Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
Czech scholar Petr Kitzler has started his own site. He writes:
I have started my own site, as you advised. See https://sites.google.com/site/petrtert/. For now, this is mainly my bibliography, with as many resources on-line or full-texts as was possible. I will of course update the pages, but it depends on my spare time (which looks bad these days). I hope people will find it interesting.
At a conference a few years ago, I remember hearing an anecdote about how the original Loeb translation of the Apostolic Fathers was made. The translator was the great Kirsopp Lake.
According to the story, Lake made his translation by lying on a sofa in his rooms with a copy of the Greek text in his hand, and simply reading a translation to a secretary as he lay there.
Those were the days of real classical learning!
…is here, which I link to mainly as an excuse to display a rather amusing picture from it:
Anyone who has “debated” with atheists online — especially anyone whom the atheists found better informed than themselves — will understand.
I thought I’d better sacrifice my Saturday and come up to Cambridge and actually look at the Corpus Christianorum edition of Anastasius of Sinai, before negotiations with Brepols to reprint extracts got much further.
It’s a rainy day, here. The university library is full of students, some with college scarfs, working away — for with the rain, what point in skiving off? It brought back memories of doing the same when I was college. I’m sat in the computer room, where I had to check which bits of Ambrose’s Commentary on Luke I need, before photocopying them from Riain’s translation.
The volume of Anastasius was to hand, and I started looking for questions 148 and 153. But… there were none. There was 103 questions and some more in an appendix. What there was not, tho, was any indication of how to map the “traditional” numeration from Mai and Migne to this edition.
Fortunately the introduction was in English. But … there’s a learning point here. Everyone who comes to my Eusebius volume will want to be able to locate the material referenced by other books against Migne or Mai or Beyer quickly and easily. The very, very first thing they need, at the front of the book, is an explanation of how I have arranged the book, what I have printed, and where they can find the bit they want.
Unfortunately the CCSG editor — who worked on the book for more than 30 years! — did not have a friend to tell him this. I wasn’t completely certain, but it looks as if he simply didn’t edit some of the material from the Migne edition of Anastasius. He doesn’t actually say so. Instead he edits what he believes to be original. That’s understandable; but it took me a frustrating half an hour thumbing through the book to come to that tentative conclusion. This we must avoid with our book.
On the positive side, it means I don’t need the permission of Brepols to use their text, since they didn’t include the material! And the only bit in question is the extracts from Jerome, differences totalling five words! To use those five words, I have to hand them control of the circulation of the book, and pay them money. Well… I think I can live without those five words. But I will consider it.
Not that I am slagging off Brepols here. I still don’t believe in the claim of copyright; it’s clearly a scam to claim copyright on an ancient author, by virtue of editorial tweaks to a few words here or there. Indeed if you did that with a 19th century author, you would be firmly shown the door by a court. But I think that Brepols, by their own lights, are dealing with me rather generously. It is simply that someone like me, with a Creative Commons destination in mind, is not the sort of thing a business usually deals with. Indeed the new world of the web that is appearing all around us must be very confusing and threatening to many a publisher.
I think that Brepols are genuinely trying to be flexible and to help, for an offline publisher. And … they have staff to pay, like everyone else, so it is understandable that they don’t want to give away money. In publishing it is the rights that give a “long tail” of income to a title.
I’ve decided to see if I can market the CDROM of the Fathers and Additional Fathers a little. It will be good practice for book selling. I’m going to have an experiment on Facebook. I’ve set up a couple of pages here to start with, and let’s see what happens! It ought to get a few more copies of the Fathers out into the world.
Joseph A. Munitiz SJ has edited the Quaestiones et responsiones of the 7th century writer Anastasius of Sinai, published by Brepols. I learn today that he is working on an English translation. This is excellent news, of course. I was thinking about this, and realised that he might benefit from the translation of the three fragments quoted from Eusebius.
So I’ve written today to offer him a copy. It doesn’t hurt me, and might help him; and let’s face it, anyone prepared to grapple for free with these texts is doing us all a great service.
UPDATE: Email bounced! Some days nothing works.
I have continued to read a cheap reprint of Harnack’s Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteratur bis Eusebius, Theil 1, Halfte 2. The volume has no index, so I have amused myself by compiling one in pencil at the front, and scribbling English notes in the margins.
While doing so I came across his notes on catenas — medieval Greek commentaries compiled by linking together chains (catenas) of quotations from earlier writers. These seemed concise and useful, so I was thinking about transcribing and translating them. Then I found <blush> that I had already transcribed them on this blog here! Time to translate it, I think.
But I was looking at that data, and remarking on the statement of Harnack that Possinus printed the catena on Matthew of Nicetas of Serrae in 1646 at Toulouse. Now quite a few of the fragments of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Gospel problems and solutions come from Nicetas on Luke, published from a Vatican ms., and a few from Possinus; but Migne does not link the two.
So who was Possinus? A google search turns up the meagre information that he was a 17th century French Jesuit, Pierre Poussines, latinized as Petrus Possinus. He certainly published a Catena Graecorum Patrum in Evangelium secundum Marcum, Rome, 1672. He worked with Balthasar Corderius on a catena, Symbolarum in Matthæum tomus alter, quo continetur catena patrum Græcorum triginta … interprete Balthasare Corderio, Boude, 1647.
According to J. W. Burgon, The last twelve verses of the Gospel according to S. Mark vindicated, p.134, the 1673 catena was found by Possinus in the library of Charles de Montchal, Archbishop of Toulouse.
In the Oxford movement text of the Catena Aurea, vol. 3, pt. 1, p.ix., we find the following statement:
Mai has published a considerable part of another Catena, in his ninth vol. Vet. Script. Its date is very near the end of the 11th century, and it is entitled, ἀπὸ τῆς ἐκλογῆς τοῦ Νικητοῦ Σεῤῥῶν. He ascribes the first Catena to the same author, and a similar title is prefixed to a MS. in the Coislin Library, (Bibl. Coisl. No. 201.) of a later date, and containing a Catena on St. Luke of sixty-two Fathers. These three Catenae, though differing in date, yet very similar in the names and number of the authors cited, must all be traced to the same source. Nor does there seem any reason why they should not be successive copies, only increased as time went on, of the original MS. of Nicetas, whose name they bear. Nicetas flourished about 1077. He was at first Deacon at Constantinople, then Bishop of Serrae in Macedonia, afterwards Archbishop of Heraclea in Thrace. He is proved by Wolf (De Catenis) to have been the author of a Catena on Job, generally assigned to Olympiodorus; and Lambecius (v. 63. iii. 81.) describes a Catena of his on the Psalms. That published by Possinus on St. Matthew, from a MS. in the Library of the Elector of Bavaria, contains extracts from thirty Fathers, with a prologue and several expositions under the name of Nicetas. It seems very probable then that Nicetas was the author of a new class of Catenae, far exceeding in size and completeness those which previously existed. For among a great number of MSS. Catenae on the Gospels in the Paris, Venice, and Vienna Libraries, which bear date of the 10th or 11th centuries, there are scarcely any which number more than twelve Fathers, none certainly which approach to the extent of those above mentioned.
But much of this again relates to the catena on Luke. Hmm. Why so hard to find out much about Possinus? I did find a statement that his catena was mainly based on extracts from Chrysostom, but then most catenas are.
Perhaps we shall just have to wait until more older scholarship appears online.
While doing this search I stumbled across a reference to an Ante-Nicene Exegesis of the Gospels, ed. HD Smith, 6 vols. (London: SPCK, 1925). This apparently includes quotes from Possinus’ catena on Matthew. I must confess I had never heard of the book! But it sounds very interesting. I wonder if it is online?
Snow here. I had to leave work at lunchtime on Wednesday and have been home since. This morning I couldn’t see where my driveway was! I tried to drive to work this morning, but I had to turn back. The roads were not too bad, but accidents were happening, and a bridge near me was closed.
On the way to and fro, I saw that the temperature on my car thermometer dropped to -8.5°C and stayed there for mile after mile. My screenwash froze, but I fixed that by adding anti-freeze to it. However at that temperature, I was pretty nervous whether the anti-freeze in the engine coolant would be OK, if I left the car outside all day.
But one positive effect of all this (unpaid) time off is that I have been working on editing the Eusebius, Gospel Problems and Solutions. Today has mostly been about tidying up. There is such a large amount of physical labour involved in doing a book. This evening I’ve been adding references to each extract given by Mai from Jerome’s Commentary on Matthew. Simple stuff, but time-consuming. I posted off materials to correct the Latin fragments to the translator yesterday.
I’ve had to order various books. My original plan was a day-trip to Cambridge, but this has gone out of the window with the snow. So I am reliant on an inter-library loan system that is both expensive — $8 per loan — and slow and unreliable. Here’s hoping!
The snow has also brought other problems, with plumbing and health. Fortunately I have been able to deal with them all!
But … aside from the urgent unimportancies of life… the snow is beautiful. I am reminded of the line in the Silmarillion where the evil of Morgoth in devising bitter cold produces a wonderland of ice. So it is here.
I found myself yesterday evening, when I had put the car away, just standing outside my front door and pausing. All was still. The road was full of snow. The sky was dark, but light was reflected from the snow onto the underside of clouds, and the world was light anyway. I just stood there… and watched the magic of winter. We must, we really must stop, and look around us. Store up these memories, memories of beauty.
Then I hastily ran into the house!
An atheist post online used the following as a signature:
“Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child-mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after-years relieved of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth – often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you can not get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.”
No reference was given, but the passage can be found attributed to a letter by Synesius. Unfortunately it seems clear that this is not part of the standard English translation by Fitzgerald, which is online at Livius.org:
So… does anyone know where Synesius says anything like this?
I am suspicious. Much of this doesn’t sound right.
UPDATE: No sign of this anywhere in Fitzgerald’s translation. Looking in Google books, I find the saying in Elbert Hubbard, Little Journeys to the homes of great teachers, 1908, p.84-5 (without reference, of course). I can’t find anything earlier than that.
The two translations that I have commissioned are coming along nicely. The Eusebius volume is pretty close to done.
So… how to turn these collections of Word documents into books? And how to sell the things when I have done so?
Off to Amazon, where I find that there is a small industry of people writing books on… how to self-publish your vanity novel. Hum. That is NOT the bracket I want to be in. There’s quite a few on “how to sell on Amazon”.
Trouble is, buy a few and it costs quite a lot of money. But my local library charges more than 5 GBP per interlibrary loan — around $8 — which means it’s actually not much more to just buy the things. (I do hate greedy local authorities). So I’ve bitten the bullet and bought four, and we’ll see what good they are.
I’ve also contacted a small UK publisher, Password Publishing, who offer to copyedit, do the book design, and typeset. They want about 20 GBP an hour for various activities, which doesn’t seem too bad. Whether they are any good I know not, but will let you know.
So… I don’t know how to sell this stuff. I do know that I need a quality product. I do know that just turning a Word document into a PDF will NOT produce something professional; it produces something hard on the eye and almost unreadable. And … I also need a business plan for this, to check that I’m not just burning money.