Month: January 2009

Have’s and have-not’s – online dissertations

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Today I went looking for a dissertation, Beth Dunlop’s PhD thesis on 4th century sermons on the Nativity.  It does exist online.  If you are a ‘have’, it’s free to download.  If you are a ‘have-not’, it will cost you $40. 

I am an ordinary professional man, earning a living in an office, and paying huge basic-rate taxes.  I am, in short,  a have-not.  Probably most of the readers of this blog are have-nots. 

Of course the ‘have not’ has funded the access for the ‘have’.  That is what is the really bitter part of it all.  I am forced to spend my days in the office, writing software for insurance companies in order to pay my taxes; in order, in short, to provide access to scholarship for others to enjoy.  If *I* want access, I must pay again.  Not that anyone ever does, I am sure – the purpose of the charge is to deny access.

Examples of online state-funded scholarship which is inaccessible could be multiplied.  More and more, scholarship depends on databases of references; databases built with state grants, and access restricted to those in full-time education.  An ordinary man can’t even get an ATHENS userid.   We can’t get access to JSTOR.  Well, dammit man… what about the poor b****y public who pay for it all?!?!

We really need a revolution here.  Just why should the ordinary man be obliged to fund the leafy paths of scholarship, and then prevented from accessing the result, exploited if he shows interest?

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Byzantium and modern politics

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A post by Douglas Carswell raised the issue of parallels between modern politicians and Byzantine emperors.   In some ways, we have much to learn from the way in which the Eastern Roman empire changed and evolved down the centuries, from Arcadius to Constantine XIV. 

It became a cruel power – the practice of blinding possible rivals for the throne was introduced, and deprived society of rulers who might have been of great service.

It became ever more bureaucratic, and it became ever less free.  Ordinary people counted for little.  If we think of the internet, it was created by a million people doing whatever they felt best.  Imagine what an internet would be like, which only contained content approved by some civil servant, goldplating some intolerant law?

The empire became ever more intolerant of the expression of ‘incorrect’ thought.  Classifying people as vendors of ‘incorrect thought’ was the endemic vice of the empire.  This amounted to finding ways to exclude and demonise people over words; surely a vice of modern societies too, with their litany of newly invented ‘sins’ such as ‘islamophobia’. 

Of course there are other things we might learn.  In a previous post I discussed the career of the Patriarch Macedonius, and attempts by his political foes to level child-abuse charges against him; charges that he was uniquely qualified to rebut, as (it turned out) a eunuch. 

Perhaps we should consider whether castration of civil servants should be reintroduced?  Indeed might the same measure might usefully be applied to US Democrat Presidents?

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Numbering the letters of Isidore of Pelusium

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Following my last post on the letters of the 5th century writer Isidore of Pelusium, I have found that much of Pierre Evieux’s book Isidore de Peluse is online at Google books, and p.6 onwards discusses the text as we have it. 

The letters are mostly extracts, and very brief.  In Migne’s edition, we find these letters arranged in five books.  But this is the result of chance, and does not reflect the manuscripts very well. 

As might be expected, different manuscripts contain different material.  Some contain more or less extensive sections of a numbered collection of letters.  Others contain groups of letters in a different order.   All derive from an ancient collection of 2,000 letters.

There is ancient evidence as well.  A collection was consulted by Facundus of Hermianus ca. 548 (Pro defensione trium capitulorum 2, 4; PL 67, 571-4);  the same by Rusticus in 564 AD, who encountered a collection in four books, each of 500 letters (translation of Synodicon Orientale, ACO I, 4, 4).  In the same period, Severus of Antioch records that collections existed at many places, including Antioch, Caesarea, Alexandria, Pelusium; indeed that he went to Alexandria when doubts arose about the copy at Caesarea (Contra Impium Grammaticum, 6th book of Letters).  Apparently some of the letters (to Cyril, Theodoret) may be bogus.  Severus estimated that around 3,000 existed (the Suda says the same); the discovery of at least 40 unknown letter in Syriac indicates that some of these may still exist.

The early editors discovered manuscripts fairly randomly.  Jacques de Billy (1585) published a bunch of letters from Parisinus gr. 832, which he arranged in three books; a fourth book was added by Conrad Rittershuys (1605) using a copy of Marcianus gr. 126, which was an anthology rather than a manuscript of the collection; a fifth in turn by Andre Schott (1623 and 1629) from Vatican manuscripts, and the whole reprinted by Migne with various other materials and collations.

Evieux decided to junk the division into books, and go back to the numbering in the manuscripts.  This comprises 1,999 letters or fragments (no letter numbered 1378 has reached us).  A Latin translation contains a selection which circulated at Constantinople; three Syriac manuscripts also contain a collection.  One of these (BL Addit.14731) contains letters which did not survive in Greek.

This week I have been typing up the concordance between the numeric series and the numbers in Migne, which I will make available online.  But what a mess the early editors made of it all!

Apparently C.H.Turner in JTS 6 (1905) p.70-86 had an article on the letters, which I will try to locate.

PS: I’ve found that volume on Google Books here, free to US readers.  The Journal of Theological Studies does have a website, but demands money of the UK taxpayers (who fund the show) to allow them to see it.  Greedy little bastards.

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Thorns from Jesus’ crown available on eBay!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Via this link.  Relics available include:

OF THE SWADDLING CLOTHES OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST
OF A THORN OF THE CROWN OF THORNS OF JESUS CHRIST
OF THE BELT OF OUR LADY, THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
OF THE VEIL OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
OF THE MANTLE OF OUR LADY
OF THE COAT OF ST. JOSEPH, SPOUSE OF OUR LADY

Thanks to Antonio Lombatti for the link.

Those of us who encounter atheists know that these toss the word “superstition” around unthinkingly, applying it to any Christian belief held by anyone, however scientific and rational.  Naturally this makes the educated man somewhat cynical, especially on observing the lack of self-criticism endemic in such folk. 

So it comes as something of a shock to encounter real superstition, medieval-style, alive and well today; and still more, the commercial exploitation of it, of the kind that was an excuse for the Reformation.  Such activity is, of course, blasphemous in the most literal sense.

Antonio mistakenly describes this business as faith-driven.  But I think that it is money-driven.  Those manufacturing the things cannot believe in their authenticity.  On the contrary, they must be hard-faced atheists to engage in such blasphemy.  They intend to dupe the faithful; and it seems hard to blame the victim of the swindle.  What Jesus thought about those who turned the Temple into a chance for a profit we all know, of course.

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Isidore of Pelusium

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Fifth century ecclesiastical history can be a depressing business, if you’re a Christian.  All these bigots and dimwits and political chieftains… in our darker moments, we may find ourselves asking how any of this can be of God?

In these moments, it’s worth remembering that the history of mankind is not written exclusively in books, and that political history is perhaps the falsest history there is.  Today I have had occasion to look up St. Isidore of Pelusium in Quasten’s “Patrology”, and found, as I recalled, a genial man with his heart set on God.

Isidore lived in the 5th century, but little is known about him.  He left behind a collection of letters, more than 2,000 in number.  These have never been properly edited, and the oldest and best manuscript was unknown to what is still the standard edition, that of the Jesuit Schotte.  This is the text reprinted in the Patrologia Graeca, which is the text available to me.  The order of the letters in there is neither chronological, nor that of the author.  A proper edition would be a blessing.

Most of the letters are very short; a quarter of a column in Migne.  Eight of them are to Cyril of Alexandria, whose position he supported in the Nestorian controversy.  But at the same time, Isidore had the courage to tell this mighty political figure that his actions at the Council of Ephesus had left most people feeling that Cyril had acted like a jerk.  This may have prompted Cyril to intensify his efforts to explain and vindicate himself, in numerous apologias.

Another is to the emperor Theodosius II, whose bailiffs at the Council had tried to settle matters on their own authority.  Isidore reminds him that minor bureaucrats are not competent to decide theology.  There are a mass of personal letters.  One, to a certain Timothy the Lector, tells him to avoid pointless arguments – a lesson many online might take to heart.

Migne’s edition does not seem to be indexed.  I can’t tell what other gems may be found there.  At some point in the manuscript tradition it was divided into five books.  A simple list of contents would be a useful thing.

Because of the connection with Cyril, whose Apologeticum ad Imperatorem is being translated for me on commission, I have tonight gathered the letters to Cyril, and to the emperor, and asked someone to translate them, again on commission, at 10c a word. 

Are there any Isidorists out there?  I can’t find any critical editions, any translations into modern languages.  I suspect that this collection needs attention.  We might start with a list of letters!

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Rescuing a bit of Eusebius from oblivion

Posted on by Roger Pearse

One of the things which I hoped for, in translating Eusebius “Gospel Questions”, was to find unknown material in the fragments that aren’t in Migne.  Yesterday that hope was justified.   In an obscure publication in Moscow in the 18th century of a catena, an extract from Ad Marinum 2 produced results:

At the line marked by my footnote 2, where I saw something was rather unusual about the Greek, it turns out that the Greek word for “dawning” came twice, and the scribe of the MS used by Mai (so also Migne and Zamagni) cut two whole lines by going on from the second one after just reaching the first.  So we’ll be the first to give our thirsty readers the real thing!  

That said, it’s only the usual verbosely repetitive hammering-in of a point already obvious;  but still, it’s very nice to have a text that does make sense without straining the Greek, as I did, or ignoring the problem altogether like Mai and Zamagni.

Two more lines of ancient literature, rescued from the darkness.  It is a small but definite triumph.

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New UK copyright consultation

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This article reports that the UK authorities are looking for input from ordinary people on how copyright affects them (by the 6th February).; how they can’t (legally) copy their own CD’s, how you can’t access out of print books because some fool has a 100 years of copyright on it, how libraries abuse copyright to keep people from taking photographs of state-owned manuscripts and putting them online, etc. Why not tell them?

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