Summary
This paper proposes a historical theory to account for the programmatic production of books at Philotheou Monastery in the sixteenth century – that the monastery hosted a school for missionary priests-teachers dedicated to countering contemporary Ottoman pressures to suppress Orthodox education and advance conversion to Islam. The Philotheite program was dominated by a group of calligraphers from Gallipoli, but incorporating the work of numerous skilled calligraphers who appear to have worked at Philotheou only briefly. It identifies the calligraphers, and surveys the related subjects of systematic book repair and production of books for personal uses. Codices are cited by Philotheou catalog numbers, not Lambros. This paper is part of a series of papers on book production at Philotheou Monastery presented at meetings of the American Byzantine Studies Conference (today the Byzantine Studies Association of North America). The series of presentations included two related papers on the subject of 16th-century book production at Philotheou Monastery in the years 1983 and 1984: * The Sixteenth-Century Scriptorium of Philotheou: The Gallipolite Calligraphers (American Byzantine Studies Conference, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA, 1983). * The Sixteenth-Century Scriptorium of Philotheou and the Athonite Resistance to Islamization (American Byzantine Studies Conference, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, 1984).
