Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Athanasios

PAPADOPOULOS-KERAMEUS, ATHANASIOS. - Orientalist, b. in Dracia of Thessaly on 26 Apr. 1856, d. in St. Petersburg on 18 Oct. 1912.

After completing his gymnasium studies at the evangelical school of Smyrna, he became curator of the Library and Museum of the school there, and published his first essays there. In 1881 he moved to Constantinople, as librarian of the Society of Hellenic Philology, and on its behalf he visited and compiled the catalogues of numerous libraries in Macedonia, Pontus and the Aegean islands. Summoned to Jerusalem by the patriarch Nicodemus, he traveled throughout Palestine in search of Greek codices, which he gathered in the monastery of Sts. Constantine and Helena, and compiled their catalogue, the printing of which was undertaken by the Russian Society for Palestine. This gave occasion for his move to St. Petersburg. In 1892 he was professor of Greek philology at that University and in 1894 he moved to the Metropolitan Library.

Tireless in his work, his long contact with ancient codices gave him the opportunity to publish for the first time numerous documents of antiquity and to compile interesting works, published in Greek and Russian journals and in many of the West. G. Papamichail (v. bibl.) lists 215 of them.

concerning classical and Byzantine archaeology, patrology, Byzantinology, ecclesiastical history and paleography. Among all his works the most valuable is the Biblioteca Gerosolimitana, ossia Catalogo dei codici greci della Biblioteca del « Trono Patriarcale di Gerusalemme e di tutta la Palestina » (5 vols., St. Petersburg 1891-1910).

Maurizio Gordillo