Tag: Manuscripts

Medieval library catalogues

Posted on by Roger Pearse

One of the most interesting books to delve into, if you have a little Latin, is Gustav Becker’s Catalogi bibliothecarum antiqui.  This was published in 1885 and consists of reprints of all the catalogues of medieval abbeys.  Books were treasures in medieval abbeys, which could be pawned for cash, and inventories were therefore taken of what books the abbey owned.

You can see three such catalogues, all for the very well-endowed abbey of Corbie in Northern France here.  Here is the first one, the shortest, from the 11th century, with Becker’s note of where he was reprinting it from:

§55. Corbeia = Corbie. saec. XI.

HI CODICES [LIBRI Delisle] REPERTI SUNT IN ARMARIO
SANCTI PETRI.

        1-3. Expositio Cassiodori super psalterium in tribus libris. — 4. Hieronymus in Isaiam prophetam. — 5. item Hieronymus super Ezechielem libri V. — 6. Herenei [Irenaei Mai] episcopi Ludunensis [Lugdun. Mai.] contra omnes hereses. — 7. Augustinus de natura et origine animae ad Renatum. — 8. epithalamium Origenis in cantica canticorum. — 9. lex Romana ab Alarico rege abbreviata. — 10. libri veterum sedecim. — 11. Libri Novellarum sex Theodosii I, Valentiniani I, Martiani I. — 12. lex Burgundionum. — 13. lex Gothorum. — 14. Iulius Frontinus de geometria. in eodem Siculus Flaccus de agris. — 15. Chigenus [Hyginus. Mai.] Augustus de limitibus statuendis. — 16. Euclides de figuris geometricis. — 17. item Augustinus de solutionibus diversarum quaestionum. — 18. concordiae evangelistarum libri IIII sancti Augustini.

        19. ecclesiastica historia Eusebii. — 20. excerptiones Eugypii. — 21. retractatio in libris confessionum Augustini. — 22. tractatus sancti Ambrosii de officiis. — 23. expositio Hesychii presbyteri super leviticum. — 24. Rufinus in librum numeri. — 25. historia Hegesippi. — 26. codex pragmaticus Tiberii Augustii. — 27. tripertita historia. — 28. Augustinus de opere monachorum. — 29. liber sancti Ambrosii de trinitate ad Gratianum imperatorem. — 30. homiliae Origenis de Balaam et Balac et in eodem Iohannis de reparatione lapsi. — 31. Tertullianus de resurrectione carnis, de trinitate, de spectaculis, de munere, de prescriptionibus ereticorum, de ieiuniis adversus fisicos, de monogamia, de pudicitia. — 32. Augustinus de utilitate credendi. — 33. Salvianus episcopus de gubernatione Dei.

        34-43. libri sancti Clementis numero decem. — 44. Hieronymi libri tres in Zachariam prophetam. — 45. item Hieronymus in Hieremiam prophetam. — 46. collationes abbatis Piamon de tribus generibus monachorum. — 47. Ambrosius episcopus de fide ad Gratianum imperatorem. — 48. Augustinus de trinitate. — 49. homeliae Origenis in genesim. — 50. Hieronymus de nominibus urbium vel locorum. — 51. Ratbertus Paschasius de corpore et sanguine Domini. — 52. Fulgentius episcopus de remissione peccatorum. — 53. altercatio Atici [Attici Mai.] orthodoxi et Cretoboli [Critobuli Mai.] heretici. — 54. Hieronymus in Danihelem prophetam. — 55. Optati Milibitani [milivetani Mai.] episcopi libri septem ad Parmenianum scismaticam. — 56. Eusebius de fide adversus Sabellium. — 57. Augustinus de singularitate clericorum. — 58. libri duo Hieronymi contra Rufinum presbyterum. — 59. item Hieronymus contra lovinianum. — 60. Firmiani Lactantii liber de falsa religione.

(Mai Spicilegium Roman. V, 202-3. ex Ms. 520 reginae Christinae, parvam partem dedit Delisle Mém. de l’institut de France. Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. t. 24, 339. vel in Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes Ser.V. tom.Ip.512. cf. Montfaucon bibl. Mss. II, 1406.)

Many of these books and names will mean little to most of us.  Irenaeus Against Heresies is there; a rare Tertullian also.  Eusebius’ Church History is there, plus Eusebius “Adversus Sabellium” must mean his five books Against Marcellus, in a Latin version; I had not known until this moment that such existed.  Augustine and Ambrose and Jerome are all well represented.  Origen’s Homilies on Genesis are present.  And so is Euclid, amazingly enough!

Paging through Becker is to gain an idea of what books were really circulating in the west in the Middle ages, at least before 1300 when he ends.

But what about the Greek East?  What sort of inventories exist for Greek monastic collections?  I would very much like to know; because I don’t know of any equivalent book for these.

Book lists do exist.  A 16th century list — probably part of a bookseller’s bait-and-switch scam — is here.  But what about the abbey inventories?

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Nominate Mingana manuscripts for digitisation

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Peter Robinson of the Virtual Manuscripts Room at Birmingham has responded here to a post of mine, bewailing the emphasis on Islamic manuscripts so far, with a very interesting response:

We are aware that the only way to satisfy everyone is, simply, to digitize everything. The project was by way of an experiment, to learn about the issues involved in the digitization and to satisfy ourselves that it WOULD be possible to go on and digitize the entire collection.

Now, we believe we can do that. We have developed a plan for this, and it would be very helpful to have the support of people on this list.

One way you could do this would be to go send in any mss from Mingana that you would like to see digitized using the form at http://vmr.bham.ac.uk/contact/. The more such requests we gather, the stronger our case for digitizing the whole collection.

This is a very open-minded and sensible approach, and I would encourage people to do just this. 

The catalogues are all online here.  I know that it is summer, and we all have many things to do involving strawberries, but if you can tear yourself away, mull over what texts you would like to see online.  I can think of the manuscript including Cyrus and Thomas of Edessa, without blinking, for instance; and there will be more!

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Cambridge University Library manuscripts department are idiots

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Apparently Cambridge University Library has appointed someone new to be in charge of the manuscripts room.  That man is a jerk.  He wants to make his mark, so has “increased security.”  Yes, I know; we all wince when librarians do this.

This I found out today when I tried to look at the catalogue of manuscripts in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples.  As a manuscripts-related book, access to it is through the manuscripts room, to which I have access (which required a special letter of introduction).

I arrive at the door of the reading room, with my special clear plastic bag containing my wallet, notebook, assorted pencils, etc.  First I have to sign my name and card number in a paper register.  Then I am denied access.  I am handed a key and told to leave my bag in a locker outside, and hold in my hands whatever I need.  I do so. 

Then I come back; and they still won’t let me in.  I have to give them the key to the locker; and they give me a tag for it.  Then they let me in.

Then I go to where the book should be.  It isn’t there.  Indeed there is no sign of a whole range of books in that shelfmark.  I go to the desk; they don’t know where it is either.  After messing me about for 10 minutes I just want to leave this creepy, horrible place.

And then, of course, I have to go through the rigamarole again in order to leave.  Remember, not a single person in that room has got there without already passing a vetting, before they were even given a library card.

Possibly I could have ordered the book at the desk, gone away, and come back again, going through this “security” nonsense FOUR TIMES.  Frankly I couldn’t face it, and went without.

Finally… CUL has no mechanism for complaints.  Very angry and frustrated.  They have the book.  I want to look at it.  I’m authorised to look at it.  And I can’t.

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Finding collections of Greek manuscripts is less easy than it should be

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I need to find out where in Southern Italy and Sicily there are collections of Greek manuscripts.  I have been trying to think of a Google search that will give this information.  I don’t expect it to give me every collection; just the obvious ones.

Well, I can’t think of a search that will do this.  A few attempts bring up nothing.

Yet… isn’t this sort of search a fundamental need?  Not just for that region; say you wanted to know where to look in the United Kingdom?  It’s the same problem.

Where DO we look?

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Online version of the Codex Sinaiticus; more manuscripts to follow

Posted on by Roger Pearse

We’ve all seen the PR for this online manuscript, which has even caused the servers to crash, although it is back now.  The PR has been very well managed, and it can only be a good thing that more interest is being generated in online manuscripts.  The announcement of more manuscripts at the Virtual Manuscript Room at Birmingham is well-timed.

I learn that the British Library is now beginning a pilot project to place some 250 Greek manuscripts online.  The project will be led by Juan Garces, who has been involved in the Sinaiticus project.  Clearly success begets success, and we can only hope that this marks the beginning of the end of the long hostility of the British Library to putting material on the internet.

Philip Comfort’s book Encountering the Manuscripts  – about New Testament manuscripts, including Sinaiticus – should be selling very well just now!

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Mingana manuscripts ignored, Korans placed online instead

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I saw today an announcement of the Virtual Manuscripts Room at the Mingana collection in Birmingham.  This is now available here.  They’ve scanned 71 mss.  But… disaster; political correctness has struck.  They’ve ignored nearly all the collection, in favour of the stray Islamic items that Mingana picked up.  Only about a dozen Syriac and a handful of Arabic Christian mss have been digitised.  The press release doesn’t even mention non-Islamic items.

I must say that I feel gutted.  Alphone Mingana must be bewailing that he ever left his mss in Birmingham.  Edward Cadbury must be apologising to him and wishing that he had chosen his heirs with more care.

UPDATE: I’ve emailed David Pulford at the library and it seems that JISC — who funded it — is to blame for the way this was presented.  They’re doing some “Digital Islam” thing at the moment, and the press release reflected that pretty much exclusively.  Still wish we had fewer Korans and more digital Dionysius bar Salibi, tho.

 

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Vatican ms orders received

Posted on by Roger Pearse

On May 19th I ordered reproductions of two manuscripts of the unpublished Arabic Christian historian al-Makin from the Vatican.  I didn’t receive any acknowledgement, so wasn’t expecting much.  Anyhow a UPS man arrived a few minutes ago, bearing a parcel.  So it took just under 7 weeks to get, from posting the order to now.  That’s really not too bad.

Less good is the payment arrangements.  They’ve sent me an invoice, which has an international bank account number (IBAN) and a SWIFT number on it, so I can do a bank-to-bank transfer.  These are marvellously expensive things to do from the UK (because the banks rip you off).  There seems no facility to do a credit card payment.

The images arrived as two PDF’s  — which is good.  The images are scanned from black-and-white (not even monochrome) microfilm — which is terrible.   The consumer really should be protected from this rip-off racket of selling substandard images at very premium prices.  The price for the two mss. was 215 euros; the charge for postage and packing was 15 euros; quite a bit for 43Mb of data, which could perfectly well have been made available for download. 

Of course the library is profiteering pretty heavily here.  The microfilms already existed, so to produce these PDF’s required them to load them in a microfilm scanner, hit “scan”, and go and have a coffee.  200 euros for a trivial bit of work; nice if you can get it, eh?

I was amused to find a “copyright” notice included.  This is almost certainly fraudulent, as ever; these images cannot be considered creative works of art!  Only in the UK could this even possibly be in copyright, because of the foolish wording of the law in this country.

Still, the failings of this service are historic and traditional; the advantages of it are all new, and I think we may expect radical improvements in service.  Everyone will expect better quality, and we may hope to get it.

UPDATE: I discovered by chance that HSBC customers can do their own international transfers from their online system, at a price of 9 GBP; far cheaper than Lloyds TSB at 15 GBP, etc.  So that’s the way to do it, if you have such an account.

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British Library to mass-digitize its manuscripts?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Tiny snippets, these, but here I found a report on a conference in February, which included the chance remark:

Will this community thrive? Ronald Milne of the British Library told me he was amazed at how web-active the papyrologist community is. Incidentally, Juan Garcés presented this work excitingly within the context of a recent decision by the British Library to mass-digitise its entire collection of pre-1600 manuscripts.

Meanwhile here is a conference due to happen in July 2009.  Among the papers to be delivered is:

Juan Garcés, Codex Sinaiticus and the mass-digitisation of Greek manuscripts at the British Library.

Hum.  If the British Library is really to digitise all of its manuscripts, that could only be a good thing; indeed a very good thing.  But the devil is in the detail.  I will see if I can find out more about this.  Who is Juan Garces, I wonder?  A search reveals this:

Juan Garcés is Project Manager of the Greek Manuscripts Digitisation Projects at the British Library, where he is currently managing both the Codex Sinaiticus Project (http://www.codexsinaiticus.org) and the Greek Manuscripts Digitisation Project. After studying theology in Giessen and Marburg, Germany, he received a doctorate in Biblical Studies from the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, in 2003.

He has since gained experience in the field of Digital Humanities as analyst, consultant, and adviser on digitally-based research projects, particular in the field of Greek texts. Before coming to the British Library, he was employed at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s College London, which recently awarded him an MA in Digital Humanities. He is one of the founding members of the Digital Classicist (http://www.digitalclassicist.org/), the organiser of the Open Source Critical Editions workshop, and co-author of the forthcoming article ‘Open Source Critical Editions: a Rationale’ (in: Text Editing, Print, and the Digital World, eds. Marilyn Deegan and Kathryn Sutherland, Ashgate Press, 2009).

Frankly this sounds pretty good.   A man with a background in Open Source, and digitisation.

My only worry … the BL has a history of creating digital items which it then sells access to, instead of making available to the general public.  It would be a tragedy if such a potentially useful project was prostituted in that way.

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Islamic Manuscripts conference, Cambridge

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This via BYZANS-L:

…registration is now open for The Fifth Islamic Manuscript Conference, Cambridge 24-26 July 2009.

http://www.islamicmanuscript.org/Conferences.html

The Islamic Manuscript Association is pleased to announce that the Fifth Islamic Manuscript Conference will be held at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge, UK from 24-26 July 2009. It will be hosted by the Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation and the Centre of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge. We invite you to register online at http://www.islamicmanuscript.org/conferences/ConferenceRegistrationForm1.html<http://exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.islamicmanuscript.org/conferences/ConferenceRegistrationForm1.html>

In 2009, the Conference will specifically address the issue of access to manuscripts. Improving access to manuscripts through digitisation and electronic ordering and delivery systems whilst ensuring their proper long-term preservation is fundamental to the successful future study of the Islamic heritage. Presently, technologies are available that have the potential to transform the way manuscripts are studied; however, the access these technologies can allow is counterbalanced by collection holders’ concerns regarding their legal rights and the financial sustainability of their organisations. During the Fifth Islamic Manuscript Conference these vital issues will be discussed by our invited speakers and selected paper presenters.

As in previous years, the Conference will be organised around the Association’s four main interest groups: cataloguing, conservation, digitisation, and publishing and research. The first day will also feature two special panels, a ‘Collections’ panel introducing less well-known collections from Africa, the Balkans, and Turkey, and a panel devoted to the conference theme of Access featuring invited experts who will discuss how such issues as security in libraries and online, financial considerations, and the understanding of international copyright law inform users’ experience of accessing materials for research.

Posters advertising the conference can be found at
http://www.islamicmanuscript.org/conferences/Posters.html The full schedule will also be available online shortly. We look forward to welcoming you to Cambridge in July.

A bit depressing, this one.  They’ve grasped that digitisation is necessary, but are still seeing the images mainly as a revenue stream!  I’ve written to the conference contact, expressing my concern.  They ought to be trying to get the things on the web, freely accessible to all.  They ought to be encouraging people to look at them, to read them, to comment on them and translate them.  Instead they’re trying to find ways to keep them off the web, out of circulation (vain hope) and charge while doing so.  Eating the seed corn of Islamic studies, in other words.

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