Documents of the Monastery of the Theotokos Lembiotissa

The edition of the cartulary of the Byzantine Monastery of the Theotokos Lembiotissa, located near Smyrna, was initiated circa 2000 by Paris Gounaridis, then a researcher at the Institute of Byzantine Research; his sudden death in 2017, however, prevented the work’s completion. The project is now being implemented in collaboration with the Institute of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and its researcher Aik. Mitsiou, and is directed primarily toward a digital edition of the documents, to be hosted in a purpose-built database and accompanied by an English translation.

Approximately 205 documents of the now-nonexistent Monastery of Lembiotissa are preserved in copies contained in a late-thirteenth-century codex held by the Austrian National Library. A first edition of these texts—essentially a simple transcription of the manuscript, without commentary and marked by many gaps—was published in 1871 by Miklosich and Müller as part of their multi-volume Acta et diplomata medii aevi. The material is of great value, as it pertains to numerous economic and administrative matters in the broader Smyrna region relating to the monastery’s properties and to its interactions with the local population. The forthcoming edition is expected to shed light on many facets of the history of Byzantine monasticism and on the economic and administrative structures of the Byzantine state.