Every so often I come across a splendid piece of scholarly work; work that makes me want to stand up, and cheer, and shout “look at this!!!”. I’m thinking of work that could only be done by a professional scholar of great skill, great linguistic ability, and massive determination.
Such an experience came my way today with an 2020 article by Alexey A. Morozov, in Russian, who is preparing to edit for the first time the De Resurrectione of Methodius of Olympus, composed in three books and attacking some of the dafter ideas of Origen. This work is probably the largest ante-Nicene text still unpublished. Dr Morozov is based at the university of Fribourg in Switzerland, from where some very excellent philological work has emerged in recent years.
The article citation is:
Морозов А. А. Диалог Мефодия Олимпийского «О воскресении» (CPG 1812) и методология критического издания славянских текстов // Библия и христианская древность. 2020. № 3 (7). С. 80–125. DOI: 10.31802/BCA.2020.7.3.003
Morozov, Alexey A. “Dialogue of Methodius of Olympus ‘On the Resurrection’ (CPG 1812) and the Methodology of Critical Edition of the Slavonic Texts”. Bible and Christian Antiquity, № 3 (7), 2020, pp. 80–125 (in Russian). DOI: 10.31802/BCA.2020.7.3.003
The original Russian can be downloaded in PDF from here. I’m sure everyone realises that I had to pass it through Google translate in order to read it. To save others having to do the same, I have pasted the raw output into a Word .docx file, which is here.
Only fragments of the original Greek text of De Resurrectione still exist. But the complete text is preserved in Old Slavonic (or “Old Slavic” as our American friends seem to want to call it). This, like most Old Slavonic texts, has never been published. In fact, before the fall of the Soviet Union, it was simply impossible to access the manuscripts anyway. A complete Italian translation exists, but this was made directly from a random manuscript. This is a hard area in which to work.
The article itself is an example of hard, painstaking, grinding labour. It is the product of assembling copies of all the manuscripts in every archive in Eastern Europe – nineteen -, and collating the lot in order to produce a stemma. It must have taken him ages. Just locating manuscripts alone involved wading through bad catalogues. Most people in the past just wimped out and worked from whatever manuscript they were able to locate, just as people did back with classical texts at the renaissance. There was nothing else you could do. So in one article he has opened up the whole field. Nobody will ever thank him, I fear. But this paper will form the basis for all subsequent work on the Old Slavonic text of Methodius. It is simply excellent stuff.
Likewise he sits down and addresses the fundamental question: how should Old Slavonic texts be published? He reviews past work, and produces a list of bullet points with the principles to be followed. This is fundamental stuff, and ought to be very influential.
There is more. Reward comes to the selfless scholar who buries himself in such a dry task. Dr Morozov’s reward is to make discoveries. First he has found some substantial portions of the text which are missing from most manuscripts of the text. Even better, he has discovered a fragments of a lost work of Methodius, mentioned by Jerome but lost since antiquity! He gives a diplomatic transcription of the short section of De Pythonissa, which I think was headed “On the demise of magic” in his manuscript. Sadly he does not give a translation, and not even Google Translate can handle Old Slavonic. He has also discovered an Old Slavonic translation of the Symposium of Methodius, the only work preserved in Greek, but not previously known in Old Slavonic. This is likely to clarify the text in some particulars.
Dr Morozov’s findings run to 40 pages. They promise very well for his forthcoming edition of the work. I hope that it will be accompanied by a translation in French.
In the museums of the world there are a number of Roman sculptures of a head, with particular characteristics. The person depicted is completely bald, lacking even eyebrows. Deeply incised upon the head, usually on the right but sometimes elsewhere, is a cross-shaped or X-shaped mark. In some cases the mark is shaped like the Greek letter “tau”, or is just a single line. The style of the sculpture makes them early, sometimes even belonging to the Republican period. Prior to 1900 such busts were often identified as portraits of P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus, the conqueror of Carthage.
Here’s an example from Paris:
Paris, BNF 15-57. Bust of “Scipio”. Gasparini, fig. 13.4a.X-shaped mark on head of Paris, BNF 15-57 bust of “Scipio”. Gasparini, fig. 13.4e.
More than a century ago, in 1905, fifteen such busts were listed and discussed in a tightly argued article by Walter Dennison.[1] He concluded that these busts had nothing to do with Scipio. Instead he argued that they represent portraits of a group of people: the priests of Isis.
The Romans did not shave their heads, although they might do so under certain circumstances, as we might. But literary sources and frescoes show that the Roman priests of Isis were distinguished by their shaven heads. The cult of Isis in the Roman world was in some ways a fake version of Egyptian religion. It was an export version, tailored for the foreign market. Ancient Egyptian priests of all deities had shaved their heads, as Herodotus records (book II, c. 36, here):
Everywhere else, priests of the gods wear their hair long; in Egypt, they are shaven.
The Roman priests of Isis retained this custom, unlike other Roman priests, as literary sources record. So the collection of busts, of different people, all shaven, can be identified with certainty as images of priests of Isis.
Once this identification is accepted, then we are immediately struck by the presence of a mark on the front of the head in all these busts. Usually it is an X-shape; sometimes a “tau” shape; sometimes just a straight line. Usually it is on the right, but sometimes on the left, or on the eyebrow-line. But the predominant impression is of a X-shaped mark, on the right.
Literary sources also tell us that Roman priests were often marked on the head with a tattoo. So we have a bunch of portrait busts, all of priests of Isis, all with a characteristic mark, a few with a variant of the X-shape.
For these reasons Dennison concluded that this portrait type – shaved headed with an X mark – was the ancient stereotype for priests of Isis. Although no ancient source refers to any such stereotype, we may reasonably conclude that this is merely a gap in our sources.
Capitoline Museum, Rome. Inv. MC 562. Bust of “Scipio”, really a priest of Isis, with a “tau” shaped mark. The drilled eyes indicate a date later than 150 AD. From here.
Dennison’s article is a fine piece of work, especially for 1905, and his conclusion has been almost universally accepted for over a century.
But it is now a very old article, and it is certainly time to revisit it. In 2019 there appeared a two volume collection of articles on the Graeco-Roman cult of Isis – V. Gasparini, and R. Veymiers (edd.), Individuals and Materials in the Greco-Roman Cults of Isis: Agents, Images, and Practices, 2 vols, Brill (2019). This included a rather diffuse paper by F. Queyrel and R. Veymiers, “De « Scipion l’Africain » aux « prêtres isiaques » : à propos des portraits au crâne rasé avec cicatrice(s)” (“From ‘Scipio’ to ‘priests of Isis’: some shaven-headed portraits with scar(s)”), 384-412, which addressed Dennison’s paper, and disagreed with it. It includes some excellent modern colour photographs of a range of the portrait busts. (There is a Google Books preview available online here).
Queyrel and Veymiers discuss the very same portrait busts, and whether the priests of Isis did indeed have such a mark on their heads. They think not.
So let’s evaluate some of the key points.
Firstly, there is no doubt whatever that the priests of Isis were distinguished in the Roman world by their shaved heads. It is a standard literary trope, and also there are painted depictions, although I won’t pursue that here. In the Gasparini volume, an article by L. Beaurin[2] gives on p.311 f. a detailed list of the literary references. Here are a couple of examples, taken from two of the more detailed sources on the cult.
Plutarch writes (De Iside et Osiride, c. 4, here):
It is true that most people are unaware of this very ordinary and minor matter: the reason why the priests remove their hair and wear linen garments. Some persons do not care at all to have any knowledge about such things, while others say that the priests, because they revere the sheep, abstain from using its wool, as well as its flesh; and that they shave their heads as a sign of mourning, and that they wear their linen garments because of the colour which the flax displays when in bloom, and which is like to the heavenly azure which enfolds the universe. But for all this there is only one true reason, which is to be found in the words of Plato: “for the Impure to touch the Pure is contrary to divine ordinance.” No surplus left over from food and no excrementitious matter is pure and clean; and it is from forms of surplus that wool, fur, hair, and nails originate and grow. So it would be ridiculous that these persons in their holy living should remove their own hair by shaving and making their bodies smooth all over, and then should put on and wear the hair of domestic animals. …
Firmicus Maternus (De errore profanum religione c.2):
The following is the gist of the cult of Isis. Buried in their shrines they keep an image of Osiris, over which they mourn in anniversary lamentations, wherein they shave their heads so that the ugliness of their disfigured polls may show their grief for the pitiful lot of their king. Also they beat their breasts, tear their upper arms, and break open the scars of old wounds, so that the anniversary lamentations may ever renew in their hearts the memory of the death effected by gruesome and pitiable murder. And after performing these rites on set days, next they feign that they are questing for the remains of the mutilated corpse, and rejoice on finding them as if their sorrows were lulled. 4. O wretched mortals, soon to perish!…[
We should note that the other details of the cult given by Firmicus Maternus here may not be accurate. I am told that Robert Turcan reports that the author is drawing upon Seneca, de beata vita. But Seneca is in fact mixing in details from the cult of Cybele and others.[3]
Dennison gives a short list of authors, which is worth reproducing: Apuleius Metamorphoses book XI, 10 and end; Juvenal (book VI, line 535); Martial (book XII, poem xxix, line 19); Minucius Felix (c. 22:1); Lactantius (Inst. I, 21, 20); Ambrose (Letters 58, 3, to Sabinus); “Spartianus” in the Augustan History (Life of Pescennius Niger, c. 6); and Prudentius (Contra Symmachum, 1, ll.622-631), but Beaurin gives many more. Indeed a reference to shaven-headed priests of Isis seems to become a regular part of the anonymous late antique poems against paganism. It appears in the Carmen ad quendam senatorem (21-23, 32) and Carmen contra paganos (98-99).
Chiaramonti Museum, Priest of Isis, with X-shaped mark. From here, via twitter here. Dennison no. 4. “From the Antonine period”.
But the marks on the head are not documented for Isis, and this is where Queyrel and Veymiers raise objections.
Dennison approaches this question step-by-step. He shows that branding the forehead was a feature of pagan priests. But he is not really able to link it to Isis exclusively. Queyrel and Veymiers rightly point out that there is actually no evidence specifically linking these marks either to Egypt or Isis; other than inferring it from the series of busts. They then investigate this collection of portrait busts.
In fact Queyrel and Veymiers devote quite a lot of space to the busts and their history. What they do not do, unfortunately, is offer a list, in the way that Dennison did, with notes against each. This makes it very hard to follow their argument. At one point they suggest (p.397-8) that many – nearly all? – of a list of busts given in another paper are actually modern copies of the BNF 15-57 bust at the head of this article. If so, obviously they can be ignored. Does that mean that all of the busts, except for that one, are modern? They do not say. It is frustrating to attempt to tease this information out of their article. In the next section of their article they write as if this is merely material that Dennison disregards, so at this moment I have no idea.
They make a further point which is interesting but not conclusive. Busts of Scipio Africanus were worth more to art dealers than random heads of an unknown bald person. Once any bald bust with a scar was identified as Scipio, the temptation to add such a scar to any bald head might be considerable. At least one of the heads labelled as “Scipio” had the hair removed and an inscription added. How many of the genuine heads, they ask, had such a scar originally? And how many were added in the 18th century, to improve the saleability of the item? Faking antiquities of famous men was rather a cottage industry after the renaissance, as we learn from Anthony Grafton’s The forgers and the critics. Many of these busts do indeed have portions which are plainly restored.
But it is an impossible question to answer, unless some forensic investigation can be done, as surely it could be. At the moment it is just speculation, until hard evidence of alterations to specified busts for this purpose exists. We can only argue from what we know, not what may be the case. What we know – I think – is that there is a corpus of heads which are shaven and have distinctive X-shaped marks.
At one point Queyrel and Veymiers go badly wrong. They dismiss Dennison’s appeal to a passage in Tertullian. Dennison wrote, “the mark upon the head is a cult sign and has a religious significance. significance. There is abundant evidence that in period priests of foreign religions were branded, at least one priesthood the branding was done in frontibus.” As part of his argument he draws particular attention to Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum 40, which he gives as follows:
“They are the wiles of the devil,” says Tertullian, of idolatry thus imitates the holy [the devil] baptizes his believers, thus celebrates a rite of consecrating bread image of the resurrection, and rewards sword; et si adhuc memini, Mithra signat illic in frontibus milites suos.”
Of course this explicitly names Mithras, and Dennison has to argue that Tertullian is mingling rites from various cults, and the reference may be a mistake for Isis. Queyrel and Veymiers pooh-pooh this, and state simply that, whatever Tertullian is talking about, it is not Isis. On the face of it, they are right. The text is clear.
But in fact the text is almost certainly corrupt at this point. Queyrel and Veymiers relied – naturally enough – on the very old Sources Chrétiennes 46 (1957) edition by Refoulé. But the early volumes of that great series were really translations with an existing text, rather than the monuments of scholarship that we know today. That edition is not that good. In his own 1942 CSEL70 edition, p.51, Emil Kroymann placed the word “Mithras” in brackets, suggesting that the word was a gloss, an above-the-line comment which has made its way into the text. (Dennison in 1905 had no access to this, of course). Yet Refoulé does not even signal the variants for this part of the text, not even that many manuscripts give “Mithrae”, the genitive.
If we look at Greenslade’s translation, the most modern, we find this:
40. I shall be asked next, Who interprets the meaning of those passages which make for heresy? The devil, of course, whose business it is to pervert truth, who apes even the divine sacraments in the idol-mysteries. Some he baptizes–his own believers, his own faithful. He promises the removal of sins by his washing, and, if my memory serves, in this rite seals his soldiers on their foreheads. He celebrates the oblation of bread, brings on a representation of the resurrection, and buys a wreath at the point of the sword. Why, he actually restricts his High Priest to one marriage. He has his virgins, he has his continents. If we turn over the religious legislation of Numa Pompilius, if we look at his priestly functions and his badges and his privileges, the sacrificial ministrations and instruments and vessels, the niceties of vows and expiations, will it not be evident that the devil has imitated the scrupulosityof the Jewish Law? If he was so eager to copy and express in the affairs of idolatry the very things by which the sacraments of Christ are administered, we may be sure that he has had an equal longing and an equal ability to adapt the literature of sacred history and the Christian religion to his profane and emulous faith with the same ingenuity, sentence by sentence, word by word, parable by parable. We must not doubt, therefore, that the spiritual wickednesses from which heresy comes were sent by the devil, or that heresy is not far from idolatry, since both are of the same author and handiwork. Either they invent another God against the Creator or, if they confess one Creator, their teaching about him is false. Every falsehood about God is a kind of idolatry.
Greenslade adds (p.60 n.98) “I think Kroymann is right in removing the word Mithra, before signat (seals), from the text as a gloss. The grammatical and logical subject throughout the sentence is the devil.”
Greenslade is right. So unless Tertullian’s mind wandered – unlikely – then we must treat “Mithras” as no part of the text. This means that Dennison’s suggestion, that this in fact refers to Isis, is therefore entirely possible.
So where does all this leave us?
I feel that it leaves Dennison’s conclusion where it was. The priests of Isis were distinguished by shaven heads, and they also had an X-shaped mark on their heads, as doubtless other priests did. But the existence of the marks depends entirely on whether those busts are ancient – our sole evidence – and unfortunately Queyrel and Veymiers do not make it clear whether they dispute this. So we must proceed on the basis that there is a collection of genuine busts, as Dennison believed. We cannot state, as Queyrel and Veymiers do, that “les prêtres isiaques n’affichaient pas leur adhésion religieuse via leurs cicatrices” (the priests of Isis did not show their religious affiliation by their scars).
Dennison’s article has largely stood the test of time. The same cannot be said for the photographs in his article. These can never have been very good. After scanning by JSTOR, they are frankly rubbish. Nor does the internet help very much – it is still very difficult to find photographs of monuments online. So I thought that we might end with a few examples that I did find online. It might help future searchers!
Priest of Isis, with cross-shaped mark. Formerly though to be a bust of Scipio. From here. No idea where this is.
Here’s another:
Priest of Isis, with X-shaped mark on right temple. 1st century AD. Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas; anonymous loan; object number 36.1997. From Wikimedia Commons.
For the moment, we have to say that the priests did have an X-shaped mark on their heads, based on the collection of busts of Isis. This is deduction, not data. But that would seem to be the state of opinion.
[1]Walter Dennison, “A new head of the so-called Scipio type: an attempt at its identification”, American Journal of Archaeology 9 (1905), 11-43. JSTOR.
[2]“L’apparence des isiaques : la réalité des stéréotypes littéraires”, p.283-321.
[3]So Queyrel and Veymiers, 407; but see other papers in the volume that note how closely the cult of Isis and that of the Magna Mater were sometimes aligned.
While under lockdown I have not been able to progress any of my projects very much. I suspect the background strain is affecting us all. Everyone is on edge, I notice. But I am certainly more fortunate than most.
After a break, I have started to nibble again at my translation of John the Deacon’s Life of St Nicholas. It’s really not very pleasant going. Every sentence offers a problem. But all it really requires is time and effort. At least I have done something.
Today I saw that someone had posted online that a vision of St Michael was recorded at St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall in 495 AD. I started to look into this, out of curiosity. It’s a bit of a puzzle.
After quite a bit of searching, the literature search seems to come down to a 5 page booklet published by G. Doble – who else? – in the early 1930s, titled “Miracles at St Michael’s Mount”. It must always have been very rare, and I could only find 3 copies listed in COPAC. [Update – the item is on Archive.org here, but does not in fact contain anything about the early legend].
Today I wrote to one university library who had it. The staff cannot have been busy, since the students are at home and the institution is not teaching. So I was quickly informed that they only deal with members of the university (!). So I shall try to find a member of that university to ask for me.
The legend is probably bogus, and perhaps copied from a similar legend about Mount Gargano in Italy in 492(ish), but it appears widely online. If I can check the Doble publication then I will then write a post about it.
Meanwhile here is a photograph of St Michael’s Mount which I found online.
St Michael’s Mount, the causeway flooded.
Some newspaper stories in 2010 claimed that the Nazi foreign minister, Ribbentrop, was a regular visitor to the area during the 1930s, and that a remark about intending to take over the castle and live there when Germany ruled the world did not endear him to his British hosts.[1] This tells us that he only visited the area in the summer time.
I have fond memories of my only visit to the area. In summer 2012, while staying at a house party in St Ives, I visited St Michael’s Mount, during a massive rainstorm. Indeed it had rained in the area every day for a month. The tide was in, so we had to take one of the little ferry boats. We were pretty much the only customers. On reaching the island we walked up to the castle and took the tour, somewhat hastened by the fact that standing on the battlements was simply a way to get soaked. The castle itself is very small. Down by the harbour there was a large modern tourist block, with restaurant, which was almost empty and a very welcome sight. After lunch the rain stopped. The tide had gone down and the boat trip was much shorter. For most of the way we walked back to my car. When we reached the hotel, one and all went to our rooms and took a hot shower and had a change of clothes. It was a memorable trip.
Looking at my “to do” list, I find that I have 29 items relating to photographs of monuments of Mithras. These I need to process into my “Roman cult of Mithras” pages.
But at this time of plague it’s important not to get drained, so I won’t push myself too hard. Now back to the sofa!
If you write a blog, you will get correspondence. Some of it will be useful. A gentleman wrote to me only yesterday, sending an image for a Mithraic monument where I previously had none.
But some of it is less welcome. I used to get cases where young people would write, asking me to do their homework. Luckily this hasn’t happened for a while. This may be because the schools no longer teach classics, of course.
An email arrived today, from someone employed by John Wiley and Sons, a major publisher. They’d found a image file on the web, from my blog. Might they have permission to use it in some publication?
My name is __________. I’m working as a permissions specialist for John Wiley & Sons, a leading educational publisher. My responsibility is to clear rights for content to be used in new Wiley products.
We would like to use your figure in a forthcoming Wiley title …. by …..
https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/uploads/2019/06/xxxxxxxxxxxx.jpg
The sender had an Indian name.
My first reaction was that this was a form email. My next was to wonder what on earth the picture was? I clicked, and it turned out to be a page from a manuscript. Obviously not my work, then. A bit more searching found the article – the sender had not bothered to do this – and I quickly found the manuscript library, and a link to it. Then I saw that I had not linked to the particular page for that image, but would have to click through and scroll a bit. The site did not work with mobile – I was lying on the sofa at the time – so I would have to go up to my study and turn on my computer etc etc.
At this point, I rebelled a bit. I try to be a good guy, but why should I have to do all this? This is my life. Why should I donate it to a stranger who themselves was making not the slightest effort.
The sender had done nothing – absolutely nothing. Their manager had given them the url of the image. All they had done was to paste the url of the image into a form email, go to my home page to find the contact form, and send that boilerplate to me. They had made no effort to find the post to which it belongs, or to discover whether the image was mine or not. They must have taken 30 seconds, if that – although no doubt they spent longer at the keyboard.
Writing to me, a reasonable person would have actually written to me, not just pasted boilerplate. They would have asked about the image, and, if unable to find the source, would have asked. That is what you or I would have done. They would have shown respect for my time. But this person did not. They evidently did not care about the job enough to lift a finger. What less could they have done, than they did?
This brought to mind a memory of days gone by, when I was freelancing. Sometimes the clients had Indian staff, either locally or offshore. Companies liked to recruit them in place of people like me, even if they had poor English. We always assumed that they were paid a pittance – although it would be a fortune back in India.
A rare few of these gentry were good. But most were not. So many did nothing at all. They would require instruction in painstaking detail for each and every task. They would never show initiative. They would do as little as possible. If pressed they would play the language card and allow their accents to thicken until you couldn’t understand them. Recruited on price, they were taking a job from someone here who deserved it, and, by doing nothing, they added to the burden on everyone else. They were paid little, and worth less.
Clearly I was dealing with one of these. So I abandoned my reply email – I had started to draft it – and decided not to reply. It’s not my image, it’s not my problem. Why should I do that work for someone who will probably not even say “thank you”?
I did feel a bit guilty. I thought “Do unto others as you would have them do to you”.
But then, I wouldn’t do this to a stranger. If I write, asking for help, I would always show that I had done the most I could. I would make clear that I wasn’t trying to steal their time in order to save my own. Is that unreasonable?
A couple of weeks ago the Persée site announced that they had added the “Documents, études et répertoires de l’Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes” to their collection. The IRHT is the centre of manuscript studies, so this is big news. The collection may be found here.
This is full of good things for those interested in medieval manuscripts. It also contains the volumes of the Codices Chrysostomici Graeci – listing the enormous number of Chrysostom manuscripts.
But the highlight is number 10, the Repertorium Pseudochrysostomicum (1965) by Aldama, listing alla large proportion of the works falsely attributed to John Chrysostom. There are hundreds of them, and this is the key tool to use. Nobody ever had access to it, of course. It’s the sort of book that is locked up in manuscript rooms, themselves accessible only with a letter of recommendation.
Yesterday I asked what the future is likely to be for private websites, in a much more regulated internet dominated by corporations and their lawyers. This led me to consider what will happen to my own literary legacy – rather too grand a term! – when the time comes. The preservation strategies of yesterday – mirroring and free availability – are unlikely to work any more.
It’s hard to say how much of what I have written will still be of value in 20 years. But one area that will definitely hold its value is the translations of ancient texts that I have published over the years. Some were made and donated by others. Some I commissioned. Some I did myself. A few were done as online collaborations.
In every case no translation existed in English when “mine” was made. In some cases a translation has come along since, but mostly they remain the only English translation ever made. There are advantages to being a pioneer! So these things are likely to be useful for the foreseeable future.
When I die, my domain names will vanish and my websites will go offline. The master copies exist locally on my hard disk and backup drives, but these will no doubt be erased by my executors.
It’s not easy to see what to do. I’ve just done a couple of Google searches, but these have mainly produced rubbish.
Possibly one solution would be to compile all these scattered translations into a single PDF, which could then be made available on Archive, Academia, and to deposit libraries. I could perhaps “publish it” formally, and give it an ISBN. Indeed I could create print copies, and deposit them with legal deposit libraries. That would be another avenue of preservation.
But it would be quite an undertaking to do this. Like Dr Johnson, if more humbly, I do not even have a list of everything that I have done. But I could do this. The more recent material will be in PDF form already, on the blog. Older material will be in HTML. The most important of these is the translation Jerome’s Chronicle, which was in tabular form and very hairy to lay out in HTML, and will have its own special problems.
Perhaps the first step is simply to create a handlist of translations that I have created or published. If St Augustine did this, in his Retractiones, then I need not be ashamed to do so. Once a complete list exists – or reasonably complete – then the task of creating the preservation volume could begin.
I suppose that I could create that list as a page on this blog, in the first instance. That might work.
The other bunch of material, of less importance, is the blog. I wonder if there is a tool to export from WordPress to PDF!! If not, maybe there should be!
Last night I noticed that one of my domains had renewed. I marvelled at the price charged, for what is just a line in a database. But I found a strange agreement of price from so many vendors. It didn’t seem easy to find anywhere that was cheaper. I then looked at the registry where most of my domains are hosted, and found – to my fury – that they had invented a fee to transfer domains elsewhere. How kind.
These charges add up, if you have more than one or two domains. I let tertullian.net go a while back, and quickgreek.com. But what happens when I get older? Will I want to spend any of my slender retirement income on inflated domain name fees?
This led me to reflect. Does anybody create their own domain any more these days? I can’t think of the last time that somebody created a site like this. But if they do, these absurd charges await them. Furthermore the same people have invented a requirement to use https, rather than http, and so created a need for a certificate for which – of course – they charge annually. In fact this whole business is a racket. It looks like a cartel, and it probably is one.
But it’s a racket aimed at companies and corporations. The internet infrastructure is increasingly aimed at companies and corporations. Google, our beloved search engine, is now aimed entirely at advertising, and so prefers websites which sell advertising – companies and corporations.
Private individuals hardly get a look in any more. If they do, they will create blogs on WordPress.com, or a Facebook page or group, or something like that. It is another matter whether they will ever be heard of.
The world-wide web was originally decentralised. Anybody could take part, on equal terms. But this is no longer the case. Google favours monopolies, companies and corporations. It privileges Wikipedia, for instance – a monolith – rather than treating sites equally. And if Google privileges you, you are privileged indeed! Google itself is a monopoly, or nearly so.
But Google is now a very bad search engine. I did a search on myself, and got around 70 hits – the product of thousands of pages of ceaseless contribution to the web over a period of 23 years results in 70 hits. A quick check on Bing revealed far better results. But the reason is very obvious – Google is the one making money out of all this, and Google is slanted to monopolies and corporations.
As I thought about all of this, I started to wonder about the results of my labours. What will become of the translations that I made, or commissioned, which are all of value? In every case there is or was no other English translation. Can anybody find them?
In the past I relied on the decentralised nature of the web. I was and am very happy for anybody to mirror my content, or to upload it anywhere. The more the merrier, I thought, and thereby preservation is ensured.
But can anybody find any of this stuff any more? I wonder, sometimes. And what happens to my sites, my content, when, in the passage of time, something happens to me?
In the past I never worried about this, because I knew that Archive.org existed, and I felt that it would all get preserved somehow. But is this true any more? Are there measures that we should take, those of us working in specialised areas, to preserve our content? If so, where?
Long ago someone at a university offered to provide a home to my content. I declined, because I was young and thought nothing of it. But I know that universities do not preserve websites. The number of broken links that I encounter these days, from older content, is considerable. In fact they don’t preserve paper content very well either – there are a number of books on my shelves which were originally donated to a university library and were then sold off by the heedless library. Even if it continues to exist, web standards change, and old technologies become obsolete and things stop working. The raw HTML page is perhaps the most enduring – a website generated from PHP will start giving errors in a decade.
Most of my stuff is probably at Archive.org. But is that a safe place now? I have my doubts. The corporatisation of the internet means that corporations will gain ever greater power. In Germany that means that the book publishing firms basically prevent anything much going online without their permission. The publishing firms have sued archive.org in the past. They have sued Google. They don’t want any books online, because they want to make money selling that content. As the corporations gain power, surely the future is with them?
The evolution of the internet into something centralised, composed mainly of a handful of websites has rendered that internet much more open to control by others, whose motives may be to exploit, not contribute. I don’t want to delve into US politics, but what has happened in the last couple of weeks suggest to me that a radical change is about to overtake the world wide web. We have seen the social media sites act as one as a cartel, banning a sitting US president and purging his supporters. Although they must have acted under political pressure from the incoming party, it is possible that they have thereby fallen into a trap. He who lives by the sword dies by the sword. Nobody anywhere likes the idea of a handful of people like Mark Zuckerberg controlling the political environment. They can hardly now plead freedom of speech, or claim impartiality. They now have no allies. They have probably acted illegally. They have violated the trust of a huge number of people around the globe. This leaves them at the mercy of the new administration. If the latter chooses, they can use this as a reason to break them up, and reshape the web, with little opposition. I have already seen articles on how unpopular Facebook is with the new administration. This suggests to me that Facebook is toast. How a future internet will work is unclear, but it will be much less free-wheeling and much more regulated. I suspect that Archive.org may die in the process.
So we face a period of change, and this will bring opportunities as well as problems. What seems clear is that the internet which we all remember is dead.
What now? And … how shall we preserve our content and transmit it to the future?
The Roman Martyrology or Martyrologium Romanum is one of the service books of the Roman Catholic church. It contains a list of martyrs, organised by the date on which they are commemorated, with a short notice of their life and death. In the daily church service, there is a point at which the martyr or martyrs for the day can be remembered, and the Roman Martyrology supplies the necessary text.[1]
The full title of the work is Martyrologium Romanum ad novam kalendarii rationem et ecclesiasticae historiae veritatem restitutum (Roman Martyrology, by the new reckoning of the calendar, and the truth of church history restored). This was part of a programme of work on liturgical texts, headed by Cardinal Sirleto. In 1580 Baronius and others on the commission drew up the list of martyrs to be included.[2]
According to the old Catholic Encyclopedia (here), this first printed edition appeared in 1583 – Romae : ex typographia Dominici Basae; excudebat Franciscus Zannettus, MDLXXXIII. It is dedicated to Pope Gregory XIII. A second edition appeared, also at Rome in the same year, but I’m not sure how to distinguish it from the first. One of these is online here. The title page has only brief details:
But the colophon at the end gives us a little more, including the date of printing – the 26th May.
Other editions appeared at Venice and Lyons in the same year.
On 14 January 1584 Pope Gregory XIII issued a breve entitled “Emendato iam kalendario”, ordering the use of the revised edition.
In 1586 a further revised edition appeared, to which Baronius added a Tractatio de Martyrologio Romano. (Online here), and Baronius himself revised it further in the Antwerp edition of 1589.
In 1630, Urban VIII produced a new edition.
Finally in 1748 there appeared the version of Benedict XIV, which remained the standard version until very recently (I couldn’t find this online, but a transcription of the Latin is here). An English translation of this appeared in the USA at some date. I was able to find editions from 1869 (online here), 1897 (online here), and 1916 (online here), although I do not know whether these are the same.
After Vatican 2, there was a need for a new edition, purged of legendary material. This appeared in 2001, at the Vatican press – Martyrologium romanum: ex decreto sacrosancti œcumenici Concilii Vaticani II instauratum auctoritate Ioannis Pauli PP. II promulgatum. Editio typica.
There is a useful article online about the Martyrologium Romanum – G. Marino, “Approaching the Martyrologium Romanum: A semiotic perspective”, in: Lexia. Rivista di semiotica, 31–32 (2018), 175-275 (online here and here).
The material contained in the Roman Martyrology is derived from many sources, and grew organically over a period of a thousand years, in manuscript. Much of this period was a time of ignorance and superstition. The value of the information provided is of very questionable historical value. Duplicate entries for martyrs abound. There is a useful but very old article by E.C. Butler, “Achelis on the martyrologies: Die Martyrologien, ihre Geschichte und ihr Wert: untersucht von H. Achelis. 247 pp. (Berlin, 1900.)”, JTS os-2 (1901), 447-458, which summarises work on the text to that date. More recent overviews must exist, but these are unknown to me.
[1]My apologies to Roman Catholic readers who will know all this and more. But protestants have very little idea about the manuals used by the Roman Catholic Church.
[2]Katherine Van Liere &c (ed), Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World, 2012, p.55. Link to Preview. See also
An interesting tweet online here, which reflects a common understanding on some Roman Catholic sites:
As Catholics, what weightage ought we to give sacred Scripture and sacred Tradition?
“I confess that I accept and venerate the four councils (Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon) in the same way as I do the four books of the holy Gospel.” – Pope Gregory I, 381 AD
That’s quite a quote, supposed to put the councils on a level with scripture. But what did Gregory actually say, and in what context?
The quote is not directly from Gregory. It comes from an English translation of a old German work by Reinhold Seeberg, his Lehrbuch des Dogmengeschicte, (online here) given the curious English title of Textbook of the History of Doctrines and printed in 1905 from the revised 1904 German edition. In volume 2 (online at Archive.org here), page 18, discussing the theology of Pope Gregory I, we find the following:
Gregory knows himself to be upon these points in harmony with the doctrine of the church councils. He is orthodox, he holds, who accepts what sanctae quatuor universales synodi accepted, and rejects what they rejected (ep. vi. 66; opp. ii., p. 843). “I confess that I receive and venerate four councils, just as I receive and venerate four books of the holy gospel” (ep. i. 25, p. 515; also iii. 10; v. 51, 54; iv. 38). Thus the authority of the church is recognized as on a par with that of the Holy Scriptures. Gregory, indeed, sustained by the strictest theory of inspiration, sees in the Holy Scriptures the “foundation of divine authority” (divinae auctoritatis fundamentum, mor. xviii. 26. 39). …
That is our source for the quote, as we can see from the word “venerate”. So let’s look up the reference in Gregory’s Letters.
The letters of Pope Gregory are collected in the Registrum Epistolarum, in 14 books. This was printed in the Patrologia Latina vol. 77. But Seeberg used the Monumenta Germanica Historia edition, in two volumes: vol 1 is here, vol 2 is here.
The first reference is in error: it is actually to book 1, letter 24, written to John, Patriarch of Constantinople and the other patriarchs. (The reference given in Seeberg is “i.25 (p.515)”, which in fact is not referring to the MGH edition at all, but to the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers translation of selected letters, in which the letter is wrongly numbered as 25). Here is the MGH text, and the NPNF translation from here.
Praeterea quia ‘corde creditur ad iustitiam, ore autem confessio fit ad salutem’, sicut sancti evangelii quattuor libros, sic quattuor concilia suscipere et venerari me fateor. Nicenum scilicet, in quo perversum Arrii dogma destruitur, Constantinopolitanum quoque, in quo Eunomii et Macedonii error convincitur, Efesenum etiam primum, in quo Nestorii impietas iudicatur, Chalcedonense” vero, in quo Euthychis’ Dioscorique pravitas reprobatur, tota devotione complector, integerrima approbatione custodio, quia in his velut in quadrato lapide, sanctae fidei structura consurgit, et cuiuslibet vitae atque actionis existat, quisquis eorum soliditatem non tenet, etiam si lapis esse cernitur, tamen extra aedificium iacet. Quintum quoque concilium pariter veneror, in quo epistola, quae Ibaey dicitur, erroris plena, reprobatur’, Theodorus personam mediatoris Dei et hominum in duabus subsistentiis separans ad impietatis perfidiam cecidisse convincitur, scripta quoque Theodoriti, per quaeb beati Cyrilli fides reprehenditur, ausu dementiae prolata refutantur. …
Besides, since ‘with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation’ (Rom.10.10), I confess that I receive and revere, as the four books of the Gospel so also the four Councils: to wit, the Nicene, in which the perverse doctrine of Arius is overthrown; the Constantinopolitan also, in which the error of Eunomius and Macedonius is refuted; further, the first Ephesine, in which the impiety of Nestorius is condemned; and the Chalcedonian, in which the pravity of Eutyches and Dioscorus is reprobated. These with full devotion I embrace, and adhere to with most entire approval; since on them, as on a four-square stone, rises the structure of the holy faith; and whosoever, of whatever life and behaviour he may be, holds not fast to their solidity, even though he is seen to be a stone, yet he lies outside the building. The fifth council also I equally venerate, in which the epistle which is called that of Ibas, full of error, is reprobated; Theodorus, who divides the Mediator between God and men into two subsistences, is convicted of having fallen into the perfidy of impiety; and the writings of Theodoritus, in which the faith of the blessed Cyril is impugned, are refuted as having been published with the daring of madness.
The next passage gives the same idea. It comes from book 3, 10 – the letter to the subdeacon Savinus. The NPNF translation is here. The footnote states that the subject is the condemnation of the Three Chapters by the Fifth Council.
X. GREGORIUS SAVINO SUBDIACONO NOSTRO.
Exeuntes maligni homines turbaverunt animos vestros, non intellegentes neque quae loquuntur, neque de quibus adfirmant, astruentes, quod aliquid de sancta Chalcedonensi synodo piae memoriae Iustiniani temporibus sit inminutum, quam omni fide omnique devotione veneramur. Et sic quattuor synodos sanctae universalis ecclesiae sicut quattuor libros sacrib evangelii recipimus. De personis vero, de quibus post terminum synodi aliquid actum fuerat, eiusdem piae memoriae Iustiniani temporibus est ventilatum; ita tamen, ut nec fides in aliquo violaretur, nec de eisdem personis aliquid aliud ageretur, quam apud eandem sanctam Chalcedonenscm synodum fuerat constitutum. Anathematizamus autem, si quis ex definitione fidei, quae in eadem synodo prolata est, aliquid inminuere praesumit, vel quasi corrigendo eius sensum mutare. Sed sicut illic prolata est per omnia custodimus. Te ergo, fili karissime, decet ad unitatem sanctae ecclesiae remeare, ut finem tuum valeas in pace concludere, ne malignus spiritus, qui contra te per alia opera praevalere non potest, ex hac causa inveniat, unde tibi in dic exitus tui in aditum regni caelestis obsistat.
X. Gregory to Savinus, &c.
Bad men have gone forth and disturbed your minds, understanding neither what they say nor whereof they affirm, pretending that in the times of Justinian of pious memory something was detracted from the faith of the holy synod of Chalcedon, which with all faith and all devotion we venerate. And in like manner all the four synods of the holy universal Church we receive as we do the four books of the holy Gospel. But concerning the persons with respect to whom something had been done after the close of the synod, there was something ventilated in the times of Justinian of pious memory: yet so that neither was the faith in any respect violated, nor anything else done with regard to these same persons but what had been determined at the same holy synod of Chalcedon. Moreover, we anathematize any one who presumes to detract anything from the definition of the faith which was promulgated in the said synod, or, as though by amending it, to change its meaning: but, as it was there promulgate, so in all respects we guard it. Thee, therefore, most dear son, it becomes to return to the unity of Holy Church, that thou mayest end thy days in peace; lest the malignant spirit, who cannot prevail against thee through thy other works, may from this cause find a way at the day of thy departure of barring thy entrance into the heavenly Kingdom.
The next two references, V.51 and 54, seem to be about simony and irrelevant.
The final reference is to IV.33, to Queen Theodelinae. The NPNF gives this as “IV, 38”. The NPNF is here. I’ll skip the Latin for the introductory stuff.
Nos enim veneramur sanctas quattuor sinodos: Nicenam, in qua Arrius; Constantinopolitanam, in qua Macedonius; Ephesinam primam, in qua Nestorius atque Dioscorus; Calcedonensem, in qua Eutyches dampnatus est. Profitentes, quia quisquis aliter sapit quam hae quattuor synodi, a fide veritatis alienus est. Damnamus autem quoscumque damnant et quoscumque absolvunt absolvimus, sub anathematis interpositione ferientes eum, qui carundem quattuor sinodorum, maxime autem Calcedonensis, de qua quibusdamm imperitis hominibus dubietas nata est fidei addere vel adimere praesumit.
It has come to our knowledge from the report of certain persons that your Glory has been led on by some bishops even to the offence against holy Church of suspending yourself from the communion of Catholic unanimity. Now the more we sincerely love you, the more seriously are we distressed about you, that you believe unskilled and foolish men, who not only do not know what they talk about, but can hardly understand what they have heard; who, while they neither read themselves, nor believe those who do, remain in the same error which they have themselves feigned to themselves concerning us.
For we venerate the four holy synods; the Nicene, in which Arius, the Constantinopolitan, in which Macedonius, the first Ephesine, in which Nestorius, and the Chalcedonians, in which Eutyches and Dioscorus, were condemned; declaring that whosoever thinks otherwise than these four synods did is alien from the true faith. We also condemn whomsoever they condemn, and absolve whomsoever they absolve, smiting, with interposition of anathema, any one who presumes to add to or take away from the faith of the same four synods, and especially that of Chalcedon, with respect to which doubt and occasion of superstition has arisen in the minds of certain unskilled men.
There’s clearly something odd with the references here. We can see that the English translation has interfered with the references, so it might be interesting to see what Seeberg actually wrote. But I was unable to trace this in the various online copies in different editions without more labour than I thought it was worth.
The first reference makes clear that Gregory did say these exact words:
sicut sancti evangelii quattuor libros, sic quattuor concilia suscipere et venerari me fateor. – I confess that I receive and revere, as the four books of the Gospel so also the four Councils.
But it seems to me that Seeberg misleads us. Gregory is not discussing the inspiration of scripture, and whether the councils should be considered on a par with it. He is talking about the councils, at a time when their authority was very much under attack. Everyone that he writes to accepts that the bible is inspired. But he is addressing people who have very great doubts about the councils, whether they should be accepted at all! His point is that he accepts them, just as he accepts the gospels. The degree to which he accepts each is not discussed, nor in anybody’s mind. It’s essentially a rhetorical flourish.
We ought to remember the times in which Gregory wrote. The Roman state in the west had collapsed. The partial reconquest of Italy under Justinian was also falling apart. Gregory was trying to build whatever sources of authority he could, finding whatever common ground he could with the east. At the same time the Eastern empire was engaged in its endless sickening theological witchhunts, ever creating new doctrinal quibbles in order to demonise and exclude others. In this environment Gregory was mainly concerned to show his loyalty, and to keep things going somehow. It is not fair to him to back-project onto him the counter-reformation attempts to put the church on a par with the bible.
Here’s a photograph for a snowy winter morning! It’s the Roman fort at Ain el-Lebekha, a micro-oasis near Kharga Oasis in the western desert in Egypt. It’s like something straight out of Beau-Geste.
I had never heard of this place, so I did some googling. I found that, as ever with Arabic names, the name is spelled several ways: Labakha, and Qasr Labakha, etc.
The North Kharga Oasis Survey site, here tells us more. “The most unexpected and startling of the remains in Kharga are the forts of the Roman period, mentioned in passing by early travellers and geologists, and never properly investigated.” There are several spectacular forts.
The area of Ain el-Lebekha is 40-50km north of Kharga. It is only accessible by 4×4. The old caravan route that the fort commands is no longer used. Apparently there are enterprising gentlemen in Kharga happy to arrange a day trip, for a mere $150.
There are some very useful photographs at Wikimedia Commons here. Here’s one, by Roland Unger:
There is a paper by C. Rossi and G. Magli, “Wind, Sand and Water. The Orientation of the Late Roman Forts in the Kharga Oasis”, in: G. Magli (ed.), Archaeoastronomy in the Roman World (2019), p. 153-166 (online here; also the references are in HTML here), which serves as an introduction to the literature on the subject.
But all that is for another day. Today I think we can just gaze at the pictures, and think of the dry air and heat of Egypt.
