Texts about books (2)
We are struck by the rarity of non-Christian titles among the books cited in documents : between the 4th and 8thcenturies , 58 letters and 22 lists (notes, inventories and catalogs) mention 402 Christian books, while only two documents (P.Turner 9 from the 4thcentury and SB XII 11084 from the5th century) mention 22 non-Christian books - - and even then, three of them are rhetorical manuals, which, although claiming to be Hellenicpaideia, could also be used for works of a Christian nature.
Although the number of books from non-Christian traditions plummets after the 4thcentury , the number of copies found still represents more than 30 % of the literary papyri : how can we explain the fact that these books are so rarely mentioned in the documents ? This apparent statistical inconsistency could be explained by the fact that classical literature became a material for study and training, and was therefore confined to the world of schools - which explains why it is absent from letters and catalogs. What's more, we have no inventories or catalogs of private libraries: the book lists that have come down to us are those of Christian institutions - churches or monasteries - most often Coptic-speaking, where we wouldn't expect to find secular works.
A special case in point, however, are the hymnoi of Gregory of Nazianzus recorded in a church inventory-catalogue(P.Leid.Inst. 13), texts which, by their form, are linked to the classical poetic tradition, while at the same time being Christian in content - an ambiguity which is also quite a didactic program in the spirit of the Cappadocian fathers seeking to edify in Christianity at the same time as inculcating the fundamentals of Hellenic paideia.
Hybrid books (1)
Does the apparently monolithic situation depicted in these documents correspond to the reality of libraries? The situation is undoubtedly far more complex, as shown by the case of hybrid books - books that have come down to us in isolation, but which combine classical and Christian traditions. With the development of the codex, it was not uncommon for private individuals to compile their own books from copies they had on loan. The study of these composite books raises the question of the link between the various texts they contain, and what they tell us about the profile of their copyist-readers.
