| Codex Baroccianus Graecus 197 in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, includes an oration Eis ten Hyperagian Despoinan hemon Theotokou, anagignoskomenon to Savvato tes Akathistou (To our Most Holy Lady Theotokos, to be read on the Saturday of the Akathist), attributed to Andreas, Archbishop of Crete. The author may have been identified by the codex scribe, Galaction Madarakis, in the mid-14th century. In other manuscripts the same oration is attributed to Emperor Theodore II Ducas Lascaris, which is also confirmed by internal textual evidence. The similarities between this and certain orations and canons by Andreas of Crete, but also with the Akathist Hymn and the Canon of Joseph, do not necessarily denote direct dependence. These are "loci communi" of ecclesiastical hymnography and rhetoric, derived from the common source of all, the Old Testament. |