Gregorius Nazianzenus: Homiliae

This volume contains the complete collection of the speeches homilies of Saint Gregorius Nazianzenus (cca 330‒390), to which two smaller works were added, one of Saint John Chrysostomus (347‒407) and one of Saint Gregory Thaumaturgus (cca 213‒cca 270).
What makes the contents important is that it was based upon this codex that the German Humanist Willibald Pirckheimer arranged the edition of the Latin language printed version of Saint Gregorius Nazianzenus’s speeches homilies (Basel, 1531). The manuscript is the most recently identified Greek language Corvina. The identification was allowed by the examination of written sources of the 16th century and certain codicology features typical of other Corvinas in Greek. At the beginning of the 16th century, the volume was in the possession of Johannes Hess of Breslau, who in his letter of 1529 to Pirckheimer attached the index of contents ‒ identical to that of this manuscript ‒ and soon would send the codex itself. That is proved by that in 1530, Hess already asks Pirckheimer of how the translation into Latin is going. (Pirckheimer was getting along well, as he had sent the Latin text of the 2nd speech already in 1529 to Georg Spalatin, the erudite secretary of the Prince-elector of Saxony with a most relevant note of that the codex originates from Hungary.)
Although there is no other written source confirming the manuscript’s one-time presence in Buda, a thorough examination revealed that the damaged parchment sheets were completed, restored and added numbers by the same hand as the restoration of the provenly authentic Constantine Porphyrogennetos Corvina. The quires of the codex that had arrived at Buda in an unknown way, were numbered carefully to prevent the bookbinding master of the Corvinas from mixing up the sheets. However, the application of the Corvina binding might not have been concluded, otherwise the 16th century owner, Johannes Hess, would not have had it bound again. (Ferenc Földesi. The entry written for the guide to the exhibition was made on the basis of András Németh’s description below: The CORVINA LIBRARY and the Buda Workshop. Exhibition Catalog. (Publication in progress.) Budapest: NSZL, 2019, Cat. C4)

Source: The Corvina Library and the Buda Worskhop: [National Széchényi Library, November 6, 2018 –February 9, 2019] A Guide to the Exhibition; introduction and summary tables: Edina Zsupán; object descriptions: Edina Zsupán, Ferenc Földesi; English translation: Ágnes Latorre, Budapest: NSZL, 2018, p. 58