Category: Eusebius

Birmingham Special Collections goes over to the Dark Side (a bit)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Drat.  The Mingana library in Birmingham have had a mental breakdown of some kind.  They used to sell colour digital images of sub-publication standard for 1GBP (about $1.50) a go.  These were really very good for research purposes, although of course a journal publication would need better quality.

I asked them about copies of the Combefis book (see previous post).  I learn today that they’ve increased the charge to 2.50GBP, plus another 25% for fun; i.e. 3.10GBP, around $5 a go. 

I need 14 pages.  That would have been 14 GBP, which is a lot, when you consider it is merely pressing a shutter 14 times, but I would have paid it.  But there’s no way I would pay nearly 50 GBP for the equivalent of 14 photocopies!

This is really disappointing.  The Birmingham Special Collections people, who own the Mingana library, are people who I watch with interest, because they really do have some innovative ideas.  They’ve led the way in putting Syriac mss online, and making them freely available.  They introduced this system of £1 photographs of manuscripts, which is clearly the way to go.  They allow us to bring our cameras in and photograph, which makes them heroes in my view; we really ought to get all the Mingana mss photographed.  And they are nice, helpful people.  I approve of these guys.

And then they do something like this.

I can only imagine that need for money — a chronic need in all libraries — led some minor official at a meeting to look at this.  Probably they were selling quite a few of the £1 images.  And the same official, with the official lack of imagination, supposed that a 210% increase would generate 210% more money.  Of course it won’t; it will kill the sales dead.

No doubt they looked greedily at the charges demanded by libraries like the Bodleian, not realising that hardly anyone ever buys any of those overpriced images.  You don’t make money by charging the earth and scaring the punters away. 

How we need a public body to regulate these charges!

This may mean that I shall have to abandon the idea of using the Combefis fragment in my Eusebius book.  But if I do, there will be some pretty trenchant words in a footnote, saying who and why, for the benefit of posterity.  First against the wall, of course, will be the Bodleian.

Sad.

In the meantime, let’s see if I can find a library that (a) has a copy and (b) will sell me a reproduction at some reasonable price.

UPDATE: Durham University want £15 a photo — which is sick –, the Bodleian we know about, and the only other copy here in the UK, held in the British Library, well… their website has been redesigned and I can’t find anything.  I wonder if there are any copies in the USA?

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The Combefis publication containing a Eusebius fragment

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I got quite cross on my Oxford visit during August, because although I located a volume of excerpts, with a fragment of Eusebius, I was unable to obtain a reproduction thanks to the greed of Bodleian staff.  A price of 29p for a black-and-white photo is not bad; but a price of £3.87 per greyscale (just a setting change on the same camera, which costs no more to take) is ridiculous, and a price of £17.20 for colour (ditto) is obscene. 

Indeed I wrote there and then an email of protest to the head of imaging services, a certain James Allan. The professionalism and customer-focus of the Bodleian and that particular bureaucrat may be judged by his failure to even acknowledge it.  As a result, I failed to note here the details of what I actually want to get; and have had to scrabble around for details of it again! 

The book is volume 1 of a two volume anthology (Graeco-Lat. patrum bibliothecae novum Auctarium) of extracts starting with works by Asterius of Amasea from various unspecified manuscripts, edited by Francois Combefis: S. Patris nostri Asterii Amaseae episcopi, aliorum plurium… Ecclesiae graecae patrum… orationes & homiliae / opera ac studio R.P.Fr. Francisci Combefis. Published: Parisiis : sumptibus Antonii Bertier, 1648.  The Bodleian shelfmark was R 6.16, 15 Jur.  There is also a copy in Birmingham ML Special Collections, shelfmark “r f BR 62”.

The portion I want consists of columns 779-791.  This is Greek text with facing Latin translation.  I noted when I saw it to emphasise that the Greek text was really important, because the binding might work against me!

I also wanted some introductory matter.  There were two title pages; then a letter Illustrissimo Franciae… covering 4 pages, and a single page headed Candido Lectori, which alone gave information about sources.  The elderly paper means that at least a grey-scale image will be necessary.

Now to find someone who will sell me copies at a reasonable price!

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Typesetting and other evils

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Sooner or later I’m going to receive the final versions of the translations that I have commissioned of Eusebius Quaestiones and Origen’s Homilies on Ezekiel.  I want to sell some copies of these to libraries.  Firstly, that will get them into the hands of the academic constituency, who still turn their noses up at online resources.  Secondly it will give them a better chance of survival; websites can be ephemeral.  And thirdly, it should help recoup some of the costs — not a small issue, since I looked today at the total bill and it is not small.

I’ve never published a thing, so it’s all a bit new to me.  What I want is to use print-on-demand if possible, but not produce anything rubbish; the libraries will not want to buy rubbish, and all the purchasers will be able to evaluate, really, is the quality of book making.

So probably it should be hardback, a sewn binding, on good quality paper.  That says I ought to use traditional publishing, if I could find it.  But I don’t really want 50 or 100 copies on my floor, which points to print-on-demand and sites like Lulu.com and blurb.com.  Trouble is, the books these produce are not conspicuous for quality.

I certainly need to get it typeset, or look unbearably amateurish.  I don’t know anything about typesetting, or how one does this or gets it done.

Does anyone have any ideas?  Say it’s 100 pages, about the size of A5, a Loeb, or a Sources Chretiennes edition?

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Fragments of Eusebius in a Coptic catena

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve mentioned before that the Coptic catena on the gospels in the Bohairic dialect published by Delagarde contains fragments attributed to Eusebius.

Six months ago I commissioned a translation of these into English.  The lady who agreed to do it refused payment, indicating that they would be done as part of a small group teaching exercise.  Unfortunately she did part of the first fragment and then went silent.

Some months later I commissioned someone else to have a go, who did fragments 2-6, although I wasn’t sure the results were as fit for publication as I would have liked. 

Then the other day, suddenly, I got an email from the other lady, attaching a file with the extension .doc but clearly not in any normal format, containing the second half of the fragments; done to quite  a high standard, but because of the formatting very difficult to disentangle.  Apparently the rest have been done as well, and will be sent to me (which was some weeks ago).

Last night I went through all the material, to see what was done and what not.  I’m still missing translations of a few of them.  I really need a reliable Copticist of professional standard to pull all this together — wonder where I could find one?

The notes from the lady tell me that the catena is lacunose; in translating they came across obvious unsignalled areas where the text is missing, perhaps pages missing.

Much of the material is very banal, consisting of a few words, then a sentence of scripture, another few words, another sentence, and so on.  It is easy to see that working through the catenas is 90% dross and 10% excitement.  It does urgently need doing, tho.

One phrase in the 6th fragment did catch my eye, and I will share it with you:

Our enemies are the devil and also his demons; they who hate our life and they seek our destruction every moment.

A useful reminder that our lives are not as banal as they seem, and small decisions may be twisted by our enemies for our destruction.

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No Eustathius at the BN in Naples

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve today had an email from the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples.  As far as they can tell, they do not have any manuscripts of Eustathius of Antioch.  The last ever copy of Eusebius Gospel Questions and Solutions was attached to the back of a Sicilian manuscript in the 16th century, and I wondered if it might be there.  Oh well.

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Eusebius, Eclogae Propheticae – Gaisford edition now online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m still going through piles of photocopies, turning them into PDF’s and throwing the paper copies out.  Occasionally I’m finding treasures.  I had forgotten that I paid the rare books room at Cambridge University Library 16.51 GBP — about $25 — to make a copy of the latest (1842!) edition of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Eclogae Propheticae. 

This curious work is three books of a now lost work, the General Elementary Introduction to Christianity, originally in 10 books.  The eclogae is books 6-9, found in a Vienna manuscript, and consisting mainly of extracts from the Septuagint Old Testament prophesying Christ, and for some reason always known as Eclogae Propheticae.  A few other scraps of the General Elementary Introduction exist; I suspect these will be fragments from catenas.

Gaisford’s edition is a little book, with a Latin introduction and no translation (drat the man).  I’ve created a PDF, and uploaded it to the web at Archive.org, here.  It’s about 28mb in size, although not searchable — I don’t have ancient Greek OCR capabilities! 

There has never been a translation of this work into English.  I am advised, tho, that such a translation would be very easy to make.  I know of at least one person working on Porphyry who has translated a large chunk of it for his own purposes, and may complete the work.  I seem to recall that someone else also has a projected translation.

If nothing emerges in a year or two, I may commission one.

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Eusebius “Quaestiones” in Isidore of Pelusium

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Differences in the Gospels and their Solutions by Eusebius of Caesarea is quoted all over the place.  One stray quotation appears in the letters of Isidore of Pelusium.  In the Migne edition this is book 2, letter 212, (PG 78, col. 651).  This letter consists entirely of a quotation from the Quaestiones Ad Marinum; how can we say that Jesus was dead for 3 days?  The text here is of course a corrective for that published by Mai, and I must send it to my translator.

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A dull post on a catena published by Combefis

Posted on by Roger Pearse

One of the problems for the Eusebius project is the quantity of materials of this work preserved in catenas.  Claudio Zamagni, in his excellent thesis, listed quite a few.  I’ve tried to track these down, but one has defeated me.  It was edited by F. Combefis, and on p.200 of Z’s thesis is listed so:

S. patris nostri Asterii Amaseae episcopi aliorumque plurimum … [=Graecolat. Patrum bibliothecae novum auctarium… 1], Parisiis 1648 [779-790]

A search in COPAC reveals a number of copies of this work in UK research libraries, mostly in the north of England.  Some of the cataloguing is splendid:

Title details: S. Patris Nostri Asterij Amaseæ Episcopi, aliorumque plurium dissertissimorum Ecclesiæ Græcæ patrum ac tractatorum lectæ nouæ eruditissimæque : cum pari pietate orationes & homiliæ: in Dominicas praesertim, sanctissimaeque Dei Genitricis solennitates. / Opera ac studio R.P. Fr. Francisca Combefis …
[ S. Patris Nostri Asterij Amaseæ Episcopi, aliorumqve plvrivm dissertissimorvm Ecclesiæ Græcæ patrvm ac tractatorum lectæ nouæ eruditissimæque ]
Series: Græcolat. Patrum Bibliothecæ nouum auctarium. ; t.1 (Graeco-Latine Patrum Bibliothecae novum auctuarium ; t.1)
Published: Parisiis, : Sumptibus Antonij Bertier … , M. DC. XLVIII..
Physical desc.: [12] p., 1774 columns, [22] p. ; fol.
Notes: Title page printed in red and black, with engraved vignette. Woodcut initials. Includes index. Full contents given in Darling, James. Cyclopaedia bibliographica. London, 1845. Greek text with parallel Latin translation.
Other names: Asterius, of Amasea, Saint, ca. 350-ca. 410; Combefis, François, 1605-1679, [editor.]; Bertier, Antoine, 1610?-1678, [publisher.]
Related item: Referenced by: Brunet, II, 646; Referenced by: CLC, II, C1567
Language: Ancient Greek (to 1453) ; Latin

I wonder what the Cyclopaedia bibliographica is, that has a full description of this?

It seems that the work appeared in two volumes, and this was vol. 1.  The text is printed and numbered in columns, rather than in pages, so 779-790 is probably the columns.  I note that there is one in Birmingham Special collections, under the somewhat gnomic shelfmark: ML Spec.Coll – r f BR 62.  It might be easiest to order copies of those pages from them, since they are a  helpful lot.

But what prompted the search was a vague memory that copies existed in Oxford.  And so they do; mostly in college libraries:

Queen’s College Upper Library, 60.F.11
Balliol College Library, Special Collections, 0125 s.a.02 A
Christ Church Library, Special Collections, Allestree B.4.1
Keble College Library, Special Collections, TE F.2.2b

It would have been far too convenient had my own college been one of them!  But a further search reveals a copy in the Bodleian:

Main author: Graeco-Latini patres.
Title details: Græcolat. patrum bibliothecæ novum auctarium (operâ F. Combefis). Tomus duplex.
Published: Par. 1648
Physical desc.: (fol.)
Other names: Combefis, François, [ed.]
Bodleian Library Bookstack R 6.16, 15 Jur.

And this I hope to inspect on Thursday.  Whether the Bodleian will allow me copies remains to be seen.

But I do feel I want to examine the book.  I shall want to see whatever information he gives on the manuscripts used.  This will be scanty, at that date, but all the same I want whatever there is.  To do so I will need to hunt through the volume.  And anyway, isn’t it pleasant to do so?

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Dionysius Bar Salibi’s “Commentary on the Gospels”, Papias and Eusebius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The massive commentary on the Gospels of the 13th century Syriac writer Dionysius Bar Salibi has never been translated into English.  But at one point it looked as if it might be.  An Irish scholar named Dudley Loftus made use of a manuscript in Trinity College, Dublin, and made a Latin translation of the whole thing.  This still exists, in manuscript, and I have seen it in the Bodleian, among the mss. of Dr. John Fell, where it is numbered #6 and #7.  The ms is crumbling, and probably unphotographed; of course I wasn’t allowed to take a copy.

But it seems that Loftus found that he could not publish his translation.  Instead he made an English version of extracts, which he did publish as “A clear and learned explication of the history of our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ: taken out of above thirty Greek, Syriack, and other oriental authors: by Dionysius Syrus, … and faithfully translated by D. Loftus. / [by] DIONYSIUS BAR SALIBI, Bishop of Amadia ; Loftus, Dudley ; JESUS CHRIST. (1695)”

This contains some interesting material.  It contains a passage from Papias, which my friend Tom Schmidt is going to blog about.  But while looking for this, I also found a quotation from Eusebius!  The work is really something of a catena, and thus the statement of Eusebius about how the Lord was dead for 3 days appears in it, on p.58.

Eusebius; Mathew by way of Exposition adds after this, of the Evening of the Sabbath the dawning of the Firstday of the Week, denoting the Hour and time of the Night after the Sabbath, which was when the First day of the Week dawned. ‘Tis true, Mathew wrote in the Hebrew, and he who Translated the Scripture into the Greek Language, rendered the Dawning of tbe Day, the Evening of the Sabbath; and Mathew, by the Evening, means the whole Length and Evening af the Night; as John calls the passing away, or the least Part of the Night, Day; and therefore adds, whilest it was yet dark, least it should be thought, that he spoke of the Morning; so Mathew also, when he said, the Evening of the Sabbath, lest Men might think it was spoken of the Evening Season, he adds, When the First day of the Week began to dawn.

I suspect this is more the sense of Eusebius’ thought than his words; it will be interesting to see, when the Syriac fragments are properly published, how this compares.

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