Section 04: The Bibliotheca
The scholarly monument that earned Photius his reputation as the most learned man of his age, together with the rest of his learned corpus. These files cover the Bibliotheca (or Myriobiblon), his collection of critical summaries of some two hundred and eighty books — through which a great deal of lost classical and patristic literature survives — and the two other great works of erudition, the Lexicon and the Amphilochia.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox / Byzantine
Contents
| File | Topic |
|---|---|
| The Myriobiblon | The Bibliotheca: its 279/280 codices of summaries written for his brother Tarasios; the works preserved only through it; its range across history, oratory, philosophy, medicine, and theology; the modern editions |
| The Lexicon and the Amphilochia | The Lexicon (the dictionary of classical and sacred vocabulary, completed by the 1959 Zavorda manuscript) and the Amphilochia (his collection of answered theological and exegetical questions for Amphilochius of Cyzicus) |
How to Use
- Read The Myriobiblon for the great work of preservation and criticism; read The Lexicon and the Amphilochia for the lexicographical and theological-question collections that round out the corpus.
- The reputation for learning that these works document is introduced in The Scholar and Statesman; the modern editing of them in Modern Scholarship.
Cross-References
- For the patristic and conciliar texts the Bibliotheca and Amphilochia preserve and discuss, see The Church Fathers
- For the learned formation behind the corpus, see The Scholar and Statesman
References
- See the collection README for the principal sources; each content file carries its own full reference list.