PAPADOPOULOS-KERAMEUS, ATANASIO. — Orientalist, born in Dracia, Thessaly, on 26 April 1856, died in St Petersburg on 18 October 1912.
Having completed his secondary studies at the Evangelical School of Smyrna, he became its librarian and curator of the school’s Museum, and published his first essays there. In 1881 he moved to Constantinople as librarian of the Society of Greek Philology; on its behalf he visited and compiled catalogues of numerous libraries in Macedonia, Pontus, and the islands of the Aegean. Summoned to Jerusalem by Patriarch Nicodemus, he travelled throughout Palestine in search of Greek codices, which he assembled in the monastery of SS. Constantine and Helena, and compiled their catalogue, the printing of which was undertaken by the Russian Society for Palestine. This led to his journey to St Petersburg. In 1892 he became professor of Greek philology at that University, and in 1894 moved to the Metropolitan Library.
His tireless work and his long contact with ancient codices gave him the opportunity to publish numerous documents of antiquity for the first time and to compose significant studies, published in Greek and Russian journals and in many periodicals of the West. G. Papamichail (v. BIBLICA) lists 215 of them.
PAPACY — The symbolic ship of the Church with the Pontiff, the bishops, and the faithful, and ss. Peter and Paul as helmsmen. Brass group by Gakpon Dahou — Dahomey (apostolic vicariate of Ouida).
concerning classical and Byzantine archaeology, patrology, Byzantinology, ecclesiastical history, and palaeography. Of all his works, the most valuable is the Jerusalem Library, that is, Catalogue of the Greek Codices of the Library of the “Patriarchal Throne of Jerusalem and all Palestine” (5 vols., Pietroburgo 1891–1910).