Category: Manuscripts

Thefts from the British Library

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA
An article in the Times today tells us that a reader who used a razor-blade to remove 98  rare maps from books in the British Library and other libraries has been jailed for three years and fined one million pounds (around $2m).  The maps, we are told, were then sold to dealers and collectors.  He was found with 7 maps, alone worth around $1m.  US readers will be amused to learn that the reader will be released automatically after a year, unless he annoys the turnkeys, and in any event after two.  The Library officials are said to be furious at the leniency of the sentence. 

The story has many interesting aspects.  The weak sentence means that it is now open season on the collections of British Libraries.  Many will consider the possibility of becoming a multi-millionaire well worth the chance of a year in conditions not markedly worse than a boys’ boarding school.  Fortunately the number of criminals equipped to sell the items must be limited. 

The Times report glosses over the motive, which is said to be “resentment” of the library.  I wonder what the nature of his resentment was.  Could it possibly be that, like so many other readers, he was tired of being robbed blind in charges for reproductions of material that he wished to examine?

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Medieval manuscripts for sale

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA
The Baden state library (Badische Landesbibliothek) in Karlsruhe has a problem.  Some of its manuscripts actually belong to the House of Baden, not the state.  The family is now short of cash — all those redistributive taxes beloved of the political Left, no doubt — and is proposing to sell them off at auction.  An article appeared in the Stuttgarter Zeitung, and posts about this have appeared in the MEDTEXTL, and MEDIAEVISTIK listserves (the latter in German), reposted in PAPY-L (papyri) decrying the “cultural atrocity” and inviting us to join them in condemning the move.

But I have mixed feelings.  The library hasn’t photographed any of these mss, as far as I know.  Indeed there doesn’t seem to be a full list of them, even.  They have just one (!) manuscript online.  I suspect that readers have been prevented from photographing them.  One scholar, when I queried why they weren’t online, suggested that it was good for scholars to have to travel to Karlsruhe to consult them!  Frankly, it would be better if these mss were in hands that would record them and place them online.  Perhaps the House of Baden would be agreeable to a proposal to do so!

I have written to various people suggesting that a few volunteers take digital cameras and record them.  It will be interesting to see whether those involved would rather allow the ‘atrocity’ than allow people to photograph them.

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No copyright on library-made photos of manuscripts

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA
I was looking at Wikipedia and found there considerable numbers of colour photographs of pages from manuscripts, most apparently professionally produced and so probably done by in-house departments at major libraries.  

Among these was one from the British Library, whom I know to be bitterly hostile to anyone seeing or using their holdings:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:British.Library.MS.Add.33241.jpg

This had a notice stating that such an image was public domain in the USA, and citing the following 1999 court case:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp.

What this seems to mean is that you can buy a picture of any page in any ancient or medieval manuscript from any library you like and the image is public domain in the USA.  You can then upload it onto your website, or Wikipedia, or wherever.

This, if true, is revolutionary.  Libraries and museums have sought prevent the circulation of photographs of out of copyright material by claiming that the photograph is copyright.  The damage that this has done to public access to their holdings is incalculable.

The page also referred to UK law, which is generally drawn up without reference to the public interest. The article expressed an opinion that even UK law would not protect such images.  Well, I have been enquiring in the ABTAPL list of smaller theological libraries, and been told that no case law exists in the UK, but that the opinion of “copyright professionals” is that UK law does allow museums and libraries this dog-in-the-manger right.  Apparently no lawsuits have ever been brought, tho, but the “Museums Copyright Group” has made all sorts of very positive statements reiterating copyright.  That the public fund these museums so that the public can see these items does not trouble these bureaucrats at all, it seems.

I shall enquire further as to how this works, but I would encourage every US citizen interested in manuscripts to start uploading images.  We in the unfree world may not be able to do this; you can.

Postscript: I have written to this “Museums copyright group” and queried whether preventing public access was really what museums were for.  I await a reply full of bureacratic evasions!

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A.G. still being used in 1900 in Iraq

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA
I wonder how many people know that the Seleucid era (Anno Graecorum=Year of the Greeks) was still being used in 1900? I’m reading through the English translation of Nestorius, “The Bazaar of Heracleides“, at the moment, and came across this footnote on p.192: 

2 The Syriac copyist has here added a note to the following effect: ‘From here twelve pages have been torn out and lost from the original by the troops of Bedr Khan Bey, when they captured the district of Das in the year 2154 of the Greeks (= A. D. 1843).’

The Syriac copyist in question must be a modern scribe writing one of the handwritten copies made ca. 1900 of the unique 11th century manuscript, since the editor only had access to these copies. The 11th century ms. was damaged but fortunately not destroyed by the Kurds when they massacred 10,000 Nestorian Christians in 1843.  It appears to have been destroyed altogether during WW1.

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Alqosh monastery bombed?

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA
This link, written in 2004, describes damage to the Christian churches at Kurdish hands in Iraq.  It mentions “Rabban Hormizd, the ancient stone monastery outside Alqosh on the Nineveh plain which was bombed so severely that many of its magnificent epigraphic memorials, dating from a hundred centuries ago, have been shattered. These memorials were some of the most precious classical Syriac stone carvings in the world. They lie in a makeshift museum in Alqosh in desperate need of restoration.” Addai Scher catalogued the books at this monastery, also known as Notre-Dame des Semences.  Some at least of these were taken to Baghdad, to the Chaldean Patriarchate (since bombed by the insurgents).  Those are apparently safe.  It all highlights the need to photograph manuscripts urgently; no-one in 1950 would have expected that we would be losing manuscripts like this in 2006!
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More on the lost library of Seert

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA
Addai ScherI have referred before to the library at the Chaldean archbishop’s residence at Séert.  Even copies of the catalogue of manuscripts made by Addai Scher in 1905 seem scarce.  Here in the UK a copy is listed in the British Library, but this is useless to most people.  Yesterday I looked at the copy in Cambridge University Library, which turned out to be an incomplete and grotty photocopy of the BL one.  I admit that I mourned over codex 88, containing the only copy in the world of Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Incarnation.  J. Quasten in the third volume of his Patrology states that among his works, “no other work was so often referenced” during the 5th century disputes.

I’ve been trying to pin down data about the loss of the library.  I’ve found online a book from 1920 in English which gives eyewitness accounts of how the scholar Addai Scher (left) died, after fleeing his residence with the aid of a sympathetic Turkish officer, he was caught, “looking pale and emaciated”, beaten up by Kurdish irregulars, and then shot several times.  Elsewhere the account refers to books being looted from other sites.

This leads to an interesting question: do we know for a fact that these volumes are not to be found somewhere in Kurdistan?  A couple of weeks ago I heard from someone who named himself a Kurd, proferring a bible manuscript, “written on skin”.  The invitation sounded like a con.  George Kiraz recounts how a DVD of images of a manuscript, on black parchment (!) and containing a mixture of crude Syriac and Arabic lettering, was being touted around bishops in Eastern Turkey, so clearly someone has realised that there is a market. 

But who are these people?  And, more seriously: what books exist in Kurdistan?  Saddam Hussein had a collection of manuscripts before his fall, which included Arabic and Kurdish mss.  Is there work to be done, to determine what actually exists out there?

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Getting a copy of a Syriac scientific manuscript

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA
I have found that the French National Library want $130 for a duplicate of a monochrome microfilm and putting it onto CDROM.  Am I the only one rather astonished at the prices that are being charged these days for low quality stuff?
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Arabic Christian manuscripts at the BNF

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA
I have been reading through the catalogue of Arabic Christian manuscripts from the French National Library, to get an idea of the contents. Curiously this was published without an index of authors, which makes it hard to gain such an overview. This is what I found.

The majority of the collection contains saints’ lives and homilies. None of the lives seem likely to be of interest, but include a life of Alexander the Great, and, interestingly, a version of the “Dialogues” of Gregory the Great (11th century, ms. 276). The sermons are clearly translated from coptic, and include sermons by John Chrysostom (in great quantity), Ephrem Syrus, Jacob of Serugh, Isaac the Syrian, John Climacus, John Saba and Severus of Antioch.

There are various works by Severus of al’Ashmuneim (=Hermopolis, a.k.a. Severus Ibn al’Muqaffa), who is also represented by a copy of his monster “History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria” (ms. 301), almost the only historical text included.

A couple of bestiaries (“physiologus”) are present, and a couple of texts by Ps.Aristotle. The life and questions of Secundus the Philosopher is present at least twice. There are seven copies of the “Barlaam and Joasaph” romance, sometimes attributed to John Damascene (mss. 268-274), who is also present in a few sermons.

There is a manuscript of the “Protevangelium of James” (ms. 147, #16). There did not seem to be other apocrypha. There were various apologetical dialogues with Moslems and Jews. There are also some texts translated in modern times from French or Italian literature.

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BNF catalogues of manuscripts all online

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA
I find that the Bibliotheque Nationale Francaise (French National Library) in Paris have scanned most of their catalogues in PDF form and made them available for free download.  The intention, clearly, is to do the lot.  Thus Zotenberg’s catalogue of Syriac and Mandean mss is online, as is the more recent supplement.  The catalogues can be found at:

http://www.bnf.fr/pages/zNavigat/frame/catalogues_num.htm

I’ve been browsing through the catalogue of Arabic mss.  As one might expect, the contents are mainly derived from Coptic or Maronite texts.  But what a treasure!  Sadly we need not ask whether other major libraries have done the same.

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Nestorius again

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA
I have been following up the story of the manuscript of the “Dialogue with Heracleides” by Nestorius.  The consensus seems to be that the single manuscript was damaged in the 19the century during Turkish-led massacres of Christians.  It was discovered late in that century, and several hand-written copies made, including one for the library of the American missionaries at Urmiah, one for Cambridge (presumably the university library) and another.  

But the original has perished, destroyed during the First World War during massacres by Turkish troops (again).

All this highlights the fragility of manuscripts, and the importance of photographing the things whenever possible.  And it really is possible!  Cheap airflights make all sorts of ventures possible.

Last year I did a day-trip to the Rhineland.  I got a budget flight from London Stansted airport (about an hour from where I live) to Frankfurt-Hahn airport.  Hahn is nowhere near Frankfurt, and is a converted American airbase, about 10 miles from Bernkastel-Kues.  I hired a car at the airport and drove there, photographed a manuscript at the Stiftsbibliothek, and returned the same day.  It was a long and weary day, but very possible.

Early this year I went even further, this time flying to Salzburg and driving 100 miles east towards Vienna to a monastery named Seitenstetten, photographing a manuscript, and coming back the same day.  This was an 18-hour day, and middle age is not an asset here — as the day wore on I started to become uncomfortably conscious that I have an uncle who suffered a heart-attack and was never the same again after doing an 18-hour day of unaccustomed exertion!  But it all shows what can be done. 

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