Marginal Knowledge, Marginal Knowing: Scholia and Commentary in Byzantine Manuscript Cultures

Stephen Carlson and Jonathan Zecher

Our TRT project, Scholia Seeking Understanding, focuses on the body of marginal notes to the works of a sixth-century mystical theologian who wrote under the name of Dionysios “the Areopagite.” We are investigating how these were read and how their aesthetic presentation on the manuscript page impacted understanding of the Dionysian text.

But we have also become interested in learning about the role of scholia more generally in education, formation, and even knowledge production in the Byzantine world.  The East Roman Empire was self-consciously conservative, culturally and intellectually.  In theology, in law, in literature and language, the Byzantine world resisted innovation and novelty, in favour of following time-honoured models. And yet Byzantine readers were far from passive recipients of hoary wisdom. Readers actively engaged with the texts and authors they revered through a range of literary modes too often overlooked by modern scholars—compilations, paraphrases, and scholia.

We want to use scholia as a lens to see more clearly how Byzantine (and other medieval) intellectuals packaged and produced knowledge—how they developed and deployed book technology and editorial practices to celebrate, converse with, improve upon, and challenge their sources of knowledge.  To that end we are convening a seminar in September 2025 at ACU’s Rome Campus, where we will gather scholars who study scholia and commentary across Byzantine literature, philosophy, law, medicine, and theology.

We hope that both through the papers delivered and the conversations started, to start rethinking the place of the margin and the marginal in Byzantine intellectual life.