Ancient medicine online

AWOL notes that a French site has a massive collection of ancient medical writers online here.  Not that any of us want recipes for colds from that source, but the incidental information about ancient society is worth looking at.

Share

A 7th century Syriac mathematician

Before the first world war there was a flourishing of interest in Syriac studies among oriental Christians.  Patriarch Aphram I Barsoum wrote in Arabic a patrology of their works, referenced mainly from manuscripts then existing in Eastern libraries.  This was published but inaccessible by reason of language.  However a few years ago the excellent Matti Moosa translated it into English, and it is available from Gorgias Press under the title of The scattered pearls.  For people interested in Syriac, it is a wonderful resource.  I went and bought a copy, which says something.

It seems that a doctoral student really is going to have a go at some of the works of Severus Sebokht.  This made me look up the entry in Barsoum’s work.  It’s quite impressive, and accessible to few.  This is what Barsoum has to say:

94. Severus Sabukht (d. 667)

Severus was a skillful and famous doctor, a mathematician, a philosopher, nay the first scholar of the church who explored the obscurities of astronomical and natural sciences. He was born at Nisibin in the last quarter of the seventh century, became a monk and was educated in the Monastery of Qenneshrin, where he also acquired that knowledge of Greek and Syriac language and literature and of the Persian language, which made him the goal of seekers of knowledge. He was one of the prominent scholars who was graduated from this famous school, in which he also spent his life teaching philosophy, theology and mathematics, besides the writings of all the Syrian scholars. He was most prominent in astronomy and even excelled the Greeks in this field.1 Many pupils studied under him, the most famous of whom were the Patriarch Athanasius II and Jacob of Edessa. In 638, Severus was consecrated a bishop of the city of Qenneshrin, or, as it was said, of his monastery. He died in 667 at an advanced age. He was assigned the twentieth of July (or according to another calendar the eleventh of September) as the festival day of his commemoration. In the latter calendar, he was called “Severus the Mathematician.”

From the writings of Severus, which cover the fields of theology, philosophy and mathematics, very few have come down to us.

Of his theological writings the following survive:

1.  a treatise on the weeks of Daniel;

2.  an extract on the date of the birth of Our Lord in flesh and in what Greek year he was born;

3.  two letters in seven pages to Sergius, abbot of the Monastery of Khanushia in Sinjar, containing a commentary on the two discourses of Gregory Nazianzen on the Son and the Holy Spirit. In these letters, the name of the author (Severus) was ascribed to his native home Nisibin, which misled Chabot, who thought they belonged to a bishop of Nisibin who was Severus’ namesake.2

His philosophical writings are:

4.  a short treatise on the Analytica Posteriora of Aristotle written in 638 of which only three pages remain;3

5.  extracts in three chapters from his treatise on Hermeneutics,

6.  a letter to his friend Jonas the periodeutes (visiting cleric), explaining some points in the Rhetorica of Aristotle;4

    1 Baumstark, p. 246.
    2 See the three folios in the Brit. Mus. MS. 14547, ninth century.
    3 Brit. Mus. MSS. 17156 and 14460. Also, the Chaldean Library in Mosul MS. 35, sixteenth century, and Cambridge MS. 3287, eighteenth century.
    4 Brit. Mus. MS. 17156, Cambridge MS. 2812, nineteenth century, Dayr al-Sayyida MS. 50. 

7.  a treatise he wrote for some of those who love knowledge, explaining some logical points which had been mentioned in his former letter to Jonas to whom he sent a copy of this treatise;

8.  a letter to the priest Ithalaha, who became a bishop of Nineveh on certain terms in the treatise, De Interpretatione and on arithmetic, surveying, astronomy and music, making the remark that he had written to him a year ago, explaining some canons of the saintly fathers and also praising him because he had sent him copies of the letters of Gregory and Basilius.1

Of his astronomical works we have:

9.  a magnificent treatise on the astrolabe in fifty-two pages, translated into French and published by Nau in 1899;2

10.  a treatise on the signs of the Zodiac, which he wrote in the year 659 or 660, of which only eighteen chapters remain. These chapters were published by Sachau in 1870.3 A few samples of these works exist in a manuscript at the British Museum, such as the habitable and inhabitable portions of the earth, the condition of those living in all its sphere—above and below the measurement of the heaven and the earth and the space between them—and whether the sun moves under or over the earth in the celestial sphere. To this treatise he added in the year 665 from nineteen to twenty-seven answers to astronomical, mathematical and cosmographical questions at the request of the periodeutes Basil of Cyprus.4 This is probably the same treatise which Bar Hebraeus alluded to in his book, Ascent of the Mind;

11.  a letter in eighteen pages addressed to the same Basil on the fourteenth of the lunar month of April 556, about fixing the exact date of Easter;5

    1 Brit. Mus. MS. 14660, ninth-tenth centuries, and Mosul MS. 35.
    2 Paris MS. 346 dated 1309 in the handwriting of the priest Yeshu` Kilo; Berlin MS. 186 in the handwriting of the metropolitan Moses of Tyre dated 1556. For the French translation of Sabukht’s treatise on the astrolabe see F. Nau, “Le traite sur l’astrolabe plan de Severe Sabokt,” Journal Asiatique IX serie, t. XIII, 1899: 56-101 and 238-303. (tr.)
    3 Sachau, Inedita Syriaca, 127-134.
    4 Brit. Mus. MS. 14538, tenth century, and Paris MS. 346.
    5 Berlin MS. 186. [The date 556 should be 665. (tr.)]

12.  three letters, also to Basil, on the science of history, contained in the British Museum manuscript;1

13.  he translated from the Persian into Syriac an abridged exposition of Aristotle’s Interpretatione which had been translated from the original Greek to Persian by Paul the Persian for King Khosrau I,2 to which the monk Severus added the fifth treatise of Aristotle on logic;

14. the translation of Ptolemy’s Tetrapillon on the composition of mathematical speech as is confirmed by an established historical tradition.3

Both Wright and Duval, quoting Assemani, who quoted al-Duwayhi, have erroneously ascribed to him a liturgy in the name of Severus of Qenneshrin, which, in fact, belongs to Severus, bishop of Samosata and abbot of Qenneshrin as has been already mentioned.4

    1 Brit. Mus. MS. 17156.
    2 Dayr al-Sayyida MS. 50.

    3 Paris MS. 346.
    4 Wright, A Short History of Syriac Literature, p. 139, citing Assemani B. O., 2: 463. (tr.)
Share

Someone to work on Severus Sebokht?

The 7th century Syriac father Severus Sebokht has left several scientific and philosophical works behind.  I grew interested in him, enough to acquire a PDF of the main manuscript of his mostly unpublished works, but other things supervened and I never pursued the matter.  There are several unpublished letters in the ms. (BNF Syriac 346), one of which is the earliest mention of what we now call Arabic numbers in the west.  The letter has never been translated, tho.

David Bertaina has posted on the Hugoye list a query about him.  Apparently he has a post-grad. student who read mathematics, and is interested in having a go at his works.  This is very good news, if so, and I have written to encourage him and offer support.

Share

Paulinus of Nola

Paulinus of Nola (353-431) has never come to my attention hitherto.  He was a contemporary of St. Augustine and lived through the times of the fall of Rome.  His works consist of poems and letters.  The poems include anti-pagan material which must therefore be of value for late paganism.  His works were translated in the Ancient Christian Writers series by P. Walsh during the late 60’s and 70’s.

Rather to my surprise I can find no trace of any of his works online in English.  There must be few fathers of that period so under-represented!

Among the material sent to me about the bruma is this from carmen 14, v.13 (p. 46):

 ergo dies, tanto quae munere condidit alto 
 Felicem caelo, sacris sollemnibus ista est, 
 quae post solstitium, quo Christus corpore natus
 sole nouo gelidae mutauit tempora brumae
 atque salutiferum praestans mortalibus ortum 
 procedente die se cum decrescere noctes 
 iussit, ab hoc quae lux oritur uicesima nobis, 
 sidereum meriti signat Felicis honorem.

Linking the birth of Christ and the bruma, it would be interesting to know what it says.

UPDATE: Here it is, from the Walsh translation, p.77:

13. So the day which bestowed so great a gift by setting Felix in the heights of heaven is the day of our yearly ritual. It comes after the solstice, the time when Christ was born in the flesh and transformed the cold winter season with a new sun, when He granted men His birth that brings salvation, and ordered the nights to shorten and the daylight to grow with Himself. The twentieth day that dawns on us after the solstice marks the heavenly glory which Felix merited.

De la Cerda believed that solstitium only meant summer solstice, in the purest Latin.  But by the time of Paulinus this was clearly no longer so.  This identifies the day of Christmas with the solstice, solstitium (“after the solstice … the twentieth day” is the martyrdom of Felix, not Christmas).

UPDATE: A preview of the Walsh translation is here.

Share

Censorinus and the secular games

One  benefit of my fruitless efforts to determine the meaning of the word bruma was to cause me to read bits of the Birthday book (De die natalis) by Censorinus.  This work was written in 238 AD (as he tells us) as a present for a friend, and is a compilation of material, mostly linked to the theme of birthdays.  I came across this portion, which quotes from a lost book of Livy, on the secular games.  It shows how much uncertainty there was on these matters, even in antiquity.

7. Some think that the Roman “age” or saeculum is marked by the Secular Games. If we could believe this, it would mean that the time span of the Roman saeculum or “century” is variable, since when it comes to the intervals at which the games ought to be held, we are ignorant not only of how long they were in the past but also how long they ought to be now. 8. We have it on the authority of Antias and other historians that they were originally founded to occur every hundred years. Varro wrote the same thing in Book I of The Early Theater at Rome: “Since there were many portents, and both the wall and tower between the Colline and the Esquiline gates were touched by heaven, the Council of Fifteen consulted the Sibylline books and announced that the Tarentine Games should be held in the Field of Mars in honor of Father Jupiter and Persephone for three days, and that black animals should be sacrificed, and that the games should be held every hundred years.”

9. Livy says the same in Book 136:

“In that same year [17 BC], Caesar Augustus held the Secular Games with great pomp, which once was the custom to hold every hundred years, for these games marked the end of a saeculum.”

On the other hand, the Records of the Council of Fifteen and the edicts of the divine Augustus seem to testify that the games were repeated after 110 years. So Horace in the song which was sung at the Secular Games designated the length of time as:

A fixed circle of ten times eleven years
to bring back song and crowded games

This from Censorinus: the birthday book, tr. Holt N. Parker, Chicago (2007), p.36.  And he then goes on to list instances of uncertainty on this matter.  Slightly earlier he adds:

An “age” (or saeculum) is the longest period of human life, delimited by birth and death.

which is again an interesting view.

Share

Too much data to find out what “bruma” means

There seem to be 336 results on a search on bruma in the PHI Latin CDROM (thanks to those who did the search).  There is probably more data in the Greek side.  And then there is the question of brumalia, which I have not even started on. 

I have only one hour this evening which is my own, and the same will be true for most evenings. I cannot grapple with that much data in that sort of time.  To digest these, collect or make translations, and tabulate them would require several uninterrupted days at least.  This means that I shall have to abandon my wish to find out what this means, by the only certain method, which is to go through the data and see what it all says.  Selective quotation is never a good idea. Nor do I propose to spend my entire Christmas holiday on it. 

It’s a pity, but the demands of earning a living will prevent me dealing with this further.

Share