Month: August 2025

The Hexameron of Jacob of Edessa – some bibliographical notes

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A little while ago I saw a twitter post that celebrated the existence of a 1990 Arabic translation of the Hexameron of Jacob of Edessa (d. 708 AD), sometimes referred to as James of Edessa.  This is a commentary on the six days of creation in the bible, and is filled with cosmological speculation and scientific information of the day, going well beyond a normal bible commentary.

This turns out to be online at Archive.org here:

الأيام الستة / ܫܬܬܝܘܡ̈ܐ ܕܚܣܝܐ ܝܥܩܘܒ ܐܦܝܣܩܘܦܐ ܕܐܘܪܗܝ / Hexaemeron “(A Work) of Six Days”
Mar Ya’qub of Edessa / مار يعقوب الرهاوي

Only the title page is in English, before you ask.  But in these days of machine translation, and AI translation, it would be perfectly possible to convert this into English and read it.

But there is no need to do so.  From Wikipedia I learn:

There are two critical editions of Jacob of Edessa’s Hexaemeron, both of which are based on a 9th-century manuscript from Lyon:

  • Chabot, J.B. 1928. Iacobi Edesseni Hexaemeron, seu in opus creationis libri septem, Paris (CSCO 92; Script. Syr. 44).
  • Çiçek, J. Y. (ed.) 2010. Jacob of Edessa: Hexaemeron, Piscataway: Gorgias Press.

A French translation exists:

  • Martin, J.P.P. 1888. “L’Hexaméron de Jacques d’Édesse,” Journal asiatique 8,11: 155–219, 401–90.

Although no full-length English translation exists, a partial one has been produced:

  • Greatrex, M. 2000. Memre I, II and IV of the Hexaemeron of Jacob of Edessa. A Translation and Introduction (Doctoral dissertation, University of Cardiff).

Finally, there is one translation into Latin:

  • Vaschalde, A. 1932. Iacobi Edesseni Hexaemeron, Leuven (CSCO 97; Script Syr. 48).

I was curious about the translation by Marina Greatrex.  It does not seem to be online, but a search of the University of Wales catalogue using her surname quickly brings up a record.

Greatrex, Marina. Memre One, Two and Four of the Hexaemeron of Jacob of Edessa: Introduction, Translation and Text. THESIS (Ph.D.) – CARDIFF, 2000. Print.
LOCATION ITEMS
NLW South
Available , ARCHIFAU / ARCHIVES ; 2001/0237
(1 copy, 1 available, 0 requests)

That would appear to be in Aberystwyth.  Google tells me that it is 506 pages.  It ought to be scanned and placed online, in my humble opinion.

I don’t know anything much about the book.  It’s in “seven books” in the CSCO edition.  I would assume from “memre” that it is in Syriac verse, and perhaps each book is a memre.

I was unable to access the CSCO edition, but the preface to the CSCO translation by Vaschalde tells me that it is a dialogue between Jacob and a disciple of his, Named Constantine.  Apparently Jacob did not live to finish it – the seventh book is by George, bishop of the Arab tribes, so the preface says, although it does not indicate how we know this.

The “Journal asiatique 8,11″ is the 8th series, volume 11, online at the Bibliotheque Nationale Francais.  Curiously the download wasn’t working, but the item is there alright.  From the introduction I learn that the key manuscript is in Lyon, MS 2, dated Thursday 8 March, 837 AD (1143 year of the Greeks), and written in the Estrangelo script by a scribe named Dioscorus.  Another manuscript exists in Paris, which Valschalde thinks is either a 15th century copy, or else a 17th century independent MS.  Here I really felt the lack of the CSCO edition which discusses such stuff in its introduction.

I had hoped to give a few bits of the text here in English.  But on reading the JA article, I find that it is not actually a translation.  Rather it’s a study which includes chunks of translation, or abbreviation of translation.  This is quite infuriating, it must be said.  So the reader must fall back on Vaschalde’s Latin translation.

Origen, the Homoousion, and the use and abuse of catenas

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Back in 2017 I wrote about Origen’s “Commentary on Matthew”, giving an account of which parts of it existed in English at that date.  A later comment on that post drew my attention to a publication by Dr Panayiotis Tzamalikos, Origen: New Fragments from the Commentary on Matthew. Codices Sabaiticus 232 & Holy Cross 104, Jerusalem, Brill (2020).

A few days ago I came across a Twitter post here quoting an earlier work by Dr T, which gave an edition and English translation of previously unknown sections of the “Commentary.”  This remarkable material shows Origen using the term “homoousios” (consubstantial) and expounding what is essentially the Nicene definition, that the Son is co-eternal with the Father.

The title of the book is “Anaxagoras, “Origen, and Neoplatonism“, 2 vols, De Gruyter (2015-6), making up a massive 1822 pages; and the material can be found in vol 2, appendix 2.  The text is on pp. 1565-7.  Here it is:

Dr. T. then discusses this material at length, including the following interesting statement:

Quite simply, the text of the present codex is Origen’s, the attribution made in this manuscript is correct, and one should not be deterred by religious (but hardly scholarly) precepts claiming that any Nicene statement occurring in ante-Nicene authors should be branded unquestionably spurious. No matter how embarrassing to certain religious allegiances, the simple truth is that the way to Nicaea was paved by Origen – yes, the ex-pagan philosopher of note and a lifetime Anaxagorean.

This is a world rather different to ours, and perhaps reflects arguments within Greek universities today.

Where does the material printed by Dr. T. come from?  It comes from MS. Sabaiticus 232, an 11th century catena manuscript in Jerusalem, two thirds of which is made up of quotations from Origen.1    Dr T. went on to give a full edition of the manuscript, although with limited translation, in his “Origen: New Fragments from the Commentary on Matthew”.

Earlier material from the catena was published as part of the fragments of Origen.  It is the contention of Dr Tzamalikos that in fact the latter sections of the catena are also by Origen.  If so, they would indeed be of very great interest.

But how do we know that this is indeed material from Origen?  Because the text in the manuscript is not a work composed by Origen.  It is a catena.

A catena is a medieval bible commentary made up of a chain (“catena”) of extracts from the fathers, each of them adapted to some extent to make a continuous commentary.  The author of each extract is identified in a rather casual way by a couple of letters, an abbreviation of his name.  Often the start of the extract is identified, but not the end.  Often the identifying letters are wrong; or are omitted.  The latter inevitably leads to extracts being identified with the author of the previous extract.  Later catenas adopt material, not from the original author, but from earlier catenas.  So there is a world of problems in using them as a source of material.  Scholars have rather shrunk away from editing them, because of the sheer labour involved.

In the early modern period a number of catenas were printed, usually with a Latin translation.  In the absence of any systematic knowledge of the world of catenas, these early editions have been plundered for fragments which have been collected by editors of the works of Origen, as Klostermann did in the GCS series volume of the Commentary on Matthew.2  These extracts in turn have been included in English translations of the works of Origen. I notice that Heine, the most recently translator, did not accept that all those fragments included by Klostermann were genuine.3

But perhaps we do wrong in treating a catena as a collection of excerpts?  Possibly we should see it as an original composition, which happens to have embedded in it a lot of excerpts.  The author is not concerned to transmit unaltered the sources he references.  He is writing a commentary.  He’s not even concerned to use “authorities”, as we can see from references to heretical writers, Nestorius, etc.  His purpose is to produce a text which is useful, a text to aid understanding of the bible text.

Quite possibly we should edit these things as original compositions.  That at least would be a possible thing to do, without disappearing down dozens of rabbit-holes, trying to restore the “original” text of each extract.  The catena author may not have had the original text.  He may have an earlier catena before him, which he is excerpting.  Or he may have altered the text before him for his own purposes.  Far better to edit what the catena says, and let studies based upon this give us this information.  Reduce the catena editing problem to something manageable.

Because the text as a whole is later, it can and will contain later ideas.  The USA of the late 2010s and early 2020s had an official ideology, composed of hot-button phrases and things that must be said, or must not be.  Byzantium was the same.  So when we identify the characteristic phrasing of the ideology of one particular era in a catena, we should assign that passage to that era or later, regardless of the author initials assigned to it in the catena margin.  When we come across chunks of material giving the Nicene definition, we must presume that it post-dates Nicaea.  We cannot, must not, put the cart before the horse, and say “Oh the margin says ‘Origen’, clearly Origen was at Nicaea.” Instead we should say “Clearly the marginal identification is wrong.”

These points are not profound, and no doubt Dr. T was aware of them. Unfortunately this subject is only appendix 2 of his immense book, and the discussion is diffuse, and covers too many points to address this one squarely.

I did look at the other book, the edition.  The structure of the introduction is such that it is difficult to locate material within it.  The Sources Chrétiennes series has set an admirable pattern for the structure of a critical text plus translation, with extended introduction.  Authors are generally well advised to do likewise.  I was unable to locate any relevant discussion of the authorship issue within it.

These are fascinating books, full of interesting ideas.  The author rightly wrote them in English, to reach a wider audience.  Unfortunately his publishers did not exercise adequate editorial control, which means that there are minor failures of English usage.  A good editor would have made both books much more readable, and therefore more likely to be read.

  1. ”Anaxagoras…”, v. 2, p.1565, n.21.[↩]
  2. GCS 41 (1941).[↩]
  3. Heine, vol. 1, p.320.[↩]

So Disqus is now down the toilet too?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m beginning to get very fed up with the modern web.  Stuff that has worked for years just breaks.

So I’ve spent some time changing my footnotes plugin.  Why?  Because WordPress has decided that the old one isn’t allowed any more.  It won’t work with the current version.  Thank you WordPress.

I’ve just uploaded an image of a monument to my Mithras page.  I allowed the feature to make comments, using disqus, although few people do.  Today I scroll to the bottom of the page and find… massive adverts.  I don’t profit from them.  I knew nothing about them.  But apparently disqus are doing this to their remaining users.  A classic case of enshitiffication.

Rather than endure that rubbish, I will remove disqus from the Mithras pages.  Which means… additional work.  Thank you disqus.

Somewhere out there, people are working on “improving” PHP.  Morally I agree that the language is poor.  But I don’t want my website broken because, effectively, they’ve changed the language.  And something is now stopping me uploading images of more than a certain size to my website.  It’s bound to be something connected to that.  Sheesh guys, leave me alone!

All these changes wear heaviest on the long-term small website.  Like my own.  They push us all in the direction of corporate control.

Which is hardly a very good idea.

Admin

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Apologies – WordPress seem to have zapped the footnotes plugin that I use.  I will fix this when I work out how.

Update: I’ve installed the “Footnotes & Content” plugin.1

  1. Let’s see if it works…[↩]

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve had no luck in getting away for a break.  The prices for hotels are simply ridiculous, and somehow other things creep in.

But I’m making good progress with Botolph.  After my last post, a very kind gentleman, who was visiting the Bodleian Library in Oxford on his own account, kindly offered to photograph the two manuscripts that they hold.  And so he did. (Update: I now have permission to say that this was Peter Kidd of manuscripts.org.uk, to whom I am very grateful indeed!)

These two are manuscripts of the epitome of the “Life of Botolph”, BHL 1429.  The shelfmarks are Bodleian MS Bodl. 240, and Bodleian MS Tanner 15, both manuscripts of the “Sanctilogium” of John of Tynemouth.  The same text appears in the printed “Nova Legenda Angliae” of 1516, and was reprinted with amendments by Horstmann in 1901.

Since these appeared, I have been collating the text.  Starting with Horstmann as a base – because I could OCR this – I compared it to the 1516 edition, to the two Bodleian manuscripts, and to British Library MS Cotton Tiberius E. 1, which I photographed myself.  This latter was damaged by fire, but it doesn’t seem to have much in the way of original readings.  All three manuscripts are 15th century, and much of a muchness.  Horstmann’s edition – based on the 1516 and the BL manuscript – is perfectly sound.  All I will contribute is a larger apparatus, I think.

All the same you really do learn a lot about a text and about the manuscripts by comparing them, word by word.  You get a definite feeling that one of the scribes was in a hurry, copying a not-very-important text, happy to stick a word a bit later if his eye skipped it, and occasionally putting down the wrong word of identical meaning during the process of reading a sentence into his head and writing it out again.  You get a feel for the scribe, and a feel for the language of the author.

Lots of fun!

The full “Life”, BHL 1428, was done, except that I have located the missing Cologne manuscript in Berlin, and need to collate that and establish its relationship to the other manuscripts, especially to the Rooklooster manuscript which is probably its twin. It may mean a change to the family tree (stemma) of the manuscripts.  It will mean changes to the apparatus.  I doubt that it will affect the text or translation.

As of today, I have a text of the epitome, BHL 1429, and a draft translation of it which I will now revise.

The very brief Life in the Breviarium Slesvicense (BHL 1430) was done a while back.

The “Translatio” of the relics of St Botolph (BHL 1431) has been transcribed and a translation made, but I need to do more on this.

So it’s coming along very nicely.  But I still need some summer holiday!

Update: Dr Kidd also advised me about the rather confusing shelfmark for MS 240:

The ‘Bodleian’ is a library but ‘MS. Bodley’ is a shelfmark, which should be abbreviated as ‘MS. Bodl.’. So the shelfmark of one of the MSS I sent is Bodleian, MS. Bodl. 240, not Bodleian, MS 240.

Thank you!

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It’s summertime, and definitely the time to get away from the computer and go outdoors.  Visit ancient monuments.  Travel to places that have nice beaches with Roman ruins.  Etc.  So I hope none of you are reading this!

I’m trying to do some of that myself, but I’ve not managed to get away yet.

I’ve made a bit of progress with the Life of St Botolph.  Both Latin and English are done and in a Word document each.  I’ve done the same with the Lives of Sts Thancred, Torhred and Tova, which followed it in one manuscript, and collated the printed text in Birch, Liber Vitae, with the manuscript.  I discovered that Birch was careless when he transcribed. I’ve identified the lost Cologne manuscript used by the Bollandists, although I have no access to it: it’s in Berlin. Maybe I should email them and ask if they would make me images of the two pages concerned?  I’m starting work on the abbreviated Life produced by John of Tynemouth, and printed in the Nova Legenda Angliae.  I’ve just emailed the Bodleian Library, who hold two manuscripts of that abbreviated Life, and asked for help in getting copies of the pages.  But this abbreviated Life really should not take much work to knock out.  So I have a bit of wind in my sails.

But I ought to get away.

Lives of St. Thancred, St Torhtred, and the Virgin Tova

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The “Life of St Botolph” begins with a preface, and ends with an account of the movement of the relics of various saints to Thorney Island during the period of the Danish raids.  But in MS British Library Harley 3097 (12th c.), folios 64v-65v (online here), in between the “Life” of Botolph, and the “Translatio” of the relics, there is another text, about three hermits of Thorney Abbey.  These were Thancred (or Tancred), his brother Torhtred, and their sister Tova.  I don’t know of any other manuscript that contains it.

The text is headed, “De Sanctis Thancredo et Torhtredo”, “Concerning Sts Thancred and Torhtred”, and ends with the explicit: “Explicit De Sanctis Thancredo et Torhtredo et eorum sorore Christi virgine Sancta Tova.”

The Latin text was published long ago in W. Birch, Liber Vitae: Register and Martyrology of New Minster and Hyde Abbey, Winchester, London (1892), appendix F, pp.284-286.  This is online at Archive.org here.

Unfortunately these saints are not listed in the Bollandists’ Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina.  Not much seems to be known about these three, except that their relics were preserved at Thorney Abbey, and venerated there before 1000 AD, as I learn from the Oxford Dictionary of Saints:

Tancred, Torthred, and Tova (870). Hermits of Thorney (Cambs.), killed by the Danes in 870.

The first two were men, the third a woman, but nothing is known of them. The story of their martyrdom rests on the chronicle of Pseudo-Ingulph, which may include sources older than the 12th century. They were, however, venerated in their Thorney shrine by the year 1000, witnessed by R. P. S. and were among the many saints whose bodies were translated by Ethelwold, but whose names William of Malmesbury was unwilling to write because they sounded so barbarous. Their feast was on 30 September at Thorney and Deeping.

R.P.S. and C.S.P.; William of Malmesbury, G.P., pp. 327–9; E.B.K. after 1100, i. 129–44.

It does not seem that the author of these couple of pages in BL Harley 3097 knew much more. All he can tell us is material from the notes of Aethelwold, founder of Thorney Abbey, and all the latter knew was that they were hermits killed by the Danes.

Here is a draft translation of the text as given by Birch, slightly corrected against the manuscript.

The saints and elect of God, rejecting the world in its fragility through inward contemplation of the soul, with single intent fixed the gaze of their hearts upon earning that joy of future blessedness.  But if anything contrary to this holy purpose appeared, they cast it aside with firm deliberation, and with the clearer sight of the mind they freely conceded renunciations, lest the ancient enemy should imagine that he could triumph over them with his usual trickery.

Hence it happened, by the blessing of God, that the holy confessors of the Lord, Thancred and Torhtred, who are venerated in today’s celebration, after despising the world, having been divinely raised to such a height of virtue, were strengthened in godly contemplation, that in the wilderness of Thorney they sought out the enemy of the human race in single combat, and at the same time, while supported by the grace of God, that they triumphed with a wonderful cry (of victory) over the one shamelessly deceiving, although no history recommends to us and no page of ancient narrative reveals the birth of these flowers of sanctity, or the manner of living of their lives.  But seeing the almighty grace of God, justifying those who fear him in every nation, we will not allow the little which we have learned about them to remain hidden from our descendants.

They lived in the aforementioned wilderness in dwellings not far separate from each other, brother from brother, likewise priest from priest, having a remote cell in which they spent their entire bodily life in meditation on the heavenly commandments. Who can measure, who can relate their labours in such a great solitude, their vigils, fastings, patience of soul, discomfort of body, the glorious tears and pious longings of a soul sighing constantly for God?

During the holy praise of these two holy brothers, a transparent pearl of the splendour of God cannot lie hidden, namely their sister and glorious partner in Christ, the virgin Tova.  She, as the blessed bishop of Christ, both the first builder of the same place, and its most holy abbot, Ethelwold, attests in his writings, was not only the sister of so many saints by blood, but also by diligent imitation of their virtues. And so she had chosen for herself with a manly spirit a solitary cottage in the woods, further away and about a mile more distant, in order to obtain divine aid more closely, having left earthly comfort and society far away. Triumphing over the tyrant of the world in that struggle, she, having become a member of Christ, deserved to have Christ as her head, to whom she was united in the framework of the body of the Church, that is, in that heavenly communion of the saints.

Fittingly do we proclaim the saints, in their contempt for the world yet exalted in the world, and nothing prevents us from proclaiming those who, despising such things for the love of God , sought the peace of solitude, in order to pour out all their attention in the single-minded pursuit of divine things. For, exiled from the doings of this world, they stood as if in a constant line of battle against the assault of the devil, and they won the right to be honoured by the Lord, not with the martyrdom of a single day, month, or even a long year, but rather with the triumph of their whole lives.

Nor did their temporal gladiator lack a crown, because the same piratical plague, which is said to have depopulated England in the time of the blessed Edmund, king and martyr, troubling many locations in many places, also came to the same wilderness, and there made the blessed bishop of Christ Thancred into a martyr, having found him in his cell, and after some time adorned the struggle of a longer wrestling-match with a glorious end.

But his brother Torhtred, equally a bishop of the Lord, as the aforementioned pontiff of God Ethelwold teaches in his writings, conquering the foe and the world in the glory of confession,1 departed to Christ in his sleep, and was buried in the same wilderness with his brother the martyr and his sister the virgin.

There, to this day, resting in their tombs, to the honour of the Holy Trinity, they are venerated by faithful Christians, who, with the support of their assistance, are freed from the burden of oppressive sins, and as the strength of their faith grows, they rejoice, to the honour and praise of the same God and our almighty Lord, who lives and reigns for ever and ever, Amen.

It sounds as if the Danes found Thancred in his cell in the woods, tortured him, no doubt in hopes of money, and then killed him.  They also tortured his brother Torhtred, but did not kill him.  The virgin Tova was a mile deeper in the woods, and perhaps went unnoticed.

 

  1. I.e. he was a “confessor”; presumably captured by the Danes and tortured, but not killed.[↩]