Category: Manuscripts

A missing manuscript

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Another interesting post at Antiochepedia is worth repeating entirely:

The pool of original sources on Antioch is shallow to say the least. By a very roundabout hunt (for something else) I stumbled upon an 1866 article in a French journal (Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes) in which Leopold Delisle discusses a collection of manuscripts that Lord Ashburnham bought from a Mr Barrois. More sleuthing revealed that this collection was auctioned off in 1897 in a spectacular series of auctions. Amongst the documents that the author mentioned is one that caught my eye, seemingly a manuscript copied by the Benedictines. This document (numbered 6755) had the following subject matter in Delisle’s words:

1. Une partie du manuscrit a ete copie en 1267 (One part of the manuscript was copied in 1267)
2. Il y a des extraits de saint Bernard et de saint Augustin (extracts of St. Bernard and St. Augustine)
3. Il y a un traite de musique commencant par les mots (a musical treatise commencing with the words) Quoniam circa artem, et occupant neuf feuillets (and occupying 9 folios).
4. Un feuillet renferme au recto la description des environs de Jerusalem (Si quis ab occidentalibus), et au verso une court description d’Antioche (Haec urbs). Le feuillet suivants contient une liste des villes conquises en Espagne par Charlemagne. (A folio with a description of the environs of Jerusalem on the recto, and on the verso a short description of Antioch.  The following folios contain a list of cities in Spain conquered by Charlemagne)
5. Le traite de Methodius commence au verso d’un feuillet et occupe les quatre feuillets suivants. (The treatise of Methodius begins on the verso of a folio and occupies the next four folios).

The catalogue of Mr Barrois has an entry relating to the manuscript that says: 11. Descriptio nobilissime urbis Antiochie. Fol 61 verso. – ” Haec urbs Antiochia valde et pulcra et honorabilis”. So the description is short but might appear to be a pre-12th century description of the city.

Some sleuthing revealed a book called “Catalogue des manuscrits des fonds Libri et Barrois” in Google Books. This is in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. The catalogue describes 180 manuscripts. Concordances on . [264]-273 indicate the correspondence of their numbers in the Bibliothèque Nationale with those in the Fonds Libri and fonds Barrois at Ashburnham Place.

Fol. 61 v°. » Descriptio nobilissime urbis Antiochie “Нес urbs Antiochia valde est pulcra et honorabilis, quia intra muros ejus sunt quatuor montanee maxime et nimis alte… “

Its location would be an interesting addition to the pool of reports on the city. Now to find out where the manuscript went in the library auction so long ago…

The Delisle article here is Observations sur l’origine de plusieurs manuscrits de la collection de Mr Barrois, Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes 27 (1866) pp. 193-264.  I need to follow the trail myself and see where it leads. 

On p. 195, Delisle states that Barrois acquired at least 30 manuscripts stolen from the Royal Library (now the Bibliotheque Nationale Francais) around 1840.  His collection was sold to Lord Ashburnham around 1849.  Delisle lists on p.194-5 the various parts of the Ashburnham collection, and their catalogues.  The Barrois mss formed the second part of this collection.

On p.196, the first Barrois ms., Delisle states that “In 1848 the absence from the (French National) library was noted of ms. Latin 6755, which was described in the catalogue of 1744, and also in a catalogue of the Royal Library by the “Benedictines” (probably the Maurists) half a century earlier.  He prints both, and in each case they correspond to the catalogue above.  It looks as if the ms was cut up, and turned into three mss (doubtless for profit), and the portion of interest to us is Ms. Barrois 284.  The description is on f.61v of that ms (was on f. 88v of the BNF 6755).

(More when I’ve finished running the Acrobat OCR on the PDF’s)

The Barrois mss of the Ashburnham collection were apparently sold in 1901 at Sotheby, according to the New York Times.  This article lists buyers!  However it also says in the introduction: “Later Leopold Delisle proved that about one tenth of the manuscripts had been stolen from French libraries and thirteen years ago” — i.e. in 1888 —  “France reacquired them by purchase”.

So probably this ms. is again in the BNF, and should be listed in its catalogue.  The BNF catalogues are all digitised here.  But the catalogue for 6755 is merely the old one.  Apparently updates are in the Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes, which is in Gallica.  There is an entry in the 1888 volume, by Delisle, about the Barrois mss (p.41-46).  Delisle recounts the negotiations, and how he went to London and bought the manuscripts.  He states the intention to reconstitute, as far as possible, the original volumes from the mess left by Barrois.

Probably the answer is to email the BNF and ask about this ms.  A photograph of ms. latin 6755, fol 61v, will probably be the goods.

Isn’t it wonderful what we can now find online?!

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If a scribe has two copies of a text in different bookhands, which will he copy?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

At the renaissance there was an explosion of copies of manuscripts.  These thick neat manuscripts will be familiar to all who have handled manuscripts at all, and are found everywhere.  Fifteenth century copies are commonplace.

I’ve just been reading Emil Kroymann’s study of the transmission of the text of Tertullian in Italy, and the role played by the central book-collector of the renaissance, Niccolo Niccoli.  Niccoli was one of us.  If he lived today, he’d be a blogger.  He was an awkward chap, who enjoyed poor health, and was difficult to deal with.  He amassed a huge collection of manuscripts, which passed to Lorenzo the Magnificent after his death, and are today in the Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana in Florence.

Kroymann did a journey into Italy at the end of the 19th century, and collated all the Italian manuscripts he could find.  In particular he found a manuscript in Florence, written in a gothic book-hand, and a copy of it in Niccoli’s hand, done in a Roman book-hand, both in the Laurentian.

The result of his collation was to discover that all of the Italian copies were descended from Niccoli’s manuscript.  Not one was copied direct from the manuscript in gothic book-hand, despite the fact that the two copies have always been together.  The scribes found it easier to read a copy in “Roman” font, rather than the gothic hand.

Yet the gothic manuscript was not ancient.  It too was written in the 15th century, by two Franciscans at Pforzheim in southern Germany.  Cardinal Orsini had made a  journey there, and returned carrying a copy of Plautus — THE copy of Plautus, which alone contains a mass of his plays — and this Tertullian manuscript.  Both were “borrowed” by Niccoli, to copy; Orsini was able to extract the Plautus from Niccoli’s hands, but the Tertullian he never got back.

We need to be aware of the “path of least resistance” that scribes will take, when technology changes.  There are various doorways down the years through which an ancient text must pass in order to reach us.   Probably one copy is made, in each case, in the new format; and that becomes the ancestor of all subsequent copies. 

When the roll format was abandoned in the 4th century in favour of the parchment codex book, those texts not copied into the new format doubtless speedily ceased to exist.  The compiler of the Theodosian codex ca. 450 complains even then that works by second-century jurists like Ulpian no longer are accessible.  The flimsier papyrus rolls, no longer considered the most valuable or easiest to use, must quickly have fallen apart.

Likewise when the uncial and capital book-hand of antiquity gave way to the various minuscule book hands in the 9th century, which were both more economic in parchment and easier to write, the older copies must have become inconvenient.  They were still readable, and parchment is forever; but if you had to carry a volume to a neighbouring monastery so they could copy it, would you want a big or a small volume?

We see the same phenomenon here in Italy in the fifteenth century.  The scribes could have used the copy that Niccolo used; but found it easier to copy the copy, typos and all.

Then we all know how the first text to be placed into print tended to become the ancestor of all printed texts up to the 19th century.  Again, this was  a doorway.  Yet the texts that were printed were by no means the best; they were often those which were simply most readily available.

Today we have texts being placed onto the internet.  This too, I suspect, is a doorway.  There will come a time, soon, when offline material is simply ignored.  These texts too will perish.

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Chrysostom is better in Syriac than in Greek! And what about the Arabs?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

If you look at the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers collection, you will see a large number of sermons on books of the bible by John Chrysostom.  The NPNF series was a pirate edition; it reprints the Oxford Movement translations, minus their notes, edited by Charles Marriot in the 1840’s and 50’s.  You have to be struck by the sheer volume of these things.  The sermons are of value to exegetes, of course.  Pre-internet it was nearly impossible to access the Oxford Movement “Library of the Fathers” volumes.  I suspect the notes would repay investigation.

But while turning photocopies into PDF’s, I came across an interesting article about the manuscripts of Chrysostom by J. W. Childers, Chrysostom’s Exegetical Homilies on the New Testament in Syriac Translation.  This tells me that the earliest manuscripts of the Greek tradition are 10th or 11th century; not bad, but by no means early.  I know that just listing medieval copies of Chrysostom takes volumes, so there is clearly a very great number of manuscripts.  So it is a surprise to learn that no earlier copies exist.

But Childers article draws attention to the fact that the manuscripts of the Syriac version are far earlier.  Thus for the Homilies on Matthew, the first 32 sermons (of 90) are preserved in four manuscripts, all from the Nitrian desert in Egypt, all of the 6th century.  Another translation existed, referred to by Philoxenus of Mabbug in an anthology composed before 484 AD.  The translations were made using the standard techniques of the 5th century, and show that the text of the Greek did not alter appreciably between the 5th and 10th centuries.  The translations are insufficiently literal to be much use for text-critical concerns.  But for the homilies on Paul’s letters the 6th and 7th century manuscripts are even more literal, and so can be used to correct the Greek.

The homilies were also translated from Syriac into Arabic, and catalogues of manuscripts invariably contain some.  There is quite a section on these in Graf’s Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur vol. 1.  While the manuscripts may not be early, they will reflect a Syriac text that may be.  It  might also be interesting to wonder what exists in Armenian.

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Placing stuff online – how much the British Library make from charging people for this

Posted on by Roger Pearse

My Freedom of Information request to the British Library got a reply a couple of days ago.  I asked:

I note that the BL charges a fee to websites that use digital images of pages from manuscripts from the BL collection.

Please would you let me know, for each of the past 5 years (either calendar or financial, whichever is more convenient):

How many requests were made for use of BL collection images of these items on third party websites.

How much income was received by the BL in consideration of the use of BL collection images of these items on third party websites.

Looking into the finances of one of our public research libraries can only be interesting and illuminating!  I got back an interesting reply that didn’t quite answer the question, as regards manuscripts, and instead gave figures for all items in the collection.  I think someone read my question a bit too quickly, perhaps!!  So I’ve asked them to review it.

They sent the reply in a non-searchable PDF, unfortunately.  (Curiously they stick a copyright notice on the information – habit, I suppose). Here’s the reply.

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000 – REQUEST 0929

We have considered your request and provide answers to your questions in turn below.

‘How much income was received by the BL in consideration of the use of BL collection images on third party websites.’

The revenue generated by charging for rights to reproduce images of items in the British Library collections for the previous five financial years (April to March) was as follows:

£                               2004/5     2005/6       2006/7         2007/8          2008/9
Total revenue    296,889      273,528     274,496        278,287         352,748

The number of requests for rights to reproduce images for which a charge was made was as follows:

  2004/5 2005/6 2006/7 2007/8 2008/9
Requests 1952 2090 2270 2770 1728

In certain cases, we waive the charge for rights for reproduction of images. Our records do no enable us to produce precise figures for this period but the approximate number of these is in the region of 800 per year.

This is very helpful, and quite interesting, all by itself.  Only a handful of requests each year, to one of the world’s richest libraries?  That feels wrong.  But who is doing the paying?  The sum is not really that high, for a major government institution, and probably can be broken down further.  We need more info, that’s for sure.

I will keep you updated!

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Medieval library catalogues

Posted on by Roger Pearse

One of the most interesting books to delve into, if you have a little Latin, is Gustav Becker’s Catalogi bibliothecarum antiqui.  This was published in 1885 and consists of reprints of all the catalogues of medieval abbeys.  Books were treasures in medieval abbeys, which could be pawned for cash, and inventories were therefore taken of what books the abbey owned.

You can see three such catalogues, all for the very well-endowed abbey of Corbie in Northern France here.  Here is the first one, the shortest, from the 11th century, with Becker’s note of where he was reprinting it from:

§55. Corbeia = Corbie. saec. XI.

HI CODICES [LIBRI Delisle] REPERTI SUNT IN ARMARIO
SANCTI PETRI.

        1-3. Expositio Cassiodori super psalterium in tribus libris. — 4. Hieronymus in Isaiam prophetam. — 5. item Hieronymus super Ezechielem libri V. — 6. Herenei [Irenaei Mai] episcopi Ludunensis [Lugdun. Mai.] contra omnes hereses. — 7. Augustinus de natura et origine animae ad Renatum. — 8. epithalamium Origenis in cantica canticorum. — 9. lex Romana ab Alarico rege abbreviata. — 10. libri veterum sedecim. — 11. Libri Novellarum sex Theodosii I, Valentiniani I, Martiani I. — 12. lex Burgundionum. — 13. lex Gothorum. — 14. Iulius Frontinus de geometria. in eodem Siculus Flaccus de agris. — 15. Chigenus [Hyginus. Mai.] Augustus de limitibus statuendis. — 16. Euclides de figuris geometricis. — 17. item Augustinus de solutionibus diversarum quaestionum. — 18. concordiae evangelistarum libri IIII sancti Augustini.

        19. ecclesiastica historia Eusebii. — 20. excerptiones Eugypii. — 21. retractatio in libris confessionum Augustini. — 22. tractatus sancti Ambrosii de officiis. — 23. expositio Hesychii presbyteri super leviticum. — 24. Rufinus in librum numeri. — 25. historia Hegesippi. — 26. codex pragmaticus Tiberii Augustii. — 27. tripertita historia. — 28. Augustinus de opere monachorum. — 29. liber sancti Ambrosii de trinitate ad Gratianum imperatorem. — 30. homiliae Origenis de Balaam et Balac et in eodem Iohannis de reparatione lapsi. — 31. Tertullianus de resurrectione carnis, de trinitate, de spectaculis, de munere, de prescriptionibus ereticorum, de ieiuniis adversus fisicos, de monogamia, de pudicitia. — 32. Augustinus de utilitate credendi. — 33. Salvianus episcopus de gubernatione Dei.

        34-43. libri sancti Clementis numero decem. — 44. Hieronymi libri tres in Zachariam prophetam. — 45. item Hieronymus in Hieremiam prophetam. — 46. collationes abbatis Piamon de tribus generibus monachorum. — 47. Ambrosius episcopus de fide ad Gratianum imperatorem. — 48. Augustinus de trinitate. — 49. homeliae Origenis in genesim. — 50. Hieronymus de nominibus urbium vel locorum. — 51. Ratbertus Paschasius de corpore et sanguine Domini. — 52. Fulgentius episcopus de remissione peccatorum. — 53. altercatio Atici [Attici Mai.] orthodoxi et Cretoboli [Critobuli Mai.] heretici. — 54. Hieronymus in Danihelem prophetam. — 55. Optati Milibitani [milivetani Mai.] episcopi libri septem ad Parmenianum scismaticam. — 56. Eusebius de fide adversus Sabellium. — 57. Augustinus de singularitate clericorum. — 58. libri duo Hieronymi contra Rufinum presbyterum. — 59. item Hieronymus contra lovinianum. — 60. Firmiani Lactantii liber de falsa religione.

(Mai Spicilegium Roman. V, 202-3. ex Ms. 520 reginae Christinae, parvam partem dedit Delisle Mém. de l’institut de France. Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. t. 24, 339. vel in Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes Ser.V. tom.Ip.512. cf. Montfaucon bibl. Mss. II, 1406.)

Many of these books and names will mean little to most of us.  Irenaeus Against Heresies is there; a rare Tertullian also.  Eusebius’ Church History is there, plus Eusebius “Adversus Sabellium” must mean his five books Against Marcellus, in a Latin version; I had not known until this moment that such existed.  Augustine and Ambrose and Jerome are all well represented.  Origen’s Homilies on Genesis are present.  And so is Euclid, amazingly enough!

Paging through Becker is to gain an idea of what books were really circulating in the west in the Middle ages, at least before 1300 when he ends.

But what about the Greek East?  What sort of inventories exist for Greek monastic collections?  I would very much like to know; because I don’t know of any equivalent book for these.

Book lists do exist.  A 16th century list — probably part of a bookseller’s bait-and-switch scam — is here.  But what about the abbey inventories?

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Nominate Mingana manuscripts for digitisation

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Peter Robinson of the Virtual Manuscripts Room at Birmingham has responded here to a post of mine, bewailing the emphasis on Islamic manuscripts so far, with a very interesting response:

We are aware that the only way to satisfy everyone is, simply, to digitize everything. The project was by way of an experiment, to learn about the issues involved in the digitization and to satisfy ourselves that it WOULD be possible to go on and digitize the entire collection.

Now, we believe we can do that. We have developed a plan for this, and it would be very helpful to have the support of people on this list.

One way you could do this would be to go send in any mss from Mingana that you would like to see digitized using the form at http://vmr.bham.ac.uk/contact/. The more such requests we gather, the stronger our case for digitizing the whole collection.

This is a very open-minded and sensible approach, and I would encourage people to do just this. 

The catalogues are all online here.  I know that it is summer, and we all have many things to do involving strawberries, but if you can tear yourself away, mull over what texts you would like to see online.  I can think of the manuscript including Cyrus and Thomas of Edessa, without blinking, for instance; and there will be more!

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Literature searching for a lost manuscript

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m still looking through the literature, trying to find leads to the last, lost manuscript of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Gospel contradictions.  I’ve been reading my photocopy of Zoepfl’s book about the Commentary on the Hexameron of ps. Eustathius of Antioch, which — according to Latino Latini — probably was the first text in this now lost manuscript.

It seems that I am not alone in being interested in Latini’s comments.  On p. 10 of Zoepfl, he lists a Spanish manuscript:

cod. Matrit. gr. 124 (1), a collection-manuscript, written by Antonius Calosyna in 1563 (2), contains in first place (f. 2ff) the ps.Eust. Commentary, under the title: Τοῦ ἐν ἁγίοις πατρὸς ἡμῶν εὐσταθίου ἐπισκόπου ἀντιοχείας ὁμιλία εἰς τὴν ἑξαήμερον ὑπόμνημα θαυμαστόν.  The end of the work is missing.

(1) See J. Iriarte, Regiae Bibliothecae Matritensis codices Graeci manuscripti, vol. I (1769), p.501 f.; J.A.Fabricius-G.Ch.Harles, Bibliotheca Graeca, vol. IX (Hamburgi, 1804), 134 f.
(2) Latino Latini wrote on the 14th September 1563 to Andreas Masius (see Latinius II 116), “Cardinal Sirletus sends to tell you, there has been found in Sicily a work of Eustathius on the creation, or the six days.”  This raises the question of whether there is a connection between the Matr. 124 and the manuscript mentioned by Latinius, especially when the Latin title in the manuscript is written in an Italian hand.

If Sirleto found a manuscript, he would first probably hire a scribe to make a copy for himself.  Since this is made in the same year as Latini wrote saying that Sirleto had just found such an ms, containing both Eustathius and the lost work by Eusebius, is this the copy made?  If so, what else is in this ms?  From what was it copied?

Interesting, and leading to more questions!

UPDATE: Iriarte doesn’t seem to be online, unfortunately.  Vol. 9 of Fabricius (found by doing a Google advanced search, author=Fabricius, date=1804) is here.  This volume of Fabricius is a patrology, so we are in the section on Eustathius, reviewing scholarly opinion on the work and full of useful and interesting information.

It is interesting how these multi-volume Latin works of the 18th century make modern patrologies look babyish.

UPDATE2: The Pinakes database contains information on this ms., which is Madrid, BN, 04852.  Eustathius is on ff.2-96v; but folios 1r-v and 97 r-v are blank, and the work is unfinished.  It is then followed by 3 works by Gregory of Nyssa.  I would guess, therefore, that the four parts are of different origins, and that the copy of Eustathius was not completed.  Drat.

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Cambridge University Library manuscripts department are idiots

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Apparently Cambridge University Library has appointed someone new to be in charge of the manuscripts room.  That man is a jerk.  He wants to make his mark, so has “increased security.”  Yes, I know; we all wince when librarians do this.

This I found out today when I tried to look at the catalogue of manuscripts in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples.  As a manuscripts-related book, access to it is through the manuscripts room, to which I have access (which required a special letter of introduction).

I arrive at the door of the reading room, with my special clear plastic bag containing my wallet, notebook, assorted pencils, etc.  First I have to sign my name and card number in a paper register.  Then I am denied access.  I am handed a key and told to leave my bag in a locker outside, and hold in my hands whatever I need.  I do so. 

Then I come back; and they still won’t let me in.  I have to give them the key to the locker; and they give me a tag for it.  Then they let me in.

Then I go to where the book should be.  It isn’t there.  Indeed there is no sign of a whole range of books in that shelfmark.  I go to the desk; they don’t know where it is either.  After messing me about for 10 minutes I just want to leave this creepy, horrible place.

And then, of course, I have to go through the rigamarole again in order to leave.  Remember, not a single person in that room has got there without already passing a vetting, before they were even given a library card.

Possibly I could have ordered the book at the desk, gone away, and come back again, going through this “security” nonsense FOUR TIMES.  Frankly I couldn’t face it, and went without.

Finally… CUL has no mechanism for complaints.  Very angry and frustrated.  They have the book.  I want to look at it.  I’m authorised to look at it.  And I can’t.

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Finding collections of Greek manuscripts is less easy than it should be

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I need to find out where in Southern Italy and Sicily there are collections of Greek manuscripts.  I have been trying to think of a Google search that will give this information.  I don’t expect it to give me every collection; just the obvious ones.

Well, I can’t think of a search that will do this.  A few attempts bring up nothing.

Yet… isn’t this sort of search a fundamental need?  Not just for that region; say you wanted to know where to look in the United Kingdom?  It’s the same problem.

Where DO we look?

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