Libri quos mari transmisi Venetias. Busbecq, Prodromos Petra e i giacimenti librari costantinopolitani al tempo di Solimano il Magnifico

This paper focuses on the Greek manuscripts, now part of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, acquired in Constantinople by the Hasburgic diplomat Oghier Ghislain de Busbecq during his two missions to the court of Soleiman the Magnificent (1554, 1556-1562). Building on previous scholarship, it mainly focusses on aspects such as Busbecq’s purchases as librarian, and the role played by scholars, scribes and trading merchants (such as the Malaxoi and the Zigomalas, who were active in Constantinople’s patriarchal quartier between the mid fifteenth century and the mid sixteenth century) in the accumulating the diplomat’s supply of manuscripts. The author argues that Busbecq’s cargo could have belonged at least in part to that last stronghold of book assets that was the monastery of Prodromos Petra between the Late Byzantine and First Ottoman period. This paper will show that after the Turkish conquest until the 1570s, Byzantium still offered a large reserve of manuscripts, and that its local antiquarian Greek culture well survived the city’s fall.