ITSEE bids farewell to two postdoctoral fellows who have been working on the ERC CATENA project.
Today sees the end of the three-year research fellowships at ITSEE of two scholars who have played a key role in ITSEE's recent projects. Dr Georgi Parpulov started work at ITSEE at the beginning of the the ERC-funded CATENA project in June 2018, with responsibility for producing the first-ever complete catalogue of Greek New Testament catena manuscripts. This was published in May 2021 as an open access volume completed by a searchable online database. During the course of this research, Georgi made over 60 updates and changes to the official list of Greek New Testament manuscripts, the Kurzgefasste Liste maintained by the INTF in Münster. Not only did he discover around 30 previously unregistered manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, but in cataloguing the different types of catenae, he identified 20 compilations which had not been allocated a number in the Clavis Patrum Graecorum. These have now been registered on the online Clavis Clavium portal. Georgi has produced several publications in recent months on these new witnesses and their significance for patristic research.
Dr Panagiotis Manafis joined ITSEE in September 2018 as one of the research fellows on the AHRC Codex Zacynthius project, contributing to the online edition and studies of the earliest catena manuscript on the Gospel according to Luke. He also worked on the CATENA project, drawing on his research on Codex Zacynthius to identify two more witnesses to this catena on Luke, which fill in the gaps of pages missing from the earlier palimpsest manuscript and provide further scholia from Severus of Antioch and other important ancient writers. In addition to continuing his studies on Byzantine compilation literature, Panagiotis also worked on codices singuli of the Gospel according to Luke: an edition of these texts will be published in the coming year.
In addition to their roles within ITSEE, both Georgi and Panagiotis developed associations with Birmingham's Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, leading workshops on palaeography and advising postgraduate students. Georgi has recently co-ordinated work on a Catalogue of Greek Manuscripts in Birmingham, which he will present at the CBOMGS seminar next month.
Prof. Hugh Houghton, Director of ITSEE, said: "Both Georgi and Panagiotis have made an enormous contribution to ITSEE in the time that they have been with us. Without them, our work on Codex Zacynthius and the CATENA project would have been much less advanced, and the remarkable discoveries they have made speak for themselves. In particular, I'd like to pay tribute to them for their continued commitment to their research while the University was closed during the pandemic, and the work they have done in mentoring and supporting research students. Although we did not see them in person as much as we might have hoped, they were still very much part of the team from a distance. We look forward to continuing to stay in touch with them and following their academic careers."
Georgi leaves Birmingham to take up an appointment at the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen working on the Editio Critica Maior of the Greek Psalter led by the Septuagint Institute. Panagiotis has successfully obtained a teaching position at the University of Patras in Greece.
Panagiotis and Georgi at the editorial meeting in Greece in October 2018
