The Project

What is known as the “Lexicon of Cyril” is an exceptionally extensive Greek lexicon that was likely compiled between the end of the fifth and the beginning of the sixth century AD. It is preserved in about 200 manuscripts, many of which attribute the Lexicon to Saint Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria (370-444 AD). The Lexicon remains essentially unpublished in the many (and often interpolated) lines of its tradition.

The aim of the proposed Project is to lay the foundations for the first comprehensive edition of the Lexicon of Cyril, which will record the manuscripts circulating over the centuries and found in—what is today—Greece. In the past, only partial editions have undergone complete or partial processing, and there is no scholarly consensus regarding the precise relationship of the surviving manuscripts. Therefore, the Project’s objectives represent the first steps towards a full-scale edition. The Project plans to create an annotated database of Cyril’s manuscripts covering the documents preserved within the borders of modern Greece.

It aims to provide a better and more secure basis for resolving the problem of the relationship between manuscripts and perhaps ultimately the surviving recensions. Research will focus on a) a comprehensive study of all the witnesses of the Lexicon tradition in Greece and the complete transcription of several of them, b) identifying headless and unidentified lexicons that may be connected to the Lexicon of Cyril, c) exploring the possibility of automatically transcribing manuscripts, and d) using digital methods to analyze the Lexicon’s stemma.

The project is implemented within the framework of H.F.R.I. call “Basic Research Financing (Horizontal support of all Sciences)” under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan “Greece 2.0” funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU (H.F.R.I. Number: KE 014890).