Greek Manuscripts and Scribes of the Eastern Mediterranean. St Catherine’s Monastery on Mt Sinai and Its Metochion on Crete (13th-15th Centuries)

The project aims to uncover the intellectual connections between St Catherine’s Monastery and its Cretan metochion, both of which were key institutions of the Sinaites in the Eastern Mediterranean. Its implementation requires systematic research in the Veneto-Cretan archives—specifically, administrative and notarial registers within the archival series Duca di Candia and Notai di Candia—in combination with prosopographical and codicological analysis of the Greek-Sinaitic manuscripts preserved in the library of St Catherine’s. Chronologically, the research extends from the Venetian settlement in Crete in 1211 and the subsequent development of ties with Sinai, to the emergence of Crete as a major centre of Greek manuscript production on the eve of the gradual rise of printing in Europe.