Essential information preserved on the margins of the Barlaam and Ioasaph Romance

This article examines the existence, function and content of the descriptive titles of the "Barlaam and Ioasaph Romance" (CPG 8120). It treats these titles as paratextual, and specifically peritextual, elements that were composed when the "Romance" was already in circulation. They offer different information about the provenance of the work, the person who brought it from the specified place of origin, the author or the translator. We argue that the form of the title found in the manuscript in Venice at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, gr. VII, 26 (coll. 1431), reflects the primary paratext prepared for the earliest version of the Romance that circulated as a book. It included the reference to both the bearer and translator of the work, whereas the titles that only mention the bearer of the Romance could be a secondary paratext formulated for a different editorial project and not necessarily at a great temporal distance from the primary paratext.