Category: Manuscripts

Digitised mss at the British Library

Posted on by Roger Pearse

From Evangelical Textual Criticism I learn that the excellent Juan Garcés is revolutionising things at the British Library.   He’s leading a project to digitise 250 Greek manuscripts and place them online so scholars can consult the things.  He has obtained funding from the Stavros Niarchos foundation.

He’s also created the Digitised Manuscripts blog to report on progress.

It seems that the British Library described the project in their “Annual Reports and Accounts 2008/2009”:

Digitisation of Greek manuscripts

We are very grateful to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation for making it possible for us to undertake a project to digitise 250 of our Greek manuscripts to make them fully accessible to researchers around the world through the internet. We will also create catalogue records for each item and create a website that will enable researchers to search using key words and interactive technology that will allow them to upload notes and collaborate with other researchers virtually. We aim to launch the website in summer 2010. We are continuing to fundraise to enable us to add the remaining Greek manuscripts and papyri to the site in the longer term.

Let us hope that they understand that we will all want downloadable PDF’s.

It might be interesting to think what mss we would like scanned.  I know that New Testament people will be lobbying; but classics and patristics mss would be nice.  I realise that I don’t actually know what Greek mss at the BL I would like to see.

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Self-service photographing of manuscripts at Leiden

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I am rather excited to learn that Leiden university library apparently allows readers to photograph manuscripts themselves!  Details here:

http://www.library.leiden.edu/collections/special/practical/reproduction-special-collections.html

They don’t allow flash (understandably) or tripods (less so).  But this is great news!

If anyone would like to try this out and see how it works, I think we would all be interested.

The reproductions department doesn’t seem to have heard of supplying microfilms in PDF form, tho. I’m querying that with them.

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Manuscripts of Eusebius’ “Vita Constantini”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A researcher from a Canadian film company wrote to me, saying they were doing a documentary on Constantine, would be in Rome and was there an original or an old copy of this work there, because they wanted to film it.  I went and looked in the GCS 7 volume online, and I thought I’d share the results.

The Mss of the “Vita Constantini” and the “Oratio ad sanctum coetum” are

1)

  • V. — Vaticanus 149 [XI S.].
  • R. — Vaticanus 396 [XVI S.].

IIa) 

  • J. — Moscoviensis 50 [XI S.].

IIb):

  • M. — Marcianus 339 [XII vel XIII S.].
  • B.  — Parisinus 1432 [XIII S.].
  • A.  — Parisinus 1437 [XIII vel XIV S.].

IIc):

  • E. — Parisinus 1439 [XVI S.].
  • D.  — Parisinus 414 [XVI S.].
  • Sct. — Scorialensis T-I-7 [XVI S.].

IId)

  • N. — Marcianus 340 [XIII S.).
  • P. — Palatinus 268 [XIII S.].
  • G. — Parisinus 1438 [XV S.].
  • Sav. — (only Vita books I-III) Savilianus [XV S.] = N + M.
  • Scr. — Scorialensis R-II-4 [XVI S.] = C + ?

Mss. called “Parisinus” will be in the French National Library. Marcianus is a library in Venice.  Palatinus is a sub-collection in the Vatican library (books originally from the library in Heidelberg of the Rhineland Palatinate, and transferred to the Vatican as part of the settlement of the 30 Years War).  Scorialensis is the Escorial in Madrid.  Cantabrigiensis = Cambridge University Library in the UK. Ottobonianus is another Vatican sub-collection (made up of the books once owned by the long-dead Cardinal Ottoboni).

It’s not a bad collection, for an ancient Greek text.  Fourteen mss, one of the 11th century.  Apparently they all have gaps in, tho!

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The lost manuscripts of Seert – a clue?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The revival of interest in Syriac before the first world war led to the establishment of the American mission at Urmia, and also transformed some of the clergy in that region of the Turkish Empire into scholars, publishing previously unknown material in western journals.  Foremost among these was Addai Scher, Archbishop of Seert.  He gathered a considerable collection of manuscripts, a few of which he sent to Paris. 

Among his discoveries was a jewel; a Syriac translation of Theodore of Mopsuestia’s De incarnatione.  This work had been lost, but was a critical factor in the disputes in the 5th century.

Everyone knows of the massacres of Armenians by the Turkish forces — mostly Kurds — during WW1.  Less well known are the similar massacres of Syriac-speaking Christians during the same period of 1915.  Addai Scher was dragged out and shot by Turkish irregulars, and most of his library was lost, including De incarnatione.

But I have been reading an article by William Macomber SJ, in which an interesting footnote appears.  It seems that a servant of Dr Scher has told various people that a number of books were buried in cases and leather bags in the courtyard.  Travellers in 1966 confirmed that the courtyard level had risen quite a bit.  The episcopal residence had been turned into a school.

I wonder if anyone has gone and investigated? 

Here are Macomber’s words:

Two apparently independent witnesses, one at ‘Aqra that was interviewed by Jules Leroy, Les manuscrits syriaques a peintures conserves dans les bibliotheques d’Europe et d’Orient (Institut Francais d’Archeologie de Beyrouth, Bibliotheque Archeologique et Historique, t. LXXVII), Paris 1964, p. 212 n. 3, and the other in Beirut, a former servant of Archbishop Scher, whose witness has been related to me by friends in Baghdad, have reported that at least some of the manuscripts of this library were buried in wooden cases and leathern sacks in the courtyard of the residence. The servant indicates the precise location of the burial, before the door of the residence that led into the courtyard. Travellers to Seert (Siirt) report that the Turkish government has turned the residence into a school for children and that the original level of the eourtyard has been considerably raised. Even if the story of the servant be true, therefore, it is quite possible that the hiding place of the manuscripts has already been discovered. Nonetheless, the importance of the coUection was so great, containing, as it did, the only known copy of the De incarnatione of Theodore of Mopsuestia, that it would seem a great pity if steps were not taken to obtain permission from the Turkish authoritiers to excavate the site. The sight of the work of excavation, moreover, might persuade citizens of Seert who may happen to have acquired some of the manuscripts to declare themselves, at least secretly, in the hope of making a profitable sale.

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Catenas on the Psalms: the “Palestinian catena”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There may be 29 different types of catena on the Psalms.  All of them contain quotations from works by the Fathers on the exegesis of the Psalms.  But the most important of these by far is the catena known to modern specialists as the “Palestinian catena”.  This catena was apparently originally compiled in 6th century Palestine, directly from a bunch of mostly now lost texts.

It stands out for the size and quality of the extracts that are preserved in it.  These are mainly taken from the commentaries of Eusebius of Caesarea, Didymus the Blind, and Theodoret.  In some of the psalms, there is also material from Apollinaris of Laodicea, Asterius the Sophist, Basil of Caesarea, and — of course — Cyril of Alexandria, Chrysostom, and Origen.  For psalm 118 there is also material from Athanasius.

Psalms is a long book.  A catena on the psalms is also a long book.  Some time after composition, the catena was turned into two editions.  The first of these was in three volumes; on Psalms 1-50, 51-100, and 101-150.  The other was a two volume edition; on Psalms 1-76 and 77-150.

Naturally the volumes of each version have travelled down the centuries independently.

The three volume edition

Volume 1 of this edition is preserved in good condition in the catena of type VI (Karo and Lietzmann).  This is found in he following manuscripts:

  • Oxford, Bodleian Library, Barroci gr. 235 (9-10th century)
  • Mt. Athos, Iviron monastery 597 (1st half of 11th c.)
  • Bucharest, Romanian Academy Library gr. 931 + Constantinople, Panaghia Kamariotissi Patristic Library 9 (1st half of 11th century)
  • Munich, National library gr. 359 (10-11th c.)
  • Vatican Library gr. 1789 (10-11th c.).
  • Oxford, Bodleian, Auct. 1.1 (= Misc. 179) (17th c.), pp.169-262 containing Pss.10-50 and pp.262-284 (Ps. 9)
  • Oxford, Bodleian, Barocci gr. 154 (late 15th c.), a copy of Barocci 235.

These are all derived from the Barocci ms., and the other mss. serve only to supplement some passages today missing from the Barocci (I presume this means leaves have been lost down the years).

Marcel Richard made a check on the value of the material using the text for Ps. 37.  The whole commentary of Eusebius on this psalm happens to be extant, under the name of Basil, and is accessible in PG 30, col. 81-104 (now I ought to commission a translation of that!).  Origen’s two homilies on this psalm have reached us, in a version in Latin by Rufinus.  Theodoret’s Interpretatio in Psalmos is extant, and in PG 80.  The work of Didymus has perished.

Richard found that all the extracts from extant sources were reproduced correctly, and attributed to the correct authors.  The remaining extracts, from Didymus, were not found in any of the other authors, so are presumably also corrected quoted.  This gives us great confidence in using the catena.

The second volume existed in a single manuscript in Turin, Cod. 300 (C.II.6, 10th c.).  Unfortunately this was destroyed in the fire on 26th January 1904, without ever being photographed or printed.  No doubt the librarians who watched it burn had congratulated themselves just as modern ones do, that they had never allowed it to be photographed, thereby preserving it from “damage”.  Some leaves remain, and the Institut de Recherches et Histoire de Textes did their best, but the majority of the material from this excellent source is lost.

Fortunately this matters less for the Commentary of Eusebius.  A portion of this massive commentary has reached us in direct transmission, and contains Pss.51-95:3.  It’s in Cod. Coislin 44 (10th c.).

The third volume, on Pss.101-150, did not reach us, and no traces of it are known.

The two volume edition

The first volume of this edition, covering Pss.1-76, has been lost.  No copy of it came down to our times.

The second volume, however, covering Pss. 77-150, is extant.  This is fortunate, as it complements the losses in the three volume edition.

This volume was classified by Karo and Lietzmann as type XI.  No single copy is entire, although it probably once existed complete in Milan, Ambrosian Library F 126 sup. (=A, 13th century) which is now mutilated at the start and end.  Fortunately Ms. Patmos, St. John’s Library 215 (=P, 12-13th c.) is complete at the end, and has only lost a couple of leaves at the front.  The material at the start of the catena is found in Ms. Vienna theol. gr. 59 (13th c.).

A and P both descend from a copy in uncial.  A is the better, as P has been contaminated with material from the commentary of Theodoret.  Fortunately this is usually placed in the same places, and can be readily identified.

Indirect tradition

The material contained in the Palestinian catena is good, but the same material also appears in secondary catenas; catenas that used the Palestinian catena as a source.  This means that this indirect tradition can be a control on mistakes in the text.

The catenas that form this tradition appear in two forms; either a condensed version of the whole catena, or else a collection of extracts from across the catena.

Printed editions

It was always obvious to scholars that it should be possible to recover the commentary of Eusebius in almost complete form from these materials.  B. de Montfaucon printed an edition of his commentary on Pss.1-118, which is reprinted in PG 23, cols. 71-1396.  J.-B. Pitra reedited this in Analecta sacra Spicilegio Solesmensi parata, 3: Patres antenicaeni, Venice: S. Lazaro (1883), p.365-529.

Angelo Mai added the remainder, from Pss. 119-150, which is reprinted in PG 24, 9-78.  Unfortunately the materials used were printed with insufficient care, and are contaminated by material from Origen.

Carmelo Curti wrote a series of articles on this subject, all reprinted in Eusebiana 1: Commentarii in Psalmos, Catania 1989 (2nd ed).  Unfortunately I have never managed to see this, but I’ve just put in an ILL for it.[1]

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  1. [1]Update, 5th June, 2015.  I came across this post this week, which I had entirely forgotten about.  I wish that I had added the sources at the time.  I think that the main source was Angelo di Berardino, Patrology: The Eastern Fathers from the Council of Chalcedon (451) to John of Damascus (d.750), 2006, p.618 f.↩

Lost Roman legal text found

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There’s still stuff out there.  This report from University College London tells us that someone (unspecified) has found 17 fragments of parchment in a binding in a manuscript or book (unspecified).  They contain parts of a lost text! 

It’s not at all uncommon to find bits of medieval books used as extra leaves at the ends of early printed books.  They’re parchment, which is tough, while the boards of the binding were added later.  At the end of the middle ages there was a surfeit of handwritten books, often of little value, which went to all sorts of purposes.  Lots of medieval service books, student copies of medieval school texts, and so on.  Ask to see volumes in any collection of early printed books, and you will as often as not find yourself looking at one of these in the end papers.

Many a rare manuscript was sent to the printers to be printed, and afterwards was used for parchment in this way.  Clearly this was one of them; although when it was dismembered is not stated.

The letters on the fragments are a mixture of uncial and semi-uncial, say 400-500 AD.  So the bits are from an ancient codex.  If they were in a binding, how did they get there?  Is it possible — God forbid — that an ancient book made it all the way to the renaissance and was then chopped up for bindings, unrecognised?  Or did it come from some manuscript, itself bound that way during the middle ages?

Here’s a striking fragment.  The title is in red, and starts with an R with a line across it.  Then the word PRESCR…, the start of a Praescriptio of some sort.  The next line contains the end of the heading: AUG. IUL. PRAESENTI — Augustus, to Julius Praesens.  This is clearly the intro to an imperial rescript (=decree).

codex_gregorianus

The text is indeed a legal one.  Simon Corcoran writes:

One complete and five partial headings to imperial constitutions have so far been identified, supplying, in addition to Julius Praesens, the names of three other addressees, and explicitly attesting four emperors: Antoninus (i.e. Caracalla, AD198-217), Gordian III (AD238-244), Philip (AD244-249), and his son Philip junior, who was associated in power with his father.

So the volume contains 3rd century rescripts.  Their conclusion, therefore, is that these are parts of the lost legal code of Gregorianus!  (Bill Thayer has some notes on what was previously known about that, here).

Who would have thought that January 2010 would be marked by the recovery of an ancient text!?

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Codex Aesinas of Tacitus

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email tells me that quite a bit of the Codex Aesinas of Tacitus – the sole surviving ms. of the minor works – is online.  And so it seems to be.  You go to this website:

http://www.icpal.beniculturali.it/esito_fotografico.html

scroll down, and search for “Aesinas”.  And up come a lot of pages!

I wonder what else is hidden in this site?

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The Armenian manuscripts of the French National Library

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The catalogue of Armenian manuscripts at the French National Library tells an interesting story of how the pre-revolution holdings were assembled. 

It all starts when Francis I of France entered into a treaty with the Grand Turk, and established a permanent ambassador in Constantinople.  This opened the Turkish state to French scholars in search of Greek texts.  Bindings of Henri II in the Royal collection show that Armenian manuscripts were being acquired in the middle of the 16th century.  But it was only in the second half of the 17th century, under the influence of Colbert, that a definite policy of acquiring Armenian mss came into being, as an official letter to the traveller Antoine Galland (1646-1715) shows, sent just before his third voyage to the East in 1679.  This instructed him to buy:

“…all the ancient Armenian books that can be found, and above all books of history by a certain author named Moses [of Khorene] in that language; also Armenian translations of the bible, written in ancient times, because an Armenian bible has recently been printed in Holland.” [1]

Colbert was interested in Armenian affairs, not least because there was an Armenian colony at Marseilles involved in the trade to Persia and India, and he arranged for Louis XIV to grant permission on 11 August 1669 to an Armenian bishop-cum-printer Oskan of Yerevan to operate at Marseilles.  This in turn sparked interest among Paris litterateurs like Richard Simon and Eusebe Renaudot in what bishop Oskan was doing.  These court Catholics made use of creeds as part of the literary war against Protestantism, to demonstrate the antiquity of catholic formulations.  A Dominican sent by Colbert to Ethiopia acquired one Armenian ms. in Cyprus on the way.  Others were bought from French merchants or travellers.  In this sort of way 165 Armenian mss were gathered in the Royal library alone prior to the French Revolution. 

Colbert himself acquired mss, as did other great persons of state or religious orders.  The collection of Renaudot went with the rest of his rich library to the Maurist fathers of St. Germains-des-Pres, which was seized at the revolution.

The first French scholar to interest himself in the study of the Armenian language was Petis de la Croix (1653-1716).  His father had been secretary-interpreter to the French ambassador in Constantinople for more than 20 years, from 1670.  De la Croix himself was a translator for the king.  He left a large Armenian-French dictionary in manuscript, assisted probably by the former Armenian patriarch of Constantinople and Jerusalem, who had been removed from Constantinople by the ambassador, the Marquis de Feriol, and held under arrest in the Bastile from 1706 until his death in 1711.  During his arrest the patriarch copied a number of Armenian mss now in the BNF.  Renaudot was authorised to negotiate with him concerning his possible release and return to the East.

A mission to the East in 1728-30 by Sevin and Fourmount resulted in the acquisition of 134 pieces.  A letter home by Sevin on 22 Dec. 1728 reveals optimism:

“Most of the works of Nestorius, Dioscorus, and some other famous heretics, have been translated into that language [Armenian] and it would be important to recover them, as well as various historical pieces composed in ancient times by the Armenians.  One of them, a friend of Fonseca, flatters himself that he has the power to supply us with these things but as the books of the Armenians are very carefully written and also mostly decorated with figures of plants and animals, a very high price is placed on them, which prevented me from buying the six that he brought to me, consisting of New Testaments, Rituals, and translations of St. Chrysostom, which it would be easy to find again.” 

In a last minute note on the same letter Sevin adds:

“Since I wrote the above, Mr. Fonseca has shown us in a house 160 Armenian mss, i.e. more than there are in all the libraries of Europe altogether, and even in all of Constantinople.  These mss are composed of commentaries on scripture, translations of the fathers, ancient works of theology and books of history; the most important is that of Armenia, which is not to be had at Paris for less than £500.  We have been promised also the history of the martyrs of Palestine by Eusebius, a piece which we don’t have in Greek, and which would throw a considerable light on the first three centuries of the church.  The acquisition of so many manuscripts in one language is very important, and there would be some risk in awaiting your order to buy it.”

Sevin went on to buy the mss anyway, for a total of £15,000, an incredible sum, and then, naturally ran into difficulties.  Sevin also stated that he would have to steal one ms, because the church to which it belonged could not sell its possessions.  The end result of his efforts, tho, was to substantially augment the holdings of the library further.

[1] Henri Omont, Missions archeologiques francaises en Orient au XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles, 1, Paris, 1902, p.206.

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The gospel of Judas saga continues

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Herbert Krosney, who wrote much the best book on the skullduggery around the finding, selling and dismemberment of the manuscript of the ps.Gospel of Judas has written an update on events since then.  This can be found here, at a page run by Marvin Meyer.  It’s explosive stuff.

The manuscript floated around the art world for 20 years.  It was then sold to an Akron art dealer, Bruce Ferrini, who had started to dismember it and sell it piecemeal.  But he was unable to pay the seller, who repossessed it.  There was always a question, therefore, of whether Ferrini had actually handed back all that he still had.  Ferrini then went bankrupt.

… on March 17th, 2008, St. Patrick’s Day, when Ferrini was finally deposed (after many attempts to get him on the stand) in Akron. The proceedings took a full day.  Ferrini not only admitted that he had withheld materials in 2001.  He also left the court-supervised proceedings at lunchtime, along with his lawyer, and returned to the court an hour or so later with a sort of lawyer’s briefcase with what appeared to be full page fragments inside.

These were delivered to the custody of the court-appointed receiver, and it was agreed that they would be photographed and identified by an expert, a Coptologist, but under strict conditions of secrecy and not for public distribution or knowledge.  No one in the know – very few people outside the lawyers, I should add – were allowed to see the photographs, nor was any public report on their contents permitted.  This secrecy was court-ordered and agreed to by all the lawyers and claimants in the case.

The photographs were sent to Prof. Gregor Wurst … What [Gregor Wurst] discovered within these materials was essentially the balance of the Gospel of Judas.

The site also gives more detail on the missing material.

The question remains, however, as to what has become of the other three manuscripts from Egypt, sold at the same time to Ferrini and given the same treatment.  The Sahidic ms. of three letters of Paul seems to have been recovered, thankfully.  But of the Coptic Exodus, we know little.  The Greek mathematical treatise is still unpublished also.  All this secrecy…

Thanks to Evangelical Textual Criticism for this one.

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The text tradition of Hippolytus “Commentary on Daniel”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A question has reached me about the Commentary on Daniel of Hippolytus, especially with regard to the passage in 4.23.3:

For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, eight days before the kalends of January [December 25th], the 4th day of the week [Wednesday], while Augustus was in his forty-second year, [2 or 3BC] but from Adam five thousand and five hundred years.  He suffered in the thirty third year, 8 days before the kalends of April [March 25th], the Day of Preparation, the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar [29 or 30 AD], while Rufus and Roubellion and Gaius Caesar, for the 4th time, and Gaius Cestius Saturninus were Consuls. (tr. Tom Schmidt).

But what is the textual basis for this?  It doesn’t appear in the Ante-Nicene Fathers version of the text.

A look at the Sources Chretiennes (14; p. 64) edition tells me that the Greek text of the work is entirely recovered from quotations in catenas.  In a catena, each quotation appears underneath the relevant biblical verse, and is labelled with the name of the author from whom it has been taken.  So the sequence is fairly clear, even if all you have is extracts, provided that the original author wrote his commentary in the same sequence as the biblical text.

The process of recovering the commentary began with one of the great 17th century editors, B. Corderius, who printed the first fragment of the text in his Expositio patrum graecorum in psalmos, vol. 3, Anvers, 1646 on p.951.  In 1672 Fr. Combefis, Bibliothecae graecorum patrum auctarium novissimum, vol. 1, p. 50-55 printed two more important fragments, this time commenting on Susanna.  Since then various editors have accrued more and more fragments from the catenas, and are listed in Bonwetsch’s edition of 1897.  A list of mss. and editions appears on p.xxviii of Bonwetsch (p.43 of the Google books PDF).

The remains seem to be divided into four books.  The last addition to the stock was in 1911, when Dioboutonis printed new fragments from a 10th century manuscript from the monastery of Meteores.  The end result is a text which contains few obvious lacunas.  However there must still be material which is lost, especially in book 1.

The text cannot be said to be in good condition.  The manuscripts in which the material is preserved are often in a poor state, or illegible.  The most recent edition, that of Bonwetsch in the Griechische Christlicher Schriftsteller 1 in 1897 (online, thankfully) often indicates words added by conjecture or asterisks where there are gaps impossible to fill.

But one compensation is that an Old Slavonic translation exists of the entire work as it once existed in Greek.  This tells us, of course, that the Greek text must still have existed in the 10th century when these translations were made.  Four manuscripts of this translation exist, none complete, but which fortunately have their omissions in different places.  This means that we can read the whole work pretty much as it came from the hand of the author.  The most ancient manuscript is 12-13th century.  Fortunately Bonwetsch translated the Old Slavonic into German, and the translation was used by the SC editor to help with the Greek.

Our passage is extant in Greek, and appears on pp.306-7 of the SC edition.  But the SC editor queries whether part of the text –“Gaius Caesar, for the 4th time, and Gaius Cestius Saturninus” — was interpolated by a later writer.

The apparatus of Bonwetsch (p.242; p.295 of the PDF) tells us that this passage was quoted by the Syriac writer  George, Bishop of the Arab tribes.  The apparatus also refers to George Syncellus, and Cyril of Scythopolis as using bits of it.  The text is given in mss. ABP and S; A= Athos, Vatopedi 260 / Paris suppl. gr. 682 (10-11th century); B=Chalcis 11 (15-16th c.); P=Paris gr. 159 p.469f.; S=the old Slavonic.

So… the text is reasonably well established, and reasonably reliable.  The Greek for our passage seems sound, with only a couple of bits in brackets.  We have a good early witness for the text, and also a translation in a 7th century Syriac writer and a 10th century translation.

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