Résumé :
This contribution concerns the manuscript Hierosol. S. Sepulcri 29 (= Taphou 29: XIIXIII
saec.), a Greek hagiographical-homiletic codex that is little studied and which is preserved
in the library of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem. An analytical description
is provided that clarifies the manner of its production and distinguishes the various hands of
the Greek scribes — amongst whom figures an otherwise unknown Leo deacon of Nyssa —
thereby adding this codex to the dossier of medieval Greek manuscripts produced in southern
Anatolia. This article focusses above all, however, on the Armenian version of Or. 38 of
Gregory of Nazianzus, which an anonymous medieval reader transcribed during the 13th century on the margin of the Greek text on fols. 43r-53r. We analyse here both the Armenian
text and its script. The Armenian text corresponds to the ancient translation that is believed
to have been made towards the end of the 5th century, which is transmitted by numerous
codices, but was here modified by the 13th-century Armenian annotator at various points so
as to make it better correspond to the Greek text that he had in front of him. Furthermore,
the Armenian script he makes use of gradually passes from the formal bookhand minuscule
(bolorgir), which is used initially, to the Armenian cursive (šáagir), which is also attested in another
Greek manuscript where the same hand seems to have added the Armenian translation
of a Byzantine poem (Vat. gr. 1445, fol. 2r). In fact, šáagir is a script-type which was hitherto
scarcely documented in its medieval phase and is in any case little attested or noted so early in
the context of book production or para-literary texts. The testimony of Taphou 29 is especially
interesting because, among other things, it confirms the reconstruction of the evolution of medieval Armenian handwriting proposed by scholars such as Hraç‘eay Açaean and Yakovbos
Tašean. Between the end of the 19th and the early decades of the 20th century, in fact, these
illustrious scholars had already suggested that Armenian cursive (šáagir) derived directly from
the calligraphic minuscule (bolorgir), rather than from the later «notary script» (notrgir) that
the communis opinio has instead considered an intermediary between the two.
