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Byzantine insularity in the early Dark Ages

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve been browsing the introduction to Van der Vin’s book on medieval travellers to Constantinople, nearly all of whom visited after the 11th century.  It seems that the eastern empire became  very isolated from the west after the collapse of the western Roman empire.

The book contains the following interesting statement (p.4):

In the last few decennia scholars have tried to sketch the development of trade and shipping in the early middle ages on the evidence of the available historical, archeological and numismatic material [11].  The following conclusion which emerges from their work is important for the present study. It appears that up till the eleventh century trade and traffic were confined mainly to two large areas: the one around the Mediterranean Sea, the other within the territory of northwest Europe. Contacts between these two trade blocs were, however, limited in scope, and it is only in the course of the eleventh century that it is possible to see clear signs of the merging and mixing of the two spheres of influence … [12] … there was little or no direct contact between Byzantium and western Europe.

An important factor which prevented the formation of direct contacts between Greek territory and the West was the attitude of the Greeks themselves. The Byzantine world was very much an inward-looking one, where people showed no interest in what was going on in what the Byzantines saw as the ‘barbaric’ West. Thus no attempts were made from the Byzantine side to maintain contacts with western Europe. Moreover, the Greeks themselves hardly engaged in trade at all. In the mediterranean area trade, in the early middle ages, was almost entirely in the hands of Jews and ‘Syrians’ – a general name for anybody from the East.[14]These Syrians and Jews collected eastern products from certain harbours appointed by the Byzantine emperors, the most important of which was Constantinople, and arranged for their transport and their sale in  western Europe. In the fifth to seventh centuries there were colonies of these Levantine merchants in all the large towns around the Mediterranean Sea: in harbours such as Marseilles, Narbonne, Aries, Genoa, Naples and Palermo, but they can also be found in towns further inland, such as Lyons and Vienne, and even Orleans and Paris.[15]

From these places oriental and Byzantine products, including slaves, furs and luxury articles, were distributed throughout France, England and Germany. …

In the above it has always been assumed that any contacts between Greece and Constantinople with the West would in any case involve a voyage, long or short, by ship.

The shortest sea route was the crossing from a harbour in southern Italy to one of the Ionian islands, or to the west coast of Greece. However abhorrent the idea of a sea journey, there was simply no alternative, as the overland route straight across the Balkans, the area where the Byzantine empire bordered on the rest of Europe, was impassable until the eleventh century.

The unsafe state of the Balkans, which was largely due to still uncivilized Serbian and Bulgarian tribes, made traffic through that area impossible. This may be clearly seen from the maps in ‘The Northern Seas’ where Lewis shows the major trade routes of Europe … up to 1100 the Balkans are traversed by not a single continuous route.[18][1]

The lack of security throughout Europe was also a factor, where local barons and robbers — not necessarily different people — made travel difficult by land.  Van der Vin comments that the crusades ironically improved security in western Europe:

The Crusades started by Pope Urban II in 1096, also contributed to greater peace in western Europe; one of their results was that because many noblemen went off to the Holy Land many existing feuds either faded into the background or else were fought out outside Europe.

In the 11th century the land route across the Balkans did reopen, partly because of the conversion of the Bulgars and Hungarians, and partly because of the increased power of the empire in that region after the campaigns of emperors such as Basil II (976-1025).

We take ease of transport for granted.  But it did not exist in most periods of history.  The isolation of the Greek east at various periods is a factor we tend not to consider.

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  1. [1]11. J.N.L. Baker, Medieval Trade Routes, London, 1954;  F. Vercauteren, Etude sur les civitates de la Belgique seconde, Brussels, 1934, pp. 445 ss; R.S. Lopez, ‘Silk Industry in the Byzantine Empire’, Speculum 20 (1945), pp. 1-42. With some hesitation I also mention here A.R. Lewis, The Northern Seas. Shipping and Commerce in Northern Europe, A.D. 300- 1100, Princeton, 1958. This work contains a great deal of material, but is so carelessly written that its data can hardly be used without first being checked.
    12. Lewis, Northern Seas, p. 455.
    14. L. Brehier, ‘Les colonies d’orientaux en Occident au  commencement du moyen-age’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 12  (1903), pp. 1-39;  J. Ebersolt, Orient et Occident. Recherches sur les  influences byzantines et orientales en France avant les Croisades, Paris-Bruxelles, 1928;  M.J. de Goeje, ‘Internationaal handelsverkeer in de Middeleeuwen’, Verslagen en mededeelingen der koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen (afd. letterkunde), 4e serie, 9 (1909), pp. 245-69;  P. Lambrechts, ‘le Commerce des “Syriens” en Gaule du Haut Empire a l’epoque merovingienne’, l’Antiquite classique, 6 (1937), pp. 35-61.
    15. Brehier, op. cit., pp. 11-6.
    18. Lewis, Northern Seas, Maps: 1, circa A.D. 300 (p. 33); 2. circa A.D. 650 (p. 148); 3. circa A.D. 820 (p. 205); 4. circa A.D. 985 (p. 369); 5. circa A.D. 1100 (p. 475).↩

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The translation of Origen’s exegetical works on Ezekiel has been proof-read all the way through, and a long but not very serious list of minor issues produced.  Next week I shall do a comparison of bold-face passages in the PDF with the original Word document, and then send the lot to the typesetter to be fixed.

My sincere thanks to John Literal, who volunteered his time and his eyes to read through the text.  It’s a hard task to do, and impossible for either myself or the translator to do, as we have seen the text so many times.  I am very grateful.  Thank you, John!

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Did moral decay destroy the ancient world?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The idea, that the Roman state declined, and ultimately collapsed, in part, because of the moral decay of the Romans themselves, is a commonplace of older literature.[1]

On the other hand many modern writers scoff at the very idea.  A Google books search will easily find examples such as this.[2]  Blogger Gary Carson at Ancient World Review has posted this blog-post and this along the same lines, and I thought that I would add a few musings on the subject here.

The question is a sensitive one.  To discuss it is, implicitly, to discuss our own society and its values or lack of them.  It can quickly turn into a political rather than a historical question, and draw responses which are more defensive-dismissive rather than useful: such as the claim that Rome never fell at all!

Such claims need not be taken seriously.  But why did the Roman world collapse?

The Roman world developed a whole series of institutional problems, which contributed to its final collapse.  Undoubtedly the most important of these was the lack of political legitimacy.  All the emperors were usurpers.  Any successful general could attempt the throne.  This meant, when the empire was fighting for its life, that, although the defeat of a Roman army was a disaster, the victory of the same army was almost as bad.  For the troops, eager for money in the shape of accession donatives, would acclaim the victorious general as emperor, willing or not.  The luckless or ambitious man would then be obliged to stop fighting the barbarians, and try to seize power, or else forfeit his life.[3]  A state that cannot win its wars has no future.

Yet the moral failure of the Romans has been a constant theme since antiquity.  Were they all wrong?

The decay of morals and the ruin of Roman society thereby is a complaint of ancient moralists such as Juvenal.  They are not primarily concerned with fornication, which the ownership of female slaves made endemic in that world.  They condemn adultery and divorce in strong terms.

The intersection between private morality, or its failure, and the structural integrity of the state (or lack of it) must be the family.  That women need families in order to raise their children is obvious; the children of those women who do not form part of a family have a much reduced chance of survival.  To form such units of mutual dependency and obligation and to preserve them is probably an evolutionary necessity.

Those who belong to families have something to lose, and so are disinclined to revolution.  The obligations between families extend, perhaps, to create a general basis for society.  By contrast the bachelor is a parasite on society, who might do anything, having little to lose and no-one to be responsible to.  On this view, if the nation is the body, then the family is the cell.  He who wishes to create a revolution will find the family an obstacle.  I am told that the Bolsheviks did indeed encourage “free love” for this purpose, as part of their strategy of gaining power.

These remarks are probably generally applicable.  But early Roman society was peculiarly centred on the family unit.  The state was ruled by the “Fathers” in the senate.  The father of the family — paterfamilias— was the unique source of property and authority in his sphere.  Indeed the Romans, like other Latin cities, had a state official known as the Pater Patrorum, who could conclude treaties with other cities; a notional “father” for the whole state.

This family unit was not the modern nuclear family.  Important men would have clients, who were attached to their family and in turn gave them importance.  Slaves themselves belonged to the family, which, as Pliny the Younger remarked, gave them a “kind of country” to belong to.

To such a family-centred society, divorce was anathema.  It arrived, nevertheless, and spread.  Similarly adultery, as destroying the integrity of the family, was a very serious business.

We all know the complaints of the moralists of the decay of the Roman family in the late Republic as divorce became commonplace.  More telling, in a way, is Cicero’s remark on his dead young daughter Tullia, “She was married to young men” (plural) “of distinction”.

The effect of easy divorce, itself often a product of adultery, and so of low personal morality, was to dissolve the fundamental building block of Roman society.  At that point, obligations also dissolve.  It is every man for himself.  Office is valued, not as a means to serve society, which includes one’s own family, but rather as a means to gain money.  Thus we reach the comical situation described by Juvenal, where wealthy magistrates appear as “clients” at some rich man’s morning levee, to claim a daily handout, regardless of the indignity to their office and the state!

Of course collapse does not happen at once.  But the rot is there.  Why sacrifice yourself, when you are accustomed to indulging yourself?  It is only by hard work and self-denial and deferred satisfaction that most people can achieve everything.  But why worry?  Eat, drink and be merry! … while it lasts.  Such hedonism is, in the end, profoundly depressing.

In the fourth century Christianity became fashionable.  This, one would expect, would improve the morals of the Romans.  But it may be questioned whether it did.  Orosius, I believe, tells us that the incoming barbarians are far superior to the Romans in that they are not adulterous.

Throughout late Roman society, we see a world devoid of fibre.  Each man is on his own.  The world exists; but nobody really feels that they belong to it.  In this respect, the rise of ascetism, of “renouncing the world”, may even have made the situation worse.

When Alaric and his Goths camped outside Rome, I am told, any of the great magnates whose estates surrounded the city could have paid the ransom demanded.  But none of them did.  The Roman government, safe in Ravenna, could have paid it.  An early Roman senate would have refused to pay, and armed the people to fight.  The late Roman establishment simply didn’t care enough to act at all.  And why?  Because their character and moral outlook had rotted in the long years of peace and plenty?  Certainly men have, until recent years, thought so.

It seems a strange claim, when we consider it, that it can make no difference to anything, how men behave in the matter that is central to the lives of most people: their marriage and what leads up to it.  It is surely far more likely that those taught to treat such obligations as unimportant are likely to treat every other obligation equally lightly.  As was once remarked, “those who encourage permissiveness in the bedroom are then shocked to find permissiveness in the boardroom.”

But whether all this really helped to destroy the Roman world needs rather more precision and analysis than I can give it!

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  1. [1]A correspondent has kindly pointed out an example in Sir John Glubb, The Fate of Empires, online here.↩
  2. [2]J.W. Ermatinger, The Decline and Fall of the Roman empire, Greenwood, 2004, 60.↩
  3. [3]Vetranio, who managed to concert the surrender of himself and his army to Constantius II and survive, is a rare exception.↩

The Life of Severus of Antioch – part 11

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Zacharias Rhetor is talking ca. 500 AD to Severus of Antioch, who is considering becoming a Christian.

Filled with joy, I replied, “I came to this town to study civil law, because I love the science of law.  But since you also care about your salvation, let me propose a project which, without harming the study of law or requiring much leisure, will give us a knowledge of rhetoric, philosophy, the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, and theology.

“What is this project?” he asked.  “Because you’re making a great big promise there, if it is possible, without neglecting the study of law, for us to also acquire such a lot of good things, especially the last one, which is the most important of all.”

Z: “We study law, according to what I have learned, all week except for Sunday and Saturday afternoon.”

S: “Indeed, on the other days of the week we attend the lectures which our masters give on the law, then we repeat them, for our own benefit at home, and we rest for half the day before Sunday, the day (Sunday) which even the civil law directs us to consecrate to God.”

Z: “Then if it suits you, we will reserve for that period the writings of the doctors of the church, i.e. those of Athanasius, Basil, Gregory, John, Cyril, etc.  Let our fellow-students do as they like, we shall revel in theology, and in the sentences and profound knowledge of ecclesiastical writings.”

S: “It is for this reason, my friend,” replied Severus, “that I asked you at the outset whether you had brought with you all these books.  However, now that, thanks to God, we have agreed on something, you will have to make us get the good things you mentioned, because I shall not leave you during the time in question.”

And off they went into the Fathers.

The dialogue sounds a little unreal to me; but this is, in the end, a hagiographical text, and probably the words are composed later.

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A useful map of Constantinople

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Van der Vin’s book[1] also contains a rather useful map of Constantinople, which I think worth sharing.  In particular it shows the location of the Church of the Holy Apostles.

constantinople_map

UPDATE: I suppose this map will be more useful to more people, if I OCR the names at the bottom so that Google can find them. They are:
1. Wall of Theodosius II
2. Golden Gate
3. Pege Gate (Selymbria Gate)
4. Hagia Sophia
5. Hagii Apostoli
6. Monastery of St. John in Stoudion
7. Church of Mary Peribleptos
8. Monastery of St. Andrew in Krisei
9. Church of Mary of Blachernae
10. Monastery of St. John in Petra
11. Monastery of Pantocrator
12. Church of St. Stephen in Dafne
13. Church of Mary Hodegetria
14. Monastery of St. George of the Mangana
15. Column of Justinian I (Augusteion)
16. Column of Constantine (Forum of Constantine)
17. Column of Theodosius I (Forum Tauri)
18. Column of Arcadius (Forum of Arcadius)
19. Column of Michael VIII
20. Imperial Palace
21. Bucoleon palace
22. Blachernae palace
23. Hippodrome
24. Obelisk
25. Cistern of Philoxenos
26. Aqueduct of Valens
27. Forum Amastrianum
28. Forum of the Bous
29. Lycus Valley
30. Mese

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  1. [1]J.P.A. van der Vin –   Travellers to Greece and Constantinople. Ancient Monuments and Old Traditions  in Medieval Travellers’ Tales (PIHANS 49), 1980. [27 cm, softcover; IX, 751].  ISBN: 90-6258-049-1. Online at the Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten – Netherlands Institute for the Near East site.↩

The church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople – already in ruins before 1453?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople was the location of the mausoleum of the emperors.  It doesn’t exist any more, as it was demolished by the Turks after 1453 and a mosque built on the site, the mosque of “Mehmet the Conquerer”.

I’ve seen the statement online, made in such a way as to palliate the destruction, that the church was a ruin before the Turks demolished it.  But I did wonder what the evidence was.

Well, I’ve been working away at Van der Vin’s marvellous book on medieval travellers to Constantinople,[1] which I mentioned earlier.  The website on which it resides did a splendid job and scanned the missing half of the book and fixed the upload in a day!  And this gives us the answer.

From Cristoforo Buondelmonti (ca. 1414-1422), Liber insularum archipelagi:[2]

Next to the church of the Holy Apostles stands the fifth column, the top of which bears an angel of bronze and Constantine on his knees.

The aforesaid church, already ruined by time, contains the sumptuous tombs of the emperors, cut out of purple marble, notably the vast sarcophagus of Constantine.  The column to which Christ was attached for the flagellation may be seen there.

This statement, however, is our only such statement.  Buondelmonti refers to ruins all over the place in Constantinople.

In fact the city was largely in ruins and extensive areas within the walls were just fields and olive groves.  the population had shrunk to a mere 40,000, living in 13 villages scattered here and there over the immense area.

The population estimate comes from an anonymous account written in Munich in 1437.[3]

Ibn Battuta, an Arab traveller who visited the city in 1332 as part of the entourage of a Greek princess, says that the citadel and palace are “is surrounded by the city wall, which is a  formidable one and cannot be taken by assault on the side of the sea.  Within the wall are about thirteen inhabited villages.”[4]

Buondelmonti tells us that the Constantinoplitans are “very few”[5] and concerned with nothing but food.  In 1432 Bertrandon de la Broquiere, a Burgundian nobleman on pilgrimage, tells us that “the city is made up of villages and that there is much more open than built-up.”[6]  Pero Tafur, a Spanish nobleman on pilgrimage who visited around 1437-8, writes:[7]

The city is sparsely populated. It is divided into districts, that by the sea-shore having the largest population. The inhabitants are not well clad, but sad and poor, showing the hardship of their lot which is, however, not so bad as they deserve, for they are a  vicious people, steeped in sin. …

It must have been a sad place, full of ruins and poverty, and an impoverished emperor and his court.  Yet how we would love to see it!

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  1. [1]J.P.A. van der Vin –   Travellers to Greece and Constantinople. Ancient Monuments and Old Traditions  in Medieval Travellers’ Tales (PIHANS 49), 1980. [27 cm, softcover; IX, 751].  ISBN: 90-6258-049-1. Online at the Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten – Netherlands Institute for the Near East site.↩
  2. [2]Van der Vin, p.688.↩
  3. [3]P.254, 443.  The text is Terre hodierne Grecorum et dominia secularia et spiritualia ipsorum; see “Neos hellenomnemon” 7 (1910), p.361.  It reads: “habitantes in ea, ut extimo, quadraginta milia hominum vix possunt interesse, qui in tempore guerrae de suis internis vineis, pratis et ceteris necessariis vivere possunt, prout frequenter probatur.”↩
  4. [4]P.569.↩
  5. [5]Van der Vin, p.669.↩
  6. [6]P.684: I am not entirely certain of the translation of the old French “Tout ainsi que les grosses carraques peuvent venir devant Pere, semblablement font à Constantinoble[sic]. Et est cette cite cy faicte par villaiges et y a beaucop plus de voide que de plain.”  Edition: Ch. Schefer, Le voyage d’Outremer de Bertrandon de la Broquiere, Paris, 1892.↩
  7. [7]P.703.↩

More on the inscription of “D. Cetiannus”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Four years after Wilhelm von Boldensele, in 1336, another German traveller visited the pyramids of Giza.  His name was Ludolf von Sudheim, the chaplain of another German nobleman on pilgrimage.  He also left an account of his travels, and a transcription of the Latin inscription on the pyramid at Giza.  His statement was as follows:[1]

To one side of New Babylonia (Cairo) across the Nile in the direction of the Egyptian desert stand several monuments of amazing size, which were formerly very beautiful; they are built of great blocks of tooled stone. Of these monuments there are two that are very large, and that were formerly very beautiful; they are square tombs. On one wall of one of these monuments there are letters chiselled out in Latin, on the second wall in Greek, on the third in Hebrew; on the fourth wall, however, there are many characters which are unknown. But on the first wall, where the Latin is, is carved- insofar as can still be made out, because of its age – the following:

Vidi pyramides sine te, dulcissime frater,
Et tibi quod potui lacrimas hic moesta profudi
Et nostri memorem luctus hanc sculpo querelam.
Sit nomen Decimi Anni pyramidis alta
Pontificis comitisque tuis, Trajane, triumphis,
Lustra sex intra censoris consulis esse.

I leave the explanation of these verses to the judgement of the reader. These monuments were called by the native population the granaries of Pharaoh.

The inscription (in six hexameters, the last plainly corrupt) is the same, except that the name of the companion of Trajan is given as D. Annius, rather than D. Cetiannus.  It is likely that the text was worn and hard to read by this date.  The presence of lettering in other languages, all unreadable to the parish priest of Westphalia, may or may not be related to the inscription.

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  1. [1]J.P.A. van der Vin –   Travellers to Greece and Constantinople. Ancient Monuments and Old Traditions  in Medieval Travellers’ Tales (PIHANS 49), 1980. [27 cm, softcover; IX, 751].  ISBN: 90-6258-049-1. Online at the Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten – Netherlands Institute for the Near East site; p.584; discussion on p.34-5.↩

An ancient Latin inscription on the pyramids of Giza

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The pyramids of Giza still retained their outer casing into the middle ages, and only lost it when the Arabs started to use it as a source of stone.  But in 1332 a German noble, Wilhelm von Boldensele, while on pilgrimage in the orient, visited the site.  In his Itinerarius Guelielmi de Boldensele in terram sanctam [1] he writes:

Beyond Babylonia (Cairo) and the river of paradise, in the direction of the desert that lies between Egypt and Africa, there are several monuments of the ancients, shaped like pyramids; two of them are amazingly large and high, with very large, polished stones, and on these I found characters inscribed in different languages. In one monument I came across the following Latin verses, chiselled in stone:

Vidi pyramidas sine te, dulcissime frater,
Et tibi, quod potui, lacrimas hie moesta profudi,
Et nostri memorem luctus hanc sculpo querelam.
Sit nomen Decimi Cetianni pyramide alta
Pontificis comitisque tuis, Trajane, triumphis
Lustra sex intra censoris consulis esse.

I have seen the pyramids in stone without you, beloved brother,
and for you I have grieved here as much as I could, and shed my tears;
And mindful of our grief I chisel this lament:
May the high pyramid know the name of Decimus Cetiannus,
The pontifex and companion of your triumphs, O Trajan,
(Who within six lustra was both censor and consul??).[2]

The inscription and the stone on which it was inscribed have long since vanished from the world.  But the name of D. Cetiannus, priest and companion of the emperor Trajan is preserved; because a German traveller twelve centuries later happened to write down the graffito.

I wonder what remains of antiquity might be mouldering in Arabic texts, unknown because Arabic literature is pretty much unknown and inaccessible, untranslated because unknown?

On the same inscription, see the following post.

UPDATE: 16 September 2019.  A twitter thread by the excellent Dr Kate Wiles here drew my attention to further information.  I don’t see any sign that this will be written up, and it would be a shame to lose what she and others uncovered.  She writes:

Some time around AD 120, a Roman woman, Terentia, visited the pyramids and, in the smooth limestone facing of the Great Pyramid, she carved a poem in memory of her brother.

‘I saw the pyramids without you, my dearest brother, and here I sadly shed tears for you, which is all I could do. And I inscribe this lament in memory of our grief. May thus be clearly visible on the high pyramid the name of Decimus Gentianus…’

… Emily Hemelrijk in her book Matrona Docta says: ‘The poem is no literary masterpiece’ but also admires Terentia’s ‘pretension in inscribing a poem on one of the great pyramids of Egypt’. ‘Her poem was meant for eternity’.

There is more in I.M. Plant, Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome: An Anthology, 2004, 155-6,[3] which tells us:[4]

Terentia was a Roman visitor to Egypt whose only known work is a poem which she composed as an epitaph for her brother, Decimus Terentius Gentianus, and had inscribed on the pyramid of Cheops. The poem was discovered and recorded in 1335 by a German pilgrim, Wilhelm von Boldensele. Since then all the limestone facing on the pyramid has been removed and the inscription itself has been lost. Terentia’s poem, as we have it, consists of six hexameters, but may originally have been longer.

We do know a little about her brother. Decimus Terentius Gentianus was consul suffectus under the Emperor Trajan in AD 116, and governor of Macedonia under Hadrian as a censitor in AD 120.2 This helps us to date Terentia’s visit to Egypt and her poem. Still in mourning for her brother, she chose the pyramid for her epitaph to provide a suitably grand and everlasting site for her tribute to him.^ She was proud of her brother’s political achievements at such a young age (under thirty), and the status and position in the imperial court that this reflected. Traditionally a man could not attain the rank of consul before he turned forty, though this Republican practice, codified in the Lex Vibia Annalis in 180 BC, was disregarded by the emperors who promoted themselves, family members and favourites without regard to the age limit. There is no other record of Terentius reaching the rank of censor, Terentia may have elevated her brother’s appointment as censitor in her poem to exaggerate his achievements.

It has been suggested that Terentia visited Egypt as a member of Hadrian’s touring party in AD 130. This may be so but there is no evidence for it, and Terentia’s epitaph must have been written after AD 130 as the Historia Augusta (23) records that Terentius did not die until after Hadrian’s tour.

Terentius had been popular in the senate and at one time considered a possible successor by Hadrian. Terentia’s poem is all the more remarkable for her boldness in lauding a politician who had fallen out of favour with the reigning emperor. Terentia looks back to the success of her brother under Trajan, whom she addresses, but does not mention Hadrian at all. Perhaps Egypt was far enough away from Rome for such political graffiti to pass unnoticed. Terentia did not need to travel to Egypt with the Emperor: evidence from the graffiti on the statue of Memnon shows that there was considerable Roman tourism in Egypt by both men and women.

Terentia’s poem can be compared with the epigrams by Caecilia Trebulla and Julia Balbilla, inscribed in the time of Hadrian on the Colossus of Memnon, as examples of occasional poetry. They show that at this time women of the Roman elite were literate—Terentia adapts a verse of Horace in line three—and could express themselves well in verse.

The text itself is better known as the Liber de quibusdam ultramarinis partibus et praecipue de Terra Sancta.  A critical edition was printed by Deluz in 1972: “O. Deluz, Liber de quibusdam ultramarinis partibus et praecipue de terra sancta de Guillaume de Boldenses (1336), suivi de la traduction de Frère Jean de Long (1351), Paris (Diss. masch.) 1972 aus einer Baseler Hs.”[5]

Written when it was, it circulated in manuscript copies, as did a French translation.  R. Rohricht, Bibliotheca Geographica Palestinae (1890; online here) lists 25 mss. for Boldensele (p.73), 4 in Munich alone:[6]

Thomas Schmid located one of the Vienna mss, number 523, online here.  The catalogue suggests that the manuscript is 14th century, but I’m not entirely certain of the full shelfmark.  The text is on image 30 – this seems to be folio 10v – where it fills the first column (click for a larger size):

A more modern but partial list of manuscripts is accessible at Cendari here.  Finally an excellent list of manuscripts and bibliography is at Arlima here.  This gives the following mss:

  1. Basel, Öffentliche Bibliothek der Universität, D. IV, 8 (anc. E. III. 20)
  2. Bruxelles, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, 8779
  3. Colmar, Bibliothèque municipale, 228, f. 12a-29b.  Online here.
  4. Den Haag, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Z. 183, f. 1-14
  5. Giessen, Universitätsbibliothek, 159, f. 1-12.  Online here.
  6. Klosterneuburg, Stiftsbibliothek, ?? (Pez, Thaur. I A, LXXXVII)
  7. Lambach, Stiftsbibliothek, ?? (Tübing. Theol. Quartalschr. 1868, 326)
  8. Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Suppl. lat. 322
  9. München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, clm 903, f. 174-196
  10. München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, clm 18621, f. 83-122
  11. München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, clm 22377, f. 183-190
  12. München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, clm 27006
  13. Namur, Bibliothèque municipale, 50
  14. Praha, Archiv pražského hradu, Knihovna metropolitní kapituly, G. 42
  15. Praha, Archiv pražského hradu, Knihovna metropolitní kapituly, N. 13
  16. Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, 737, f. 169-175
  17. Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reginensi latini, 171
  18. Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, 523
  19. Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, 3529, f. 132-153
  20. Wilna, Gräfl. Potocklische Bibliothek, [sans cote], f. 188-201
  21. Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Weissenb. 40, f. 95-110 (B b 2)
  22. Wrocław, Biblioteka uniwersytecka, IV, 37, 4°
  23. localisation actuelle inconnue: Straubing, Cod. d. früheren Dechantan Matthias Ebersperger (B b I)
  24. localisation actuelle inconnue: anc. ms. Cheltenham, Sir Thomas Phillipps, n° 6650

The last item, according to Worldcat, is in fact at the University of Minnesota in the USA, here.

All of these are presumably copies.  Wouldn’t it be interesting to know if the autograph existed somewhere?

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  1. [1]No modern edition seems to exist: my source is a translation of extracts in J.P.A. Van der Vin, Travellers to Greece and Constantinople. Ancient Monuments and Old Traditions  in Medieval Travellers’ Tales (PIHANS 49), 1980. [27 cm, softcover; X, 751 (2 vols.)].  ISBN: 90-6258-049-1. p.574 f, esp. p.577-8.  Downloadable here.↩
  2. [2]Text and translation from Van der Vin.↩
  3. [3]Google Books preview here.↩
  4. [4]I could only view the introduction.  There are copious notes, but I could not view these either.↩
  5. [5]Information and further bibliography from here.↩
  6. [6]These details and image from Phil Booth.↩

The Life of Severus of Antioch – part 10

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Let’s continue reading Zacharias Rhetor’s eye-witness account of the life of Severus of Antioch.  The date is the late 5th century.  The two friends have now gone to Beirut (ancient Berytus) to study law.

Shortly afterwards, the man of God (=Severus) came to me.  He greeted me cheerfully and said, “God has sent you to this city because of me.  Tell me how I may be saved.”  I raised my eyes to heaven with joy and thanked God that He had inspired this thought and made him think about his salvation.  Then I took his hand and said, “Since your question relates to matters of faith, I will take you to the temple of the Mother of God, and there I will tell you what the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Fathers have taught me.”  When he heard these words, Severus asked me if I had with me the books of the great Basil, the illustrious Gregory, and of the other teachers.  I told him that I was carrying many of their works.  So then he came with me to the temple of the Mother of God.

First he recited with me the necessary prayers.  Then he put to me the same question (as before).  Beginning with the book of Genesis, written by the great Moses, I made him see the concern of God for us; how He had created all that exists, and likewise took us from nothingness, and had placed our first ancestors in the paradise; how He had given them, as beings endowed with reason and masters of themselves, the law of salvation, concerning what they should do; and how they despised the sovereign commandments, by the deception of the serpent, and lost this blessed life and exchanged immortality for death, of which the law had warned them in advance.

Saying all this to him, I showed him Adam and Eve — they was a painting of them in the temple — clad in tunics of skin, after their expulsion from paradise.  I then showed him the numerous miseries that resulted from this, all caused by the cunning and power of the demons, which we had voluntarily unleashed against ourselves, in obeying he that was at the head of all rebellion.  Then I mentioned the mercy of God towards us.   In His goodness He did not allow his creature to perish, which had been incorruptible, which would never have been subject to the miseries of human nature, once born to enter the hereafter, which would have received immortality superior to its nature, if it had kept the law of God.

Then I continued, “After the natural law, God also gave us the written law, by the intermediary of Moses.  He also came to the assistance of nature through the intervention of many holy prophets.  But when He saw that the wound required a stronger medicine, the Word of God and the Creator God came to us, having been made man by the Father and the Holy Spirit.  Rising sun, he shone, onto the high places where we sat  in the shadows and in the shadow of death!  He was conceived of the Holy Spirit in the flesh, and by the power of the Holy Spirit came from a virgin and immaculate womb.  He left his mother with her virginity.   This was the first proof that He gave of His divinity: by a miracle He produced a conception without seed and without sin, and a birth above nature.  He then tried to separate us from the power of the devil, the rebel to whom we had sold our soul, and voluntarily accepted the cross in His body for us.  He gave His body to death as the price of our ransom, and rose again on the third day, having broken the tyranny of the devil and the perverse demons, his assistants, and the power of death. He raised us with him, made us sit down with him in Heaven, as the Scripture says, and showed us the new way of salvation which leads to Heaven.  He conquered the whole earth through His apostles, and He abolished the oracles of pagan magic, and the sacrifices of demons, established a single catholic church over all the world, and taught us to repent and to seek refuge in Him through the redemptive baptism, which symbolises the burial of three days and the resurrection of the saviour of us all, Christ.”

When I had also produced numerous other proofs (of the divinity of Christ), of which the gospels are full, I said to Severus, “It is therefore necessary, my friend, for all intelligent people to seek refuge in Him by means of the life-giving baptism.”

— “You have said well,” he said, “but we must stop at this point.  Because I am busy here with the study of law.”

— “If you listen to me,” I said, “or rather, if you listen to the holy Scriptures and the universal teachers of the church, first flee from the shameful shows, the horse-racing and the theatre, and those where we see wild beasts pitted against some wretched men.  Then, keep your body in a state of purity, and every day, after you finish studying law, offer to God the evening prayers in the holy churches.  In fact it is right that we who know God should do evening duty in the churches, while others usually spend their time playing dice, wallowing in drunkenness, drinking with prostitutes and even degrading themselves completely.”

Severus promised to do this and observe this (habit).  “Only,” he said, “you will not make a monk out of me.  Because I am a law student, and I greatly love the law.  Now, if you want something else, say so.”

I think that’s enough for the moment.  How accurately this dialogue is reported might be questioned, of course.  But no doubt something of the kind passed between them.

Note the reference to combat between wild beasts and poor men.  One does not think of the arena as being in operation ca. 500 AD, but it must have been, for otherwise the observation would lack point.

The description of the variety of student life in the evening — some praying, others drinking or degrading themselves in various ways — is probably typical of university life, even today.  It is remarkable how little change there is, in some ways!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Another chunk of the transcription of al-Makin has arrived, making 70 pages in all, or around a quarter of Erpenius’ edition.  This is going swimmingly!

One of the reasons why I wanted an electronic transcription of the text is so that I — as a non-Arabic speaker — can use Google Translate on it.  Today I pasted the first chunk into it, to see what happened.  Alas Google Translate for Arabic still has quite a way to go; but I got something.  One interesting bit was the use of “Peace be upon him” at various points.  This is, of course, the section of al-Makin devoted to Islamic rulers, and epitomised from al-Tabari; but it’s still unnerving.

A correspondent sent me a link to another collection of online books: the Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten – Netherlands Institute for the Near East.  Most exciting of these — for me — was J.P.A. van der Vin –   Travellers to Greece and Constantinople. Ancient Monuments and Old Traditions  in Medieval Travellers’ Tales (PIHANS 49), 1980. [27 cm, softcover; IX, 751].  ISBN: 90-6258-049-1.

Unfortunately the PDF was incomplete.  It omitted the notes (all placed at the end — aargh!) and indeed about half the book.  I have written to the site, however, and already received a very kind reply, so I have hopes that it is merely a glitch.

Even so I found many statements of interest in it.  Most notably, after 1204, nobody describes Constantinople as a “rich” city any more.  The looting by the Latins clearly beggared the town.  Likewise the population declined so that wide areas of the city were turned into farmland.  I’d like to see the references for this; but I recall that Mesariotes in his very late Description of the Church of the Holy Apostles describes it as lying in the middle of farmland.  Doubtless it was so.  But I shall look into this once I can see the rest of the book.

UPDATE: The site fixed the book within 48 hours! Wow!

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