Author: Roger Pearse

Arius to Eusebius of Nicomedia: the Son is “fully God”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Da Vinci Code has spawned a host of people who believe that the First Council of Nicaea voted on whether Jesus was God.  I tend to correct such people by pointing out that Arius himself calls the Son, “fully God”, in his letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia (321 AD).  I usually include a paragraph from the translation of Henry Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church, 1947, p.55 (online here), as a particularly clear statement of this:

Eusebius, your brother, Bishop of Caesarea, Theodotus, Paulinus, Athanasius, Gregory, Aetius, and all the other bishops of the East, have been condemned for saying that God existed, without beginning, before the Son; except Philogonius, Hellanicus and Macarius, men who are heretics and unlearned in the faith; some of whom say that the Son is an effluence, others a projection, others that he is co-unbegotten.

To these impieties we cannot even listen, even though the heretics threaten us with a thousand deaths. But what we say and think we both have taught and continue to teach; that the Son is not unbegotten, nor part of the unbegotten in any way, nor is he derived from any substance; but that by his own will and counsel he existed before times and ages fully God, only-begotten, unchangeable.

This evening I noticed that not every translation of this letter reads this way.  So I wondered just what the Greek said.

The letter is transmitted to us by Theodoret, Historia Ecclesiastica, book 1, chapter 5 (although in the NPNF version it is mysteriously chapter 4).  The text is edited in the GCS series, and the key passage appears on p.26-27.  In fact the key words are the very first two words on p.27.  And there are no variants!  Here’s the text:

And there it is: πλήρης θεός – pleres theos, fully God.  Pleres indeed can mean complete as well as full, as we see in LSJ.  But the idea is pretty clear.

I did wonder if there was a variant.  After all, everybody knows that Arius did not think that the Son was God in the same way as the Father.  I fully expected to see someone “correct” the text to fix what it said, to  bring it into accordance with the known views of Arius.  But the GCS does not list one.

But Theodoret is not our only source for the letter of Arius.  It is also transmitted by Epiphanius in the Panarion, 69.6.  This also was edited in the GCS series, by Holl.  On p.157 (here) we find the text as follows:

with apparatus:

Here Holl is proposing an emendation.  But the text as transmitted is still πλήρης θεός – pleres theos, fully God.

There are also two ancient Latin versions of the letter of Arius.  The first is by Candidus Arianus, which appears among the works of Marius Victorinus.  The other is found in an 8th century manuscript from Cologne Cathedral.  Both of these say “plenus deus”, “fully God”.  (I have written a separate post on these  here).

The letter was also edited by H.-G. Optiz in the Athanasius Werke III/1, as “Urkunden zur Geschichte des arianischen Streites” (= “Documents for the history of the Arian dispute”) 1934, Urk. 1 (= Doc. 1) accessible online here.  Optiz did something a little odd: he simply inserted Holl’s conjecture into the text:

With apparatus:

This refers to Holl, and to John 1:14

14 Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν, καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ πατρός, πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας· (SBL)

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (ESV)

But there seems no pressing reason to introduce this into the text as transmitted.

The NPNF translator rendered πλήρης θεός as “perfect God”, doubtless thinking of the Latin “perfectus”, completed.

However the translation at the excellent Fourth Century site here is different: it follows Optiz.

(4.) We are not able to listen to these kinds of impieties, even if the heretics threaten us with ten thousand deaths.  But what do we say and think and what have we previously taught and do we presently teach?  — that the Son is not unbegotten, nor a part of an unbegotten entity in any way, nor from anything in existence, but that he is subsisting in will and intention before time and before the ages, full <of grace and truth,> God, the only-begotten, unchangeable.

The translation is in fact that of R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 1988, as they make plain.  Hanson page 6:

Which is what Optiz give us.

All the same, we have to work with what Theodoret and Epiphanius and the Latin witnesses record, and what Arius wrote.  The old heretic definitely wrote “fully God”.  What he actually meant by this, of course, was the subject of the Arian disputes.  But he did not believe that the Son was not God.

Note: My sincere thanks to A. von Stockhausen for telling me about Epiphanius and the Optiz text in the comments below, with the very useful links.  I have revised this post to include this very valuable information.

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Some further notes on Primasius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Following my post of yesterday, I have gleaned a few more details on Primasius of Hadrumetum and his commentary on Revelation (Commentarius in Apocalypsin).

A better account of his life and actions can be found in the old 19th century Dictionary of Christian Biography volumes, with references, here.  It reads:

Primasius, bp. of Adrumetum or Justinianopolis, in the Byzacene province of N. Africa. He flourished in the middle of 6th cent., and exercised considerable influence on the literary activity of the celebrated theological lawyer JUNILIUS, who dedicated to him his Institutes, which spread the views of Theodore of Mopsuestia in the West. Primasius first comes before us in a synod of his province in 541, the decrees of which are known only through Justinian’s decrees confirming them, as given in Baronius, Ann. 541, n. 10–12. He was sent to Constantinople in connexion with the controversy on the Three Chapters c. 551. He assisted in the synod which pope Vigilius held against Theodore Ascidas and was still in Constantinople during the session of the fifth general council, but took no part in it, notwithstanding repeated solicitations (Mansi, ix. 199 seq.). He was one of 16 bishops who signed the Constitutum of pope Vigilius, May 14, 553. When, however, Vigilius accepted the decrees of the fifth council, Primasius signed them also. According to Victor Tunun. (Migne’s Patr. Lat. t. lxviii. col. 959), other motives conspired to bring about this change. He was at first exiled to a convent, and then the death of Boethius, primate of the Byzacene, aroused his ambition to be his successor. He gained his point, but, returning home, his suffragans denounced him as guilty of sacrilege and robbery. He died soon afterwards. His writings (ib. pp. 407–936) embrace commentaries on St. Paul’s Epp. and the Apocalypse; likewise a treatise (now lost), de Haeresibus, touching on some points which Augustine did not live to treat with sufficient fullness (Isid. HispaI.Vir. lll. xxii. in ib. lxxxiii. 1095; Cave, i. 525; Tillem. xiii. 927, xvi. 21). Our Primasius is sometimes confounded with bp. Primasius of Carthage. The best account of Primasius of Adrumetum is in Kihn’s Theodor von Mopsuestia, pp. 248–254, where a critical estimate is formed “of the sources of his exegetical works. [CHILIASTS.] Cf. also Zahn, Forschungen, iv. 1–224 (1891).

A kind correspondent linked to a study by Haussleiter from 1887.[1].

I was able to learn of the following manuscripts of the Commentarius in Apocalypsin:, partly from Haussleiter, partly from a wonderful twitter thread by Colleen Curran.  (When will somebody start a project like Pinakes for Latin mss?)

  • Oxford, Bodleian, ms. Douce 140.   Late 7th / early 8th century.  This was in England in the Anglo-Saxon period.
  • Kassel, MS Theol. fol. 24.  9th century.  From Fulda.
  • A = Codex Augiensis 222.  Late 8th / early 9th century.  Originally from Reichenau.  But Curran gives this as “Karlsruhe, MS 212 (s.vii, Reichenau)”.
  • C = Paris 2185, once the Colbertinus.  Partly 10th c., partly 11-12th.  Originally from Corbie.
  • G = Paris 13390, once the Sangermanensis 94.  9th century.  Also from Corbie.

In Becker’s Catalogi of old medieval libraries, various copies of Primasius seem to have existed.

  • 2 distinct copies at Reichenau in 822 AD, nos. 348 and 349 in the catalogue.
  • 1 copy at St Riquier in 831, no. 191.
  • 1 copy in two volumes at St. Gall in one catalogue of the 9th century, nos. 272-3, but only one volume in another catalogue of the same century, this time bound with Gregory but labelled as “corrupt”.
  • 1 copy at Bobbio in the 10th century in two volumes.
  • 1 copy at St Bertin in the 12th century, no. 211.
  • 1 copy at Corbie in the 12th century, no. 253.
  • The same single copy in the catalogue of Corbie of ca. 1200, no. 209.

The editio princeps of Primasius appears to be in 1535 in Cologne.  This was unknown to Haussleiter.  The manuscript used is attributed to Jean de Gagny, who seems to have had access to all sorts of monastic libraries in France at this period.

It is delightful to find this edition is online, at the Bayerische StaatsBibliothek (BSB), here.

The most easily available edition is that of the Patrologia Latina, 68, cols. 793-936.  This may be found from the links on the right.  There is a modern CCL 92 edition, which of course is inaccessible to most people, so I have not seen it.

Here’s the Latin for the prologue.  I initially scanned Haussleiter – scanning the PL text is a nightmare – but the PL was at least printed by someone who understood it, so I have added back in the capitals at the start of sentences and converted “Jotor” to “Jethron”, which is plainly what it should be, changed elitist spellings and generally changed it back to something that a normal person could work with.  I’ve had rather enough of working with partly corrupt Latin texts lately.

Prologus. Tuis, vir inluster et religiose Castor, suasionibus adquiescens, sic librum Apocalypsis beati Johannis multis mysteriis opacatum, in adjutorio domini nostri Jesu Christi, licet exiguis susceperem viribus exponendum, ut non meis solis tantum fuerim contentus inventis, sed quamquam numero pauca, si qua tamen a sancto quoque Augustino testimonia exinde exposita forte reperi, indubitanter adjunxi.  Sed etiam a Ticonio Donatista quondam certa, quae sano congruunt sensui, defloravi, et ex eis quae elegenda fuerant, exundantia reprimens, importuna resecans, et impolita componens, catholico moderamine temperavi.  Multa quippe in ipso eius opere reperi et supervacua, et inepta et sanae doctrinae contraria, ita ut et de causa, quae inter nos et illos vertitur, secundum pravitatem cordis sui loca nocentia captaret, nostraeque ecclesiae noxia expositione putaret mordaciter illudendum.  Nec mirum, quod haereticus rem sibi congruam fecerit, sed vel quod invenire potuit defloranda, quod tamen ille facere iniuste temptavit, nobis cura fuit, locorum opportunitatibus nactis, veraciter exsequi, eorumque errorem convincendo cassare.   Sicut enim preciosa in stercore gemma prudenti debet curare, collegi, et reperta dignitati ingenuae revocari, ita undecumque veritas clareat, catholicae defeudenda est unitati.  Huic enim soli competit quicquid veritas foris etiam personarit.  Juste namque fides a perfidis collegit, quod sui iuris esse cognoverit.  Nec prodesse potest alienis usurpatum sed filiis, cum iuri matris fuerit redditum.  Sic autem Donatistae hinc extolli non debent, sicut de sermone Caiphae quem dixit:  Expedit ut unus homo moriatur pro populo (John 11), Judaei non debent gloriari.  Sed nec nostris esse debet offensio.  Si qua enim fuerint ecclesiasticis utilitatibus profutura, nostris sunt instructionibus applicanda neque attendenda persona dicentis, sed qualitas consideranda est dictionis. Sic Moyses (Exod. 19), eruditus omni sapientia Aegyptiorum, post divini sermonis alloquium, cuius pridem meruit beari consortio, Jethron socerum suum, mitissimus rudem, peritus ignarum, magister copiosae multitudinis singularem, Israhelita gentilem devotus audivit, eiusque consilium sequens, mox utilitatem praedictam invenit.  Cum regendi populi communicanda per multos onera partiretur, specialiter levigatus, sic certe ab ethnicis auctoribus probabiliter dicta et apostolicis praedicationibus sociata nostro profectui usu meliore cesserunt, unde tamen non sinuntur gloriari gentiles.

Extenditur autem hoc opus in libros quinque.  Quorum lectio qualem studiosis sit latura profectum, experimento melius quam nostra pollicitatione probabitur.  Verum quia pro diversitatibus opinantium, diversis me modis arbitror fore culpandum, cum alii de huius operis coeperint prolixitate causari, alii autem libri profunda pensantes de exiguitate magis censuerint arguendum.  Tali primos reor sermone placandos, quod satius me fatear de paucitate notandum, eo quod latentem ibi mysteriorum plenitudinem divinorum nec penetrare conpetenter queverim, nec ea quidem quae intellegi potuerunt, idoneo valuerim sermone proferre. Secundis vero hoc alloquio satisfactionis insinuem, nihil me dominis conservisque meis malivole subtraxisse, sed ignorantiae confessione de exiguitate malle veniam postulare.  Si enim experto non crederem, sancti tamen Hieronymi edoctus sententia didicissem, qui de hoc libro docens dicit: ‘Apocalypsis Johannis tot tibi sacramenta quot verba: parum dixi et pro merito columinis laus omnis inferior est.  In verbis singulis multiplices latent intellegentiae.’  His intercedentibus, et veniam humilis confessio promeretur et praecelsi dignitas libri credentibus saltem, etsi necdum intellegentibus, innotescat.  Nam cum intellegentibus alibi raro interponi soleat tropica proprietati narratio, hic tamen aut frequenter intexitur, aut condensior figura sensus generatur ex altera, aut una eademque res sic variis profertur adumbrata figuris, ut non eadem credatur repeti potuisse, sed altera, quod et in principio Ezechielis et in aliquibus Danihelis visionibus invenitur, sed hic amplius.  Pro qua re me infirmem nostis vestris amplius orationibus adiuvandum.

I’ve not translated this, but let us note his description of getting material from Tyconius: “jewels from a dunghill” (“preciosa in stercore gemma”).

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  1. [1]J. Haussleiter, “Leben und Werke des Bischofs Primasius von Hadrumetum: Eine Untersuchung”, Erlangen (1887), online https://archive.org/details/lebenundwerkedes00haus/page/1↩

Primasius and his Commentary on Revelation

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Few will have heard of Primasius, bishop of Hadrumetum in Vandal Africa.  What little we know about him comes from the obscure chronicle by Victor of Tunnuna (who is NOT Victor of Vita),[1] and from Isidore of Seville (De viris illustribus 22).  The Italian continuation of Quasten’s Patrology published by Marietti (Patrologia IV: I padri latini (secoli V-VIII)) tells us:

On Primasius we are informed by Victor of Tunnuna and Isidore (Vir. Ill. 22).  Bishop of Hadrumetum, he was among the African bishops summoned to Constantinople in 551 because of the controversy over the Three Chapters.  Initially he took a position against Justinian and did not participate in the council of 553.  In consequence he was exiled to a monastery.  But then, according to Victor, in order to obtain the position of primate of the late Roman province of Byzacena, roughly equivalent to modern Tunisia, he sided with the emperor and began to persecute the defenders of the Three Chapters.

His Commentarius in Apocalypsin in five books is also mentioned by Cassiodorus (Inst. I, 9).  This is presented in the prologue as a work of compilation, based upon Augustine – although Primasius notes that Augustine had never written a commentary on Revelation as such – and Tyconius.  Tyconius had been a Donatist, so Primasius took care to declare this, and that he had selected the best bits, taken the gem out of the dung, etc.  …

Apparently Primasius also wrote three books on Heresies, to bring up to date the catalogue of Augustine.  Cassiodorus knew the first book of this, but it has not reached us.  The work under his name in PL 68 is the commentary of Pelagius on Paul, reworked by Cassiodorus, and supplemented by a work by Halberstadt.

CPL 873-4; PL 68, 793-936; PLS 4, 1208-1221; A.W.Adams, Commentarius in Apocalypsin CCL 92 (1985). …

Which is useful stuff as far as it goes.

The commentary only survived in seven manuscripts.  Strangely it is easier to find one of these in Google than anything else.  This, the oldest manuscript, is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 140, which is late 7th century.  A page of it, fol. 4r, following the preface and the capitula for book 1, is shown here at the British Library website; the ms. is online here and here.

I have not been able to find any trace of a translation into any language, which is most curious.  However a reconstruction of Tyconius, by Roger Gryson, largely extracted from Primasius, has been translated into both English and French.  I do not object; but it does seem odd that a hypothetical book should receive translation while a real book does not.

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  1. [1]The chronicle has been translated in John R. C. Martyn, Arians and Vandals of the 4th-6th centuries, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008.↩

Augustine’s “De ordine” and his comment on prostitution

Posted on by Roger Pearse

One of the earliest works of St Augustine is a work that he wrote in 386 AD at a country villa while preparing for baptism.  It is one of a number of works that he wrote at that time.  Augustine had just abandoned his job as a teacher of philosophy, but the milieu is still that of late philosophy.

The work is De ordine, “On Order”, which Robert P. Russell, the first translator, revised to a more meaningful “Divine Providence and the Problem of Evil”.[1]  The work is concerned with explaining how God controls everything that happens in the world, even the bad things, although he is not responsible for them.  Given in dialogue form, it records a discussion between Augustine and his friends and a couple of students.

In De ordine book 2, chapter 4, we read the following statement:

TRYGETIUS: … Indeed, the entire life of the unwise, although it is by no means consistent and by no means well regulated by themselves, is, nevertheless, necessarily included in the order of things by Divine Providence. And, certain places having been arranged, so to speak, by that ineffable and eternal law, it is by no means permitted to be where it ought not to be. Thus it happens that whoever narrow-mindedly considers this life [the life of the “unwise”] by itself alone is repelled by its enormous foulness, and turns away in sheer disgust. But, if he raises the eyes of the mind and broadens his field of vision and surveys all things as a whole, then he will find nothing unarranged, unclassed, or unassigned to its own place.’

AUGUSTINE: … Now, you were looking for just one or two illustrations for that opinion of yours. To me there already occur countless illustrations which bring me to complete agreement.

What more hideous than a hangman? What more cruel and ferocious than his character? Yet he holds a necessary post in the very midst of laws, and he is incorporated into the order of a well-regulated state; himself criminal in character, he is nevertheless, by others’ arrangement, the penalty of evildoers.

What can be mentioned more sordid, more bereft of decency, or more full of turpitude than prostitutes, procurers, and the other pests of that sort? Remove prostitutes from human affairs, and you will unsettle everything because of lusts; place them in the position of matrons, and you will dishonor these latter by disgrace and ignominy. This class of people is, therefore, by its own mode of life most unchaste in its morals; by the law of order, it is most vile in social condition.

And is it not true that in the bodies of animals there are certain members which you could not bear to look at, if you should view them by themselves alone? But the order of nature has designed that because they are needful they shall not be lacking, and because they are uncomely they shall not be prominent. And these ugly members, by keeping their proper places, have provided a better position for the more comely ones.[2]

(Paragraphing mine).  The argument is fundamentally one in which Augustine is trying to explain how God controls evil and makes a use of it, assigning it a role in our broken society, but does not endorse it or take responsibility for it.  The examples are incidental.  Augustine was not describing how a society should be, but how his society was.  The social order of the Western Roman Empire was pagan to the end.

Unfortunately this idea, that prostitution and pimping were a necessary evil, like the hangman, was picked up by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa theologica, 2a 2ae, q. 10. a; 11. c, who used it to illustrate the idea that human legislators may at times permit certain evils for the purpose of avoiding greater ones.  This led to the awful institution of legalised brothels in Catholic countries, the abuse of women for profit, even in Rome itself.[3]

As the Fathers of the Church editor is keen to point out, Augustine spoke rather more clearly in Contra Faustum Manichaeum, book 22, chapter 61 (Latin here, English here):

Consulta quippe aeterna lex illa, quae ordinem naturalem conservari iubet, pertubari vetat, non nisi propagationis causa statuit hominis concubitum fieri, et hoc non nisi socialiter ordinato connubio, quod non pervertat vinculum pacis: et ideo prostitutio feminarum, non ad substituendam prolem, sed ad satiandam libidinem propositarum, divina atque aeterna lege damnatur.

Obviously by that eternal law, which commands that the natural order be conserved, and forbids it to be disturbed, human sex is not established to happen unless for the cause of propagation, and this not unless a marriage has taken place, so that the bond of peace is not overthrown/corrupted: and likewise the prostitution of women who offer themselves, not for the begetting of offspring but for the sating of lust, is condemned by the divine and eternal law.

The “bond of peace” is of course the institution of marriage.  Certainly this indicates that Augustine reaffirms that prostitution is wrong.

It is remarkable what men will do to justify an evil, if they stand to profit by it.  Indeed only this week I came across someone campaigning to “legalise prostitution”.  Prostitution is legal; it is pimping that is not, so the campaign is to permit the legal trade in women to resume.  I pointed out that prostitution was awful; and he had the cheek to ask me sneerily, “Why is prostitution awful”.  Those willing to commit some obvious evil are seldom ashamed to lie about it as well.

Curiously the second half of the NPNF translation is wrong at this point, reading:

Undoubtedly, by the eternal law, which requires the preservation of natural order, and forbids the transgression of it, conjugal intercourse should take place only for the procreation of children, and after the celebration of marriage, so as to maintain the bond of peace. Therefore, the prostitution of women, merely for the gratification of sinful passion, is condemned by the divine and eternal law.

What happened to “non ad substituendam prolem”, one wonders.

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  1. [1]“Writings of Saint Augustine volume 1”, in: Fathers of the Church 5 (1948), p.229-334↩
  2. [2]Key passage p.287-8.↩
  3. [3]See for another example, Michael M. Hammer, “Prostitution in Urban Brothels in Late Medieval Austria”, online here.  It seems to  be a paper from this 2017 seminar “Forgotten Women from a Forgotten Region: Prostitutes and Female Slaves in Central and Eastern Europe in the Long Middle Ages” here.↩

An online quote attributed to St. Jerome, on prayer

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It’s often wise to be wary of online quotes which carry a famous name, but no reference.  One of these caught my eye a couple of days ago, and I wondered if it was genuine.  A google search revealed nothing as to its source, unfortunately.  It does appear without reference in a Catholic collection of quotes from the saints.

Here it is:

“Let prayer arm us when we leave our homes. When we return from the streets let us pray before we sit down, nor give our miserable body rest until our soul is fed.” – St. Jerome

The quotation in this case is indeed authentic.  The reference is St Jerome, Letter 22 to Eustochium (de virginitate servanda / on the duties of a virgin), chapter 37; taken from F.A.Wright (translator), St Jerome: Select Letters, Loeb Classical Library 262 (1933), p.144-5.

Letter 22 is a treatise, really, rather than a letter.  It was composed around 384 AD.  It was translated by W. H. Fremantle for the 19th century Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series II, volume 6.  This translation may be found online in many places, such as here.  Fremantle renders the Latin as follows:

When we leave the roof which shelters us, prayer should be our armor; and when we return from the street we should pray before we sit down, and not give the frail body rest until the soul is fed.

Yet another translation of letter 22 appears in P. Carroll, The satirical letters of St. Jerome, Chicago, 1956, on p.17-68.[1]  There are probably others.  The most recent translation known to me is by Charles Christopher Mierow, The Letters of St Jerome, vol. 1 (1-22), (1963), in the Ancient Christian Writers series, on p.134-80.  But I have not seen any of these.

The Latin text was printed by Hilberg in CSEL 54, on pages 143-211, from which the Loeb text was supposedly drawn.  The text of our quote is the same in both, and reads:

Egredientes hospitium armet oratio, regredientibus de platea oratio occurrat ante, quam sessio, nec prius corpusculum requiescat, quam anima pascatur.

Manuscripts are listed in Hilberg on p.143.  The oldest is 6th century.

There is apparently a commentary on the letter: Neil Adkin, Jerome on Virginity: A Commentary on the Libellus de virginitate servanda (Letter 22), ARCA Classical and Medieval Texts, Papers and Monographs 42 (Cambridge: Francis Cairns, 2003).[2]

The Loeb is out of copyright, and so may be found on Archive.org, or via this site.  Searching for it by Google is a depressing business, with a mass of bookseller results entirely concealing the download.  I had to specify “PDF” in the search to locate the free copy.  This made me notice how unfit a search engine Google now is.  It’s not really oriented towards useful information, so much as commerce.  Once it would easily have brought me material useful to me.  Now it brings me material useful to the shareholders of Amazon and half-a-hundred other merchants.  I had not originally known that it was online.  I did consider buying a volume; a sheer waste of money.  I did feel rather annoyed once I realised.

The Google search did produce two search results, which are on JSTOR.  The first is a negative review of the Loeb volume by the great Alexander Souter, here, which lists the defects and concludes with the words “It is abundantly clear that this book suffers from want of competence and of care”.  The second is a truly vicious review by one Martin R. P. McGuire here, ending with the words, “Professor Wright has shown himself incompetent to deal in a scholarly and accurate manner with a patristic writer. The editors of the Loeb must assume a certain amount of responsibility for not having investigated his qualifications thoroughly before assigning to him the letters of St. Jerome.”

The tone of the McGuire review is so intemperate that we must suppose some form of personal animosity.  There is a Wikipedia article on McGuire that informs us that he was a Catholic University of America scholar.

But who was F. A. Wright?  This is hard to say.  He does not appear in the Dictionary of National Biography.  His publications are mainly translations or deal with Greek poetry.  I did find a short statement in a book on Rationalist Criticism of Greek Tragedy, by James E. Ford, p.56:

Frederick Adam Wright was professor of Greek at London University, but his real vocation was his commitment to liberal causes, one of which was women’s rights (“The fact is—and it is well to state it plainly—that the Greek world perished from one main cause, a low ideal of womanhood” [1]). He takes from Verrall the basic idea of the ironic dual message in Euripides’ plays and states his acceptance of Verrall’s interpretations of Iphigenia in Taurus, Heracles, Orestes, and the Bacchae (see 109, 111). [3]

Other sources are vague.  One website says: “Frederick Adam Wright (1869-1946) was Professor of Classics in the University of London.”  The index of contributors in the “The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824-1900, Volume 5”, p.857, confirms his dates but says vaguely “headmaster, class. scholar”.  One final source, that I was only able to access as a snippet, stated: “FREDERICK ADAM WRIGHT (1869-1946) Wright was Professor of Classics at Birkbeck College, London, and the author of numerous books on classical literature as well as of translations from Greek and Latin authors.”[4]

Possibly Professor Wright and his critics may have been divided by political considerations here.  But I would guess that the cause of all the problems identified by Souter is that the old man simply produced a translation by the slacker standards of the early Loeb volumes, and left the rest to the Loeb editors; who let him down.

All the same, F. A. Wright gave expression to a thought of St Jerome that has achieved an independent existence.  I expect St Jerome is pleased!

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  1. [1]ACW preface, p.20, currently visible online as preview here.↩
  2. [2]I owe many of these details to the excellent Fourth Century website, and their page on Letter 22 here.↩
  3. [3]Google Books preview here.↩
  4. [4]Richard Stoneman, Daphne into laurel: translations of classical poetry from Chaucer to the present, 1982.  The page number is unknown to me, but possible p.305.↩

John Zonaras on the date of Easter

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Most of us think of John Zonaras as a Byzantine epitomator of Cassius Dio.  This he certainly did, as part of composing his own history.  Even in brief, that history was pretty long, running up to the reign of Alexius I Comnenus.  We’re still dependent on the old Bonn CSHB text for access to this work.  A good chunk of it was translated recently into English by Thomas Banchich, covering the period from Alexander Severus up to Theodosius the Great.  I also today found a bunch of earlier material translated on the Sententiae Antiquae blog here.

But Zonaras also left us a work commenting on ecclesiastical canon law; and one part of that affects the life of millions, by way of the “Zonaras Proviso”.  I learned of this recently from a very interesting article on Easter at the OrthodoxWiki site.

In the Orthodox world, there is a subtle difference in the calculation of Easter: that Easter or Pascha must always follow the Jewish Passover.  This rule is unknown in the west, with the effect that Easter can sometimes precede Passover.  For a lucid explanation of this, let me refer the interested reader to an article at Roads of Emmaus blog.

But our interest is the text of Zonaras, Commentary on Apostolic Canons, canon 7, which appears in the PG 137, cols. 49-50, in the middle of a combined commentary by Theodore Balsamon, Zonaras and Aristenus.  The canon reads “If any bishop, presbyter or deacon celebrates the holy day of Pascha before the spring equinox with the Jews, let him be deposed.”

Here’s Zonaras:

ZONAR. Ἐαρινὴν ἰσημερίαν τινὲς τὴν κε᾽ φασὶ τοῦ Μαρτίου· τινὲς δἐ τὴν κε᾽ τοῦ Ἀπριλλίου. Οῖμαι δὲ μήτ᾽ ἐκείνην μήτε ταυτην τὸν κανόνα λέγειν· ὡς ὲπι τὸ πολὺ γὰρ τὸ Πάσχα πρὸ τῆς κε᾽ τοῦ Ἀπριλλίου ἑορτάζεσθαι είωθεν· ἔστι δὲ ὅτε καὶ πρὸ τῆσ κε᾽ τοῦ Μαρτίου, ὡς συμβαίνειν (εἰ οὔτως νοοϊτο ἡ ἐαρινὴ ἰσημερία) παρὰ τὸν κανόνα τοῦτον τὸ Πάσχα ἑορτάζεσθαι. Ἔοικεν οὐν ἄλλο τι ἐαρινὴν ἰσεμερίαν τοὺς συνετοὺς ἀποστόλους ὀνομάζειν. Ἡ δὲ πᾶσα τοῦ κανόνα, διαταγὴ τοῦτό ὲστι, τὸ μὴ μετὰ Ἰουδαίων (ἤγουν κατ᾽ αὐτὴν τὴν ἡμέραν) ἑορτάζειν τὀ Πάσχα Χριστιανούς. Χρὴ γὰρ προηγεϊσθαι τὴν ανέορτον ἐκείνων ἑορτὴν, καὶ οὕτω τὸ καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς τελεϊσθαι Πάσχα. Ὁ δὲ μὴ τοῦτο ποιῶν ἱερομένο, καθαιρεθήσεται. Τοὺτο δὲ καὶ ἡ ἐν Ἀντιοχείᾳ σύνοδος ἐν πρώτῳ κανόνι διετάξατο, λέγουσα τῆς ἐν Νικαίᾳ πρώτης συνόδου ὄρον εὶναι περὶ τῆς ἑορτῆς τοῦ Πάσχα· εἰ καὶ μὴ εὑρισκεται ὲν τοῖς κανόσι τῆσ ἐν Νικαίᾳ συνόδου τοιοῦτος κανών.

Helpfully the OrthodoxWiki writer has translated it, humbly adding, “Please note, this text has been translated into English from the Latin parallel translation found in Migne, PG 137.”  I’ve amended it in places.

ZONAR. Some say the Spring equinox is the 25th day of March; others, the 25th day of April. I deem that the canon refers to neither the one nor the other. For Pascha is often celebrated before the 25th of April.  There are even times when it is celebrated before the 25th of March; so that, (if “Spring equinox” were so understood) Pascha would happen in violation of this canon. Whence it appears that the wise apostles call something else the “Spring equinox.” So the whole thrust of the canon is this, that Christians should not celebrate Pascha with the Jews (that is, on the same day). For it is fitting that their feast (which is no feast) is done first; and thus we do our Pascha. If one consecrated to God does this even once, he is removed from orders. The synod in Antioch also ordered this, in their first canon, where they stated that this was decreed concerning the feast of Pascha by the synod of Nicea, although no such canon is found in the canons of the Nicene synod.

I have never known anything about canon law.  I find that there is a volume on Greek canon law which tells us about this side of Zonaras.[1]  From this we learn the following details:

The work of commentary was completed after 1159, and Zonaras also included brief legal treatises within his text.  It is found in a “rich manuscript tradition”, sometimes combined with Balsamon, and sometimes by itself.  The work was translated into Old Slavonic.

The Zonaras material was edited by G. Beveregius, otherwise W. Beveridge, Synodikon sive Pandectae Canonum, Oxford 1672 in two volumes, and this was reprinted as we have seen in the PG, volumes 137 and 138.  There is, however, a newer edition by Rhalles-Potles in 6 volumes,[2] although, since this was printed in Athens, I imagine that few have access to it.

Apparently there are other works by Zonaras, which are theological, and remain largely unedited.

Clearly there is work to do on Zonaras.

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  1. [1]Wilfried Hartmann, Kenneth Pennington, The History of Byzantine and Eastern Canon Law to 1500, Catholic University of America (2012), p.176-7.↩
  2. [2]Georgios A. Rhalles and Michael Potles, eds., Σύνταγμα τῶν θείων καὶ ἱερῶν κανόνων (6 volumes; Athens 1852–59, reprint Athens 1966).↩

The late antique edition of Livy by the Nicomachean family

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The vast history Ab urbe condita by Livy was so enormous – well over 100 books – that it was transmitted in collections of 10 books.  Most of these “decades” are lost.  We possess only the first, third, fourth, and half of the fifth decade.

In late antiquity the texts of the first century came back into fashion, and were once more copied and amended.  We learn from a letter by Q. Aurelius Symmachus, the opponent of St Ambrose, that “Munus totius Liviani operis quod spopondi etiam nunc diligentia emendationis moratur.” (Epist. 9.13: “The gift of the whole of the works of Livy which I have promised is also now delayed by the task of removing errors”.)  This letter seems to date to 401.[1]

What is remarkable is that this work of correction, undertaken by the interlinked Symmachan and Nicomachean families, is attested in the colophons of surviving manuscripts of the First Decade.  These are well-known to scholars.  But it is wonderful to find that we can see an example online at the Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana in Florence, ms. Plutei 63.19, “M” to the editors.  This was written sometime before 968 at the Cathedral of Verona.  Tweeter GiorgiaV has extracted four pages with examples.

Here’s the end of book VI (fol.138):

I.e.

Titi Livi Nicomachus VC III prefect urbs emendavi ab urbe cond Victorianus VC. Emendabam Domnis Symmachis Liber VI Explicit.

Nichomachus, 3 times urban prefect, I have corrected the “Ab urbe condita” of Titus Livy.  Victorianus, I corrected [it] for the noble Symmachi.  Book 6 ends.

fol.138v:

And the end of book V:

TITI LIVI Nicomachus Dexter V.C. emendavi ad exemplum parentis mei Clementiani; ab urbe condit. Victorianus VC emendabam domnis simmachis.

Nicomachus Dexter, I corrected against the copy of my Clementian parents; the “Ab urbe condita” of Titus Livy. Victorianus, I corrected [it] for the noble Symmachi.

Fol.156r:

At the end of book 8:

Emendavi Nicomachus [F]lavianus Titi Livi ter praef. urb. apud hennam [i.e. terminam] ab urbe conditor.  Victorianus VIC [i.e. VC] emendabam domnis Symmachis. lib. VIII. explicit.

I, Nicomachus Flavianus, 3 times urban prefect, have corrected the “Ab urbe condita” of Titus Livy at the end.  Victorianus, I amended it for the noble Symmachi.  Book 8 ends.

Fol.172v has the colophon for book 8.

VC is vir clarissimus, a member of the aristocracy.  All these people engaged in textual criticism were very senior people indeed.  Victorianus is Tascius Victorianus.  He also worked with Nicomachus on a translation from Greek of Philostratus Life of Apollonius of Tyana, as we learn from Sidonius Apollinaris, letter 8.3.[2]  The publication in Latin of a life of this controversial figure, used then and now for anti-Christian purposes, reinforces the pagan background of the editorial team.

An old 1828 edition here provides a sometimes inaccurate transcription of these and other colophons.  Charles W. Hedrick’s volume History and Silence p.28 tells us about the three terms as urban prefect of Flavian Nicomachus, presumably ending in 408 AD.

The grammatical structure is sometimes a bit weird.  There is an article by J.E.G. Zetzel, “The Subscriptions in the Manuscripts of Livy and Fronto and the Meaning of Emendatio”, in Classical Philology 75 (1980), p.38-59.[3]  This offers an intriguing suggestion, that, particularly for book 7, we’re looking at the result of copying a colophon laid out like this:

emendaui Nicomachus Flauianus
TITI LIVI
uc ter praef. urbis apud Hennam
AB VRBE CONDITA
Victorianus uc emendabam domnis Symmachis
EXPLICIT LIBER VII INCIPIT LIBER VIII.

The Livy stuff is in capitals, the colophon info interspersed between it.  So one of the medieval copyists ran together what he found in the exemplar before him.

But the manuscript has yet another interesting feature for us, on fol.163v, in book 8, chapter 15:3, describing how a vestal virgin was buried alive.  Here we find a marginal note:

I am  unable to read this, but Zetzel informs us that it begins by paraphrasing the text and then reads:

miror autem, cum defossam indicat, omisisse illum ex libris Sibillinis hoc esse praeceptum, ut legisse me in ipsis apud Flegontem temporis istius uersibus recolo.

But I amazed, when he says that she was buried [alive], that he has omitted that this was commanded in the Sybilline books, as I recall that I read in them, in Phlegon in the poems of that time.

References in Latin to Phlegon are rare and late; found only in the Historia Augusta, and in Jerome.  It’s not likely that a medieval annotator could write such a thing, so it looks as if at least some of the marginalia also belong to antiquity, and quite possibly the Nicomachean editors.

It’s wonderful what you find in old books.

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  1. [1]Zetzel, p.38.↩
  2. [2]S. Stucchi &c, Apollonius of Tyana in Legend and History, p.170.↩
  3. [3]JSTOR↩

Bits and bobs

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Here’s some stuff that’s wandered into my in-tray.

Google is becoming a useful tool for biblical quotations.  While checking some of these by googling, I found myself looking at archive.org at several volumes of the critical text of the Vetus Latina.  A search on Vetus Latina brings up quite a number here.  I hope that Archive have checked the copyright tho.

How people find the energy to scan books I do not know.  I’m sitting here with a volume of St Augustine, and having to pause for breaks.  I know that I did a lot of this ten or twenty years ago.  How on earth did I do it?

It’s been a while since I get out my Plustek Opticbook 3600, and I couldn’t remember if it worked with Windows 10 or not.  At first try it didn’t work.  Looking at the manufacturer site did not look good either.  But there was a Windows 8 driver, which I installed.  Still nothing.  Anyway I rechecked the cables and… um, the cable was half-unplugged at the scanner.  When pushed in firmly then it all worked.  I’m using it with Finereader 12 at the moment.

Next up is a photograph of one of the lost streets of Rome, the Via Bonella, from 1907.

The now-lost Via Bonella, with the so-called Pantani Arch. Photo taken in 1907.

I plucked from here this modern image:

The columns are those of the forum of Nerva, to the left of the temple of Mars Ultor.  The modern street behind the arch, running left-right, is the Via Tor di Conti.  The orange building behind the arch is today the Forum Hotel, complete with a rooftop restaurant at which I had a terrible dining experience on my only visit to the building.

I do quite a bit of translating, so I was interested to come across an article, Translating for a Digital Archive.  This shows how the professionals do it, rather than people like me, alone in a room with a pile of dictionaries.  The project is to put British Library Arabic manuscripts online, and make the titles etc searchable in either Arabic or English.

As part of the BL’s [British Library] translation team, I work to produce and edit the Arabic language content for the QDL [Qatar Digital Library]. While the collection items themselves are displayed solely in their original language, all of the portal’s supporting and descriptive content is translated, as are the expert articles, meaning that the catalogue can be searched and used just as easily in Arabic as in English.

…

Our Toolbox: Translation management software

Like many large-scale translation projects, ours involves multiple translators, and several rounds of proofing and quality checks to ensure accuracy and consistency. To manage this, we use a piece of software called memoQ that includes two essential tools: a translation memory (TM) and a term base (TB). The TM functions as a bilingual database of previously translated segments of text; it works by storing pairs of original source-language content alongside its approved translation. When a new text is imported, memoQ breaks it into smaller segments on the basis of punctuation and line breaks, and automatically conducts a search for exact and partial matches. These are then presented to the translator for approval and/or review.

While a human expert still has the final say on whether to accept any suggestion from the TM, frequently only a minor edit is needed to make the old translation suitable for the new context. This serves the double purpose of saving time and maintaining consistency across the catalogue as a whole. Translation memories tend to prove their worth the larger they are and the more repetition there is in the content. Having grown over the years since the start of the project, our TM now routinely recognises a third of content in a new file, and often much more.

While the TM grows organically over time by compiling and storing translation segments, the term base is maintained manually. It works as a glossary for key terms, allowing us to suggest preferred equivalents for individual words or phrases, and/or to blacklist translations that should be avoided. As the TB is visible to all parties at all stages of translation and proofing, it helps to ensure the consistency of these terms in Arabic.

Authorities: making the most of memoQ

The TB has proved especially useful when it comes to translating authority files. An authority record serves to identify and describe a person, corporate body, family, place name, or subject term that is featured in a catalogue description. Each term is authorised and unique. As every record and every expert article on the QDL is linked to at least one authority file, they form an index through which users can search for all the content related to a specific term.

Read the whole thing.  I was unable to find an author’s name on it, curiously.

This idea of “Translation Memory Tools” sounded interesting to me.  I quickly found that several seem to be proprietary and expensive.  I did come across OmegaT, which is not, here.  But I suspect that none of my projects are large enough for me to use it.

Another interest of mine is hagiography, about which I know very little.  So I was interested to come across a seminar description (Seminar VII: Hagiography) at Lancaster University, with bibliography, and the following interesting introduction:

Hagiography, the historical genre which is the subject of this week’s seminar, comprises narratives concerned with the saints and their achievements, especially the miracles which God has performed through them and on their behalf. Six basic types of hagiographical ‘story’ or ‘scenario’ may be distinguished:

  • first, the vita, the story of the achievements that a saint performed in his or her lifetime;
  • second, the passio, similar to the former, but about a martyr who has died a violent death for the faith or for some other God-arranged reason;
  • third, the inventio or revelatio, the story of how a new saint or more often a saint’s bodily remains were discovered;
  • fourth, the translatio, the story of how a saint’s relics were brought to a church or moved to a new shrine;
  • fifth, the visio, the story of how a saint appeared to someone in a vision;
  • and sixth, the miraculum, the story of how a miracle was performed on the saint’s behalf by God.

Miracula are typically concerned with the wonders that were performed after the saint has died and become a resident of the heavenly kingdom. A hagiographical text might well combine many of these stories or ‘scenarios’. Many vitae continue on, for example, well-beyond the scene of the saint’s death to describe how his or her corpse was lost, re-discovered and then brought and enshrined in the church where it now rests. In these texts the true climax comprises the saint’s translatio and enshrinement. Miracula, furthermore, were often combined to form libri miraculorum, ‘books of miracles’, which sometimes (but not usually) extended beyond the usual few dozen items to encompass hundreds of episodes.

In its various manifestations hagiography was the mode of historical discourse most frequently deployed in the Middle Ages, generating many thousands of vitae and miracula and contributing substantial passages to many chronicles and rhetorical histories. The similarities (and sometimes, the lengthy verbal affinities) between these narratives naturally lead to the suspicion that most, if not all, instances contain much that has been borrowed from earlier examples or which has been re-fashioned so as to resemble the scenes found in key archetypes—such as the late fourth-century Life of St Martin of Tours by Sulpicius Severus—which exerted great influence over the development of the genre. This conclusion seems inescapable; but the process might sometimes involve an oral phase, prior to the writing up of the legend, in which the hero’s story assimilated many standard elements or was gradually re-fashioned with each act of re-telling, bringing it ever closer to the recognised archetypes. The few texts which admit importing episodes from the lives of other saints invariably claim that the story was true of some saint if not of the saint with whom the text is chiefly concerned or that there is so little doubt about the subject’s sanctity that the mis-attribution of a few stories will scarcely make any difference to his or her cult. As such admissions show, hagiography’s claim to authority rested, as in the case of ecclesiastical history, on its claim to record actual events—actual moments of divine intervention in the world.

I’d like to know which texts include those admissions of borrowing material.  I wonder how one could find out.

That’s enough for now.  I find that I have 197 items in my backlog folder, so perhaps I should have a push on getting them out!

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More Meta Sudans photos and a document on the demolition!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The excellent Roma Ieri Oggi site continues to upload old photographs of Rome.  I confess that I find the twitter feed more accessible than the website, and of course it allows for feedback.

A couple of days ago, I browsed through the feed and came across something very interesting.  First there was a photograph of the arch of Constantine and the Meta Sudans, taken around 1930, a few years before the latter was demolished.  Here it is:

But underneath another tweeter, “Paolo (@vonhoeneim)” posted three contemporary documents about the demolition.  Here’s the tweet:

Dall’Archivio centrale di Stato, tre documenti sulla demolizione della Meta sudans. Questa venne abbattuta per non impedire i flussi del traffico automobilistico e non, come si dice, per far sfilare la camicie nere.

From the Central State Archives, three documents on the demolition of the Meta sudans. This was removed so as not to obstruct the flow of car traffic and not, as is said, to allow the black shirts to parade.

He attaches evidence, which I will upload here (for twitter is ephemeral):

I can’t read this. Can any reader do so?

This is from the “office of the governor” and reads:

= APPUNTO PER S.E. IL CAPO DEL GOVERNO =

Mi onoro informare l’E.V. che, con la lettera odierna, di cui unisco copia, ho sottoposto a S.E. il Ministro dell’Educazio ne Nazionale la questione delle risoluzioni da adottarsi per i ruderi della base del Colosso di Nerone e della Meta Sudante, in relazione ai lavori in carso per l’allargamento della Via di S. Gregorio.

Con devoto ossequio

Roma, lì 7 settembre 1933-XI

I.e.

I am honored to inform the EV. that, with today’s letter, of which I add a copy, I have submitted to his excellency the Minister of National Education the question of the measures to be adopted for the ruins of the base of the Colossus of Nero and the Meta Sudans, in relation to the work in progress due to the widening of the Via di S. Gregorio.

And then there is this:

I.e.

mento rapidissimo dalla zona alta dei quartieri dell’Esquilino del Laterano e dei Monti, con la Via del Mare e con la Stazione di S.Paolo Lido di Roma, Appunto a tale scopo è già previsto l’allargamento del Viale Aventino ohe costituisce la diretta continuazione della Via di S.Gregorio.

Il traffico già intenso ohe in Questi ultimi anni si svolgeva in tutte le ore della giornata lungo la Via di S.Gregorio è venuto aumentando enormemento dopo l’apertura della Via dell’impero, cosi da consigliare a questo Governatorato le opportunità di provvedere senza indugio all’allargamento della strada. Precisamente verso la Via dell’impero erano già e saranno sempre più frequenti le comunicazioni con la nuova strada, sicchè é evidente la necessità di facilitare per quanto è possibile i raccordi, tra le due grandi arterie della nuova Roma di Mussolini, ambedue importantissime non solo per la loro bellezza estetica ma per la loro rispondenza si bisogni del movimento cittadino.

Si presenta perciò in vista della facilitazione di tale raccordo una questione che, nome l’E.V. avrà veduto, ha vivamente in bere usato in queste ultime settimane la stampa cittadina o la pubblica opinione, e cioè la conservazione dei due avanzi monumentali della Base del Colosso di Nerone, e della Meta Sudante.

Come appare dalla pianta allegata, la base del Colosso di Nerone costituisce indubbiamente un gravissimo imbarazzo per lo comuninazioni fra la Via dell’impero e la Via di S.Gregorio, obbligendo i veicoli provenienti dalla Via dell’impero ohe seguono, come è prescritto, ma marcia a destra a girare al di là del rudero, inflettendo uno stretto arco per raggiungere il passaggio tra l’Arco di Costantino ed il Palatino. E’ stata da varie parti avanzata la proposta di demolire il rudero della base del Colosso di Nerone (dopo averne fatto i più precisi rilievi) e di lasciarne la traccia nella pavimentazione stradale, con un piantato in travertino o in gradito o con altro materiale acconcio, e collocando nei pressi una iscrizione, che ricordi l’esistenza del rudero, individuandone esattamente la posizione.

… very fast from the upper area of ​​the Esquilino del Laterano and Monti districts, with the Via del Mare and the S.Paolo Lido station in Rome. Exactly for this purpose the widening of the Viale Aventino is already provided, which constitutes the direct continuation of the Via di S.Gregorio.

The already intense traffic that in recent years took place at all hours of the day along the Via di S.Gregorio has increased since the opening of the Via dell’Impero, so as to suggest to this office the need to provide without delay for the widening of the road. Precisely towards the Via del’Impero connections with the new road were already and will be more and more frequent, so that the need to facilitate as much as possible the connections between the two great arteries of Mussolini’s new Rome, both very important not only for their aesthetic beauty but for their correspondence, requires action by the city.

Therefore, as the name of the E.V has been mentioned, a question presents itself for the facilitation of the connection that has arisen in recent weeks in the city press and public opinion, that is the preservation of the two monumental remains of the base of the Colossus of Nero and the Meta Sudans.

As appears from the attached plan, the base of Nero’s CoIossus undoubtedly constitutes a very serious problem for the connections between the Via dell’Impero and the Via di S.Gregorio, obliging vehicles coming from the Via dell’Impero to follow, as designed, but it runs to the right to turn beyond the ruin, inflicting a narrow arch through which to reach the passage between the Arch of Constantine and the Palatine. The proposal to demolish the ruin of the base of the Colossus of Nero (after having made the most precise recordings) and to leave its trace in the road pavement, with traced in travertine or in gradito or with other acconcite material, has been advanced, and placing an inscription nearby, which reminds us of the existence of the ruin, identifying its exact position.

Unfortunately the document breaks off there before discussing the Meta Sudans, which was treated similarly.  It looks as if the impetus came from the local authorities, rather than the national government, however, in their eagerness to be seen to cooperate.

Finally here is another picture from Roma Ieri Oggi, from 1900, showing the Meta Sudans from an unusual angle, through the arch of the Arch of Constantine:

Wonderful to see it.

The destruction of the base of the Colossus and the Meta Sudans took place very recently.  So much that we might want to know is probably freely accessible in Italian archives, to those who read Italian.  I wish that someone would go through them all and make it accessible.

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Manuscripts and text of the Vita S. Valentini: a review of the article by Edoardo D’Angelo

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve started to look at the photocopies that I obtained three days ago of articles in the Bassetti volume of papers about St Valentine.[1]  Naturally my first interest is the paper by Edoardo D’Angelo, “La Passio sancti Valentini martyris (BHL 8460-8460b): Un ‘martirio occulto’ d’età postcostantiniana?” (p.179-222), as it contains a discussion of the manuscripts and a new critical edition.

The first thing that struck me about the paper was its position.  If I were doing a volume of papers centred around a single literary text, and one of those papers was a critical edition of the text, then I would most certainly place it at the front.  I would also insist on a translation.  Doing so would be the natural way to begin such a volume and present it to the public.  Instead it is the seventh paper in the volume, and relatively one of the shortest.

The paper starts with a list of manuscripts containing the work, which is really very useful considering the small space in which it has to appear.  There are 118 manuscripts in all, and two of a slightly modified  version of the text identified as BHL 8460b.  Seven of these date from before 1000 AD, two before 900; and a further thirty-seven from before 1200.  These are all given.[2]  The remainder sadly are not; but of course there is no space.

The origins of each manuscript are not given, but we learn that nearly all of these are Italian, and all of the early ones.  D’Angelo infers from this that the text has an Italian origin.  It is always risky to argue from survivals, but it is not improbable in any way that the Life of St Valentine of Terni should originate close by, in Lazio.  The other content of the manuscripts likewise relates to Umbrian saints.

The 37 manuscripts include a manuscript from South Africa, from the “Grey collection”.  I don’t think that I have ever before seen reference to a medieval manuscript held in South Africa.  I would hope that the remaining South Africans are photographing the manuscripts as fast as they can before the barbarian rulers of that unhappy land destroy them.

The wide diffusion of the text and the Carolingian date of some of the copies tends to suggest an early date.  The quotation of two sentences verbatim by Bede in his Martyrology (CPL 2032) in the early 8th century provides a terminus antequam.  The text is most likely therefore of the 6-7th century.

The standard reference edition of the text is still that of the Bollandists in the Acta Sanctorum (AASS), under February 14.  This was printed in 1658, yet D’Angelo tells us that “Tale edizione seicentesca, fondata su una base decente di codici, ha retto tutto sommato all’urto del tempo e dell’avanzamento della ricerca.” (“This seventeenth century edition, founded on a decent base of manuscripts, has all in all survived the impact of time and the progress of research”), which is fair comment.  The AASS introduction states that it was based on five mss plus the Mombritius edition; but the footnotes to the text come from three manuscripts; “S. Maxim.”, “Regium.” and “Gladbas.”, six breviaries, and two printed editions, the Mombritius and Surius.  D’Angelo has clearly not had the chance to pursue this very far, but suggests that the “Regium” must be one of the 8 mss in the Royal Library in Brussels – reasonable, considering that the Bollandists were working in that area – and the “Gladbas” is probably ms. 72 in the library of the Bollandists, previously from the monastery of St Vitus Martyr in Gladbach.

The editor has produced his new edition based on the earliest manuscripts, plus a handful from the next 37, which he believes to be from the same geographical area.  This is reasonable up to a point; but what we do not see is proper stemmatics.  We all know that late manuscripts can contain truth which is not found in surviving earlier manuscripts.  There is also the problem that this is not a literary text, but a hagiographical one, where the copyist may feel free to alter the text.  The article is not nearly long enough to explore these questions properly, and so the new edition is not really as critical as it could be.  All the same it involves various small changes to the text printed by the Bollandists.

One decision made by the editor seems to me to be absolutely mistaken.  He has not normalised the spelling: we have “michi” rather than “mihi”, for instance.  The logic here seems to be faulty: we are told that the mss vary wildly, that we have no idea what spelling the author might have used (although I do not see why we care), and so he has compromised between the spellings of the manuscripts, in order to avoid “alle pericolosissime tentazioni di classicizzazione forzata” (the most perilous temptations of forced classicization”).  But we do not do this in our literary editions.  The variable spelling of Shakespeare, or even Jane Austen, are not respected in modern editions.  Spelling was not standardised in the past.  This was an evil, not a good, and it was a barrier to communication.  The editor should have used the standard spellings, and noted anything he felt was significant in the apparatus.

Short though the paper is, the author has also been obliged to discuss whether the content of the Life of St Valentine is in some way historical.  The attempt is made to show that it might be.

We learn that many people suppose the events in the story to belong to the reign of Claudius II Gothicus (268-270), because that is the setting for the martyrdom of Valentine the Roman in the Passio Maris et Martha, which may or may not be the same saint as our St Valentine of Terni.  The logic of this is poor: there may be two separate St Valentines, or they may be the same one.

The Prefect of the City of Rome in the Life is given as “furius Placidus”, “the furious Placidus”.  The Bollandists treated this as a joke by the author, but D’A. identifies him as a certain absurdly named Marcus Mecius Memmius Furius Baburius Cecilianus Placidus, praetorian prefect from 342-4 and prefect of the city from 346-7.  Other not very distinctive names are adduced to suggest that the story should be set in the same period.  None of this seems much more than speculation.  Nothing compels us to believe that these are anything but coincidences.

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  1. [1]M. Bassetti &c, San Valentino e il suo culto tra medioevo ed età contemporanea. Uno status quaestionis, Terni, 2012. ISBN-13: 978-8879885713.↩
  2. [2]The numeral for the shelfmark for the early MS in the Arch.Cap.S.Pietro has been omitted; unfortunate considering that there are 470 such mss.↩