Greek Orthodox Church Attempting to Reclaim Centuries-Old Manuscripts in U.S. Collections

Greek Orthodox Church Attempting to Reclaim Centuries-Old Manuscripts in U.S. Collections

Dig­i­tized images of a 12th cen­tu­ry copy of the New Tes­ta­ment, hand­writ­ten in Greek. Pho­to / Duke Uni­ver­si­ty’s David M. Ruben­stein Rare Book & Man­u­script Library.

More than a cen­tu­ry after being removed from a his­toric monastery in north­ern Greece, rare ninth-cen­tu­ry Chris­t­ian man­u­scripts have been locat­ed in the Unit­ed States, where a team rep­re­sent­ing the Greek Ortho­dox Church is wag­ing a tire­some legal bat­tle to return them to the library from which they were taken.

At the moment, eight of the sacred man­u­scripts sit among the library col­lec­tions of three pres­ti­gious U.S. insti­tu­tions — Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, Duke Uni­ver­si­ty, and the Mor­gan Library in New York City.

How­ev­er, long before becom­ing pieces of Amer­i­can col­lec­tions, these doc­u­ments once resided in the Kosinitza Monastery — one of Greece’s old­est and most impor­tant Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian reli­gious sanc­tu­ar­ies — locat­ed in the north­ern region of Macedonia.

Also known as Pana­gia Eikosiphoinis­sa (“twen­ty palm trees” in Greek), the monastery was built in 400 AD just out­side the city of Dra­ma and has a tur­bu­lent his­to­ry includ­ing sev­er­al mas­sacres of monks, destruc­tion of its build­ings — and theft of the extreme­ly rare manuscripts. 

In March 1917, as World War I was rag­ing through­out Europe, a group of Bul­gar­i­an mil­i­tants raid­ed the monastery and stole the entire con­tents of its library, which had been filled with holy texts that includ­ed the old­est com­plete ver­sion of the New Tes­ta­ment in existence.

Before the loot­ing, the library housed 1300 vol­umes, 430 of which were high­ly-valu­able man­u­scripts. Many of the vol­umes dat­ed back more than 1,000 years and were sold across Europe to var­i­ous book deal­ers and col­lec­tors and nev­er recovered.

Attor­ney George Tsougarakis — a part­ner with Hugh­es Hub­bard & Reed, a New York City-based firm that is han­dling the recov­ery of the man­u­scripts on a pro bono basis on behalf of the Ecu­meni­cal Patri­ar­chate of Con­stan­tino­ple — said that his legal team has con­tact­ed each Amer­i­can insti­tu­tion to ask for the man­u­scripts’ return.

While we’ve had long dis­cus­sions with each of them, and while they haven’t said no yet, they also haven’t said that they would return the items either,” Tsougarakis told The Pap­pas Post.

He said the monastery has firm legal grounds to sup­port the man­u­scripts’ return, as a thief can­not pass own­er­ship to oth­er buy­ers, which would mean that the insti­tu­tions do not have legit­i­mate claims of ownership. 

The Kosinitza Monastery, also known as Pana­gia Eikosiphoinis­sa, locat­ed near Dra­ma, Greece. Pho­to / Irak­lis Milas via VisitKavala.gr

Two years ago — in addi­tion to Prince­ton, Duke and the Mor­gan — a fourth Amer­i­can insti­tu­tion also held anoth­er valu­able man­u­script from the monastery, but its han­dling of the doc­u­ment stark­ly con­trasts with how the three insti­tu­tions in ques­tion are han­dling their own.

The Luther­an School of The­ol­o­gy in Chica­go had what turned out to be the old­est com­plete ver­sion of the New Tes­ta­ment, hand­writ­ten in Greek — one of only 60 such doc­u­ments in the world. End­ing up in a far­away col­lec­tion, the sacred text had shared the same fate as the oth­ers that had been tak­en from the monastery one cen­tu­ry earlier.

In Novem­ber 2016, how­ev­er, the Luther­an the­olo­gians made a his­toric ges­ture by prompt­ly return­ing the New Tes­ta­ment after a request from Greek Ortho­dox Church offi­cials, giv­ing up the 337-page doc­u­ment that was — by far —  the most prized and sacred item in the school’s collection.

That is why the Luther­an School’s deci­sion to return [the book] was such a sac­ri­fice,” Fr. Alex Kar­lout­sos said. “And [that is] why it stands in stark con­trast to respons­es by the oth­er insti­tu­tions we con­tact­ed regard­ing the remain­ing eight volumes.”

Kar­lout­sos, who han­dles var­i­ous pub­lic and gov­ern­ment affairs mat­ters on behalf of the Ecu­meni­cal Patri­ar­chate and the Greek Ortho­dox Arch­dio­cese of Amer­i­ca, is work­ing close­ly with Tsougarakis to recov­er the remain­ing man­u­scripts and uses the Luther­an School’s exam­ple as one for the oth­er Amer­i­can insti­tu­tions to follow.

Kar­lout­sos added that the school’s ges­ture also pro­vides “an inter­est­ing per­spec­tive,” say­ing that Prince­ton, Duke and the Mor­gan are “far wealth­i­er” and “cer­tain­ly don’t wor­ship the man­u­scripts” as the Luther­an School wor­shipped its New Testament.

After receiv­ing a sin­gle let­ter from us, the Luther­an School imme­di­ate­ly did the right thing,” he said. “The oth­ers have not. Why not?”

For decades, stu­dents at the Luther­an School of The­ol­o­gy in Chica­go rou­tine­ly stud­ied the old­est com­plete ver­sion of the New Tes­ta­ment in exis­tence, hand­writ­ten in Greek. Pho­to / Luther­an School of Theology

Princeton’s Act­ing Uni­ver­si­ty Spokesper­son Michael Hotchkiss said the school is “sen­si­tive” to the Greek Ortho­dox Church’s con­cerns and that it is “com­mit­ted” to ensur­ing that the man­u­scripts have been prop­er­ly obtained.

He said, how­ev­er, that the uni­ver­si­ty has “care­ful­ly reviewed” the infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the Patri­ar­chate and has also been con­duct­ing its own research on the issue since late 2015.

Based on the infor­ma­tion avail­able to us,” Hotchkiss told The Pap­pas Post in a writ­ten state­ment, “We have found no basis to con­clude that the man­u­scripts in our pos­ses­sion were loot­ed dur­ing World War I, or oth­er­wise improp­er­ly removed…”

The spokesman added that Prince­ton will con­tin­ue to give “prompt and mean­ing­ful con­sid­er­a­tion” to any oth­er evidence.

The Mor­gan Library Man­ag­er of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Shaili Shah was also con­tact­ed by The Pap­pas Post and said the library’s admin­is­tra­tion had no com­ment at the time.

Final­ly, Duke Uni­ver­si­ty had not respond­ed to requests for com­ment at the time of this article’s publication.

In response to Princeton’s claims that it had not found evi­dence that the man­u­scripts were stolen, Kar­lout­sos told The Pap­pas Post that the uni­ver­si­ty can find such evi­dence on its own campus.

For exam­ple, Prince­ton pro­fes­sors Dim­itri Gondi­cas and Don C. Ske­mer wrote in the pref­ace to the “Greek Man­u­scripts at Prince­ton, Sixth to Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry: A Descrip­tive Cat­a­logue” (2010) that “all of the monastery’s man­u­scripts were removed from its library and tak­en to Sofia by the Bul­gar­i­an author­i­ties in 1917.” 

Gondi­cas, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Hel­lenic Stud­ies, and Ske­mer, cura­tor of man­u­scripts at the uni­ver­si­ty library, both describe Princeton’s own col­lec­tion of Kosinitza man­u­scripts as being “removed” from the library by Bul­gar­i­an authorities. 

Any­one who argues that the word ‘remove’ doesn’t mean ‘stolen’ sure­ly has a mis­tak­en view of his­to­ry,” Kar­lout­sos said. “The monks at the monastery clear­ly didn’t invite the Bul­gar­i­an author­i­ties into their sacred home dur­ing the peak of World War I and offer these cher­ished vol­umes as gifts.”

Kar­lout­sos added that, in the same man­u­script cat­a­logue, Prince­ton pro­vides exten­sive addi­tion­al evi­dence from oth­er sources that the man­u­scripts were part of the monastery’s col­lec­tion and ille­gal­ly loot­ed in 1917.

Giv­en the cir­cum­stances of the Great War and the pletho­ra of pub­lished infor­ma­tion avail­able, the evi­dence clear­ly sup­ports that the unau­tho­rized tak­ing of the man­u­scripts by the Bul­gar­i­an author­i­ties was a theft — plain and sim­ple — we know it, and Prince­ton knows it,” Kar­lout­sos said.

Dig­i­tized image of an 11th cen­tu­ry Greek Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian man­u­script — known as Gar­rett MS. 16 — in the Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Library. Pho­to / Princeton.edu

Tsougarakis said he thinks that insti­tu­tions with valu­able his­tor­i­cal items often hes­i­tate to give them back because it could set a prece­dent, lead­ing to even more returns and pos­si­bly deplet­ing a vast part of their collections.

Var­i­ous Greek dias­po­ra orga­ni­za­tions have shown sup­port for the church in its effort to re-obtain the doc­u­ments, as the Hel­lenic Amer­i­can Lead­er­ship Coun­cil in Chica­go start­ed a peti­tion for sup­port­ers to sign.

Kar­lout­sos said he has hope that the insti­tu­tions will make the “right choice,” cit­ing a sim­i­lar exam­ple of Nazi-stolen art being returned to fam­i­lies of Jew­ish col­lec­tors who had been vic­tim­ized dur­ing World War II.

[Like that case] we believe that this case is also egre­gious and hope that Prince­ton, Duke and the Mor­gan will ulti­mate­ly do the right thing and return the man­u­scripts,” he said. “Until then, it’s a bit of a mys­tery why they won’t.”


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