The Byzantic Scriptorium

Eldest of the present community. Has copied the homilies of John Chrysostom on Matthew three times in his life — the second through tears, the third with reading-spectacles he refuses to admit are spectacles. His hand is steady on weekdays and forgiving on feast-days. Believes, with the patience of long experience, that the difference between a good copy and a bad one is whether the scribe was tired in the morning, or in the afternoon.

Specialist in liturgical hymnography and ekphonetic notation. Will quietly correct your neumes and very loudly correct your accentuation. Owns three calami and considers two of them inferior. Has been heard singing while ruling a folio, which is technically against the customary; the customary has not yet been emended.

Joined the desk last spring. Copies classical Greek authors with eager incompetence and improving discipline; has been told twice not to attempt Pindar before he has finished the basic compendium. Carries an ink smudge on his cheek which the community has agreed, kindly, to interpret as a sign. His drop initials are excellent. His margins, less so.

Copies the Cappadocian Fathers and complains about the temperature, in that order. The brazier is moved closer to his desk every November and farther from it every Lent. Marginalia attributed to him are reliably, depressingly meteorological. Possesses an extra cloak, two pairs of stockings, and a doctrine of patience which he applies, with effort, to himself.

Adds interlinear glosses in a hand so small that two of his colleagues have requested permission to consult his folios with the loupe. Maintains, with quiet conviction, that the gloss is the text and the text is the pretext. Pen-knife at the belt, ruler in the sleeve, a look of mild distraction perfected over fifteen years.

Produces patristic florilegia for our own use and, occasionally, for others. His desk is the worst-organised in the scriptorium and yet, somehow, the most productive. Can locate a citation in any of his stacks within four breaths; the rest of us have given up trying. Volumen petitum, columna xv is sufficient direction for him; for everybody else it is the beginning of an afternoon.

Paints the decorated initials and the small marginal miniatures. Grinds his own pigments and is rumoured to keep three different blues, one of which he calls the Tuesday lapis for reasons no one has yet had the courage to interrogate. Hands tremble slightly on the second cup of wine; perfectly still on the first.

Receives the finished quires and turns them into codices. Strong forearms, soft voice; will lecture for half an hour on the difference between a long-stitch and a Coptic binding if you ask, and even if you don't. The leather scraps in his work-area have, on more than one occasion, been mistaken for Pangur.

Reads what the rest of us write and removes the parts that should not have been written. Carries a pen-knife of unsettling sharpness and a quill of red ink, and is feared in proportion to his usefulness. Has, among other discoveries, restored an entire dropped paragraph of Gregory of Nazianzus that nobody else had noticed missing — a fact he has, to his credit, never once mentioned at chapter.