Category: Eusebius

We like to work from a critical text, don’t we? And rightly so; a text established in a scholarly manner, from a proper analysis of the witnesses and due consideration of the style of the author and the period is a good thing.

But an awful lot of texts don’t exist in that form.  So … how usable are those pre-critical texts?

Today I compared the text of excerpts of Eusebius from Jerome’s Commentary on Matthew, published by Angelo Mai in the 1820’s from, no doubt, some older edition, with the latest critical text in the Sources Chretiennes.  I was struck by the lack of differences. 

Differences there were.  An ergo for an igitur, a quum for a cum.  A late antique peccatricibus is given by SC for Mai’s peccatores — but the sense is the same.  Indeed I couldn’t find an instance where the text changed meaning. 

I did find that Mai had punctuated his excerpts inadequately.  He didn’t indicate omissions properly.  Where he introduced the “Magi” as the subject of a verb, to clarify the sense, he didn’t indicate that he had added this word.  But what he did quote really differed little if at all from the SC text except in details such as above.

I am rather heartened by this.  I had expected worse. 

It will be interesting to do the same exercise with Ambrose’s Commentary on Luke, where again Mai quotes excerpts and the SC is the critical text, and see what the results are.

If I’m going to print a text alongside the translation of Eusebius, then I need to try to print a critical text.  Now I’m not going to edit the text — that crosses a line which I have decided not to cross.  But if the text has been edited more recently than Mai — not that difficult, in almost 200 years! — then I need to use the more up-to-date text.

I think I’m on top of the Greek and Syriac fragments.  I did go and find the text from the catena of Macarius Chrysocephalus, which Mai reprinted from an early publication — it was horrible to read, all abbreviations and ligatures.  It’s on Google books, thankfully.

But what about the Latin fragments?  There’s a couple of pages of these, excerpts from the Commentary on Luke by Ambrose of Milan, and the Commentary on Matthew by Jerome.  And both of these have been edited, I find, by the Sources Chretiennes.  So it looks as if I will have to ask for permission on these.  But first, I shall need to see whether the text really does differ.  I haven’t looked at either much.

Here’s the details I have on Jerome.  Even the Migne is more recent than the Mai!

• Migne, ed. Commentariorum In Evangelium Matthaei Libri Quattor, PL vol. 26, coll. 15-218D.
• E. Bonnard, Saint Jerome: Commentaire sur S. Matthieu, SC volumes 242 and 259 (Paris, 1977 and 1979)
• And Thomas Scheck has just translated Jerome’s commentary on Matthew in its entirety (Catholic University of America Press, 2008), which is online in preview here.

I’ll need to get hold of these, compare them with the excerpts used by Mai, and see what the damage is.

I never use my PC on Sundays.  I sit before the magic box all day and all evening, six days a week.  If I used it on Sunday too, I think I’d become insane.  I always recall the poor cabman in Black Beauty who had a seven-day licence, and died of overwork.  “I never got my Sundays,” he lamented at the end.

But a very interesting email came in an hour ago as I was off to bed, with some very sound suggestions about how to make and sell the Eusebius book.  It’s way too late for me to digest, so I’ll mull it over on Monday.  It included a sample page that had just the look that I am aiming for.

However, it also recommended strongly that I print a Greek text, rather like the Loebs.  This I have very much wanted to do.  But there are obstacles, which I need to find a way around.

The book consists of an epitome, plus catena fragments, plus Latin fragments, plus Syriac fragments.  The catena fragments are printed from Angelo Mai, and were reprinted by Migne.  This exists in electronic form, so would be simple to include.  The Syriac would need to be typed, and I’d have to pay for that.  But I have someone in mind who would do it.  The Latin, if necessary, I could do myself from Mai. 

However, it’s not so simple for the epitome.  This was translated from the critical edition by Claudio Zamagni, published a few months ago by Sources Chrétiennes.  It would be a bit odd to use Migne’s text instead of that, although I suppose I physically could. 

While I don’t believe that Zamagni’s text can be in copyright (although the apparatus and translation certainly can), I don’t want a law suit.  In fact I don’t want to do anything that Zamagni wouldn’t like, since I’ve swapped emails with him and know him.  So I need to discover who “owns” the text, and find out if I would be allowed to reprint the bare text.  As a plus, they should probably have an electronic text available.

I don’t want to use their apparatus; this is not about printing a critical text, but about allowing readers to check interesting points in the translation against the original.  Anyone who wants to see how Claudio made his text should use his book.  It’s sobering to reflect that Claudio’s dissertation, of which the SC text is but a part, blows the socks off almost any piece of anglophone scholarship that I have ever read.  This is a book, remember, from a man just out of university.  What a guy!

So I’ve fought off the urge to go to bed, and written to Claudio to ask about these issues.  Who owns the text?  Can he help?  I’ve also written to a French Jesuit scholar whom I know, whom I think is associated with the SC.  He may know who I need to talk to, and put in a good word for me.

It’s worth asking.  If they are willing for me to use that text, and can provide an electronic text, then that settles it; I will print the original language on facing pages.  I’ll commission the transcription of the Syriac, and we’ll do it. 

But if it gets all difficult, or they want serious sums of money, then my choices will be to print the Migne text anyway with a disclaimer — rather horrible — or else omit the original languages altogether.

Decisions, decisions!  In that situation, I wonder what readers would prefer?

I’m still working on editing the translation of the Gospel Problems and Solutions by Eusebius of Caesarea.  The fragments of catenas and the like are all printed by Angelo Mai in the early 19th century, or reprinted by him from yet earlier non-critical publication.  In other cases he is printing unpublished material.  This means that I need to check for subsequent publication.

Several extracts come from the Questions of Anastasius of Sinai.  A web search — thank heavens for Google — reveals that an edition appeared in 2006, by Marcel Ricard, in the Brepols Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca, vol. 59.  I need the text of questions 9, 148 and 153, so my translator can compare the text given by Mai with that of a critical text.  Sadly the libraries are all closed when I am at home, so a day off for a day trip to Cambridge will be necessary.

Another extract — not actually from the Gospel Problems is given “from unpublished chronicles by George Hamartolus and Johannes Siculus.”  A search reveals that the chronicle of George Hamartolus or George Monachus was edited badly in 1859 by a chap called Muralt, and reprinted by Migne in PG 110.  No sign of a fresher edition, so I’m not sure I need to do much more.

But “Johannes Siculus”… that could be anyone.  All it means is “John of Sicily”; every third Byzantine was called John, and thousands of them lived in Sicily.  A search in Google on “Johannes Siculus” was rather dispiriting!  Fortunately “John of Sicily” was better.  This led to H. Heinrich, Die Chronik des Johannes Sikeliota, Graz, 1892, edited from a Vienna manuscript. A book of that date ought to be online, but … it’s in German.  Das Reich ist immer offline.

So off to COPAC to search for a copy offline.  Several searches later, I draw a blank.  Even a search by author=Heinrich, date=1892, draws a blank.  But I have played before, and am not dispirited.  I am reasonably sure that a copy exists in the UK.  So I wonder if this dratted thing is hidden in a serial?  Hmm.

Back to Google to look for clues, searching for “Johannes Sikeliota”.  And sure enough I find the book mentioned with an addendum, “In Reihe: Schulprogramm Graz / 1892”.  This gives the author as “Alfred Heinrich”.  Search COPAC for the series; nothing.  Ah, the joy of offline knowledge…

Then I remember that Google book search doesn’t work properly outside the US.  I retry via a US server.  The book at least appears now, albeit clearly not online, here.  I click the “Find in a library” link (to worldcat).  And it turns out to be a thesis, or dissertation, never published.  Boy that site is slow, tho.  It never actually finished displaying.

Does anyone know where I could get a copy?

In the fragments of Eusebius, Mai added this note.  It was translated for me by the translator, but has no place in the book, so I give it here.

Another delightful thing has happened to me.   While I was translating from Greek into Latin all the passages of Eusebius in the MS of Nicetas’ Catena on Luke, I fortunately observed that the last passage of Eusebius, written on the two final pages of the MS, corresponded word-for-word with Theophania bk 4 chs.8 and 9, as read, in translation from Syriac, in the English edition of the Rev. Samuel Lee, top of p.224 – top of p.229.   The original Greek fragment discovered by us will now have to be placed in our own Greek edition of Theophania, between nos. 5 and 6 on p.121.  Furthermore, as I have already more than once said elsewhere, Nicetas was in the habit of reproducing portions of Theophania in his MS catena, sometimes with the actual title of the work, but sometimes just ascribed to Eusebius by name; hence, before finding out about the English or Syriac editions of the work, we could not ascribe them to the Theophania.  This we have now done, thanks to the English book; just as the English editor will, we think, be pleased in his turn to incorporate our Greek originals, when convenient, into his book.   To avoid repetition here, let us refer our readers to the discussions in the Observations on p.108 and pp 157-9 above, as well as in scattered remarks in the notes.  In any case, it is evident from this that another fragment of ours, cited by Rev. S. Lee in a note on p.224, cannot, as he would wish, be applied to this passage of Theophania.