Homilies of Gregory Nazianzenus.Patmos, Monastery of St. John the Theologian, codex 33, fol. 4v-5r

This manuscript was written in Reggio, Calabria, in 941 and is the oldest dated manuscript from southern Italy. The codex contains the Homilies of Gregory Nazianzenus, some funeral epigrams, a biography of Gregory and commentaries by Pseudo-Nonnus. Before the text are placed four impressive pages that serve as frontispieces and are decorated with a full-page miniature each. The miniatures bear frames in multilobed shapes, circles, crosses and rectangulars that enclose verses in majuscule writing from the Homilies of Gregory or others in honour of him. The decoration in the rest of the volume is based almost exclusively on headpieces and decorated initials with fish or hands in blessing at the beginning of each text.
On the frontispiece presented here, the text is enclosed in a plaited cross. Inside there is a poem composed by monk Nicholaos. He and his son Daniel executed the work and it seems that, before becoming monks, they had been prosperous laymen with a high level of culture. On the opposite leaf, the first page of the text of the Homilies bears the title in gold writing inside a decorative rectangular shape. The lines of the title are painted each in a different colour, thus creating an impression of polychromy. Underneath, the first word of the text is written, ΗΤΤΗΜΑΙ (I have been defeated). This is the oration "In Defence of His Flight to Pontus, and His Return, After His Ordination to the Priesthood, with an Exposition of the Character of the Priestly Office". Gregory regarded his ordination as a presbyter by his father an act of tyranny, and left Nazianzus in order to live as an ascetic in Pontus. However, he came back a year after to assist his father and wrote this oration in order to defend and explain his conduct and supply an exposition of the obligations and dignity of the Priestly Office. The word ΗΤΤΗΜΑΙ is dividen in three tall groups of letters, that prelude the tripartite division of the text. The groups are plaited and have gold studs, and the letters end in elaborate animal heads that bite their own neck.
This unconventional manuscript of Patmos has analogies in byzantine manuscripts. But here, the frontispieces do not have any part in the use of the text. The emphasis laid on the embellishment and the first word of the text, as well as the extensive use of plait, are reminiscent of western manuscripts. On the other hand, there are obvious eastern influences in the animals and the affixes on the small headpieces that resemple the "soura"(the additions in decoraive bands in manuscripts of the Koran). The coexistence of byzantine, eastern-islamic and western elements in a work from Calabria is explicable, since Reggio had an arabic population already since the 10th century.