Polybios: Historia

DATA SHEET

Shelfmark: Cod. Graec. 157
Country: Germany
City: Munich
Keeper location: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek
Digitized corvina: at the keeper location
Author: Polybius (c. 200 BC–c. 118 BC); Herodian (c. 175–c. 250); Heliodorus of Emesa (3rd or 4th century?); Theodore Prodromos (12th century)
Content: Polybius: Istoriai; Herodian: Tēs meta Markon basileias istoria; Heliodorus of Emesa: Aithiopika; Theodore Prodromos: Versus in Charicleam
Writing medium: parchment (fol. I–VII, I* paper)
Number of sheets: VII + 169 + I*
Sheet size: 280 × 212 mm
Place of writing: probably Constantinople
Date of writing: first third of the 15th century
Scriptor: Isidore of Kiev (1380/1390–1463)
Place of illumination: probably Constantinople
Date of illumination: first third of the 15th century
Possessor, provenience: copied by Isidore, later Metropolitan of Kiev and cardinal, either by commission or for private use, probably before he took up high ecclesiastical office, presumably in Constantinople; the volume was removed from the city after the fall of Constantinople (1453); it is not known when and how it came to be in the library of Matthias Corvinus (King of Hungary 1458–1490, King of Bohemia 1469–1490); after the battle of Mohács (1526), a soldier took the manuscript, because of its gilded decoration, to Ansbach, where it was lent to philologist Vincentius Obsopoeus (?–1539) through the collaboration of lawyer Jacobus Otto Etzel (?–after 1538); in the 1570s, the volume was in the possession of Joachim II Camerarius (1534–1598), a physician from Nuremberg, who may have inherited it from his father, the famous humanist Joachim I Camerarius (1500–1574); Camerarius the younger presented it to Prince Albert V of Bavaria (r. 1550–1579) on 23 May 1577, and it has been in the court library at Munich ever since
Binding: probably originally a corvina leather binding, the present binding is a 16th century leather binding (circa 1525–1529); gauffered-gilded edge
Language of corvina: Greek