Maria Pan. Panagiotopoulou, “Notes on the first (?) edition of the Typikon of Saint Sabbas (Venice 1545) and on two copies in the library of the monastery of Panagia Tatarnas in the Evrytanic Agrafa,” Byzantinika 37 (2022), 271–294.

Μαρία Παν. Παναγιωτοπούλου, «Σχόλια στην πρώτη (;) έκδοση του Τυπικού του αγίου Σάββα (Βενετία 1545) και σε δύο αντίτυπα στη βιβλιοθήκη της μονής Παναγίας Τατάρνας των ευρυτανικών Αγράφων», Βυζαντιακά 37 (2022), σ. 271–294.

In this specific case (the 1545 Venice Typikon of St Sabbas), Panagiotopoulou sketches several concrete channels. She talks about a “δίκτυο επικοινωνίας” – a network of communication – between monasteries in the Agrafa region, and then says the data she has collected include examples of both the lending of books and their transfer “for various reasons from one monastery or church to another monastery.”

For Tatarnas she narrows it down to a few plausible mechanisms by which the two copies of the Typikon arrived there:

Books attached by donors. She mentions “προσηλώσεις βιβλίων από λαϊκούς” – laymen who formally “attach” or dedicate a book to a monastery. These ownership notes (προσηλώσεις) act as breadcrumbs showing that a volume could start life in one place and then be gifted or re-gifted to another.

Loans and circulation among clergy. She explicitly notes “δανεισμό βιβλίων … από μονή ή ναό σε άλλη μονή” – borrowing and lending of books between priests and monasteries, sometimes temporary, sometimes effectively permanent when the borrowing community keeps or re-binds the book.

Movements of entire monastic groups. A big part of her reconstruction is the movement of the Dousikio monks (μονή Σωτήρος Χριστού Δουσίκου) who leave their original house and found or refound other monasteries, including Tatarnas. When a group of monks moves, their liturgical books, especially something as central as a Typikon, move with them. She suggests this as one avenue by which the Venice 1545 Typikon could have travelled.

Purchases through markets and fairs. She points to sources on book prices and mentions, for example, that one copy of the same Typikon (TAS 1545) in Corfu cost sixteen measures of wheat in 1624, which is only knowable because it appears in a transaction record.

These kinds of notations, together with references to fairs (π.χ. Lamia) in related literature, show that monasteries sometimes bought printed liturgical books through regional markets, not just as gifts.

Bindings and bindery “fingerprints.” She notes that Tatarnas and especially Dousiko had bookbinding workshops, with a characteristic technique: wooden boards with leather covering. The Tatarnas Typikon copies show just that kind of binding. By identifying which monastery had an active bindery, you can sometimes tell where a printed book spent a major phase of its life, even if the text was printed elsewhere (here, Venice).

Private libraries bleeding into monastic ones. In the broader survey part of the article she brings in figures like Eugenius Giannoulis and Anastasios Gordios, who maintained substantial private libraries in the region. After their deaths or during upheavals, parts of those collections flowed into monasteries, into the hands of other clergy, or into local elites’ libraries, and then sometimes back into monasteries again.

If we zoom out from this single case, you get a general picture for early modern Orthodox printed books (especially liturgical ones):

Printed in diaspora centres like Venice by Greek or Greek-connected printers, often under the editorial care of a learned figure (here Nucius / Νούκιος), the books travel first along commercial and ecclesiastical routes to major monasteries and bishoprics. From there they trickle outwards via:

Donations (with dedicatory inscriptions) by lay patrons or notables;
Monks moving between houses, bringing “their” service books;
Formal and informal loans between clergy and monasteries;
Purchases at fairs and through itinerant book-sellers;
Inheritance and dispersal of private scholarly libraries that partly end up in monasteries.

Panagiotopoulou is very explicit at the end: she says that “with these possible routes, with a network of communication between the monasteries, with the ‘proseloseis’ (dedications) of books by laymen such as Theodoros, with the loans of books between clergy, the two copies of the Typikon of St Sabbas (Venice 1545) ended up in Tatarnas.”