The volume of indexes of the Revue de l’Orient Chrétien has now appeared online here. Thanks to Albocicade for the tip.
Author: Roger Pearse
Nominate Mingana manuscripts for digitisation
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!
From my diary – Cambridge
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!
Digest of Roman Law online in English; and Hadrian on castrating your slaves
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.
Roman attitudes to magic
There were three sets of Roman legislation relating to magic.[1] There was an edict in the Twelve Tables (ca. 451 BC); the laws of Sulla (81 BC); and the legislation of Constantine and other Christian emperors (after 312 AD).
Table VIII.9 made it a crime to move crops from someone else’s field to one’s own by magic. There is another possible prohibition of a carmen causing insult to another, where carmen may mean a spell. The emphasis is on injury to another. A trial under this law took place before the curule aedile, Spurius Albinus, in 157 BC according to Pliny the Elder NH 18-41-43. Further actions against magicians, usually their expulsion, took place during the republic.[2]
The Lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficis (=assassins and poisoners) is quoted in the so-called Sentences of Paulus 5.23.15-18 (ostensibly ca. 210 AD; probably actually late 3rd century AD; does not seem to be online). This reads:
Persons who celebrate or cause to be celebrated impious or noctural rites so as to enchant, bewitch or bind anyone, shall be crucified or thrown to wild beasts… Anyone who sacrifices a man, or attempts to obtain auspices by means of his blood, or pollutes a shrine or a temple, shall be thrown to wild beasts, or, if he is of superior rank, shall be punished with death. … It has been decided that persons who are addicted to the art of magic shall suffer extreme punishment; that is to say, they shall be thrown to wild beasts or crucified. Magicians themselves shall be burned alive. … No-one shall be permitted to have books of magic in his possession, and when they are found with anyone they shall be publicly burned and those who have them, after being deprived of his property, if they are of superior rank shall be deported to an island, and if they are of inferior station shall be put to death; for not only is the practice of this art prohibited, but also knowledge of the same.
Digest 48.8 deals with the Cornelian law, and quotes the opinions of later jurists on it.[1] Interestingly they include (48.8.4) a quotation from book 7 of Ulpian’s De officiis proconsularis [4]. Lactantius tells us that this same volume of this same book by Ulpian contained edicts against the Christians:
Moreover, most wicked murderers have invented impious laws against the pious. For both sacrilegious ordinances and unjust disputations of jurists are read. Domitius, in his seventh book, concerning the office of the proconsul, has collected wicked rescripts of princes, that he might show by what punishments they ought to be visited who confessed themselves to be worshippers of God. – Lactantius, Div. Inst. 5, 11.
It’s interesting to see that Christianity was grouped together with magicians by Ulpian. It may be relevant that Christians were sometimes accused of practising magic; perhaps the edicts were gathered together for this reason.
Augustus as pontifex maximus ordered all books on occult subjects to be burned, which were 2,000 in number, according to Suetonius (Aug. 31). In AD 16 yet another expulsion of magicians and astrologers from Italy took place; and further expulsions occurred during the first century.
The legislation of the Christian emperors against magic is in the Codex Justinianus 9:18 and in the Codex Theodosianus 9:16. In 312 Constantine banned a haruspex from visiting another; in 321 banned magical arts that injured others, while exempting those used for medicinal purposes or the general welfare. In 357 Constantius banned magic altogether (CJ. 9.18.5):
Chaldaei ac magi et ceteri, quos maleficos ob facinorum magnitudinem vulgus appellat, nec ad hanc partem aliquid moliantur.
Chaldeans, magicians, and others who are commonly called malefactors on account of the enormity of their crimes shall no longer practice their arts.[5]
A law of 358 called magicians “the enemies of the human race” and classified those who used magic verses, sorcerors, haruspices, soothsayers, augurs, diviners, and interpreters of dreams as magicians.
Although the Lex Cornelia involved a general prohibition, cases such as that of Apuleius show that only when harm was supposed was the law likely to become involved, and otherwise was not strictly enforced. Apuleius was accused of using magic to cause a boy to fall sick, and also to induce a wealthy widow to marry him (to the fury of her family, who raised the allegation). In his defence, Apuleius acknowledges the illegality of magic (Apology 47):
You have demanded fifteen slaves to support an accusation of magic; how many would you be demanding if it were a charge of violence? The inference is that fifteen slaves know something, and that something is still a mystery. Or is it nothing mysterious and yet something connected with magic? You must admit one of these two alternatives: either the proceeding to which I admitted so many witnesses had nothing improper about it, or, if it had, it should not have been witnessed by so many.
Now this magic of which you accuse me is, I am told, a crime in the eyes of the law, and was forbidden in remote antiquity by the Twelve Tables because in some incredible manner crops had been charmed away from one field to another. It is then as mysterious an art as it is loathly and horrible; it needs as a rule night-watches and concealing darkness, solitude absolute and murmured incantations, to hear which few free men are admitted, not to speak of slaves.
And yet you will have it that there were fifteen slaves present on this occasion. Was it a marriage? Or any other crowded ceremony? Or a seasonable banquet? Fifteen slaves take part in a magic rite as though they had been created quindecimvirs for the performance of sacrifice! Is it likely that I should have permitted so large a number to be present on such an occasion, if they were too many to be accomplices? [3]
Magic, then, was always something secret and illegal; if, in practice, tolerated so long as no scandal occurred.
1. Stephen Benko, Pagan Rome and the Early Christians, p. 128f.
2. Eugene Tavenner, Studies in magic from Latin Literature, p.13 f, usefully reviews all the data with references, and also lists Roman writers on the occult.
3. Apuleius, Apology, 47.
4. The Digest is online in Latin here.
5. Codex Justinianus 9.18.5, ed. P. Krueger, Berlin: Weidmann (1877), p.837. Online here. The Codex Justinianus is online in Latin here as part of the Corpus Juris Civilis.
Update 20 May 2024: The second reference to the “Digest” should have been to the Codex Justinianus, part of the Corpus Juris Civilis, and in vol. 2 of the Krueger edition of 1877. Slight revisions for clarity.
Norwich and the Roman world
I went to Norwich today, since the weather was so fine. The city itself is well worth a visit, with the remains of the medieval walls, a bustling market and the massive Norman keep on the hill overlooking the city. And my goodness weren’t there a lot of pretty girls out in the streets!
Just outside the city, at the roundabout with the A140, is a sign to the Roman city of Caistor St. Edmunds. This is basically a field, which is visible from the A140, with Roman walls at various points. More photos from here, where a project to do magnetic resonancing was announced in 2006. But take some food and drink with you; there isn’t a bite of anything to be had on site!
Translating from Arabic into Latin in Medieval Spain
A really important blog post at Quodlibeta on a very neglected subject: how did Arabic scientific knowledge get into circulation in Latin in the Middle Ages? Read it for yourself. I have asked for a bibliography, as I certainly want to know more!
Readers of this blog will recall my posts on Galen and Hunain ibn Ishaq; how Greek scientific knowledge got into Arabic, by means of Christian translators, first into Syriac by people like Sergius of Reshaina and Job of Edessa, and then in the 10th century across into Arabic by people like Hunain ibn Ishaq. But the Quodlibeta post continues this, in asking what happened next!
The anathemas against Origen at the 2nd Council of Constantinople
I’m going through my filing cabinet, turning photocopies into PDF’s and throwing away the paper. While doing so, I’m coming across all sorts of things that I haven’t seen for years. One of these is some pages of Norman Tanner’s edition of the Decrees of the ecumenical councils (1990). This is the sort of thing that I dearly wish was online. But a note in the preface caught my eye:
Our purpose in editing the texts has been to present all the decrees of the councils and only the decrees. For this reason some very important texts have had to be omitted, for example the anathemas against Origen formerly attributed (erroneously) to Constantinople II, or the charges on which pope Honorius was condemned (as these relate to the acts, not the decrees, of Constantinople III), or the profession of faith of pope Hormisdas which was a condition of admittance required of the council fathers at Constantinople IV, but does not appear to have been formally approved by the council.
Now I was under the impression, rightly or wrongly, that the Council of Constantinople held by Justinian had condemned Origenism, and perhaps anathematised Origen himself, depending on some text-critical questions. To pronounce a man anathema 300 years after he died in the peace of the church, and died moreover from the effects of torture in confessing Christ, would be morally wrong of course.
Unfortunately I don’t have the relevant pages of Tanner, and I don’t know the facts. Would someone better informed on this council than myself care to comment?
More books in and about Syriac online at BYU
Kristian Heal has announced 35 additions to the Syriac books online here. Nothing wildly exciting, but all very useful, solid stuff!
Some answers on the confusing History of Abu al-Makarim / Abu Salih
I’ve now read the article by Ugo Zanetti, “Abu-l Makarim et Abu Salih”, Bulletin de la societe d’archeologie copte 34 (1995), pp.85-138, which seems pretty thorough on all the confusing information around. Rather than leave my questions hanging, I thought I would answer it myself for the benefit of those reading and not as obsessed as myself!
There are two, and only two manuscripts; Paris arabe 307, and Munich ar. 2570. The latter once belonged to Girgis Filutaus (who was Rector of the Coptic Cathedral in Cairo), but arrived in Europe a couple of decades ago, in a very bad state.
Evetts published the Paris ms in 1898, with an English translation. This is missing the introduction, but ends with a colophon.
Fr. Samuel published the Munich ms (then still in Egypt), and used a modern copy of the Paris ms. in the Coptic Museum. His edition was in 4 parts, part 4 being indexes etc. Part 1 and 3 were from the Munich ms; part 2 from the Paris ms, where he improves somewhat on Evetts edition.
Zanetti analysed the two mss codicologically and found that they were originally a single manuscript, which was dismembered centuries ago, before the Paris ms was bought in Egypt during the 17th century. The Munich ms. is the start of the ms. and should be followed by the Paris ms. So the correct order of the parts in Samuel should be part 1, part 3, and then part 2. (Samuel was misled by the hand of the scribe, which changes part way through the ms and then changes back, and by the fact that he didn’t have access to more than photographs of the Paris ms.)
An English translation exists of part 1 (only) of Samuel’s edition. This is
Bishop Samuel, “Abu al Makarem”. Trans<lated> by Mina al-Shamaa`. Rev. by Mrs. Elizabeth (= “History of the Churches and Monasteries in Lower Egypt in the 13th century”), Cairo, Inst. des. Etudes Coptes (Anba Ruwais), 1992.
It also includes some maps and an index. A copy exists in the US Library of Congress.
So no translation exists of part 3 (i.e. the middle part of the work).