ON THE ORIGIN OF A MANUSCRIPT FROM THE SUKALADZEV LIBRARY

This paper is dedicated to an analysis of a pergameneous manuscript of the late fourteenth century (Tikh. 8) from a collection of medieval manuscripts in the Siberian Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The title of the manuscript is “The Sermon of Gregory of Nazianzus about the Maccabees with Commentary by Nikita, Metropolitan of Irakleia.” The manuscript has an unusual history. It was formerly in the collection of the notorious falsifier A. I. Sukaladzev, who presented it as a twelfth-century manuscript. On the basis of paleographic, codicological, and textological data, the present paper argues that Tikh. 8 is one of the lost pieces of the manuscript Sin. 43 (State Historical Museum), containing the most valuable copy of “The 16 Sermons of Gregory of Nazianzus with Commentary by Nikita, Metropolitan of Irakleia.” The reconstruction of the original sequence of folios in Tikh. 8 shows that, in addition to “The Sermon about the Maccabees,” this fragment contains an almost complete text of “The Sermon on the Arrival of the 150 Bishops in Constantinople,” the beginning of which is found in Sin. 43