Please do plagiarize me, I don’t care: a blogger writes about #ReceptioGate

Posted on by Roger Pearse

On Christmas Eve, a blogger named Peter Kidd launched an attack on Twitter on a Swiss academic named Carla Rossi and her RECEPTIO foundation, with a blog post headed “Nobody cares about your blog!” Dr Rossi had helped herself to some images and some of the research on the blog while doing her own research, and had not credited her source.  Unfortunately for her, in fact Dr Kidd was not “just a blogger”, but also a professional, working in the world of manuscripts for the Bodleian and Sothebys, and he took exception to what he saw as plagiarism.  His blog, Medieval Manuscripts Provenance,  contains much original research and supports his career. He wrote to Dr Rossi and complained.  What he got back was an insulting brush-off and a threat of litigation.  His blew the whistle: the business went viral, and a lynch mob formed.  It turned out that Dr R. had also created various shell organisations in order to apply for funding.  Other examples of the use of other people’s work appeared.  Dr Rossi’s reputation is severely damaged thereby.

But I have not followed every twist and turn.  I don’t unreservedly agree with either side.  I notice that Neville Morley at the Sphinx blog raises some of the same issues that I can see.  This business reveals much about the modern “Academia” business, and the pressures upon academics to publish, publish, publish.  I don’t think that using stuff off the web is wrong.  Copying stuff off the web is what everybody does.  All of us need inspiration from somewhere.  Creating one-man institutions in order to jump through the hoops for funding is how everything in academia starts.  Despite the hoo-hah, much of what Dr R. has done is venial at worst, and the beating that she has received is really disproportionate.  But I also think that people shouldn’t dump all over those from whom they borrow.  It will all blow over in a while, I am sure.

None of this is any of my business.  Unlike Dr. Kidd, I am indeed “just a blogger”.  I am not an academic.  I do not have a career.

All the same, I’d like to make clear my own attitude to the use of materials uploaded by me by others. This blog, and everything I do, is a labour of love, nothing more.  Plagiarize me as much as you like!  I do not care.  I am, indeed, gratified if you do.

I place online all sorts of stuff. I have done so for twenty-five years now.  I continue to do what we all did in the early days of the web; to contribute.  I borrow images from wherever, and I don’t credit where that is, quite often.  But I really do not think that it matters.  There is neither money nor prestige to be found here: only honest enthusiasm.

I am very happy for anybody to use anything that is mine, and I don’t expect credit or attribution.  I do not even care.  I don’t care whether the person using my stuff is an academic, or a member of the public.  Both are equal in my eyes.  Help yourselves.  I’ll do what I can for you.

My own purpose is to make the world a larger and better place.  I want people to read ancient texts, to learn, to have better lives and to know more.  Access to this stuff is difficult.  Even an amateur like me can do something.  So I do.  Doing all this stuff makes my life better, and gives me a purpose in life.

I don’t do any of this for recognition, and I don’t really want any either.  I do feel glad when I see evidence that what I do is having an effect.  In some cases I have uploaded some text or other, and found that, over the next few years, a series of academic publications have taken place upon that same text.  None of them mention me, of course, and perhaps it is a coincidence.  But I can hope that it is not.  Sometimes the project clearly  did arise because of my work, which is great.  And they often do right in not mentioning me, because academia is as snobbish as hell, and you can damage your own reputation by mentioning non-academic sources.  I understand.

I don’t want #ReceptioGate to stop people putting stuff online, or using stuff that they find online.  In the end it is just an academic spat.  But the culture of sharing and reuse benefits everybody.  Please… plagiarize me!

Update: From the comments, I ought to make clear that I don’t in any way endorse academic plagiarism, or failure to cite sources.  But use my stuff as you like!

Share

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email from my local library advises that a copy of K. Meisen’s Nikolauskult und Nikolausbrauch im Abendland (1928) has arrived.  Tomorrow I shall go and get it.  I can’t read German very well, so I will have to scan it into a PDF, so that I can use Google Translate on it.  So I think that’s going to take up tomorrow.  I imagine that, once I have done so, I will find that someone long since put a PDF on the web.  At least, that’s what happened the last time!

I read somewhere that Meisen’s book is the best study of the spread of the legends of St Nicholas, and publishes some of the texts.  But I also read that it was always a rare book, because most of the print run was destroyed before it could be sold.  Copies for sale online are indeed very pricey.

While I was working on analysing the medieval manuscripts of the Nicholas legends, I kept tripping over the various miracle stories tacked on the end.  Eventually I got fed up, and started creating a Word document with the Latin text of these, and the Bibliographia Hagiographia Latina number for each, simply so that I could find my way around this mass of stuff.  I’m still working on this file, and I’ve included a rough English translation of each as I go.  They’re mostly short, so this is not hard work.  The majority of the texts were printed by the Bollandists in the early 20th century in their catalogues of Brussels and Paris manuscripts.  They were made of stern stuff in those days.

But even so, they had their limits.  This evening I looked up BHL 6146, and found that they only printed the incipit and a brief description of contents.  So I will have to go and find a manuscript and transcribe it myself.  Luckily I have a PDF of the very manuscript from which they printed their stuff.  I’ll come back to that one, tho, as I am rather on the roll with the others.

A couple of days ago I saw an interesting tweet online by María Ithurria here, which I thought might be of interest to many of us: “This is how a physician ended up arranging the funding for a translation of Justinian’s Digest.”  She posted this portion of Alan Watson, “Aspects of Reception of Law”, in: The American Journal of Comparative Law, 44 (1996) 335-351 (JSTOR):

Many scholars, not just in law, discount chance. By chance I mean something that could not be predicted. Some even deny the existence of any such thing. But I have an example that is irrefutable.  Today (when I was writing — late 1994) Roman law is more prominent in South African decisions than it was a decade ago. Roman law, as received in Holland in the seventeenth century, has always been influential in South Africa, but why the upswing?

In 1977 on his way to the airport, Dr. Carleton Chapman bought in New York a copy of Alan Watson’s, Legal Transplants, without much examination. Dr. Chapman was a physician who was interested in law, and thought the book was about the law relating to medical transplants. Still, he had a life-long interest in legal history, and he enjoyed the book (I presume). He wrote to Watson asking why there was no English translation of Justinian’s Digest.  Watson first thought of not bothering to reply. But he had a visit from Colin Kolbert from Cambridge, who was on his way farther North, who told him to give a response. Watson wrote that there already existed a poor translation,[9] that a new translation would be an enormous task, and that the work involved would carry little prestige, would be unnecessary in the eyes of many, and would be very expensive to produce. Chapman replied that if Watson came up with a feasible scheme for translating he would arrange the funding. Chapman was then the President of The Commonwealth Fund, a foundation primarily concerned with medical research. The outcome was the publication in 1985 of a four volume translation (with facing text) of Justinian’s Digest. It is the existence of this translation that has made the Digest more accessible to South African lawyers, and accounts for the upswing in its use.

[9].  S.P. Scott, The Civil Law, 17 vols. (1932)

We discount the personal element at our peril!

Share

A complete Ibn Abi Usaibia “History of Medicine” now online in Arabic and English

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Something that passed me by, and which I only became aware of today, is that in 2020 a modern scholarly text and translation appeared of Ibn Abi Usaibia’s History of Medicine, from Brill. The author – often known in online forums as IAU – wrote in the 13th century, so it’s basically a bunch of anecdotes about past and present famous physicians.  It’s very readable, and quite fun.  Indeed I uploaded a public domain translation long ago.  But it has never previously been published in English.  Indeed no complete English translation has existed.  But… no longer.

The book is E. Savage-Smith, S. Swain, G.J. van Gelder eds., A Literary History of Medicine, Leiden: Brill (2020), ISBN: 978-90-04-41031-2, in 5 volumes.  The price is massive.  I’ve not seen the book.  Indeed I only heard about it by accident.  Thankfully nobody asked me to review it.  But thankfully it is accessible online, embedded in a online viewer at the Brill site at: https://scholarlyeditions.brill.com/lhom/.  The viewer is indeed a bit baffling to use, but get’s easier as you work with it.  You can plunge straight into the English translation here, where the title is “Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah, The Best Accounts of the Classes of Physicians.”  Footnotes are like Wikipedia, and pop-up when you click on them.

The Arabic text is also there, as is prefatory material and “essays” – the sort of stuff about manuscripts etc that we find in any modern edition – which is rather good stuff.  The book is divided online into four chunks:

Read the “table of contents” section first, to get an idea of what’s where.  Oddly this is not hyperlinked to the contents.  Nor was I able to find the sections 4-11 of the “Extra” anywhere online.  The “downloads” – including a PDF? – appear to be only available to people with a subscription.  But… a PDF should be made available.

All these sorts of awkwardnesses arise from the difficulties in the general transition in our time to open access, and are not the fault of Brill as such.

According to the website, the team behind this monster was:

The edition is the result of a joint University of Oxford/University of Warwick project, led by Emilie Savage-Smith, Simon Swain, and Geert Jan van Gelder. The team also included Franak Hilloowala, Alasdair Watson, Dan Burt, N. Peter Joosse, Bruce Inksetter, and Ignacio Sánchez.

Well done chaps.

The site states:

Generously funded by the Wellcome Trust, this is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC-BY-NC 4.0 License, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.

Which is how it should be.  Well done, everyone.

I no longer recall how I came to be interested in Ibn Abi Usaibia.  But back in 2011 I became aware of an unpublished translation of this work by Lothar Kopf.  It had been made in the late 60s for the US government, and the typescript was then filed and forgotten at the National Library of Medicine.   But the translation was public domain, and nobody was doing anything, so I made the time and put it online here, with the hope that it would spur interest.

Unfortunately the Kopf translation was incomplete, it turned out.  I have always hoped that somebody would be motivated to go and do the thing properly.  And now they have!

It would be daft to end without giving a story from Ibn Abi Usaibia, who is an interesting and amusing writer, ideal to dip into.  This one, chosen at random, came from here [10.1.7]  I have paragraphed it for readability online, and removed the footnotes.  The translator was Alasdair Watson.  The story belongs to the time of the Caliph al-Mutawakkil, who died in 861 AD.

During the time of the Caliph al-Mutawakkil, Muḥammad and Aḥmad, the sons of Mūsā ibn Shākir, used to plot against all those who had a reputation for advanced learning. They had already caused Sind ibn ʿAlī to be sent to Baghdad after having estranged him from al-Mutawakkil, and had plotted against al-Kindī so that al-Mutawakkil had had him flogged. They had also sent people to al-Kindī’s house to confiscate all his books and had placed them in a repository which was given the name ‘Kindiyyah’.

They had been able to do this because of al-Mutawakkil’s passion for automata. The Caliph approached them concerning the excavation of the canal known as the Jaʿfarī canal. The Banū Mūsā delegated the project to Aḥmad ibn Kathīr al-Farghānī who had built the new Nilometer in Egypt. Al-Farghānī’s knowledge, however, was greater than his good fortune since he could never complete a work and he made an error in the mouth of the canal causing it to be dug deeper than the rest of it so that a supply of water which filled the mouth would not fill the rest of the canal.

Muḥammad and Aḥmad, the two Banū Mūsā protected him, but al-Mutawakkil demanded that they be brought before him and had Sind ibn ʿAlī summoned from Baghdad. When Muḥammad and Aḥmad realized that Sind ibn ʿAlī had come they felt sure they were doomed and feared for their lives. Al-Mutawakkil summoned Sind and said to him, ‘Those two miscreants have left no foul words unsaid to me concerning you, and they have squandered a great deal of my money on this canal. Go there and examine it and inform me whether it has a defect, for I have promised myself that if what I have been told is true, I will crucify them on its banks.’

All of this was seen and heard by Muḥammad and Aḥmad. As Sind left with the two Banū Mūsā, Muḥammad ibn Mūsā said to him, ‘O Abū l-Ṭayyib, the power of the freeman dispels his grudges. We resort to you for the sake of our lives which are our most valuable possessions. We do not deny that we have done wrong, but confession effaces the commission, so save us as you see fit.’

‘I swear by God,’ Sind replied, ‘you well know my enmity and aversion for al-Kindī, but what is right is right. Do you think it was good what you did to him by taking away his books? I swear I will not speak in your favour until you return his books to him.’ Thereupon, Muḥammad ibn Mūsā had al-Kindī’s books returned to him and obtained his signature that this had been done. When a note from al-Kindī arrived confirming that he had received them to the last, Sind said, ‘I am obliged to you both for returning the man’s books to him. Accordingly I will inform you of something that has escaped your notice: the fault in the canal will remain hidden for four months due to the rising of the Tigris. Now the Astrologers (ḥussāb) agree that the Commander of the Faithful will not live that long. I will tell him immediately that there was no error in the canal on your part so as to save your lives, and if the Astrologers are correct, the three of us will have escaped. But if they are wrong, and he lives longer until the Tigris subsides and the water disperses, then all three of us are doomed.’

Muḥammad and Aḥmad were grateful and mightily relieved to hear these words. Sind ibn ʿAlī then went to see al-Mutawakkil and said to him, ‘They did not err.’ The Tigris indeed rose, the water flowed into the canal, and the matter was concealed. Al-Mutawakkil was killed two months later, and Muḥammad and Aḥmad were saved after having greatly feared what might befall them.

Most of these names will be unfamiliar to most people; but it hardly matters, and anyway Brill provide footnotes.  What a rich picture we get of life at the court of the Abbasids!  This sort of stuff should not be only for Arabic speakers.

This is frankly a treasure.  I’ve long wished that someone would grab hold of this fascinating book and do the necessary scholarly work.  Now, at last, they have.

Share

Fascinating extra stuff at Google Translate for Latin

Posted on by Roger Pearse

About a year ago Google Translate for Latin changed, and started to produce very good translations indeed.  I commented on this in April 2022 here.  I never saw any announcement of this.  But yesterday I again saw something new.

I pasted into the Latin box part of a medieval miracle story of St Nicholas.  It produced a quite decent new-style transation.  Then, by accident, I clicked on the English of one sentence.  A box sprang up, giving two other versions of the same Latin sentence, both somewhat different from mine, and two English translations of them!  Here is what I see this morning:

Google translate output

So my sentence reads:

Finita vero oratione, in altum in nomine Domini cubitum et dimidium fodit, continuoque sufficienter emanavit abundantia aquae.

And the default translation is:

Having finished his prayer, he dug a cubit and a half deep in the name of the Lord, and immediately a sufficient abundance of water emanated.

But the popup box also gives:

Having finished his prayer, he dug a cubit and a half deep in the name of the Lord, and immediately a sufficient abundance of water emanated.

Finita oratione, fodit cubitum ac semissem in nomine Domini, et statim emanavit aquarum abundantia.

When he had finished his prayer, he dug a cubit and a half deep in the name of the Lord, and immediately a sufficient abundance of water flowed out.

Finita oratione, fodit cubitum ac semissem in nomine Domini, et confestim fluxit aquae copia.

What on earth is this, I wonder?  It’s fascinating, of course.  Are there texts out there, in which this version of the Latin may be found, with that translation?  I tried googling for the two sentences, with no result.  Or is there some other explanation?

Google does fiddle with Google Translate.  Boxes can indeed appear, offering various options; and then the facility disappears as silently as it appeared.

Google does not share all of its resources on the web.  I once read that there is a server, somewhere, with all of the books in the world on.  They scanned them; but the publishers wouldn’t let them use them for Google Books.  But that doesn’t mean that they cannot use them in other ways.  Possibly this is the source of the other material?

I do wish Google would be more transparent.

Share

Whatever became of the World-Wide Web?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The only certainty in life is change.  If things are bad, the only certainty is that they will be different soon.  If things are good, the only certainty is that they will be different soon.  This can be a comfort, or a warning.  But it is a fact.

What brought this on, you may ask?  Well, I write this blog on WordPress.  I don’t use most of the features.  But one that I do use is the “Jetpack Social”, which automatically posts a notification to a couple of twitter accounts when I write a new post.  Or it did.  This post is the first where it won’t work.  Why?

You currently have 0 shares remaining. Upgrade to get more.

That’s right.  On the right of my working area, some words have appeared: “You currently have 0 shares remaining. Upgrade to get more.  More about Jetpack Social”.  By “Upgrade”, of course, they mean pay them money every month for the same service that I enjoyed for the last 10 years for free.  No thank you.

This is an example of the good old, bad old commercial habit known as predatory pricing.  You give your product away, create a monopoly – after all, nobody will bother to produce an alternative – and then, once you have the monopoly, you start charging them for basic functionality.  It’s illegal in many countries.

This leads me to some rather rueful reflections.

I started contributing to the World-Wide Web in 1997, writing HTML pages.  This I did for very many years.  I came very late to the blogging world, and missed the boom entirely.  But I’ve found the format very useful, and I have blogged for about 20 years now, using WordPress.

The web exists because it is trivially easy to knock up a few webpages in basic HTML.  Or, at least, it was.   Now it is very very difficult to do without something like WordPress to do all the formatting for you.  The result is that around a third of the web runs on WordPress.  The practical effect is to exclude, to place the power in the hands of a handful of privileged individuals who control the platforms.

Blogging platforms were adopted because they were free, and even easier to use, and looked better.  Or, at least, they were.  WordPress too has become fearsomely complicated.  The default writing editor is now too complicated for me, and I use the old one.  And because it is so complicated, it has to have constant security updates.  So, although the software is open-access, in practice you must use the latest one.  The practical effect, again, is to centralise power.

Google exists because it was such a great search engine compared to the others.  At least, it was.  Now all you can find is advertising for commercial products.  Because Google holds the monopoly, they show you stuff that makes them money.  That means that stuff that is free is not their priority.  So, in practice, Google is not a search engine any more, but a portal.  So where do you go when you need a search engine?

Monopolies and cartels are evil things.  Yet here we are.  The free, open world-wide web, where anybody could contribute, and anybody could say anything, has gone.  The world-wide web looks very like the offline world.  It is controlled, monetized and taxed by people who contribute nothing to it, but demand total control.  They have not hesitated to abuse this power for political purposes, just as broadcasters have done for all the years of my life.

I miss the old web.  I don’t want this commercial, despotic monster, controlled by people whom I should not care to know.

But where do we go now?

I have no idea what the answer is.  Change is the only certainty.  All the same, I miss the old web.

PS.  Apparently this will be my 4,445th blog post.  According to WordPress.

Share

“Duo mercatores” – Another miracle story about St Nicholas (BHL 6159)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Here’s the Latin text and a Google translation of another of the random miracle stories that fill up the medieval manuscripts of the Life of St Nicholas.  This one is uncommon. The Bollandists assign it the number BHL 6159, and it only appears in three manuscripts, all in Belgium.  None of these are online.  Luckily the Bollandists transcribed the text in Anecdota Bollandiana 4, p.203-4, which I reproduce below.  (AB4 is actually online at Google Books, but good luck in finding it!  I wish I’d kept the URL).

Again the translation is that of Google, but I’ve tweaked it a bit.

Duo mercatores consocii fuerunt, qui lustrando diversas regiones vendendo et emendo infinitam congregaverant pecuniam.  Deinde repatriantes, in cujusdam noctis crepusculo in hospitio unius eorum magno sunt recepti gaudio.  Nec mora, post susceptam cibi potusque receptionem fessa corpora dormitioni dederunt.

Interea antiquus ille humani generis persecutor fallaciae venenum in pectus mulieris infudit, ut domino suo consiliaretur illum socium suum clam intempesta nocte interimere, quatenus divitias utrorumque labore partas solus obtineret.  Quod dum mulier perfida auribus viri primo renuentis hortando, admonendo, obsecrando saepius instillavit, instinctu antiqui serpentis voluntati suae pestiferae acquievit citissime.  Igitur mitem immites, fidelem infideles sopori deditum more lupi membratim distrahunt, membra quidem in penetralibus suis occultantes, et immensam illius pecuniam in receptaculis abscondentes.

Matutinali vero tempore fama undique replevit confinia unum illorum cum gaudio reversum, alterum vero nusquam comparuisse.  Uxor igitur illius, hac dira legatione suscepta, quasi amens socium mariti sui aggreditur, quaerens quo vir suus devenisset. At ille, plenus fallacia, affirmabat multimodis juramentis hesterna nocte eum cum copiosa pecunia ab hospitio suo discessisse, nec postea vidisse.

Mulier vero his verbis utpote sagittis vulnerata letiferis, ad statuam sancti Nicolai, quam adorare consueverat, recucurrit, dolore dictante, in haec verba prorumpens:  “Tu gemma sacerdotii, electe Dei confessor, Nicolae, cujus misericordia et pietati virum meum, me ipsam et res nostras commiseram, quare nos oblivioni dedisti? Quamobrem virum meum mihi non reddidisti?  Vere nunc, si maritum meum tibi commissum mihi non reddideris, nomini tuo amodo nec gloriam conferam, nec honorem.”

Haec et his similia postquam flendo dixerat, discessit, obvians sancto Nicolao. Cui sanctus his usus est verbis: “Quid fles?  cur lacrimis manas?” Cui dum mulier omnia sicut gesta erant seriatim exposuerat, a sancto Nicolao ducta est ad viri sui occisorem.

Quem electus Dei servus his aggreditur interrogationibus: “Dic mihi, miser, dic ubi sit maritus istius mulieris.”   Qui postquam juramentis multimodis affirmavit socium suum in praeteritae noctis crepusculo sanum et incolumem discessisse, egregius Dei amicus, invocato Creatoris coeli et terrae nomine, occisum admonuit ut, si in receptaculis illius hospitii occultatus fuisset, responsum non denegaret.   Mira res: vix sanctus sermonem finierat, cum lingua dilaniati corporis aperta voce se adesse respondit.  Cujus vocem vir Domini hilari corde percipiens, membra illius dilacerata sibi praesentari jussit; et invocata summi regis majestate, anima ad corpus rediit.

Quo viso, postquam electus Dei servus omnipotenti Deo dignas persolvit gratias, erectum virum uxori reddidit, dicens: “Ecce, per Dei misericordiam virum quem mihi commendasti tibi sanum reddo.” Unde mulier laetificata gratias egit sancto Nicolao et omnipotenti Deo, cui est honor et gloria in seculorum secula.

There were two merchant partners who, by visiting different countries and selling and buying, had amassed an infinite amount of money.  Then returning home, in the twilight of a certain night they were received with great joy in the lodgings of one of them.  And without delay, after receiving the welcome of food and drink, their tired bodies gave way to sleep.

Meanwhile, that ancient persecutor of the human race poured the poison of deception into a woman’s breast, to advise her lord to kill his partner secretly in the dead of night, in order that he alone may obtain the riches obtained by the labour of both.  While the perfidious woman repeatedly poured into the ears of the man, who at first refused, encouraging, admonishing, and imploring, he very quickly yielded to the suggestion of the ancient serpent of his malicious will. So like wolves the faithless savage ones cut the sleeping mild faithful one to pieces, indeed hiding the limbs in their inmost places, and concealing his immense wealth in the hidden places.

But in the morning the report filled the neighbourhood from all sides that one of them had returned with joy, but that the other was nowhere to be found. His wife, therefore, receiving this terrible news, attacked her husband’s companion as if mad, demanding where her husband had gone. But he, full of deceit, affirmed with many oaths that he had left his lodgings last night with a large sum of money, and that he had not seen him since.

But with these words the woman, as if she had been pierced by arrows, ran back to the statue of St. Nicholas, which she was accustomed to venerate, and, speaking with pain, burst into these words: “You jewel of the priesthood, chosen confessor of God, Nicholas, to whose mercy and piety I committed my husband, myself, and our affairs, why have you consigned us to forgetfulness?  Why did you not give me back my husband? Truly now, if you do not return to me my husband who was committed to you, I will give neither glory nor honor to your name.”

After she had said these and similar things, weeping, she departed, and met St. Nicholas. To whom the saint used these words: “Why do you weep? why do you shed tears?” While the woman seriously explained everything as it had happened to him, she was led by St. Nicholas to her husband’s murderer.

The chosen servant of God attacked him with these questions: “Tell me, wretch, tell me where that woman’s husband is.”  After he had affirmed by many oaths that his companion had departed safe and sound at the twilight of the previous night, the distinguished friend of God, invoking the name of the Creator of heaven and earth, commanded the murdered man, that if he was hidden in the hiding places of that lodging, he would not refuse to answer. A strange thing: scarcely had the saint finished speaking, when, with the tongue of his torn body, he answered in a clear voice that he was present.  The man of God, perceiving his voice with a joyful heart, commanded that his torn limbs should be presented to him; and being invoked by the majesty of the supreme king, the soul returned to the body.

When he saw this, after the chosen servant of God had paid the due thanks to Almighty God, he restored the husband to his wife, saying: “Behold, by the mercy of God I restore to you the man whom you entrusted to me.” Whereupon the woman, delighted, gave thanks to Saint Nicholas and to Almighty God, to whom be honour and glory forever and ever.

    *    *    *    *

This story reminded me of an anecdote.  There were once a pair of men who ran a shop.  While cashing up, one discovered that a customer had inadvertently given him two $50 notes stuck together instead of one.  This, he said to his son, meditatively, raised an important moral question: should he tell his business partner?  The answer of this honest merchant to his dilemma is not recorded.

Share

Fact Check: Did Clement of Alexandria say that “Every woman should be overwhelmed with shame at the thought that she is a woman”?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An interesting query on yesterday’s post here:

I wanted to know if you know where that quote attributed to Clement of Alexandria “Every woman should be overwhelmed with shame at the thought that she is a woman” comes from? In fact, some indicate that this phrase comes from Clement’s book “pedagogue 2”, but when I went to look there I did not find this quote.

As far as I can tell, the latest translation of the Paedagogus or Instructor is the 19th century Ante-Nicene Fathers, online here.  This does not contain these words.

Lists of quotes designed to demonise always omit context, and often vary in wording and attribution.  Our quote is not different in this respect.  Some suggest that it comes from the Stromateis or Miscellanies book 3, but it does not.  It appears in somewhat varying forms around the web, such as “every woman should be filled with shame by the thought that she is a woman”.  A hate-article, “20 disgustingly misogynist quotes from religious leaders” – none of them Muslim, for some reason – at Salon, by a certain Valerie Tarico, Oct 15, 2014, (online here) gives it in this version, which is sometimes combined with the other:

[For women] the very consciousness of their own nature must evoke feelings of shame. —Saint Clement of Alexandria, Christian theologian (c150-215) Pedagogues II, 33, 2.

There are a number of books from India which reference Bertrand Russell as a source, such as this one.  But that book only references his smug tract in favour of adultery, Marriage and Morality (1929) – one feels for his poor abused wife – which does not contain any reference to Clement of Alexandria.

Rather more helpful is an article “Religion as the root of sexism” by a certain Barbara G. Walker, published at Freethought Today 28 (2011) and online here.

Clement of Alexandria said every woman should be filled with shame by the thought that she is a woman, and quoted Jesus’ words from the Gospel According to the Egyptians: “I have come to destroy the works of the female.”

The article notes:

Barbara G. Walker is author of the monumental feminist/freethought sourcebook The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (1983). Her 20 other books, published by Harper & Row, include The Skeptical Feminist.

If you follow the reference (the same claim appears on p.921) and look up the sources, you are led back to R. Briffault, “The Mothers“, NY: MacMillan (1927) vol. 3, p.373, online here.  This does give a specific reference:

“Every woman,” says Clement of Alexandria, “ought to be filled with shame at the thought that she is a woman.” [4]

4.  Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus, ii. 2,in Migne, op. cit., Series Graeca, vol. viii, col. 429.

I.e. Patrologia Graeca 8, col. 429.  This too does not contain the words given; but there is indeed something here, in Paedagogus, book 2, chapter 2, towards the end:

Image of PG8, col. 429, with relevant part highlighted

The Ante-Nicene Fathers translation (online here) gives this as follows:

For nothing disgraceful is proper for man, who is endowed with reason; much less for woman to whom it brings modesty even to reflect of what nature she is.

The subject is drunkenness, and how inappropriate it is for men or women.

Greek:

οὐδεὶς γὰρ ψόφος οἰκεῖοσ ἀνδρὶ λογικῷ, ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον γυναικί, ᾗ καὶ τὸ συνειδέναι αὐτὴν ἑαυτῇ, ἥτις εἴη μόνον, αἰσχύνην φέρει.

The Latin, and Google translate:

Nihil enim, quod probram affert et vituperationem, viro, qui ratione est praeditus, convenit, multo autem minus mulieri, cui vel ipsum cogitare quaenam sit, ei affert pudorem.

For nothing that brings shame and reproach is suitable for a man who is endowed with reason, but much less for a woman, to whom even to think what she is, brings her shame.

The Sources Chrétiennes 108 French translation (p.71), with Google translate:

2. Il ne convient pas de faire du bruit (en buvant), ni à un homme raisonnable , ni encore moins à une femme, à qui le fait d’avoir conscience elle-même de ce qu’elle est, suffit à inspirer de la pudeur.

2. It is not appropriate to make noise (while drinking), neither for a reasonable man, nor even less for a woman, to whom the fact of being aware of herself of what she is, is enough to inspire modesty.

Interestingly the Greek and French have section numbers.  The French edition is mainly a reprint of Stählin’s edition in the GCS series (GCS vol. 12, 1905), and this text is indeed found in section 33.2, just as in the Salon article.  Amusingly Stählin on p.lxxxiii of his edition mentions the numbering thus:

Die Seitenzahlen der Ausgaben Sylburgs und Potters stehen mit S und P am Rand, eine Tabelle mit den Seiten der Pariser Ausgabe (1629) wird am Schluß der Ausgabe beigegeben werden, da nach ihr noch immer häufig citiert wird. Die Paragrapheneinteilung von Klotz habe ich trotz ihrer Mängel beibehalten, um nicht die Verwirrung (oft wird Clemens in einem Buche auf dreierlei Art citiert) noch größer zu machen. Doch habe ich die großen Paragraphen in Unterabschnitte zerlegt. In der Ausgabe selbst ist stets darnach (mit Weglassung der Capitelzahlen) citiert.

The page numbers of Sylburg’s and Potter’s editions are given in the margin [of my edition], and a table with the page numbers of the Paris edition (1629) will be added at the end of the edition, since it is still frequently cited with them. I have retained Klotz’s division of paragraphs,  despite its shortcomings, so as not to create even more confusion (often Clemens is quoted in three ways in one book). But I have divided the major paragraphs into subsections. In the edition itself it is always cited thus (with omission of the chapter numbers).

The smaller subsections are convenient – the original “chapter 2” is very long – and Stählin’s “subsection” 33 is indeed where our text is found.

This passage of Clement, I think, is indeed the origin of our “quote”.

Exactly what Clement means here is not clear, for it is merely an aside.  It looks to me as if the context is noisy drunkenness; wrong for any rational man, and still more so for a woman precisely because she is a woman.  For nobody, in antiquity or now, wants to see a loud drunken slapper.

But it is quite possible that Clement did have the inferiority of women – a commonplace in antiquity – in mind.  He is writing to people in his own age, after all.  This was an age with much the same vices as our own.  But because everybody owned female slaves, these women were abused even worse than now.  Clement writes, as all the fathers do, to increase female self-respect and social standing, and they are not afraid to appeal to contemporary contempt for certain sorts of female behaviour.

Such nuances are not of interest to the polemicist, nor particularly to us.  Briffault seems to be one of those awful people in the early 20th century who, under pretence of science, sought to debauch the morals of society.   What we have here, I think, is Briffault “improving” the text in order to create a one-liner.  This he could then include in a hit-list of patristic sayings, designed to shock, in order to sway the reader to support his arguments for vice.  The other variants then arise as others “improve” it further to increase the impact.

Share

Five miracle stories about St Nicholas

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The medieval manuscripts that contain the Life of St Nicholas almost always continue with a mass of miracle stories about the saint.  The 1751 pre-critical edition by Falconius does the same.  The genuine Life by John the Deacon ends with his “chapter 13” – the numbering is his – but there are more chapters.  Anybody who looks at the manuscripts will find this mass of stuff on the end, which frankly adds very little.  C. W. Jones, in his book on the legends of the saint, dismisses it in a  sentence.

Since I scanned Falconius, I thought I would scan up to the end.  This would give me a file with the additional material in it.  When working with the manuscripts, you can get lost, and it can be  very helpful to do “Ctrl-F” on some wording and find out where you are.

Just for fun, I then pushed each chapter in turn through Google Translate, to get an idea of the content.  I was amazed – once again – at the quality of the translation.  I did the same with Falconius’ increasingly sarcastic footnotes.

I won’t do much more with this.  It is just a means to an end.  But nobody ever does anything with this stuff, as far as I can see.  So I thought that I would share the contents here.  I’ve not troubled to correct the translation much, so it’s more or less as it came out.  Of course if you see an obvious error, do signal it in the comments and I will fix it.

The effort was valuable in another way.  We can get an idea of just how carefully Falconius worked on his edition.  How?  Well, from the fact that he misnumbered his own chapters.  There really are *two* chapters  marked “XVII”, “17”!  Not good.

I’ve added the BHL numbers for each text (=Bibliographia Hagiographica Latina, the index of all saints’ lives).  I also went and looked at the earliest manuscript, Paris BNF lat. 989 (10th century) for the places where Falconius indicated uncertainty.

    *    *    *    *

The start of the first story in Paris BNF 989, fol. 91v.

[BHL 6150]  XIV. (a) Quodam itaque tempore, advenit quadam mulier, de vico qui dicitur Cyparissus, ad sanctissimam domum Archangeli, qui vocatur Croba, ubi erat sanctus Nicolaus. Haec adtulit filium suum, quem iniquissimus daemon ita vexabat crudeliter ut etiam vestimentum, quo induebatur, dentibus laceraret. Quem projecit ad pedes sancti Nicolai, flens et dicens, “Miserere serve Dei huic misello filio meo, quia fortiter vexatur a daemonio.” Pietate autem ductus, sanctus Dei famulus super eum apprehendit manum ejus, et insuper flavit in ore illius. Statimque, divina virtute et beati Nicolai meritis emundatus, immundus ab eo evanuit spiritus, sanusque ad propria, cum matre sua exsultans, reversus est.

(a) Has lectiones, 14.15.16.17 & 18, non Johannes Diaconus, sed alius ex Actis antiquis consarcinavit cap. 30. ipso seculo decimo, vel undecimo (quod est verisimilius) qui, ad usum Ecclesiae Neapolitanae, Diaconum in lectiones redegit.

At a certain time, there came a certain woman, from a town called Cyparissus, to the most holy house of the Archangel, called Croba, where St. Nicholas was. She brought her son, whom the most wicked demon was tormenting so cruelly that he even tore the clothes which he was wearing with his teeth. She laid him at the feet of St. Nicholas, weeping and saying, “Have mercy on this poor son of mine, servant of God, because he is strongly tormented by a demon.” But led by piety, the holy servant of God took hold of his hand over him, and, moreover, blew into his mouth. And at once, cleansed by the divine power and by the merits of the blessed Nicholas, the unclean spirit disappeared from him, and in good health he returned, rejoicing with his mother, to his home.

(a). These readings, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18, are not by John the Deacon, but were stitched on the end from some earlier Acts, ch. 30, by someone else, of the 10th or (more likely) 11th century, who arranged John’s text into readings according to the usage of the Neapolitan church.

The BHLMS lists 49 manuscripts of this story.

[BHL 6151] XV. Rursus autem alio tempore, altera mulier, de vico Neapoleos (b), ab immundo Spiritu graviter torquebatur. Quam assumens vir ejus, adduxit ad monasterium Viri Dei, ubi ipse tunc temporis morabatur (c), et projecit eam ad pedes beati Nicolai, dicens, “Sancte Dei, succurre huic mulieri miserae, quae graviter torquetur a daemonio.” Sanctus autem Dei Nicolaus, mox, ut orationem fudit pro ea ad Dominum, immundum ab ea pepulit Spiritum, et sana effecta, abiit in domum suam, glorificans Deum,et sanctam Sion. Hoc erat vocabulum monasterii Sancti Nicolai: id est Sancta Hierusalem.

(b) Haec sumpta est ex fine cap. 29.  Sed ibi pro Neapoli est Nicapo.

(c) Sic saltat foveam homo cautus.  Ubi modo est, ille Myrensis Archiepiscopus Nicolaus?

Then again, at another time, another woman, from the village of Naples,(b) was severely tormented by an unclean spirit. Her husband picked her up and brought her to the monastery of the Man of God, where at that time he was staying, and laid her at the feet of blessed Nicholas, saying, “Saint of God, help this poor woman, who is severely tormented by a demon.” Then Nicholas, the saint of God, immediately, as he poured out a prayer for her to the Lord, drove away the impure spirit from her, and being healed, she went to her house, glorifying God and Holy Sion. This was the name of the monastery of St. Nicholas: that is, “Holy Jerusalem”.

(b) This is taken from the end of ch. 29. But there for “Neapoli” it reads “Nicapo”.

(c) Thus a cautious man leaps over a pitfall. In what way is this about Archbishop Nicolaus of Myra?

The BHLMS lists 48 manuscripts of this story.  The oldest is BNF 989 (10th c.) which reads “Necapoleos”.

[BHL 6152] XVI. Venit quidam homo ad Sanctam Sion, nomine Nicolaus, de vico Sibino, (d) tempore Sancti Jejunii. Hic adduxit quendam infirmum, super animali sedentem, ad Sanctum Nicolaum, ut saluti eum pristinae redderet. Erat autem homo ille toto exsiccatus corpore, ab ea aegritudine, quae Graeco vocabulo, “paralysis”, Latine vero “resolutio membrorum” dicitur. Quem in conspectu viri Dei, in terram projiciens, obsecrat dicens, “Nicolae vir Dei, pro isto misello homine interveni, quatenus per tuas sanctas orationes propitietur ei Deus.” Cujus infirmitati, plurimum vir Dei condolens Nicolaus, assumpto oleo de dominica lampade, perunxit eum. Inde autem facta super eum oratione, illico eum pristinae reddidit sanitati. Benedictioneque percepta, reversus est ad domum suam, gratias agens glorificans Deum.

(d) Ex eodem cap. 30. sumpta.

A certain man, named Nicolaus, from the town of Sibinum,(d) came to Holy Sion at the time of Holy Lent. Here he brought a certain sick man, sitting on an animal, to St. Nicholas, that he might restore him to his former health. Now that man was withered throughout his body, from that sickness which in the Greek word is “paralysis”, but in Latin is called “the dissolution of the limbs”.  In the presence of the man of God, laying him on the ground, he beseeched him, saying, “Nicholas, man of God, intercede for this poor man, inasmuch as through your holy prayers God may be propitiated for him.” Nicholas, the man of God, sympathizing greatly with his infirmity, took oil from the Lord’s lamp and anointed him. Then, after a prayer was made over him, he immediately restored him to his former health. Having received the blessing, he returned to his house, giving thanks and glorifying God.

(d) Taken from the same ch. 30.

The BHLMS lists 47 manuscripts of this story.  BNF lat. 989 = “Sivino”.

[BHL 6153] XVII. Nec multo post, quidam energumenus, de vico Cendino (e); cui nomen erat Timotheus, adductus est in Monasterium Sanctae Sion, ad famulum Dei Nicolaum. Habebat enim homo ille spiritum pessimum, qui ita eum exagitabat, ut, per ligna et lapides, hinc et inde, caput suum percutiendo contunderet. Unde factum est, ut de creberrimis percussionibus, plagis horridis, caput vulneratum haberet, ita ut etiam sanies cum vermibus proflueret. Sustentatus itaque a tribus viris, perductus est, ut diximus, in Sanctam Sion, ad sanctissimum Dei famulum Nicolaum: Quem etiam orabant, ut suis eum curare precibus dignaretur. Inquiunt: “Nicolae serve Dei excelsi, conspice miseriam hominis hujus; ora pro eo ad Deum, ut possit evadere, et Christi consequi misericordiam.” Quem Sanctus Nicolaus, propriis consignans manibus; daemonium ab eo expulit, et ab omni aegritudine liberavit, et sanum et incolumem remisit ad propria: gaudens et glorificans Deum, qui hanc confessori suo, gratiam contulerat Nicolao.

(e) Et haec ex eodem cap. 30. sumpta est.  Sed pro “Cendino”, ibi est “Cedemorum”.  Num proprium sit “Cendenum”?

17.1. Not long after, a certain strong man, from the town of Cendinum,(e) whose name was Timotheus, was brought to the monastery of Holy Sion, to the servant of God Nicholas. For that man had a very bad spirit, which so agitated him, that he was bruising his head from side to side with sticks and stones. As a result he had a wounded head from the frequent knocks and terrible blows and it was oozing pus and worms. Supported therefore by three men, he was led, as we have said, to Holy Sion, to the most holy servant of God, Nicholas: whom they also begged, that he might condescend to cure him with his prayers. They said, “Nicholas, servant of God on high, behold the misery of this man; pray for him to God, that he may escape, and obtain the mercy of Christ.” St. Nicholas, sealing him with his own hands, cast out the demon from him, and freed him from all sickness, and sent him back to his own home, safe and sound, rejoicing and glorifying God, who had bestowed this favour upon his confessor, Nicholas.

(e) And these things were taken from the same ch. 30. But instead of “Cendino” this reads “Cedemorum”.  Possibly the correct reading is “Cendenum”?

The BHLMS lists 50 manuscripts of this story.  BNF 989 = “Cendino”.

[BHL 6154]  XVII. Cum igitur his, et aliis pluribus miraculis, ac virtutibus beatissimus floreret Nicolaus, decidit in aegritudinem, de qua, ex hac instabili luce subtractus est. Qui cum jaceret in grabatu; accessit ad eum quaedam mulier lunatica, de vico Olcon (f); cujus nomen erat Eugenia. Quae eum exorabat, ut sibi conferre dignaretur sanitatis gaudia.  Cujus precibus beatus Nicolaus annuens; pro ea fudit orationem ad Dominum. Deinde signavit eam: sicque sanitatem, quam optabat consequi; adipisci promeruit. Remeans ergo mulier ad propria; sana et incolumis, magnifice collaudavit Dominum Jesum Christum; qui in Sanctis suis, semper est mirabilis.

(f) Haec etiam ex Actis sumpta est cap. 31.

17.2.  Therefore, while the most blessed Nicholas was flourishing with these and many other miracles and virtues, he fell into an illness, because of which he was withdrawn from this unstable light. When he was lying on a pallet, a certain lunatic woman came to him, from the town of Olcon (f), whose name was Eugenia. She entreated him to condescend to confer upon her the joys of health. Blessed Nicholas, assenting to her prayers, poured out a prayer for her to the Lord. Then he signed her [with the cross], and so succeeded in securing the health which she wished to obtain. The woman, therefore, returning to her own home, safe and sound, praised the Lord Jesus Christ magnificently, who is always wonderful in His Saints.

(f) This is also taken from those Acts ch. 31.

The BHLMS lists 59 manuscripts of this story.

    *    *    *    *

There are many more tales of this sort.  I shall look at some more.

Share

Happy New Year

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A very happy new year to you all!

This year I intend to continue looking at the Latin text of the legends of St Nicholas, and comparing the manuscripts.  I don’t know what will be the end goal of this, but I’m enjoying doing it.  At the moment I am still collecting and making PDFs of manuscripts.

I usually write a post whenever I feel like it.  Last year, for the first time ever, I committed to a monthly post from the Chronography of 354.  Unfortunately , during the year, quite a lot of things happened in my life that were not very good.  Writing those posts swiftly became a burden.  I shall not make that mistake this year.  It’s back to writing about whatever!

Share

Learning by doing again – Recensio part 6

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve now collated my Latin text – all 6 sentences of it – with 2 early editions and 24 manuscripts.  I have at least another 6-10 manuscripts accessible to me to collate.

As I thought, this is a case where you have to learn by doing.  You have to attempt to collate the text and manuscripts, somehow, anyhow, just guessing how, in order to learn how to do it, and how not to do it.  Then you modafinil get go back and do it properly.

I’d like to record a couple of things which are emerging from my first pass.

Point 1.  Don’t alter your “base text” in mid-collate.  If you do, the early parts of your collation become uncertain.

The “base text” does not matter at all.  It is NOT your final text.  Rather it is some “textus receptus” that you found in a crummy early edition.  It’s a random text.  But…. it’s the text against which you collate.  Unless you want to record every word of every witness, you have to have something where your silence says “the text at this point in the manuscript is the same as the ‘base text'”.

I have indeed made this mistake already.  What I should have ambien done is have another line, which is my proposed text.  That I could alter as I choose.

Point 2.  Expect to collate more than once.

When you start, you don’t know how the text varies.  You don’t know if it varies only in individual words, or if whole chunks are involved. So take this part of the text:

favet**, credite mihi, favet nostrae devotioni.

Now you have xanax to compile your collation using a) the word or phrase, followed by b) the manuscript shelfmark.  Doing it the other way doesn’t work for more than about three manuscripts.  So you gaily put something like this:

favet – Angers 802, Arras 462, Milan P113supp

and you mark which “favet” in the base text.

But as you proceed, you find that you’ve goofed.  You should have recorded both “favet”s separately.  Your notes start to change, until you reach something like this:

REDO THE WHOLE THING “favet, credite mihi, favet” (he favours) – Mom.; erased BNF 2627, Fal., Angers 802, Arras 462, Milan P113supp, BNF 1864; BNF 5287, BNF 5296C, BNF 5344  RECHECK, BNF 5573, BNF 11750, BNF 12600, Saint-Omer 715
“adjuvat credite michi et favet” – BNF 5284, BNF 5345
“adjuvat…adjuvat” – BNF 5360, BNF 5607, BNF 18303, BNF NAL 2335, Rouen 1383
“adjuvat” (=he helps) – Wien ONB 12831 (15th), Orleans 342, BNF 989 RECHECK

The unit of variation isn’t the individual “favet” but the pair favet…favet.  There are four possible combinations of “favet” and “adjuvat“.  You’ve got to record this part of the text differently.  You would have done it differently from the start, had you known.  You’re going to have to go back to the first few manuscripts and see how they look against what you now know about the variability of the text.

So… your first pass through the collation process is really just a means to learn what the “units of variation” are.

Point 3.  Note down any cases that explain a divergence of reading.

I’ve been wondering why I have variations between “expectet” and “expectat“.  But I have now come across the practice of writing “expectet” as “expect&“.  That abbreviation at the end, in some versions of book hand, looks almost identical to a lower-case “a” with a “t” right against it.  So that by itself explains the “at” variant.

Likewise, as we saw in a previous post, in Beneventan minuscule I was really uncertain what the word was.  It looked to me like “notata“.  But someone who knew the hand told me it was “nacta“.  The collation shows that these are the two main variants of the text at that point.  Conclusion?  An early ancestor of every manuscript of the “notata” family was written in a Beneventan book hand, and the scribe misread it – just as I did – when he made a copy in Carolingian book hand.  The text was composed in Naples, so the existence of such a copy in Beneventan is almost inevitable.

I’ve also noted that some manuscripts use the Tironian symbol for “et” (=”and”).  Usefully there is a unicode character for it: “⁊“.  When the “⁊” is faint and narrow – and it often looks just like the lower portion of an “i” -, then the scribe may simply not see it.  It can quite easily be mistaken for text on the other side of the leaf.  I found myself looking twice, in one manuscript.  So the presence or absence of an “et” is not necessarily significant.

Point 4.  The early editions are bad stuff.  The editors have introduced changes which are not found in any manuscript, and seem entirely unnecessary.

I have clomid order not, of course, examined every manuscript.  But I’ve looked at rather a lot now.  There is a consistent pattern of differences, between the manuscripts on the one hand, and both of the early editions (in different places) on the other.  I know that people tend to assume that the editors just printed what they had before them.  I am less sure of this now.

I’m going to carry on with the collate, and process the remaining half-dozen manuscripts into the working document.  But once I reach the end, I will do it all again; except that this time, I know what to look for.

Share