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An adventurer in Arab Christian Studies – Prof. Bartolomeo Pirone

Posted on by Roger Pearse

None of the histories of Arabic Christian literature – Agapius, Eutychius, Yahya ibn Said al-Antaki, Al-Makin, Bar Hebraeus – exist in English translation.  This site has made some modest efforts to remedy this, by turning the French translation of Agapius and the Italian translation of Eutychius into English, and posting them online.  Judging from queries received, the effort has been worthwhile, and has drawn attention to both.  It was difficult to obtain a copy of the Italian translation, but eventually I located  and purchased one over the web from the Franciscan bookshop in Jerusalem, where it had plainly sat and gathered dust for many years.  The translator was a certain Bartolomeo Pirone, of whom I knew nothing.

Indeed how many of us are that aware of material in Italian?  Even though Google Translate handles Italian very well these days, few of us have any idea what is out there.  Yet there are invaluable translations of otherwise inaccessible patristic material.

A few days ago I became aware of a series of translations into Italian of Arabic Christian literature, the PCAC series.  This includes 30-odd texts from the literature of the Christians in the Near East, such as Theodore Abu Qurrah.  The region was occupied by Islam in the 7th century, and they were obliged to write in Arabic from the 9th century onwards, as the cultural pressure became irresistible.  But it is, at that period, a branch of Byzantine literature, and full of interest.

Much to my surprise, I discovered that the series was edited by none other than the same Dr Bartolomeo Pirone.  Now retired but still active, he was a full professor at the University of Naples L’Orientale, and lectured in Cairo and Beirut.  Judging from a google search, he has dedicated a portion of his life to making this literature known, in the most obvious way possible; by translating it into the vernacular, and gathering other scholars to do likewise. Indeed I have at this very instant just discovered that he also made a translation of Agapius into Italian![1]  But this does not exhaust his work, which also includes Muslim literature, and the interaction between Christianity and Islam.

Much of his work was published by the Franciscan Province of the Holy Land, known as the “Custody of the Holy Land“.  This in turn explains why a copy of his standalone translation of Eutychius was available in their bookshop in Jerusalem.  There is an article from 2018 at the Franciscan website here, celebrating his 40 years of research.

Prof. Bartolomeo Pirone

I would imagine that very few people in the English-speaking world have ever heard of Dr Pirone and his immensely valuable work on an area of literature known to very few.  But if you are at all interested in Arabic Christian literature, and especially if you – like myself – do not know any Arabic, then you need to know about his work.

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  1. [1]Agapio di Gerapoli, Storia universale, Terra Sancta (2013), ISBN 9788862401647.↩

Getting manuscript reproductions in the UK – important and useful court judgement?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Via Dr Bendor Grosvenor on Twitter, I learn of an interesting court case about “image fees”.  According to Dr. G, this is very good news for manuscript researchers, and historians in general, and also for those who want to download and post online images of out-of-copyright material.  Here’s his thread:

Those of us who’ve had to pay image fees will know the system relies on museums claiming copyright in their photos – irrespective of whether the art they’re photographing is itself in copyright. (In the UK, copyright lasts for 70 years after the death of the artist).  In other words, a painting by John Constable may be long out of copyright, but taking a photo of it creates a new copyright in that photo. By restricting the taking or sharing of other photos, museums force us to use their own photos for publication, and thus charge large sums.

Copyright is the glue which holds the system together, otherwise, we’d be able to either take a photo from the museum’s website, or use a photo someone else has already paid for. The ‘copyright licence’ we buy prevents us from sharing the image for wider re-use.

In the UK, this copyright claim has for long been contentious. For example, under the 2019 EU Copyright Directive (Article 14), it is not possible to claim copyright in a straightforward reproduction of a work of art which is itself out of copyright (older than 70 years).  The relevant bit of Art. 14: “when the term of protection of a work of visual art has expired, any material resulting from an act of reproduction of that work is not subject to copyright or related rights unless the material resulting from that act of reproduction is original in the sense that it is the author’s own intellectual creation.”

In other words, take a straightforward photo of the Constable painting = no new copyright in your photo. But pose something in front of it, add an extra cow in Photoshop = new copyright in your photo.

For many of us, that EU Directive looked like the end to image fees in the UK – but Brexit happened just before ratification was required in member states.

In the UK, museums and image libraries relied on the UK’s Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, which appeared to give copyright to your photo of the Constable simply because of the effort you took in taking it. This was called the ‘sweat of the brow’ concept.  In other words, you did not need to demonstrate any creative effort, or add any personal touch, to claim your copyright. BUT, since 1988, various EU and UK judgements have eroded the ‘sweat of the brow’ concept.

But the situation was still not entirely clear, until now. In an Appeal Court judgement this November (THJ v Sheridan [2023] EWCA Civ 1354). Here’s the full judgement.

Click to access ewca_civ_2023_1354.pdf

(And here (to which I am indebted) is Prof. Eleonora Rosati @eLAWnora  commentary on the judgement.)

https://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2023/11/originality-in-copyright-law-objective.html

Para 16 rules that, for copyright to pertain: ‘What is required is that the author was able to express their creative abilities in the production of the work by making free and creative choices so as to stamp the work created with their personal touch.”

So, taking a straightforward photo does not count, nor does getting the lighting right or other labour of a ‘technical’ kind.

What does this mean for the image fee system which strangles so much art historical scholarship, prevents the public learning about the art they own, and acts as a tax on knowledge? In the UK, it means it’s over.  In fact, because in THJ v Sheridan, the judges said the ‘skill and labour’ test has not been valid *since 2004*, it suggests that all those ‘image licences’ which have been sold relying on copyright have been invalid, and (I suspect?) mis-sold.

Those of us who’ve been campaigning against image fees have been arguing (with hard evidence) that the system doesn’t raise meaningful revenue for museums (and in many cases, costs them money).  But to little avail, as far as museums are concerned. They just carried on charging, insisting they had copyright, which encouraged publishers to insist we kept buying ‘licences’. And now we know that for historic, 2D artworks it’s basically been a scam.

What do we do now? I suppose museums can carry on restricting the availability of decent photos. That’s why Tate’s website only lets us see low-res photos (of the art we own).  But without the glue of copyright, the system must collapse, because there’s nothing to stop images being re-used.  So, if you’re able to take a tolerably good photo of a historic artwork from online for your publication, do so.  Don’t let publishers and journals bully you into buying ‘licences’. Don’t agree to label photos (C) when no copyright exists.  And if you’re a museum director or trustee, think hard about your museum mis-selling licences for the last two decades.

Note that this is clearly downstream of the EU ruling.  This now leaves the USA behind, at least until some public-spirited person clarifies the law there.

The actual court case was about whether a GUI could be copyrighted, so it isn’t really the same thing.  But the case is about “originality” in copyright, and this is what lies behind the claim of museums that a photograph is an “original work” and therefore in copyright. There is discussion of the case on these sites:

UK Court of Appeal rules on copyright in GUIs

Originality in copyright – a review of THJ v Sheridan

Let us hope that the judgement does indeed mean what Dr G. says that it does, and frees up public domain material for the use of us all.  I suspect the foot-dragging will be immense, tho.

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A new Mithraeum at Aquincum / Budapest, Hungary.

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Roman military site of Aquincum near Budapest in Hungary is already known for five temples of Mithras.  A housing development in the area has uncovered a sixth temple, discovered in the summer and just now reported by Oliver Kovács in a Hungarian archaeological website, Muemlekem.hu.  There are a number of photos with the article!  More excavation is planned for the spring, but we must hope that the site is preserved.  There is some doubt whether the Hungarian authorities have done enough to ensure this.

Mithras expert Dr T. Csaba Szabó has written more about this here.

A votive item, made out of lead, showing figures wearing Phyrgian caps – possibly Mithras and the torchbearers?
A painted altar stone with TRA(N)SITO on it.
Fragments of fresco, showing Mithras himself?

Wonderful!

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A modern “quote” from St Nicholas?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

On various websites you can find the following quotation, attributed to St Nicholas of Myra:

The giver of every good and perfect gift has called upon us to mimic God’s giving, by grace, through faith, and this is not of ourselves.

No source is given, however.

A google search revealed no results prior to 2015, when it appeared in Carol Kelly-Gangi, 365 Days with the Saints: A Year of Wisdom from the Saints, New York: Wellfleet Press (2015) ISBN 978-1-62788-963-6, p.257 (Google Books Preview).  Here’s a screen grab of the top of the page, which gives an idea of the kind of book that this is:

The next result was in December 2016, when it appeared in an article in the Christian Post.  Since then it has spread to various other sites.

The author of the 2015 book, Carol Kelly-Gangi, appears to be a professional writer, who works for publishers, and has turned out a number of books of this sort.  In this kind of hack-work, the book is commissioned by the publisher, and the format prescribed, and the writer compiles the thing from whatever sources they have.

In this case the format seems to require a quotation of some sort in italics.  I wonder whether in this case the “quote” was simply composed by the writer?

At all events there is no sign of the quotation prior to this book.

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Arabic Christian Historians: Yahya ibn Sa`id al-Antaki

Posted on by Roger Pearse

When the early Muslims conquered the Near East, they subjugated large areas populated by Christians, politically part of the Greek-speaking Eastern Roman empire, but speaking either Syriac or Coptic.  Over time these were forced to adopt Arabic, and to translate their literature into that language from the 9th century onwards.  This multi-lingual environment produced the Translation Movement, which translated Greek science into Arabic.  Arabic Christian literature is little known, but voluminous.

There are five major historians prior to 1500.  These are Agapius, Eutychius, Yahya ibn Sa’id al-Antaki, Al-Makin, and Bar Hebraeus.  I always find it hard to remember the barbarous-sounding Yahya ibn Sa’id al-Antaki – it means John, son of Said, of Antioch – and, having managed to remember, I thought I would say a few words about him.

TLDR: He was an Egyptian who went to Antioch and wrote a continuation of the Annals of Eutychius covering the years 938-1028.

I think we’d better start with the entry in Georg Graf’s Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Litteratur vol. 2 (1947), p.49 f.  (Written 76 years ago!)  I’m not bothering with the dots and accents here.

14.  Yahya (Yuhanna) ibn Said ibn Yahya al-Antaki.  According to Ibn Abi Usaibia, he was a relative of Eutychius, and composed his annals under the title “The Book of the Appendix” (Kitab ad-Dail) for the years 938-1027-8 AD.  He wrote the majority of the work before his move to Antioch in 1015, but then corrected, supplemented and expanded it based upon the archival documents which he found there. Apart from presenting Byzantine history, it is above all an important source for the history of Fatimid rule in Egypt and Syria. It is also rich in valuable details about ecclesiastical conditions and events in the eastern countries.

We then get some very elderly bibliography, which I will abbreviate a bit.

Ibn Abi Usaibia, vol. 2, 87.  Krumbacher 368.  … An excerpt on the seige and capture of Antioch by the Byzantines in 967-8 was printed in translation by Alfred von Kremer, Beiträge zur Geographie des nördlichen Syriens, Wien 1852, p. 4-6.  … (Russian publication) deals with, among other things, the Christianization of the Russians and the history of the Bulgarians at the end of the 10th and beginning of the 11th century, with a different perspective to that in Byzantine sources.  The first complete edition of the Arabic text was  part of the publication of Eutychius by L. Cheikho &c in CSCO, Scriptores Arabici, textus, series III, t. VII (Beirut 1909), p.89-273, and taken from Ms. Paris ar. 291 (17th century), folios 82v-137v, and a manuscript of the collection of excerpts by the deacon Paul az-Za`im of Aleppo (17th century), itself derived from a copy of Yahya ibn Said al-Antaki’s text made in Cairo in 1291.

A new edition with French translation was made in the Patrologia Orientalis series, volumes 18 pt 5 and 23 pt 3.  …. using various rather late manuscripts.

This is online so I will skip Graf’s remarks about it, and give links:

Three other works of the same author also exist, although I have no idea whether any have been printed, or even exist now.  These remarks are from 1947.

Three theological works by the same author, “Abu’l Farag Yahya ibn Sa`id ibn Yahya al-Antaki” are in manuscripts in a private collection in Aleppo:

  • Treatise (maqala) on the truth of the (Christian) religion, catalogued in Sbath, Fihris 2527 (13th c.)
  • Refutation of the Jews, 2528.
  • Refutation of the Muslims, 2529.

Some sources refer to a supposed English translation of the historical work:

J.H. Forsyth “The Chronicle of Yahya ibn Sa’id al-Antaki”, Univ. of Michigan Ph.D. thesis, 1977.

But this is now online here, and in fact is only a study.

An Italian translation does exist, and selections from this are available online at the publisher’s website!  I do approve of that practice.

Yaḥyā ibn Sa’ïd, al-Anṭākī, Cronache dell’Egitto fāṭimide e dell’impero bizantino : (937-1033) (PDF). Translated by Bartolomeo Pirone, (3rd ed. heavily revised and corrected), Milan: Jaca Book (1998).  Series: PCAC 3.  The publisher has a page for it here.

Since I don’t have the English translation, why don’t we let Google translate give us the first couple of sections of the Italian of Bartolomeo Pirone?  (Saʿīd Ibn Baṭrīq = Eutychius).

1.   In the name of God, the Merciful, the Merciful!  A book composed by Yaḥyā Ibn Saʿīd al-Anṭākī, a continuation of the Annals of Saʿīd Ibn Baṭrīq.  I propose, with this book, to narrate those past events and present events of which I have come to know, and which I believe to be true, starting from the time at which the Annals of Saʿīd Ibn Baṭrīq, patriarch of Alexandria, end, to the present day, thus taking care to oblige myself towards the one who asked me to compose and write it, encouraging me to draft it and arrange the parts in good order. May God guard him, and preserve him, too, from what he fears!

2.  Now Saʿīd Ibn Baṭrīq stops, in the Annals that he wrote, at the fifth year of the caliphate of al-Rāḍī, i.e. in the year 326 of the hegira, while he himself died in the year 328 of the hegira. The day and the month of the year in which he died, I will mention them at the right place in this book of mine. I will classify the material I have collected following the same classification criterion he adopted and, in doing so, I will stick to the methods he followed. For my part, I will add the names of all the caliphs and all the rulers that have come to me and I will define the period of government completed by each of them; to this I will add everything I have learned about their deeds, their lives and the events that took place in their days, avoiding, in doing so, giving in, at the same time, to verbosity of exposition and excessive conciseness, following, at the on the contrary, somewhere in between. Indeed the minds of men more often seek, and pursue with greater desire, knowledge of events close to their own time.

Few of us, perhaps, will ever have reason to venture into this book.  But it is useful to have some idea of what is out there, and how to find it.

Update (9 December 2023): The Forsyth “translation” does not exist; it is merely a study.

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Al-Makin: Critical edition and English translation published!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Arabic Christian literature is little known to most of us.  It is the literature of the Christian communities of the Near East, the Syriac and Coptic worlds, after they were overrun by Islam, and their languages started to fade under the pressure of the dominant Arabic-speaking culture.  Naturally much of it begins with translations from the original languages, and consequently there is a strong connection to Greek and Byzantine literature.

Within Arabic Christian literature there are the five big histories: those of Agapius, Eutychius, Yahya ibn Said al-Antaki, Al-Makin, and Bar-Hebraeus.   All these need work, to make them accessible, and I have done things with Agapius and Eutychius.  But none has been neglected like al-Makin.  He wrote in the 13th century, but he is known in mainstream circles, if at all, today because of a 1971 article, Shlomo Pines, “An Arabic version of the Testimonium Flavianum and its implications.”  In this Pines gave a version of the Testimonium Flavianum from Agapius, which he mangled using the unpublished text of Al-Makin.

Like most such chronicles, Al-Makin divided his work into two halves; the first containing history until the appearance of Islam, and the second covering the Islamic period up to his own time.  The second half was printed back in 1625 with a Latin translation by Erpenius.  A French translation of part of this appeared in 1955.  I myself made attempts to create an Arabic text, which proved futile.  The first half was never even printed.

But… today I received an email from Dr Martino Diez, who has … produced a critical edition, with parallel English translation, of the opening section of the first half!

Martino Diez, al-Makīn Ǧirǧis Ibn al-ʿAmīd: Universal History. The Vulgate Recension. From Adam to the End of the Achaemenids.  Leiden: Brill (2024). Pages: xxii, 1115 pp.  https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004549999 

Dr Diez is professor of Arabic language and literature at the Catholic University of Milan, and has written a number of excellent papers on the subject.  Here’s what he says:

I am happy to announce that the first part of al-Makin Ibn al-Amid’s Universal History is now available in critical edition with parallel English translation.

https://brill.com/display/title/65043

This part covers from Adam to the end of the Achaemenids. Unfortunately this means that for the Testimonium Flavianum you will have to wait a little longer, but I am supervising a PhD student and we have already established the Arabic text.

In the introduction, apart from the Ibn al-‘Amid’s life and the different recensions in which his book has been handed down, I discuss the sources and the fortune of the work.

The link leads to the Brepols site, which has a PDF of the table of contents.  This indicates an extensive and very interesting-looking introduction.  There are two versions of the text in existence, as is also the case with other Arabic-laanguage histories, and he has rightly chosen to work with the most commonly encountered “vulgate” edition.

The Brepols site adds:

When the 13th-century Coptic official al-Makīn Ibn al-ʿAmīd was thrown into prison by Sultan Baybars, he set out to compile a summary of Biblical, Graeco-Roman, and Islamic history for his own consolation. His work, which drew from a vast array of sources, enjoyed enduring success among various readerships: Oriental Christians, in Arabic-speaking communities but also in Ethiopia; Mamluk historians, including Ibn Ḫaldūn and al-Maqrīzī; and early modern Europe.

Obviously I have not seen the book itself, but this is an enormously welcome volume.  It is very good news that Martino Diez has a second volume in progress!

It’s well worth reading these sorts of chronicles, to see what sort of things they contain.  After all, if you’re working with Byzantine histories, in Greek or Syriac, you are basically working with the same material which finds its way into the Arabic language.  You need to know what that material looks like, a century or two further down the line.  The pre-islamic half of Al-Makin is entirely derived from Byzantine and Syriac sources, and consequently of great interest to anyone looking into those sorts of Chronicles.

Recommended.

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Where do I find a list of the Melkite patriarchs of Alexandria?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Recently something or other drew my attention to a mysterious saint named “John the Merciful”.  A google search took me to a dreadful Wikipedia article – since modified – which merely repeated anecdotes from his Life, itself online elsewhere.  He was described as “John V” and patriarch of Alexandria.

With some effort, I discovered that he was in fact the Melkite patriarch – not the Coptic patriarch – at the time of the Sassanid Persian occupation of Egypt under Heraclius.  He was the state appointed patriarch in a hostile land, and he sensibly legged it straight out of Dodge when the Persians arrived, along with Nicetas the governor.  He’s a saint in the Greek orthodox world, although curiously he may also be a Coptic saint – the online material is confusing.  There is an account of him in Butler’s The Arab Conquest of Egypt, although this is very old.

This lead me to wonder where I could find a reliable, scholarly list of bishops of Alexandria.  It isn’t easy to answer that question, whichever episcopal see you are interested in.  You can find such things online, but never referenced, and you never know quite what you’re looking at or how reliable it might be.

After some googling around, for quite some time, I did find some sort of answer.  There is a list in Walter Eder, Chronologies of the Ancient World: Names, Dates, Dynasties, Leiden (2007), which is supplement 1 for Der Neue Pauly.  Section XIII, p.315-332, gives lists of bishops and patriarchs, for Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, together with a “synoptic chart”, a table of dates and bishops showing who was presiding where at what time.  Each section has a brief bibliography.  The Melkite patriarchs of Alexandria are in there.  The series ends with the Muslim conquest, when the Melkite patriarch, a state official, sensibly disappeared off to Constantinople.  A figurehead “Greek Orthodox Patriarch” was re-established about a century later, to serve the needs of visitors, with the consent of the Muslim rulers, and this post still exists today.

The same question could reasonably be asked of other sees.  Name any ancient see.  Now consider: just where would I find a reliable list of bishops?  Ideally with primary source references?  Surely this must exist?

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Review: Saints at the Limits: Seven Byzantine Popular Legends

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Stratis Papaioannou, Saints at the Limits: Seven Byzantine Popular Legends (Dumbarton Oaks medieval library 78), Harvard (2023).  ISBN 9780674290792.  $35.  Introduction online here.  Buy at Amazon.com here.

The medieval religious folk-stories known as the “Lives of the Saints” are an under-studied form of medieval literature.  The stories themselves often arise from the people, and are expressed in popular language.  They reach us in medieval handwritten copies, like everything else, but these are not literary texts.  The story, rather than the text, is what is important, and so the actual words are freely modified.  Several versions usually exist.  Thankfully we have the index of the Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca (= BHG; online here), which  assigns numbers to the various texts.  Students often find it difficult to work out how to relate to this material, but the urban legend is perhaps the nearest modern equivalent.

There has been an increase in interest in hagiography in recent years.  Yet even now few of the source texts have been critically edited, and still fewer have been translated into any modern language.  One obstacle to doing so is that most of these texts are shorter than book length.  Each would make an edition and translation suitable for publication as a journal article, and indeed we find that, a century ago, scholars such as François Nau routinely published texts in this way.  If necessary, they split them over multiple issues.  But it is doubtful that a modern journal editor would print such an article.  It would be declined on the grounds that it is “not research.”

Instead the only way to publish such translations is to collect together a number of texts, and publish them in book form, with some kind of connecting link.  Sadly there are no obvious series of translations into which such a book would naturally fall without some wrestling.  What is needed is a series made up of translations of Saints’ Lives, rather like the New City translations of all of Augustine.  But this perhaps must await a renewal of interest in medievalism in the wider public, for otherwise who would buy them?

Thankfully the excellent Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library series has produced this volume, and they have kindly sent me a review copy.  The physical book is well made and manufactured, and sold at a very modest price.  It is a true hardback, sewn rather than glued.  There is even a sewn-in book mark, so this is quality indeed.

The volume contains seven texts in Greek, with fluent English translations on facing pages.  These seemingly disparate texts are linked together by the editor in his introduction in a reasonably convincing way.  The introductory discussion may be read on Academia.edu here.  This is very well done, and well-referenced.  The discussion is perhaps a little dense for anyone new to hagiography.  Unfortunately the footnotes have been banished to the end of the introduction, which makes it hard to use them.

What makes this volume truly invaluable is the translations.  As knowledge of ancient languages diminishes, the translations make these texts more accessible than ever.   It seems likely that all these texts will attract more scholarly interest over the next few years.  The texts included, and the BHG number for each, are:

  • 1) Boniphatios of Tarsus (BHG 279-280);
  • 2) Alexios the Man of God (BHG 51n);
  • 3) Markos the Athenian (BHG 1039-1041);
  • 4) Makarios the Roman (BHG 1005);
  • 5) Christopher, the Cynocephalus (BHG 309);
  • 6) George the Great Martyr (BHG 670a), together with the miracles about his slaying the Dragon (BHG 687) and capturing the Demon (BHG 687k);
  • 7) Niketas, son of Maximian (redaction related to BHG 1346d)

All these texts appear in English for the first time.  Each is given with a Greek text and English translation on facing pages, in the format familiar to readers of the Loeb series.  This is really praiseworthy.  The Greek font chosen is very readable, and the reader of the English translation may well find his eye stray across the page to the Greek to see just what English word lies behind this or that wording.  Even someone with little Greek can spell out a word or two, and look it up online; and the format positively encourages such activity.  The text has been well paragraphed, which assists this useful opportunity for those with little Greek of learning more.

Words quoted from the scriptures are placed in italics.  This works well in the English, without the need for obtrusive footnotes.  Curiously it looks a bit strange in the Greek text, however.  At first I wondered if my eyes were having trouble!

The translation given of each text is very readable, which is absolutely right and proper.  At points it drops into colloquialisms, such as the use of “you’re” instead of “you are”.  This is a bit of a shock – we’re all used to formal language -, but it will hardly deter the reader.  The effort involved in producing the first English translation of any text is considerable, and usually underrated except by those who have done it.  This is a fine effort.  Translationese has been avoided, and the result is impressive.  Dr Papaioannou tells us in the preface that he got the translation read by native English speakers.  It is a very difficult task to make a satisfactory translation into any language that is not your mother-tongue, even for those really fluent. So he did wisely, and I hope his statement here will encourage others to do the same.

One oddity about the book, which may mislead the reader, is that the information about the Greek text that has been printed is found, not before the text itself, but instead at the back, on pages 281 f., and the critical notes following that, as endnotes, on p.293 f.  The casual reader of the book is very likely to miss this invaluable material, as I did initially.  This is especially so for a reader interested only in a single text – which will be quite often the case.   I can only presume that this arrangement, adding in the extra material, was an afterthought; but if so, it was a happy one.   The editor first indicates the principles of his edition.  In general he has tried to retrieve an early version of the legend, and print something not otherwise available.  Faced with such a mass of hagiographical material, this seems like the only possible approach for any editor to take.  He then lists the manuscripts and existing editions that he used.  Everything in the bibliography is useful, and it could well have been longer.

The version of the legend of St George translated here (BHG 670a, summary of story at CSLA here) is very similar to the Latin text which I translated elsewhere on this site, and therefore is also likely to be a very early form of the legend.  St George dies four times, at the hands of an increasingly angry but non-existent emperor Dadianus.  Later revisions of the legend tended to correct the name, and reduce the legend to a somewhat more believable form.  The evil magician introduced has the name of Athanasius, which naturally leads the reader to wonder whether the text was produced as a satire by a 5th century Arian.  A useful addition is a translation of two of the miracle stories.  The ones chosen are major ones: St George and the Dragon, and St George and the Demon.

The Passion of Nicetas son of Maximian (a version related to BHG 1346d) – two other Nicetas’ are mentioned in the BHG – references the emperor Dadianus, so shows knowledge of the St George legend. Portions of this are rather comic: the demon Beelzebub appears, and, tortured by the saint, he explains just how he leads the faithful astray and foments arguments.  Later he reappears, encounters Nicetas again, and “when the demon saw the saint staring at him, he said, “Oh dear!  He wants to catch me again!” And vanishes at once.

In this legend, I must mention my one gripe about the book.  Native English readers will wince at the use of the barbarous-looking “Niketas,” rather than the usual Nicetas.  While “Niketas” is bearable, the usage becomes absurd on p.251 where a woman’s name is given as “Iouliane”.  This collection of vowels did make me rub my eyes a bit, until I realised that the name is simply “Juliana”, an ordinary Latin name, given in the text in its Greek version – naturally -, and transliterated rather than translated back.   I am aware that an elitist fad has arisen lately for transliteration rather than translation.  But editors need to resist this trend, in the interests of everybody.  Nobody needs to mentally retranslate words.  Readers need no barriers to understanding.  We need Greek legends made more accessible, rather than filled with strange and uncouth words.

I have nothing special to say about the other texts, although it is wonderful to have them.  The Life of Macarius the Roman (BHG 1005) is a very different text for these two: an imaginary journey into darkest Africa!  The Passion of Boniphatios (or Boniface, in English) is a straightforward story of a dissolute man who is sent to the Greek East to collect some relics of the martyrs for his mistress, but is converted and martyred himself.  The ease of the translation is particularly notable here.

All in all, this is a very valuable volume to have.  If this was the first book on hagiography that a novice reader came to consult, he would most certainly know a great deal more than he did at the beginning, and would have a good solid feel for hagiographical texts.  Recommended.

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Another AI Translation Experiment: Old Slavonic

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This post at Three Pillars Blog came to my attention yesterday.  Scott Cooper is experimenting with Google Translate and ChatGPT AI to see whether we can get anything useful out of Old Church Slavonic.

As you can see, Google’s language detection isn’t entirely useless with OCS. Apparently early Cyrillic and it’s modern Bulgarian equivalent, as well as some of the vocabulary, are similar enough that Google “detects” Bulgarian and renders both individual words and some complete sentences. In a pinch, it seems there are OCS dictionaries one could slog through, cobbling together what Google can’t. That sounds rather miserable. ChatGPT, as we’ll see, was able to use my description of the text as Old Church Slavonic, and produce a full translation. What follows is information on the source text, an of outline the results, and a comparison to an actual human translation.

He’s picked an Old Slavonic text which is online, and indeed already has an English translation online, and run ChatGPT against it.

Obviously we have to ask – is that translation already in the ChatGPT database?  If so, the AI translation will not in fact be doing anything much.  What we need is some u untranslated Old Slavonic.

But very interesting!

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