Tag: Manuscripts

The manuscripts of Pliny the Elder’s “Natural History”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Pliny the Elder, who died in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, has left us only a single work out of his vast literary activity.  This is the Historia Naturalis, a compendium of information about natural phenomena of various sort.  The work consists of a prefatory letter, addressed to his friend, the emperor Vespasian Titus, followed by 37 books.  The first book is composed entirely of a list of contents for each book from book 2 onwards.  At the end of each list is a list of the authors used to compile it.

Ancient manuscripts

Pliny’s work was read continuously and epitomised throughout antiquity; indeed the Collectanea of C. Iulius Solinus is largely derived from Pliny and can be used for the establishment of the text.   Unusually, therefore, the remains of no less than 5 ancient codices have come down to us.

  • M = St. Paul in Carinthia, Stiftsbibliothek 3.1 (25.2.36; xxv.a.3) (CLA x.1455) (=codex Moneus), 5th century.  Discovered at the Austrian monastery where it still resides in 1853 by F. Mone, hence the name.   The manuscript contains Jerome’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes, written around 700 AD in Luxeuil minuscule on reused parchment.  It also contains a 15th c. ex-libris for Reichenau.  But the book is a palimpsest.  The lower text consists of large sections of books 11-15, partly visible, in a 5th century uncial hand.  The manuscript has been treated with chemicals to try to bring out more of the ancient text. The text is of high quality. A description of the ms. and a complete transcript is available as most of vol. 6 of Sillig’s edition (Gotha, 1855).  The codex is also online here, although hard to use.
  • N = Rome, Bibl. Naz. Sessor. 55 (CLA iv.421), 5th century, uncial.  Also a palimpsest, containing patristic texts and written in the second half of the 6th century, the lower text consists of a few passages from books 23 and 25.  Both texts were written in Italy.
  • O = Vienna 1a (CLA x.1470), first half of 5th century, uncial.  Probably written in the south of Italy, it consists of fragments of 7 leaves, reused for bindings.  It contains part of books 33 and 34.
  • P = Paris lat. 9378, folio 26 (CLA v.575).  A single folio, seemingly of Italian origin, written at the end of the 6th century and containing part of book 18.  It was found, apparently, in the binding of a manuscript from St. Amand in France.
  • Pal. Chat. = Autun 24 + Paris n.a.lat. 1629 (CLA vi.725), 5th century, uncial, containing a few sections of books 8 and 9.  Presumably from Italy, it was overwritten in the late 6th century with Cassian’s Institutions, probably in Southern France.

It is telling that 3 ancient manuscripts, M, P and Pal.Chat, found their way to France but were turned into clean parchment before they could generate a tradition in that region.

The medieval manuscripts have been divided by editors into two classes, the older or vetustiores, and the newer or recentiores.  Unfortunately the dates of the mss. have been so confused that the division is not as clean as it should be.

Medieval manuscripts – vetustiores

  • Q = Paris lat. 10318 (CLA v.593), written in central Italy ca. 800 AD, in uncial.  This contains the Latin Anthology, and includes medical excerpts from books 19-20.  The source manuscript used for this was of high quality.
  • A = Leiden, Voss. Lat. F.4 (CLA x.1578), first third of the 8th century, insular, written in the north of England.  Contains books 2-6, with large gaps.  Other books may have been known to Bede, and Pliny is listed in Alcuin’s list of books present in York.  Not as good as M or Q, but better than most continental mss.
  • B = Bamberg, Class. 42 (M.v.10), first third of the 9th century, in the palace scriptorium of Louis the Pious.  It contains books 32-37, and is the only one to preserve the ending of the work.  Of excellent quality, and clearly copied carefully from an ancient codex whose notae it carefully preserves.  Online here.

There are also a number of collections of excerpts made in this period which preserve portions of the text.  They seem to be associated with the court of Charlemagne and the scholars who communicated with it.

Medieval manuscripts – recentiores

The vetustiores do not give us anything like a complete text, unfortunately.  For most of the work we are dependent on the inferior recentiores.  These contain small lacunae, but give a more or less complete text.

The main mss., which all descend from a common parent, are:

  • D+G+V = Vatican lat. 3861 + Paris lat. 6796, ff. 52-3 + Leiden, Voss. Lat. F. 61 (CLA x.1580 + Suppl. p.28), written ca. 800 AD in north-east France, perhaps in the Corbie area.  This manuscript was later divided into three.  It contains most of the work.
  • Ch = New York, Pierpont Morgan Library M.871 (formerly Phillipps 8297), first half of 9th century, written apparently at Lorsch by a scribe using the style of St. Vaast.  Contains books 1-17.
  • F = Leiden, Lipsius 7, written first half of the 9th century, by a scribe from Luxeuil collaborating with one from Murbach, possibly at Murbach.  Contains books 1-37.   Possibly copied from D+G+V before it was corrected.
  • R = Florence, Bibl. Ricc. 488, second half of the 9th century, perhaps at Auxerre.  Contains books 1-34.
  • E = Paris lat. 6795, 9-10th century, France.  Contains books 1-32.

All five mss. are related; their ancestor suffered a dislocation, where leaves from book 2-3 were swapped with some from 4-5.   Attempts were made to fix this in D and E, in a botched way.

E was prone to accident; leaves were lost in the ms. from which it was copied, and then in E itself.  Unfortunately it was E that dominated all later copies.  However some of them were clearly corrected from otherwise unknown copies of the older and better tradition, in D2, F2, R2,  and E2.

Medieval manuscripts – later recentiores

  • h = Berlin (East), Hamilton 517, 11th c.
  • X = Luxembourg 138, 12th c., from the Abbaye d’Orval.
  • Leiden, Voss. Lat. Q.43, 12th c., from Orleans.
  • n = Montpellier 473, 12th c., from Clairvaux; mainly medical excerpts.
  • Co = Copenhagen Gl.Kgl.S.212 2°, ca. 1200 AD.

All these are derived from E.

  • Oxford, Bodl. Auct. T.1.27 + Paris lat. 6798, 12th c., Mosan region.
  • C = Le Mans 263, 12th c.  A beautiful book, apparently of English origin. (Image of one opening here).

These are very close to E, and may derive from it.

  • e = Paris lat. 6796A, 12th c.  A faithful copy of E.
  • a = Vienna 234, 12th c.  Not derived from E, but from its ancestor.
  • d = Paris lat. 6797, third quarter of 12th century, Northern France, probably St. Amand.  Contains a substantial amount of the older tradition.

There are many more manuscripts, many of which have not been explored for their textual value.  One which is online is Ms. British Library, Harley 2676, written in Florence in 1465-7.  The BL site adds, ” identifiable as the missing Pliny from the Badia of Fiesole (according to unpublished notes of A. C. de la Mare at the Bodleian Library, Oxford)”.

Critical editions

The text of the NHwas established by the work of German scholars in the 19th century; J. Sillig, D. Detlefsen, L. von Jan, and K. Rück.  This culminates in the second Teubner edition, that of L. Jan and C. Mayhoff (5 vols, 1892-1906).  Much of the fundamental work on the recension was done by Detlefsen, in a series of papers[1] and in his edition (5 vols, Berlin, 1866-73).  The 20th century has only produced the Budé edition, now in more than 30 volumes, containing limited and rather stale information.

Bibliography

I am indebted for all this information to L.D. Reynolds, Texts and Transmissions, Oxford, p.307-316.

UPDATE: My thanks to J.B. Piggin for extra links.

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  1. [1]Rheinisches Museum 15 (1860), p.265-88 and 367-90; Philologus 28 (1869), p.284-337; Hermes 32 (1897), p. 321-40.↩

Syriac manuscripts in St Petersburg, Russia

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It’s pretty hard to find out what the libraries in St Petersburg hold.  But today I discovered that Gregory Kessel produced an abbreviated translation of the 1960 catalogue by N. V. Pigulevskaya.   Better yet, he made it available online.  It’s here.

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Vatican manuscripts online!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Mike Aquilina of Way of the Fathers has drawn my attention to a Vatican Radio announcement: 256 Vatican manuscripts have gone online.  A list by shelfmark is here.  They are mostly from the Palatine collection, which in turn contains a lot of the loot from the ancient monastery of Lorsch, destroyed during the 30 years war.

Here are a few highlights:

  • Pal. lat. 2 – Old Testament, Lorsch, 9th c.  (followed by a considerable number of biblical mss.; as far as Pal. lat. 68)
  • Pal. lat. 57 – The catalogue of the library at Lorsch.  Yay!  I have so wanted to see this.
  • Pal. lat. 150 – Ignatius, Polycarp, Hermas; plus letters and life of Anthony, and the sayings of Sextus.
  • Pal. lat. 153 – Chrysostom on Hebrews.
  • Pal. lat. 162 – Lactantius; and Claudian.
  • Pal. lat. 170 – ps.Hegesippus.

There’s then a lot of Jerome and Augustine.  Then:

All this on a fairly quick glance plus some random clicking.  It is an excellent selection.

The index pages for some of the manuscripts need more information.  But this is a minor point.  A PDF download would also be nice to have.

I hope that someone will do a proper list of all the mss. and their contents.  I would do it, but I am still somewhat unwell.

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Unbinding the Codex Alexandrinus to photograph it

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A marvellous post at the British Library manuscripts blog.  It begins with the encouraging statement:

The British Library is committed to making available online as many of its medieval manuscripts as possible.

And then it goes on to discuss how the ancient Codex Alexandrinus of the bible, currently bound in 4 volumes, had to be taken apart to be photographed.  Nor is this surprising, as anyone who has handled the British Library’s manuscripts will know.  The bindings are frequently like iron.

In the case of Codex Alexandrinus, the opening of the manuscript was heavily compromised by the last re-binding, which jeopardised our ability to photograph properly each page in its entirety. Bound books are very complex structures: they are made of many different materials and the interaction between the writing support and the mechanics of the sewing structure is vital to their survival. Unfortunately, it had been the practice in recent centuries to attach too-heavy spine linings (made of layers of stiff paper and weak fabric) to the back of book blocks, which in many cases has only served to compromise their opening. This was found to be the case when Codex Alexandrinus was examined prior to digitisation.

The first requirement was to reach the back of the book block, which entailed removal of the cover. Next, the parchment book block was gently cleaned by removing the different layers of unsuitable materials, releasing the pressure on the folds of individual sections, and improving considerably the opening of the manuscript. A new reinforcement made of archival suitable materials was then placed onto the spine to support the opening of the book, and to increase the strength of the connection between the book block and the cover. Finally, the cover was re-adhered to this volume of Codex Alexandrinus. By doing this, the manuscript could be opened sufficiently to image its pages.

What is encouraging is that the library had the wisdom to do this.  In ancient times manuscript bindings were detachable.  If the modern bindings are unserviceable, and not of historical importance, then there is no reason not to adjust them.

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New contexts for old texts: but no public please

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Via Paleojudaica I learn of a workshop, taking place in Oslo, which sounds rather interesting:

WORKSHOP AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OSLO:

Textual Transmission and Manuscript Culture: Textual Fluidity, “New Philology,” and the Nag Hammadi (and Related) Codices

This is the first major international workshop of the NEWCONT-project.Starting tomorrow. Pseudepigrapha and Hermetica figure in the program as well.

Background on Project NEWCONT is here.

But to my surprise, it says that attendance is “by invitation only”.  I wonder why?

The project page is here.  The whole project seems eminently sound.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Via AWOL I learn that an edition and translation of Bar Hebraeus’ scholia on the Old Testament is now available in PDF form online from the University of Chicago.  The PDF is here (linked on that page under the red down-arrow next to the text “Terms of Use”.

In addition, an interesting volume, The Early Text of the New Testament, ed. Charles E. Hill and Michael J. Kruger, Oxford, has appeared and is discussed by Larry Hurtado here.  It has wider interest than merely biblical scholars:

There are cogent discussions of wider issues, including in particular Harry Gamble, “The Book Trade in the Roman Empire” (pp. 23-36), and Kruger (a former PhD student), “Early Christian Attitudes toward the Reproduction of Texts” (pp. 63-80).  …

Charles Hill (“‘In These Very Words’:  Methods and Standards of Literary Brorowing in the Second Century,” pp. 261-81) provides a valuable study showing that pagan and Christian authors followed a different set of conventions in citing texts than used by copyists of texts.  …

This volume (though expensive!) is now probably the most up to date analysis of earliest evidence about the state and transmission of NT writings in the second century CE.  Given the limitations of our evidence, scholars are required to make the best inferences they can.  This volume provides essential resources in doing so, and largely shows that we can with some confidence posit that the NT writings, essentially as we know them, were copied for both ecclesial and private reading.

Which is what we would tend to expect, surely, of any ancient literary text not belonging to the corpus of astrological handbooks or similarly fluid literature?

Michael Kruger adds a note here.

I’d very much like to read this volume: it seems likely to be relevant to classical and patristic scholars.  It’s about $175, tho, which is a bit above my budget!

UPDATE: A corrrespondent writes to point out that I have confused two books in the above.  I referred to The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis. Second Edition (eds M.W. Holmes & B.D. Ehrman; NTTSD 42; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2012), which appeared at a ridiculous price ($314).  But the book that I was discussing was actually the Charles Hill volume!  Many thanks for the correction.  Friday night tiredness, I’m afraid, is responsible.

The Holmes volume, however, is also likely to be interesting, as may be seen from the list of chapters given by Peter Head here.  But at $341 is way out of reach.  However I suspect it will be quickly pirated in PDF form, unless students have become wealthy in the last few weeks!

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An ancient roll-end from the 1st century BC / 1st century AD

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Francesca Schironi’s book on how the end of a work was marked in an ancient papyrus roll ends with a dossier of photographs, as I remarked earlier.  I think that it would be useful to give some extracts from this, as we all think about a subject better when we can see what we are talking about.

Number 10 in this dossier is P.Oxy. 42, 3000.  It contains the remains of the last two columns of a lost epic work, Eratothenes’ Hermes.  The papyrus dates from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD.

Fortunately the item is online, and may be found by a search at Oxyrhynchus online for “3000”.  Curiously there seems to be no way to get a direct link.  Possibly this link to the Hi-res image will persist?

I would like to mark up the image, to highlight its features.


Click through to see the full size image.

The fragment has two columns.

At the top of the remains of the second column (the left hand side only is preserved) is the end of the work, with a coronis — a bird-like mark — on the left.

Then there is a gap, and then some scribbled scholia in various hands.

In the middle of the second column, rather larger than the original text, is the end-title, which reads ERMHS | ERATOSQENO[US] – the last two letters being lost.

Underneath the end title is a numeral.  This is a bit of stichometry — a count of the number of verses.  It reads ARIQ … X.  In the gap, in superscript, is M[OS].  The editor considered that this added up to about 1600 lines, if restored.  This is about the average length of a tragedy or comedy, according to Schironi, so probably this is close to the end of the roll as well as the end of the work.

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How the end of a book was marked in ancient rolls

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Ancient works were frequently divided into many books.  What did the end of a book look like, in an ancient roll?[1]

To answer this question requires examining papyri which contain such items.  Francesca Schironi assembled a dossier, with photographs, of 55 papyrus fragments, 51 of them from Homer.  Her analysis is very dense, and her conclusions deserve to be more widely known.

Two symbols are used in a great many of the papyri in this context.  The symbols are mentioned among various forms of punctuation by Galen in Peri Alupias 14-15[2].  These are the paragraphos, and the coronis. 

The paragraphos is a horizontal line in the left margin, extending under the first few letters on the line.  It is used to divide chunks of text in various ways, of which the end of a book is just one.[3] 

A coronis looks like a bird standing upright and looking to the left, and has been connected with korwnh, or “crow”.  In the Palatine Anthology of Greek verse, Meleager says:

I, the coronis announcing the final lap, the most trustworthy guardian of the enclosure of written sheets, proclaim that Meleager has brought his labour to an end, having gathered all the works from all lyric poets into one collection and having wrapped them into this roll.  And that from flowers he has twined together one poetic wreath worthy of remembrance from Diolces.  And, curled in coils like the back of a snake, I am sitting here enthroned beside the conclusion of his learned work.[4]

An example from P. Berol. inv. 9875, column 5, may be found online here, courtesy of an anonymous papyrologist in Wikipedia.[5]  This dates from 400 BC, contains a part of the Persae of Timotheus of Miletus, and shows both the coronis and paragraphos:

A less good image of the same material may be found here.[6]  The paragraphos, from the1st century onwards, is always “forked” at one end.[8]

The end title is usually written in somewhat larger letters, usually after a line or two has been left blank.[9]

4 papyri have the symbols, but no end-title.  All are early (second half of 3rd century BC to second half of the 1st century BC), and tend to suggest that the use of the end-title in Homer developed in the Roman period.[10] Dramatic papyri of the Ptolemaic period do contain end-titles, however.[11]

One papyrus, numbered 2 by Schironi, has none of these signs or titles, and is one of the oldest, dated to the second half of the third century BC.  It does demonstrate that even early rolls of Homer contained more than one book.[12]  And it is the only Ptolemaic papyrus of Homer not to have some form of division markers.[13]

In the Roman period, a roll of epic poetry would be organised as follows:

  1. At the end of each book of Homer there was an end-title.  This consisted of the name of the word in the genetive (ILIADOS or ODYSSEIAS) followed by the letter ascribed to the book (not the same as a Greek numeral, for Homer) which had ended.  In the case of non-Homeric poetry, the end-title consisted of the name of the work in the nominative, followed by the author’s name in the genetive.
  2. As well as the end-title, there would be a marginal mark; a coronis or both a coronis and paragraphos, both rather ornamental.
  3. The last book was terminated by an end-title only.[14]

The same organisation appears in codices, of which examples appear from the 3rd century AD.

A 2nd century AD papyrus shows the end of book 24 (the last) of the Iliad, and has merely the end title and book number over two lines(i.e. ILIADOS | W), but no symbols.  Schironi notes that this is the only example of the end of the whole work among the rolls, but that a codex likewise marks the end of the whole work in a different manner.[15]

The remainder of the papyrus rolls are damaged in various ways, and so cannot be interpreted certainly as evidence.  None contradict the impression given by the data above.

A further element at the end of the book is the versus reclamans.  This is the first line(s) of the next book, written immediately after the last line of the book.  It indicates, therefore, which is the next book; what the order of the books in the work may be.  5 Homeric papyri have these.  Two of these are clearly the end of the roll, indicating that the next book was in a different roll.[16]  The reclamans became unnecessary with the development of end-titles, and is not found in any example of Homer after the 2nd century AD.  Yet it persists in prose texts later, and indeed is found in medieval manuscripts of texts such as Herodotus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and the biblical book of Kings.[17]

In Ptolemaic papyri the beginning of a new book was not marked by the start of a new column.[18]  This is sometimes true in Roman rolls also, but more often a new book begins a new column.[19]

There are also sometimes stichometrical annotations at the end of a book — a count of the number of lines.  These indicate that some rolls contained 4 books.[20]

The end-titles in other types of literature had some differences.  They usually consisted of the name of the author in the genetive, following — often on a new line — by the title of the work in the nominative.[21]  Some texts circulated without an author’s name; sub-literary grammatical texts, glossaries, astrological texts.[22] There are cases of works by very well-known authors where only the title is given.  Homeric papyri do not name the author.  Likewise a papyrus of Sappho is known with no name, although another exists which does.  A collection of 8 oratorical manuscripts likewise fails to include any names of the authors; Demosthenes, Isocrates, Hyperides.  But the hypothesis is that these all consist of manuscripts containing works by only one author; and that the name, therefore, probably appeared at the beginning, or end of the whole volume.[23]

The name of the work can appear in these genres in a number of ways:

  1. The name of the work in the nominative, preceded by the genetive of the author: e.g. “Menander’s GNWMAI”, etc.
  2. Preceded by a preposition such as “Peri”, “Kata”, “Uper”.
  3. Like #1, but with the name in the genetive, and followed by a number: “Xenophon’s ELLHNIKWN | A”.
  4. Like #1, but just followed by the numeral: “Julius Africanus’ KESTOS | IH”.[24]

Schironi does discuss beginning-titles briefly.  16 manuscripts of hexametric verse display beginning-titles, but only 13 are certain (7 rolls and 6 codices), all dating from the 2nd-6th century AD.  The beginning title is not associated with any symbols.[25]

I think we may all agree that this is very interesting indeed.  The differences by genre are apparent; the text of Homer, the ‘bible’ of the Greek world, might be expected to differ in some respects from other texts. 

There is certainly room for a further study, to cover the same ground with respect to the Herculaneum rolls.  Let us hope that someone undertakes it!

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  1. [1]I am indebted to Peter Head, who directed me to Francesca Schironi, To Mega Biblion: Book-ends, end-titles and ‘coronides’ in papyri with hexametric poetry, American Society of Papyrologists, 2010.  The statements in this post are all derived from this extremely dense volume, which is also reviewed at Bryn Mawr here.  An earlier paper on the same subject is: Francesca Schironi, Book-ends and book-layout in papyri with hexametric poetry, in: “Proceedings of the twenty-fifth international congress of papyrology, Ann Arbor, 2007”, American studies in papyrology, 2010, p.695-704, which is online here.↩
  2. [2]Schironi, p.17↩
  3. [3]Schironi p.16.↩
  4. [4]AP 12.257, Schironi p.16-17 n.35.↩
  5. [5]Supposedly from W. Schubart, Papyri Graecae Berolinensis. Bonn, 1911.↩
  6. [7]↩
  7. [6]A companion to Greek studies, Cambridge University Press, 1931, p.707. [/ref]  In this very early example the two items mark the beginning of the sphragis or final portion of the text.

    Let us return to Schironi’s dossier of papyri.

    The end of a book, in a roll, is most commonly marked by a coronis, a paragraphos, and an end-title.  The dossier contains 11 examples of this (although one 1st century AD example omits the paragraphos), dating from the 1st century BC/1st century AD to the end of the 3rd century AD.  The end-title appears sometime between the 1st century BC and 1st century AD, and thereafter is always present.[7]Schironi, p.26.↩

  8. [8]Schironi, p.78.↩
  9. [9]Schironi, p.79.↩
  10. [10]Schironi, p.28.↩
  11. [11]Schironi, p.70.↩
  12. [12]Schironi, p.28.↩
  13. [13]Schironi, p.76.↩
  14. [14]Schironi, p.38.↩
  15. [15]Schironi, p.27.↩
  16. [16]Schironi, p.31-32.↩
  17. [17]Schironi, p.74.↩
  18. [18]Schironi, p.32.↩
  19. [19]Schironi, p.52.↩
  20. [20]Schironi, p.44.↩
  21. [21]Scironi, p.64-65.↩
  22. [22]Schironi, p.66.↩
  23. [23]Schironi, p.66-68.↩
  24. [24]Schironi, p.69.↩
  25. [25]Schironi, p.82-83.↩

More on the manuscript of Festus’ Lexicon

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An early editor, Antonio Agustin, in his preface to his edition of 1559, describes the transmission as follows:

In these twenty books, which he entitled de verborum significatione, or priscorum verborum cum exemplis, Sextus Pompeius Festus abridged the books of Verrius Flaccus on the same subject. For he omitted the words which were, in Verrius’ own words, ‘too old, and dead and buried and were of no use and authority’. He dealt with the same words [that Verrius had discussed] more clearly and more briefly, setting out the original words in a smaller space. He also provided a critical treatment of examples found in other sources. He often corrected Verrius’ errors, and he always explained most learnedly why he did so.

Now this book had the misfortune to suffer harm of several kinds very long ago. For we could not find out either who this Festus was, or when he wrote this work. Only one or two references to it are to be found here and there in Charisius and Macrobius.

While the whole book was still extant in the time of Charlemagne, one Paulus thought it would be useful if he made a sort of epitome of the parts he liked best. Ignorant men liked his book so much that it took Festus’ place in every library.

One codex survived the slaughter. But that was like a soldier whose comrades have been defeated and massacred, and who creeps along at random with his legs broken, his nose mutilated, one eye gouged out, and one arm broken. This book supposedly came from Illyria. According to Pio and Poliziano, Pomponio Leto had some pages of it; Manilius Rallus had the greater part. Angelo Poliziano received the book from them, went over it, and copied it, and he tried to use it in his Miscellanea to emend a verse of Catullus. Using this same copy by Poliziano, Pier Vettori has begun, with his customary learning, to emend the vulgate text of Festus at various points in his Variae lectiones.

The remains of the codex passed to Aldo Manuzio, who tried to combine them with the epitome of Paulus, thus making one body from two sets of parts. But so much was omitted [or] changed in publication that it was still necessary for other critics to intervene. Achille Maffei, the brother of Cardinal Bernardino, has another copy, similarly confIated from both texts; it is fuller than the Aldine. Thus there have been three recensions of the same text, all imperfect. There is the old MS of half of Festus; of this, nothing remains before the letter M, and from that letter to the end barely half of what there used to be. The second text is Paulus’s epitome. As we show in this edition, even the most ignorant can see from a comparison of the texts how carelessly that was put together. The third text is that conflated from the other two, like those of Aldo and Maffei, and our own.

Stirring stuff!  Anthony Grafton, who translated the Latin [1] rightly remarks, “by no one has [the story] ever been told in livelier terms”.

Grafton corrects the picture slightly.  Various editions of the epitome by Paul the Deacon started to appear in print from 1471 onwards.  The solitary codex to survive the Middle Ages is Naples, Bibliotheca Nazionale IV.A.3, written in the second half of the eleventh century, probably at Rome.  It originally contained sixteen gatherings, the first seven of which had already been lost by the time that it reappeared in the fifteenth century.  He continues:

The nine that remained had also been damaged by fire, so that some leaves were missing, and on many leaves most or all of the outer column of the text was also lost. Manilius Rallus, a Greek from Sparta who became a successful Roman Catholic churchman and Neo-Latin poet, brought it to Italy at some time before 1477. He is said to have found it in Dalmatia.

Rallus lent this codex to Pomponio Leto, who found it most helpful for his pioneering research into Roman antiquities. He drew on the new codex for his university lectures on Varro and other authors. Unfortunately, he treated the codex with his usual lack of scruple – he kept the eighth, tenth, and sixteenth gatherings, which have subsequently disappeared, and must be reconstructed from a number of surviving transcripts. 

These statements about the ms. Grafton references to the edition of W. M. Lindsay (1913), p.iii-xi (the statements about Leto are from elsewhere).

However Fay Glinister disagrees on one important point:

When the manuscript surfaced, some time before the death of the humanist and philosopher Lorenzo Valla (1406-1457), it was already incomplete.[6]

[6] For the date, see Lorenzo Valla, Le postille al”Institutio oratoria’ di Quintiliano, eds. L. Cesarini Martinelli and A. Perosa (Padua 1996). There had previously been a claim that the MS was found in Dalmatia in the 1470s, by the Greek Manilius Rhallus; it is now evident that this was a mistake.

I presume from this hasty reference that there is evidence that Valla referred to Festus (and not to the epitome of Paul the Deacon), but without access to the Valla text, it is not clear what the argument is. 

Lindsay on the other hand tells us:

In Illyrico codicem repertum fama erat, sed non satis certa.

It is supposed that the codex was found in Illyria, but this is not quite certain.

No reference is given for this statement.  Rhallus’ claim to discovery is based on his edition of the epitome by Paul the Deacon in 1471, in which he refers in the preface:

Nuper cum legissem Pompei Festi mutilatos libros qui priscorum verborum inscribuntur, vehementer dolui quod tantum opus integrum non remansit.

Recently when I read the mutilated books of Pompeius Festus which are inscribed priscorum verborum, I greatly regretted that such a work should not be preserved complete.

But whether this refers to the manuscript, or to the epitome is not clear.

The Illyria story seems to derive from the preface of the editio princeps, 1500, at Milan, from Io. Angelus Seinzenzeler, which contained Nonius, Festus with Paul the Deacon, and Varro.  The editor was Io. Baptista Pius.  In his preface he writes:

His quae nobis venerunt ex codice pervetusto et ob hoc fidelissimo, qui ex Illyrico Pomponio Laeto fuerat oblatus, …

These things, which came to us from a very old and therefore very reliable codex, which was brought from Illyria by Pomponio Leto, …

There are no other references to a find in Illyria in Lindsay.  It would be good to clarify precisely what is, and is not, known about the circumstances of the rediscovery.

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  1. [1]Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A study in the history of classical scholarship, Clarendon, 1983, p.134.↩

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve commissioned translations of Ephraim the Syrian, Hymns against heresies 23 and 24, to be done by Christmas.  Looking forward to those!  Together with hymn 22, they form a group against Marcionism.

I’ve now received by ILL To Mega Biblion, on the presence of end titles and the like in ancient papyri of Homer.  It catalogues nearly 60 examples.  It’s going to take some careful reading.  But one interesting snippet, if I remember it correctly, is that end-titles as such seem to appear only from the 1st century B.C. onwards.

This evening I had intended to translate another chunk of the Life of Mar Aba.  But … I can’t find the .rtf file with the source!  Maybe another night.

On a different note, I read a rather sensible blog article at The Gospel Coalition on the appointment of a new Archbishop of Canterbury. 

Much more exciting, tho, was an article over at the British Library manuscripts blog (whose evil comment system erased an enthusiastic comment that I left). Julian Harrison has an interesting piece on the 12th century catalogue of the books of Reading Abbey, found in Ms. B.L. Egerton 3031:

The book has a remarkable history. It was discovered in 1790 in a bricked-up chamber by a workman who was demolishing part of a wall at Shinfield House, near Reading, home to Lord Fingall (whose family sold the manuscript to the British Museum).

How the cartulary came to be there remains a mystery — was the hiding place at Shinfield used by a Reading monk when Henry VIII’s followers ransacked the monastery, or was it buried in the chamber at another time?

The item then was:

…. purchased by the British Museum in 1921 using funds bequeathed by Francis Henry Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater (d. 1829). …

The library catalogue only takes up four pages, but it lists about 300 books according to subject with the heading in red ink, Hii sunt libri qui continentur in Radingensi ecclesia (These are the books contained in the church of Reading). It begins with four Bibles, each comprising three or four volumes. Next were glossed books of the Bible, one of which is probably British Library, Additional MS 54230, a copy of the book of Judges with other texts. One of the largest categories contains the works of the Church Fathers, particularly St Augustine, for whom 18 volumes are listed. Following these are a small collection of classical texts and, lastly, liturgical books, such as breviaries, missals and antiphoners for use in the daily devotions.

There is an image of folio 8v (although not nearly large enough: the full size item is here), which is the beginning of the catalogue.  I wish that the other three pages were also online!!  Only the last three entries are by Augustine: the first two on Psalms and Canticles; the other de unitate dei in uno volumine.

I wonder what else Reading held?  How I wish these things were online!  It is fascinating to dig through the remains of medieval libraries.  Which patristic texts were there?  Which classical texts?

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