Claudio De Stefani – författare

The two poems Descriptio S. Sophiae and Descriptio Ambonis of Paul the Silentiary, composed for the inauguration (562 AD) of the church of St. Sophia (Istanbul) after its partial rebuilding, are an invaluable source for the history of Byzantine arts and a beautiful piece of late Greek poetry. Silentiary's poems respectively describe the church and its (now lost) pulpit. The Descriptio S. Sophiae also contains a lavish praise of emperor Justinian and of the patriarch Eutichius. De Stefani’s edition is based on a collation of the witness of the text, Heid. Pal. gr. 23, and takes into account all previous bibliography. Some corrupted passages of the poems have been emendated, the few false readings still present in the text printed by the last, authoritative editor, P. Friedländer (1912), have been corrected.

The two poems Descriptio S. Sophiae and Descriptio Ambonis of Paul the Silentiary, composed for the inauguration (562 AD) of the church of St. Sophia (Istanbul) after its partial rebuilding, are an invaluable source for the history of Byzantine arts and a beautiful piece of late Greek poetry. Silentiary''s poems respectively describe the church and its (now lost) pulpit. The Descriptio S. Sophiae also contains a lavish praise of emperor Justinian and of the patriarch Eutichius. De Stefani’s edition is based on a collation of the witness of the text, Heid. Pal. gr. 23, and takes into account all previous bibliography. Some corrupted passages of the poems have been emendated, the few false readings still present in the text printed by the last, authoritative editor, P. Friedländer (1912), have been corrected.

A book which provides readers with a critical text of both the ecphrasis of the church of the Holy Apostles by Constantine of Rhodes and his satyrical poems was still needed. De Stefani and Strano offer a new edition of these texts, while correcting several corrupted passages. Particularly, the debts of Constantine with his avowed model in the description of the church of Holy Apostles, Paul the Silentiary, have been highlighted and the imitations of Constantine's poems by later Byzantine poets have been registered. In fact Constantine is the scribe (J) of Paul's poems in the famous Pal. Heid. gr. 23. De Stefani in his edition of Silentiary's text pointed out several imitations of Silentiary by Constantine. Further imitations of Silentiary's poem came out in course of the elaboration of this project and are recorded in the fontes. Constantine's poem is wordly quoted by Georgius Cedrenus. This new very important tool would help to better both the text we are editing and the quotations by Cedrenus listed in the fontes. Finally, the apparatus of the fontes will also mention the most patent imitations of the poem of Constantine by later Byzantine poets. The book will be a useful tool for all students of Byzantine literature.