ΒΧΜ

This is an exceptionally rare edition of an important work, whose first edition (editio princeps) in 1499, produced in Venice by the printing press belonging to the Cretans Zaxarias Kalliergis and Nikolaos Blastos, was a significant Greek publishing achievement. The year in which this book was printed (1710), the well-known and important printing press owned by Gianniotis Nikolaos Saros in Venice had already been bought by Antonio Vortoli. The Greek and foreign printing houses, which were operating as early as the 15th c. in the lively Greek communities in East and West (in Western Europe, Russia, Moldavia and Wallachia and in Istanbul), made a decisive contribution to shaping the Modern Greek identity. From very early on the Greek printing houses produced mainly religious and above all liturgical publications. Later on during the 18th and the early 19th c. the contribution of the Greek printing houses to the spread of the Ideas of the European Enlightenment to Greek soil and to “Rum” Communities in Asia Minor and Balkans was decisive.