The book’s main overall strength is in spotlighting less known and understudied individuals and networks, their book collections and bookshops. While the early Greek diaspora in Italy has traditionally received ample scholarly attention (mainly for its contribution to the ‘rediscovery of the classics’ in Italian humanism), the later diaspora has received considerably less concerted attention, at least from non-Greek scholars. The present volume contributes to rectifying this situation. Taken together, the chapters show, among other things, that the Byzantine Greek diaspora of the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did not just cater to the classical interests of its Italian hosts, it also cultivated its own concerns and interests.

Rosa Maria Piccione. Greeks, books and libraries in Renaissance Venice. Transmissions: studies on conditions, processes and dynamics of textual transmission, volume 1. De Gruyter, 2021. 

From Bryn Mawr Classical Review (BMCR). Review by Han Lamers, University of Oslo