Une nouvelle Apocalypse apocryphe : la Revelatio Iohannis transmise dans le manuscrit latin de Prague, Knihovna Metropolitní Kapituly, N. LIV

Abstract

The Revelatio Iohannis (Rev Ioh) is an unedited apocryphal Apocalypse in Latin, recently discovered in a Prag manuscript (Knihovna Metropolitní Kapituly, N. LIV. fol. 26v-32r, dated 1478). The text is here edited for the first time, with translation and introduction. Several observations suggest that it has been translated from Greek to Latin : it is immediately followed, in the Prag manuscript, by a Latin translation of the Greek Apocalypse of Mary (CANT 327), which was completely unknown until now ; it contains three expressions that clearly point to an error in translation (initium impiorum ; pugnae cadent sub pedibus eius ; lex super legem) ; the physical description of Antichrist differs from those of rare Latin parallels. The long passage on the succesion of the emperors until the advent of Antichrist (ch. 4) allows to date the text to the beginning of the 7th century : it is possible to identify the historical figures alluded to in this ex eventu prophecy only up to Maurice (580-602) and Phocas (602-610). This dating is confirmed by the fact that the text doesn’t hint at the threat of islam and at the legend of the Last Emperor. A terminus ad quem is given by a quotation of Rev Ioh 13,2-6 in the Formulae Hispanicae in modum symboli (CPL 1753), a Spanish collection of creedal formulas which go back in part to the 8th century and is transmitted only in a visigothic manuscript of Roda dated from the 10th-11th century. The Revelatio Iohannis contains several borrowings from the canonical book of Revelation, in particular the vision of the throne of God and of the crowned lamb (ch. 2), the message to be transmitted to individual Churches, with the expression « These things says the first and the last » (ch. 3), the star named Absinthium, Wormwood (ch. 6), Armageddon (ch. 7), the mark of the beast (ch. 8). In our view, these borrowings aim not only at establishing the authority of the new text, but also at promoting it as the true « Revelation of John », in place of another book that was not considered as canonical.