Category: Manuscripts

BBC4 programme on science and islam

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Quite by accident last night I found myself watching a BBC4 programme on Science and Islam.  Jim Khalili presented it, and did so extremely well and very clearly.  This was episode 2,  entitled “Empire of Reason”, and in it he discussed the interest in scientific and technical works in the Abbasid caliphate, and various innovations made during that period by people like al-Biruni. 

There was mention of the translation of Greek works in the time of al-Mamun (labelled the “Translation Movement”), although Hunain ibn Ishaq was not mentioned by name.   But in a one hour programme, detail will be omitted in favour of bright images, and this the programme did well.

Like all popular programmes, the narrative jumped around a bit.  I doubt that anyone without a clear idea of Islamic history would have been able to follow who did what when, but this is not a vice in such a programme, which is really intended to spark interest.  I did wonder who the intended audience was, tho.   But who cares?  Let’s be glad of the chance to learn.

The story was told without restraint or qualification.  Khalili was an unabashed apologist for how wonderful “Islamic science” was, and how it was the basis of all modern science (!).   Of course this is rather a half-truth, but, since he is an Iraqi, we may forgive his pardonable pride in his own racial and religious group.  Wouldn’t we all rather hear an enthusiast anyway?  The problem seemed to be in what was omitted, and how various elements were given a spin which calmer evaluation might disallow.  I would have liked to see more on how the scholars of the period made use of non-Greek sources.

Various experiments were conducted on-screen, and explained very well indeed.  He also did meetings with people looking at Arabic books,  including images of manuscripts.  This was very nice to see.  I think we could all do with a better knowledge of Islamic literature.  One question, tho — are any of these texts available online and in English?  I have my doubts.  Is there, indeed, any equivalent to Brockelmann’s massive lists of Arabic authors and texts?  I doubt it.

In fact scientific texts from antiquity seem conspicuous by the lack of English translations.  Many of these are only extant in Arabic; works by Galen, and Hero’s Mechanica spring to mind.  As for being online…!

One very reluctant comment: I do have to say that I think the programme was probably  intended by the BBC as anti-western propaganda.  But let us restrain our disgust,  at them, as far as possible.  No blame attaches to the presenter for supporting his own side; indeed his enthusiasm is a bonus – even if, in his enthusiasm, he seemed to forget that Cordoba cannot be used as an example of Abbasid splendour!  Let us freely acknowledge the debt we owe to the Islamic world for advances in various areas made during this period.  The subject matter is interesting, and it’s easy enough to watch.  If we can remember that this is not a balanced picture — that it is just one side of the coin –, then the series itself is full of interest.  Recommended.

PS: I see that Jim al-Khalili has started a blog.  Read the first post here.  I also discover an article that he wrote for the Guardian, in which he states that “I am on a mission to … present the positive face of Islam.”  Hmm.

Share

Manuscript digitisation gathers pace

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Jim Davila’s excellent PaleoJudaica blog highlights a number of interesting non-Jewish items this week.  I don’t seem to be able to link to his individual posts, so here are some excerpts.

The Cologne Manichaean codex is a tiny parchment codex from middle Egypt, containing an account of the youth of Mani.  Digitising it and placing it online is such an excellent idea.  This is where the internet scores.  Suddenly people can SEE the thing!  I wonder if an English translation of the text is around, tho?

Jim has posted on this before and links to other posts.  It seems that the mass of Syriac manuscripts in Kerala are to be photographed.  Let us hope they go online!  But the easy availability of digital cameras makes digitisation simple.  Well done, the Kerala clergymen who seem to be leading this one.  They’re also trying to encourage interest in Syriac.

  • PHILIP JENKINS’S BOOK, The Lost History of Christianity, is reviewed by Brother Jeffrey Gros, F.S.C. in the Catholic Review Online.

This is a book that discusses Oriental Christianity, and which has been criticised to me for being too Christian, and not Christian enough.  I’m going to have a read once the paperback comes out here.  Anything which will increase the number of people interested in the obscure Syriac and Arabic Christianity must be a good thing.

Share

Eusebius and Islam

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There are some things which are obvious, once they have been invented.  It took the genius of Eusebius of Caesarea to digest down into a tabular form of dates and events all the information about dates and events for Greece and Assyria and Persia and Rome — and the Hebrews — contained in the literature available to him.  But once this Chronicle of World History existed, running up until the 20th year of Constantine, every copyist would feel the urge to add extra lines on the bottom, to bring it up to date.  It’s sort of obvious, isn’t it?

To this obviousness we owe a mass of chronicles, not just in Greek but in Latin and Syriac.  One such continuator was James of Edessa, the 8th century scholarly West Syriac bishop who attempted to introduce Greek vowels into the Syriac script, and partially succeeded.  His continuation was composed in 692 AD.  

The text is lost, but portions of it remain.  The text of the 10th century World History of Michael the Syrian makes use of it verbatim in places, although not in tabular form.  Better still, a 10th/11th century Syriac manuscript from the Nitrian Desert, now in the British Library (Ms. Additional 14685) contains a substantial chunk of it, albeit in an abbreviated form.  It starts where Eusebius left off, and begins with a preface in which James discusses an error in calculation which he has found in Eusebius.  Then it goes into a set of tables.  Like the Armenian version of Eusebius (but unlike the original, or the Latin version), the columns of year numbers are positioned in the centre of the page, and events for those years written on either side.

I was looking around the web today for the ancient texts which mention Mohammed, and came across this site.  To my surprise this chronicle by James is one of the earliest mentions of Mohammed.  This has given impetus to me to put it online.  But how to do so?

E. W. Brooks published the Chronicle in Zeitschrift fur deutschen morgenlandischen Gesellschaft 53 (1899), p. 261-327.  He didn’t publish the preface.  He published the Syriac text, laid out in tabular form.  He followed it with an English translation, not of all the text, but of the wording (events) against each year.  He then republished it, this time with the preface, in CSCO Syr. 5, with a Latin translation of the lot in CSCO Syr. 6.  Both text and translation contained the tabular layout.

I’m not going to transcribe the Syriac, or the Latin.  I have already OCR’d the English, but there is a problem.  The Islamic website above rightly quotes three chunks of relevant information.  But… two of these are embedded in the table in the middle of the page, so not present in the English translation.  Anyway… don’t we want to see the proper layout?  I certainly would!

I think the solution will be to take the Latin translation, lay it out in HTML, and then substitute the English where it is available, translating the trivial bits of Latin where it is not.  It will be fiddly; but it will work.  Considering its importance, tho, something must be done.

Share

Getting hold of manuscripts of the Arabic historian Al-Makin

Posted on by Roger Pearse

We all know that Shlomo Pines published an exotic version of the Testimonium Flavianum of Josephus, telling of the events of the life of Christ.  This he tells us he got from the 10th century Arabic Christian historian, Agapius.  But on closer reading, he says that he reconstructed the text of Agapius at this point using the 13th century Arabic Christian historian Girgis Al-Makin (George Elmacin).  This hasn’t ever been published, never mind translated. 

The text is in two halves, according to Georg Graf’s handbook, Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur vol. 2, p.348-351.  The first half covers history to the reign of Heraclius, divided into 120 sections on ‘important people’.  The second half covers history from the Arab invasions to his own time.

I’d like to get a copy of a manuscript of this work, and see if I can get the portion on Jesus translated.   Graf tells us that there is a manuscript in the Vatican (Vat. ar. 169, 1686 AD, on ff. 1r-194r); another in the Bodleian Library in Oxford (Bodl. ar. christ. Nicoll. 47, 1 & 2 = Bodl. 316, 1646 AD), which also has a handwritten Latin translation of the end of part 1 and all of part 2; another in the British Library (or. 7564, AD 1280); another in Manchester (ar. 239, 18th century, but incomplete and breaking off at 1118/9 AD); another in Cairo (Coptic Museum Hist. 266, AD 1893); yet another in Cairo (Coptic Patriarchate Hist. 17, 18th century); one in the Sbath collection wherever that is now (Fihris 80 & 81); and finally one somewhere in the Orthodox Library in Aleppo between the wars, mentioned by L. Cheiko.

That sounds a lot – eight copies.  But the Vatican library is closed, and emails are being ignored.  The Bodleian is going through a greedy-nasty phase, and wants me to pay some enormous sum so they can make colour images for themselves but only supply low-grade monochrome images to me.  The microfilm of the British Library manuscript only covers part 2, and the leaves are said to be disarranged anyway.  The John Rylands Library in Manchester also demanded some huge and prohibitive sum for their partial manuscript.  Manuscripts in Cairo are inaccessible; a set of microfilms in the USA likewise, for practical purposes.  The location of the other two is really unknown.

Here we are in 2009; yet a researcher can’t get a copy of stuff held by state institutions.  This is a ridiculous situation, surely?

There are also manuscript copies of each half.  Perhaps the answer is to obtain some of these.  There are three of part 1 in Paris, for instance, and it should be possible to obtain copies, I would have thought. 

PS: The great thing about the Bibliotheque Nationale Francais is that they have scanned their catalogues and put them online.  A quick search, and I find that Mss. Arab. 294 and 295 should cover the whole text.  294 is 250+ folios in length, tho.  Less good is the prices demanded for colour digital images, which are basically free to make.  The prices are prohibitive, which is very silly.  I’ve been driven to ask for a duplicate of a microfilm in PDF form, for which they will charge 50 euros each (!).  Even that is a ridiculous price for what basically costs half an hour of staff time.  When will this ceaseless greed stop?

Share

The last complete copy of Diodorus Siculus, part 2

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Yesterday I mentioned N. G. Wilson’s statement that a complete copy of Diodorus Siculus existed in 1453.  This led me to look again at his two books on how ancient Greek literature came to the west.  These excellent volumes are Scholars of Byzantium, which discusses the fate of that literature in the Eastern Roman Empire from 400-1453; and From Byzantium to Italy, which talks about how it then got to Italy. 

The statement about Diodorus is on the last page of text of the latter, p. 162, and note 4 on it, which tells us that Constantine Lascaris saw that volume in the imperial palace, PG 161:198.  This is the last volume of the PG, in fact; containing material by Bessarion, George Trapezuntinus, Constantine Lascaris, Theodore of Gaza, and Andronicus Callistus.

The work by Constantine Lascaris is De scriptoribus Graecis Patria Siculis – Greek writers from Sicily – is in Latin, addressed to a renaissance ruler of Sicily, and commences on col. 195.  Various writers are listed.  I transcribe the whole entry on Diodorus from an unfortunately indistinct image:

9. Diodorus Siculus Argyrensis, historicus praestantissimus, qui sub Tiberio militavit.  Historiam composuit libris quadraginta, quam Bibliothecam vocavit: de antiquitate Aegyptiorum, de Sicilia et aliis insulis, de bello Trojano, de gestis Alexandri et Romanorum usque ad suam artatem (?), quorum sex a Poggio Florentino traducti circumferuntur. Reliqui vix inventiuntur.  Ego autem omnes ejus libros vidi in bibliotheca imperatoris C[onstantino]politani.

That’s plain enough:

9. Diodorus Siculus, of Argyra, a preeminent historian, who lived in the time of Tiberius.  He composed a History in 40 books, which he called The Library: on the antiquities of the Egyptians, on Sicily and the other islands, on the Trojan war, the deeds of Alexander and the Romans, down to his own times, of which six translated by Poggio the Florentine are going around.  The rest are hard to find.  But I myself have seen all of his books in the imperial library in Constantinople.

We can take Lascaris at his word, I think.  Constantine Lascaris was a nobleman of the empire who fled the city with others in 1454 and went to Italy.  After staying in Milan and Rome he received an invitation from Ferdinand I to go to Naples, and eventually fixed himself in Messina in Sicily, where he taught Greek language and literature.  His library ended up in the Escorial in Spain. 

What became of this copy we do not know.

Share

The last person to see a complete Diodorus Siculus

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The splendid efforts by Bill Thayer to scan the still-massive  remains of the Universal History by Diodorus Siculus have reminded me that the complete text still existed in 1453.  N. G. Wilson in Scribes and Scholars p.72 tells us of a well-established fact, stated by Constantine Lascaris who says that he saw a complete copy of the work in the imperial palace in Constantinople, and that it was destroyed by the Turks. 

Scribes and Scholars is a masterwork, but one of its defects is the casual attitude to referencing.  But by chance a French correspondent asked me about this very event, and in order to give him a page reference, I pulled down the French translation by the excellent Pierre Petitmengin, D’Homère a Érasme.  I was surprised, but delighted, to find on page 48 a reference for this statement: Patrologia Graeca, t. 161, c. 918.  One of the reasons why the French edition is useful is that it does fill in some of the gaps like this.

It would be nice to have Constantine Lascaris’ words in English, but that must wait another day!

Share

Digitization of the Plutei collection in Florence

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve had an email from the Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana in Florence telling me that they are actively exploring digitising the Plutei collection. This includes massive numbers of the oldest manuscripts of any number of the classics, including both Tacitus manuscripts. They think it will take around 30 months, and they intend to put the results online.

Remarkably, they’re also looking at ways for people to contribute to the online material and so enhance the content.  This is very far-seeing of them, and will be most interesting to see.

All early days, but very, very interesting.

Share

Does the manuscript of Tacitus say ‘Christian’ or ‘Chrestian’?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Yesterday I wrote a post criticising the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence in some pretty direct terms.  I’ve deleted it; because it seems that I got hold of the wrong end of the stick.

We all know the reference to the Christians in Tacitus, Annals, book 15, chapter 44.  A discussion arose in an online forum as to whether this said ‘Christians’ or ‘Chrestians’ in the single manuscript.  The only photographs available, from an elderly facsimile, were monochrome and it was impossible to tell.  It certainly said ‘Christians’; but there was a gap after the ‘i’.

A friend saw that the only thing to be done was to get a new photograph of the page.  This he did, and let me look at it, which was kind.  But as it was monochrome also, I was under the impression that the BML had sold him a monochrome photograph.  That would be a disgraceful thing for a library to do, in 2008, when every librarian has a mobile phone with a colour digital camera built in, and I said so.

But later I learned that they had actually sold him an ultra-violet image, which was naturally monochrome!  That left me feeling quite sheepish, and I deleted the post.

The image revealed the erased ‘e’ in ‘Christians’, neatly filling the gap in the manuscript.  They charged him three or four euros for it, which is a very reasonable price, and the image was of the whole opening, not just a single page.  In fact the photograph is rather splendid, nicely displaying the two column mis-en-page.  Of course a colour image under normal light would be nice too!

The only thing that is unsatisfactory is that I cannot show the image to you.  For it is not online, and copyright in the EU probably covers it.  The image really should be on the BML website.  Here is an excerpt from the photo, although enlarged a little too much.

 Tacitus, Annals: the word 'Christians' or 'Chrestians'
Tacitus, Annals: the word 'Christians' or 'Chrestians'

But well done the BML for selling a good, useful image, very cheaply. 

Share

Digitising the manuscripts of St. Gall

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Benedictine abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland is one of the places where manuscripts travelled down the centuries.  Founded in the Dark Ages, it’s collection crops up in many a discussion of ancient texts.  Quintillian was found here by Poggio, for instance.  There is still a very substantial collection there in the possession of the Roman Catholic church, although the abbey was expropriated in 1805.

I was delighted to learn today from Evangelical Textual Criticism that St. Gall are digitising their collection and placing it online.  Of course ETC are mainly interested in biblical mss; but the rest of us will be interested in the other mss!  The website is here.  Currently there are 144 mss online.

An article in the NY Times says that they have recently received a grant of $1m from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to scan the 355 mss in their collection which were written before 1000 AD.  This tells us that the Swiss intend to digitise all 7,000 medieval mss in that country — wonderful news indeed, and one that must benefit scholars greatly.  Full marks to the Foundation for funding it.  That works out at around $3,000 per manuscript; quite a bit, but getting much closer than the British Library ever has to the real cost to doing the work.

All credit is due to Ernst Tremp, the library director.  It seems that he thought up the project after seeing widespread flooding in Dresden in 2002 which damaged many artworks.  It is great to see a library director who grasps what should be obvious; that manuscripts must be photographed and must be made accessible or they WILL be lost in the mischances of the years.

The site has an English interface.  I had a browse by author to see what’s in there, which gave a short list, and then by title to see the rest.  Most of the stuff is 9th century, it seems.  There’s a 9th century ‘Hegesippus’ (Latin Josephus’ Wars); an copy of Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae from ca. 900; a bunch of biblical commentaries by Jerome of the same date; Lucan, Pharsalia, 11th c.; Martianus Capella; Orosius; Prudentius; a 9th century astronomical/computistical text; a bunch of composite manuscripts; several volumes of fragmenta rescripta or reused palimpsest parchment pages from late antique books.

Nothing of great interest to me, so far; but still very useful indeed to have available.  My only query: why don’t they make the mss into PDF’s, like Google do?  These itsy-bitsy one-page-at-a-time custom interfaces are a pain to work with.

Share

Nicaea II and missing books

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This post raises some interesting questions about the destruction of Iconoclast literature after the second council of Nicaea in 787 AD.  (Also commented on here at Labarum).

The thrust of the post is that the council ordered the destruction of iconoclast books, aside from those held in a private collection by the patriarch of Constantinople.  The existence of such a collection may explain some of the reading material listed by Photius in his Bibliotheca.

What I was not clear about, tho, was what the historical sources quoted were.  How do we know this?

Sadly a firewall prevents me posting a comment, but if you know, please let me know.

I find that this is supposedly from the 9th canon of the canons of the council.  In the NPNF translation these read:

Canon IX.

That none of the books containing the heresy of the traducers of the Christians are to be hid.

All the childish devices and mad ravings which have been falsely written against the venerable images, must be delivered up to the Episcopium of Constantinople, that they may be locked away with other heretical books. And if anyone is found hiding such books, if he be a bishop or presbyter or deacon, let him be deposed; but if he be a monk or layman, let him be anathema.

Notes.

Ancient Epitome of Canon IX.

If any one is found to have concealed a book written against the venerable images, if he is on the clergy list let him be deposed; if a layman or monk let him be cut off.

Van Espen.

What here is styled Episcopium was the palace of the Patriarch. In this palace were the archives, and this was called the “Cartophylacium,” in which the charts and episcopal laws were laid up. To this there was a prefect, the grand Chartophylax, one of the principal officials and of most exalted dignity of the Church of Constantinople, whose office Codinus explains as follows: “The Ghartophylax has in his keeping all the charts which pertain to ecclesiastical law (that is to say the letters in which privileges and other rights of the Church are contained) and is the judge of all ecclesiastical causes, and presides over marriage controversies which are taken cognizance of, and proceedings for dissolution of the marriage bond; moreover, he is judge in other clerical strifes, as the right hand of the Patriarch.”

In this Cartophylaceum or Archives, therefore, under the faithful guardianship of the Chartophylax, the fathers willed that the writings of the Iconoclasts should be laid up, lest in their perusal simple Catholics might be led astray.

But here at IntraText I find a different version of the text.  Now IntraText is not a scanning site; they just use what others upload.  So which translation is this?  The same text is here.  I also find it here with attribution to Peter L’Huillier. 

After much searching, I find online “Canons of the seven ecumenical councils from the Rudder trans. by D. Cummings, 1957, with intro by Archbishop Peter L’Huillier.” (Chicago: Orthodox Christian Educational Society) and discussed here.

Share