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Machine-translated portions of the new Maronite Chronicle of 713 in English

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I learn from twitter that Alex Hourani has made a transcription from the manuscript (MS Sinai Arab. 597) of most of the text of this chronicle, discovered by Adrian Pirtea, which is online here. But there is still work to do, as the manuscript is damaged.  So the transcription is just provisional and incomplete.  But as Dr Pirtea generously says, the more people working on this text, the better.

Of course this means that non-Arabic-speaking non-specialist plebs like us can now read it, thanks to the marvels of Google Translate.  So I thought I’d run a few pages through it.  Here’s a quick version of the opening bit.

[85b] In the name of God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

[ ] The History of the Years and Times, called the Greek Chronicle, beginning with the creation of the world.

With the help of Christ, God above all, we begin in this history by explaining the things that were in the world, starting with the origin of creation, which God created.

Some members of the Church undertook the task of copying the Book of Times, diligently recording all the years found in the books of the prophets. They began with Adam and explained the years that followed, adding to them the years found in other versions, and those not fully recorded by the prophets. They also followed this with explanations of matters, some of which are found in the prophets, and some of which are accounts compiled from other books.

Because of the long period after the completion of their books, we [86a] undertook to explain matters that were anomalous and added them to the ancient texts. We explained the earlier versions and followed them with what was available to us in our time. Some of this was what we heard, some from books, some from the accounts of trustworthy people, and some we learned through investigation, concerning events that occurred in our time.

We arranged all the years from Adam to this point, in addition to explaining matters that occurred at different times. This was not in the order of the final stories, but rather the outlines of the events. Furthermore, we arranged and narrated the accounts that were included in the explanations of the accounts that served as reminders. We presented them in simple language so that their knowledge would be readily available to those who encounter them.

We begin with Adam, the beginning of our human race, the first human being, and then proceed down to this year and this year.

And here’s the final third:

[132a]
//////// and forty.

[ ] One hundred and forty-seven went out
[ ] with his partner, Valentinianus
[ ]
[ ] in the name of Simon.

[ ] Rillis, Bishop of Alexandria [132b], and Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus, were counted among the Greek teachers, and in the Syriac language, the blessed Isaac was appointed to teach, and from that time, the number [ ] began to decrease in the churches.

During this reign, many became saints in various denominations of worship.

And the blessed Mary Simeon, who was the first to demonstrate the resurrection [ ], was present at that time.

At the height of Theodosius’s reign, there was unrest in the churches, stemming from the unlawful acts of the council of Constantinople, and also from Paus and Leon of Dioscorus, and that abominable act committed in Ephesus at that time, when they gathered and did what transpired, instigated by the misguided Eutyches. During this period of error, the pious King Theodosius died, having reigned for forty-one years.

His sister, Plucria, mentioned earlier [133a], apprehended the king along with Marcion, who succeeded Theodosius.

She was eager to correct the deviation from the truth, and King Marcion, in his eagerness, convened the great synod that met in Chalcisonia, and it nullified and invalidated the wicked acts of the council of Dioscorus. [762 Sel.] The year in which this great council convened was seven hundred and sixty-two. Until that time, the Church and its magnificent monasteries were increasing, growing, and flourishing. They were being built and established, especially in and around Jerusalem, by the blessed Saint Euthymius, and his disciples Theodosius and Sabbas. The blessed Maron also established a monastery during that time, and the security of the monastery and the churches increased in every place. Likewise, the pleasures of the Roman emperor were inclined towards glory.

[The following appears to be a separate, unrelated statement:] … [133b]

[769 Sel.] [And] in the reign of Leo in the year seven hundred and sixty-nine, there was an earthquake on the morning of Sunday, the fourteenth of March, and it occurred [ ] and in the aftermath of that year there was [ ] on the twenty [ ] morning ////
And in that year Saint Mary Simeon rested
[134a]

[And] they obeyed them, and [ ] a long time until the reign of Justinian, the king [ ] Leo reigned for seventeen years.

[ ] The king after him was Zenon, and during his time there was a rebellious and difficult enemy of King Zenon, and he was removed from the throne for a short time, and after that the rebellious one was killed, and Zenon remained in command [ ].

[ ] [7-9 Sel.] And in the year seven hundred and nine [ ] there was a great famine,

And also in the year seven hundred [134b] //////// their attack, for they had been in ancient times and ages forming in the countries around them, taking captives and destroying, and they [ ] under the rule of the Romans [ ] their kings did not [ ] that, and they destroyed many places [ ] they reached the countries of the East [ ] villages, and at times they attacked the cities.

[135a]
//////// The Romans [ ] kings [ ] fighting the two armies was doing great destruction.

[6000 AM] And in the nineteenth year of this Anastasius the sixth millennium was completed.

At this time, Romanus and Mary Jacob appeared in teaching. Romanus was in the city of Homs, and in Greek he composed hymns on various melodies and psalms.

[135b] Mary Jacob was among the rivers, copying in Syriac many different articles.

[823 Sel.] In the year 823, the sun appeared at midday on the 29th of June, and darkness lasted for one hour.

At that time, there was a great disturbance that defiled the churches, and many monasteries were also torn apart and cracked, since the time of that disturbance in Alexandria concerning Protoris and Timothy, which we have already mentioned.

This yeast was buried and secretly growing among the people. At this time, it surfaced, finding a pretext among some monks and bishops, and the king who had extended his hand to their hidden agendas. They then committed vile and defiling acts in the churches.

So, a man was able to learn even without [136a] the copies, and so too did matters outside the realm of the Romans.

The two leaders of the sectarianism at that time were Savaras and Xenia, one among the Greeks and the other among the Syrians [ ]—this tyranny.

The turmoil in the churches continued until the death of Emperor Anastasius. After that, peace was established in the churches by the king who succeeded him, and the monasteries remained divided, with sectarianism growing and spreading to this day.

Anastasius reigned for twenty-seven years, and then Justina succeeded him.

And after a short time, the blessed Jacob, the teacher among the Syrians, died, and likewise the blessed Romanus, who was among the Greeks, had died some time before. From that time onward, teaching and knowledge ceased in the churches, and no one was seen [136b] [seemingly] seeking to teach himself fully.

[831 Sel.] Also, in the year 831, there was great snow and intense cold, and ice mixed with it. Even during the day, it was seen on the slope where those who preferred hunting were stricken, and all the trees in the surrounding areas were struck down from top to bottom. Many other calamities followed this.

Then, at the end of that year, the rains ceased, and the crops of the land, the grain, and the oil were withered, and other hardships occurred. Moreover, there was a great thirst, and because of this difficulty, the people were greatly distressed.

And in addition to this, there was a plague and locusts, and the torment of all these things lasted for six years.

[837 Sel.] In the year 837, on the twenty-ninth of May, a Friday, the earth shook for eight hours during the day, and this [137a] also occurred during the night of that day. Antioch, a Syrian city, was destroyed, and many of its inhabitants perished, along with Seleucia, which was on the coast [ ] at that time.

Justinus reigned for nine years and made Justinian, his nephew, his co-ruler. When he had been in charge with him for about nine months, he died, so the rest of his reign was about ten years.

[839 Sel.] Justinian then sat alone on the throne of the Romans in the year 839

[839 Sel.] In that year, on the twenty-ninth of October, there was also an earthquake, and parts of the city of Antioch were destroyed. In this earthquake, Laodicea in Syria was also affected. This earthquake occurred at eleven o’clock in the daylight on a Friday.

[840 Sel.] In the year eight hundred and forty, a thief [137b] came forth, and the land of the East was affected, and he established a great [ ].

[ ] The king’s army also came to them, and from the first king whom they had seated and killed, they made another king [ ] and this one also killed [ ] they conquered [ ].

[ ] The time came when the king’s decree [ ] all the Hanifites who were under the rule of the Romans [138a] //////// his kingdom.

As for Rome and the land of Italy, when the Persians, who had previously fought a great battle, and then grew stronger and were controlled by a great force, there were times when the Roman Empire was also restored.

[138b] The light was so dim that many, due to the greatness of the universe, were blinded.

In the summer of the year ////, the sight was impossible ////.

[ ] The land of Syria and Palestine

[139a] //////// which was upon Theodore, and upon those [ ] with him, and because of this, a considerable anxiety was renewed in the Church [139b].

[853 Sel.] Also, in the year 853, there was a widespread plague, and news of it began to come from the interior [ ] countries, and from the west and the east, and also to the north. Its spread lasted for three years, and the war with the Persians was also ongoing.

In the first year of the war, on the nineteenth of November, when the Arab raider was in the land of the Romans, a great and astonishing sign appeared: a vision like a drawn sword in the sky. This vision remained throughout the winter, and its appearance began from the west to the east. Its appearance changed and shifted in every direction, like the plague that followed.

The emergence of the actions that signify severity, with the prolonged duration of the plague and the fighting, was preceded and made clear by that lesson, and thus was its course.

[855 Sel.] During the fighting in the year 855 [140a], the Persian king descended upon the city of Edessa, which is part of Mesopotamia, but it was preserved by the mighty hand of God.

[863 Sel.] Also in the year 863, there was a plague among the cattle, and it greatly afflicted the people. [ ] There is no account that tells of anything like it, neither in the times past, nor in the years since. It was like a plague that spread among the people and swept through the lands.

At that time, and in those years, there was also unrest in the cities, and anxiety afflicted all the people, both the Tibetan and the Russians. It was not as was the custom in the past, that a city would be unsettled for a few days and then things would settle down. But the whole Roman province, in its entirety, was in turmoil, and great fear and destruction befell many. The calamities that struck the cities, accustomed to fighting their enemies, were not lacking.

[865 Sel.] In the year 865, there was an earthquake [140b] on the 21st of July, at eleven hours on a Friday. And there was another earthquake seven days later. Both earthquakes were great, and cities on the coast and many villages nearby were overturned in these two great earthquakes.

Also in other places, in cities and villages, there was damage from these two earthquakes.

From the first day of the earthquake, the earth remained in constant turmoil, its disturbances and intensity never subsiding. It continued to tremble gently for several days.

[865 Sel.] Then, on the thirteenth of June of that year, a Saturday, al-Mundhir, king of the Arabs, fought the Romans. All these sorrows that afflicted the world occurred at their appointed times. This was followed by the disturbances that took place in the churches, and the great confusion and fragmentation that occurred in the monastery, which had begun in the days of King Anastasius. Then the period of time continued, for it is the worst of times [141a], in which all the difficult times follow one another like the days of the year.

It also happened at this time that the Jews, who had prepared the cross, were deterred by this reason: the weeks mentioned in the prophet Daniel, from the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, they were counting. This number of seventy weeks amounts to four hundred and ninety years, and it will be completed in the year eight hundred and seventy of the king of the Greeks.

When a holy king spoke of its first destruction by a foreigner, he informed them of the matter, but in their foolishness they attributed it to this other one, who was from the Romans.

When the time they were waiting for drew near and nothing of what they hoped for came to pass, they scorned and squandered their false hope.

[867 Sel.] And in the year eight hundred and sixty-seven, they set the people of Constantinople against the king [141b] //////// Justinian.

[ ] All his servants, then he went down to the assembly. When the rest of the people had gathered, Plesser sent his servants, and they set fire to the great church.

When the sound reached the city, all the people rushed to the church and abandoned the new king they had appointed.

Then Plesser struck down Hobutus and killed him [142a] //////// which he called Sophia.

[875 Sel.] And in the year eight hundred and seventy-five //// the Paulists.

He was saying that [ ] was not perceptible within himself and did not change, like those [ ] of Julian.

As for the bishops, they made a slate and asked the king about it.

When he refused to accept, he sent him to them and demanded that they submit to him. [142b] When all the lands of the East were in this state of turmoil, King Justinian died after a reign of thirty-nine years.

Then his nephew Justinian succeeded him and ended that unclean upheaval.

King Justinian, with this conscience, established the honor of truth, but with great virtues, he surpassed all the kings who preceded him. He possessed great magnanimity, a broad and enlightened vision, and abundant blessings.

He also established great churches and strong fortresses in the cities under his rule. He upheld Christianity with great dignity, and many nations came to the faith of Christ. He was keen to guide the derivation of the churches towards reconciliation and agreement, and he diligently worked to unite and bring everyone together, and to follow the straight paths [143a] that each [ ] and each order was [ ], and he disciplined [ ] them with piety towards God and with church teachings that he was ignited [ ] by many.

And if one were to consider the validity of comparing what came before him with what came after him, he would find that to him was reached the ultimate in piety and righteousness of all the glorious [ ] Christian denominations, not only those of the monarchy but also those of the glorious Church.

I speak of the abundance of knowledge, the depth of understanding, the gift of foreknowledge and foresight, the power to perform miracles and wonders, and also the use of love, and other than that, the piety of God, which was present in every aspect of the believers, was ablaze. Thus, from ancient times, this was readily available and spread to the sons of the Church. And in the days of Constantine the Victorious, it grew strong and spread abundantly. And until the end of Justinian’s reign, this righteousness continued to flourish and spread. And since then, one of the degrees of decline has been gradually diminishing, day by day, and the light has weakened. And glory be to God alone, what will be the end result of this chapter?

[877 Sel.] In the year eight hundred and seventy-seven, Justinian reigned, similar to the first. When he also ascended the throne, he showed concern for the affairs of the churches and wrote a covenant of uprightness and praise, and sent it to the lands under his authority, and ordered that whoever does not follow the church should be deposed.

From his position.

And at the beginning of his reign, he saw to the north something like a pillar of fire, which remained for a year.

[885 Sel.] In the year 885, the Persian foreigner, who was from Ladarmah, came and captured Apamea, and took all its inhabitants captive to Persia. He set fire to and burned the great church [144a] there, along with all the city’s decorations.

Bishop Furdan, who was appointed there afterward, rebuilt and restored it.

Other places were also taken and plundered by that corrupt foreigner.

Likewise, among the Romans, Risa destroyed the people of Apries.

King Justinian fell ill and was struck with a disease from which there was no cure. He gave his daughter to Tiberius and made him king after he had reigned for thirteen years.

[1 Tiberius] In the first year of Tiberius, Hormizd, son of Khosrow, reigned in Persia for twelve years.

[894 Sel.] When Tiberius the king had ruled for four years, and the time of his death approached, he also gave his daughter to Mauricius, the commander of the army, and made him king in his place in the year 894.

[9 Mauricius] In the ninth year of his reign, [144b] Kasrun, son of Hormizd, reigned in Persia for thirty-eight years.

At that time, Anastasius the Palestinian, who was Patriarch of Antioch, and Eulogius, Pope of Alexandria, were debating about the truth.

[896 Sel.] In the year 896, which was the second year of Mauricius’s reign, the pious and blessed Elder George, the Just and Great, who had joined the Church and rejected the teachings of the heretics, passed away in the monastery called Mar Maroun.

King Maurice made peace with Chosroes, the Persian king, and there was great affection between them. For when the Persians killed his father Hormizd, Maurice fled to Chosroes, who received him with great warmth. Chosroes provided him with the Roman army, and Maurice defeated the Persians in battle and succeeded his father as king.

Maurix also made peace with Ambrose and all those around him, and with great effort, he strengthened the Roman forces.

Then they rebelled against him and killed him after he had reigned for twenty years, and they seized his position in Phoca.

When King Chosroes heard that the Romans had killed Maurice, he was enraged and sought revenge.

Then he led his army and besieged Dara, the city between the two cities, and besieged and captured it.

He also besieged and captured Marda. And likewise, during the eight years of Phocas’ reign, they pressed the Persians to the Euphrates. The evil of the sword was not confined to the eastern lands, but those west of the Euphrates were not spared.

And because of the false cause of the Bentites and the Persians, the peoples of the cities turned against one another, and with swords sharper than those of their enemies, they perished.

Ponus the tyrant, the enemy of righteousness, with his arrogance that exceeded all bounds, destroyed and annihilated many every day.
[145b]

/////////////////
And there were also in Africa, //// one named Gregory [ ] Nectaneous, and the other named Heracles ///// King Phocas //////// They sent them to kill the king, and they agreed that one would go by sea and the other by land, and whichever of them entered the city first and killed the king would become king.

Heraclius traveled by sea, and Nekita by land. Heraclius reached Nekita first and entered, killing Phocas after he had reigned for eight years.

Then he reigned after him, and he stoned the wicked Lobonus.

[146a]

//////////////// Anastasius [ ]

[921 Sel.] In the year nine hundred and twenty-one, Heraclius reigned. //// They descended upon a city //// before them was a city, //// and they drove the Romans out of the lands of Syria and Egypt. The Persians inhabited it for twenty years, and such a thing had not happened for a long time since the Romans had taken it at the beginning of their reign before the coming of our Lord Christ. No foreign people had inhabited it. Then the Romans also left it completely and came here. But praise be to Him who does His will.

At the beginning of the reign of Heraclius, he was a man of Arab descent, learned in his appearance, when it was said of him:

[146b]

/////////////////
[2 Heraclius] In the second year of the reign of Heraclius, //////// from Caesarea //////// and fought and conquered it //////// to Persia.

And Rosemizd went out and entered Egypt, and marched and descended to Alexandria and conquered it in the second year, and they ruled over all the land.

[ ] Rosemizd went out and entered Egypt, and marched and descended to Alexandria and conquered it in the second year, and they ruled over all the land. [935 Sel.] After many wars, the faithful king Heraclius fought the Persians and refused to submit to them. His son Constantine ascended the throne and surrendered the city to him. He then took the Roman army and marched into Persia in the year 935 AH (1536 CE). There, he inflicted a great defeat and conquered fortified cities.

[147a]

////////
He killed him and ruled after him until the year 939 AH (1536 CE), which was the eighteenth year of the reign of the righteous Heraclius.

When he became king, he made peace with the Romans and granted them their territory up to the Euphrates.

He diligently worked with the Arabs we mentioned earlier and patiently instructed and taught his followers to turn away from the false idols they worshipped and to call upon and worship the One God. He did not lead them to anything reprehensible.

[147b] When all the Arabs obeyed and submitted to him ////////
[931 CE] In the year nine hundred and thirty-one, which was the tenth year of the reign of Heraclius, and from here began the history of the Arabs.

As for Quds, the king of Persia, his reign was short, and he died, and his son Ardashir succeeded him. Likewise, this son did not complete a year in power, for he was killed by Ruzmazin, who was Shahrbar, and he succeeded him.

[941 CE] In the year nine hundred and forty-one, in November, all the Persians crossed the Euphrates to the east, after having inhabited this land for twenty years. And in this year, Mari sent the pure cross from Shahrbar to the Romans.

[148a]

//////////////// Nine hundred and forty-two ////////////////
[944 CE.] [And] in the year nine hundred and forty-four, Yazdegerd, king of Persia, reigned for twenty-one years.

[942 CE.] And Muhammad, the first, began [ ] the Arabs, when he had guided them for ten years, taught them, and copied for them [ ] his book, the Qur’an. He died in the year nine hundred and forty-two, which was the twenty-first year of King Heraclius [ ] Then a second king, Abu Bakr, reigned over the Arabs.

When he became king, he divided all his armies into four divisions [148b] and sent them to conquer the land, as they said that Muhammad, their prophet, had previously instructed them to do so.

One of the Arab divisions went to Egypt.

[ ] Another division went to Palestine and Syria.

And he divided them into two groups: one group to the Persians, and another group to the Qataris.

[945 Sel.] In the year 945, during the reign of Heraclius in the year 24, Arab raiders came and attacked the land of the Qibla, inflicting great harm with the sword and taking captives.

Then Theodorakis, the king’s brother, took the Roman army and marched to meet the Arabs. The Arabs defeated the Romans, and they were routed before them. A wondrous sign appeared in the Seleucid calendar, revealing the wrath that would befall the land at their hands.

The faithful king Heraclius was in Nisibis with the Roman armies when terrifying news reached him of the atrocities committed by the Arabs in the direction of Mecca. He dispatched Paphnutius the patriarch with a large Roman army.

[149a]
[947 Sel.] In the year 947 AH (1540 CE), and not until the king’s reign in the year 26 AH (1546 CE), Paphnutius and the patriarch fought the Arabs at Jabiyah. Many Romans fell there, and the rest were defeated. At that point, the Romans were humbled before the Arabs, and their fear of them has persisted to this day.

When the faithful king Heraclius understood from the events that had transpired and what had happened to the Romans, and realized that the land belonged to the Arabs, he left Syria and marched towards Constantinople. The Arabs had conquered the land.

Their king, Abu Bakr, ruled for four years before he died, and Umar succeeded him for ten years.

And the faithful King Heraclius sent many letters to the Arabs, seeking peace from them to extinguish the flames of their swords, which had mercilessly drunk the blood of the people.

But they did not respond to him, for they were the very embodiment of justice.
[149b]

/////////////////
After he had reigned for four months, his son’s wife died, along with her son Heraclius, who had been dead for eight months. Then the armies rejected her and her son.

[954 Sel.] Then Constus, son of Constantine, ascended the throne in the year 954.

[954 Sel.] [2 Constans] And in the second year of Constans, he died [ ]

[150a]

////////////////
They plundered the lands of the Romans, pillaging, killing, burning, and destroying throughout [ ] and did as they pleased without mercy. No place escaped their hands except the city of the king.

And to this great humiliation and after this disgrace, they brought down the mighty king of the Romans, the like of whom had never been seen before.

[150b] But glory be to the Wise Judge who causes all to perish [ ] for His own pleasure.

[962 Sel.] Also in the land of Persia, the Arabs did even greater things after many wars in which the Persians fought them. The last king, Yazdegerd, was killed, and all their armies perished. The Persian kingdom was completely destroyed in the year 962, which was the eighth year of the reign of Augustus, the Roman emperor. The remaining Persians became slaves, paying tribute to the Arabs. The Persian kingdom had lasted four hundred years from the beginning of this last period until its end.

[967 Sel.] In the year 967, which was the thirteenth year of Augustus, and in the Arab calendar, the thirty-sixth year, the Arabs rose up against their king, Uthman ibn Affan, and killed him after he had ruled them for twelve years.

They said of this Uthman that he was one of those whom Muhammad had appointed as their leader [151a] and with whom he had pledged allegiance. He gathered and wrote a document for them and sent it to all his troops, instructing them to adhere to it alone and to burn everything else in their possession.

The Arabs who were in the Maghreb with Mu’awiya, their leader, accepted and obeyed all his commands.

As for those who were inhabitants of the eastern region, some obeyed and some did not.

Those who did not obey anything were called the Kharijites.

When Uthman was killed, Mu’awiya, the commander of the Maghreb armies, did not agree with those who had killed him, but he gathered the Maghreb troops and marched down to fight the easterners.

Likewise, the commander of the east gathered the eastern armies and marched out to meet Mu’awiya.

[968 Sel.] In the year nine hundred and sixty-eight, on a Friday in the month of July, the battle of Siffin on the Euphrates was raging, and a great multitude fell there on both sides.

[151b]

///////////////// Many of them [ ] fell to Rome.

As for Muawiyah, every year he would send an Arab army into the land of the Romans [ ] until they destroyed and plundered, and pillaged all their lands.

[976 Sel.] In the year nine hundred and seventy-six [ ] in December, there was a great earthquake, and well-known places collapsed.

[152a]

///////////////// He ruled over them for twenty-seven years.

When [ ] Muzizi wanted to seize a king for himself, he killed some of the [Rus] and Romans who were with him.

And in that year Constantine reigned with his two brothers, and in that year King Constus died, the island of Sicily was captured by the Arabs.

[152b]

///////////////// A small success, they [Fatruna] and Jalti the chieftains [ ] came out against them, sitting in a yellow ship with a vessel full of fighting men, and many of the Arab riders were burned and drowned at sea.

And the rest of the others returned fleeing to their country when the calamity [ ] occurred, the grief born of extreme hardship.

The year of that fortress when they went

[153a]

/////////////////
And also, wicked and corrupt thieves from the Jurjum tribe went out to Syria and seized control of the entire coast and the mountains. Severe hardships arose from them and because of them, and seven years of hardships ensued, caused by them and the aforementioned locusts.

[990 Sel.] In the year nine hundred and ninety, in the month of Nisan, on the third of the month, on a great Sunday, around the third hour [153b], there was a great and severe earthquake, and well-known places were destroyed by it, especially the region east of the Euphrates, where a great corruption appeared.

[991 Sel.] In the following year, Mu’awiya, the fifth king of the Arabs, died. He had reigned for twenty-four years, and his son Yazid succeeded him.

[992 Sel.] In the year nine hundred and ninety-two, which was the twelfth year of the reign of Constantine, the examination of the mystics and the persons of the church took place. The council of Rome convened, and also in the city of Constantinople. Then they arranged and confirmed the mystics and the persons of the church.

Then they excommunicated and deposed all who opposed this, not only those who were alive at the time, but also those who had died long ago.

I say: Anorius, Pope of Rome; Sergius and Qura; Paula; and Petra, Patriarchs of the city of the king; Qura, Pope of Alexandria; and the pious Theodora [154a] of Pharisee, who had gone to our master; and Consecrated Antioch with his disciple Stephen. These, who were gathered with them, were excommunicated, deposed, and banished.

And before the assembly dispersed, King Constantine gathered a large Roman army and marched against the Bulgars. A great Roman army was stationed there, and the king and his army were nearly destroyed by that foreign people.

This great calamity befell them because they had corrupted and defiled the sacred trust they were supposed to uphold.

After the king suffered this defeat and was overthrown by the foreign people, he returned to his war against his own two sons, Tiberius and Heracleion, and cast them out of the royal court. He did the same to his mother and wife, expelling and casting them out.

Likewise, he killed Leo, the Patriarch of Sparta, and he was being tortured throughout the entire sanctuary. [154b]

///////////////// And he died after he had risen to power //////// Then Justiniana became king from ////////////////
[994 Sel.] He died in the year nine hundred and ninety-four, then //////// among the Arab people, and they were in every land fighting each other ///////////////// and he killed them and enslaved the rest [ ].

Then, after Maron had lived for one and a half years, he died before he had enslaved all the Arabs, and his son Abd al-Malik succeeded him in governing the Arabs.

[997 CE] In the year nine hundred and ninety-seven, which was the beginning of the reign of Justinian, king of the Romans, and Abd al-Malik, king of the Arabs, the rains decreased and the crops failed. In the following year, famine struck and food became scarce throughout [155a] ////////////////

[4 Justinian] In the fourth year of Justinian’s reign, the Roman army entered the Slavic lands and inflicted a great defeat upon them, expelling a large number of them and taking them with him to his own territory.

Also, Abd al-Malik, the leader of the Arabs, after fighting his people in many battles, enslaved them all.

[1002 CE] When all the Arabs in every region obeyed him at that time, the conflict among them ceased, and they all made peace [155b] and made peace with one another in the year one thousand and two of the Greek censuses. [1004 Sel.] And in the year one thousand and four, which is the eighth year of the reign of Justiniana and the ninth year of Abd al-Malik, the truce that was between the Romans and the Arabs was broken, after it had lasted for nine years.

Very grateful to Dr Pirtea for discovering and promoting the text, and to Dr Hourani for putting his transcription online.

The Sermons of Eusebius of Emesa

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve written in the past about Eusebius of Emesa (d. ca. 360).  He was a pupil of Eusebius of Caesarea, and therefore, inevitably, a scholarly man.   He is identified by Jerome as an Arian.  But in truth he was perhaps one of the many in the east who rejected the Nicene watch-word “homoousios”  – consubstantial – as a key term of belief, because it was not scriptural.  These people were thereby driven into the arms of the Arians, and it was part of the Nicene recovery to identify and separate these people, who only objected to the word, from the true Arians.

His career is recorded by Socrates, in his Ecclesiastical History book 2, chapter 9.  After the emperor Constantius II arranged for Athanasius to be deposed as bishop of Alexandria, an Arian synod nominated Eusebius of Emesa to replace him.  But Eusebius wisely refused, and his refusal was accepted.  Probably the bishops realised that he was not the man for the rough work they had in mind.  They nominated George of Cappadocia instead, who was to meet a violent end after the death of Constantius.

Eusebius was instead made bishop of Emesa, modern Homs, in Syria.  He was in fact a native Syriac speaker, and therefore should have been acceptable.  But he was unable to remain there, after his interest in scholarship and astronomy caused the locals to worry that he was a sorceror.  A reconciliation was patched up, which collapsed, and thereafter he retreated to Antioch and lived a quiet life.

Most of the works attributed to him by Jerome have perished.  A few quotations survive in later writers.  But two collections of homilies have survived, one in an ancient Latin translation, the other in Armenian.

Both are basically inaccessible, even today.

The Latin homilies were edited by E. Buytaert in the 1950s, in two volumes.  The first is a collection preserved only in a manuscript at Troyes, Bibliothèque Municipale 523, which also contains some works by Tertullian, and the De solstitiis et aequinoctibus.  The second contains works published under other names in the 17th century by Sirmond.

But Buytaert’s edition is not accessible online.  Indeed it is one of the ironies of our age that the actual manuscript, Troyes 523, is online as a scanned microfilm, while the edition is not.  Thankfully Peeters of Leuven keep it in print, remarkably, so it can be purchased that way.

The Armenian homilies were edited by Nerses Akinian around the same time, and published in Handes Amsorya (= Monthly Review), published by the Mechitarist Fathers in Vienna.  This is not online as far as I can tell, and actually I can’t find a research library near me that might have them.  Worse, it seems that the University of Michigan did scan all their volumes, which it made available through Hathi, who make them unavailable on copyright grounds.  The fact that the whole lot is in Armenian script makes it very hard to work with anyway.  But I suspect that it might be OCR’d, and then machine translated.  Or maybe not.

There do not seem to be any translations of any of this material.

The name of Eusebius of Emesa also became attached to a Latin collection of homilies known as “Eusebius Gallicanus”.  The publication history of the latter involved confusion on exactly this point.  But I will write more about these two, and also the homilies of Eusebius of Alexandria, which also feature in both cases.

MS Troyes BM 523, folio 1, top.

A new Syriac Chronicle! the Maronite Chronicle of 713; plus a collection of Jerusalem microfilms at the Library of Congress

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A couple more interesting items have reached me.

The first is the discovery of a new Universal History of the early 8th century! This is being called “The Maronite Chronicle of 713”.

It has reached us in the collection of Mount Sinai, in Arabic translation, and Adrian Pirtea discovered recently.  His article is open access, and published at Medieval Worlds 23 (2025), pp.155-167.  Here’s the abstract:

This research note introduces the Maronite Chronicle of 713, a hitherto unknown Christian world chronicle in Arabic, recently identified by the author in the collection of manuscripts at St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mt. Sinai.

Extant in a single thirteenth-century manuscript (Sinai Ar. 597), this Arabic chronicle is a translation of a lost Syriac work, originally composed in 712-713 CE, probably in a Syriac Monothelete milieu with close ties to the Monastery of Mar Maron.

The chronicle covers the history of the world from Adam to 692-693 CE and exhibits numerous parallels with the so-called »eastern source«, which informed the chronicles of Theophanes, Michael the Syrian, Agapius of Mabbug and the anonymous Syriac Chronicle of 1234.

To demonstrate the links between these sources and the new chronicle, the note analyses, as a case study, a passage discussing the main events of the year 633-634 CE.

The author argues that the Maronite Chronicle of 713 provides an alternative chronology of events for this year and thus represents an independent source for the early stages of the Arab conquests.

A more detailed study and a critical edition and annotated translation of this new chronicle are in preparation.

This is marvellous stuff, of course.  This is the raw material of history.

The Byzantine tradition of writing history persisted in Syriac, and naturally entered Arabic also.  It highlights once again how we really need to dig into Arabic sources, especially Christian Arabic literature.  Basic stuff, about the Muslim conquest of the Near East – not without importance today – is still out there, unedited, untranslated.

Thankfully Dr P. is going to do both for his chronicle!

Update: Alex Hourani has put online a transcription here of the Arabic, and some comments here on Pirtea’s article.  I gather the transcription is not complete, as some areas of the manuscript are damaged.

My other item may be known to others, but I had never come across it.

There is a collection at the Library of Congress entitled “Manuscripts in the Libraries of the Greek and Armenian Patriarchates in Jerusalem“.  It consists of microfilms of manuscripts, in Greek, Syriac, Ethiopic, Slavonic, and Armenian.  The webpage suggests that there are “1,009” items, which seems incredible if true.

The microfilm images are of variable quality, as ever.  But what a resource!

New Mithraeum discovered in Regensburg

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A new temple of Mithras was discovered at Regensburg in 2023.  The cramped site is located at Stahlzwingerweg 6 in the old town. Even more interestingly, it’s a wooden rather than a stone construction.  Some of the finds are now on display in the Historischen Museum Regensburg. Regensburg was a legionary town, and other finds connected to the cult have been found there.

The find was made during routine archaeological investigations carried out ahead of a residential construction project by SDI GmbH & Co. KG.  Dr Sabine Watzlawik of ArchäoTeam GmbH led the excavation. As expected in Regensburg’s densely layered old town, the team encountered traces of settlement dating back to prehistory, the Roman period, and the Middle Ages.

The story is here:

It was only after months of excavation—conducted in several phases between spring and autumn 2023 due to the site’s confined conditions—and a comprehensive evaluation by archaeologist Dr Stefan Reuter that the significance of the discoveries became clear. Together, the finds pointed to the former presence of a Mithraeum, a sanctuary used by followers of the Mithras cult.

Although the temple itself was built of wood and has largely perished, a combination of clues proved decisive. Among the discoveries were a votive stone with an illegible inscription, fragments of votive plaques typical of Mithraic shrines, cult-niche fittings, and numerous coins.

The coin evidence dates the sanctuary to between about 80 and 171 AD, during the period of the Roman cohort fort in Kumpfmühl and the associated Danube settlement, before the establishment of the legionary camp at Regensburg….

Additional finds strengthened the identification: fragments of ceramic vessels decorated with snake motifs, incense burners, and handled jugs. Such objects are closely associated with Mithraic ritual practices, which included communal ceremonial meals. Drinking vessels, experts note, were an integral part of these rites.

Fragment of a votive stone with inscription: The stone’s state of preservation unfortunately makes deciphering the inscription impossible. © Museums of the City of Regensburg

For those who speak German, the story is on a number of sites, including this.  There are a couple of videos here and here.  Text from the latter:

Archaeologists first stumbled upon the remains of the wooden building at a construction site in the west of Regensburg’s city center in 2023. They were only able to proceed slowly, section by section, because construction work continued simultaneously at the site, says excavation director Sabine Watzlawik.

Among the remains, archaeologists found primarily fragments of drinking vessels, wine containers, and plates. While this could have indicated the presence of an inn, says Dr Stefan Reuter, who subsequently analyzed the finds, the researchers ultimately came across a different clue: much of their discovery was strikingly similar to other temples from the same period – not dedicated to a Roman deity, but to the oriental god Mithras.

One clue: Like other Mithras temples, the wooden structure, approximately seven meters long, was elongated and partially built into the ground. The followers of the mystery cult, to which only men were admitted, likely had to descend into the sanctuary via a ramp.

While a kind of trench ran down the middle, there were raised platforms on the sides where followers could sit or lie. Mithras temples were modeled after caves, since a central motif of the mythology was Mithras’s killing of a bull in a cave, according to Reuter….

The temple was illuminated by candles and oil lamps, says Johannes Sebrich from the Regensburg Office for Cultural Heritage. …

What exactly ended up on the participants’ plates at these feasts could be revealed by further analysis of the remains found. The investigations of the food containers, for example, are still ongoing. “I don’t want to preempt anything, but it seems that clearly high-quality food was consumed,” says Stefan Reuter.

According to researchers, the Regensburg sanctuary dates from between 80 and 171 AD. This makes it the oldest Mithras temple discovered in Bavaria to date. …

Even though no inscription bearing the name of the god Mithras was found, and therefore absolute proof is lacking, the archaeologists involved are “very certain” that their interpretation is correct.

The artifacts from the temple will be displayed in the Regensburg Historical Museum, which is currently redesigning its Roman exhibition. The Mithras sanctuary will occupy a prominent place in the new section of the exhibition.

Snake decoration on the handle of a broken pot.

Many thanks to Csaba Szabo who drew my attention to this exciting discovery!

De Solemnitatibus Paschae, “On the Solemnities of Passover” (CPL 2278) – online in English

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I wrote in a previous post about CPL 2278, the anonymous 6th century text De Solemnitatibus Paschae, “On the Solemnities of Passover”, which is also letter 149 of St Jerome, or rather pseudo-Jerome.  Since the existing translation by G.S.M.Walker is hard to access, I have made a translation myself. Here it is:

The files are also at Archive.org here.

As usual, I make this public domain.  Do whatever you like with it, personal, educational or commercial.  And just to make it easier, here’s just the translation without the notes.

It’s a text written during the arguments about whether the Roman or Irish method of calculation should be used for Easter, in the run-up to the Synod of Whitby (664 AD).  The Irish method could potentially cause Easter to coincide with Passover, the 14th of the month.  This left a powerful argument in Roman hands, which the author takes full advantage of.  Now read on!

The Disputation of St. Jerome regarding the Solemnities of Passover / Easter

1. Regarding the solemnities, sabbaths, and new moons, which are commanded to be observed by the Lord in the Law, we are compelled by the authority of your Charity to say what should be rejected according to the letter, and what should be observed spiritually. First we are obliged to respond to those who love the letter and to the adversaries of the truth. Although I could reasonably strike back at them, I prefer to bring them to the recognition of the truth by addressing them in a winning and gentle manner.

In their desire to chew over the bitter bark of the root they are ignoring the fruit, and in admiring golden dust they are despising the finished metal. Because even if they contend that all things should be observed according to the letter of the Law, they cannot be enlightened by the Spirit of Truth because there is a veil placed over the face of Moses.

But even if they have not assented to the truth, let us bear them anyway upon the shoulders of our patience, “ready to give an account of that faith which is in us,” (1 Pet. 3:15), according to the custom of the scape-goat which is sent out to its destruction,(Lev. 16:20-26), and to wash our garments afterwards, so that we may not stay contaminated by the pollution of heretical thinking.

Now at the start of this little book we will follow the example of Jeremiah: we will first uproot and destroy, and then we shall plant and build. (cf. Jer. 1: 10).

2. Regarding the scriptures, we want to show first how these feast days of the Lord, which are commanded to be observed in the Law, must be celebrated, not as a shadow, but as a spiritual observance. And if anyone wants to treat the authority of one as unimportant as myself as of little account, let them listen to the prophets. These looked into the future by providential prophecy and with a clear voice foretold the condemnation of these things in the days of the gospel.

Indeed through them the Lord himself proclaims in advance, “Your feasts, new moons, and sabbaths, my soul hates” (Isaiah 1:13-14), and (in this way) the Lord declares that he did not command these things, when it is clear that He did command these things in the Law. What else is shown by these words, other than that, once Christ the end of the Law has come, He does not command them to be observed according to the letter?

Regarding sacrifices, however, he says through another prophet (Ps. 50:8-9), “I will not reprove you for your sacrifices: your burnt offerings are always in my sight. I will not take calves out of your house, nor goats out of your flocks,” and the rest, as far as, “or shall I drink the blood of goats?” (Ps. 50:13)

The Apostle, filled with the same Spirit, fittingly says in these words, (Col. 2:16-17) “Let no one pass judge you in food or drink or in respect of a festival day or of the new moon or of the sabbaths, which are (just) a shadow of things to come” and the rest. With the utmost clarity he declares in these words that in observing either particular days or foods in the flesh he can find nothing but an empty shadow and a snare of deception.

The Lord Jesus also declared (implicitly) in the gospel that (the commandment about) the sabbath is abolished when he commanded the paralysed man, “Take up your bed” (cf. Mark 2:9; John 5:8), because it is clear that this was forbidden by the Law, namely to carry burdens on the sabbath. He also abolished the feast of Tabernacles when he said, “I do not go up to this festival day” (John 7:8), just as if He had said, “In this observance of this festival, the glory of my honour will not go up.” (cf. John 7: 39)

3. Regarding Passover, however, the greatest sacrament of our salvation, I shall speak a little more fully, although there is not the time to discuss everything.

Firstly, I wish to demonstrate through what regulations and how many it is commanded to observe the Lord’s Passover. Through Moses, the Lord commanded that, on the tenth day of the first month, a lamb, a spotless young lamb, should be set aside and kept until the fourteenth day. On the fourteenth day, in the evening it should be killed by the whole assembly of the children of Israel.

When the Lord himself, the true Lamb, was moving towards the true passover, He observed some of these observances, intending them to continue; but others he changed, preferring them not to continue. While He considered it right to be sacrificed according to the command of the Law in the first month, and made sure that the time of his passion did not in any way precede the fourteenth moon, the gospel reports that he still did some things contrary to the foreshadowing (of the Law), because although He was handed over to the Jews by Judas, he was not taken into custody on the tenth day of the first month, and although He had considered it right to give the sacraments of His body and blood to His disciples during his lifetime, it is revealed that He did this also contrary to the foreshadowing (of the Law), because that lamb, which at passover is ordered to be killed as a foreshadowing of Christ, was commanded to be roasted with fire and eaten by the people, together with its head and feet and entrails, after it was slaughtered.

Now it seems to me that God makes clear that he did this for two intelligible reasons. (Firstly), if he had not changed the (format of) the sacrifice afterwards, when he had eaten passover with his disciples, saying, “This is my body,” (Mt. 26:26) then they would suppose that it should still be observed going forward. The other reason is, I think, this: so that when they saw, prior to the passion, the body of the Lord whole and containing his blood in him, they would believe that they were being refreshed spiritually in the body; and so this should be believed by us now in the same way. And we must also consider this: that it was not on the fourteenth day at evening, as the Law commands, that “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,”(John 1:29) and “Christ our passover was sacrificed,” (1 Cor. 5:7) but on the fifteenth day. From this it is evident that the feast day of the Jews along with its sacrifice was abolished by the Lord.

But what are we to understand from this: that first they eat the body of the foreshadowing lamb (cf. Exodus 12), and then He refreshed the apostles with the food of his body; and, after the foreshadowing of the Jews, Christ was sacrificed in our passover? This, I think, is in order that the reality would not precede the foreshadowing, but the foreshadowing would precede the reality, because “The spiritual did not come first, but the natural; and after that the spiritual” (1 Cor. 15: 46). For this reason the whole church, the chosen and beloved bride of Christ, anathematises those who, like the Jews, decree that the fourteenth moon is to be celebrated on the passover feast, and the sabbaths and the rest of the shadow observances of this sort. And this only did the Lord deem worthy to observe, so that he decreed without ambiguity that, in the first month AFTER the fourteenth day, the passover festivity should be celebrated, although in this a difference has arisen in the church, some believing that it is sufficient to avoid celebrating passover with the Jews on the fourteenth, while others strongly and cautiously maintain this, that they do not dare to celebrate the sacrifice of the true “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,” before the fourteenth, according to that legal precept which the Lord, coming to his passion, did not at all despise, but said, “You shall keep it until the fourteenth day,” (Exodus 12:6) which the Church, following the authority of the apostolic see, now especially observes.

But let us turn our attention to the spiritual interpretation because there is not enough time to examine every detail, leaving these things in which it is commanded to eat the body of the passover lamb on the fourteenth day of the month in the month of new things: so that, while new fruits are being born from good works because the words of the Decalogue have been fulfilled by us, as we stand firm in the four-fold perfection of the gospel, we may eat the body of our Lamb in the evening of the world, in which the end of the ages has come, with unshadowed hearts, while the Holy Spirit is illuminating the night.

4. Regarding the Sabbath, for six days we are commanded to work, but on the seventh, that is the Sabbath, we are forbidden all servile work. By the number six the perfection of works is signified, because God made heaven and earth in six days.

On the Sabbath, however, we are forbidden to do any servile work, which is sin, because “whoever commits a sin is a slave to sin;”(John 8:34) so that, when we have completed the perfection of works in the present age without hardening our hearts, we may deserve to arrive at the true rest which is denied to the obstinate. As the Lord says through David, “They shall not enter into my rest.” (Ps.94:11, Heb. 4:3-7)

Regarding Pentecost, from the day after the Sabbath we are commanded by the Law to count seven full weeks until the day after the completion of the seventh week, that is the fiftieth day , on which the first fruits are offered. This numbering of full perfection is made through the number seven, and fifty, and five times ten, which I think signifies this: that through the number fifty, which contains forgiveness in itself, and through charity, which is poured into our hearts by the grace of the sevenfold Spirit coming upon it, we may have the five senses of our body placed under the Law of God, which contains within it the words of the Decalogue; and, as I said, through charity, “which charity covers over a multitude of sins.” (1 Peter 4:8) And so we shall offer a new sacrifice to the Lord in all our dwelling-places, offering up (ourselves) to our great Priest along with our peaceful sacrifices, just as we shall have made peace with the Lord by offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, He who eats the bread of the first-fruits of our land, though leavened, yet consecrated to Himself.

This is our high priest, who, having entered heaven, is able to have compassion upon our weaknesses, (Heb. 4:14-15) and, since we have him as an advocate with the Father (1 John 2:1), He accepts the works which, leavened with the leaven of our frailty, through His compassionate mercy rise up through the upraised hand of prayer , to this priest. They do not bring to God an odour of sweetness, but rather demand His forbearance.

5. Regarding the Feast of Tabernacles. And at the end of the solar year among the Hebrews, i. e. in the seventh month, when the harvest is gathered into barns or storehouses, then it is commanded by Law to celebrate, i.e., on the first day (the feast) of Trumpets (Lev 23:24), and on the tenth day (the feast) of Atonement, days of rest should be celebrated; and from the fifteenth day for seven days, until they end on the eighth, the feast-days of Tabernacles are prescribed. But perhaps by these things it can be signified that we should not cease to learn, because we are consecrated at the end of the age by the triple sacrament of prayer: by the trumpet of proclamation; by the faith of the gospel and by sprinkling with the blood of Jesus Christ in which is the true atonement now that the time of the Law is over; and we, having gathered the “new harvest” of good works, having rested from every evil work, and having received perfection through the grace of the sevenfold spirit, we may deserve to attain the number of the eighth blessing. This, however, there is no doubt that we can achieve through the labours of fasting and prayer, because it is commanded in the Law that the soul should be afflicted.

6. Regarding the New Moons. At the “Neomenia” it is commanded to blow the trumpet, i.e. at the new moon, because he who is enlightened by the moon of knowledge should not cease to preach to others. Paul, enlightened by the brightness of the knowledge of Christ, did not at all disdain to observe this (command), and preached in the synagogues of the Jews.

Regarding the sacrifices, I had intended to say little. Since they contain within them the foreshadowing of the sacrifice of the true high priest, they must also be offered by us to the Lord in a spiritual manner. The calf represents our labour, the sheep innocence, the he-goat the mortification the pleasure of fornication, the she-goat, which feeds on the lofty pasture, the contemplative life, the ram the work of preaching, which brings forth lambs for the good shepherd, the turtledove the chastity of a solitary mind joined to no one but Christ, the dove a more perceptive understanding of the sacraments, the bread the solidity of the commandments, the fine flour the honesty of life, the wine and salt the truth of preaching, the oil the comforts of charity. All these things, whether feasts or sacrifices, the Law commands to be celebrated and offered in one place, because then all things are profitable when they are carried out within the unity of the Church without any error of schism. I, a poor man and a foreigner, did not fear to write these few things, this little writing, leaving many things in darkness, to a rich man and a citizen, because “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18); believing also this, venerable Father , that obedience with faith is worth more than the power of human intellect.

But these things were requested by you and spoken by me on account of those who, although they appear to be Christians on the surface, are not afraid to tear apart the body of Christ, that is, the Church, with their schisms through the impiety of Jewish thinking. These things we have run through in a brief way, which if they were treated in full, would require a large volume, which cannot be completed at this time, because they require a great period of free time.

Pray for me, venerable Father.

MS Geneva, Bibliotheque de l’Universite 50, fol. 121r top.

Can we do anything to get British Library manuscripts back online?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m still working away at producing an English translation of the “letter 149” attributed falsely to St Jerome, De Solemnitatibus Paschae, (CPL 2278) which probably dates to the 6-7th century.

This evening I ran into trouble with some variations in the Latin text.  Now I don’t have access to Walker’s critical edition.  I have two editions, that of Migne, based on a Vatican manuscript, and that in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, based on a Paris manuscript.  It’s pretty clear that the author knew some Greek, and that he managed to confuse the copyists.  What was the blighter actually trying to say?

Well, the text is preserved in seven medieval manuscripts, dating from the 9-12th centuries.  Six are held in Oxford in the Bodleian Library; in Paris in the Bibliothèque Nationale Français; in Koln, in the Dombibliothek; in Geneva in the university library; in the Vatican; and in Tours in their Bibliothèque Municipale.  To my great surprise, and no little delight, I was able to find digital facsimiles of all of these.  That gives a big clue about the text.

The seventh manuscript is – deep breath – held in the British Library in London.  Which means, of course, that the chances of accessing images online are basically zero.  Their very limited collection of digital manuscripts was zapped back in October 2023, and very little has been done to rectify the position.

This is pretty shameful, when you see the relentless pace of digitisation of medieval manuscripts across Europe.

It made me think of the fire at Notre-Dame in Paris.  This was an attack on a national institution in France, and the French government sprang into action.  I think they’ve more or less completely restored it now.

The attack on the British Library was also an attack on a national institution.  Yet it seems that the British government just shrugged.

In the end, just how hard can it be to photograph pages from medieval books?  I’ve done it myself.  Probably many of us here do it.  Photographers are cheap.  Just hire a few and let them crank it out.

Of course there is nothing that a civil servant cannot gold-plate, nothing that a greedy contractor cannot inflate.  A massive price could quickly be conjured up by the usual suspects.  But Covid proved that capable people do exist who can get things done very rapidly and efficiently through by-passing the senile British civil service.  Why not let some of these people get to work on this problem?  It is NOT a difficult problem.

I think we’ve all had enough of this collection being essentially offline.  This evening I wrote to my Member of Parliament, Jenny Riddell-Carpenter MP, and asked if anything can be done.  It’s not much, but it’s something that I can do.  She’s a new MP and hopefully not completely ground down by the pressures of parliament.

If any of my readers reside in the UK, perhaps they could write to their MPs also.  It couldn’t hurt.

If you don’t live in the UK, your country probably has an ambassador here.  Would an email serve a purpose?

The opening text of De Solemnitatibus Paschae in the Bodleian manuscript. (MS Bodl. 309, fol. 82v)

UPDATE: It seems that the manuscript I wanted – MS Cotton Caligula A xv – is indeed online already here.  I couldn’t find it because, when I searched, I searched for “Cotton Caligula A”, which gave only one result.  In fact I needed to search for “Cotton MS Caligula A”.  Aargh!  But the general point stands.

The British Library needs to update its search engine handling so we can find these things through Google, but that’s secondary.

A new translation of Oecumenius’ Commentary on Revelation, plus an article on using your phone to scan articles (and other snippets)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A couple of interesting items have reached me this week.

Firstly, John Litteral has prepared and published a translation of Oecumenius, “Commentary on the Apocalypse” (CPG 7470).  It’s based on the editions of Hoskier and De Groote (see the Wiki article here).  The author has made it freely available online at Archive.org here.  He’s also included excerpts from other commentaries by Oecumenius, where he references the same passage.  The work is perhaps the earliest commentary on Revelation, and probably dates to around 700 AD.  A look at Amazon shows that the translator has made a number of translations of material by Oecumenius.  Grab yours there!

The second item is by the excellent Rob Bradshaw, who will be known to many as the digitizer of theological papers at his website, http://theologyontheweb.org.uk/.  It’s a tutorial in how to scan books and articles, using a mobile phone, and doing so carefully!  It’s on his blog here.  Useful if we need to do it!

Next, an email from French scholar “Albocicade”, on a quotation that I placed online quarter of a century ago, and attributed to Tertullian by C. G. Jung – or, at least, so I thought back then, having found it somewhere online:

He who lives only to benefit himself confers on the world a benefit when he dies.

Dr A. has located what may be the real source among the Sentences of Publilius Syrus (or Publius Syrus):

Avarus, nisi cum moritur, nihil recte facit.

Fascinating!

Finally – I’ve been adding these as I work down my inbox! – a note about the translation of ps.Hegesippus which was made by Wade Blocker and was uploaded in 2005 to my site by the permission of his son David Blocker.  Carson Bay in his “Biblical Heros and Classical Culture in Christian Late Antiquity: The Historiography, Exemplarity, and Anti-Judaism of Pseduo-Hegesippus”, Cambridge (2022), p.33, comments on modern translations (emphasis mine):

De Excidio will have been accessible to many European readers by the seventeenth century. Yet, for all that, in recent years it has hardly been translated afresh. Dominique Estève’s dissertation does include a French translation of Books 1–4, but this translation was never formerly published and is very difficult to access.101 The only other modern translation of which I know is that produced by Wade Blocker in 2005 and made available online by Roger Pearse.102 While this translation cannot be used uncritically, it has rendered the text popularly accessible. Blocker’s was always a nonscholarly translation, not designed for publication, and criticisms like those lodged by Leah Di Segni (published on Roger Pearse’s website) are unnecessary and unhelpful. More apt is Richard Pollard’s comment that Blocker’s translation is “useful if inelegant.”103

So: Historically De Excidio has been widely accessible. The Latin manuscript tradition was robust and diffuse, the early print tradition witnessed many printings and translation into at least three languages, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries issued two critical editions. The lack of a usable modern translation has surely contributed more than a little to the text’s anonymity and disuse in more recent years. I anticipate producing a translation of De Excidio in the future, and the block translations in the present book mark a step in that direction.

Myself I am grateful to Leah Di Segni for her feedback, but Dr Bay is undoubtedly right in the line that he takes.  The fact is that there is no scholarly translation, and we are all the richer for Wade Blocker’s work.  If Dr B. follows through with his intention to make one, that would be wonderful!

New project on Ibn al-Ṭayyib’s commentary on the Psalms

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Some fantastic news from Oxford!  It seems that Steven Firmin is working with a team of cool dudes to create a critical edition with English translation of Ibn al-Tayyib’s “Commentary on the Psalms”!  In fact, if he can get some major funding, the team will work on a series of Christian Arabic texts!

Few will have heard of Ibn al-Tayyib.  He was an Arabic-speaking Christian writer belonging to the Church of the East –  basically in Persia.  He lived in Baghdad in the 11th century, and worked for the Abbasid caliph.  He wrote a tremendous amount of interesting material.  There’s a summary of his life and works at Beth Mardutho here.

There are some curious parallels between Ireland and the native inhabitants of the Near East.  When the latter were conquered by the Muslims in the 7th century, the Christian peoples of those lands preserved their identity, language and culture through their church.  Over time they were forced to largely adopt the language of their conquerors, just as the Irish were, but they retained a fierce loyalty to their own culture.  This therefore manifests in ecclesiastical literature, or in apocryphal compositions “predicting” the events of their own time in a disguised form.  Consequently Christian Arabic literature preserves a millennium of lived experience among largely voiceless and unknown communities, in Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Iran and elsewhere.  Today these communities are also found in exile in the USA and other western nations today.  The lack of awareness of this material is therefore a huge void.  Access to it must begin with texts like this; and people in the west may learn from the commentaries on the bible, seen through eastern eyes living in a very different culture.

Dr Firmin also tells me that the results of their work will be open-access or public domain, and this is really important for public access.

An edition of some sort of this Commentary on the Psalms does exist, according to the Beth Mardutho site: Y. Manquriyūs and Ḥ. Jirjis, al-Rawḍ al-nadīr fī tafsīr al-mazāmīr, Cairo (1902).  With my non-existent Arabic, I was unable to locate this online, although it must be out of copyright.  There’s probably a PDF somewhere.  But in my experience such texts printed in Cairo at that date are simply copies of whatever manuscript came to hand, always a very late copy, and often corrupt or interpolated.  Establishing a good Arabic text is certainly the first step.

It is very cheering news indeed!

New: The MTA–SZTE Momentum Mithras Research Group

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email reached me about a new initiative in Mithras studies.  This is led by Dr. Csaba Szabo, who has just created a new research group in Hungary, at the university of Szeged.  This will undertake the “Remithra: reinventing Roman Mithras. Materiality and appropriations of a Roman cult in Central-Eastern Europe” project.  The project has been funded by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences over five years to do something really very useful.

The aim of the project is to use modern methods to collect – and digitize! – all the material evidence for the cult of Mithras in the Roman provinces on the middle and lower Danube.  This includes Pannonia Inferior, Superior, Moesia Inferior, Superior and Dacia.

These provinces contain an immense amount of archaeology and other primary material for the cult, and the results of the project must be of considerable scientific and scholarly interest.

There is a project website here, with full details of the project and its participants.  And a nice logo!

Our existing information is either scattered in journal publications, or else very elderly and focused primarily on major artwork-type images.  So this is solid stuff, which can only do good.  Well done Dr. S.

Visual Studio Community Edition and the QuickLatin source code

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Although I no longer sell the QuickLatin parser, it still exists.  I use it myself, and I still work on it from time to time, adding additional meaning or syntax information.  When I discovered that first declension neuter nouns existed, like “pascha”, I wondered whether these were in the dictionary files.  They were not.  So I started to wonder how to add them.  For it has been a while since I worked on it, and I could not even remember how the dictionary files were generated!  This led me to poke into the code.

Currently QuickLatin exists in a Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate project.  I used this because it gave me code coverage, which I greatly miss otherwise.  Curiously Microsoft never made this elementary tool available unless you bought the “enterprise” version of Visual Studio.  These are hideously expensive, so I made do with a second-hand copy of a long-outdated version.

Yesterday I discovered that Microsoft had added a “Community” edition to recent versions of Visual Studio.  This, designed for one-man developers like myself, has the right licensing, and is free.  But I did not know that today it also includes code coverage, as it does.

So yesterday I downloaded Visual Studio 2026 Community Edition, and started trying to set it up to work with unit tests and code coverage.  I created a “noddy” solution and projects, for I have long experience of how dreadful it can be to get started with Microsoft’s premier development tool.  Nor was I wrong.  It was simply hideous to work with, and I nearly abandoned it.  The main project would not work with the unit test project, giving odd errors of subtly different versions of .Net.

Eventually I deinstalled, and tried again, this time with .Net 8.0.  I found a page showing how to get unit testing working in Visual Studio using C#, and it did work.  Then I redid it in Visual Basic, and that worked too.  The experience was bad enough that I actually documented the whole thing in a .docx file with screenshots and uploaded a noddy project with full details to GitHub here.  This may be useful to others – but with my forgetfulness, one day I might need it!  It is beyond me how any newcomer can start out and expect this to work tho.

Microsoft put other barriers in the way.  When you download the installer, it’s a trivial little thing.  But I don’t want to rely on the existence of Microsoft’s servers if I need to reinstall.  So I need a proper offline installation.  Microsoft don’t make that available.  Instead you have to download a special tool named vs_community.exe and run it at the command line to pull down all the installation packages and create a directory full of what you need, which you can turn into an ISO.  This I did today, and the resulting directory was 80 gigabytes in size.  Talk about bloatware!  But anyway, I have it.

So I haven’t achieved anything, except that it looks as if I can abandon Visual Studio 2010 at long last.  It will be a bit of work to do, but certainly worthwhile.  This will allow me to reorganise the code, and particularly the code that handles the database of dictionary endings etc.  That is, it will if I don’t get distracted!  For I need some clear days of work.  Tomorrow I have something else to do, but soon, I hope.