Tag: Manuscripts

Coptic monastery set alight; fate of Coptic manuscripts unknown

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There have been vague reports on twitter for a few days of a 4th century Coptic church, the “Virgin Mary church”, being burned by the Moslem Brotherhood’s thugs in Egypt.  Today I find something solid, and it looks grim.

From Jihadwatch.org:

Ancient Egyptian Christian Monastery Set Aflame

As Muslim Brotherhood supporters continue their jihadi rampage on Egypt’s Christian churches—several dozens have now been attacked—it’s important to remember that their hostility is not simply directed to churches, but any and every expression of Christianity, including crosses, Bible stores, and even remote monasteries.

Most recently, for instance, early Thursday morning (Egyptian time), hundreds of pro-Morsi rioters set fire to the Virgin Mary Monastery, also known as Muharraq Monastery, in Quwsaya, Asyut—one of the oldest monasteries in the world, which held many ancient Coptic manuscripts, likely now all turned to ash.  Its flames reached surrounding Coptic Christian homes, setting some 15 aflame.

The news link above leads to an Arabic language site, but we can use Google translate to get the gist:

Supporters of imprisoned president set fire to the Muharraq Quisya centre in Assiut.

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Sparked hundreds of supporters of President Mohamed Morsi, isolated in Assiut, in the early hours of Thursday morning, the fire in the Diocese monastery Muharraq Qusiya center , and the flames spread to more than 15 homes adjacent to the Copts.  The civil defense forces are trying now to control the fire that broke out in the monastery of the oldest monasteries in the archaeological world.

This comes after the establishment of thousands of supporters of President isolated march night protest through the streets of Center City Qusiya condemn the decision of the curfew and the imposition of emergency law, in addition to resolving Aatsami “fourth Adawiya” and “Renaissance” by force by the police and military forces and the accompanying casualties.

In a related development, a number of supporters of President Mohamed Morsi, isolated fired two shells from guns “mortar” on a police station Sahel Selim, east of the Nile Assiut Governorate, in an attempt to storming resulted in the demolition of the center and interface wall.  Military sources said that the car tracked armored and armed forces on their way to the police station amid heavy exchange of automatic weapons fire between the security forces and a number of supporters of President orphaned.  The sources said that it had been determine where it launched a missile village “Boit” east of the Nile and the reinforcements being sent military and police, sources reported that there were casualties among the security forces Safwat.

The Al-Muharraq monastery has an English language website here, and a short Wikipedia article here.  The Tour Egypt site has a long page on it here, which includes something on the library:

The library of the monastery is divided into two main sections. The first  section contains thousands of modern books and reference material dating from  the 19th and 20th centuries. They cover religion, science and other subjects  written in various languages including Coptic, Greek, Arabic, English and  Amharic. The second section of the library contains hand-written manuscripts in  Coptic and Arabic. Scientifically indexed, these priceless manuscripts date back  as early as the 13th century.

The monastery website helpfully explains the various names of the monastery, including the name of the “burned monastery”, and “Deir al-Muharraq”.

For a long time the place has been well known as “Virgin Mary monastery”. It has also been reputed as “Muharraq Monastery”, and “Mount Koskam Monastery”.

But it does make clear that the monastery has a manuscript library:

There has been a great interest in Coptic manuscripts whether they are originally in Coptic language or translated into Coptic since the European movement of geographical and scientific discoveries. Travelers, explorers, researchers, scholars and scientists collected manuscripts from ancient monasteries and churches, and took home all what they could during the 17th. century when the Europeans began to take interest in studying Coptic language (stated by Mallon in his introduction to: Coptic Agronomy)

Some famous transcriber monks are:

Hegomen Kuzman (14th. C.) who cared for copying some books of the Holy Bible.

Hegomen Ecluda (14th. C.) (Pope Ghabrial’s brother) copied the Coptic lectionary.

Hegomen Yohanna (19th. C.) from Etleedem copied 64 manuscripts within 48 years. He was worthily called the father of transcription.

Some important manuscripts in the monastery have been printed and published.

However the main churches are apparently 19th century.

The Coptic Encyclopedia has an article on Dayr al-Muharraq (why on earth can’t the Arabs organise among themselves a standard transcription of their language?):

Nothing is known for certain about the date of the foundation of this monastery. A sermon attributed to the patriarch THEOPHILUS OF ALEXANDRIA (384-412) credits him with a vision of the Holy Virgin in which she revealed to him that the principal church of the monastery in the place where Mary and her son sojourned during their flight from Herod was consecrated by Jesus himself, assisted by his disciples. Guidi (1917) has published the Oriental versions. The Arabic text is also given in a work entitled Al-La’ali’ (1966, pp. 56-70). A reworking of this sermon is attributed to Zechariah, bishop of Sakha at the beginning of the eighth century (pp. 40-55).

The monastery is said to have been founded by Saint PACHOMIUS (Simaykah, 1932, Vol. 2, p. 121), but the Lives of Pachomius, both Greek and Coptic, do not speak of it. The most ancient source appears to be the HISTORY OF THE PATRIARCHS of the Egyptian church, which in its list of the places where the Holy Virgin stayed with Jesus in Egypt names Qusqam, but not Dayr al-Muharraq.

The clearest source is without doubt ABU SALIH THE ARMENIAN from the beginning of the thirteenth century (1895, pp. 224-27). He knew the legend of the Holy Family’s FLIGHT INTO EGYPT and of the consecration of this church, but he never spoke of a monastery.

…

A manuscript of the Synaxarion deriving from the library of the Dayr al-Muharraq indicates the feast of the qummus ‘Abd al-Malak on 18 Babah. This saint built or restored the Church of Saint George. He lived in the Arab period, prior to the date of the manuscript (1867, according to Troupeau, 1974, Vol. 2, p. 30).

In 1305 Marqus, bishop of Qusqam, was present at the preparation of the chrism (Munier, 1943, p. 37), and in another manuscript about the same event, Marqus is called bishop of al-Qusiyyah. Since the monastery is only a little over 4 miles (7 km) from this town, he was probably bishop of these two places (Muyser, 1945, p. 158).

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, several monks of Dayr al-Muharraq became patriarchs of Alexandria: in 1370 GABRIEL, in 1378 MATTHEW I, in 1452 MATTHEW II, and in 1484 JOHN XIII.

So the solid evidence is of foundation before 1300.

But what of the manuscripts?  I can find no more information online.

It’s so very hard to get useful information, because the BBC and other “mainstream” outlets seem to be ignoring most of the violence, and all of the violence against Copts.  Thank heavens for Jihad Watch and its staff, trawling through the Arabic news output.

If anyone has more details, I should be glad to hear it.

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Augustine, Letter to Firmus – English translation

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An article by Lambot informs me of the existence of an interesting letter by St. Augustine, and a correspondent has let me know that an English translation exists in the Fathers of the Church volume of the City of God, to which the letter relates.[1]

While discoveries of sermons by St. Augustine have never ceased, his correspondence has remained pretty much where the Maurist fathers left it.  Only 5 letters have been discovered since the late 17th century; 2 in 1732 by G. Bessel, 1 in 1901 by Dom G. Morin, and finally 2 in 1898 and 1904 by A. Goldbacher, the CSEL editor of Augustine’s letters.

A further letter is found in two manuscripts of Augustine’s De civitate dei, and might reasonably have come to light earlier.  The mss. are the Reims 403 (12-13th c.) and Paris Saint-Genevieve 2757 (14-15th c.).

The letter is deeply interesting for what it tells us about the circulation of the works of a major author in his own time.

Here is the letter.  I have copied a few of the notes from the Fathers of the Church translation, which I have prefixed with FoC:

To Firmus,[2] My Distinguished and Deservedly Honored Lord, and My Cherished Son, Augustine Sends Greeting in the Lord.

The books on the City of God which you most eagerly requested I have sent you as I promised, having also reread them myself. That this, with God’s help, should be done has been urged by my son and your brother, Cyprian, who has furnished just that insistence I hoped would be forthcoming.

There are twenty-two sections.[3] To put all these into one whole would be cumbersome. If you wish that two volumes be made of them, they should be so apportioned that one volume contain ten books, the other twelve. For, in those ten, the empty teachings of the pagans have been refuted, and, in the remainder, our own religion has been demonstrated and defended—though, to be sure, in the former books the latter subject has been dealt with when it was more suitable to do so, and in the latter, the former.

If, however, you should prefer that there be more than two volumes, you should make as many as five. The first of these would contain the first five books, where argument has been advanced against those who contend that the worship, not indeed of gods, but of demons, is of profit for happiness in this present life. The second volume would contain the next five books, where [a stand has been taken against those] who think that, for the sake of the life which is to come after death, worship should be paid, through rites and sacrifices, whether to these divinities or to any plurality of gods what­ever. The next three volumes ought to embrace four books each; for this part of our work has been so divided that four books set forth the origin of that City, a second four its prog­ress—or, as we might choose to say, its development,—the final four its appointed ends.

If the diligence you have shown for procuring these books will be matched by diligence in reading them, it is rather from your testing than from my promises that you will learn how far they will help you. As for those books belonging to this work on the City of God which our brothers there in Carthage do not yet have, I ask that you graciously and will­ingly acceed to their requests to have copies made. You will not grant this favor to many, but to one or two at most, and they themselves will grant it to others. Among your friends, some, within the body of Christian folk, may desire instruc­tion; in the case of others, bound by some superstition, it may appear that this labor of ours can, through God’s grace, be used to liberate them. How you are to share it with them you must yourself decide.

For my part I shall take care to make frequent inquiry, God willing, what progress you are making in my writings as you read them. Surely, you cannot fail to know how much a man of education is helped toward understanding the written word by repeated reading. No difficulty in understanding occurs (or, if any, very little) where there is facility in reading, and this gains in scope with successive repetitions. Constant appli­cation [brings to fruition] what [through inattention] would have remained immature.

In earlier letters, my distinguished and deservedly honored lord and my son Firmus, you have shown acquaintance with the books on the Academics that I composed when my con­version was yet fresh.[4] Please write in reply how you came to this knowledge.

The range of subject matter comprised in the twenty-two books of my composition is shown in the epitome that I send you.

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  1. [1]Lambot, Lettre inedite de S. Augustin relative au “De Civitate Dei“, Revue Benedictine 51, 1939, p.109-121.  The first couple of paragraphs I give below; and Augustine, City of God, Books I-VII (tr. Zema and Walsh), FotC (Washington, 1950) — appendix p. 399.↩
  2. [2]FoC: Lambot (113f.) collects the evidence identifying the African priest, Firmus. In Epist. 200, Augustine speaks of his intimate friendship with him. The closing paragraph of Epist. 82 (= Jerome, Epist. 116) is one of the texts which reveal Firmus as carrying letters between Augus­tine and Jerome. A certain Cyprian named there as performing similar service is probably the Cyprian mentioned early in the present letter; cf. Lambot 115 n. 3. From Epist. 184A, addressed to the monks Peter and Abraham, we learn that Firmus was to bring them a copy of the first thirteen books of The City of God.↩
  3. [3]FoC: Lat. ‘quaterniones.’ The word ‘quaternio’ normally signifies one of the 16-page quires or signatures commonly used in the physical com­position of an ancient codex. Here it may well be synonymous with the literary division ‘liber’ (‘book’) ↩
  4. [4]FoC: The Contra Academicos, translated, under the title ‘Answer to Skeptics,’ by D. J. Kavanagh, OS.A., in the first volume of the Writings of Saint Augustine as found in this series. In discussing this passage, Lambot (114) reminds us that Augustine’s earliest writings were soon eclipsed by the greater works of his maturity. As we learn from Augustine’s Retractations (12), his own copy of the De beata vita showed gaps he could not fill. All but one of his treatises on the liberal arts had vanished from his shelves, though Augustine understood that copies were owned by others (Retract. 1.6). In the De Trinitate (15.xii.21) Augustine discusses the utility of his books on the Academics to any­one ‘who wishes to read them and can do so’ (‘qui potuerit et voluerit legere’)—language which suggests that it was hard to find a copy. Read in the light of this passage of the De Trinitate, Augustine’s request that Firmus write how he came to know the Contra Academicos gains point and, as Lambot remarks, is a guarantee of the authenticity of the letter.↩

Manuscripts online at the Walters Art Museum

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A bunch of gospel manuscripts and other items, mostly illuminated, are online at the Walters Art Museum here.  Blessedly, the Walters has made the images truly accessible:

This Web page links to complete sets of high-resolution archival images of    entire manuscripts from the collection of the Walters Art Museum, along    with detailed catalog descriptions. They are available for free under a Creative      Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.  Manuscripts    images and descriptions were created and are provided through Preservation    and Access grants awarded to the Walters Art Museum by the National    Endowment for the Humanities, 2008-2014.

Images are offered in four sizes:

  1. Master TIFF (600PPI for text pages/1200PPI [or highest resolution    attainable] for illuminated pages
  2. 300PPI TIFF
  3. JPEG (1800 pixels on the long side)
  4. Thumbnail JPEG (190 pixels on the long side)

For an animated “turning the pages” presentation of the manuscripts and    downloadable PDFs, visit    the Walters Art

Well done the Walters!  This is what we want.  Serious users of the collection do not want to be trapped by some custom “viewer application”.

What of the mss?  Well, they aren’t that interesting to us.  There is a large collection of Korans, for instance.  Here are a few that might be of wider interest:

There are also a bunch of Armenian gospel manuscripts there, which makes me wonder whether we actually have a critical edition of the Armenian bible yet?  Metzger deplored the absence of one in his book on the versiones decades ago.

A useful resource, I think.

 

 

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The Townley Homer at the British Library

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A very welcome addition to the British Library collection of digital manuscripts is announced on their blog today.  In an excellent article by Julian Harrison, Hooray for Homer!, we learn that BL. Burney 86, a 10th century manuscript with copious scholia, is now accessible here.

The article itself is really useful, giving the history of the Ms. in modern times, links to other Homer mss. at the British Library, and a bibliography.  It would be impossible and unnecessary to do this for every manuscript placed online; but it is nice to see, once in a while.

It is also very nice to see an appreciation of a manuscript that is of textual interest, rather than the “pretty pretty picture” type manuscript that tends too often to attract digitisation.

Scholia are remarkably hard to get access to, and only Eleanor Dickey’s handbook Greek scholarship is available to guide those interested.  So it is nice to see pictures in the blog article of the text, and some explanation (with translation) of what these have to offer.

Well done.

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Which manuscript of Leontius Byzantinus did Angelo Mai use?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The translation of Leontius of Byzantium’s Adversus fraudes Apollinistarum (CPG 6817) is going great guns.  But we have found at least one lacuna in the printed text, where a heading promises a quotation from Apollinarius, but is in fact followed by Leontius’ diatribe in reply.

The Greek text of this work was published by Angelo Mai in Spicilegium Romanum vol. X, part II, p.128-151.  I’m not sure that anyone has published an independent edition since, although Migne reprinted it in PG 86, cols. 1948-1976.

In part I of the same volume, p.v-vi, he mentions that:

I myself … obtained also a Greek codex of the treatises, ancient, complete and very rare, which once belonged to Cardinal Salvati, then to the Colonna family, and finally, a few years ago, while presiding at the Vatican library, it was brought in by me for a price; … if the Vatican codex should perish by an accident, it would be difficult to find another of this kind.

He also remarks that the Latin translation was made from a defective Greek manuscript, and indeed at one point Turrianus’ Latin did not contain the text given in Mai’s Greek.

But which manuscript did Mai use?  I could find no catalogue of Vatican Greek manuscripts online. But a search in the Pinakes database of Greek manuscripts reveals only a single manuscript of this text, Vatican gr. 2195, 10th c., and our text is on “p. 165-184.”[1]  CPG confirms that this is the only manuscript of this text known.

The work is preceded in the manuscript (p.1-50 and p.85-165) by Leontius’ Contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos libri tres, edited by Mai at the same time; and p.50-84 contain two further works against Severus.  Other works of other authors are also found therein.

The Latin translation printed by Migne was made before 1584 by Turrianus, as I remarked previously.  A correspondent, Albocicade, has kindly sent me some further information about Turrianus, or Francesco Torres, S.J., to give him his real name.  Among other things, he was the first translator of Arabic Christian writer, Theodore Abu Qurrah — presumably of his Greek works.

There is a summary of his life and work here.  There is a list of his publications here. A Google Books preview of a book that mentions him (text and n.26) is here.  All three are in French, I should add.

It would seem that others have wondered about what manuscripts Turrianus used.  There is a 1970 publication, “Zu griechischen Handschriften des Francisco Torres S.J.”, although just at the moment I cannot cope with more German.

Another correspondent, Walter Dunphy, added:

There is something about Torres in Hurter/Nomenclator vol.3,col.281. Long list of his publications in Sommerfeld: Bibliotheque (of SJ writers) vol.3, col.1231.

If you get PDF (big/slow!) from Gallica it’s image n.418.  (Difficult to navigate Gallica online.).

The work in question seems to have been published from the notes/papers left by Torres (cf. Canisius, IV, p.163).

All useful stuff to know – thank you both!

UPDATE: Reading the CPG, it looks as if a critical edition of Leontius’ works exists, by Brian Daley, and a google search reveals: “B. E. Daley, Leontius of Byzantium: A Critical Edition of his Works, with Prolegomena (Diss. Oxford, 1978).”

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  1. [1]Pinakes gives as its source of information: S. LILLA, Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae… Codices Vaticani graeci. Codices 2162-2254 (Codices Columnenses), Vaticano, 1985↩

Manuscripts online at the Spanish National Library

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A correspondent, Surburbanbanshee, has drawn my attention to the presence of digitised manuscripts at the Biblioteca Nacional de Espana website here.  If you click on the link “manuscritos” at the foot of the BNE page, you get all their manuscripts.

Of course a lot of these are modern, and of no interest to us.  Instead go to the advanced search, at the top of the all manuscripts page, select manuscritos and language as classical Greek or Latin.

I haven’t quite worked out how their  viewer works yet.  But it looks as if some PDF download is possible, which is good.  Indeed they use Adobe to display sections of the manuscript, in 50 page chunks – an excellent idea!  Why reinvent the wheel?

Greek mss:

Not a stellar collection, it must be said, but something.

There are rather more in Latin – some 900.  Here are a few:

That was what I got from the first 300. I’m afraid I couldn’t be bothered to wade through the other 600-odd mss.  Perhaps someone else will have more dedication than I!

UPDATE (8 July 2013): Banshee has come to our aid and looked through the next 300!  Here are the proceeds:

There are a few useful items in there, once more.  Thank you!

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Bamberg manuscripts online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The library website does it’s best to conceal the fact, but there are a number of very interesting manuscripts online at the Staatsbibliothek Bamberg Kaiser-Heinrich-Bibliothek site in Munich.  The top-level site is here, but unless you can wade through oceans of PR waffle, you won’t find the manuscripts.  These are here.

The online viewer isn’t very good; not nearly as user-friendly as the one at the Bibliotheque Nationale Francais Gallica site, nor even the British Library.  But I’m finding my way around it, so I suppose it’s mainly a case of unfamiliarity.  There’s no PDF download either.  I haven’t managed to find the zoom facility either.

The texts are all Latin, as far as I can see.  Generally they are 9-10th c.

There is a 5th century ms. of Livy’s 4th decade (books 31-40).  It’s only strips, extracted from book bindings, tho.  There is also a 9th century copy of the 1st decade.

There’s a fair bit of Cicero, some of the Augustan History, a lot of Boethius, Jerome.  Aurelius Victor and Eutropius are there.  There’s some Augustine, some Ambrose, a Statius Thebais with the scholia of Lactantius Placidus.  There’s a bit of Seneca, a couple of Quintilians, a Pliny the Elder NH, a Priscian, unfortunately lacking the beginning.  There’s Origen on Judges, plus Rufinus’ translation of De Principiis. Martianus Capella is still at the wedding of Philology and Mercury, the first part of Macrobius’ Saturnalia is there.

Lucan is there.  Josephus likewise. Justinian’s Institutiones, interestingly.  There’s a Horace, and the usual dollop of Isidore of Seville.  There is a Eugippius, Thesaurus ex S. Augustini operibus, which is interesting to me if no-one else.

Worth knowing about.

The world of online manuscripts is still very immature.  In five years things will be very different.  At the moment the BNF in Paris are showing the way; but standards will certainly improve all round.

A few institutions are still in the Dark Ages – step forward Stanford University and Corpus Christi Cambridge, who have put the Parker collection of manuscripts into the hands of a commercial company, to sell access to pictures to institutions (and tough if you aren’t affiliated to one).  Shame on them both.  But this too will change, given time.

It’s an exciting time to be involved with mss.!

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Excel spreadsheet of all manuscripts at the British Library

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Someone at the British Library has had an excellent idea.  They’ve uploaded a spreadsheet listing all the manuscripts they have online, with the URL.  It’s here.  They have 856 mss online at the moment; a small proportion of their holdings, but still very useful.

The spreadsheet lists shelfmark, contents, url and the project that did the upload.  The last won’t be much use, but browsing down the list of contents is exciting!

It will be very useful to me on my current project too.

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Greek mss. at the French National Library

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I learned today from the Evangelical textual criticism blog that the Bibliotheque Nationale Francais have been putting manuscripts online, at their Gallica.bnf.fr portal. Locating these is not straightforward; but if you do an advanced search, leave blank the title etc, and select manuscripts, Greek, you get back a list. A good number are biblical mss., but most are not. Blessedly you can download a PDF of the whole thing in each case.

I thought that a few examples might be useful. The first item is the shelfmark

  • Coislin 352, 17th c. Palatine Anthology of Greek verse.
  • Grec 2971, 16th c. Hermogenes, Progymnasmata.  Whatever that is.
  • Grec 2868, 16th c. Apollinaris Metaphrasis Psalmorum.
  • Grec 510, 9th c. Gregory Nazianzen.
  • Grec 2929, 16th c. grammatical bits and pieces.
  • Grec 2705, 14th c., John Tzetzes on the Iliad.
  • Grec 2261, 16th c. medical ms.
  • Grec 216, 10th c. Acts of the Apostles, with the catena.
  • Grec 1853, 10th c., Aristotle
  • Coislin 291, 14th c., Simeon the New Theologian.
  • Grec 1807, 9th c. Plato
  • Grec 1685, 15th c. Ps.Callisthenes, History of Alexander; Aesop’s fables.
  • Grec 1639, 15th c. Xenophon, Cyropedia; expedition; Theophrastus, characters.
  • Grec 1759, 13th c. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the philosophers.
  • Grec 2465, 14th c. Michael Psellus
  • Grec 1407, 15th c. Arrian, Anabasis; on India; Ptolemy’s geography, epitome.
  • Grec 1122, 14th c. John Damascene.
  • Grec 2795, 15th c. Sophocles, Electra, Orestes, etc, with scholia.
  • Grec 2850, 1475 AD, Sybilline oracles.
  • Grec 2902, 16th c. Aesop, Aristophanes, Euripides.
  • Grec 2999, 16th c. Demosthenes.
  • Coislin 1, 7th c. Greek Old Testament
  • Coislin 79, 11th c. Chrysostom.
  • Grec 2809, 15th c. Euripides.
  • Grec 2036, 10th c. Longinus on the sublime, Ps. Aristotle.
  • Grec 2706, 1500. Aristarchus, summaries and scholia on the Iliad.
  • Grec 2742, 17th c. Greek anthology of epigrams.
  • Grec 1535, 11th c. Martyrdoms.
  • Grec 164, 1070 AD. Psalms and canticles, with scholia.
  • Grec 1671, 1296. Plutarch.
  • Grec 107, 7th c. Bilingual Greek/Latin Paul’s letters. For some reason not identified by BNF.
  • Grec 1128, 14th c. Barlaam and Joasaph.
  • Grec 1767, 15th c. George Cedrenus, Narratio of meeting of Pope Silvester with some Jews.
  • Grec 1909, 15th c. Simplicius on Aristotle’s Physica.
  • Grec 2179, 9th c. Dioscorides.
  • Grec 2442, 11th c. Aelian, Tactica; Onasander, etc – military manuals.
  • Grec 2389, 9th c. Ptolemy.
  • Grec 3094, 17th c. Chrysostom, 4 homilies to Antiochenes.
  • Grec 923, 9th c. John Damascene, Sacra Parallela.
  • Grec 451, 914 AD. The Arethas codex of the Greek apologists!!!
  • Grec 781, 939 AD. Chrysostom.
  • Grec 142, 12th c. Euthymius Zigabenus, Commentary on Psalms and Canticles.

I’m about half way through and have to rush off. A few more.

  • Grec 945, 15th c. Origen.
  • Grec 414, 16th c. Gelasius of Cyzicus, Eusebius Vita Constantini, HE, etc.
  • Coislin 202, 6th c. Euthalian chapters, New Testament, note saying it was copied from Pamphilus’ exemplar (f.14r, v).

But a great number have no description, although I find that if you look inside, a slip glued onto the guard-folios at the front often tells you what the contents are.

This is marvellous, and I haven’t really digested what is here. There’s 146 Greek but only 15 Latin mss.

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Buying images of pages from a manuscript in the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg – part 1

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I need to look at some pages from a Syriac manuscript in the collection of the National Library of Russia in St Petersburg.   Rather than flying out there, paying for a hotel, it might be cheaper to just purchase a few digital photographs.  At least, one would hope so!

After a look at page on the website which talks about electronic copies, I have composed an email in English and sent it off.  It will be interesting to see whether they are cooperative or not.  Manuscript libraries can be very bolshy!

I will let you know.

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