Half-way point on the British Library Greek manuscripts

A post on the British Library manuscripts blog tells me something once almost unimaginable: that fully half the Greek manuscripts in the collection are now online and accessible to the world 90% of the Greek manuscripts of the BL will be online by March.  All credit is due to Julian Harrison and his team for this massive work, and also to the Stavros Niarchos foundation –  never was Greek shipping money so well deployed! – and the other funding bodies.

The full list of 40 new manuscripts is at the blog above.  But here are the items which seem of most interest to us.  (And thanks to Cillian O’Hogan for making it much easier to write this list this time!)

• Add MS 24372, Gregory of Nazianzus, Orationes: 1, 11, 14-16, 19, 21, 24, 38, 39, 40-45; 11th c.
• Add MS 24381, Gregory of Nazianzus, Orationes, most being imperfect at the beginning, owing to miniatures which have been torn out. 1079 or 1088 AD.
• Add MS 28823, John Zonaras, Commentary on the Canons of the Apostles, of the ecumenical and local councils and of the Fathers, and related texts. 4th quarter of the 14th century.
• Add MS 28825, Greek translation of Ephraem the Syrian, Homilies, imperfect, and other patristic texts, including Isaiah of Gaza, Asceticon, Nilus of Ankara, Epistola ad Diaconum Achillium. Marcian of Bethlehem, and John of Lycopolis. 12th century.
• Add MS 34554, Lives of saints and theological discourses, imperfect. 16th century.
• Add MS 35212, John Chrysostom, In Genesim homiliae 10-17, imperfect. 11th century.
• Add MS 36669, Apophthegmata Patrum: a compilation of the Greek Church Fathers, bearing the title Λειμὼν ἐνθάδε καρπῶν πεπληρωμένος. 14th century. In a 17th-century binding of boards covered with leather with gilt ornament, the centrepiece representing on the upper cover the Crucifixion, on the lower cover David and the angel of the Lord.
• Add MS 36754, Basil of Caesarea, Homilies on the Hexameron and John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis, imperfect and mutilated. 11^th century.
• Add MS 36821, Works of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, with the marginal commentary of Maximus the Confessor, and additional texts relating to Pseudo-Dionysius. 1st half of the 10th century, possibly copied from an uncial manuscript of Pseudo-Dionysius written by Methodius, future Patriarch of Constantinople, at Rome.
• Add MS 39608, John Chrysostom, In Genesim homiliae 1-133. 13th century.
• Burney MS 100, Works of Aristotle, preceded by Porphyry, Isagoge. Italy, N? 1st half of the 15th century.
• Burney MS 111, Ptolemy, Geographia, with many diagrams and coloured maps, all except that on f 1v being later fifteenth-century replacements on inserted leaves. 4th quarter of the 14th century-1st quarter of the 15th century.
• Harley MS 5600, Homer, Iliad, with prefatory material. Florence, completed on 16 May 1466. With a full-page frontispiece in colours and gold on f 15v; a full white vine border in colours and gold on f 16r; 25 white vine initials in colours and gold.
• Kings MS 16, Homer, Iliad. Italy, 1431.

Marvellous!

Now how about making it possible to download a PDF of each manuscript?

UPDATE: A kind correspondent writes to advise me that this is actually the half way point of the current project; and that in fact 90% of all the mss will be online by the spring.  This is even better news!