Tag: Manuscripts

The early translations of Chrysostom into Latin — 5. The collection of 38 homilies

Posted on by Roger Pearse

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.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

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:

  • S. 3–363 Johannes Chrisostomus: 37 ächte oder untergeschobene Reden >Incipit liber omeliarum Johannis Chrisostomi< dazwischen S. 251 eine mit der Ueberschrift: Incipit Severiani epi. sermo de pace, gedr. in Petrus Chrysologus Venet. 1742 F. p. 178.
    • cf. Severiani Homiliae nunc primum editae Venet. 1827.
  • S. 363–399 >Incipit de eo quod non laeditur homo nisi a semetipso.< Scio quod a crassioribus
  • S. 399–460 >Incipit eiusdem s. Joannis de cordis compunctione liber primus< und liber secundus pag. 436. Anfang: Cum tantum intueor b. Demetri
  • S. 460–530 >Inc. eiusdem de reparatione lapsi<

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!

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The overwhelming quantity of John Chrysostom

Posted on by Roger Pearse

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.

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More British Library mss.

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The British Library continue their digitisation of their manscripts, which is very welcome.  They’ve moved on to the Royal collection, although the focus seems to have drifted back to digitising “pretty books” and medievalia, rather than the material that classics and patristics scholars will want.

There is a Tertullian in that collection, which ought to be online.  But I have given up making suggestions and requests, since it never seems to have any effect.

In the current upload only one volume is of interest:

  • Royal 6 C. i   — Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae, England (St Augustine’s, Canterbury), 4th quarter of the 11th century.
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Papyri of St Augustine in the Green collection?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Via Tommy Wasserman at Evangelical Textual Criticism I learn of some rather exciting news!

The Baptist Standard reports (2012-07-10) from the same summer institute citing Jeff Fish (editor of the new Brill series) who said:

Scholars also mentored students editing some of the earliest fragments of the New Testament, with some dating to the second century, Fish said. Other discoveries are fragments of copies of some of St. Augustine’s commentaries on John’s Gospel and the Psalms, . . .

There is a little more on the session here, although no more about Augustine.

Also, it looks as if New Testament material will not relegate other material to the sidelines: Dr W. reckons that “the first volume will not contain the NT MSS”.  Information from this interview with Jerry Pattengale in Indiana Wesleyan University (2012-08-02):

Comprising of one to two new volumes per year, the new series will publish approximately 20 papyri with a thorough description, commentary with images, and web-based support for further resources.

The first forthcoming volume in the series, planned to be released in early 2013, is dedicated to an early 3c BCE papyrus containing an extensive, undocumented work by Aristotle on reason, and is currently being analyzed by a research group at Oxford University.

Of course the biblical material is no doubt of very great importance; but classical and patristic material is pretty interesting too!

Well done, Steven Green, for getting hold of all this stuff, and making it available!

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A new work by Aristotle in the Green collection?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Today I  learned of the Green Collection, a large private collection of manuscripts and papyri.  It is owned by the Green family of Oklahoma, who are (a) billionaires and (b) Christians.  In consequence they have been collecting material of wide interest. 

Brill have announced a new series of publications for the papyri:

The new series fits well among Brill’s strong portfolio of Classical Studies and Biblical and Religious Studies publications, as well as its extensive list of digitized primary source manuscript collections. Comprising of one to two new volumes per year, the new series will publish approximately 20 papyri with a thorough description, commentary with images, and web-based support for further resources.

The first forthcoming volume in the series, planned to be released in early 2013, is dedicated to an early 3c BCE papyrus containing an extensive, undocumented work by Aristotle on reason, and is currently being analyzed by a research group at Oxford University.

The Green Collection contains over 50,000 items, and now holds nearly 15,000 papyri acquired from private collections in Europe, and continues to grow. The collection is approximately 70% Greek, 15% Coptic and 15% late Egyptian. The collection is currently unpublished and contains items of extraordinary importance, including some of the earliest Greek literary texts known, dating to the early 3c BCE. A major building near Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. was purchased in July 2012 to house an international museum for these items.

They are also working with scholars at Tyndale House in Cambridge:

The Green Collection has announced that the Codex Climaci Rescriptus – containing the earliest-known texts of Scripture in something close to Jesus’ household language – will return to the University of Cambridge in collaboration with the collection’s international research arm, the Green Scholars Initiative.

Top manuscript scholars from Cambridge’s Tyndale House will conduct intensive, high-tech research on the codex’s 137 reused vellum leaves, which feature overlapping layers of text. Recent technological breakthroughs developed by Green Scholars at the University of Oxford allow once unreadable, underlying text from the codex to be “lifted” to the surface for enhanced study through a process known as “multi-spectral imaging.”

In selecting Cambridge as the official research home of the Codex Climaci Rescriptus, Green Scholars Initiative Director Dr. Jerry Pattengale said, “Tyndale House is a perfect fit for this project given both its excellent scholars and its reputation in biblical studies. We are pleased with the strength of their ancient languages, from Aramaic, Syriac and Hebrew to Greek and Coptic – and, just as important, their passionate interest in biblical studies.”

They have launched the Green Scholars Initiative:

The Green Scholars Initiative is an international research project involving dozens of institutions under the auspices of The Green Collection, the world’s newest and largest private collection of rare biblical texts and artifacts.

Through thousands of cuneiform texts and papyri, Dead Sea Scrolls and Coptic texts to Gutenberg, Wycliff, Tyndale, Thomas à Kempis, Erasmus, King James and a litany of Reformation and post-Reformation original texts, the Green Scholars Initiative brings established and young scholars together to pioneer groundbreaking biblical discoveries

There will be a new museum in Washington:

A sampling of the Bible museum’s offerings — from the collection of more than 40,000 artifacts — have been displayed in the Passages Exhibit at the Vatican and in Oklahoma City and Atlanta and will soon appear in Charlotte, N.C.

All this is very encouraging for papyrus and manuscript studies: a family with the resources to collect and publish materials, and the desire to do so.  And for once it is being done from a Christian perspective too.  Well done!

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The cost of copying books by hand

Posted on by Roger Pearse

At the end of Ms. Vall. 2297, there is an interesting note by the owner, a 15th century chap named Sozomenus, about whom I know nothing except that he owned manuscripts:

Melius est emere libros iam scriptos quam scribi facere: nam pro membranis exposui grossos tredecim, scriptori dedi libros duodecim, et cartorario grossos quatuor.  Summa ergo in totum libras  sexdecim solidos tredecim denarios vi. Die primo mensis Martii MCCCCXXV.[1]

It is better to buy books already written than to have them written: now for parchments I am out 13 grossos, I gave 12 to the scribe of the boooks, and 4 grossos to the binder.  In total therefor in all books 16 solidi, 13 denarii and vi.  1st March, 1425.

The “grosso”, or “denaro grosso” — “heavy penny” — was an Italian silver coin, heavier than a silver penny.  The name is related to the medieval “groat”, I believe.  It cost the owner 29 of these to have these books copied.

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  1. [1]Albert C. Clark, Sabbadini’s Finds of Greek and Latin MSS, The Classical Review 20 (1906), p.229, referencing the Valliere catalogue (cur. de Bure, 1783) vol. ii. p.26.  http://www.jstor.org/stable/694935↩

More manuscripts online at the British Library

Posted on by Roger Pearse

At the British Library manuscripts blog, there is news.

Final Harley Science Manuscripts Published

We are delighted to announce that the remaining manuscripts in our Harley Science Project have now been published to the British Library’s Digitised Manuscripts site. All 150 manuscripts in this project have been digitised and recatalogued thanks to the generosity of William and Judith Bollinger. We hope that this resource, part of our ongoing campaign to make our collection items more accessible, will promote new research into the books in question.

I hope so too.  It can’t do the slightest harm.  The cataloguing is pretty good too, I have to say.  But … I wish we could get PDF’s of the mss, rather than being at the mercy of slow broadband and a quirky interface.  I suspect it will come, once libraries recognise that it doesn’t harm them in any way.

Access to these texts was always the problem; only a tiny handful of geographically local scholars could do much.  Now … there are NO excuses for lazy scholarship.  Get publishing articles, gentlemen!

In the current tranche, the following items will be of interest to us.

  • Harley 2686  Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae (France, 9th century)
  • Harley 3748  Galen, Opera (France or Italy, 14th-15th century)
  • Harley 3892  Miscellaneous texts on rhetoric, grammar, geometry and divination (Italy, 1400-1454) — this actually also contains parts of Horace, Ars Poetica and Letters.
  • Harley 3915  Collection of chemical, alchemical and medical recipes, and texts on the techniques and technology of various arts (Germany, 1200-1444) — Includes an extract from Vitruvius, and an autograph note by Nicholas of Cusa, indicating that this book once belonged to him (and so ought to be in Berkastel-Kues with the rest of his books).
  • Harley 3969  Works on history, natural history and rhetoric (England, 14th century) — Actually includes extracts from: Cassiodorus, De orthographia, Censorinus de natali die, Apuleius, Dares Phrygius, Pliny the Elder, and Jerome’s Letter to Helvidius.
  • Harley 4241  Aristotle, Metaphysica (Germany, c. 1450-1464) — Another of St. Nicolas of Cusa’s books.

There are a number of other Latin translations, of Euclid and Aristotle.

Good to have these.

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Manuscripts of Quintus Curtius Rufus

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Penguin translation of the History of Alexander the Great by Q. Curtius Rufus tells me that there are 123 manuscripts of this work.[1]  A list is apparently given by Dosson in his Etude sur Quinte Curce, 1887, p.315-356 (online here).

The work was originally in 10 books, but books 1 and 2 are lost.  There are also large lacunae at the end of book 5 / start of book 6, and in the middle of book 10.  All the extant mss. are of French origin.  The extant manuscripts, which date from the 9th century onwards, divide into two classes, one of which exhibits signs of scholarly tampering.  There is also a mass of late mss, virtually unexamined.

Interestingly the work of Quintus Curtius Rufus is not referenced by other extant writers until the 9th century, although passages which suggest the author had read Curtius Rufus — or perhaps his source — can be found in Seneca, Lucan, and Quintilian.[2]

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  1. [1]p.1.↩
  2. [2]Dosson, p.357.↩

Armenian mss photographed in Syria by HMML

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Via Paleojudaica I learn of an interesting article on the PanArmenian website.

PanARMENIAN.Net – Hill Museum & Manuscript Library at St. John’s University completed a manuscript preservation project in the Middle East shortly before the violence worsened in Syria, sctimes.com reports.

“This was our last current project in Syria, and we had done actually a series of projects – about six of them in Syria – in different locations,” said the Rev. Columba Stewart, executive director of the Collegeville-based library.

However, HMML-trained technicians in Aleppo, Syria, were able to complete the digitization of 225 Armenian manuscripts belonging to the Armenian Orthodox Diocese of Aleppo – one of the largest Armenian collections in Syria.

“We began the work before the current turmoil in Syria, and this particular project was finished just as the situation started to get bad in Aleppo, which had been quiet until fairly recently,” Stewart said during a call from Bethlehem. …

“We also work on Islamic projects, so our interests transcend particular denominations or religious groups because all of this handwritten manuscript heritage is really the heritage of all humankind,” Stewart said.

HMML has now completed a series of projects in Aleppo that have included important collections belonging to the Syriac Orthodox, Syriac Catholic and Greek-Catholic communities, for a total of 2,150 digitally preserved manuscripts. …

Adam McCollum is the lead cataloger of Eastern Christian manuscripts at HMML and will be responsible for getting the Armenian collection cataloged once it is at the HMML.

“Once the library has entered into a partnership with people who have collections of manuscripts, a studio is set up there with a digital camera, and entire manuscript collections are photographed and put onto hard drives and mailed back to us,” McCollum said.

One digital copy of the Armenian collection will stay with Bishop Shahan Sarkissian and the Armenian Orthodox Diocese of Aleppo. HMML will keep an additional digital copy of the collection in a highly secure location.

“The general populace in these places is still pretty safe – at least at this point – but we have no idea what’s going to happen in the future,” he said of HMML’s continuing work in Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, as well as in Ethiopia, southwest India and Malta.

I think that we must all wish this enterprise well.  HMML is doing a rescue job here, and a very necessary one. 

Before the first world war, scholars were very excited to discover that the “mountain Nestorians” in the Turkish empire, in what is now the north of modern Iraq and Iran, were still speaking Syriac.  It was discovered that they had preserved manuscripts of various important patristic works previously thought lost.  They were based in the mountains in order to resist Moslem attacks, mainly by Kurds.  American missionaries set up a base at Urmia and copied whatever they could access.  The Archbishop of Seert, Addai Scher, became a well-known scholar and collected a number of irreplaceable items, including a complete Syriac translation of Theodore of Mopsuestia’s lost work, De incarnatione, discovered in 1905 and unpublished.  

Then the war came, and the Turks orchestrated genocidal attacks on the Armenians in 1915, but also on Christians generally.  Scher was murdered and his library vanished, taking with it any chance that men could ever read De incarnatione.  The losses of manuscripts in that period were severe. 

Likewise the violence in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein once again led to Moslem violence against Christians, and the loss of cultural treasures.

The revolutions going on at the moment — and I have no idea what is truly happening there, and I don’t believe our media reports — are very likely to involve the destruction of irreplaceable material. 

The work of HMML in making copies of manuscripts is undoubtedly a wise precaution.

Armenian literature itself is much better known than Old Slavic, but simply cataloguing those manuscript, as Adam McCollum is to do, will itself make material more accessible. 

I once wanted to learn if there was any catena material in Armenian.  I was defeated by the fact that all the titles, in the catalogues of manuscripts that I consulted, were in Armenian script and so unreadable!  A web catalogue will not have this problem.

Yesterday the Slavicists were talking about the need for a Clavis listing all works and authors known in the language, and assigning each a numeric reference.  Is there a Clavis for classical Armenian, I wonder?  If not, why not?

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