Author: Roger Pearse

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Still reading God’s philosophers.  The work is written from the point of view of the history of science, not the history of culture or literature; and the renaissance, which is such a milestone in the latter, is barely visible.  In this book, the continuity is much more important than the differences.  That’s a rather different perspective to the one we are used to.  But when the author does get to the renaissance, he finds in it a source for a good many modern myths.

Still turning photocopies into PDF’s and emptying my filing cabinet.  Finding a few in A3 photocopy form; not sure how to handle those!

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Notes from the 39th century on the perils of partial evidence

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Some may know that I occasionally receive scholarly papers from the 39th century.  Unfortunately it is impossible for me to reply, and consequently I see some curious errors made about 20th century America because of the limited survival of evidence to that period.

Scholars at that period write in a stylised and archaic form of English, which they understand is used in our day by the most important political and ecclesiastical figures.  This they learn from the remains of a Guide to plain English which reached them.  It is a little unfortunate that they misunderstood the thrust of some of the statements.  They call this awkward style “Gibberish”, as they understand from the Guide that this is what every politician tends to speak in public.

The paper that has come before me is incomplete, but discusses a curious feature of 20th century US society, from impeccable references. 

At this period every American citizen seems to have owned a donkey, and it seems to be understood that the animal is kept close by at all times.  There are copious references in the literature to this. 

In a ballad entitled Stone Sun, listing various pleasures, the line occurs: “I’m gonna dress my ass in the latest fashion.”  From this we learn that the donkeys were dressed in some manner, and that the status of the owner would depend on the degree to which the donkey was kept attired in the latest fashions. 

In the fragmentary play “Total Recall” by Arnold Blackegg, the line “Get your ass to Mars” appears; the hero must take the animal even in his space-craft.  It must be admitted that it is unclear how this could have been practical in the supposed space-missions of the period, and is one argument for considering all these to be fictional.

The animal was clearly very important.  In another play, the hero invites the villain scornfully to “kiss his ass”.  It must be presumed that this reflects some ceremony not otherwise known to us.  Later one of the players states his intention to “kick the ass” of someone else.  A similar idea appears in “I am going to  get medieval on his ass,” presumably indicating harmful intentions.

People of low status might sell their donkey.  Studies of the term “sell your ass” have tended to suggest that in fact outright sale was not involved, even then; but rather a rental agreement.  Only the most degraded would do this, it seems, but that it did occur is agreed by all who have written on the subject.

However archaeological examinations of American tenement blocks reveal a total lack of facilities to keep this essential animal.  Despite the lack of literary evidence, therefore, we must presume that only those who had already sold their ass could work for major corporations and live in large cities.  Whether they recovered their donkey on retirement is unknown.

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First impressions of Hannam’s “God’s philosophers”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A dull grey day, and the postman brings an envelope containing a review copy of James Hannam’s God’s philosophers: how the medieval world laid the foundations of modern science.  Drat my luck.  I open the envelope and a big lump of paper, over 400 pages, almost nine inches tall and an inch thick hits the table with a loud thud.  Nice cover, but why oh why did I agree to read all this when I have so much to do?  I never review books, unless very angry.  I feel quite sorry for myself.

The book is about science and religion.  All of us are taught at school and on the mass media that science is good, religion is bad, and that religion — by which they don’t mean Islam, or Buddhism! — has always obstructed science and “progress”, and that in the Middle Ages no-one did any because of the Church.  But it’s not true, at least not put that baldly.  JH did his doctorate on the subject, and is trying to get people to realise that this is a myth, and one that grew up from mostly anti-clerical propaganda.  The reality is far more complex.  Doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that will be easy going, tho.

Still, it’s raining, and  I promised, so I settle down with this monster.  Probably it will look smaller in paperback.  I hope so, for who will read a book for a general reader of such length?  The introduction does nothing to dispel my gloom; it’s a bit hard going.  At least he’s not going to pester me with CE and BCE, it turns out — how I hate the elitist Christophobes who’re running that racket.  He’s not going to tell me that the Roman collapse didn’t happen either, I learn, although clearly he wants to avoid getting drawn into arguing about that nasty piece of revisionism.  Quite right too.  No footnotes either; all banished to the end, probably by the publisher.  I pull down two bookmarks and resign myself to flipping to and fro.  Then there’s a discussion of what is in the chapters, and I set it aside and go off to walk down by the beach, in the hope of acquiring some motivation.  I hate big books. 

When I pick it up again and start with chapter 1, there is a nice surprise.  The style changes completely into an engaging anecdotal style.  More to the point, he’s telling me things that I don’t know.  He’s giving estimates on population in the Roman world, and how this changes by 1000 AD — upwards, surprisingly.  The book is plainly aimed at the educated layman, and so intended to be easy to read and interesting.  And it is.  I wince, tho, when I read in a very quick scene-setter that Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the empire in chapter 1.  Of course  he legalised it and favoured it, but paganism remained the official state religion until Theodosius I.  His chapter on “progress in the early middle ages” is thankfully brief and doesn’t attempt revisionism of what was, after all,  a nasty period of history.  But then we get into the medieval period.

Much of this is interesting to readers of this blog.  After all, we tend to have a fairly good idea about when the literary works of antiquity became known, but most people are much hazier on when the technical handbooks became available in the west.  The book is good on this, and gives a very nice overview of what was going on.

Then into the university scene, and the university of Paris.  I was a little surprised to find no mention of the pecia system; the book mentions how students made notes, but not how textbooks were rented out in pieces (pecia) so that the students could copy them and make their own copy.  Possibly this is just too much detail; and omission of unnecessary detail is probably a critically important thing to do in a book like this, which is anyway rather long.  Abelard makes his appearance, and the book discusses how the universities interacted with the civil and religious power.  Then onto heresy trials. 

I’m 83 pages in, so far, in the middle of chapter 4.  I’m slimming down my library at the moment, and I made clear that I would probably return the review copy, to avoid cluttering my floor.  But it is telling that I am already beginning to wonder whether I was too hasty, and whether I should hold onto it.  The references aren’t heavy, but there is usually a lead into the secondary literature, and the points made are often very interesting indeed.

More later.  Maybe a steak will help me read my way through this!

Postscript: the steak did help, and I read another hundred pages.  There’s an interesting discussion of medieval magic, very well thought out and very clear.  The story proceeds by giving biographies of individuals and discussing their work.  This of course makes it easier to read.

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The signs of ruin in the Theodosian Code and Novels

Posted on by Roger Pearse

For why has the spring renounced its accustomed charm? Why has the summer, barren of its harvest, deprived the laboring farmer of his hope of a grain harvest? Why has the intemperate ferocity of winter with its piercing cold doomed the fertility of the lands with the disaster of sterility? — Theodosian Novels, title 3, section 8.

In these words the emperor Theodosius II recognised that something was badly wrong in the Roman world.  His remedy, unfortunately, was religious persecution.  As Clyde Pharr, the translator, remarks:

Theodosius II did not, however, give soil exhaustion resulting from the inordinate requirements of the gigantic officialdom and the urban masses as the answer to these rhetorical questions. . . . The Emperors tried remedies more pragmatic than religious exhortations. Farm work was “frozen.” In the early fourth century the agricultural producer was bound to the land, forbidden to leave for the more leisurely and amusing life of the Roman proletarian. The decree which first imposed this restraint is not available. Apparently it was issued by Diocletian, and the principle is referred to in an edict of Constantine in 332.15 Thus was established in Western Europe the institution of rural serfdom, destined to last far longer than the government which originated it.

The shortage of food was reflected not only in labor policy, but also in taxation. In the later Empire no subject was more alive. Wallon sarcastically noted that Rome, “in the early times of the Republic, was chiefly preoccupied with having a numerous and strong population of freemen. Under the Empire she had but one anxiety–taxes.”

There is much of value to be learned from the legal codes of the Roman empire.  The Roman state collapsed, after all.  Today it is fashionable in some circles to deny that there was ever a Dark Age — a view that would have astonished Sidonius Apollinaris.  It is, after all, inconvenient for the selfish to discuss what happened the last time round.

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Severus Sebokht and “Arabic” numbers

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A bunch of Syriac works on scientific subjects are preserved in a single manuscript in the BNF in Paris.  Most are by Severus Sebokht, the 6th century monk and bishop at the monastery of Kinnesrin, where Greek studies thrived.

I have a microfilm of this manuscript, and it contains a number of letters by Severus.  One of these is of wide interest; it defends Syriac science against the Greeks, and incidentally mentions (for the first time) the numbers that we today call “Arabic” numbers.  But it has never been translated; all our knowledge of it is from a small excerpt.

This is a reminder to myself; I need to get this transcribed and translated and put online!  That’s why I got the microfilm!

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The destruction of the apocryphal Acts of John

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Burning books with which one disagrees is such fun!  At least, we might infer this, from the universality of the practice in all ages, including our own.   A discussion on this subject elsewhere raised the question of the apocryphal Acts of John, and caused me to read the relevant sections in volume 2 of Schneemelcher’s “New Testament Apocrypha”  (2003).  Page 156 indicates:

At its fifth session the Nicene council of 787 pronounced on the Acts of John: “No-one is to copy (this book): not only so, but we consider that it deserves to be consigned to the fire.” 49

49. Conc. Nic. II, actio V (Mansi vol. 13, col. 176 A)

In the West Leo the Great had given a similar verdict to the entire compass of the apocryphal literature used by the Priscillianists: “The apocryphal writings, however, which under the names of the apostles contain a hotbed of manifold perversity, should not only be forbidden but altogether removed and burnt with fire.” 50

50. Leo the Great, Letter to Turribius of Astorga on 21 July 447, c. 15; PL 54, col. 688A.

These judgments sufficiently explain why the Acts of John have survived only in fragmentary form.

Leaving aside the somewhat doubtful logic of the latter, I thought it might be useful to examine these references.  Leo the Great, Letter 15 (to Turribius, against the Priscillianists) is online in English here:

And on this subject your remarks under the fifteenth head make a complaint, and express a well-deserved abhorrence of their devilish presumption, for we too have ascertained this from the accounts of trustworthy witnesses, and have found many of their copies most corrupt, though they are entitled canonical. For how could they deceive the simple-minded unless they sweetened their poisoned cups with a little honey, lest what was meant to be deadly should be detected by its over-nastiness?

Therefore care must be taken, and the priestly diligence exercised to the uttermost, to prevent falsified copies that are out of harmony with the pure Truth being used in reading. And the apocryphal scriptures, which, under the names of Apostles, form a nursery-ground for many falsehoods, are not only to be proscribed, but also taken away altogether and burnt to ashes in the fire. For although there are certain things in them which seem to have a show of piety, yet they are never free from poison, and through the allurements of their stories they have the secret effect of first beguiling men with miraculous narratives, and then catching them in the noose of some error.

Wherefore if any bishop has either not forbidden the possession of apocryphal writings in men’s houses, or under the name of being canonical has suffered those copies to be read in church which are vitiated with the spurious alterations of Priscillian, let him know that he is to be accounted heretic, since he who does not reclaim others from error shows that he himself has gone astray.

I can never read materials of this date, expressing themselves in these terms, without hearing an echo of modern political correctness and the exaggerations that this creates.  Every right-wing politician in the UK is labelled “fascist” more or less by reflex; yet in truth there are no politicians known to me who advocate the Fuhrerprincip or the policies of Il Duce!  The label is intended to demonise, not inform; and somehow I tend to wonder about some of the 5th century denunciations, as being examples of the same phenomenon.

Nothing in Leo’s letter leads us to suppose that any actual burnings took place, nor does it refer specifically to the Acts of John.

The other reference is to the 5th session of the acts of the Council of Nicaea II in 787, the council that condemned iconoclasm.  Mansi, vol. 13 is here.

As far as I can make out, the Fifth Session of the synod was spent listening to extracts from the Fathers on the question of icons. On p.90 (col. 167D) there seems to be the start of the discussion of this text. The Acts of John are quoted twice, although not named — the text refers to bogus itineraries of the apostles.  The first passage condemns icons; the second asserts various gnostic ideas about Christ.  Various members of the synod then point out the obviously heretical nature of the text.

Our bit is right at the bottom of p.93/top of p.94 of the PDF. I find the Greek almost unreadable in this PDF; the Latin translation reads:

Joannes reverendissimus monachus et vicarius orientalium pontificum dixit: Si placet sancta ac universali huic synodo, fiat sententia, ne ulterius scribant aliqui sordidum istum librum.  Sancta Synodus dixit: Nemo scribat: non solum hoc, sed igni eum dignum judicamus fore tradendum.

The most reverend John, monk and Pontifical Vicar of the East said, “If it pleases the Holy and Universal Synod, let this be the sentence, that nothing of this sleazy book be copied (lit. written) any more.”  The Holy Synod said: “Let no-one copy it; not only that, but we judge it deserving to be thrown into the fire.”

Yet again this does not seem to me to be a general decree; so much as a rejection of the book as evidence for the purposes of the council (which indeed it could not be).

Schneemelcher is an odd book, isn’t it?  In some ways it’s very good, but in others quite dreadful.  Something must be allowed for the awkwardness of translation from the German.  Indeed there are some horribly tangled sentences, which almost suggest that the English editor did not read it carefully enough!  But the introduction by Schneemelcher himself to the five surviving apocryphal acts is not very good at all.  It consists of a rambling survey of the opinions of various scholars, on subjects that the reader has yet to encounter.  It is, indeed, otherwise fact-free.  In the English version the prose is nearly unreadable, to make matters worse.  A survey of the scholarship is not a bad idea; but this is not well achieved.

I learn from the book that Photius is our source for gathering the five together, as all composed by one Leucius Charinus, and all used by the Manichaeans; the acts of John, Thomas, Paul, Peter and Andrew.  Yet it must be questioned whether the text today known as the Acts of Paul is the same text that Photius used.  It is, after all, a very different document from the others, all of which have gnostic leanings and would be amenable to Manichaean purposes.  It may be telling that the Acts of Paul is condemned separately in the Decretum Gelasianum from the “writings of Leucius”.  Was there, perhaps, another “Acts of Paul”, which has perished?

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Indexes of ROC now online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The volume of indexes of the Revue de l’Orient Chrétien has now appeared online here.  Thanks to Albocicade for the tip.

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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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From my diary – Cambridge

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Sunshine this morning, so I clambered into my car and drove up the A14 to Cambridge.  Only one broken down lorry at Sproughton to delay traffic – police coned off one lane, causing tailbacks.  More noticeable is the atrocious state of the roads, worn threadbare and rutted with lack of maintenance.  I drive on past Cambridge to the M11 junction, drop down towards London two junctions, and come off with the tower of the University Library in sight.  Then a drive through fields, then along a leafy road or two between agreeable large houses of the early twentieth century, down to West Road and into the car park where I even manage to find a space.  Normally I have to park by the side of the road!

Into the library, swiping my card as I go to operate the turnstyle.  Up to the catalogue room, and a search for Le Monde Copte sends me to South Wing Floor 3.  A look at the article tells me that it is of little interest.  Down to the machine room on the ground floor to look for Bishop Samuel al Suryani’s edition or translation of Abu Makarim; in vain.  The Newton catalogue behaves erratically, as ever, refusing to give results that I know it has.  But I do find an entry for “Tawaḍrūs, Ṣamūʾīl, 1911-” as author of a “Guide to ancient Coptic churches & monasteries in Upper Egypt / by Samuel al Syriany, Badii Habib”, 1990.  Seems to be Arabic language, tho.

The university library building is well designed, built of brick and obviously intended to resemble an Italian palazzo, or so the architects model in the foyer indicates.  I suspect the university was less impressed by the somewhat forbidding appearance that they actually got.  Gothic is the only style that looks good in the rain, in my experience.

I still have a bunch of books rejected in Oxford in the boot of my car.  I wonder if Oxfam in Cambridge will take them and find homes for them?  But it is quite a way from the library on foot into town!

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Digest of Roman Law online in English; and Hadrian on castrating your slaves

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’d like to highlight that an out-of-copyright translation of the Pandects, otherwise known as the Digest of Roman Law by Justinian, is actually online here as part of the Corpus Juris Civilis, under the  misleading title of “The Civil Law”.  Few people seem to know about this.

I thought that I would look at the comments on the Lex Cornelia, in 48.8, which I was discussing earlier in connection with legislation against magic.  The law is mainly concerned with assassination and poisonings, and so are the comments.  But there were clearly further provisions:

4. Ulpianus, On the Duties of Proconsul, Book VII. …

(2) The Divine Hadrian also stated the following in a Rescript: “It is forbidden by the Imperial Constitutions that eunuchs should be made, and they provide that persons who are convicted of this crime are liable to the penalty of the Cornelian Law, and that their property shall with good reason be confiscated by the Treasury.

“But with reference to slaves who have made eunuchs, they should be punished capitally, and those who are liable to this public crime and do not appear, shall, even when absent, be sentenced under the Cornelian Law. It is clear that if persons who have suffered this injury demand justice, the Governor of the province should hear those who have lost their virility; for no one has a right to castrate a freeman or a slave, either against his consent or with it, and no one can voluntarily offer himself to be castrated. If anyone should violate my Edict, the physician who performed the operation shall be punished with death, as well as anyone who willingly offered himself for emasculation.”

All this is interesting, considering that the priests of the state cult of Magna Mater (Cybele) were eunuchs!

A further interesting provision appears further down:

11. Modestinus, Rules, Book VI.

By a Rescript of the Divine Pius, Jews are permitted to circumcise only their own children, and anyone who performs this operation upon persons of a different religion will incur the penalty for castration.

This rescript of Antoninus Pius is second century, so cannot relate to Paul and Christianity; but if a similar attitude was around, it may explain why circumcision was not favoured by gentile converts.

Finally we get to something related to magic:

By a decree of the Senate it is ordered that anyone who offers sacrifices for the purpose of causing misfortune shall be subjected to the penalty of this law.

But the whole discussion relates to murder, rather than magic; clearly the latter was a minority concern.

Searching further for comments by Ulpian, I find this: 2. Ulpianus, On the Duties of Proconsul, Book VII.  This is in 48.22, concerning associations, but again may relate to Christians.

Anyone who becomes a member of an unlawful association is liable to the same penalty to which those are subject who have been convicted of having seized public places or temples by means of armed men.

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