Category: Information access

Manuscripts of Greek astrological works

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Looking at the calendar of Antiochus of Athens, as I was yesterday, led me to a corpus which was unfamiliar, the Catalogus codicum astrologorum graecorum.  Seven volumes of this are on Google books.

What was this series, the CCAG?  I find a splendid blog piece here by Chris Brennan on the Rediscovery of Hellenistic astrology in the modern period.  He also has a collection of PDF’s of these texts online.

The most important efforts in this area were initiated by a group of scholars in Europe towards the end of the 19th century who set out on a mission to collect, catalogue and edit all of the existing manuscripts on astrology that were written in ancient Greek during the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods.  This project, which was led by a Belgian scholar named Franz Cumont, took over fifty years to complete, and it entailed scouring the world’s libraries and private collections for ancient texts and manuscripts that had been copied and preserved over the long centuries since their original composition.  This project culminated in the publication of a massive twelve volume compendium called the Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum (Catalogue of the Codices of the Greek Astrologers), more commonly known simply by its acronym as the CCAG. …

This massive compendium, which was published in 12 volumes between 1898 and 1953, consists of critical editions of dozens of astrological texts and fragments which had been carefully sifted through, examined, and edited by diligent linguists and paleographers in order to produce published volumes of all of the extant Greek astrological texts from antiquity. 

This explains why the CCAG, despite its name, is more than this and contains material by Antiochus of Athens.

I can’t say that I am at all interested in astrology, ancient or modern.  But someone has to edit all this material.  It may be junk, but it is part of the literary heritage from antiquity.  It is a reminder that, as in every age, most of what is written is rubbish.

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Why the Wikileaks attack on the US is bad news for free speech

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Wikileaks was once a reputable website which published things that the powerful and corrupt — especially third-world states and nastier corporations — would rather we did not see.  At that time I believe it was run by a group of people, some of them Chinese dissidents.  I don’t know who this Julian Assange might be, but I believe he took over the site some time ago.

The first warning that something was wrong was when Wikileaks published the membership list of the British National Party.  This small political party is the UK party opposed to immigration.  It has been targeted for violence, much of it evidently with the concurrence of the establishment and the police, and is currently being forced out of existence by an abuse of the legal process.  Far from being powerful, its members have to take their lives and livelihoods in their hands in order to belong.  And Wikileaks denounced them, Vichy-style, to the powerful, the police, and the media.  It matters nothing here what the BNP is; but to betray the abused to the abuser, to hand over those afraid to speak to those who would punish them for so doing, this was a betrayal of the whole purpose of the site, which was to deal with attempts to suppress free speech by the powerful. 

Now we have the current scandal.  I have not been able to understand how any of us benefit by the betrayal of Afghans who have assisted our forces to the Taliban.  Making it difficult for the US to conduct diplomacy, forcing it to use force rather than talking … who benefits?  Only those corrupt and hateful regimes which hate us all too.

But Assange has done the world a far greater injury, one that will last far longer than this five days sensation.   For he has found a way to force the liberal democracies to create the means to control what appears on the internet.  He has made it a matter of national security, he has made it essential for governments to have to power to take down websites on little or no notice, and for them to have the power to bring to justice those who post on them.  The Chinese will love it!  So will the big corporations, who whisper in the ears of legislators.

Yesterday I read that domain name hosting companies were refusing to point to the Wikileaks IP address.  Today I read that Paypal has withdrawn it’s support for donations to Wikileaks.  Well and good… except that here is another precedent.  For who believes that any of this did not happen with state pressure?

No-one, in London or Washington, however inclined to freedom of speech, will be able to deny any demands that national security requires this site to be silenced, whatever it takes.  It won’t be politically possible.  And once the deed has happened, what then? 

What happens then, is that the security services on both sides of the Atlantic have a brand-new method of censorship.  And it will be used.  It will be developed.  Policies will be created.  Laws will be passed.  A whole apparatus of control will come into existence.  How can it not, unless the US is run by people heedless of their own convenience? 

Generations to come will not remember the name of Julian Assange.  But he has done more than anyone to make the internet a place where the free speech that we have all relied on will become a memory, and to create corporate control of the internet. 

It is, indeed, a  bitter Christmas present for the world. 

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UK internet to be controlled by police

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A curious story here at political blogger Guido Fawkes.  He says that Nominet, the controller of the .uk domain, has decided to take down any site, if the police make a request for it to be taken down.   Apparently they will do so without any requirement for a court order.

The impetus behind this is to deal with sites run by organised crime.  But the implications are wider, and Guido is right to be alarmed.

The British press is subject to the D-notice system.  This is a group of senior security figures, who advise the press when to suppress some story prejudicial to national security.  It is a civilised system, and certainly every nation needs to ensure that the media do not give aid and comfort to enemies in time of war. 

The recent actions of Wikileaks highlight why such a system is needed.  Nothing is gained by betraying the secret communications of your diplomats to your enemies.

But surely we don’t want the police deciding who may and may not run a website?

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Back to Isidore of Pelusium’s letters

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email reached me today from a chap volunteering to take on a commission for some Greek and Syriac (and Armenian for that matter, although I have none in mind at the moment).  I’ve written back and asked for some details.  It might be nice to get him to do a few of the letters of Isidore of Pelusium, at least as a starter.

This reminded me that someone translated 14 of Isidore’s letters during the summer, and that — as I dimly remembered — I commissioned some more, as I remarked here.  I wonder if I ever published those 14 letters online?  I certainly meant to!  I paid for them, after all, and the last revision was rather good and rather readable.  I must hunt them out.  Meanwhile I have written to the translator asking what happened with regard to the next chunk. 

There’s no lack of material to commission.  There’s sermons by Chrysostom, such as the two on Christmas.  I think I listed a bunch of Chrysostom material some time back.

There’s also material by Severian of Gabala.  That reminds me that I ought to write to two other people, each of whom was going to do a sermon and neither of whom I have heard from since.  There is such a thing as being too busy, and I suspect I probably qualify!   But it illustrates why reliability is such a virtue in a translator. 

Then there are works by Cyril of Alexandria, such as his Apologeticus ad imperatorem, explaining himself after the Council of Ephesus.  There’s John the Lydian, On the Roman Months (De Mensibus), book 4 of which is intensely interesting.  Andrew Eastbourne translated the section on December for us a while back.  Indeed John’s work might form a nice volume three in the series of translations I am publishing, although I suspect a UV photographic copy of the manuscript might be a necessary precursor.

Who knows?  The email is welcome, and let’s see if we can get something done.

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Letter 133 in the letters of Leo the Great – Proterius on the calculation of Easter

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A post in an online forum has drawn my attention to the letters of Pope Leo I (d.461).  He is probably best known for persuading Attila the Hun to leave the defenceless city of Rome alone.  Among patristicians, he is remembered for his Tome to Flavian, a letter sent to the Council of Chalcedon in 451 on the monophysite question, which was approved by the council and so committed the Roman see to supporting the decisions of that highly divisive council.

A collection of 173 letters, 30 of them by other people, is found in the Patrologia Latina volume 54.  Among these is letter 133, which is not by Leo but addressed to him. 

At that period the date of Easter was determined by a letter sent out by the patriarch of Alexandria.  In 455, Leo wrote, querying the date given as being wrongly calculated.  The patriarch was one Proterius.  The emperor Marcian had appointed him, and he was deeply unpopular among the Alexandrian monophysites.  After the death of Marcian in January 457, without bothering about Proterius they consecrated Timothy Aelurus (Timothy the Weasel) as patriarch, and on 28 March 457, during the celebrations of Maundy Thursday, Proterius was attacked and brutally lynched.

Proterius wrote back, commenting that possibly Leo had a bad copy or that a copyist had made a mistake.  He also sent a copy of his letter in Greek, to make sure that no mistranslations got in the way.  He justified the dating, pointing out that Easter was being celebrated a week late to avoid coinciding with the Jewish passover on 14 Nisan, which in 455 fell on a Sunday.

The online text of the PL is columns 1084-1094, although there are formidable notes so it’s probably about 7 columns of “normal” text. It’s long enough to be divided into chapters.  I suppose a translation would not be that expensive, although I can think of no special reason to translate it.

Few of the letters of Leo have ever been translated into English.  A selection by Edmund Hunt appeared in 1957 in the Fathers of the Church vol. 38.  (I was going to link to a preview of this, which I saw at lunchtime today, but annoyingly I can’t find it on Google Books now!). 

All the sermons of Leo seem to have been translated into German in the old BKV series, in the 2nd edition (vols. 54-55), here.  According to Quasten, the letters were translated by Severin Wenzlowsky in 1869 in the first BKV series.  The way in which the second edition left out material from the first — it applies to material by Tertullian also — has always baffled me.  But I can find no trace online of any such volume.  Wenzlowsky edited Der briefe der Papste in 1878 in this series, so it may be that Quasten was confused.  These are all in a  horrible Gothic font anyway.

I can find no information about French translations. René Dolle in the Sources Chretiennes series translated his sermons, in 4 volumes (22, 49, 74, 200) from 1947-73.  But an earlier translation was made by a certain Pere Quesnel in 1698, and another by Nicholas Fontaine in 1701. 

So … nothing, really.  It is remarkable, tho, that the letters of so important a figure remain inaccessible!

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Copyright claim on all images of Stonehenge ever

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An amusing example of bureaucratic hubris has reached me.  A post here on the fotoLibra blog — a commercial picture library — reveals an email from English Heritage, claiming copyright on all images ever made of Stonehenge.

We are sending you an email regarding images of Stonehenge in your fotoLibra website. Please be aware that any images of Stonehenge can not be used for any commercial interest, all commercial interest to sell images must be directed to English Heritage.

Legally it’s nonsense, of course.  The copyright in images resides always with the photographer, not the ‘owner’ of the site, unless those rights are explicitly transferred.  Just owning something that people photograph gives you no rights (British Library take note please).

But it does show the attitude — it’s all about exploitation, as much as can be achieved.   Not a very good sign, for a world heritage site whose every penny comes from public funds.

For those unfamiliar with it, English Heritage is a quango — an organisation set up and funded by the UK government, but with establishment appointees who are then allowed to run it as they please without government interference. 

UPDATE:  I have just had to delete an abusive comment on this post. I can only suppose from its content is by an EH employee; because I can’t imagine anyone else would care enough about EH to insult me over this.  Nasty people, if so.

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Back to the Religionsgesprach

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The project to translate all the fragments of Philip of Side is still progressing.  A bunch of these are in a 6th century fictional text depicting a religious debate at the court of the Sassanids.  More or less by accident, I seem to have commissioned a translation of this text, although it is turning out to be very interesting indeed.

Another chunk arrived today, and I thought I would share with you the opening words, which struck me as truly splendid and brightened my morning considerably:

34.  The following day, Oricatus the foremost of the enchanters came to him and said:  “Master of everything under the sun, grant me glory, so that I may preside in this assembly, since I have three mighty acts to perform!” 

Not many job interviews begin like that!

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A 12th century trilingual Arabic, Greek and Latin psalter

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A correspondent tells me about this post at Arab Orthodoxy:

On the website of the British Library they’ve posted images of a Psalter dated to 1153 written in parallel Greek, Latin, and Arabic. The Arabic translation of the Psalms is that of Abdallah ibn al-Fadl al-Antaki, the famous 11th century deacon and translator from Antioch. You can turn to all the pages and zoom in. Take a look, it’s beautiful.

Here.

In St. Petersburg they’ve recently published a two-volume facsimile and study of a 17th century illuminated Arabic Psalter based on Abdallah ibn al-Fadl’s translation. I’ll get around to writing a review of that at some point…..

I wonder where on earth that was written.  My guess, considering that it dates to the crusader period, is in Syria.  Just before the crusades the Byzantines had conquered the area, bringing Greek; then the crusaders come in, with Latin; and the local Christians speaking Arabic.  Where else would you have this kind of tri-lingualism?

What a wonderful thing to have online!

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Bigotry in Colchester?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Persecution does not necessarily hit the headlines.  Most of it goes on “under the radar”.  The large-scale violence of the Great Persecution under Diocletian was abnormal.  Tertullian lived in a world where the proconsul did not, as a rule, orchestrate attacks on Christians.  Rather the Roman state put in place the legal framework which denormalised Christians and encouraged individuals or groups to engage in harassment or denunciation of them.  Christians were second-class citizens, whom a disgruntled individual could always denounce.

The last government of the UK set out to create a similar climate here in the UK.  It did so by passing laws at the behest of militant anti-Christian gay groups. The laws were designed by the latter to permit the latter to drag Christians before the courts.  It also arranged for “education” of judges, magistrates and the police, in “diversity and equality”, to ensure that these would be afraid to obstruct such cases in case they were also accused.  This was not accidental; on the contrary one government minister openly boasted that the proposed law on “inciting religious hatred” — thankfully emasculated in the Lords — would force churches to hire lawyers.

Today via VirtueOnline I read of a case of this kind from 2009, taking place around 15 miles from my home.  The Revd. Thomas Yap is the Anglican chaplain of the University of Essex at Colchester, belonging to the Diocese of Chelmsford.  His account of his own case is here in a submission on the OSCE website (clicking the link downloads the PDF).   Unfortunately I was unable to find any confirmation of the narrative from any other source, so we must treat it with care.  But it seems worth giving all the same, since it is particularly local to me.  It isn’t something happening to people far away in some strange land.

I work as a fully authorised University Christian Chaplain at a British University in the United Kingdom. In this year 2009, following requests from Christian users of the Chaplaincy, I provided books and multi‐media materials on the issue of same‐sex attractions as an extension of my Christian ministry. All books and materials were housed within the Chaplaincy library area and included titles such as “Coming out of Homosexuality” by Lori Rentzel, “Setting Love in Order” by Mario Bergner, “Out of Egypt: Beyond Lesbianism” by Jeannette Howard and “You don’t have to be Gay” by Jeff Konrad. There were no specific publicity or fanfare about the provision of the books except within the Chaplaincy membership nor were they displayed outside the Chaplaincy area.

Within a week, the Equality and Diversity Unit of the University contacted me in person and demanded that all such materials be removed because they were deemed as harassment following one complaint. I was accused of putting out “offensive display; offensive in the eyes of the complainant”.

In addition, I was threatened that any speech or teaching that I gave within the University about unwanted same‐sex attractions will be deemed as harassment and that I may be subjected to staff disciplinary action if I contravened harassment legislation.

Effectively, I was banned from expressing my age‐old orthodox Christian belief about life transformation from unwanted same‐sex attractions. Also, I was intimidated from offering pastoral care through using Christian books relating to changing of unwanted same‐sex attractions. Lastly, my hands are tied from making professional referrals to reparative therapy from unwanted same‐sex attractions for those who seek them.

The case is still “On File” and I may be subject to further investigation by the Equality and Diversity Unit pending any further complaint.

The VirtueOnline article derives from a submission to the same conference by an American, a certain Rev. Mario Bergner, who adds that Mr Yap hired “a barrister” — surely a solicitor?  

Now I cannot say whether this story is true, although Mr Yap is certainly a respectable clergyman in the Church of England.  But I have seen too many of these stories over the last year or two to be very comfortable in dismissing it.  Unless I am much mistaken, this sort of thing is happening.

Rev. Bergner quotes another example and then makes the following request.

 Participating States of the OSCE should draft legislation to safeguard the free speech of Christian academicians and clerics so that they may teach the sexual morality of their faith traditions without being subject to false accusations of hate speech so they may empower Christian believers to practice the sexual morality of their Christian conscience.

Christian clerics and academicians are being discriminated against, treated in an intolerant manner and falsely accused of harassment for articulating the moral worldview of their faith traditions when specifically applied to homosexuality.

We might agree or disagree with the proposal, but this states a general issue with all these stories quite well.  It seems as if anyone choosing to teach what Christians have taught for 2,000 years risks all these things, not because of a personal view, but merely for being faithful to the world’s largest religion and its teaching. 

But the issue is not simply one of Christians being targeted.  Indeed it hardly matters what the “hot button” issue is.  It hardly matters who is the victim, who the bully, which side is making use of informers, and so on.  Those will be determined, not by right or wrong, but purely by who has power.  Today it is gays.  Yesterday it was hardly possible to say anything negative about Jews, but today they are going down the wind, and Moslems are higher up the food chain, and anyone who defends Israel is starting to risk the same dreary and hateful process documented above.  What  matters is that it is possible to do this.  Naturally every special interest group seeks to acquire similar power over those it dislikes. 

We need to start being aware of this process, of the steady encroachment on freedoms we have taken for granted.  How we fight these I do not know.  But we can at least publicise these cases.  Bureaucrats hate to have their petty bullying exposed to view.

UPDATE: I have revised this post somewhat to avoid stating as fact what I only hear from one source.

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