Tag: Patristics

Devreesse on the extracts of Origen on Ezekiel in the catenas

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve continued to work away at the monster article on the catenas by R. Devreesse, Chaines éxégetiques grecques, Supplément to Dictionnaire de la Bible, vol. 1 (Paris: Letouzey, published 1928).   The print-out that I got using the default settings in Adobe was very hard to read, very grainy and faint.  Fortunately I found a way to set the printer to denser printing, and this improved this.  So this morning I made a pile of print-outs, stapled them together in four sections, took my pen and … went off to lunch.  They went very well while waiting for a steak to appear!

The material concerned with Origen on Ezechiel is quite brief and begins on col. 1154.  Here it is in English, omitting chunks of Greek quoted where it would be a pain to transcribe them.  It is rather full of unfamiliar names.  Who, for instance, is Faulhaber? (<cough> A quick google search reveals that I have asked this question before, and that his book is online!).  Moving quickly on:

V.  EZEKIEL. — Faulhaber has placed the work by Pradus-Villalpandus, In Ezechielem explanationes et apparatus urbis ac templi Hierosolymitani commentario et imaginibus illustratus, 3 vols, Rome, 1596-1604, in its true context.  These volumes may have some importance for biblical topography, but they have nothing to do with the literature on the catenas.  There are again many manuscripts of Roman catenas derived from the ms. Chisianus which we must examine.

This is a reference to various catena manuscripts in Rome, in the Vatican etc, which he has already referred to for other Old Testament catenas.

The catalogue of Karo and Lietzmann adds to these on the one hand ms. Coislin 17 (13th century), Ambrosianus E. 46 sup. (10th c.)  and on the other the two Laurentianus V, 9 (11th c.) and XI, 4 (11th c.).

The catenist, probably John Drungarius, prefixed his collection with a preface in which he declared that he had searched in vain for commentaries of the fathers on Ezekiel; he could only discover passages of the prophet referred to or explained by them, randomly, in one or another of their works.  Lacking works by the holy Fathers, he searched elsewhere for materials for his collection; the “heretics” Theodoret, Polychronius and Origen furnished him with scholia.    But he also came across an earlier catena which it seems contained anonymous extracts.  These he included preceded by the lemma  Ἄλλος.  Faulhaber, p. 141-2.  The sources for John’s catena — which we will call this, for convenience — are thus the following:  some anonymous scholia, based on a primitive catena and prefixed with the lemma Allos, some interpretations detached from context on odd passages of the prophet, and some fragments taken from authors of limited orthodoxy.  All this material has been treated with some freedom.  What is the Allos material?  Faulhaber has remarked that these extracts look very strongly like extracts from Polychronius.  These fragments must have come from some primitive catena, itself derived from a commentary by Polychronius.

I’m sure all of us are wondering who Polychronius is.  I certainly don’t remember the name!  A quick Google search reveals that he was bishop of Apamea in the early 5th century and the brother of Theodore of Mopsuestia.  No doubt his “heresy” consisted of following the Antiochene approach to the various controversies of the period, nearly all political in inspiration.  Quite a bit of his exegetical work has survived, including nearly all his work on Ezechiel.

But back to Devreesse:

Let us note, in passing, that in Ambrosianus E. 46 sup (10th c.), we find the commentary of Theodoret surrounded by scholia.

AUTHORS CITED.  — Origen. — We are told in the Church History of Eusebius (V, 32:1-2) that Origen began at Caesarea and completed at Athens a commentary (tomoi) on Ezechiel.  The work comprised 25 books.  Of this commentary there remains only a section from the 20th book, preserved in the Philocalia (Patrologia Graeca vol. 13, cols. 663-666; ed. Robinson, p. 60).

I ought to add here that the Philocalia is a compilation of extracts from Origen, which was made in the 4th century by the great Cappadocian Fathers Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa.  It survives, and I long ago scanned the English translation and placed it online here.

The commentary was not the only exegesis that Origen undertook on Ezekiel.  A translation by St. Jerome has handed us fourteen sermons (PG vol. 14, cols. 665-768; also edited by Baehrens, Griechische Christlicher Schriftsteller, 1925, p. 318-454).  There is no question, both in Eusebius and Jerome, that Origen also left scholia or excerpta on Ezekiel.  The fragments given in the catenas (233 in the ms. Ottobonianus 452, according to Faulhaber, p. 153) are taken from the homilies.  An edition of them by De la Rue can be found in the PG 13, cols. 695-787.  The Ottobonianus 452 was exploited by Cardinal Mai to furnish four further extracts (Novum Patr. Bibl. vol. 7, 2, praef., p. v [1], reprinted as PG 17, col. 288).  The manuscripts Vatican 1153 and Ottoboni 452 permitted Cardinal Pitra to pursue this collecting further, and to discover some next texts (Analecta sacra vol. 3, p. 541-550; the first extract had already been edited by De la Rue, the last and next-to-last by Mai).  The edition of Baehrens gives the fragments taken from the Ottoboni 452, Vatican 1153, and Laurentian V, 9 manuscripts, but we know that the homilies, which were the object of this publication, were attached to specific passages of the prophecy and did not go further than Ezechiel 44:2.  The remainder of the scholia are perhaps all that survives of lost homilies and commentaries.  The study of these fragments must therefore begin by establishing from the best manuscript witnesses a complete list, and then determining their relationship to the texts preserved in the direct tradition.

Devreesse then goes on to talk about the fragments of Hippolytus, but we need not follow him.

What does all this tell us?  Much and little.  It is reasonably certain that we have most of the catena fragments on Ezechiel by Origen.  It is equally certain that we don’t know that much about them, and that some of them are bogus.

I think it is time to clarify who the modern editors of Origen have been.  Schaff as always gives us something, but here is a little more:

Charles de La Rue (d. 1739) was the Benedictine editor of the complete works of Origen, reprinted by Migne in PG 11-17 after 1850.  He was one of the Maurist fathers, whose fabulous erudition was only brought to an end by the French Revolution, when their headquarters at St. Germain-des-Près were stormed by the mob.  Most of their books went to the National Library; a certain number were acquired by a Russian agent, Petrus Dubrovsky, and shipped out and sold to the Tsar, and are in St. Petersburg.  Dubrovsky himself was denounced to the Committee of Public Safety and had to flee, leaving some of his manuscripts to be scattered over Paris.

C. H. E. Lommatzsch also seems to have reprinted De la Rue, in 25 small volumes: Opera omnia quae graece et latine tantum exstant et ejus nomine circumferuntur … Ediderunt Carolus et Carol. Vincen. De La Rue … denuo recensuit … Carol. Henric. Eduard. Lommatzsch, Berlin: Haud and Spener (1831-1848).

The most  modern text on Origen on Ezekiel is that in the Berlin Griechische Christlicher Schriftsteller  series by Baehrens, which was reprinted by Borrett in the Sources Chretiennes edition.   Fortunately Baehrens is out of copyright, so there is no barrier to using his text.

I wonder what Baehrens thought of De la Rue’s work?

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Devreesse on quotations from Eusebius in catenas in John

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There are quite a few nuggets of interesting information in the 78-page article by R. Devreesse on Greek exegetical catenas in the Dictionaire de la Bible — supplement 1.  Naturally there are catenas on each of the Gospels, and he lists the authors quoted.  Here is what he says on John’s gospel, under the heading Eusebius.  Cordier/Corderius is one of the first catena editors; Cramer the editor of a catena in the 19th century.

Eusebius — Eusebius is the source of many citations in the catenas on St. John.  The first that we encounter (Cordier, p. 80) relates to John 2:22.  Cordier p.136 (on John 19:13-17) gives an extract from Severus [of Antioch], which is also found in Cramer, p. 398, with an indication of the source:  Σευήρου ἐκ τῆς πρὸς Θωμᾶν Γερμανικίας ἐπίσκοπον, where Severus reports the opinion given by Eusebius ἐν ταῖς πρὸς Μαρῖνον.  Cf. Brooks, A collection of letters of Severus of Antioch … in Patrologia Orientalis vol. 14, p. 268 [438].  The text of Cordier was reprinted in the Patrologia Graeca vol. 22, col. 1009 A-C.

On John 20:3-7, the Roman catenas cite a long passage of Eusebius.  The first part of this citation corresponds to P.G. 22, col. 984, A-C4, Eusebii Caesariensis supplementa quaetionum ad Marinum … ex Nicetae catena in Lucam; the second part is found in P.G., col. 989 B-C8.

Cordier, p. 449-450, gives a text which agrees with Question III to Marinus (P.G. 22, col. 948-949).  Finally on these same verses of chapter 22 of St. John, Cordier (p. 450-451) gives a citations which is almost identical to the content of P.G. col. 984-985.

It’s not quite clear from all of this whether Migne actually contains all this material, although it looks like it.  The most interesting reference is to the letters of Severus of Antioch, the monophysite patriarch of Constantinople in the reign of Anastasius until dethroned by the new emperor Justin in 517.  Long ago I scanned Brooks’ English translation of the letters, which are extant in Syriac.  Indeed I still remember the pain of doing so, because the volumes were very heavy to lift and place on the photocopier, and the pages had Syriac at the top and English in a grainy print at the bottom.

The Severus can be found here.  It is a truly interesting passage, all for itself!  I have added extra paragraphs for readability.

But that our Lord Jesus Christ our God was pierced in the side with a lance by that soldier after he gave up the ghost, and blood and water came forth from it in a miraculous manner, the divine John the Evangelist recorded, and no one else wrote about this. But certain persons have clearly falsified the Gospel of Matthew and inserted this same passage, when the contrary is the fact, in order to show that it was while he was alive that the soldier pierced his side with the spear, and afterwards he gave up the ghost.

This question was examined with great carefulness when my meanness was in the royal city, at the time when the affair of Macedonius was being examined, who became archbishop of that city, and there was produced the Gospel of Matthew, which was written in large letters, and was preserved with great honour in the royal palace, which was said to have been found in the days of Zeno of honourable memory in a city of the island of Cyprus buried with the holy Barnabas, who went about with Paul and spread the divine preaching; and, when the Gospel of Matthew was opened, it was found to be free from the falsification contained in this addition, [437] of the story of the soldier and the spear. …

But Eusebius of Caesarea (1141), who is called ‘Pamphili’, whom we mentioned a little above, when writing to a man called Marinus about questions concerning the passions of our Saviour and about his Resurrection, showed us nothing whatever about the said addition, as being unknown and having no place in the books of the gospel.

But in the same letters to Marinus, who had asked him for an interpretation on the subject of our Saviour’s passions and his Resurrection, he inserted the following exposition also in his letters, that the divine Mark the Evangelist said that it was the 3rd hour at the time when Christ who is God and our Saviour was crucified, but the divine John (he said) wrote that it was at the 6th hour that Pilate sat upon his judgment-seat at the place called ‘the pavement’, and judged Christ.

And therefore Eusebius said that this is an error of a scribe, who was inattentive when writing [441] the Gospel. For it is the letter gamal that denotes 3 hours, while the letter which is called in Greek episemon denotes the number of 6 hours, and these letters are like one another in Greek, and, the scribe wishing to write ‘3’ quickly, and having turned the letter a little backwards, it was thereby found to be ‘6’, because, since the letter had been turned backwards, it was supposed to be the letter that denotes ‘6’. Since therefore the three other evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke stated alike as with one mouth that from the 6th hour to the 9th there was darkness over all the land, it is plain that our Lord and God Jesus Christ was crucified before the 6th hour, at which the darkness took place, that is from the 3rd hour, as (1142) the blessed John himself wrote. Similarly we say that it is the 3rd hour, because those who wrote before, as we have said, changed the letter. We must insert also in this our letter upon this matter a part of what Eusebius himself stated at length; and his words are as follows:

“We agree not with any chance man, but with the evangelist who gave this testimony, [442] Mark. For it happened that there was an error on the part of the scribe so that he changed the letter by adding length to it, and it was thought that the letter which represents ‘3’ was ‘6’, on account of the likeness of the two letters of that which denotes ‘3’ and that which denotes ‘6’.

If therefore it is stated by John that it was the preparation of the day of unlevened bread, and it was about the 6th hour, and Pilate said to the Jews ‘Behold! your king’ (1143), and so on, let there be read instead of ‘6th’  ‘3rd’, since the beginning of his trial took place at that time, and in the middle of the hour or after it had been completed they crucified him, so that the result is that they judged and crucified him at the same hour”. (1144)

If you look for and find the volume addressed to Marinus about the interpretation of these things, you will find the accuracy of the writer as regards these matters.

The footnotes:

1141. 2. This passage to ‘letter’ (p. 441,1.12) is published in Greek in Cramer, Cat. in Luc. et Jo., p. 389 (cf. Corderius, Cat. in Jo., p. 436; P. G., XXII, 1009).
1142. 2. Some words have perhaps fallen out {Syriac}.
1143. 1. John, xix, 14.
1144. 2. Not known except from Severus

The next extract is from a letter to Theognostus of Germanicea, and Brooks notes:

1145. 3. A Greek extract from a letter to Theognostus of Germanicea is published in Cramer, Cat. in Epp. Cath., p. 159.

Hmm.  Well, I had forgotten (if I ever knew) that extract.  It had probably better be included in the Eusebius book!

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Styles of translation – an example from Isidore of Pelusium

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A friend has been typing up the Greek text of letter 212 of Isidore of Pelusium for me.  This is one of the fragments of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Gospel Problems and Solutions, so I have a translation of it.  The friend commented on the style of translation adopted, versus a more literal approach. 

Your translator did a nice job making a loose translation that is quite faithful to the intent and meaning of the letter.   …  I don’t think the translator was too loose.  For an academic translation, which is usually more literal, it does toe the line a little bit, but it does make a far more interesting and pleasant read.   Here are two passages that I translated literally.  Mine are in [normal text], your translator’s are in italics.

Τὸ γὰρ ἀδύνατον καὶ ὄν καὶ δοκοῦν, ὅσον πρὸς τὴν τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἀσθένειαν, φημὶ, κατορθώσας, ούκ ἄν περὶ τὸ δυνατὸν ἐξησθένησεν

He accomplished, I say, something both apparently and actually – as far as human weakness is concerned – impossible; so he would have shown no weakness in a matter that was possible.

For, I say, having accomplished what both is and seems impossible, as much as concerns the weakness of man, he would not be weak concerning what is possible.

Τὸ μὲν γὰρ θᾶττον ἀναστῆναι, ἔγκλημα οὐκ εἶχε

An early resurrection was irreproachable.

For a swift resurrecting does not have reproach. [Infinite changed to a participle]

For to resurrect swiftly does not have reproach. [Adjective changed to an adverb]

He adds:

I added an alternate translation of the last bit.  Basically there is an infinitive acting like a noun that is modified by an adjective.  In English we either have to make the infinitive a participle or the adjective into an adverb to be grammatically correct.  We can’t say “For to swift resurrect does not have reproach” but that is what the Greek says.  I guess what I am saying here is that either of my two translations I gave are equally literal in their own way. 

Now there are those who quibble about how “literal” is a meaningless and a subjective term, but I think that being able to reconstruct the original language from a translation is a fairly objective standard.  Irenaeus’ Against Heresies has a loose Latin translation and a very literal Armenian translation.  The Armenian can potentially be used to reconstruct the Greek.  The Latin can’t really.  It doesn’t mean one is necessarily better than the other, it just means one is more literal.  I would be interested in what more professional people think of my “literal” translation.  Maybe they have better suggestions!

Any such suggestions would be welcome, as would opinions on the version in Italics.

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The external appearance of catenas

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A kind correspondant has sent me a PDF of R. Devreese’ article Chaines exégétiques grecques, in the French Dictionaire de la Bible – supplement.  It’s around 80 pages long, and double columns, and very detailed even in the generalities.  I thought I would give an English version of a portion of the introduction, starting on col. 1089.

g) Page layout of catenas — So far we have only examined the titles of compilations to which the name of exegetical catena is given.  If we open one of these volumes, what do we see?

Most often, the text of scripture occupies the centre of the page, and is written in larger letters than the extracts which surround it.  To these catenas the name of marginal catenas (Rahmencatene) is given.  The names of the authors, sometimes written in red, precede each fragment of exegesis. (Cf. Vat. gr. 749 in Pio Franchi de’ Cavalieri -Lietzmann, Specimina codd. Vatic., tabula 8).  To the same type of arrangement belong the types of catena which are formed around a commentary or an existing catena.  There are no lack of examples, we could cite some covering almost all the books of scripture.  We will only name Coislin 81, where the elements of the catena are found dispersed in the margin around the commentary of Theodoret on the Psalms; Reg. 40, where the centre of the page is occupied by the commentary of Hesychius on the Psalms; Paris 128, where a scribe was completing a commentary on the Octateuch; the beginning of Palat. 20 where the centre is filled by a catena on Luke and the margins by the catena of Nicetas on the same gospel…  This manner of adding new scholia to compilations or finished treatises was continued to the end of the Middle Ages, because there are certain mss. commentaries of Euthymius on the Psalms where the procedure described is found still in use.  This procedure was flagrantly inconvenient for later copyists; there was a risk that texts written in the margin could end up integrated into the commentary or existing catena, and that all this would be presented without distinguishing the elements of which it was comprised.  Because of this, it happens that some of our commentaries are found in an interpolated state.

In the manuscripts that we are going to talk about, the glosses occupy the outer three margins of the page.  Sometimes, but rarely, the biblical text occupies exactly the middle of the page and the scholia are presented on all four sides; we find this layout in Vallicell. E. 40, and in Monac. gr. 9 (cf. Lindl, Die Octateuckatene des Prokop von Gaza, which reproduces folio 20 of this last manuscript).

Another layout just as common as the last gives one or more verses of Scripture written in sequence and then, on the following lines, the scholia of various authors, each preceded by a proper name, that of the author.  We call these catenas long-line catenas (Breitkatene).

Let us finally mention catenas in two columns.  Many of those already mentioned of the eclogae of Procopius are in this format.  An idea of their layout can be had from a reproduction of a page of Coislin 204, given by Swete, op. cit., p. xvii.

h) The lemmas — In these different catenas, whatever their layout, the name of the author is generally indicated, whether by the copyist himself or by a rubricator, either in the body of the text or in the margins.  Just as in legal manuscripts, the name is given in the genetive (Eusebiou, Theodorou).  It is customary to designate these by the word lemma, a convenient expression, if one that sometimes is found rather a long way from its original meaning.

Rarely — only in the most ancient manuscripts — the lemma is written in entirety.  More often, it is abriged into contractions, which may lead to a mistake.  A list of the most frequent abbreviations can be found in Montfaucon, Paleographica Graeca, p. 348.  Cf. M. Faulhaber, Babylonische Verwirrung in gricchischen Namensigeln, dans Oriens christianus, vol. VII , 1907 , p. 370-387.

More than once, whether because the copyist intended to come back and add them later, or because he left the task to a rubricator, the lemmas are omitted, and the spaces that should have contained them are left empty.  Scribes who copied these incomplete manuscripts found it easiest to run together the extracts presented to them without authors.  Whether they didn’t find lemmas, or omitted them, the result is the same.  When the lemmas were omitted and the scholia run together, the appearance was created of continuous exegesis.  This is how some names are found with material added, and others diminished.  This is how, for example, one part of the commentary of Eusebius on the Psalms (see below col. 1124) is in reality only a catena without lemmas.  All this supposed commentary is distributed in fragments among a half-dozen authors, from Athanasius to Hesychius.  It is probably for identical reasons that we possess pseudo-commentaries of Peter of Laodicea on the Psalms and Gospels, of Oecumenius on the Letters and Acts, which are really also just catenas without lemmas.

Very frequently, in recent manuscripts, we find omitted in sequence one or more lemmas.  It is necessary then to go back and locate the first error and return to many what has been ascribed to one author.

Later, when the number of interpretations had multiplied, in the marginal chains and chains on long lines a system of reference signs was used, made up of various geometrical combinations.  In this way, at a glance, one could see which scholia explained a given passage of the bible and conversely which biblical passage related to an exegesis one was looking at, just as with modern signs and notes.

I think we can all agree that this material is actually very interesting.  The French of Devreese is not difficult — I was reading this in bed before I felt obliged to come and type it in — and the precision of his remarks is most useful and plainly derived from specific examples.

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Testing the catenas – Carmelo Curti on Eusebius on the Psalms

Posted on by Roger Pearse

We all know that medieval Greek commentaries on the bible were compiled by chaining together extracts from commentaries on the book in question by the Fathers. Often these catenas continue to exist, when the original works are lost.  They are therefore a valuable source for retrieving early Christian comments on biblical verses.

But … to string these quotes together, the compilers had to adapt the quotations, if only slightly; they had to add bridging words, tweak tenses.  They had to abbreviate, very often.  So the question before us is whether we can rely on the quotations.

Eusebius of Caesarea wrote a monster commentary on the Psalms.  Unusually, a third of it still exists, preserved in ms. Coislin 44.  This means we can compare the original text with the catenas, and get an idea of the value of each.  Carmelo Curti wrote an interesting article on this [1], from which I have translated a couple of passages:

Of the famous “Commentarii in Psalmos” of Eusebius of Caesarea, about a third, Pss. 51-95,3, has been transmitted to us directly in the manuscript Coislin 44, saec. X [1] and the rest of the work, Pss. 1-50 and 95,4-150, came to us through the catenas, i.e. a path which, as is well-known, is among the least easy for the editor of Christian texts in the Greek language. The importance of the Coislin manuscript does not end in giving us a text genuine, complete and, in principle, correct of one part of the commentary of Eusebius. The manuscript also allows us to determine through appropriate comparisons, the value of those catenas that, together with other fragments of the Eusebian commentaries, contain some passages related to Pss. 51-95,3, i.e. that part attested by Coislin 44. This is the case for two catenary codices, Patmos Monastery St. John 215, saec. XII-XIII and Ambrosianus F 126 sup. century. XIII, deriving independently from a common original and, according to the classification of Karo-Lietzmann, Catena-type XI [2]. Together with fragments of other exegetes of the Psalter, the first one transmits fragments of the commentary of Eusebius on Pss. 78,5-150, the other,  fragments of the same comment that referring to Pss. 83,4-150 [3].

In my study published in 1972, comparing the text of these manuscripts with those witnessed by Coislin 44, I have demonstrated: first, that the compiler of the base catena, from which directly or indirectly our two witnesses derive, used a copy which belonged to the same branch of the tradition as the Coislin manuscript and secondly, that this compiler, while often omitting the comment of entire entries, has worked on the text under his eyes generally by abbreviating …, i.e. removing words or phrases or even whole periods not deemed essential to the meaning …. It follows that from Ps. 95.4 — as has been said, with Ps. 95.3 the Coislin manuscript unfortunately stops — the editor of the Eusebian commentary can be  certain that the text given by the two catena codices is usually genuine, though mutilated and spoiled by the omission of words or phrases or even whole sentences in the passages relating to verses for which they have preserved the comment.

By contrast, the contribution of the two catenas for the constitution of the exegesis of the Eusebian text on Pss. 51-95,3 — for this section, as we have said, we are aided by Coislin 44 — is of course not as relevant but still not entirely negligible. They in fact, as we will show in this chapter, in many cases allow us to improve the text offered by the Coislin manuscript, some correcting obvious mistakes, others filling gaps, others attesting variants which may deserve more consideration.

As documentation of what we have stated above, we give some examples. We quote the text of Coislin, which generally corresponds to that reproduced in PG 23, noting the variations  between the two catena manuscripts in parentheses. …

In conclusion, for the constitution of the text even in that part of the Eusebian commentary that is preserved in Coislin 44, the manuscripts Ambrosiano F 126 sup. and Patmos S. John Monastery 215 can not be ignored. They in fact, as we believe we have demonstrated, correct obvious errors in Coislin 44, restored to Eusebius words (or phrases) missing in this codex — both attributable to the copyist of the oislin ms. or that of his source –,  and also offer alternative readings that are worthy, in some cases, of some attention. The mistakes of Coislin in truth are mostly of the sort that could easily be corrected by the action of a prudent, unhurried editor (but all those mentioned in the course of this chapter are found in the edition of de Montfaucon reproduced in PG 23). It is a different matter for omissions, which are always difficult to divine and are risky to infer in any text and, more importantly, in a text of prose. For these the testimony of the two catenary manuscripts becomes extremely important and irreplaceable.

It is always good to test our theories about what is happening in catenas.  It is a relief to learn that they really do have value to the editor.  That lesson should be applicable well beyond the specific case of Eusebius on the Psalms.

1. C. Curti, I “Commentarii in Psalmos” di Eusebio di Cesarea: tradizione diretta (Coislin 44) e tradizione catenaria.  In: Eusebiana 1, 2nd ed, 169-179.

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More on the lost manuscript of Eusebius’ “Quaestiones” and the deeds of Cardinal Sirleto

Posted on by Roger Pearse

One of the mysteries attached to the Gospel Questions and Solutions by Eusebius of Caesarea is the question of what became of the last known manuscript of the full text.  It was seen “in Sicily” in 1563 by Cardinal Sirleto (who became a cardinal only in 1565, but was already librarian at the Vatican at that time), together with a manuscript of ps.Eustathius on the Hexameron.  Sirleto intended to publish the text, but never did.  A manuscript of the Eustathius, copied in the same year in a South Italian hand, is in the Escorial Library in Spain.  According to the IRHT catalogue it does not contain the Eusebius.

This evening I was reading the cheap reprint copy of Harnack’s Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur I.1 that I received a couple of days ago, and browsing the section on the manuscripts of Origen.  On p.393 I came across repeated references to “Cod. Sirl. xxxx (Miller, Esc. 123)”. 

19th century tomes loved to abbreviate.  Sometimes we may reasonably curse them. But I can think of no library which might be abbreviated “Sirl.”, and “Esc.” sounds an awful lot like “Escorial”.  Are the manuscripts of Sirleto all in the Escorial, I wonder?

An article by Irene Backus, Le cardinal Guglielmo Sirleto (1514-1585), sa bibliothèque et ses traductions de saint Basile, online here, tells me that Sirleto was appointed Cardinal-protector of the Basilian Greek monasteries in Southern Italy in 1571.  On p.899 it continues (my translation):

No doubt the contacts of Sirleto with the Basilian communities of the South (he had been  named Visitor on 4th March 1566 [38]) had facilitated a nomination above all honorific, and which was not a cause of great regret to him.  Likewise this facilitated his access to the monastic libraries, the engagement of copyists, and perhaps even the borrowing of certain manuscripts.  It is on the other hand certain that Sirleto collected Greek manuscripts from the decaying Italo-Greek monasteries of Calabria — and also in the East (cf. Vat. lat. 9054) — and he was set to reform these monasteries in collaboration with Cardinals Savelli, Carafa, and Santoro.[39]

The footnotes on this are also of interest:

[38] Commodaro, p. 126 (Calabria, Sicily and Basilicate).  {{which I presume from BBKL is P.E. Commodaro, Il Card. Sirleto 1514-1585, in: La Provincia di Catanzaro 3 (1985) Nr. 4}}

[39] One of the most celebrated Basilian monasteries, S. Giovanni Teresti, was situated in Sirleto’s native country (Stilo).  On the decay of the monasteries and their reform undertaken by Sirleto, see the very well documented expose in Commodaro p. 126-132.  It also served the aims of Philip II, who, as sovereign of Southern Italy, desired to acquire manuscripts for the Escorial Library; ibid. p. 141, n. 8.

I know that some of Sirleto’s papers are in the Vatican, and the Backus article makes this clear.  But … are the manuscripts in the Escorial?  The Backus article certainly suggests that an investigation there might pay dividends.  

I don’t think we should be deterred by one aspect that always clouds searches at the Escorial; the fire in the Greek manuscripts.  I do wish, tho, that I could consult Gregorio de Andrés, Catálogo de los códices griegos desaparecidos: de la Real Biblioteca de El Escorial (1968).

That said, a note in Simon Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity and History in Tridentine Italy, p. 61, is discouraging: he tells that Sirleto built up a library of almost 2,000 mss, which Philip II considered buying but found the price too high:

… Sirleto subsequently became Prefect (1570) and finally Cardinal-Librarian (1572-85). In addition to the familiarity which he enjoyed with this the largest and most comprehensive library of liturgical and church history in Christendom, we have already seen that Sirleto himself owned a notable personal library, which was considerably enriched by material that had come from Cervini’s collection, containing almost 2,000 manuscripts in Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Arabic and valued at 20,000 scudi at his death.[171]

[169]  E.g. a single ms.: BAV, Vat. lat. 6191 … consists entirely of letters to Sirleto, 1571-73. On Sirleto the best monograph is still G. Denzler, Kardinal Guglielmo Sirleto (1514-1585) … (Munich, 1964). For a list of mss. in the BAV which contains material by, to and from Sirleto see ibid. p. ix. Cf. L. Accattatis, Le biografie degli huomini illustri delle Calabrie, vol. 11 (Cosenza, 1870; repr. Sala bolognese. 1977), pp. 31-6 and P. Paschini, ‘Guglielmo Sirleto prima del cardinalato’ in his Tre ricerche sulla storia della chiesa nel ‘500 (Rome, 1945), pp. 155-281.

[171] Philip II of Spain deputed his ambassador Count Olivares to investigate the possibility of buying this library for the Escorial but the king decided the price was too high. See P. E. Commodaro, ‘Il Cardinale Guglielmo Sirleto’, pp. 171-3. Cf. L. Dorez, ‘Recherches et documents sur la bibliotheque du Cardinal Sirleto’, Melanges d’archeologie et d’histoire, 11 (1891) pp. 457-91.

It seems to me that there is a trail to be followed here.

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Origen update

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Translations of some more catena fragments from the work of Origen on Ezekiel have arrived.  These are useful and help get a complete picture.

The second is a translation of Delarue’s introduction where he discusses what he does.  It’s very interesting!  These old introductions are often full of useful info.  Delarue frankly confesses that in many cases he has no certain idea of whether the material is by Origen or not!  He writes:

The trustworthiness of these catenae, however, is very questionable.  For in them the names of the writers from whose fragments they have been patched together are so very often mixed up and confused that those which one catena ascribes to Origen are attributed in another catena to Didymus or Eusebius or Theodoret or some other interpreter.  Add to this the fact that even when the unanimous consent of the catenae ascribes a certain fragment to Origen, I have often discovered it belongs to Eusebius or Theodoret or to some other writer, on the basis of the published commentaries of these Fathers.

He goes on to discuss his approach.  We will definitely have to include this preface somehow in the book.

But … the more work I do with catenae, the more evident it becomes to me that we need new modern editions, not of extracts from catenae, but of catenae themselves.  They are compositions, and should be edited as such, a stemma established, and so forth.

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Graf on Arabic translations of Eusebius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In Graf’s Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, vol. 1, p. 318, is a note on translations of Eusebius in Arabic.  Here it is:

85. Eusebius, Bischof von Cäsarea (gest. 339 oder 340). Abu’l-Barakät, Katal. 648 erwähnt von ihm “Erklärungen zu den Abschnitten des heiligen Evangeliums und verschiedene Abhandlungen”. Mit den ersteren sind eher die “Kanones” oder synoptischen Tabellen zu den Evv gemeint, die häufig den Evv-Hss beigegeben sind, als die unter seinem Namen gehenden Scholien in Katenenwerken. Die grosse koptisch-ara­bische Evv-Katene (siehe unten S. 481 f.) enthält 6 Scholien des Eusebius zu Mt und weist ihm im Bunde mit Severus von Antiochien den grösseren Anteil an Scholien zu Lk zu [1]. Auch ein junger jakobitischer Kommen­tar zu den evangelischen Sonn- und Festtagsperikopen verwendet “Er­klärungen” des Eusebius; siehe im II. Teil. — Ueber eine Einleitung zu den Psalmen unter seinem Namen siehe II. Teil.

Von den „Abhandlungen” scheint in arabischer Sprache nichts mehr vorhanden zu sein ausser ein unterschobenes Leben des Papstes Silvester (314-335) in Par. ar. 147 (15. Jh.), ff. 306 r-321 v. Ob und inwie­weit dieses mit der griechischen Vita S. Silvestri (von Simeon Metaphrastes?) in Verbindung steht, aus der ein Auszug in freier Bearbeitung dem B. V. 58 einverleibt ist, bleibt noch dahingestellt; vgl. Rom. Quartalschr. 36 (1929) 209 f. 229 f.

[1] Nächste Quelle für den Kopten dürfte Nicetas gewesen sein, der in seinem Kommentar zu Lk Eusebius 121 mal (mit Auszügen aus der Kirchengeschichte) zitiert; siehe Joseph Sickenberger, Die Lukaskatene des Niketas von Herakleia [T. u. U. 22, 4], Leipzig 1902.

In English:

85. Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea (d. 339 or 340). Abu’l-Barakat, Catalogue 648 mentions by him ‘Explanations of the sections of the Holy Gospel, and various papers”. The former are more likely to be “canons” or synoptic tables of the Gospels, which Gospel-manuscripts often include, or scholia going under his name in Catenas. The great Coptic-Arabic Gospel-Catena (see below p. 481 f.) contains 6 scholia of Eusebius on Matthew and, along with Severus of Antioch, assigns to him the larger share of the scholia on Luke. Even a younger Jacobite Commentary on the Gospel passages used on Sundays and festivals refers to “Explanations” of Eusebius, see in Part II. – About an introduction to the Psalms in his name, see Part II.

Of the “papers” in Arabic, nothing seems to be left apart from a interpolated life of Pope Silvester (314-335) in Par. ar. 147 (15th century), ff 306r-321v. Whether and to what extent this is connected with the Greek Vita of S. Silvestri (by Simeon Metaphrastes?), from which an excerpt is incorporated in a free version by BV 58, remains an open question; Rom. Quartalschr. 36 (1929) 209 f. f 229 .

[1] Nicetas should have been the source most readily available to the Copts, who, in his commentary on Luke, cited Eusebius 121 times (including excerpts from the Church history), see Joseph SICKENBERGER, The Luke catena of Nicetas of Heraclea [T. u. U. 22, 4], Leipzig, 1902, B. 86 f.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The first chunk of the translation of the Coptic portions of Eusebius on the Gospels has arrived!  This is very good news.  The translator is asking ab0ut how I formatted the rest of the work — a very good question — and asking to see the rest.  I must progress this. 

An email came back from Claudio Zamagni; when he sent his Greek/French text to the publisher, he supplied the Greek and the French in separate files.  This is why, he says, the Greek page has the same page number as the French page.  This is very useful info, of course.

The chap who is going through the files turning the Greek into unicode is doing a splendid job, and has done the second file also (of four).

I have started to put out feelers to see if I can find a freelance editor to take on the book.  I just know so little about the process of book production.

I also emailed Sebastian Brock about the possibility of finding the lost mss. of Seert.  His response was to discourage investigation because of the sensitive politics around the massacres that led to the books being lost/hidden.  Some parties locally might prefer to destroy the books, rather than recover them. 

I’ve also remembered who I asked to translate all of Sbath treatise 20, and sent them a reminder.

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The lives of the Coptic Patriarch Isaac

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An interesting email arrived today.

I am writing to you hoping that The Life of Isaac, Patriarch of Alexandria (686-689 AD) would see the light in English translation through you.

Patriarch Isaac’s Life in the History of the Patriarchs of the Egyptian Church, which was complied by Severus of Ashmunin, is available in both Arabic and English translation, but it is a very short biography.

A longer Life is available in Coptic, and has been translated twice into French. To my knowledge it is not available in Arabic.

The two French translations, which are available on the net, and can be got at http://www.coptica.ch/5422/223222.html, are:

1. Amelineau, E., Histoire du Patriarche Copte Isaac. Paris, 1890.
2. E. Porcher, Vie D’Isaac. P.O. V. II. Paris, 1915.

I have always felt that the shorter Life of Isaac which is part of Severus of Ashmunin’s book is deliberately made short. His period was turbulent, and witnessed serious conflicts with the Muslim Ummayad ruler, Abdel Aziz ibn Marwan (685-705 AD). Copts were exposed to severe persecution during his rule, and it seems that there were contacts between Isaac and the Ethiopians and also the Nubians, which angered the Muslim ruler.

My current circumstances mean that I cannot take on any new projects, and I am trying to reduce my work load.  But I think the longer life of this period could not fail to be of considerable interest.  Google translate does a very reasonable job of French these days which would help anyone who took it on.

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