You are kindly invited to the St Francis of Assisi Ceremonies and Entertainment Hall for the presentation of the only Greek codex in Slovenia, on Tuesday, 5 March 2024, at 18:00.

Within the framework of the KOPER 1500 celebration and the Tuesday meetings with cultural heritage: literary pearls of the Koper Public Library, the Greek Codex in Koper: a SLOVENIAN unicum will be presented.

A dynamic sequence of contributions will be presented:

  • Diocese of Koper Dr. JURIJ BIZJAK
  • Greek Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas Trieste Mr. GREGORIOS MILIARIS
  • Slovenian Franciscan Province of Holy Cross Prof. Dr. Fr. VIKTOR PAPEŽ OFM
  • Koper Library mag. PETER ŠTOKA
  • Serbian Orthodox Church in Koper Fr. TOMO ČIRKOVIĆ
  • Cathedral Parish of Koper dr. PRIMOŽ KREČIČ
  • Macedonian Orthodox Community in Koper Fr. DEJAN MILOSKI

The evening will be musically coloured with choir music by the Church Choir of the Greek Community of St. Nicholas of Trieste and representatives of the Koper Music School.
Guests of honour will be from the surrounding area and abroad.

Eduard Gollob, Austrian imperial-royal library superintendent, explored 197 public and private libraries in 1903, finding 75 Greek manuscripts, 4 of which were in Koper. Only 14 cities of the Austrian Empire had Greek codices, including Koper, alongside Sankt Florian, Krakow (two), Kremsmünster, Lvov, Nikolsburg, Olmütz, Prague (two), Raudnitz, Reun, Salzburg and Seitenstetten. Of the Greek codices of Koper mentioned above, only one has been preserved – the Commentary on the Psalms of the Basilian monk Euthimios Zygabenus, theologian, scholar, writer who lived in Constantinople (1050-1118/1120) at the court of Emperor Alexius Comnenus, for whom he wrote the Panoply. The codex is equipped with a label in Latin writing “Conventus S. Annae Justinopolis”, which belonged to the Franciscan convent of S. Anna, where it arrived with the Greek monks after the fall of Constantinople in the mid-15th century. The codex consists of 143 folios, without the original binding, damaged at the beginning and end, and was restored in the laboratory of the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia in 2011. The Greek commentary on the Psalms by Euthimios Zygabenus is the only Greek codex in Slovenia.