Pinakes | Πίνακες

Résumé :

The medical compilation in seven books made in the 7th century by the byzantine physician Paul of Egina, under the title Epitomae Medicae, was transmitted in many manuscripts, the oldest of which date back to the 9th century. Its diffusion from the Renaissance onwards, from the 1528 Aldine edition in Venice to the edition by J.-L. Heiberg in 1924 in the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum, does not take into account all the manuscripts and has left aside the most trustworthy of them. Among the 44 manuscripts of book V, devoted to theriacs and alexipharmaka (antidotes against venoms and poisons), in which Paul of Egina has compiled the works of Philumenus, Pseudo-Dioscorides, Oribasius or Galen, 23 are kept at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, but most of them have not yet been systematically described. The present paper offers a codicological and paleographical examination, combined with historical criteria, in order to complete the wellknown and usual catalogues already existing or to synthetize the most recent studies.