Andrew Eastbourne writes to point out that the Bonwetsch edition of Methodius, GCS 27, is actually online at Internet Archive here. Yet I couldn’t find it this afternoon!
This is very, very good news!
Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
Andrew Eastbourne writes to point out that the Bonwetsch edition of Methodius, GCS 27, is actually online at Internet Archive here. Yet I couldn’t find it this afternoon!
This is very, very good news!
Quite by accident I stumbled over the following interesting passage[1], by which we all might profit:
The attitude which Swinburne took up and, except for a few spasms of irritation, steadily maintained was one of great dignity. The best statement of it is not in any surviving correspondence of the time but in a letter written later to Watts-Dunton, who had very properly reported some libel to him.
His position, and none could have been wiser, was this. He wished to be acquainted with any allegation so dishonouring that self-respect would necessitate its definite refutation; but for the rest, he preferred to remain in ignorance of libels.
For the weakness which led Byron to catalogue the infamies attributed to him, Swinburne expressed contempt; at the weakness which, after 1870, left Rossetti’s peace of mind at the mercy of every hostile scribbler, he expressed astonishment. And towards worthier opponents he was prepared to exhibit magnanimity.
It may be natural for us to be upset when we are the target of vicious and venomous personal attacks. But it is surely unwise for us to allow this to happen. Let us cultivate a due contempt for the anonymous and malicious scribbler, such as the great men of past times had to do.
Finereader 11 looks quite a lot like Finereader 10. So far, it seems very similar. Once nice touch is that when it is reading a page, a vertical bar travels down the thumbnail.
But I have already found an oddity. I imported into it the project that I am currently working on in Finereader 10 — part of Ibn Abi Usaibia — and it looks really weird! All the recognised text is spaced out vertically! The paragraph style is “bar code”, and no other styles are available.
Here’s what I see when I open it:
Not very useful, is it? But when I minimise the image, and increase the recognised panel to 100% size, it looks like this!
There seems to be no rhyme or reason for the massive gaps between lines. And here is the very same project in Finereader 10:
Weird. Doubtless there is some setting to persuade FR11 to behave, but it isn’t obvious what. This does NOT happen when I recognise the page again in FR11. The style gets set to “Body Text (2)”, in this case.
And … when I do Ctrl-Z, and revert the recognition, it goes back to the weird appearance above. But … this time, a bunch of other styles are available, and if I change to BodyText2, that is what I get. But on the next page … once again, Barcode is the only style.
This must be a bug, I think. It means that Abbyy’s testers have not tested importing documents from FR10 sufficiently. What it means is that you can’t upgrade projects once you start them. Well … I try to keep my projects small, and break up large documents into small chunks, so I shan’t mind. That would seem to be the workaround.
One good feature that is new, is that it remembers where you were in the document last time. All previous versions always opened the document at page 1. I got quite accustomed, indeed, to placing a “qqq” at the point where I stopped, so I could find it again next time. No need in FR11, it seems.
Also FR11 comes bundled with “PDF Transformer 3”. This suggests that the latter product was bought in, to beef up the rather unremarkable PDF handling in Finereader. I’ve not tried this yet, tho.
I’ve continued to collect ancient literary sources about Isis. I have a set of working notes (in no particular order) here. There seems to be a lot of wild talk around about Isis too.
Today my objective was to discover the attitude of Augustus to the cult. I have read unreferenced claims that Augustus described the cult as “pornographic” — but have yet to find a source for this. But I did eventually locate the source that showed that he pushed the cult outside the pomerium, not in Tacitus, as several books claim, but in Cassius Dio.
But there is still a lot to do.
Ages ago the PLGO group compiled a list of GCS volumes online. This vanished recently, as I discovered when I went looking for it. A version still exists in ScribD, but, you know, I don’t find stuff in ScribD that accessible.
Rather than go without, I have transcribed the list and placed it on a page on this blog here.
Updates are welcome.
UPDATE: I have just been through Internet Archive using terms such as “eusebius werke” and “origenes werke” and filled in most of the gaps before 1923. Methodius is one of only two gaps (of course it would be one that I want to look at). It seems that the people at IA have been very busy, bless them!
Scanning and OCR is on my mind at the moment. A new version of Abbyy Finereader — version 11 — is out. Since I have some 750 pages of Ibn Abi Usaibia to do, any improvement in accuracy is welcome, however slight.
Originally I did my OCR using Omnipage. It is many years since I was led (by Susan Rhoads of Elfinspell.com) to look at Finereader 5. This was immensely superior, and I have never used any other product since. But I see that Omnipage 18 is now out. Stirred by a bit of curiosity, I’ve been wondering what this would be like.
Finereader is not without its faults. Foremost among them, for what I want to do, is that it cannot make a PDF searchable without making the PDF much, much larger, messing with the images, and so forth. This is so bad, in fact, that I use Adobe Acrobat Pro 9 for that task, despite the much inferior OCR.
Omnipage seems to be aware of the issue, and a look at their site suggests that they realise that a lot of this activity goes on.
I decided, therefore, to buy both and see what they’re like. I will let you know!
But … software vendors are thieves and robbers! If you go to the Abbyy site, the cost of a downloaded upgrade to Finereader Pro 11 is “€ 89 / £ 65 (download)”. The full version is “€ 129 / £ 99” — and if you want just the download, it’s exactly the same price, despite the fact that it costs them less! But go to Amazon.co.uk, the complete boxed set is just £63.16 — less than the upgrade. Needless to say, that’s what I ordered.
Omnipage are no better. Go to the Nuance site, and Omnipage 18 (standard version) is £79.99, whether download or boxed. Again they swindle the download users. But go to Amazon.co.uk, and the complete boxed set is £46.90!
I didn’t buy the Omnipage Pro version, but stuck with the standard one. It’s a lot more money, and I wasn’t convinced that I’d use the extra features — especially since I don’t know if the OCR is any good at all. Here a trial version would have helped — Finereader make trial versions available online. This is smart marketing on their part, because magazine reviews of such a specialised area of software are invariably useless.
My current interest in Russian texts of Methodius means that I was interested to see that Omnipage offer a separate Russian version. Finereader used to have a specific “Cyrillic option” version — indeed I owned a copy, back in the FR5 days — but this seems to have vanished from their product list. Kudos to Finereader: Russian support is included in the main product! I only wish their obscure “fraktur” recognition module was included too! This recognises old “Gothic”-style typefaces, and some of us would find it handy. But I could only find it in their SDK for Linux. And it doesn’t seem that you can even buy the latter off-the-shelf.
I’ve been making a bit of progress on Methodius today. I learned from an academic that no published text of most of the Slavonic Methodius exists. The manuscripts are 15th century or later, as we already knew; and I suspect that the Russian volumes (from 1877 on) are simply updated versions of these. A couple of other interesting details when I get permission to post them.
I’ve also been looking at the 1930 edition and translation of On freewill by A. Vaillant in the Patrologia Orientalis 22. Vaillant tells us that the Slavonic is so literal that you can see the Greek behind it; and indeed even the marginal corrections in the exemplar! As a result, his edition is a little confusing: he prints the Slavonic; opposite it he prints a Greek text, his own reverse translation from the Slavonic; and underneath a French translation made from what he believes the Greek was. He checks the Greek against the surviving Greek fragments.
If there is no published Slavonic text, we might have to make do with translating some Russian versions into English. But I would hesitate to spend money on translating a translation — it doesn’t make sense. It would be better, surely, to obtain a manuscript reproduction and translate from that.
My posts on the works of Methodius in Old Slavonic here and here have attracted a wealth of learned comment, for which many thanks.
Mikhail Vedeshkin kindly left links to online Russian resources about Methodius.
Here you can find a few works of Methodius translated into modern Russian.
http://mystudies.narod.ru/name/m/methodius.htm
“The feast of 10 virgins or about virginity”
http://mystudies.narod.ru/library/m/methodius/virgins/000.htm“About the freedom of will or against the Valentinians”
http://mystudies.narod.ru/library/m/methodius/advalent.htm“About Resurrection or against Origen”
http://mystudies.narod.ru/library/m/methodius/resurr.htm“About creation or against Origen”
http://mystudies.narod.ru/library/m/methodius/creation.htm
Thanks to Google translate, I learn a little more from the first link. It lists works of Methodius in Greek and Slavonic. Then it continues:
Translations into Russian from these languages.
Methodius, bishop of Patara. His collected works // Trans. ed. Е. Lovyagin. – St. Petersburg, 1877. The same: 2d ed. – St. Petersburg, 1905.
Some published Arch. Michael (Chub) in the collection “Theological Works» (№ №. 2, 3, 10, 11)
The existence of the Lovyagin book (in two editions) is new and useful. I’m not quite sure whether the Old Slavonic text is printed, or just a Russian translation. Nor am I sure where a copy of these volumes might be found. I have a feeling from Google that “E. Lovyagin” might be “Evgraf Lovyagin”, of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. This rather dodgy-looking site tells me:
1822 – 1909), Professor of St. Petersburg Theological Academy. Major works: “On the merits of St. Athanasius to the church in the fight against Arians” (St. Petersburg, 1850) and “On the relation of the classical writers of the Bible on the outlook of Christian apologists (St. Petersburg, 1872, dissertation). His articles theological, , . prepared editions of the monuments of Christian literature, . part in the original text, . with Russian introductions and explanations, . part in the translation from the original text, . as well as the execution of transfers are listed by Professor AI,. Garden in the article: “Professor E.I. Lovyagin “(” Christian Herald “in 1909,” 15, (obituary Lovyagin).
I find, indeed, that a search for “Lovyagin” in COPAC produces results, and Evgraf Ivanovitch (Евграфа Ловягина) does indeed seem to be our man. Sadly none of the results are the Methodius volume. A search in the LOC catalogue for “Lovyagin” produced no results at all! Nor did a search at the BNF. I wonder, perhaps, whether there is some other way of anglicising his name?
The page continues with a useful overview of all the works, and with some references.
Writings that have come down to us only in short fragments.
Lovyagin, 1877, p.252-259. Against Porphyry, and On the martyrs.
There are then two more works, which the page labels as probably apocryphal, on Palm Sunday and on the Presentation of the Lord. These are given from the 1905 edition of Lovyagin (p.161-170) and the 1996 “Library of the Fathers and doctors of the Church. Creation St. Gregory the Miracle Worker and St. Methodius bishop and martyr. – M. Palmer, 1996” (Библиотека отцов и учителей Церкви. Творения св. Григория Чудотворца и св. Мефодия епископа и мученика. – М.: Паломник, 1996.) which must be a reprint as regards Methodius.
This is a rather splendid site, and with a great number of texts in Russian, including Euthymius Zigabenus, Epiphanius’ Panarion — neither of which we have in English.
I would draw attention to this page, or rather the Google translate version here, where the site author, the excellent Sergei Pavlov, asks for help in locating copies of various patristic texts in Russian. (There is an email address there too, in bitmap form of course). It doesn’t seem as if he has a copy of the Lovyagin book(s).
I realise that I don’t know of a reliable source for Russian books in PDF form (or, indeed, any other).
In other news I have had an email back from one of my enquiries, telling me of a British professor of Slavicist studies, who might be able to help with a translation or know someone who can. I will wait until I have the text in my hands before contacting him.
The comments to my article yesterday on the Works of Methodius are very useful. Commenter “Maureen” has tracked down what look very like publications in Russian of some of the smaller works — precisely the ones that I want to get hold of.
I’ve never tried to get hold of material in Russian, and of course I don’t speak it. I wonder how best to do so. A few PDF’s seem definitely called for!
Today I have to go on a journey, so I can’t do more right now, but I shall think about this.
UPDATE: I have now identified an anglicised name for the journal in which the text appears, and a location where I can get copies. See the comments to the Works of Methodius post for details.
I realise that all this may seem a little dry. But the details of how I worked out, from a string of Cyrillic characters, where to find a journal in a language I don’t read, might be of general utility. And having the details online may save me some trouble when I get confused looking for it in the stacks in a week or two!
From the BL manuscripts blog I learn that a further 74 Greek manuscripts have been added to their online site. The site uses proprietary technology to ensure that users can’t download images — perish the thought! — but is still better than nothing.
The blog post gives a list of manuscripts. Previous lists just gave the shelfmark, but this time, thankfully, they have indicated the contents.
There’s quite a chunk of useful material here. A few highlights:
I admit to rubbing my eyes a bit when it came to Harley 5593 — Philip of Side? Investigation gives a bit more:
Regular readers will remember that I commissioned a translation of all the fragments of Philip of Side, which is here. I wonder, therefore, what this is? I’ve asked Andrew Eastbourne to take a look, and we’ll see.
In other news, I have emailed a Dutch academic to ask about people who might be willing to translate some Old Slavonic for us all. I am, of course, thinking about the works of Methodius!