Abstract
In 1988, Gary Vikan dedicated a study to the famous post-Byzantine calligrapher Luke the Cypriot, Metropolitan of Wallachia. Trying to substantiate the claim that the subject of his research “was closely acquainted with Anastasios Crimca, Moldavian Metropolitan, who was also a renowned manuscript illuminator”, he stated that “Mount Sinai cods. 1480 (Gospels)” was written by Luke, “while the headpieces and Evangelist portraits are by Crimca”. The detail was important, because it highlighted a previously unsuspected connection between two major Early Modern “schools of scribes”, a Greek one, gravitating around Luke († 1629), in Wallachia, and a Church-Slavonic one, galvanized by Crimca († 1629), in Moldavia. Yet Sinaiticus gr. 1480 does not contain the Gospels and it was not copied by Luke: it is a liturgical chant manuscript copied by one of Luke’s most talented disciples, hieromonk Iakovos of Simonopetra, in Bucharest, in 1625. There is, however, a manuscript that fits the (laconic) description provided by Vikan: Sinaiticus gr. 203. The present paper places the manuscript in its (dual) cultural context and reconstructs, with the help of archival materials, the career of the donor. Based on this evidence, it argues that it mirrors the profound political, economic, and social transformation of Southeastern Europe after the fall of Constantinople (1453).
Keywords
Anastasie Crimca, Greek calligraphy, Luke the Cypriot, manuscript illumination, school of scribes, St Catherine Monastery on Mount Sinai
