Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
In French, here. Not wildly exciting, tho.
The 13th century Arabic Christian chronicle of George Al-Makin or Ibn Amid has never been published in full, or translated into any other language. However it contains a version of the so-called Testimonium Flavianum, based on that in Agapius. Some access to this text is desirable, therefore. It’s a big text, in two halves. The first need is to get hold of copies of manuscripts.
This has drawn my attention before. I ended up ordering copies from a Paris manuscript, which cost a lot and turned out to be wretchedly poor quality; too poor to be usable. I’ve gone back to them, and we’ll see if they will send me something useful.
In the meantime a scholarly friend has been going through this, listing the sections and how long they are, so that we can get an idea of contents. The poor state of the Paris microfilm has become very apparent during this process.
According to Georg Graf’s Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, vol. 2, p. 349, the following manuscripts exist of the first half:
Manuscripts exist of the second half, as does a printed text, Thomas Erpenius Historia Saracenica (1625) with Latin translation.
I need to have another go at getting manuscript copies from the Vatican. Last time my email was ignored. I don’t know that the Bodleian has changed its policy of charging the customer vast prices for full-colour images, but only supplying him low-grade monochrome derivatives. Being poor, such a policy amounts to prohibiting access. But it may be possible to obtain images from some of the other institutions.
Isn’t it odd, what a struggle it is to just obtain access?
UPDATE (16th Dec. 2013). I have added some notes from Martino Diez, “Les antiquities greco-romaines entre al-Makin ibn al-`Amid et ibn Khaldun”, Studia Graeco-Arabica, 3, (2013) 121-140.
The scumbag ecclesiastic is a perennial figure, his hands ever grasping the property of others, ever active in promoting evil, mouth ever open against any who dare to suggest that his life and actions are condemned by Christ. Bishop Eusebius of Pelusium has ordained one of his sidekicks, a man named Zosimus, conspicuous for his evil life.
1382. (V.116) TO CASIUS THE PRIEST
In your letter, you express your astonishment: how can the unworthy consecration of Zosimus appear right to the man who has illegally ordained him? I reply: your indignation, being of the kind that arises from a horror of wickedness, is legitimate, no-one can deny that! But I advise you to keep your tongue free of all evil-speaking. Although that man does indeed deserve a thrashing a thousand times over, as you write — because instead of being improved by his responsibility, he has taken on the priesthood as a tool to serve his vices and to do the intolerable — you mustn’t soil your mouth while exposing his shameful deeds and scabrous morals to the public.
PDF is here. It’s plainly a google book, but not sure where from.
While I was kept offline and looking for something to read, I found on my hard disk some volumes of the Bibliotheca Graeca of J. Fabricius. This is a catalogue of all Greek writers from the beginning up to the renaissance, complete with extensive chunks of their works. It’s in Latin, of course, but anyone with a bit of effort (and maybe a bit of help from QuickLatin) can make something of it if they try.
This massive and monumental work has long been inaccessible to anyone. It was published so long ago that it disappeared into rare book rooms 150 years ago. Once in there, no-one was able to consult it except in small chunks under the hostile gaze of the dragons that such places tend to employ. Difficult of access, in a language increasingly unused, and of course also out of date, it has vanished from our eyes.
Yet such works have a tremendous value, so long as one can look at a complete set. If you have a bunch of volumes before you, you learn something about the scope of Greek literature simply by browsing. Every page adds something. Reading the contents pages alone will introduce the reader to writers of whom one might never otherwise hear. Dip in, a little here, a little there. Read up on someone you know a bit about, and then enjoy the luxury of letting your eyes drift onto the next entry. Plonk the book down while you grab a beer, and pause to watch Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, or whatever. Pick it up when the dialogue gets boring, in short snatches. Take a volume to bed, and skim a few pages before turning off the light. In time no page will be unfamiliar to you, however large the book, and you will acquire a width of knowledge which few today can boast.
This is how to master such a book. But of course this all depends on whether you have a personal copy, which you can gaily toss into the bedside cabinet. In a rare books room, such study is impossible. Google books has done us all a tremendous favour in making volumes available in PDF.
We need the other volumes too. But the current PDF’s aren’t really good enough, splendid though they are. We need PDF’s scanned at a higher resolution, in black and white. We need images that are clear, at least 400 dpi. Then we can dash off to lulu.com and print a copy ourselves! For how else, except in book form, can one play with such a book?
In 1843 William Roberts translated a selection of the letters of Isidore of Pelusium into English, as part of his book A History of Letter Writing from the earliest period to the fifth century. I stumbled across a copy of the PDF which I must have downloaded ages ago, while looking around my hard disk for something to read during a period of no internet access. Isn’t Google Books wonderful? The book also contains letters of Phalaris, Cicero, Apollonius of Tyana, Synesius, and so forth. I will scan these and make them available in due course.
This story from slashdot is good news:
“If there were any doubt that open access publishing was setting off a bit of a power struggle, a decision made last week by the MIT faculty should put it to rest. Although most commercial academic publishers require that the authors of the works they publish sign all copyrights over to the journal, Congress recently mandated that all researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health retain the right to freely distribute their works one year after publication (several foundations have similar requirements). Since then, some publishers started fighting the trend, and a few members of Congress are reconsidering the mandate. Now, in a move that will undoubtedly redraw the battle lines, the faculty of MIT have unanimously voted to make any publications they produce open access.”
Ohio State University Press have started making full texts of some of their books available online as PDF’s. They’ve realised that they’re not making money on these, and decided to get on with the business of disseminating knowledge instead. My heroes! The list is here. Thanks to Christopher Ecclestone for the tip!
Titles include Gregory, Timothy E.: Vox Populi: Violence and Popular Involvement in the Religious Controversies of the Fifth Century A.D. Lots of stuff on Ephesus and Chalcedon, Cyril and Nestorius.
But the pick of the lot is the English translation of all the works of Fulgentius Mythographicus by L. G. Whitbread! This is a wonderful find. Get your copy of this 5th century Roman living in Vandal Africa now!
Moving on, books tend to come to me in groups or not at all. Today I got an email from the Ethos service. I blogged on this a couple of months ago. Basically you can order a PDF for free of a UK dissertation, and they will scan it and upload it. I ordered a couple and waited; and today they arrived. This service is going to be a howling success. It will quickly get all the important UK dissertations online.
The Catholic Encyclopedia tells us that the Romans gave gifts on 1st January (the Kalends of January), called strenae.
Pagan customs centering round the January calends gravitated to Christmas. Tiele (Yule and Christmas, London, 1899) has collected many interesting examples. The strenae (étrennes) of the Roman 1 January (bitterly condemned by Tertullian, de Idol., xiv and x, and by Maximus of Turin, Hom. ciii, de Kal. gentil., in P.L., LVII, 492, etc.) survive as Christmas presents, cards, boxes.
Tertullian says:
By us, to whom Sabbaths are strange, and the new moons and festivals formerly beloved by God, the Saturnalia and New-year’s and Midwinter’s festivals and Matronalia are frequented — presents come and go — New-year’s gifts (strenae) — games join their noise-banquets join their din! (ch. 14) … New-year’s gifts likewise must be caught at, and the Septimontium kept (ch. 10).
A google search reveals that “Tiele” is Tille, and on Google books here. I will have to read this, as it seems copiously referenced. Not sure whether the text is quite sensible, but it does contain interesting snippets.
But I can see at once, on p.84 n.3, a reference to Plautus, Stichus, iii. 2, 6; v. 2. 24; Ovid, Fasti, i. 187; Martial, viii.33, xiii.37; Seneca, Letters, 87. There are two unreferenced claims; that money took the place of New Year’s gifts under Augustus, and that the custom persisted to the time of Honorius and Arcadius.
There is a reference to the Kalends and the celebration of Janus in the Acts of the Council of Turin in 567 AD. (p.87 n.1), which calls him a king, not a god. In the capitula of Martin of Braga, chapter 73, we read:
Non liceat iniquas observationes agere Kalendarum, et otiis vacare gentilibus, neque lauro aut viridate arborum cingere domos.
Hanging up green boughs seems to be the custom. It would be interesting to know more about this.
In his cell outside the Egyptian city of Pelusium, ca. 430 AD, Isidore of Pelusium is still writing spiritual advice to us all.
Some are doing well. But it can be risky to be proud of success in overcoming temptation:
1225 (V.10) TO SYMMACHUS
In the civil wars, even if the conquerors are more unfortunate than the conquered — indeed they have more to blush about, precisely because they did whatever was done more than the others did — they will in any case oppose each other with the idea of a reconciliation in mind. But in us, where the warfare is more relentless than in the civil war — because it takes place inside a single being — it takes place without the idea of a reconciliation in mind. On the contrary, one sees he who has done more of it than his adversary glorify himself for it, whereas he should blush! Because punishment is reserved for the author of the drama, rather than for those who are simply its victims.
Others haven’t quite grasped why they need to renounce what they imagine to be the “innocent pleasures” of contemporary society:
1226 (V.11) TO MARTINIANUS, ZOSIMUS, MARON, EUSTATHIUS
My dear chaps, flee from vice: it is capable of making its devotees mad and foolish. Pursue virtue: it is capable of rendering those who stick to it wise, and of maintaining in them a good disposition. Because there is often gentleness and serenity in their eyes, this shows that in them a spirit full of wisdom has entered everywhere.
The legislation of Constantine made it financially profitable to become a priest and thereby avoid the ever-increasing taxes that finally destroyed the late Roman economy. A century later, the theological standard of the ordinary priests could be low. Some didn’t even understand that Jesus was God. Gently Isidore addresses this:
1227 (IV. 166) TO ARCHIBIUS THE PRIEST
You were saying that you did not understand the expression “In him all the fullness of the divinity dwells, corporeally“; myself, I think that this expression is put for substantially. Because this is not an operation of the divinity produced by the substance who governed this immaculate temple, but a substance with innumerable operations: it was not a fraction of a gift, but the source of all good. It is, he means, He himself who reigns with the Father, who reigns in heaven and governs the earth, who was made man and, with the weapons of a combatant, took up position in the line of battle, at the same time organizing the world, ensuring victory to mankind, putting to rout the demon kidnappers, throwing down their chief who was swollen with pride, and filling the Church with innumerable gifts. This is a king, he says, who has been a general, not a general who could have been spared the title of king; this is the king who in the shape of a slave hid his own dignity in the battle, not a simple soldier who assumed the title of king. He was a king when he legislated, not a simple soldier starting to legislate: because the expression “I say to you” is that of a king; “I do want, be purified!” is that of a sovereign; “May it be for you as you wish” comes from someone with absolute power; “Be silent, silence” is that of a lord; and all the expressions of this kind which I don’t want to enumerate in full so as not to lengthen my letter.
But if you are shocked by the Passion, an audacious temptation against God which reached only his flesh, listen to the choir of the apostles: “But, he says, as Christ suffered in his flesh.” If thus He who had received in His hands the keys of Heaven has shown that the flesh suffered in a real sense — it alone was accessible to suffering because the divine is impassive — if even, because they had put the heir to death, the Jews suffered more than in any tragedy, don’t let yourself be disturbed by the Passion, but let it lead you to make full thanksgivings, because the king, the impassive one, who could not accept the shadow of a change, has delivered his own flesh, and appearing many times as a weak man, thought up a stratagem to surprise the evil one, and having produced brilliant trophies of victory, has risen up to Heaven, and returned to the dwelling of his nature.
But if, as some say, he was simply a man, lacking in divine grace, why then did the Jews, when they killed a great number of the saints, not undergo the same fate in turn, while, because of Him, no tragedy can bear comparison with their sufferings? Well, it is obvious that the first were only saints, while Him, he was the only-begotten God who had condescended to be made man. They did not have same dignity when they went to the torment: they were servants. He, he was the Master; this is what involved the Jews in relentless punishment. “Here the heir,” they say. The vine growers threw themselves on the heir to kill him, and not on a servant like themselves, on the real son of the Master, and not on one of themselves which had been raised to the dignity of son. How indeed was the Son was sent after the servants, He should be respected? How was it that he was called the second man come from the sky? How did God come here, if he cooperated with man? How did He abase himself, when He was the equal of God? How did God send his Son with a flesh similar to that of the sinners? Or how is there not scorn for the Sacred mysteries, when they claim to be the body and the blood of a man? How did he say: “You have provided me with a body”? How must He also have something to offer to him? How, by His own blood did he release the prisoners? How did they crucify the Lord of glory? How was the Word made flesh? How did the Father, having spoken on several occasions and in many ways in the prophets, then speak in His Son? Or again, how did the Son share much the same living conditions (as ourselves)? Well, rather than overpower your attention by an exhaustive enumeration, I will say just one thing which summarizes them all: to pronounce humble words while being God, this is to carry out effectively the economy of salvation, and that causes no damage to His immaculate substance; on the other hand, to pronounce divine and supernatural words, when one is just a man, is the height of presumption. Because, while a king can allow himself to be ordinary in his remarks and his thought, for a soldier or a General, to speak like a king is prohibited. If thus he were God, as precisely he was, by being made man there is a place for the humble things; while if he were only a man, there is no place for that which is above.