Tag: Manuscripts

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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Some notes on the lexicon of Festus

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There is a manuscript in the Farnese collection, in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples (shelfmark Bibl. Naz. IV.A.3), known as the Farnesianus or F, because it once formed part of the library of Cardinal Ranuccio Farnese.  This contains a text consisting of words and definitions, entitled De significatione verborum, On the meaning of words.  The manuscript tells us that the author is an otherwise unknown Sextus Pompeius Festus.[1]  The manuscript itself is 11th or 12th century.

The manuscript consists of 41 folios of parchment, written on both sides in two columns, giving us 164 columns of text.

The manuscript has suffered damage.  More than a few of the columns show signs of burning on their exterior margin, and most of the folios show evident traces of fire.  However, for some folios, the burned portion has been cut away, and on folio 19, this means that the outer column is completely gone.  The first eight folios are often nearly illegible.  The parchment itself is often pierced here and there by small holes or cuts.

From the ninth folio, the writing is very neat and clear, but heavily abbreviated.  Each entry is begun with majuscule letters, used only for this purpose.

The manuscript seems to have been discovered in Illyria at the start of the 16th century, and brought to Italy.[2]

A good bibliography may be found in the Festus Lexicon Project, which points out that the French translation is at Remacle.org here.  I was unable to locate a copy of the W. M. Lindsay edition of 1913 online, unfortunately.

Fay Glinister writes at the Festus Lexicon Project:

The text, even in its present mutilated state, is an important source for scholars of Roman history. It is a treasury of historical, grammatical, legal and antiquarian learning, providing sometimes unique evidence for the culture, language, political, social and religious institutions, deities, laws, lost monuments, and topographical traditions of ancient Italy.

Festus is important, too, in terms of his numerous explicit citations of early Roman authors, from Fabius Pictor on. He quoted or used many ancient sources, including authors – poets, grammarians, jurists and antiquarians – whose works do not survive elsewhere.

In the case of Plautus, the quotations that survive in Festus are particularly important, as they antedate the edition from which the archetype derives, and sometimes preserve a true reading not otherwise attested.

We could sometimes wish that Festus included more: in quoting, his practice is typically to complete the line, whether or not the sense of the passage can be understood.

The text of Festus sometimes preserves very early traditions, or readings of other authors. For example, the quotation from the Augustan jurist Antistius Labeo’s work on pontifical law in Festus 474, 476L, apparently from priestly records, may be earlier than Varro’s discussion of the Septimontium in LL 5.41.

Other frequently cited authors include Lucilius, Caecilius, Accius, Afranius, Titinius, the grammarian Cornificius, and of course Varro (directly cited about twenty times; in addition a number of other entries have been attributed to him). Festus also includes many glosses of legal character, and cites jurists such as Mucius Scaevola, Sulpicius Rufus, Ateius Capito and so on.

Festus’ many sources represent a wide range of Republican scholarly antiquity, but it is also worthwhile looking at him in the context of his own time. The choice he made to work on such material is quite an interesting one. Clearly, he was interested in the Roman past, but as the first part of his work is lost, we lack any explicit personal statement of his aims.

Nevertheless, his literary activity can be understood in the general context of the cultural attitudes of the second century. He is concerned with the recovery of Roman antiquities of all kinds, and with early literary works (such as those by Ennius and Cato), which fits in with the arcaising and antiquarian interests of a number of near-contemporary Latin authors such as Probus, Apuleius, and most notably Aulus Gellius, author of the Attic Nights.

Hmm.  Now that sounds interesting, although an English translation would definitely need footnotes.  She also believes he is a writer of the 2nd century, not the 4th.

I’ve had a quick look at a couple of sections of the remacle transcription, and came across one entry that seemed interesting:

SOL.  The sun is so named because it is alone.  It is named sometimes sun, sometimes Apollo: You are Apollo, you are alone (Sol) in the sky / heaven.

In this light, the cult of Sol Invictus in the late empire takes on a new meaning.

Likewise the expression “sub corona”, under the crown, is of interest.  There are versions of this in the extracts by Paul the Deacon, as well as the direct text.

SUB CORONA: Captives are said to be sold “under the crown”, because they are sold with their head decorated with a crown.  Cato says: “Let the people give thanks to the gods for giving them success, rather than see themselves sold, wearing a crown, following a defeat.”

SUB CORONA: We say “sold under the crown” because usually a crown is placed on the head of captives when they are sold, as Cato says in his book On the military art: “Let the people go and give thanks to the gods for a success, wearing a crown, rather than be sold, wearing a crown, following a defeat.” However this sign indicates that nothing is owed by the people, as Plautus also indicates in his Little Garden: “Let the crier be crowned, so that he may be sold for any price.”

I wonder whether the custom may explain the passage in Tertullian’s De corona militis where soldiers who worshipped Mithras refused to wear a crown during the distribution of the donatives from the emperor, on the grounds that “Mithras is my crown”?  The crowns were worn for celebration; but clearly it could have another meaning, of ownership.

Another anecdote:

RIDEO, INQUIT GALBA CANTERIO [“I laugh,” said Galba to his horse], is a proverb which Sinnius Capito interprets thus: “If a man falls at the first moment when he begins something.”  Suplicius Galba, setting out for the province that had been assigned to him, saw his horse fall right at the gate of the City.  “I laugh,” he said, “O horse, to see you already tired, with so long a journey to do and so short a distance from the start.”

PRAETORIA COHORS.  The praetorian cohort, so named because it always accompanied the praetor.  Scipio Africanus was the first to select the bravest men from the army, and form a body who would always accompany him during the war, being exempt from all other service and receiving a sixfold wage.

PRAETORIA PORTA.  This name is given to the gate of the camp from which the army goes out to go to fight, because in the beginning the praetors fulfilled the functions assigned today to the consuls, and directed the operations of the war: their tent was likewise called the “praetorium”.

PUNICUM.  A type of cake, the use of which came from the Carthaginians.  Also called probum, because much more delicate than the others.

PECULIUM.  Money belonging to slaves is so called from pecus, just as money belonging to the head of the family is called pecunia.

Other entries of interest that I saw were those on the October Horse and the Ordo Sacerdotum (order of precedence of the priests), but there is much else of interest to the casual reader in this work.  If Aulus Gellius can be read in English, it seems like a pity that Festus cannot be.

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  1. [1]C. O. Muller, p.ii, footnote 2, quoting Politian to this effect.↩
  2. [2]A. Savagner, Sextus Pompeius Festus, De la Signification des mots, vol. 1, 1846, preface.↩

More on codex Palatinus graecus 129

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A comment by Dr Divna Manolova on my post about some of the Heidelberg manuscripts picked up on a problem; that I could not tell what the 141 folios of ms. Palatinus graecus 129 actually contained.

It seems that it consists of working notes by a Byzantine scholar, Nikephoros Gregoras (d. ca. 1359/1360).  The manuscript contains a hand also found in codd. Vat. gr. 116 and 228, which are filled with letters, editorial notes, etc, by the same scholar.

That is, Pal. gr. 129, together with several other codices, is one of the material witnesses of the circle of scholars/scribes Gregoras was part of, or even presiding over.

She also drew our attention to the catalogue entry for the ms at Pinakes, which indicates that the ms. contains an enormous number of excerpts by some fifty different authors.

An email from George Christodoulou added more information.  With his permission, let me give here (slightly edited) what he tells us:

Well, having just transcribed for my own use a small fraction of the text on fol.1recto, it seems as if what we have here is but a syncopated paraphrasis of random passages from Herodotus.  My transcription points to Bk.I,178.1 sq., 179.4, 204.1.

I can also refer you to Edmund Fryde’s book, Early Palaeologan Renaissance 1261- c.1360 (Brill, 2000).  He speaks of Nikephoros Gregoras, and the well known Byzantine scholar’s habit of using Greek authors “merely as a source of endless citations” (360).  He singles out for especial reference his autograph codex Palatinus gr. 129, into which Gregoras would copy excerpts from a number of rare authors. In a note, Fryde also mentions a scholarly article by A. Biedl, “Der Heidelberger Codex Pal. gr. 129 – die Notizien-sammlung eines byzantinischen Gelehrten”, Würzburger Jahrbücher 3 (1948), 100-106.

He also transcribed some of the opening lines, which he confirms are taken from Herodotus, just as the Pinakes entry indicates, and has kindly allowed this to appear here:

I.178.1 sqq.  ὅτι Νίνου ἀναστάτου γενομένης μεγάλης πόλεως τῶν Ἀσσυρίων τὰ βασιλήια κατεστήκεεν ἐν Βαβυλῶνι, ἣ ἐστὶ τοιαύτη πόλις. νέεται ἐν πεδίῳ μεγάλῳ τῆς Ἀσσυρίης. μέγα–θος ἐοῦσα μέτωπον ἕκαστον ρκ΄ σταδίων ἐούσης τετραγώ–νου. τὸ δὲ τεῖχος αὐτῆς πεντήκοντα πήχεων βασιληΐων τὸ εὖ- ρος, ὕψος δὲ διηκοσίων. ὁ δὲ βασιλήϊος πῆχυς τοῦ μετρίου ἐστὶ πήχεως μέζων τρισὶ δακτύλοισιν:

Ι.179.4 sqq.  ὅτι ποταμός τις Ἲς ὄνομα εἰσβάλλει εἰς τὸν Εὐφρά-την ποταμὸν τὸ ῥέεθρον.  ὃς ἅμα τῷ ὕδατι θρόμβους ἀσφάλ-του ἀναδιδοῖ πολλούς.  ἔνθεν ἡ ἄσφαλτος εἰς τὸ ἐν Βαβυλῶ-νι τεῖχος ἐκομίσθη:

Ι.204.1 ὅτι  ἀπὸ τῆς Κασπίης θαλάσσης, τὰ μὲν πρὸς τὴν ἑσπέ-ρην φέροντα ὁ Καύκασος ἀπείργει [γῆς ὄρος readings uncertain] μέγιστον καὶ ὑψηλότατον. τὰ δὲ πρὸς ἠῶ τε καὶ ἥλιον ἀνατέλ-λοντα πεδίον ἐκδέκεται πλῆθος ἄπειρον εἰς ἄποψιν. οὗ μοί-ρην οὐκ ἐλαχίστην μετέχουσιν οἱ Μασσαγέται, ἐπ’ οὓς ὁ Κῦρος ἐστράτευσε πέρην οἰκημένους τοῦ ὄρους καὶ τοῦ ποτα-μοῦ.

Ι.214.3  ὑπὸ τούτων τῶν Μασσαγετῶν  τὸ πολὺ τῆς Περσικῆς στρατιῆς τότε ἐφθάρη ἐκεῖ καὶ αὐτὸς συντετελευτήκει ὁ Κῦρος.  λέγουσι δὲ καὶ σκυθικὸν εἶναι τοῦτο τὸ ἔθνος:

[Herodotus’ original text underlined above in bold letters.]

My thanks to Dr Christodoulou for this!

One further point was made by Dr Manolova, and is also very interesting:

In Pal. gr. 129 Gregoras used two different styles of handwriting. I am not sure how common this is, but I found it intriguing that one could variate one’s handwriting for different purposes; with respect of different content and contexts.

Indeed so, and an interesting subject for research.

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Another Heidelberg Palatinus graecus manuscript appears online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Judging from their RSS feed, the university library at Heidelberg are actively digitising their manuscripts.  Another one popped up today, in addition to those that I mentioned last week:

  • Palatinus graecus 40 (14th c.) — Sophocles, Ajax, Electra, Oedipus; Pindar; Dionysius Periegetes; Lycophron; Oppian, Halieutica; Aratus, Phaenomena; Homer, Catalogue of the ships &c; George Cheroboscus, on poetical subjects and forms, plus a page on poetic meters.

A useful  volume!

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Manuscripts at Cesena, the Malatestiana mss; mss at Lyons

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There are a considerable number of Latin humanist manuscripts online at Cesena here.  These include Augustine, Justinus, Pliny the Elder and Younger, Suetonius, and so on.  The introduction is here.  For some reason the catalogue entries are not with the images, not even which works begin on which folios.  But the images are super!

Update: here I find a bunch of manuscripts at Lyons, including an 7-8th century ms. of Rufinus’ translation of Origen’s homilies on Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus; and a 5th century ms. of his Commentary on Romans.

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Digitised manuscripts at Heidelberg

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Yesterday I found that there are a number of manuscripts online at Heidelberg, here.  Looking around, there are a number there, which are of wide interest.  Better yet, you can download them in PDF form!

The Palatini manuscripts are inevitably interesting.  Among the Greek mss are the following items of special interest:

  •  Palatinus graecus 18 (13th century) — Hesiod’s Works and Days, with Tzetzes’ scholia, Euripides’ Hecuba with scholia, a portion of Luke’s gospel, Lycophron’s Cassandra, and others.
  • Palatinus graecus 23 (9-10th c.) — The Palatine anthology of Greek verse.
  • Palatinus graecus 45 (14th c.) — The Odyssey plus summaries and scholia.
  • Palatinus graecus 47 (1505) — Athenaeus, Deipnosophists (the banquet of the foodies!)
  • Palatinus graecus 88 (13th c.) — 32 orations of Lysias, plus other orations.
  • Palatinus graecus 129 (before 1360) — 141 folios of … what?  Any guesses?
  • Palatinus graecus 153 (10th c.) — Plutarch, 6 of the Moralia.
  • Palatinus graecus 155 (15th c.) — Aelian, Variae Historiae!  Then a bunch of letters by Philostratus and Alciphron, among others.
  • Palatinus graecus 252 (10th c.) — Thucydides.
  • Palatinus graecus 281 (1040) — Miscellaneous stuff, none of which I recognise, arithmetical, musical, theological, etc.  I do love these miscellaneous manuscripts, tho!
  • Palatinus graecus 356 (13th c.) — Bits and pieces; extracts from declamations by Libanius, Aristides, Severus of Alexandria, Phalaris, Apollonius of Tyana, Synesius, Julian the Apostate, Isocrates, Gregory Nazianzen, Epiphanius On gems, and much more.
  • Palatinus graecus 398 (9th c.) — Periplus of the Erythraean sea, Arrian’s Cynegeticos, Phlegon, and other geographical and paradoxographical material.

Now that is quite a lot of value from a few manuscripts!

The Latin manuscripts also contain some gems:

Not so spectacular as the Greek, but solid, useful stuff.  I was particularly delighted to see the Periochae of Livy. 

And the ability to download the things makes these mss. invaluable to researchers.

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Notes on the manuscripts of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email this evening requesting information tells me that someone, somewhere, has set his class the task of finding out about the manuscripts of this work.    The question is one of interest.[1]

The text is preserved in the ms. Palatinus Graecus 398, fol. 40v-54v, held today in the Universitäts Bibliothek, Heidelberg and online there.[2]  This means that we can consult it, and also see the other geographical works contained in it!  Here is the top of fol. 40v:

The exemplar was plainly lacunose and corrupt; the scribe has left gaps and placed ticks in the margin where he recognised evident errors.  The ms. is in minuscule, with marginal headings in small uncials, and dates from the start of the 10th century.

A copy of this manuscript exists, errors and all, in the British Library, ms. Additional 19391, fols. 9r-12r[3], of the 14-15th century.

Early editions are generally poor.  The best is Muller’s Geographi Graeci Minores, but Fabricius’ 2nd edition held the field and is described by Casson as displaying “a total disregard for the readings of the manuscript.”  Unfortunately it was this which was used by Schoff for the translation into English commonly available.  A proper critical edition only appeared in 1927 as edited by Hjalmar Frisk.[4]

The date of the work is now established, Casson tells us, as mid-first century A.D.

Returning to the manuscript, however, we find that it contains yet more interesting material:

The collection of writers of marvels — paradoxographers — is interesting.  I have an English translation of Phlegon’s Book of Marvels, which is, in truth, a rather dull collection of oddities. 

However the text in the ms. does not seem to include either an incipit or explicit, which leads me to ask how we know the authorship?  But perhaps there are other mss, which do have this information.

It must be said that I was previous unaware of these online Greek mss.  What a marvellous collection, however!

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  1. [1]Lionel Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei: Text With Introduction, Translation, and Commentary, Princeton 1989, p. 5.  Google Books preview here.↩
  2. [2]Index of available digital mss. here↩
  3. [3]So Casson; but can this small page count be correct?↩
  4. [4]Casson, p.6.↩

Digitised manuscripts at Verdun – Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, liturgical

Posted on by Roger Pearse

J.B.Piggin drew my attention to a new site full of digitised Latin manuscripts, at Verdun.  The manuscripts are those of the abbey of St. Vanne, the cathedral, and others, doubtless seized at the French Revolution.

Annoyingly you cannot download the things in PDF form, but are obliged to peer at them, squintily, through a keyhole flash viewer.  It works well enough, but is deeply frustrating to use for more than a minute or two.

It looks to me as if the collection was looted of nearly all its content at some time.  Most of the mss. are breviaries and graduals — service books, essentially.  But a few items of interest to us do remain.

Somewhat annoyingly, there seems to be no easy way to link directly to individual manuscripts (if I am wrong, do let me know).

  • Ms. 24 – Boethius, De institutione arithmetica (11th c.), originally from Lobbes.  Includes diagrams.
  • Ms. 26 – Isidore of Seville, De natura rerum (9th c.); astronomical stuff.
  • Ms. 30 – Florilegium, saints’ lives, letter of ps.Alexander the Great to Aristotle (11-12th c.).
  • Ms. 45 – Eusebius of Caesarea, Church history (11th c.) as translated by Rufinus.  Has a list of books and numbered chapters at the front.
  • Ms. 47 – Gregory Nazianzen, 8 works translated by Rufinus: Apologeticus, De epiphaniis, De communibus sive secundis epiphaniis, De pentecoste, De semetipso de agro regressus, De reconciliatione monachorum, De grandinis vastatione; Chrysostom, De compunctione cordis libri duo., Quod nemo laeditur nisi a seipso, De reparatione lapsi. Ps. Chrysostom, Sermo de poenitentia. Augustine, letters 166 and 167 to Jerome, Jerome, Letter 134, 141, 142 to Augustine, Augustine letter 190, Jerome letter 126. (11th c.)
  • Ms. 48 – Ambrose, Isidore, Augustine (11-12th c.)
  • Ms. 50 – Ambrose, De fide, De spiritu sanctu, De incarnatione, De mysteriis, De sacramentis, De Nabuthae – Phoebadius Aginensis, De fide orthodoxa. (11th c.)
  • Ms. 51 – Jerome’s Commentary on Isaiah (11-12th c.)
  • Ms. 52 – An evangelary of the 4 gospels (11th c.)
  • Ms. 57 – Augustine, various works; Fulgentius of Ruspe, De fide ad Petrum seu de regula fidei. Rescriptum Aurelii Augustini ad Petrum diaconum de fide sancte trinitatis sic incipit, Gregory the Great. (11th c.)
  • Ms. 75 – ps.Clementine Recognitions in 10 books, letter of ps.Clement to Peter (11th c.)
  • Ms. 77 – Venantius Fortunatus, Poems (11th c.) Also has other medieval items.

I was quite unable to locate an “overview” page, or get any idea about this project.  There must be more mss. to be digitised.  But all the same that gives us quite a bit that we didn’t have before!

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Some pages from a manuscript of Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A post at the British Library manuscripts blog by Sarah J. Biggs about the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville is rather interesting, and illustrated with some pages from the 11th century digitised ms. British Library Royal 6 C. i:

Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636), the bishop of Seville from about 600 to his death, is better known as an author than as an administrator.  His most famous work is the Etymologies, a work of tremendous influence throughout the Middle Ages.  One eleventh-century manuscript (Royal 6 C. i), probably copied at St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury, is now available on the Digitised Manuscripts website.

The Etymologies is famous for its sometimes quirky explanations of the history of words.  In some cases, when Isidore takes the word apart based on what it sounds like, the explanation that results can be extremely engaging, …

In other cases, Isidore’s etymologies, while colourful, are spot-on.  The one he gives for the words Fornicarius and Fornicatrix (male and female prostitute) explains that these terms come from the Latin word for ‘arch’ (fornix), and refers to the architecture of ancient brothels.  Prostitutes were understood to lie under such arches while practising their trade.  This is the same explanation for the word ‘fornicate’ offered in the Oxford English Dictionary today!

Great to have an image of some pages of raw text for a change.

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