The library is contained in two small rooms looking into a narrow court, which is situated to the left of the great court of entrance. One room leads to the other, and the books are disposed on shelves in tolerable order, but the dust on their venerable heads had not been disturbed for many years, and it took me some time to make out what they were, for in old Greek libraries few volumes have any title written on the back. I made out that there were in all about five thousand volumes, a very large collection, of which about four thousand were printed books; these were mostly divinity, but among them there were several fine Aldine classics and the editio princeps of the Anthologia in capital letters.
The nine hundred manuscripts consisted of six hundred volumes written upon paper and three hundred on vellum. With the exception of four volumes, the former were all divinity, principally liturgies and books of prayer. Those four volumes were Homer's 'Iliad' and Hesiod, neither of which were very old, and two curious and rather early manuscripts on botany, full of rudely drawn figures of herbs. These were probably the works of Dioscorides; they were not in good condition, having been much studied by the monks in former days: they were large, thick quartos. Among the three hundred manuscripts on vellum there were many large folios of the works of St. Chrysostom and other Greek fathers of the church of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and about fifty copies of the Gospels and the Evangelistarium of nearly the same age. One Evangelistarium was in fine uncial letters of the ninth century; it was a thick quarto, and on the first leaf was an illumination the whole size of the page on a gold background, representing the donor of the book accompanied by his wife. This ancient portrait was covered over with a piece of gauze. It was a very remarkable manuscript. There were one quarto and one duodecimo of the Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypse of the eleventh century, and one folio of the book of Job, which had several miniatures in it badly executed in brilliant colours; this was probably of the twelfth century. These three manuscripts were such volumes as are not often seen in European libraries. All the rest were anthologia and books of prayer, nor did I meet with one single leaf of a classic author on vellum. I went into the library several times, and looked over all the vellum manuscripts very carefully, and I believe that I did not pass by unnoticed anything which was particularly interesting in point of subject, antiquity, or illumination. Several of the copies of the Gospels had their titles ornamented with arabesques, but none struck me as being peculiarly valuable.