Tag: Information access

Doing it right – an new edition and Italian translation of a work by Hunain ibn Ishaq

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It’s always delightful to see things moving in the right direction (especially when it isn’t because I pushed them).  Quite by accident I came across this site, which is the English-language page of an Italian journal.

The arab version of De differentiis febrium of Galen, edited by Claudio De Stefani, is the first issue of the Collection «Studi di Eikasmós Online».

Galeni De differentiis febrium versio Arabica (Bologna 2004)

Hunain ibn Ishâq di al-Hîra (808-873[?] A.D.), physician and philologist, author of original works and translations into Syriac and Arabic, was the most important arabic translator of the Middle Ages, and one of the best in the world. Because of this celebrity, many translations from Greek were wrongly attributed to him in the arabic mss. Most of his translations from Greek concern the works of Galen of Pergamon (128/131-210/213 A.D.). Here is the translation of one of Galen’s pathologic works on fevers (in two books): it was largely spread in the byzantine Greece (many Greek mss. preserve this work and several summaries on the same subject), in Western Europe (there are some latin translations from Greek, for example that of Burgundius), and in the Arabic East, where the galenic doctrines on fevers were going to survive for a long time. This electronic edition is interesting for people working on Galen, Arabists, historians of medicine.

Book I,1-8
(file.pdf)
Book I,9-14
(file.pdf)
Book II,1-7
(file.pdf)
Book II,8-18
(file.pdf)

The text (as a pdf file) can be scrolled or free downloaded (clic the file name and choose “Save as”), and printed for study. All rights are reserved for commercial reasons and aims.

Now this is simply splendid!  The files contain an electronic Arabic text with Italian translation.  And quite rightly too!  For the subject is so obscure that very few people will be interested. 

Most such pieces of work vanish into specialist libraries and never become known to the public.  Here someone — who? — has realised that there is another audience out there, one that will never see the printed paper journal, will never buy it, will never read its contents or know of them; the general educated public.  People like us, in fact.

Well done, the Italians!  In one stroke they have probably multipled by ten the number of people who can read this.

Thanks to this site.

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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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Harnack’s Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I learn from Wieland Wilker at the Textualcriticism list that all four volumes of this (vol. 1 pts 1 and 2, and vol. 2 pts 1 and 2) are online.  I was able to find three of them easily enough.  But the one I could not find was vol. 1 part 2; that is here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=tlwtAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=editions:OCLC6778038&lr=

The work is very valuable still, because Harnack crammed it full of erudition which later compendia such as Quasten, good as they are, tend to omit.

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Albocicade at Archive.org

Posted on by Roger Pearse

French internetter Albocicade has been busy at Archive.org, uploading material of considerable value.  You can see his efforts here.

Among the jewels is an index to a French translation of the 19th century of the complete works of Chrysostom.  We don’t possess a complete Chrysostom in English, so it is something to know that Bareille’s exists.  And Albocicade has uploaded it!

There is also a French translation of the Demonstration of the Faith by the early Arabic Christian writer Abu Qurra, plus a file compiled from Migne of all the Greek works of this author.

And not least, an abbreviated French translation of Nicephorus Callistus, translated in 1676.

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Armenian bibliography of bible commentaries/catenas

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m still looking for Eznik Petrosyan’s book on Armenian bible commentaries. I have now found somewhere online where this item is available.  My interest is in catenas, of course.  The book is published by the Armenian Bible Society, who have a website.  It’s here.

Bibliography of Armenian Biblical Commentaries
( Bishop Yeznik Petrossian & Armen Ter-Stepanian )

Code  BIBLIOGRAPHY | ISBN  9993052841 | Pages   129 | Format  300 X 210 X 13 | Language  Armenian Eastern | Weight (kg)  0.600 | Publisher  The Bible Society of Armenia | Published  2002 |

Compiled by Bishop Yeznik Petrossian (Holy Etchmiadzin) and Armen Ter-Stepanian (Matenadaran). This volume represents many years of tireless effort to unearth details of Biblical commentaries authored by Armenian scholars.

The price is “5.000” AMD.  This is the Armenian Dram, the currency of Armenia.  I think we would say 5,000AMD, which is about $13. 

But … there seems no way to place an order for a copy!  How very, very weird.  So I have sent them an email.

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Medieval mss from Switzerland online?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Very good news from Switzerland, which has launched the e-codices site:

The goal of e-codices is to provide access to the medieval manuscripts of Switzerland via a virtual library. On the e-codices site, complete digital reproductions of the manuscripts are linked with corresponding scholarly descriptions. Our aim is to serve not only manuscript researchers, but also interested members of the general public.

At the moment, the virtual library contains 570 manuscripts from 24 different libraries. The virtual library will be continuously updated and extended.

This is what we want to see; the mss becoming accessible to us all.  Well done the Swiss!

When you access the site, they want you to click to “accept terms”.  Yes, well, that is just silly, lads — how are you going to enforce that on someone in Turkmenistan?  But at least they have recognised that the world and his wife use English!

I did a search for ‘Eusebius’, and up come various catalogue entries.  The mss seem to be mostly Latin; descriptions were in German, but none the worse for that.  ‘Tertullian’ brought up no results.  ‘Origen’ gave nothing; ‘Origenes’ 8 mss.  Interestingly this included a “Martin Bodmer” result — is it possible that all the Bodmer mss are now online?  If so, that would be very exciting!

And … there are 74 Bodmer mss online.  I wonder what treasures this contains?

H/t Open Access Manuscript Library of Switzerland at Charles Ellwood Jones.

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Scanty referencing in older sources

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m going through the fragments of Eusebius printed by Angelo Mai in the 1820’s from catenas.  These often refer pretty briefly to the sources from which he copied them.  Thus one fragment is headed (translated):

From Macarius Chrysocephalus’ Florilegium, in Villoison, Anecdota, vol. 2, p.74.

Hum, yes, well of course.

Fortunately I can find information online, that tells me the book was printed in two volumes in 1781, that the author was “De Villoison”.  Knowing that ligatures are not well handled by Google Books search engine, I search for author=Villoison and title=Anecdota, and behold!  I find that the book is actually on Google books, here, the two volumes bound as one (the second volume starts on p.514 of the PDF).

Likewise I can find a mysterious volume by “R. Simon” which turns out to be A critical history of the text of the New Testament, here.

When I started on the Eusebius project, I travelled by car to Cambridge, spending around $60 in petrol to do so.  I went to the University Library.  I went to the admissions desk, and paid $15, and renewed my library ticket which had lapsed.  Then I went to the Rare Books room (which only Privileged People are permitted to enter, with a letter of reference from an academic), and I ordered up the two editions of Mai’s book.  Then I looked to see which pages I needed.  Then I filled in a paper form, in pencil of course.  Then I handed it in, with the books, and went away, and came back a week later.  And then I paid 25c per page for a grainy photocopy.  This I took home, turned into a PDF, and have used ever since.

How much easier and cheaper it was today, to find this source which I probably want only a few lines from!  We are truly, truly blest!

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Daremberg and Saglio’s “Le Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

… is online here.  (The page is the start of stuff on bruma).  This French dictionary looks very useful, and the referencing to ancient sources isn’t bad either.

Thanks to Bill Thayer for pointing me at this one!

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