Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
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:
A useful volume!
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.
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:
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.
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!
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).
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!
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.
Yesterday I summarised, section by section, the content of chapter 1 (“Edessa”) of Walter Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy, with a view to working out just what, in plain terms, his argument was. I shall do more on this next week, and reduce the book to a series of testable statements and propositions, which we may then evaluate.
Along the way I noticed an interesting statement to which I have referred before, but this time was able to address.
d) EH 5.23.4: At the time of the Roman bishop Victor (189-99), gatherings of bishops took place everywhere on the matter of the Easter controversy, and Eusebius still knows of letters in which the church leaders have set down their opinion. In this connection, the following localities are enumerated: Palestine, Rome, Pontus, Gaul, and then the “Osroëne and the cities there.”
The phrase “and the cities there” is as unusual as it is superfluous. Where else are the Osroëne bishops supposed to have been situated except in the “cities there”?
But what speaks even more decisively against these words than this sort of observation is the fact that the earliest witness for the text of Eusebius, the Latin translation of Rufinus, does not contain the words “as well as from those in the Osroëne and the cities there.” This cannot be due to tampering with the text by the Italian translator, for whom eastern matters are of no great concern. In those books with which he has supplemented Eusebius’ History, Rufinus mentions Mesopotamia and Edessa several times (11.5 and 8 at the end; see below, n.24).
Thus the only remaining possibility is that in his copy of EH 5.23.4 he found no reference to the Osroëne, but that we are dealing here with a grammatically awkward interpolation by a later person who noted the omission of Edessa and its environs.
Bauer references the GCS edition of Eusebius’ Church History by E. Schwartz. We may find the volumes of the GCS edition of the HE easily enough here (part 1; books 1-5), here (part 2; 6-10, and Rufinus 10-11) and here (part 3; introduction, indexes). EH 5.23.4 is in part 1, p.490-1, here, both Greek and Latin, at the top of the page.
Let’s first look at the manuscripts, listed at the start of part 1, and discussed in detail in part 3.
Of the manuscripts used for the Greek text, ms. A is 11th century; T = 10-11th; E=10th; R = 12th; B is 12th; D is 11-12th; M = 12th.
Of the manuscripts of Rufinus’ translation into Latin, only a few were used. But ms. N= 8th century; P = 9th; O = 9/10th; F = 9/10th.
The difference in age, therefore, is very slight. Bauer relies on this difference in order to privilege the version by Rufinus, but neglects to indicate to the reader how very slight it is.
But when Bauer states that the “earliest witness” for the text of this passage is the Latin translation of Rufinus, he is mistaken. For he seems to have forgotten the Syriac translation, also referenced at the start of the GCS edition, but otherwise not discussed in that edition as far as I can see. This was published by Wright and McLean in 1898, and may be found here.
Of the manuscripts used for the Syriac text, ms. A is dated AD 462, i.e. 5th century; ms. B is 6th century. The editors add that the translation has evidently been transmitted through several copyists, even at this early date; Wright, indeed, believed (p.ix) that the translation was made either in Eusebius’ lifetime or soon afterwards. There is a medieval Armenian version as well, which the editor believes is based on a Syriac text of the 4th century (p.xvii), prior to the corruptions in the Syriac.
So what does the Syriac text say, for this passage? I am indebted to Syriacist Stephen Ring, who kindly examined it for me. The passage may be found on p.304 of the Wright-McLean edition, between p.304 lines 13 and p.305 line 1. This passage is given from B, according to the plan of the edition, with footnotes from Gothic A, by which the editors confusingly indicate the Armenian.
There is another written account of this inquiry and it makes known about a bishop Victor and about the bishops of other places who placed Palma as their chief and of the churches which are in Gaul ruled by Ireneus and again of Mesopotamian churches and the cities there. And also (the written account goes on) of Bakilios bishop of Corinth and many others. Those, as one government were agreed and were of one accord and from these there was one decree which those twenty-four said about it, about the division in Asia.
The Armenian contains something, given in the footnote as:
7. A. ecclesiarum et urbium quae in Mesopotamia sunt.
i.e. “of the churches and cities which are in Mesopotamia.”
For convenience I give the NPNF translation of the Greek:
And there is also another writing extant of those who were assembled at Rome to consider the same question, which bears the name of Bishop Victor; also of the bishops in Pontus over whom Palmas, as the oldest, presided; and of the parishes in Gaul of which Irenaeus was bishop, and of those in Osrhoëne and the cities there; and a personal letter of Bacchylus, bishop of the church at Corinth, and of a great many others, who uttered the same opinion and judgment, and cast the same vote.
The passage which Bauer dismisses as interpolated is shown to be present in a similar form in an Armenian witness to a Syriac text of the 4th century and in a Syriac witness of the 6th century.
There is, of course, a difference between “Osrhoene” and “Mesopotamia”. Dr Ring adds:
Where the text in question has ‘those Osrhoëne’, the Syriac translator wrote ‘idte debayt nahrote’ = ‘churches of betwixt the rivers’ = ‘churches of Mesopotamia’. In my opinion, it would be reasonable to translate ‘those of Osrhoëne’ into Syriac this way.
However, the Syriac context suggests this is exactly what happened, because Osrhoëne is a political entity which had cities like Edessa, Amid and Mabbug, whereas, ‘Mesopotamian churches’ in the Syriac is an ecclesiastical entity which would not contain cities, but the Syriac goes on ‘and the cities there’ suggesting that the translator has not chosen his/her words very carefully.
It is curious that the passage is absent from Rufinus. Possibly he either translated from a copy of the Greek which was lacking this passage, or else that he accidentally omitted it? But that the passage was present in copies from very soon after composition can hardly be doubted.
It would of course be possible to assert that this only shows that the passage was added very early to some copies, but that Rufinus had obtained an uncorrupted copy, and the shorter form is more likely to be authentic, despite the very early date of the Syriac-Armenian witnesses. The reader may form his own opinion on this matter.
But if we return to the main issue; is this a late interpolation, and therefore no evidence of Christianity in the time of Irenaeus in Edessa? The answer must be no. It is, if an interpolation at all, one made almost while the author was still breathing. More likely, the Greek and the Syriac reflect what Eusebius actually wrote.
The next section in Voicu’s article discusses a collection of 38 sermons by John Chrysostom in a Latin version, which are found in various manuscripts of the 9th century onwards, including the one online at Cologne which I referred to a few posts back.
Dom Andre Wilmart drew up a list of the contents in his 1918 article. Let’s give that list here, together with where they appear in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca.
1.-2.) In Psalmum 50 homiliae 1-2 (PG 55, 565-588)
3) In Psalmum 122 (PG 55, 351-353)
4) In Psalmum 150 (PG 55, 495-498)
5) De beata Iob (not actually by Chrysostom, but an extract from Augustine, De excidio urbis Romae)
6) De ascension Eliae (original Latin; Wenk 1988, p. 100-108)
7) De septem Macchabaeis (PG 50, 617-624)
8. De tribus pueris (original Latin; Wenk 1988, p. 117-121)
9) De sancta Susanna (again not by Chrysostom, but a cento of Augustine, De Susanna et Ioseph sermo)
10) De proditione Iudae homilia I (PG 49, 373-382)
11) De cruce et latrone homilia 1 (PG 49, 399-418): quoted by Leo the Great.
12) De cruce et latrone (original Greek in Wenger, 1954)
13) In uenerabilem crucem sermo (Browne 1990, PG 50, 815-820): quoted by Augustine.
14) In ascensionem D. N. Iesu Christi (PG 50, 441-452): quoted by Leo the great.
15) In pentecosten sermo 1 (PG 50, 803-808)
16) De nativitate Domini (original Latin by Jerome; PLS 2, 188 to 193)
17) De natiuitate Domini et Iohannis Baptistae (ed. Botte 1932, pp. 93-105; provenance unknown, possibly from a Greek model, cf. CPL 2276)
18) In resurrectionem Lazari (original Latin Potamius of Lisbon, ed. Wilmart 1918b): cited by Augustine.
19) De Chananaea (pC 52, 449-460) ruled in Constantinople in 403;
20-23) Four works on the gospels, actually by Jerome (PLS 2, 125-188)
24) De recipiendo Seueriano (PG 52, 423-426) given in Constantinople in 401 AD.
25) Severian of Gabala, De pace (ed. Kerameus-Papadopoulos 1891, p. 15-26): also 401 A.D. Migne does print a text of this in Latin.
26) In Genesim sermo 1 (PG 54, 581-585);
27) De eruditione disciplinae (actually a compilation from the works of Cyprian, ed. Wenk 1988. pp. 127-138)
28) In Eutropium (PG 52, 391-396) given at Constantinople in 399.
29) Cum de expulsione eius ageretur (PG 52, 427-436) given at Constantinople in 403.
30) Ad Theodorum lapsum liber 2 (PG 47, 309-316; Greek text and Latin version in Dumortier, 1966a, p. 46-79 and 241-256)
31) De militia spiritali (Greek text transmitted under the name of Basil of Cesarea; PG 31, 620-625; cf. CPL 1147; CPG 288)
32) De militia christiana (Latin text ed. Wenk 1988, pp. 145-156)
33) De patre et duobus filiis (actually by ps. Jerome; cf. CPL 766; ed. Wenk 1988, pp. 170-188).
34) Sermo ad Neophytos (Greek text and Latin version: Wenger 1970, pp.150-181 ): version citated by Julian of Eclanum.
35) De turture seu de Ecclesia sermo (PG 55, 599-602)
36) Quando ipse de Asia regressus est (Greek text and Latin version: Wenger 1961, pp. 110-123).
37) Post reditum a priore exsilio (Greek text omitted from PG; found in old editions, e.g., Montfaucon 1721, pp. 424-425; ancient Latin version : PG 52, 441-442).
38) De fide in Christo (possibly from a lost Greek original).
Some mss add a further four texts as an appendix.
Bouhot in 1971 analysed a version of the Wilmart collection which added extra works, omitted 1-2, and omitted 14-15 although it retained mention of them in the index of contents. The order differed as well; consisting of 3-9, 16-17, 10-13; then 34, in a revised recension used by Augustine; then Ad illuminandos catechesis 1 (PG 49, 223-232); then 18-38; then De paenitentia homilia 5 (PG 49, 305-312; the Latin version is divided into two parts); Ad populum Antiochenum homilia 1 (PG 49, 15-34); Epistula 3 (Greek Malingrey 1968, pp. 242-305; PG 52, 572-590): cited by Augustine.
A comparison of the two editions of the collection indicates that the Bouhot version is closer to that used by Augustine. But neither matches exactly, or includes all the works referenced by Augustine.
Voicu then proceeds to analyse this collection at some length. It has been asserted that this collection was also translated by Anianus of Celeda. But nothing suggests this. There are no dedicatory epistles, and the standard of comprehension of the Greek seems to be inferior.
Various citations of the collection in the 5th century indicate that this collection circulated in that period.
Some manuscripts add what has been called the “ascetic appendix”:
39) Quod nemo laeditur nisi a seipso (ed. Malingrey 1964; PG 52, 459-480).
40-41 ) Ad Demetrium de compunctione liber I and Ad Stelechium de compunctione liber 2 (PG 47, 399-422; in latin under the single title De
compunctione cordis).
42) Ad Theodorum lapsum liber I (PG 47, 277-308; Greek text and Latin version: Dumortier I 966a, pp. 80-218 and 257-322).
The date of the addition is unclear, but must be quite early, as it is mentioned in a ms. of the 7th century, Cod. Vaticanus Reginensis Latinus 2077, which lists some works of Chrysostom:
De compunctione animae liber unus, Neminem posse laedi nisi a semet ipso, In laudem beati Pauli apostoli volumen egregium, De excessibus et offensione Eutropii praefecti praetorio.
These may easily be recognised as nos 40, 41 and 39 of the collection, then the translation by Anianus of Celeda of the works on Paul, and finally no 28. A similar list is found in Isidore of Seville.
Voicu finishes his splendid article by telling us that there are further Latin translations from the 6-8th centuries, and refers us to Bouhot (1989, p.34). The article ends with three pages of incredibly useful bibliography. My only question is why this useful article is not online? And that, I fear, we all know the answer to: copyright.
I’m still thinking about the sermons of the late 4th century church father John Chrysostom, the most important of the Greek fathers. In particular I’m thinking about the one only extant in a short latin version, De recipiendo Serveriano, That Severian must be received, preached after his (temporary) reconciliation with Severian of Gabala.
I mentioned that his sermon De regressu, On his return from exile, existed in a short latin version, but that the full Greek text was retrieved by Wenger, who also printed a full ancient Latin version. The latter came from a homiliary, a genre of text about which I know nothing, and about which a Google search at first sight tells me nothing.
In the process, tho, I have come across a 9th century manuscript of the collection of 38 latin homilies! It’s at St. Gall, Cod. 113. The description is here:
OK, so this is all Chrysostom material. On folios 3-363 is the medieval collection. On folio 251 there is the start of Severian’s reply On Peace, again in an abbreviated form. On folio 248 is the start of De recipiendo Severiano.
These are the items printed by Migne. So it is nice to see a medieval manuscript version of them, as Migne’s text is not necessarily that reliable!
It can be a shock, sometimes, to remember that not every writer is extant in a single manuscript. That shock just hit me, when I decided, in a weak moment, that I would “just” have a quick search in the British Library Manuscripts catalogue for works by Chrysostom.
I’m looking for copies of the ancient Latin translation of De Severiano recipiendo, in truth. But since I wasn’t specific, I got the lot.
Boy did I get a lot! 103 hits, to be precise. Mostly homilies on scripture.
Mind you, the quality was rather low. Arundel. 542 has a catalogue description which is plainly the result of uncorrected OCR. I don’t mind; but I’d like to see the raw image! On the other hand, someone has indexed the authors out of this mess with some skill and effort — well done! The ms. also contains some homilies of Severian of Gabala at the end, it seems.
I drew blank, but it’s a reminder that finding stuff by Chrysostom in all this mass will not be easy.