Towards a stylometric profile of the Studite texts: an analysis of a Middle and Late Byzantine corpus using the Delta method

Abstract

The article presents a case study in the stylometric analysis to Middle Byzantine texts, focusing on the attribution of the "Catechetical Homilies" to Patriarch Antony III Studites (10th century). Confirmation or refutation of this hypothesis could make an important contribution to research on the intellectual history of Studite monasticism. The primary aim is to evaluate the efficacy of various Delta metric modifications (classic Burrows's, Eder's, and Cosine) for a corpus of homiletic, hagiographic, and epistolary works, and to apply a calibrated method to this contested attribution. A representative corpus of key Studite tradition authors and their contemporaries was compiled. Through a series of experiments, optimal analysis parameters–including metric choice, the number of most frequent words, and the necessity of lemmatization–were determined by calibrating the method against control samples: 14th-century texts with undisputed authorship and the corpus of St. Symeon the New Theologian. The study assesses the stylistic proximity between Antony Studites' undisputed and disputed texts. The results confirm the general applicability of the Delta method to Middle Greek material, while highlighting its parameter dependence. For longer texts (>10,000 words), classic Delta with lemmatization and a set of 500–750 most frequent words yielded the best outcomes. For shorter texts (~5,000 words), Eder's Delta or Cosine Delta applied to raw word forms with 250 most frequent words proved more effective. The method exhibited high sensitivity to textual genre. The findings support the attribution of the "Catechetical Homilies" to Antony Studites. Additionally, the analysis revealed a strong stylistic affinity between the corpora of Symeon the New Theologian and his disciple Niketas Stethatos and suggested a hypothesis of common authorship for two 10th-century hagiographical works. These results position stylometry as a viable auxiliary tool for investigating intellectual and literary networks within the Byzantine monastic tradition.