Category: Announcements

General announcements

Notes on the manuscripts of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email this evening requesting information tells me that someone, somewhere, has set his class the task of finding out about the manuscripts of this work.    The question is one of interest.[1]

The text is preserved in the ms. Palatinus Graecus 398, fol. 40v-54v, held today in the Universitäts Bibliothek, Heidelberg and online there.[2]  This means that we can consult it, and also see the other geographical works contained in it!  Here is the top of fol. 40v:

The exemplar was plainly lacunose and corrupt; the scribe has left gaps and placed ticks in the margin where he recognised evident errors.  The ms. is in minuscule, with marginal headings in small uncials, and dates from the start of the 10th century.

A copy of this manuscript exists, errors and all, in the British Library, ms. Additional 19391, fols. 9r-12r[3], of the 14-15th century.

Early editions are generally poor.  The best is Muller’s Geographi Graeci Minores, but Fabricius’ 2nd edition held the field and is described by Casson as displaying “a total disregard for the readings of the manuscript.”  Unfortunately it was this which was used by Schoff for the translation into English commonly available.  A proper critical edition only appeared in 1927 as edited by Hjalmar Frisk.[4]

The date of the work is now established, Casson tells us, as mid-first century A.D.

Returning to the manuscript, however, we find that it contains yet more interesting material:

The collection of writers of marvels — paradoxographers — is interesting.  I have an English translation of Phlegon’s Book of Marvels, which is, in truth, a rather dull collection of oddities. 

However the text in the ms. does not seem to include either an incipit or explicit, which leads me to ask how we know the authorship?  But perhaps there are other mss, which do have this information.

It must be said that I was previous unaware of these online Greek mss.  What a marvellous collection, however!

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  1. [1]Lionel Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei: Text With Introduction, Translation, and Commentary, Princeton 1989, p. 5.  Google Books preview here.↩
  2. [2]Index of available digital mss. here↩
  3. [3]So Casson; but can this small page count be correct?↩
  4. [4]Casson, p.6.↩

We are what we read?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In the last year I have taken the time to read quite a few Christian novels.  I read a lot anyway.  But it is remarkable how much effect this has had on my attitudes, and on how close I feel to God.

It makes sense, really.  What we take inside ourselves tends to determine what we are.  The attitudes we take into our minds inform our sense of “normal”, of what is, and is not usual and commonplace.  If we only ever read non-Christian material, all of which silent presumes Christianity is untrue, and that the value-system manufactured in late 20th century America is eternal and everlasting, we may find ourselves in conflict with our own subconcious.

It’s easy enough to take into our heads images that we cannot easily get rid of.  I’m thinking of manipulative, emotion-tugging tear-jerking advertising to save children, and the like.  But it equally applies to TV dramas, and the smut with which they are laced today.  Indeed it applies to novels.  What effect does horror literature have on us?  It even applies to historical reading; I wish that I could dispose of one searing image from the diaries of the Borgia Pope’s master of ceremonies, described in the dullest of prose.

What we are is what we read.  What we think is what we have read, and has become part of us.

What blogs do we read?  Do what extent is our RSS feed devoid of anything useful and soul-building?  Is it entirely stuff that is non-Christian?  If so … what message are we sending to our souls?

Cherish good books and good reading.  You can never have too much of it.

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10th International Coptic Conference at Alin Suciu

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Alin Suciu publishes the programme for the Coptic conference in Rome here.   The conference starts on Monday.

Now I’ve seen what is happening, and that most of the papers are in English, I wish that I was going.  So much of the material and papers being given is of interest, and I would certainly love to be in Rome with so many other people doing interesting things.

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Digitised manuscripts at Verdun – Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, liturgical

Posted on by Roger Pearse

J.B.Piggin drew my attention to a new site full of digitised Latin manuscripts, at Verdun.  The manuscripts are those of the abbey of St. Vanne, the cathedral, and others, doubtless seized at the French Revolution.

Annoyingly you cannot download the things in PDF form, but are obliged to peer at them, squintily, through a keyhole flash viewer.  It works well enough, but is deeply frustrating to use for more than a minute or two.

It looks to me as if the collection was looted of nearly all its content at some time.  Most of the mss. are breviaries and graduals — service books, essentially.  But a few items of interest to us do remain.

Somewhat annoyingly, there seems to be no easy way to link directly to individual manuscripts (if I am wrong, do let me know).

  • Ms. 24 – Boethius, De institutione arithmetica (11th c.), originally from Lobbes.  Includes diagrams.
  • Ms. 26 – Isidore of Seville, De natura rerum (9th c.); astronomical stuff.
  • Ms. 30 – Florilegium, saints’ lives, letter of ps.Alexander the Great to Aristotle (11-12th c.).
  • Ms. 45 – Eusebius of Caesarea, Church history (11th c.) as translated by Rufinus.  Has a list of books and numbered chapters at the front.
  • Ms. 47 – Gregory Nazianzen, 8 works translated by Rufinus: Apologeticus, De epiphaniis, De communibus sive secundis epiphaniis, De pentecoste, De semetipso de agro regressus, De reconciliatione monachorum, De grandinis vastatione; Chrysostom, De compunctione cordis libri duo., Quod nemo laeditur nisi a seipso, De reparatione lapsi. Ps. Chrysostom, Sermo de poenitentia. Augustine, letters 166 and 167 to Jerome, Jerome, Letter 134, 141, 142 to Augustine, Augustine letter 190, Jerome letter 126. (11th c.)
  • Ms. 48 – Ambrose, Isidore, Augustine (11-12th c.)
  • Ms. 50 – Ambrose, De fide, De spiritu sanctu, De incarnatione, De mysteriis, De sacramentis, De Nabuthae – Phoebadius Aginensis, De fide orthodoxa. (11th c.)
  • Ms. 51 – Jerome’s Commentary on Isaiah (11-12th c.)
  • Ms. 52 – An evangelary of the 4 gospels (11th c.)
  • Ms. 57 – Augustine, various works; Fulgentius of Ruspe, De fide ad Petrum seu de regula fidei. Rescriptum Aurelii Augustini ad Petrum diaconum de fide sancte trinitatis sic incipit, Gregory the Great. (11th c.)
  • Ms. 75 – ps.Clementine Recognitions in 10 books, letter of ps.Clement to Peter (11th c.)
  • Ms. 77 – Venantius Fortunatus, Poems (11th c.) Also has other medieval items.

I was quite unable to locate an “overview” page, or get any idea about this project.  There must be more mss. to be digitised.  But all the same that gives us quite a bit that we didn’t have before!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

At home and have been trying to regain control of my inbox!

I’ve worked out how many copies of the Eusebius book have sold so far.  174 copies have been manufactured so far, paperback and hardback.  But probably around 30-odd were review or complimentary copies; and I have about a dozen paperbacks in a box — the only stock that I have.  These books were part of a box of 20 that I ordered for the Oxford Patristics Conference, but of which I sold almost none at the time.

It took a couple of hours going through the paperwork to work out where we are.  I still haven’t got a final reckoning on cost (never had the time).  But the income from each volume is only 66% of cover price.  It’s clear that the income will not faintly cover the costs of the project.  This does not matter, because it was an experiment, but it does indicate that doing more will not be a good idea financially at least.

All this effort was undertaken to calculate the royalties due on Zamagni’s Greek text.  I’ve made approaches to pay that, and get that done.

An email suggests that creating a PDF version of the translation of pseudo-Hegesippus would be useful.  It might.  It might be a good text on which to experiment with typesetting, if I ever have the time.

The translation of Ephraim’s Hymn 22 against heresies will be delayed, at least to the end of September.  No problem there.

I’ve ordered a copy of M. Albert &c, Christianisme orientaux, a volume of summaries of the various Oriental Christian literatures, running to 400 pages.  It’s pricey, at $60, but Sebastian Brock recommends the section on Georgian literature by Bernard Outtier as being so good that it ought to exist in English.  Luckily my French is not at all bad these days.

An article at the Lacus Curtius/Livius blog on “Original research” at Wikipedia has caught my eye.  An article was created on the obscure grammarian Hestiaea.  This led to discussion on Wikipediocracy, and the discovery of a second reference to the lady, in “pseudo-Didymus”‘ scholia on the Iliad; and attempts by me to discover what this source was, and how we might check.

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Repertorium pseudo-Chrysostomicum at Alin Suciu

Posted on by Roger Pearse

At Alin Suciu, an invaluable tool has been posted in PDF form; J. A. de Aldama’s list of the spuria of Chrysostom.  These are interesting as preserving material by people who were later considered heretical, or were just unpopular.  A good portion of the works of Severian of Gaballa in Greek are preserved in this way.

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An interesting experiment at HMML by Adam McCollum

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Adam McCollum is the dedicated cataloguer of manuscripts at the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library run by Fr. Columba Stewart.  The latter is doing an enormously valuable job; of getting copies of all the Syriac and Arabic manuscripts located in oriental monasteries in places like Syria and Iraq.  The urgency and importance of this task should be obvious to us all at the moment.

Adam’s task is seemingly more prosaic; to catalogue the results.  In practice this requires a wide familiarity with the literature and a great deal of dedication.  But it also gives him the chance to make original finds, and to publicise the texts.  

On his blog today is an interesting post, and a PDF download:

Among some manuscripts at the Church of the Forty Martyrs, Mardin, that I have recently cataloged are some that deal with the hagiographic Qartmin trilogy of the stories of Samuel, Simeon, and Gabriel.

Some of this material has been published (and even partly translated), but the published texts are not easy to come by. While going through these texts I came across one episode in The Story of Šemʿon (Simeon) in Syriac and in Arabic that, not too short and not too long and of enough entertainment value and philological interest, called for greater readership than it currently has residing in manuscripts.

The text, in either or both languages, would be suitable for intermediate, perhaps even beginning, reading courses, and of course anyone interested in hagiography and the history of asceticism, and more generally scholars of Syriac and Arabic, would lose nothing by studying the passage. I stress that the file below is merely a beginning effort, and while I have proofread it, it still should be considered a draft! Here it is:

episode_mar_shemun_syr_arab

The ease of making texts available this way — from manuscript to electronic file to the internet in a matter of days, with the option of correction always there — has the potential to change greatly any academic field based on texts, and I hope that more such text presentation will appear. Comments especially on this general prospect are encouraged!

Emphasis mine.  He is quite right.  The PDF presents the text, in Syriac and in Arabic, in a perfectly serviceable form.  And … the world can see it and use it.

Well done, that man.

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Some pages from a manuscript of Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A post at the British Library manuscripts blog by Sarah J. Biggs about the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville is rather interesting, and illustrated with some pages from the 11th century digitised ms. British Library Royal 6 C. i:

Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636), the bishop of Seville from about 600 to his death, is better known as an author than as an administrator.  His most famous work is the Etymologies, a work of tremendous influence throughout the Middle Ages.  One eleventh-century manuscript (Royal 6 C. i), probably copied at St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury, is now available on the Digitised Manuscripts website.

The Etymologies is famous for its sometimes quirky explanations of the history of words.  In some cases, when Isidore takes the word apart based on what it sounds like, the explanation that results can be extremely engaging, …

In other cases, Isidore’s etymologies, while colourful, are spot-on.  The one he gives for the words Fornicarius and Fornicatrix (male and female prostitute) explains that these terms come from the Latin word for ‘arch’ (fornix), and refers to the architecture of ancient brothels.  Prostitutes were understood to lie under such arches while practising their trade.  This is the same explanation for the word ‘fornicate’ offered in the Oxford English Dictionary today!

Great to have an image of some pages of raw text for a change.

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Life of Mar Aba – chapter 31

Posted on by Roger Pearse

31.  Then they bound the saint hand and foot and neck with heavy iron fetters, and covered his face so that no-one would know him and no rebellion would break out, placed him on a mule and handed him over to the mobed who had oversight of the prison at court.  The mobed did as he was commanded and the house in which the blessed one was was guarded by horsemen and foot soldiers.  When the saint heard that zealous believers were hanging about, looking to break open the house, he was very worried and forbade them to remain in the vicinity of the house.  Immediately they left at his command;  but the saint stayed in the prison guarded by God, who had said, “With the righteous am I in distress; I will strengthen and honour him and show him my salvation.”  And although fettered, he consecrated bishops, priests and deacons, strengthened them with blessings and prayers, and sent them out to the provinces.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The first chunk of a translation of Chrysostom’s homily on the circuses has arrived, and looks excellent.  I’ve paid for it and asked for more!  It will, of course, appear online and be placed in the public domain as per normal.

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