Month: August 2006

Nestorius again

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA
I have been following up the story of the manuscript of the “Dialogue with Heracleides” by Nestorius.  The consensus seems to be that the single manuscript was damaged in the 19the century during Turkish-led massacres of Christians.  It was discovered late in that century, and several hand-written copies made, including one for the library of the American missionaries at Urmiah, one for Cambridge (presumably the university library) and another.  

But the original has perished, destroyed during the First World War during massacres by Turkish troops (again).

All this highlights the fragility of manuscripts, and the importance of photographing the things whenever possible.  And it really is possible!  Cheap airflights make all sorts of ventures possible.

Last year I did a day-trip to the Rhineland.  I got a budget flight from London Stansted airport (about an hour from where I live) to Frankfurt-Hahn airport.  Hahn is nowhere near Frankfurt, and is a converted American airbase, about 10 miles from Bernkastel-Kues.  I hired a car at the airport and drove there, photographed a manuscript at the Stiftsbibliothek, and returned the same day.  It was a long and weary day, but very possible.

Early this year I went even further, this time flying to Salzburg and driving 100 miles east towards Vienna to a monastery named Seitenstetten, photographing a manuscript, and coming back the same day.  This was an 18-hour day, and middle age is not an asset here — as the day wore on I started to become uncomfortably conscious that I have an uncle who suffered a heart-attack and was never the same again after doing an 18-hour day of unaccustomed exertion!  But it all shows what can be done. 

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When does antiquity end?

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA
This week I have been reading Ignatius Aphram Barsoum, “The scattered pearls”, which is a monster history of Syriac literature (mostly ignoring the Nestorian half) at the monster price of $100. Barsoum wrote in the 1920’s, from notes of visits that he had made to libraries around the world and in the east, and so he gives lists of manuscripts where texts can be found. He’s pretty vague, sometimes, tho, and also adds that World War 1 may have destroyed some of them.

I’ve been looking at this to see what texts are of interest now. Since I have online collections of patristic texts, this raises the question of where the cut-off is, in the east. If we draw the line ca. 640, with the Arab conquest, this is a sensible point. It also fits in with the death of Isidore of Seville in the west. But then we have writers working later who still have access to ancient sources. Jacob of Edessa, I was interested to note, wrote a Syriac translation of Eusebius of Caesarea’s “Chronicle” and extended it down to his own time. Do we exclude such texts?

On the other hand the scholiast to Dionysius Bar Salibi writing in the 13th century is routinely quoted online as a source about the origins of Christmas. We can’t really go that far, surely?

When does “antiquity” end in the east? And why?

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Translations of Jerome’s biblical prefaces

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA
I’d like to highlight that Kevin Edgecomb has been quietly working away translating into English the prefaces to books of the bible from the Vulgate written by St. Jerome. These are all interesting, and offer insight into the way in which Jerome worked. Those done so far are here. We should all be grateful to him. I hope that Kevin will place them in the public domain, and we’ll all be able to use them.
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Lost Syriac manuscripts found?

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA
I wrote on Saturday to the author of this site http://sanate.free.fr/.  I got back a most interesting note about the books burned at Seert in 1915 (see preceding post). 

It seems that five years ago a case of books was found in the Bibliothèque Nationale Française in Paris.  It contained some twenty of the most precious manuscripts, brought from Seert by Addai Scher, just before the start of WW1!

I referred to the found and then lost text of “De incarnatione” of Theodore of Mopsuestia.  Is it possible that this text, thought lost, has all the while been slumbering in a packing crate, through two world wars?  I will investigate further…!

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