Los manuscritos griegos de Antonio Agustín

Abstract

During his lifetime, Antonio Agustín collected 272 Greek manuscripts. On his death in 1586, all of them were bought by Philip II for the library of El Escorial, except for fifteen that were sent to the Vatican Library to prepare the edition of the Ecumenical Councils. This work gives an overview of the almost one hundred that survived the fateful fire of 1671 at El Escorial, paying special attention to those of classical content and datable between the 12th and the first half of the 16th century, for which a catalogue update is provided. In addition, the ways in which Agustín built up his collection of Greek manuscripts through dealers are explained, as well as the origin of some codices from Crete, southern Italy, Cyprus and Constantinople. The final appendix contains a table with the signatures of all the Greek manuscripts preserved or missing, their current location, dating and contents. The text is accompanied by 14 illustrative plates.