Il colofone e la data del Par. gr. 290: per la cronologia dello stile «à μεν distendu»

This article offers a new reading and exegesis of the metrical colophon of the manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, gr. 290. The text of this short scribal poem is, in fact, disfigured by a large number of misspellings and by probable misunderstandings of some expressions of one or more poorly imitated «poetic» models. Over the last two centuries, various attempts at interpretation have resulted in divergent datings of this codex to the years 1157 or 1257, or even to its generic assignment to the 13th century. A date of 1157, however, would pose a palaeographic problem: were this codex to be dated to that year, it would represent by far the oldest example of the so-called «à μεν distendu» style, a Greek script that seems to be typical of the island of Rhodes and surrounding areas and is attested between the last decades of the 12th and the mid-13th centuries. This study, by contrast, argues that a date of 1257 seems much more likely, thus placing this codex among the latest dated witnesses of this type of script.