Capron Laurent. Deux codices hagiographiques sur papyrus du Musée du Louvre: édition et commentaire

Université Paris 4 Paris-Sorbonne, 2010. — 297 p.This thesis presents the reconstruction and the commented edition of the fragments of two hagiographical codices on papyrus, from the Musée du Louvre. They preserve some parts of the Life of Eupraxia (codex 1), of the Life of Abraham of Qidun and the Life of Theodora of Alexandria (codex 2). The codex 1 is unedited. The codex 2 was partly published in 1889 by C. Wessely, but as a result of the discovery of new fragments and the restoration of all of these papyri, a new edition was indispensable. After the reading of a large number of medieval manuscripts, it has been possible to fill most of the lacunae. Only the Life of Theodora remains incomplete. These papyri present the oldest witnesses of the Greek version of the texts, allowing the identification of the groups of manuscripts which preserved the best text. The Life of Abraham is a Greek translation of a genuine Syriac text. Some now lost Greek manuscripts, contemporary of the papyrus, have been translated in Christo-Palestinian Aramaic. These versions are studied in particular. The Life of Eupraxia as well as the Life of Theodora are probably fictions in which it is possible to detect the presence of historical-political quarrels.