Saying grace before ….

Posted on by Roger Pearse

At the weekend, I ventured as far as the English coastal resort of Aldeborough.  Like all the little towns on the East Coast of England, it is gloomy and desolate for nine months of the year, its streets swept by the bitter weather that blows in from the North Sea.  But this weekend the sun shone out of a dusty blue sky, and the sea sparkled in the sun.

I parked in the high street, and walked towards the promenade.  On the way I looked into a little second-hand bookshop.  It was a single room, the corner of a little house.  Blocking out entirely one little window and visible from the street, never looked at, stood volumes bound from some gentleman’s library – cheap, useless books, like a Cicero interlinear, that no man would read without compulsion.

But amid the ruin of other men’s libraries, of one generation ago or two, I found a little volume of the Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb.  I leafed through it, and realised that I had never read more than a handful of these essays.  Finding the volume could be bought for less than three dollars, I bought it.

This evening I was reading the essay entitled Grace before meat, when, in his whimsical way, Lamb asked:

Why have we none for books, those spiritual repasts–a grace before Milton–a grace before Shakespeare–a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading The Faerie Queen?

Of course Lamb does not mean it.  The idea is unthinkable to him.

And yet … what would happen if, before we picked up a book, we prayed?  If we thanked God for what we were about to receive, if we asked God to bless us, for what we were about to consume with our minds, if we asked Him to guard us against any poison lurking therein?

Nor do I mean only serious books; but also novels and magazines, the “light literature” with which we amuse ourselves.

Might it be beneficial?  At least sometimes?

We are what we eat, they say.  But are we not, more truly, what we read?

What if we likewise prayed before we sat down with an open internet browser, pouring words into our minds and our souls?

I make no rule here for anyone.  To do so is to forget He who said, “My yoke is easy, my burden is light.”  No load of duties do I seek to impose on another.  Least of all do I wish anyone troubled by this.

It’s a thought, at least, that a grace before reading a blog might not be such a bad thing.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A very hot day here.  I have been converting an out-of-copyright Loeb into PDF format.  The book is old and worn, and the binding is loose with much use.  Yes, it is a library copy.

Yet somehow such old volumes have a charm of their own.  I did look to see if I might purchase one online, but only new copies are accessible.  New Loeb’s have a harshness about them.  One of my favourite Loebs is an old Juvenal, bought in Minehead in the west country for practically nothing.  It is long since superseded, in the eyes of librarians, but the softer prose of a century ago makes it far more agreeable than the harsh shouting of the modern translations I have elsewhere on my shelves.

Perhaps I shall recline, Roman-like, on my sofa later and read into that old Loeb.  Possibly with strawberries and cream.

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Manuscripts online at the Spanish National Library

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A correspondent, Surburbanbanshee, has drawn my attention to the presence of digitised manuscripts at the Biblioteca Nacional de Espana website here.  If you click on the link “manuscritos” at the foot of the BNE page, you get all their manuscripts.

Of course a lot of these are modern, and of no interest to us.  Instead go to the advanced search, at the top of the all manuscripts page, select manuscritos and language as classical Greek or Latin.

I haven’t quite worked out how their  viewer works yet.  But it looks as if some PDF download is possible, which is good.  Indeed they use Adobe to display sections of the manuscript, in 50 page chunks – an excellent idea!  Why reinvent the wheel?

Greek mss:

Not a stellar collection, it must be said, but something.

There are rather more in Latin – some 900.  Here are a few:

That was what I got from the first 300. I’m afraid I couldn’t be bothered to wade through the other 600-odd mss.  Perhaps someone else will have more dedication than I!

UPDATE (8 July 2013): Banshee has come to our aid and looked through the next 300!  Here are the proceeds:

There are a few useful items in there, once more.  Thank you!

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Links on the Wimbledon preacher arrest

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The BBC has chosen to ignore the story of how a street preacher was sworn at by a woman and then arrested, for daring to mention homosexuality among a number of sins (see here and here and here).  Others have not. Cranmer broke the story, and the Daily Telegraph ran with it.  A few more links.

The Huffington Post (UK) gives couple more details, which actually sound even more sinister:

According to the Christian Legal Centre which is representing Miano, he was offered a £90 fine to secure his release, but after being interviewed with a solicitor present, the police told him they would seek prosecution because he said he believed his remarks were “100%” acceptable” and that he planned to say them again.

This explains, then, why they kept him in a cell for seven hours.  They were hoping to get him to admit the “offence” and pay a fine, for his temerity.

Cranmer’s Curate makes the point that a tough ex-police-officer like Miano was far better equipped to push back at such nonsense than most of us would be.

There are also stories at Opposing Views, Christian Today, Christian Post, The Christian Institute, Canada Free Press, Charisma News, Cross Map, and others.

On the other hand we have this from Pink News, Homophobic street preacher arrested in London, and Gay Star News, Wimbledon tennis preacher arrested for gay hate.  The comments in both are pretty vile.

UPDATE, 6th July 2013: Not part of the same story … or may be it is: Christian preachers brutally beaten at Gay Pride Festival.

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Bamberg manuscripts online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The library website does it’s best to conceal the fact, but there are a number of very interesting manuscripts online at the Staatsbibliothek Bamberg Kaiser-Heinrich-Bibliothek site in Munich.  The top-level site is here, but unless you can wade through oceans of PR waffle, you won’t find the manuscripts.  These are here.

The online viewer isn’t very good; not nearly as user-friendly as the one at the Bibliotheque Nationale Francais Gallica site, nor even the British Library.  But I’m finding my way around it, so I suppose it’s mainly a case of unfamiliarity.  There’s no PDF download either.  I haven’t managed to find the zoom facility either.

The texts are all Latin, as far as I can see.  Generally they are 9-10th c.

There is a 5th century ms. of Livy’s 4th decade (books 31-40).  It’s only strips, extracted from book bindings, tho.  There is also a 9th century copy of the 1st decade.

There’s a fair bit of Cicero, some of the Augustan History, a lot of Boethius, Jerome.  Aurelius Victor and Eutropius are there.  There’s some Augustine, some Ambrose, a Statius Thebais with the scholia of Lactantius Placidus.  There’s a bit of Seneca, a couple of Quintilians, a Pliny the Elder NH, a Priscian, unfortunately lacking the beginning.  There’s Origen on Judges, plus Rufinus’ translation of De Principiis. Martianus Capella is still at the wedding of Philology and Mercury, the first part of Macrobius’ Saturnalia is there.

Lucan is there.  Josephus likewise. Justinian’s Institutiones, interestingly.  There’s a Horace, and the usual dollop of Isidore of Seville.  There is a Eugippius, Thesaurus ex S. Augustini operibus, which is interesting to me if no-one else.

Worth knowing about.

The world of online manuscripts is still very immature.  In five years things will be very different.  At the moment the BNF in Paris are showing the way; but standards will certainly improve all round.

A few institutions are still in the Dark Ages – step forward Stanford University and Corpus Christi Cambridge, who have put the Parker collection of manuscripts into the hands of a commercial company, to sell access to pictures to institutions (and tough if you aren’t affiliated to one).  Shame on them both.  But this too will change, given time.

It’s an exciting time to be involved with mss.!

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Police statement on arrest of street preacher in Wimbledon

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Further to this and this, I have now received confirmation of the basic details of the story from the police at Wimbledon.  My enquiry was as follows:

I read online a report that the police arrested a street preacher and held him for seven hours while quizzing him on his beliefs.  According to the report the reason given was that, in preaching about sin (which he was against), he mentioned homosexuality.  The report and a video may be found at the Archbishop Cranmer site.

May I ask whether the report is correct?  Is there a press release on this incident?

I received the following answer:

Police were called to Wimbledon Hill Road, SW19, at approximately 16.30hrs on Monday, 1 July, following reports of a man speaking through a public address system who was alleged to have made homophobic comments.

Officers attended and arrested the man, aged 49, on suspicion of offences under the Public Order Act.

He was taken to a south-west London police station and spoken to by officers before being released with no further action later the same day.

This more or less confirms all the statements made by the victim Tony Miano.

UPDATE: Cranmer has now posted the full transcript of the police interrogation here, which began four hours after his arrest, at eight minutes past nine at night, and concluded half an hour later.  In one respect it doesn’t quite confirm what Miano said, but, quite frankly, considering that he was grilled without having a record himself around 14 hours after he got up, we can forgive the lapse of memory.

The transcript reads like something out of the 17th century.  There is no question of the accused having done anything; it is what he thinks that is being questioned.  And this, in a free state, is unacceptable.

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Excel spreadsheet of all manuscripts at the British Library

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Someone at the British Library has had an excellent idea.  They’ve uploaded a spreadsheet listing all the manuscripts they have online, with the URL.  It’s here.  They have 856 mss online at the moment; a small proportion of their holdings, but still very useful.

The spreadsheet lists shelfmark, contents, url and the project that did the upload.  The last won’t be much use, but browsing down the list of contents is exciting!

It will be very useful to me on my current project too.

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More on the arrest of the street preacher at Wimbledon

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Further to yesterday’s post:

I learn from the comments at the Cranmer blog that the incident took place on Monday 1st July.

I have had no reply to my enquiry to Wimbledon Police Station.

The Daily Telegraph has today run the story, Christian arrested for calling homosexuality a ‘sin’.

A Christian street preacher has been arrested and questioned about his beliefs after saying that “fornication” and homosexuality are a sin.

Tony Miano, a retired police officer from the US, was held for almost seven hours, forced to give finger prints and a DNA sample and questioned about his beliefs on sin.

Mr Miano, who served as a Deputy Sherriff in Los Angeles County, was arrested under the controversial clause of the Public Order Act, recently amended by the House of Lords, which bans “insulting” words or behaviour.

In a video placed on YouTube he can be seen debating with two Metropolitan Police officers about whether the amendment to the law had come into force yet.

It came after a woman complained that the sermon he preached a sermon in busy street in Wimbledon, south west London, on Monday afternoon, about “lust” and “sexual immorality”, was homophobic.

Taking as his text a passage from Thessalonians, he listed homosexuality alongside other “evil” sexual temptations as being against “God’s law”.

He can be heard saying: “My friends, the reality is, we are all going to stand before God to give account for our lives.

“And whether our sin is sexual in nature or not, if we have violated his law in any way – whether it is homosexuality, whether it is refusing to abstain from evil in the heterosexual community and we are lusting after people we are indulging in fornication, but even beyond that if we have so much as told one lie – God sees us as a violator of his law, God does not see us as good.”

He said that during his time at the police station he was questioned about his beliefs.

“He asked me, among other things, whether I believed homosexuality was a sin,” he explained.

“He also asked me: ‘If a homosexual person came to you and was hungry, would you give him something to eat?’

“It was unnerving to be questioned about my Christian beliefs and I was made to feel that my thoughts could be held against me.

“The two final questions were: ‘Do you believe you are 100 per cent right in what you did today?’, I answered yes, and “If you were to go back there tomorrow, would you do the same thing again?” to which I also answered yes.”

He was eventually released without charge around midnight.

There could be no charge, of course, for he had done nothing wrong.  The “arrest”, and the deliberately prolonged incarceration and “questioning” were merely harassment, intended to intimidate.  The phrase “the process is the punishment” describes what happened here; drag someone through the system in order to stop them doing something which is entirely legal.  Even if they are found innocent, just being accused and tried — at deliberately elaborate length — is a shattering experience for normal, innocent people.

I gather that Tony Miano has sought legal advice.  I hope that the Metropolitan Police are forced to pay a large sum in damages.  I also would hope that whoever was responsible for this is discharged from the force.

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Street preacher arrested at Wimbledon, held for seven hours

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There is a worrying report at the Cranmer blog this evening.  It is good that they have highlighted this, because it seems to have gone otherwise unreported.

Mr Miano has recently been out preaching in Wimbledon. He very much enjoys biblical evangelism, speaking about spiritual growth, personal holiness and the person and work of Jesus Christ. On Monday, his theme was sexual immorality – all forms (1Thess 4:1-12). He talked about sin – heterosexual and homosexual – without discrimination. As he was preaching, a lady heard him say that homosexuality was a sin, and promptly summoned the police, who duly arrived.

Mr Miano was then arrested for violating Section 5 of the Public Order Act: he was accused of using homophobic speech likely to cause anxiety, distress, alarm or insult.

He was escorted to Wimbledon police station, where he was photographed, finger-printed and had a DNA sample taken. He was then incarcerated in a cell for seven hours.

And he was interrogated about his faith in Jesus Christ.

He was asked if he believed homosexuality was a sin. He was asked from which portion of the Bible he was preaching. Incredibly, he was asked whether, if a homosexual was hungry and walked up to him, he would give them something to eat.

He was then informed that there was sufficient evidence from his responses to forward his case to the CPS, and that the judge could order him to remain in the country for 4-5 months while his case came to trial.

This story reads like something out of the Keston College annals of religious persecution in Russia.  The preacher … the informer … the bullying police-officers … the jeers at religion.

Of course we don’t blame the police for doing what they are told.  The rulers of Britain have made this happen, and have ensured that the police will do this when the situation arises.   The judges have likewise been screened to ensure that they too will toe the line.

These kinds of stories are troubling because each such incident sends a direct message to Christians: you are not wanted, and we will arrest you if you share your faith.  What kind of country directs that message at a harmless minority?

However I have emailed Wimbledon police and asked for a statement.  It is always wise to check one’s facts.

In the mean time, may I suggest that Christian readers remember to pray for both the informer, and the policemen involved, as well as the preacher and the blog that reported it.

UPDATE: I find a curiously similar story from 2010. Preacher Dale McAlpine was arrested under similar circumstances, and was committed for trial in September.  But on May 1 the Mail on Sunday reported the story, echoed by the Daily Telegraph the next day.  Two weeks later the BBC reported that the charge against him had been dropped.  On December 18 2010 the Daily Mail reported that the police paid out 7,000 GBP plus legal costs, and refers to “new guidelines” issued by the Association of Chief Police Officers, entitled “Keeping the peace”.  Perhaps they should issue a new booklet, and address it to Met Police.  They might entitle it “Taking the peace”.

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Chapter divisions, titles and tables of contents in the BNF Greek mss.

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Now that the French National Library has a bunch of Greek manuscripts online, we can use them to find out what proportion have chapter divisions and titles.  It can’t be comprehensive, but this limited exploration will give us some sort of idea.  It will also be interesting to see if I stumble across any tables of contents.

The divisions are identifiable as breaks in the text, often with a red heading in the gap, and an initial on the new line.  Here, for instance, is one that I just found, in Ms. gr. 2971, folio 10v:

On the other hand initials pushing into the margin like this may only be paragraph markers.

So … let’s go!  What can be found in the first few pages of these mss….?

  • Coislin 352, 17th c. Palatine Anthology of Greek verse. — N/A: special layout epigrams.
  • Grec 2971, 16th c. Hermogenes, Progymnasmata.  — Divisions with red headings.
  • Grec 2868, 16th c. Apollinaris Metaphrasis Psalmorum. — Sections in red ink, followed by sections in black starting with red initial. Otherwise undivided.  Special layout.
  • Grec 510, 9th c. Gregory Nazianzen. — Initials at intervals but no text division.
  • Grec 2929, 16th c. grammatical bits and pieces. — Divisions with red headings as for gr. 2971.
  • Grec 2705, 14th c., John Tzetzes on the Iliad. — Red initials protruding into margin.  No other divisions.
  • Grec 2261, 16th c. medical ms. — Not divided.
  • Grec 216, 10th c. Acts of the Apostles, with the catena. — Starts with numbered table of contents of Acts here, f.1r, and also has numbered headings.  Rather catena-ish, tho, in format.

  • Grec 1853, 10th c., Aristotle.  No red ink! Not obvious divisions. Might be capitals in margin occasionally.
  • Coislin 291, 14th c., Simeon the New Theologian.  Very faded red initials in margin.  Last line of end of chapter ends with “:–“, and rest of line blank.
  • Grec 1807, 9th c. Plato.  Not obviously divided, but marginal asterisks and other marks.
  • Grec 1685, 15th c. Ps.Callisthenes, History of Alexander; Aesop’s fables.  Red marginal initials only in Ps.Callisthenes; Aesop has red initials and headings (e.g. f.59r).
  • Grec 1639, 15th c. Xenophon, Cyropedia; expedition; Theophrastus, characters.  — Red initials.  No break in text.   But by f.193v (probably Theophrastus), divisions, red headings and initials.
  • Grec 1759, 13th c. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the philosophers.  — Black initial, break, red heading (probably later, on f.2r), chapter ends with “:–“.  Only when new philosopher introduced (e.g f.107v).  So perhaps special format.
  • Grec 2465, 14th c. Michael Psellus.  — None that I can see.
  • Grec 1407, 15th c. Arrian, Anabasis (f.11v); on India; Ptolemy’s geography, epitome.  — Red letters.  Ms. starts with several pages of what may be indices; red and black text, much faded.
  • Grec 1122, 14th c. John Damascene. — Red letter, break, red heading (e.g. f.4r).
  • Grec 2795, 15th c. Sophocles, Electra, Orestes, etc, with scholia. — Drama has special format.
  • Grec 2850, 1475 AD, Sybilline oracles. — None that I can see.
  • Grec 2902, 16th c. Aesop, Aristophanes, Euripides. — Red initials, heading, breaks in Aesop.
  • Grec 2999, 16th c. Demosthenes. — Not divided that I can see.
  • Coislin 1, 7th c. Greek Old Testament — initials in margin, but much too often.  Some special format.
  • Coislin 79, 11th c. Chrysostom. — table of contents (f.3r-4v), then “logos a'”.  Divided by space in middle of line, then initial in margin at start of next line.  No chapter titles.
  • Grec 2809, 15th c. Euripides. — (Not examined)
  • Grec 2036, 10th c.  (f. 1r-v) Πίναξ, then (ff. 2-178v) Ps.-Aristotle, Problemata physica, then Longinus (Dionysius).  — There is a numbered table of contents starting, “Ἀριστοτέλους προβλήματα καὶ Διονυσίου Λογγίνου περὶ ὕψους λόγου.” (i.e. Aristotle’s Problems and Dionysius Longinus’ περὶ ὕψους λόγου”.  The toc. is in the hand of Matthieu Devaris, according to the notes.  Divisions by initials in margin.  No red.  Numerals in margin look to me like Devaris’ work.
  • Grec 2706, 1500. Aristarchus, summaries and scholia on the Iliad. — red initials, headings, and line break.
  • Grec 1535, 11th c. Martyrdoms. — red initials in margin. No headings or line-break.
  • Grec 1671, 1296. Plutarch, parallel lives. — marginal initials, but too frequent to be chapters, and in same ink colour.  No headings or line breaks.  F.10r has a break for new “life”.
  • Grec 107, 7th c. Bilingual Greek/Latin Paul’s letters. uncials. — f6v-7r shows an initial in the margin; a later hand has marked this as “chapter 2”.
  • Grec 1128, 14th c. Barlaam and Joasaph. — red initial in margin. Heading in red, followed by picture (!).
  • Grec 1767, 15th c. George Cedrenus, Narratio of meeting of Pope Silvester with some Jews. — red initial pushing into margin, or sometimes in body of text.  Some red writing, not sure if for that purpose.
  • Grec 1909, 15th c. Simplicius on Aristotle’s Physica. — Divided, red initial, black heading, new line.
  • Grec 2179, 9th c. Dioscorides. — Hard to see, but looks like newline, red title, and numeral (and picture) for new chapter.
  • Grec 2442, 11th c. Aelian, Tactica; Onasander, etc.  Aelian has “:–“, new line initial in same ink pushing into margin, and marginal numeral.
  • Grec 2389, 9th c. Ptolemy. — initials pushing into margin, but appear to be paragraphs. f.3v shows start of chapter 2 with heading, newline, numeral, and the initial, all in black ink.
  • Grec 3094, 17th c. Chrysostom, 4 homilies to Antiochenes. — no divisions.
  • Grec 923, 9th c. John Damascene, Sacra Parallela. — a numbered table of contents in alternating red and black (2r – 8v).  Chapter division – heading in gold box, with numeral.  Marginal initials in black must be paragraph divisions.
  • Grec 451, 914 AD. Division on f.96v consisting of ~~~—, new line, black title, new line and initial in margin.  A numeral seems to be a later addition.  f.213v has the table of contents to book 2 of Eusebius PE.  In the PE there are no divisions except paragraph initials.
  • Grec 781, 939 AD. Chrysostom.  f1r-v is a numbered table of contents for the various items in the book.  There seem to be no internal divisions, tho; not even paragraph initials.
  • Grec 945, 15th c. Origen.  — Contra Celsum (from f.48r) seems to have no internal divisions.
  • Grec 414, 16th c. Gelasius of Cyzicus (from c.4 to end), Eusebius Vita Constantini (siglum=D), HE, etc. — the beginning of Gelasius is lost.  But on f.1v he shows chapter divisions:

And on f.65 Eusebius’ Vita Constantini book 1 begins with an unnumbered table of contents to book 1 thus.  The first item is chapter 1, Προοίμιον περὶ τῆς Κωνσταντίνου τελευτῆς.

and f.81v shows the end of the table for book 2, a blank line, and then the start of the book.  The PE here is noticeably devoid of book titles, although it does feature colophons.  There is likewise a table of contents for Constantine’s Ad sanctorum coetum (f.134).
  • Coislin 202, 6th c. Euthalian chapters, New Testament, note saying it was copied from Pamphilus’ exemplar (f.14r, v). — this one I can’t make much of.

Now that was an interesting way to spend an afternoon!  Thank you, BNF, for making it possible to see all these things “in the wild”, as it were.  This is precisely what a major library should be doing.  And making it possible to download PDF’s helped as well, at various points when I was skimming around the pages looking for things.  Again – thank you.

I suspect that most of these mss. never even get looked at.  Well, today they did!

UPDATE: That was 42 manuscripts, and even at the press of a mouse-button, that took all afternoon.  Useful, tho!

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