Tag: British Library Digitisation

A post on the British Library manuscripts blog tells me something once almost unimaginable: that fully half the Greek manuscripts in the collection are now online and accessible to the world 90% of the Greek manuscripts of the BL will be online by March.  All credit is due to Julian Harrison and his team for this massive work, and also to the Stavros Niarchos foundation –  never was Greek shipping money so well deployed! – and the other funding bodies.

The full list of 40 new manuscripts is at the blog above.  But here are the items which seem of most interest to us.  (And thanks to Cillian O’Hogan for making it much easier to write this list this time!)

• Add MS 24372, Gregory of Nazianzus, Orationes: 1, 11, 14-16, 19, 21, 24, 38, 39, 40-45; 11th c.
• Add MS 24381, Gregory of Nazianzus, Orationes, most being imperfect at the beginning, owing to miniatures which have been torn out. 1079 or 1088 AD.
• Add MS 28823, John Zonaras, Commentary on the Canons of the Apostles, of the ecumenical and local councils and of the Fathers, and related texts. 4th quarter of the 14th century.
• Add MS 28825, Greek translation of Ephraem the Syrian, Homilies, imperfect, and other patristic texts, including Isaiah of Gaza, Asceticon, Nilus of Ankara, Epistola ad Diaconum Achillium. Marcian of Bethlehem, and John of Lycopolis. 12th century.
• Add MS 34554, Lives of saints and theological discourses, imperfect. 16th century.
• Add MS 35212, John Chrysostom, In Genesim homiliae 10-17, imperfect. 11th century.
• Add MS 36669, Apophthegmata Patrum: a compilation of the Greek Church Fathers, bearing the title Λειμὼν ἐνθάδε καρπῶν πεπληρωμένος. 14th century. In a 17th-century binding of boards covered with leather with gilt ornament, the centrepiece representing on the upper cover the Crucifixion, on the lower cover David and the angel of the Lord.
• Add MS 36754, Basil of Caesarea, Homilies on the Hexameron and John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis, imperfect and mutilated. 11^th century.
• Add MS 36821, Works of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, with the marginal commentary of Maximus the Confessor, and additional texts relating to Pseudo-Dionysius. 1st half of the 10th century, possibly copied from an uncial manuscript of Pseudo-Dionysius written by Methodius, future Patriarch of Constantinople, at Rome.
• Add MS 39608, John Chrysostom, In Genesim homiliae 1-133. 13th century.
• Burney MS 100, Works of Aristotle, preceded by Porphyry, Isagoge. Italy, N? 1st half of the 15th century.
• Burney MS 111, Ptolemy, Geographia, with many diagrams and coloured maps, all except that on f 1v being later fifteenth-century replacements on inserted leaves. 4th quarter of the 14th century-1st quarter of the 15th century.
• Harley MS 5600, Homer, Iliad, with prefatory material. Florence, completed on 16 May 1466. With a full-page frontispiece in colours and gold on f 15v; a full white vine border in colours and gold on f 16r; 25 white vine initials in colours and gold.
• Kings MS 16, Homer, Iliad. Italy, 1431.

Marvellous!

Now how about making it possible to download a PDF of each manuscript?

UPDATE: A kind correspondent writes to advise me that this is actually the half way point of the current project; and that in fact 90% of all the mss will be online by the spring.  This is even better news!

The British Library continue their digitisation of their manscripts, which is very welcome.  They’ve moved on to the Royal collection, although the focus seems to have drifted back to digitising “pretty books” and medievalia, rather than the material that classics and patristics scholars will want.

There is a Tertullian in that collection, which ought to be online.  But I have given up making suggestions and requests, since it never seems to have any effect.

In the current upload only one volume is of interest:

• Royal 6 C. i   — Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae, England (St Augustine’s, Canterbury), 4th quarter of the 11th century.

The Stavros Niarchos foundation continue to fund the digitisation of Greek manuscripts at the British Library, who in consequence are still shovelling them online.  Thank you both, gentlemen: this is good news.  Long may it continue!

A new tranche of 75 was released today, bringing the total to 500.  Fortunately the library staff have started to give a summary of the contents of each manuscript, which can be found at the bottom of the post.

So, what goodies are there for patristic and classically minded people in this release?

• There’s a 16th c. copy of Photius’ Bibliotheca cod. 1-222 — i.e. nearly all of it — in Harley Ms. 5591.
• Hero of Alexandria, Pneumatica and De automatis, Harley 5605, with diagrams. (16th c.)  These are the texts in which he describes his machines.  Here’s one of the diagrams (fol. 10v).  I was curious to see whether these were copies of ancient diagrams.  But … they look more like modern ones to me.

Useful to be able to see what the manuscript contains, tho.

I wonder if there are online English translations of these two works?  Greek scientific literature is shamefully neglected.

• Ms. Harley 5638 is not well catalogued, being given merely as “Plutarch and Philostratus”.  Here is where the limitations of the online viewer kick in — it really would not be a simple task to leaf through the book and discover precisely what it contains.
• Harley 5643 contains a “patristic miscellany”, much of it from Chrysostom (and there’s a thought: given that you usually can’t breathe for codices of Chrysostom in any collection of Greek mss., isn’t he shamefully under-represented in the 500 mss we have had so far?)  There’s a scholion of Eusebius in there too — on what I cannot say.
• Harley 5646 is another of the same, mostly 216 letters by Chrysostom.
• Harley 5677 contains the Catena of Nicetas on the Psalms!  Now that is well worth having!  And almost immediately I learn something novel and interesting on fol. 1v, which is how the names of the authors excerpted appeared in 17th century copies of  the catenas.  For it is very hard to work this out, from editions of catenae like those of Cramer.

(How I wish it was possible to link to what I want to display, at the resolution I want, and to embed the precise view that I want, rather than having to screen-grab bits like this?  Surely it should be possible to pass a few parameters to the display engine?)

The sigla are in red in the margin.  The top one is “xru” — probably Chrysostom.  The lower one is “athana” — probably Athanasius.  I wonder what the bit above the name is, in each case?  What we need now, of course, is a list of authors and folio numbers for each.  That would be quite a task, tho!

• Harley 5689 is a bunch of Chrysostom, including homiles 4-8 of the homilies against the Jews.  This one is 11th century.
• Harley 6296 is the “impious Porphyry”, De Abstinentia.
• Harley 6305 is medical works by Galen and Paul of Aegina.
• Harley 6318 is two books of Stobaeus (and why hasn’t Stobaeus ever been translated?)

It would not be right to ignore two mss. containing work by Manuel Chrysoloras, such as Harley 6505.  Chrysoloras is the father of all modern Greek studies.  He was a Byzantine diplomat who was persuaded to come and teach in Florence at the very end of the 14th century, and who proved capable of reducing the myriad complexities of Byzantine grammars down to something that could be comprehended for the first time by a non-native speaker.  Before it, fol. 1v has with an alphabet, and a few marginal signs at the bottom.  Ever wondered how we know that a sign indicates “obelise”? —

Of course I am just scratching the surface here.  Go and explore!

From the BL manuscripts blog I learn that a further 74 Greek manuscripts have been added to their online site.  The site uses proprietary technology to ensure that users can’t download images — perish the thought! — but is still better than nothing.

The blog post gives a list of manuscripts.  Previous lists just gave the shelfmark, but this time, thankfully, they have indicated the contents.

There’s quite a chunk of useful material here.  A few highlights:

• Harley 5564 – Epiphanius of Salamis, De duodecim gemmis, 16th century.
• Harley 5590 – Eusebius of Caesarea, Commentary on the Psalms, 16th century
• Harley 5592 – Photius, Bibliotheca, 16th century
• Harley 5593 – Works of Photius, Aristides, Philip of Side etc., 1555
• Harley 5596 – Divinations, magic, etc., 15th century

I admit to rubbing my eyes a bit when it came to Harley 5593 — Philip of Side?  Investigation gives a bit more: