Codicology, also known as ‘the archaeology of the book’, is the study of manuscripts as physical objects. It is a discipline that studies manuscripts with a predominantly historical orientation. This essay explores the sequel to the most famous literature before and after Islamic epic story and the link between Islamic signs and literature review. The greatest pre-Islamic mysteries in the history of Moslem literature and its religious effects were disused, which were solved by manuscript studies and some case studies. (...) The research method is based on the position story and finding the Islamic signs of the research to confirm the Islamic signs in the history and its changes over time. Therefore, in this research, religious symbols in the history of literature have been studied. The authors try to reach a new knowledge regarding the foundations of this school by tracing the history of religious literature. Furthermore, the connection between culture and religious literature is made by examining the Islamic religion mysteries sample. The symbolism and explanation of codes and elements in art works have been studied and the role of myths and metaphors in semantic analysis and religious concepts has been discussed. Finally, the effect of the Islamic events in literature review and art development is discussed.Contribution: This study provides further insights into the relationship between theology and literature through a historical literature review. (shrink)

Among Digitized Manuscripts: Philology, Codicology, Paleography in a Digital World. By L. W. C. van Lit. Handbook of Oriental Studies, I, vol. 137. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Pp. xi + 333. $150, €125, open access: https://brill.com/view/title/56196.

Muslims are fundamentally interested in the practice of writing especially for scribing the copies of the Qur’ān. Later, the practice of scribing ḥadīths texts and writing diplomatic correspondence increased the demand for developing this practice. It is because the writing is based on a religious reference in Islamic societies; over time, the interest in writing and writing materials has also turned into an art form. Thus, writing and writing materials have been named with the selected words from the Qur’ān. Pencil, (...) book, pages (ṣuḥuf), line, stone tablet (alwāḥ) are some of the examples of those words. The writing constituted a series of professions. Calligraphers and warrāqs (book dealers/booksellers) are some examples in Islamic societies. Until the printing press became widespread, the books were written and reproduced by hand which is called istinsākh. Nowadays, these manuscripts are protected in libraries and digital archives. Codicology examines the external elements of these manuscripts such as ink, binding and paper. In addition, the critical edition method was used to bring out manuscripts to the surface. Critical edition of manuscripts is not only transferring the text to the computer. The critical edition is to compare manuscripts of work to reach the original text of the author. While doing this, the evaluation of the text has been held to reveal the historical value of it. In this article, the place of manuscripts in Islamic culture has been discussed and the basic principles of the critical edition, how to create the editing (dirāsa) and text (naṣṣ) sections of the critical edition are explained with examples. The examples were selected from the previous critical editions conducted by the author. This study aims to give an introduction to a very wide field of codicology and critical edition. This article is intended to provide basic information for researchers interested in codicology and critical edition.Summary: Classical Islamic writing culture has its method. For centuries, Muslims have written manuscripts according to this method. This method has been applied from writing the knowledge on paper to collecting and binding the fascicles.The adventure of creating a manuscript is a long process. A lot of people come around to contribute this process initiating from the writing of the first sentence. Producer of the knowledge: scientists, paper-producer: werrâq, the calligrapher: khaṭṭāṭ, bookseller, bookbinder, expert in the ink, naqqāsh who marbles the papers, sponsors of the project, collection and the librarian are some of the contributors. Today, this adventure continues with the participation of enthusiasts which are: the author who re-writes the manuscript to revive it, the restorer who repairs the damage of the manuscript, the expert who creates the digital copy and institutions which publishes the facsimile.Nowadays manuscripts are accepted as important scientific data and are examined in many ways other than their contents thus new specialities have been occurred. At universities, the institutes which examine manuscripts have been established and academic journals have been published. Moreover, the critical edition of manuscripts is the main subject of some of the M.A. and Ph.D. theses.The studies on critical edition, which initiated earlier in some of the western countries, have made a rapid development and created its method. In Turkey, there are many critical editions of works which are based on various manuscripts from Theology to Literature fields. However, there is no significant mutual method among the studies yet. Also, their understanding of critical edition differentiates. In those studies, it has to be examined that basic parameters such as the selection of convenient copy, access to all copies of manuscript or priority of copies are applied to critical edition process. Most of the time it is observed that the advisor’s way of the critical edition has shadows on studies. However, fundamentally critical edition process needs expert contribution itself. Difference between studies is related to the fact that the critical edition is relatively a new field of study in Turkey. Therefore, specific studies in the field of critical edition and codicology are still needed to be developed. On the other hand, there are various publications to establish an objective methodology of the critical edition. Significant studies are being held by the Center for Islamic Studies (ISAM) to establish a mutual language and method for critical edition studies. The factor that led to the emergence of this article is the effort to contribute to the realization of this method. The article discusses the principles to be followed during a critical edition process. Moreover, topics are explained practically with examples selected from manuscripts. Those examples have been chosen from the author’s previous critical edition works. The article would be considered as an “Introduction to Critical Edition” for the researchers who are new at this field. In this respect, the article aims to make a methodological contribution to the critical edition studies.There are many parts of a manuscript –something more than the written text on the page– which makes it a whole. These parts can be divided into internal and external elements of the manuscript. All of these are parts have different levels of contribution to the examination of the critical edition of the work and the interpretation of the texts.Some external elements of manuscript are: ink production and color, inkwell, production of paper, foliation, rule-borders, and frames, ruling board (misṭara), sewing of quires, gilt and gilding, bookbinding, stamping and tooling, frontispiece, cases and pouches, storage boxes and cabinets, flap, tabula ansata, the history of manuscript.The internal elements of the manuscript are: text of the manuscript, script, subject, authenticity, historical value and importance, proprietor, literary features, number of copies and textual variants, scribes and copyists, whether it has been falsified or not, sources used or referenced by the author, abbreviations, records of marginalia, colophon, glosses and scholia, ownership statements, seals and seal impressions, word transposition or transposition of words/letters, waqf-statements, correction signs and corrections, countermarks.While the internal elements of manuscript are the work of critical edition, the external elements of the text fall within the field of codicology. Although critical edition and codicology are considered as separate sciences, there are points where they can contribute to each other. For instance, the ink tone or binding style of a manuscript may help to determine the writing date range of it. The references used by the manuscript can give us an idea about the name or the subject of another manuscript. The literary characteristics of the manuscript may reflect the author's success in language and literature fields. Thus, we are able to inform that the critical edition process of a manuscript requires the evaluation of substantial information at the same time which is no different from an archaeologist carefully examining an arrowhead. Therefore, whatever is the relation between History and Archeology has; Islamic sciences have the same relationship with critical edition. They are both individual sciences with methods of their own and two inseparable common sciences. Thus, without the contribution of codicology or other sciences, rewriting a manuscript on a computer does not mean making a critical edition of it. According to this information, we can define the critical edition as follows, “Critical Edition is the process of reviving of any manuscript -which belongs to Islamic civilization- with comparison of all available copies to create a single text which is closest to the text of the author and to determine the sources which this main text is based, citations such as verses, hadiths and poetry.”For studies on critical edition, the priority should be given to the texts which will contribute to this science. Before initiating critical edition, the authenticity of the author of the manuscript should be determined precisely. Of course, having a person's name on the page is not enough for determination. All copies of the manuscript must be identified. From those copies, critical edition should be based on the text that the author has personally written or prepared as a draft and other copies should be compared with this. In the absence of the author’s authentic copy, new criteria will apply. For instance, the copy written by the closest student of the author or the copy with the closest writing date takes precedence over the copies with no date. After comparison of all copies, the differences are shown in the citation.Critical Edition consists of two sections entitled as Edition (Editing/Dirāsa) and Text (Naṣṣ):The Edition section includes: the author’s name, lineage, place and date of birth, scientific life of the author and his/her prominent students, works, the authentication document which is proven that the text is belong to the author, the place of the work in the history of science, studies about the work, bibliography, literary characteristic, terms in the text, the amount and characteristics of the copies, the characteristic of the main copy which is determined as the fundamental text for the research, the rules and principles applied during the critical edition, the digital images of the first and last pages of the copies used. The Edition section is the part that demonstrates the reliability of the study. All external elements of writing are being introduced here. The importance of the text is confirmed by this edition process. Thus, the final shape of the edition section must be shaped by reading and understanding the text.In the text section, the main aim is to reach the very first text which has been written originally by the author. In this section, principles of morality and objectivity are followed. The text is preserved; additions or subtractions are not made. Cited sources at the manuscript are being found. Verses and ḥadīths are written with their sources. Poems are found in Dīwāns. Text is made legible with punctuation and pilcrow. Proper names, dates of death are written together. Page numbers in the manuscript are shown in square brackets. Some simple grammatical errors are corrected without interfering with the main text. Mostly the reason for this is the letters used for men or women. At the end of the study, a bibliography with all the resources used during the critical edition process is added. The Islamic codicology and manuscripts appear to receiving interest especially in academic studies. Considering that many manuscripts from the Ottoman Era are still waiting to be revived thus, we may come across profound critical edition works in the near future. Therefore, it is understood that individual studies related to the manuscript itself and the method of the critical edition will guide the researchers. (shrink)

Le présent travail se veut avant tout une introduction bibliographique à l'étude de la codicologie et de la paléographie latine en Roumanie. Les quelques 150 études et volumes qui y sont recensés et commentés donnent un tableau des directions d'étude prises par les chercheurs roumains dans ces domaines. Dansl'introduction, les auteurs proposent une évaluation de la recherche paléographique et codicologique roumaine du XXᵉ siècle, tout en suggérant de nouvelles voies à explorer. Dans ce sens, la priorité devrait être donnée à (...) un inventaire des manuscrits médiévaux en écriture latine conservés sur le territoire roumain, cequi débouchera sur la rédaction d'un catalogue général de ces manuscrits. Parallèlement, la recherche codicologique devrait produire des études détailléesdes reliures médiévales et modernes et des autres éléments structuraux du codex. La décoration des manuscrits, qui a déjà attiré l'attention des historiens d'artpar le passé, se doit d'être étudiée de nouveau dans une perspective codicologique et d'histoire du livre manuscrit. Enfin, un autre but est d'imposer un vocabulaire codicologique roumain, conforme aux progrès et innovations terminologiques de la recherche européenne contemporaine. (shrink)

Le présent travail se veut avant tout une introduction bibliographique à l'étude de la codicologie et de la paléographie latine en Roumanie. Les quelques 150 études et volumes qui y sont recensés et commentés donnent un tableau des directions d'étude prises par les chercheurs roumains dans ces domaines. Dansl'introduction, les auteurs proposent une évaluation de la recherche paléographique et codicologique roumaine du XXᵉ siècle, tout en suggérant de nouvelles voies à explorer. Dans ce sens, la priorité devrait être donnée à (...) un inventaire des manuscrits médiévaux en écriture latine conservés sur le territoire roumain, cequi débouchera sur la rédaction d'un catalogue général de ces manuscrits. Parallèlement, la recherche codicologique devrait produire des études détailléesdes reliures médiévales et modernes et des autres éléments structuraux du codex. La décoration des manuscrits, qui a déjà attiré l'attention des historiens d'artpar le passé, se doit d'être étudiée de nouveau dans une perspective codicologique et d'histoire du livre manuscrit. Enfin, un autre but est d'imposer un vocabulaire codicologique roumain, conforme aux progrès et innovations terminologiques de la recherche européenne contemporaine. (shrink)

The article supplements the publication of the introduction to Theophan Prokopovych’s philosophical course (taught at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in 1707-09). It analyses characteristics of Prokopovych’s manuscript in comparison with the manuscript of Georgiy Konyskyi’s philosophical course (taught in 1747-1749). The latter turns out to be a copy of the former, as it does not contain significant differences. The article describes the editorial principles of Prokopovych’s Prooemium and the significance of the text as well as gives short exposition of the content with (...) the analysis of references by Prokopovych. It explains some codicological and textological characteristics of both manuscripts. The analysis of textual relation between the two manuscripts shows that Konyskyi’s manuscript contains much more mistakes than Prokopovych’s manuscript. Most of more than a hundred variations between the manuscripts are mistakes in Konyskyi’s manuscript. The author supposes that the student, the scribe of Konyskyi’s manuscript, not completely understood rather complicated style of Prokopovych. Prokopovych’s position about the style of exposition shows balancing between humanistic and scholastic ideas. It states that Prokopovych refers usually to ancient authors. The references in the text are quite detailed, but not enough accurate. Half of them (6 out of 12) happen to be incorrect. It is probable that Prokopovych made references from memory. (shrink)

Main figures in Byzantium after the Byzantium were Ioannis Zygomalas (1498-1584) and his son and fellow Theodosius (1544-1607) who drew a spiritual path that left many and rich traces and presumptions. They served in the Patriarchate of Constantinople in key positions. There they taught the ancient Greek language and they copied and distributed manuscripts of works of ancient and byzantine writers. Their mailing correspondence with European scholars and travelers is well known. Thanks to that, the humanistic Europe met not only (...) the Greek scholars of the 16th c. but also their spoken language of that era, as a continuation of the Greek classical times and the Byzantine world. The historical information concerning them that has been saved is of interest to many categories of specialists of human sciences: Theology and Philosophy, Social History, History of Law and Institutions, Literature and Linguistics, Palaeography and Codicology, Letter-writing. Authors: Hans Eideneier, Ernst Gamillscheg, Christian Gastgeber, Andreas Rhoby, Dora E. Solti, D. G. Apostolopoulos, Athanasios E. Karathanasis, Vassilis Katsaros, R. Georgios D. Metallinos, Machi Paizi-Apostolopoulou, Stavros Perentidis, Konstantinos Pitsakis, Georgios Steiris, Notis Toufexis, Andronikos Falaggas. (shrink)

In the years 1961-1972 Marie-Thirhse d'Alverny published in "Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Littiraire du Moyen Age 11 fascicles of a study of the codicological tradition of the Latin Avicenna. In these she identifies and describes more than 150 Latin manuscripts of the Avicennan corpus preserved in European libraries, thus laying the foundation for work later published in the "Avicenna Latinus series. These fascicles are photomechanically reprinted here, together with hitherto unpublished material concerning another 30 manuscripts compiled from Professor d'Alverny's papers (...) by Simone van Riet and Pierre Jodogne. The compilers have also added a list of corrigenda as well as an index of manuscripts discussed and an index of names and works. (shrink)

Modern knowledge of the grammarian Consentius’ De barbarismis et metaplasmis, a work valuable for the study of the Latin language, dates back to a relatively recent past: it was only in 1817 that its editio princeps was published by Ph.C. Buttmann, just a few years after the legal scholar A.W. Cramer came across a mention of the then unknown treatise in a ninth-century MS in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek of Munich, numbered Clm 14666. Based on this solitary manuscript, H. Keil published (...) the short treatise in the fifth volume of his Grammatici Latini. With no little enthusiasm did W.M. Lindsay announce his unearthing of what, in his own words, had ‘long been a “desideratum”, a second authority’ for this text, in the MS F 15 III d at the Universitätsbibliothek Basel; this was followed by E.O. Winstedt's complete collation and M. Niedermann's critical edition. After about a century now there comes to light a third authority, surprisingly enough in a codex which has enjoyed such fame in the past decades that one might wonder how Consentius could have gone unnoticed in it for so long: this is the eleventh-century MS of Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana Lat. Z. 497, in which the De barbarismis et metaplasmis is contained on fols. 84vb 39 - 90va 39; moreover, a so-far-unnoticed quotation from it, together with one from Consentius’ De nomine et uerbo, is found on fol. 41vb 16–21 of the same manuscript in a famous grammatical florilegium. The codex, written in Romanesque minuscule and probably originating in Rome, is regarded as a handbook of liberal arts designed by Lawrence Archbishop of Amalfi, formerly a monk at Montecassino, thereafter a teacher in Florence and Rome, where he died in about 1049. Based on palaeographical evidence, F.L. Newton rightfully assumed as an exemplar for this codex a MS in Beneventan script, as some features can be detected that betray the scribal imitation of that typical South Italian script, namely the use of the distinctive abbreviation for eius as ‘ei in ligature with stroke through the descender of the i’, the Beneventan ti ligature for the assibilated sound, and the 2-shaped Beneventan interrogation sign, to which I would add the typical abbreviation for in as a long i cut by a horizontal stroke and the confusion of a and t. Interestingly enough, none of these features is found on fols. 66–95, those containing the new Consentius: from a codicological point of view, this is an autonomous section, written by a different scribe from the rest of the MS and preserving some grammatical texts generally attributed to insular authors, such as Smaragdus’ Liber in partibus Donati and part of the compilation entitled Pauca de barbarismo, which precedes the De barbarismis et metaplasmis; not surprisingly, the new text of Consentius displays numerous features of the Insular script, such as the symbols for enim, autem, eius, est, nihil and et. On this basis it is most likely that this whole section was never included in the Beneventan exemplar, but was added at the time and place of copying of our MS in order to enrich the grammatical content. (shrink)

The seventeenth-century Brussels manuscript 8232-33 is an extant Greek witness for the Metastasis of the apostle John. The seminal text edition of the apocryphal Acts of John by Eric Junod and Jean-Daniel Kaestli provides neither a siglum for, nor a comprehensive codicological description of, nor catalogue references concerning this manuscript. The present annotation makes this information available and analyzes the manuscript of the Metastasis with regard to its model, copyist, and time of origin.

The recent detailed study of Prof. Axinia Džurova deals, from a codicological point of view, with a palimpsest codex kept in the Vatican Library, Vat. gr. 2502. Known to the scholarly community since 1981, this rather common minuscule Greek evangeliary (Gospel lectionary) of the 12th or 13th century has been written over the text of an earlier Slavic evangeliary followed by an accompanying Synaxarion. The book is bilingual, in French and Bulgarian, and is devoted exclusively to the ornamentation of the (...) partially effaced Slavic text. (shrink)

Autorica donosi kratki prikaz najznačajnijih djela fra Vicka Kapitanovića, poznatog i uglednog znanstvenika, pročelnika Katedre crkvene povijesti na Katoličkom bogoslovnom fakultetu Sveučilišta u Splitu i ravnatelja Arhiva Franjevačke provincije Presvetog Otkupitelja u Splitu. Predočeni su rezultati autorova znanstveno istraživačkog rada. Razloženi su raznovrsni aspekti i dimenzije, te doprinosi sveukupnoj hrvatskoj kulturno-duhovnoj i društvenoj povijesti. Ti se doprinosi odnose prvenstveno na filozofsku i crkvenu povijest, ali i na znanstvena područja povijesti umjetnosti, arhivistiku, paleografiju, arheologiju i diplomatiku. Nadalje je to doprinos otkrivanju, (...) katalogiziranju i kodikološkoj analizi umnogome još nepoznate rukopisne baštine, posebice franjevačke, izvora i građe domaćih samostanskih i knjižnih fondova, od najstarijih razdoblja starokršćanske civilizacije do novije povijesti. Svojim velikim interdisciplinarnim znanjem autor je ovladao u domaćim i stranim učilištima .The authoress presents a brief survey of father Vicko Kapitanović’s works. He is a well-known and highly regarded scholar, the Head of the Church History Department at the Catholic Theology Faculty of the Split University, and the director of the Archive of the Franciscan Province of the Most Holy Redeemer in Split. She also depicts the results of the author’s scientific-research work and expounds the various aspects, dimensions, and contributions to the entire Croatian cultural-spiritual and social history. These contributions are, in the first place, to the history of philosophy and to the history of the Church, and also to the art history, to archive administration, paleography, archeology, and diplomacy. Furthermore, there are the contributions to the discovery, catalogization, and codicological analysis of the hitherto unknown manuscripts, especially from the Franciscan heritage, sources from Croatian monasteries and libraries, from the most ancient period of the early Christian civilization to the more recent history. The author gained his huge inerdisciplinary knowledge in the domestic and also foreign universities. (shrink)

Whether known as jongleur, minstrel, gestour, disour, mimus, scurra, or by some other term, the professional entertainer who sings, tells jokes and stories, and declaims the deeds of great men is a ubiquitous figure in both medieval literature and modern scholarship. A large body of literature, not only heroic narrative such as the chansons de geste and the romances, but also fabliaux, political satires, and short comic monologues, has been confidently placed in the minstrel repertoire, and terms such as “minstrel (...) tag,” “minstrel style,” and “minstrel text” are in common use. Although these attributions have met with increased suspicion in recent years, no one has fully challenged the widespread assumption that there exists somewhere a body of manuscripts that once belonged to minstrels, manuscripts that would offer codicological evidence of the practice and range of narrative minstrelsy. (shrink)

In Printing Spinoza Jeroen van de Ven systematically examines all seventeenth-century printed editions of Spinoza's writings, published between 1663 and 1694, as well as their variant 'issues'. In focus are Spinoza's 1663 adumbration of René Descartes's 'Principles of Philosophy' with his own 'Metaphysical Thoughts', the 'Theological-Political Treatise' (1670), and the posthumous writings (1677), including the famously-known 'Ethics'. Van de Ven's descriptive bibliography studies, contextualizes, and records all aspects of the publication history of Spinoza's writings from manuscript to print and assesses (...) their immediate reception. It discusses the printed books' codicology, philology, typographical and textual relationships, illustration programmes, as well as their dissemination in early Enlightenment Europe, in view of the physical aspects of 1,246 extant copies and their provenance. (shrink)

The manuscript preserved in the Bibliothèque National de France, arabe 4235 is a fragmentary copy of Abū ‘Alī l-Qālī’s al-Bāri‘ and belonged to a certain Ibrāhīm b. Ḥumām Ibn Aḥmad. Although we know nothing about him, we have information about his father, Ḥumām Ibn Aḥmad al-Uṭrūš, who lived in Cordoba between 357/968 and 421/1030. He was a professor of Language and Poetry and, at the same time, he copied books for living during the crisis of the cordovan Caliphate. A marginal (...) note in f.22b, in a personal codex of Abū ‘Alī l-Qālī allows the author to believe that the manuscript comes from a privileged Cordovan environment. The orthographic and philological care with which the copy was made, as well as the graphic style makes also evident that the manuscript was the work of a language professor and not of an expert copyist. The context of its production and the data provided by a codicological and paleographical analysis, make also clear that the dating of this manuscript should be the end of the IV/X century or the beginning of next century. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Authenticity, Antiquity, and Authority: Dares Phrygius in Early Modern EuropeFrederic ClarkDares Phrygius, “First Pagan Historiographer”In his Etymologies, Isidore of Seville—the seventh-century compiler whose cataloguing of classical erudition helped lay the groundwork for medieval and early modern encyclopedism—offered a seemingly straightforward definition of historiography, with clear antecedents in Cicero, Quintilian, and Servius.1 Before identifying historical writing as a component of the grammatical arts, and distinguishing histories from poetic fables, Isidore (...) confirmed that “history is a narration of deeds [narratio rei gestae], through which things done in the past are discerned.”2 Thereafter, he equated historical writing with eyewitness observation, insisting that “among the [End Page 183] ancients, no one wrote history unless he had been present and seen those things to be recorded.”3 But Isidore’s further treatment of historiography grew more perplexing. Upon affirming that “among us, Moses first composed a history, on the beginning of the world,” he unexpectedly declared that “among the pagans, Dares Phrygius first composed a history, concerning Greeks and Trojans.”4 Only later did the encyclopedist mention more well-known Greek historians (to modern audiences at least) like Herodotus. 5Isidore’s invocation of his “first pagan historiographer” referred most likely to the De excidio Troiae historia (henceforth DET), a fifth- or sixth-century Latin pseudo-history billed as an eyewitness account of the Trojan War. Conveyed in sparse, dry, and inelegant language, the DET was long thought to have been the war diary of one Dares Phrygius, purportedly a Trojan participant in the conflict.6 In reality, the Latin DET was a two-part forgery, as its spurious dedicatory epistle—supposedly from the Augustan-era biographer Cornelius Nepos to the historian Sallust—claimed that “Nepos” had discovered the work in an Athenian archive and rendered it “truly and simply” (vere et simpliciter) from Greek into Latin.7 While potentially derived from a Greek antecedent, perhaps composed as an anti-Homeric jeu d’esprit during the Second Sophistic, the Latin Dares was assuredly not an accurate and verbatim translation of any lost Greek original. 8Notwithstanding its uncertain origins, Isidore’s pagan counterpart to Moses would go on to achieve canonical status in the medieval Latin West, and survives today in approximately 200 manuscripts. Moreover, Dares’s authority was extended through practices of compilation integral to medieval [End Page 184] textual culture.9 This compilatory impulse—which spawned countless multi-text anthologized codices and similarly animated Isidore’s encyclopedism—encouraged the Phrygian’s codicological pairing with numerous sources both ancient and medieval. Not only did the DET serve, codicologically, as a prologue to Trojan origin narratives like Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae, but it was also integrated into the structure of universal history, utilized as a means of augmenting the Chronicon of Eusebius-Jerome.10 Throughout the Middle Ages, Dares served not only as a name to invoke, but also as a source to appropriate and rework: to insert into universal chronicles, append to Trojan genealogies, or render into epic verse. Moreover, the pseudo-author’s status as “first pagan historiographer” was hardly lost on medieval sources: for instance, when William of Malmesbury inserted the DET into his anthology of ancient Roman histories, he made sure to include Isidore’s endorsement directly before the text’s incipit.11 For nearly a millennium, Dares’s fabricated claims of antiquity and autopsy constituted airtight guarantors of textual auctoritas.Between Criticism and Credulity: Dares in Early Modern ScholarshipBut Dares did not remain undisturbed in the canon. Instead, the DET saw its first recorded challenge with the advent of the early Renaissance. Writing in 1400 in his De tyranno, the Florentine Chancellor Coluccio Salutati turned to the Phrygian when debating a favored subject of nascent Italian humanism—the history of early Rome. Here Salutati sought to counter the long-held claim, attested in the DET, that Aeneas was not a pious hero driven from Troy, but rather a duplicitous traitor who had himself betrayed the city to the Greeks.12 The Florentine Chancellor correctly acknowledged that Aeneas’s treason was alleged by “the most ancient historians Dares [End Page 185] Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis” (Dictys, another late antique... (shrink)

Nella produzione libraria del mondo antico e medievale, i codici palinsesti rappresentano un settore tanto interessante quanto, ancora, relativamente poco indagato. La stratificazione, per lo più casuale, di tipologie testuali e grafiche diverse in un unico codice-contenitore (la cui stessa ragion d'essere si propone, per la singolare natura del prodotto librario, come problematica e significativa) offre a specialisti di ambiti diversi – filologi, paleografi, codicologi – un ampio ventaglio di prospettive d' indagine e di itinerari di ricerca. Come uno scavo (...) stratigrafico – in cui ciascun elemento va riportato alla luce, studiato, contestualizzato, preservato nella sua originaria integrità – così l'indagine condotta sui codici palinsesti deve costantemente conciliare la natura frammentaria dei materiali riutilizzati (testuali, grafici, codicologici) con la nuova unità libraria che ne è derivata, cogliendo, proprio nella compresenza di elementi vari ed eterogenei, gli indizi utili alla ricostruzione di scenari culturali più vasti e articolati. Dapprima indagati sotto il profilo esclusivamente testuale – con atteggiamento non scevro da una certa ‘filologica’ superiorità nei confronti di prodotti librari ritenuti comunque di seconda scelta (si pensi, per esempio, ai lavori di Angelo Mai, intesi esclusivamente al recupero di testi antichi ritenuti particolarmente significativi, con procedimenti per lo più devastanti per la conservazione e l'integrità dei reperti), solo in tempi più recenti i palinsesti sono stati recuperati alla dimensione di uno studio globale, non più solo filologico, ma anche grafico e codicologico, che prescinda dalla rarità dei testi conservati. (shrink)

This article first presents a codicological and paleographical analysis of the Bibliotheca Medicea Laurenziana's manuscript Plut. 57.12, a codex containing the Epistolographi Graeci that was owned and annotated by Francesco Filelfo. The original nucleus of this composite was produced in Constantinople in the third decade of the 15th century. Afterwards, Filelfo himself had two copyists -one of whom is identifiable as Gerard of Patras - transcribe supplements to be added to the codex. Filelfo's ownership is proved not only by autograph (...) marginal notes, but also by the use of this manuscript as the source of Filelfo's Latin translation of several of these pseudepigraphic letters that were incorporated in his Commentationes Florentinae de Exilio, and by the correspondences between the marginalia accompanying the Commentationes and those in the Laur. Plut. 57.12. (shrink)

The interest in Andronikos Kallistos, a leading personality among the Greek émigrés who participated in Italian Humanism, arose at the end of the nineteenth century within the frame of the studies on Byzantine scholars of the Renaissance. Researchers have only glimpsed the depth of Kallistos' erudite personality. To date, nearly 130 manuscripts have been found bearing evidence of his work as a copyist and philologist. However, research into both his scribal and scholarly activity remains fragmented into many isolated contributions, mainly (...) concerning specific chapters of the manuscript tradition of classical Greek authors. Adopting a synergistic approach to historical, philological, codicological, and paleographic data within this framework, this monograph study aims to fulfil the following tasks: outlining an updated biography; defining Kallistos' scribal activity better by means of a thorough examination of all surviving manuscript sources; attempting to reconstruct the development of his book collection; acknowledging Kallistos' scholarly activity both as a teacher and philologist; making an inventory of all the manuscripts which bear traces of his writing; and, finally, publishing Kallistos' works. (shrink)

The collection of Coptic literary papyri of the Egyptian Museum of Turin is one of the most important in the world, if not for the number of codices, certainly for their contribution to the knowledge of Coptic literature and codicology. This paper makes an exhaustive list of the codices and of the works that they contain, with reference to their publication, especially that of Francesco Rossi , who could read more than is visible today. The tables provided are useful (...) because the papyri have been set in different order , after Rossi’s publication. (shrink)

This article offers the first comprehensive study of Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS Latin 182, a twelfth-century codex formerly belonging to the Benedictine Abbey of Gladbach in Germany. I begin with a full codicological and palaeographical analysis of the entire manuscript, before moving on to a discussion of its contents. These include the Venerable Bede‘s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum and the Continuatio Bedae, as well as two hagiographical works copied at the end of the manuscript. I then propose a new (...) possible context of reception for Bede‘s Historia ecclesiastica during the twelfth century, one that interlinked with the prevalent discourses on secular ecclesiastical lordship and monastic reform at Gladbach, as well as, perhaps, in Germany more widely. In doing so, I essentially argue for the possibility that the Gladbach scribes and their audiences may have used and understood the Historia ecclesiastica not only in the conventional context of history and historiography, but also as an example of the golden age of monasticism which during the later twelfth century was re-framed and re-contextualised as both a spiritual guide and a source of miracle stories. (shrink)

Galen’s commentary on the Hippocratic Aphorisms is transmitted by a large amount of Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. Some of them remarkably display a “mixed” text, in which Galen’s commentary is combined with passages from the later commentator Theophilus. Most important among these is the Marc. gr. V 9 (coll. 1017), which inserts two large passages by Theophilus into the Galenic commentary (i. e. VI 1-38; VII 12-73). Both of them were copied by the late physician and student of John Argyropoulos (...) in Constantinople, Demetrios Angelos, who was not primarly involved in the production, but purchased the manuscript after completion and restored its text using another commentary on the Aphorisms, which he had at his disposal. This paper aims at investigating codicological, paleographical and philological aspects of the Marc. gr. V 9, in order to retrace the origin of its mixed commentary and place it in its historical-cultural context. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:During my stint as a visiting scholar at St. Bonaventure University, I stumbled on two very interesting manuscripts that are not as well known as they deserve to be. I would like to make these two 'pebbles' more accessible to other scholars and to anyone who desires to approach this valuable material, which is preserved in the Friedsam Memorial Library.The First Manuscript: A "Handbook" for the Observant FriarsAt St. (...) Bonaventure University, I was working on the sources concerning John of Capistrano's polemics against the Jews and the Turks. To this purpose, I scanned the Ottokar Bonmann Archive at St. Bonaventure for letters, sermons, and treatises. At the same time I was working on the critical edition of Capistrano's La dichiarazione in volgare sulla Regola di san Francesco, which amounts to a vernacular explanation and interpretation of the Rule of St. Francis. It is one of the first vernacular texts of its kind, providing, in a few simple words, an explanation of the meaning of Franciscan spirituality. As its author is one of the "four columns" of the Observant family, it can, in fact, be understood as a vademecum for the Observants. My first impressions in this direction were confirmed and reinforced by looking at the manuscript Holy Name College, cod. 35, which is now preserved in the Friedsam Memorial Library of St. Bonaventure University .Chiappini lists three manuscripts containing La dichiarazione:1. L'Aquila, Archivio di Stato, cod. S.73, ff. 461b - 469b 2. Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, cod. XII.G.5 n. 23. Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, cod. B.131, ff. 53r-66vBonmann found six other manuscripts:1. Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana , Vat. lat. 13100, ff. 80r-94v2. Rome, Biblioteca S. Isidoro 1/68, ff. 244r-254v3. Rome, Biblioteca S. Isidoro 1/85, ff. 10r-24r4. Washington DC, Library Holy Name College, cod. 355. Zara, Biblioteca Paravia, cod. 1552, ff. 3v-13v6. Private collection of Giovanni PansaSince I have not yet been able to see the last two manuscripts , some questions remain concerning their actual contents. When we consider the Zara manuscript, for example, we notice that Chiappini claims it to contain on folios 3v-13v the Expositione della Clementina de Clemente V, sopra la regula de li frati minori, traslata ad litteram de latino in vulgare per lo venerabile frate Iohanni de Capestrano . Based on the similarity of subject matter and the use of the vernacular language, Bonmann inferred that this text included Capistrano's dichiarazione. The circumstances surrounding the manuscript in Giovanni Pansa's private collection present us with a real detective story. This Italian bibliofile described the manuscript for the first time in 1887, when it resided in a library in Sulmona. Pansa subsequently bought the manuscript and sold it in Rome before 1925 to the antiquarian bookstore of Ermanno Loescher & Company. Since then, the manuscript has disappeared without leaving any trace. All details concerning this story can be found in the work of Chiappini, who wrote that the manuscript contains the Postilla in clementina "Exivi" super Regulam fratrum minorum per sanctum Ioannem de Capestrano. This might be the same Postilla as that found in MS. 20 of the Capestrano library. Based on all this, I believe that Bonmann misunderstood Chiappini's reference.Thus far I have found one manuscript not mentioned by Chiappini or Bonmann, namely MS Roma, Biblioteca S. Isidoro, 1/87, ff. 66ss. Hence there are now either ten or perhaps only eight manuscripts available for the creation of a critical edition . One of these, as I have indicated above, is manuscript Holy Name College, cod. 35, currently kept in the Friedsam Memorial Library of St. Bonaventure University. As I had the opportunity to study this manuscript, I can provide a more precise description of its codicological properties and contents. (shrink)

At the end of the twentieth century, the Ayatollah Marʿashī Najafī Library acquired a fourteenth-century manuscript of munshaʾāt previously held in a private collection. This composite multitext manuscript contains about two hundred letters sent by or to officials of the Rūm Saljūq sultanate in the thirteenth century. The letters include official and private correspondence as well as decrees of nomination. They are all in Persian. This article is a first study of the codicological features, structure, and contents of this manuscript. (...) It suggests a production process that unfolded in several stages over a period of seventy years, from the reign of Ghiyāth al-Dīn Kay-Khusraw II to the second decade of the fourteenth century. The Marʿashī manuscript expands considerably the volume of documents available on Saljūq Anatolia during the beginning of Mongol period. It is poised to become a major source on the political history of the period and will also help to understand the integration of Anatolia into the Persianate sphere. (shrink)

This fine new study amalgamates catalogue-type entries for a number of illustrated manuscripts of the homilies of John Chrysostom with a cogently written thesis. Only certain manuscripts have been chosen for full analysis (to this extent the title of the book is somewhat misleading): this is a study devoted primarily to the Chrysostom manuscripts of the 11th and 12th centuries that have some anthropomorphic figural illustration (as opposed to purely vegetal or zoomorphic illustration), with a special emphasis on miniatures which (...) are text-based, i. e. correspond in some precise way to the text they accompany. Earlier homily manuscripts (there are illustrated versions from the 10th century on), and manuscripts with full-page, non-text-based frontispiece illustrations such as the magnificent, oft-discussed imperial codex Paris, B. N. Coislin gr. 79, though included, are not the central concern of this book. Despite the fact that distinctions between anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic figural decoration, and between text-based and non-text based imagery are not likely ones that would have been drawn by the Byzantines themselves, the author's particular focus has the advantage of bringing into the scholarly arena a considerable number of unfamiliar works, here subjected to careful codicological, paleographical and stylistic analysis, and reproduced in superb color and black and white plates. (shrink)

Manuscript Paris Bib. Nat. lat. 2923 contains, among other texts, the letters of Abelard and Heloise, with notes by Francesco Petrarca. Although these texts have been the object of study by many researchers, especially philologists, none has ever published the complete marginal notes or done a thorough exegesis of them. In general, with the exception of the work of Pierre de Nolhac and Peter Dronke, and certain paragraphs that Constant Mews devotes to the subject, descriptions and other references to these (...) notes are framed primarily in Abelardian studies. Therefore, in the hope of expanding the studies that will bring Abelard and Petrarch closer, we have decided to produce the first complete edition of all of Petrarch’s marginal notes, with a view to future hermeneutical analysis. It is, after all, much more than letters that Abelard and Petrarch have in common. This first part of the article contains the marginal notes, each with its corresponding codicological description and ratio edendi. (shrink)

The Rabat manuscript, BNRM, 87-Q, is a unique copy of Kitāb al-burṣān wa-l-‘urjān wa-l-‘umyān wa-l-ḥūlān written by the Basrian al-Jāḥiẓ. It was used for the two known critical editions of this text. Their confrontation with the manuscript reveals their merits and their limits. The codicological and paleographical examination of the manuscript allows us to consider it as an Andalusian book production and to suggest an approximate dating of the end of the 4th/10th or even of the beginning of the 5th/11th (...) century. The identification of one of its first possessors is an additional argument for this dating and localization. These elements make this document a rare witness to the dissemination of some writings of al-Jāḥiẓ in al-Andalus. (shrink)

Assuming the crucial interest of Arabic material for the recovery of the textual tradition of some Greek texts of mechanics, the following article aims at presenting a partial survey of the Graeco-Arabic transmission in the field of mechanics. Based on new manuscript material dating from the ninth to the twelfth century, it investigates the textual and theoretical traditions of two writings ascribed to Aristotle and Euclid respectively and transmitted to Arabo-Islamic culture in fragmentary form. The reception and the impact of (...) the Peripatetic Mechanics are analyzed on the basis of texts edited by al-Khāzinī as well as by the comparative study of the proof of the law of the lever in three authors: Pseudo-Aristotle, Thābit ibn Qurra, and al-Isfizārī. The codicological analysis of the extant manuscripts of Maqāla fī ‘l-mīzān – a rather systematic treatise on the balance ascribed to Euclid – leads to the assumption that it is a Greek fragment edited in Arabic. This reconstruction of the Arabic tradition of Euclidean mechanics is further elaborated by an annotated synopsis of al-Isfizārī's systematic recension of the text. (shrink)

With the publication of these two volumes the ground has now been prepared for a long awaited event, the critical edition of the works of Henry of Ghent. Henry was one of the outstanding philosophizing-theologians at the University of Paris in the second half of the thirteenth century and, during the period between the death of Thomas Aquinas in 1274 and the ascendancy of John Duns Scotus near the beginning of the fourteenth century, no other Master surpassed him in terms (...) of influence or importance. During his tenure there as Master in the theology faculty, Henry conducted fifteen Quodlibetal disputes. His written versions of these, along with his Summa of ordinary Disputed Questions, constitute his most important surviving works. And of these, his Quodlibets rank first. Henry's philosophical and theological views were highly original and drew considerable reaction from other leading Masters of the time, especially from Giles of Rome, Godfrey of Fontaines, and somewhat later, from Duns Scotus. While his personal thought cannot be reduced to that of any earlier thinker or tradition, his views were heavily influenced by Augustine, by Avicenna, and by various other Neoplatonic currents. At the same time, while he was quite familiar with the texts and thought of Aristotle, he reacted strongly against the more radical form of Aristotelianism developed by Siger of Brabant, Boethius of Dacia, and other Masters in the Arts Faculty at Paris in the 1260s and 1270s. Aquinas's incorporation of many Aristotelian positions into his own thought was also suspect in Henry's eyes. Given this background, Henry himself may be regarded as an outstanding representative of the Neo-Augustinian philosophical current which surfaced at Paris around 1270, which triumphed with the condemnation of 219 propositions by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, in 1277, and which would continue to be a dominant philosophical force until the end of the century. The need for a critical edition of his Quodlibets and his Summa has long been recognized, since the only printed versions date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In these first two volumes of Henry's Opera omnia Macken has prepared the way for the critical edition of Henry's works and especially of his Quodlibets. Here one finds a valuable catalog, based on first-hand inspection, of the widely scattered manuscripts of Henry's works. The catalog also contains expert codicological descriptions of the contents of these manuscripts, including works whose authenticity remains doubtful. Manuscripts are also considered which contain works that treat ex professo of Henry's doctrine. This is followed by an appendix which surveys ancient references to other manuscripts allegedly containing Henry's works, which manuscripts have not yet been found. Then there is a Répertoire, not of manuscripts but of Henry's works themselves, including certainly authentic works, works of doubtful authenticity, and finally, in another short appendix, works which have been falsely ascribed to him. A third part of this survey of Henry's works is devoted to manuscripts of other writers who discuss Henry's doctrine ex professo. The two volumes conclude with all the necessary indices. One must congratulate Macken for the care, the industry, and the meticulous scholarship with which he has prepared these two volumes. Not only are they of great value to anyone interested in the manuscript tradition of Henry's works and doctrine; they also include helpful descriptions of the writings of many other medieval authors which are contained in many of these same manuscripts. They will undoubtedly be carefully combed for decades to come by other scholars interested in these same authors and manuscripts. These volumes will be indispensable for libraries of institutions making any serious claim to expertise in the history of medieval philosophical and theological thought. One can only wish Macken and his international team of collaborators every success in their next immediate task, the actual edition of Henry's most important works, his fifteen Quodlibetal Questions.--J.F.W. (shrink)

A Text Worthy of Plotinus makes available for the first time information on the collaborative work that went into the completion of the first reliable edition of Plotinus’ Enneads: Plotini Opera, editio maior, three volumes (Brussels, Paris, and Leiden, 1951-1973), followed by the editio minor, three volumes (Oxford, 1964-1983). Pride of place is given to the correspondence of the editors, Paul Henry S.J. and Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer, with other prominent scholars of late antiquity, amongst whom are E.R. Dodds, B.S. Page, A.H. (...) Armstrong, and J. Igal S.J. Also included in the volume are related documents consisting in personal memoirs, course handouts and extensive biographical notices of the two editors as well as of those other scholars who contributed to fostering the revival of Plotinus in the latter half of the 20th century. Taken together, letters and documents let the reader into the problems – codicological, exegetical, and philosophical – that are involved in the interpretation of medieval manuscripts and their transcription for modern readers. Additional insights are provided into the nature of collaborative work involving scholars from different countries and traditions. A Text Worthy of Plotinus will prove a crucial archive for generations of scholars. Those interested in the philosophy of Plotinus will find it a fount of information on his style, manner of exposition, and handling of sources. The volume will also appeal to readers interested in broader trends in 20th century scholarship in the fields of Classics, History of Ideas, Theology, and Religion. (shrink)

A Manichaean Prayer and Confession Book. Edited and translated by Nicholas Sims-Williams, with introduction by John Sheldon and codicology by Zsuzsanna Gulácsi. Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum, Series Iranica, vol. 1. Turnhout: Brepols, 2022. Pp. xxvi + 195. €100.

The present paper is an inventory and a description of the known manuscripts of the Nyāyamañjarī, meant as a tool for philological research on Bhaṭṭa Jayanta’s magnum opus. The inventory is gradually built through a systematic analysis of archival data found in catalogi catalogorum, bibliographies of catalogues, individual catalogues, unpublished lists, and editions of the Nyāyamañjarī. The list is followed by a concise description of each manuscript, including an external description, an outline of the contents, and historical information.