Nea Sion 52 (1960) Hellenika Cheirographa en tei Monei tou Hagiou Sabba

The core idea here is that the famous Nea Sion notice is real and bibliographically solid, but much less “independent” than it first looks, because it is largely a mediated echo of the discoverer’s own description rather than a fresh, on-site account by someone else. Nea Sion 52 (1960) really did publish an article titled “Hellenika Cheirographa en tei Monei tou Hagiou Sabba,” describing Greek manuscripts at Mar Saba, including the volume that later became central to the debate. The issue and page spans are well documented: Nea Sion 52 (1960), pp. 110–125 and 245–256. 

Later archival work shows that the text printed there was not simply a cleaned-up version of notes taken in the monastery, but a translation chain: the original Greek marginalia and shelf notes were transcribed and translated into English by the discoverer, and that English report was then translated and edited into modern Greek by Archimandrite Constantine Michaelides for publication in Nea Sion. One can even see the discoverer’s irritated marginal comment on the printed article calling it a “Retranslation to Gk. of my Eng. Translation!”, written next to corrections he made to the Nea Sion text in his own file copy. 

That chain of dependence matters for how the notice is weighed in arguments about authenticity. On the one hand, the Nea Sion piece is strong evidence that the Patriarchate was officially informed in 1960, that the volume was catalogued under a specific manuscript number, and that some description of its contents entered an ecclesiastical publication quickly after the find. On the other hand, because the wording ultimately goes back to a report drafted by the same person who made the discovery, it cannot function as truly independent corroboration of what was seen on the end-papers or how the text was read; it is more an institutionalized restatement of his own account, filtered through editorial choices in modern Greek. The article still has value as proof of timely notification and as an archival pointer, but in terms of external control on the contents of the Clementine letter, the evidentiary weight remains with the photographs and later full publications rather than with this brief, mediated notice.

A compact line from the period sums up what the 1960 article itself claimed to be doing: “Ἑλληνικὰ χειρόγραφα ἐν τῇ μονῇ τοῦ ἁγίου Σάββα” – “Greek manuscripts in the monastery of Saint Sabas” – a title that promises a straightforward catalogue, but, as the translation chain shows, also hides how much of that “catalogue” was already shaped by one intermediary pen.