Collation Of Manuscripts Research Articles

Biscioni’s Dante

This essay focuses on the 1723 edition of two of Dante Alighieri’s “minor texts”, the Vita Nova and the Convivio, both of which had troubled editorial histories, within the volume Prose di Dante Alighieri e di Messer Gio. Boccacci prepared for the Tartini press in Florence by Anton Maria Biscioni. In intervening in the texts of both works in unique ways, this edition sought to return to Dante’s original intentions when writing them. This essay argues that Anton Maria Biscioni’s work offers modern readers a unique glimpse into the workshop of an editor of this eighteenth-century edition of Dante’s texts, an editor who details all the facets of the editorial process, from the collation of manuscripts to the hard choices determined by that collation and by the current practices of the editorial trade. The authors argue that main achievements of this 1723 edition can be seen in its editor’s promotion of bibliographical studies.

New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures

Extending the works contained in the first volume in this series (Tony Burke and Brent Landau, eds., New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures. Volume 1. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), this second volume edited by Tony Burke provides an additional 29 texts, many of which are now made available to the English readers for the first time.Following the traditional classification as reflected in J. K. Elliott’s edition (The Apocryphal New Testament. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993) that it seeks to supplement, most of the texts in this volume fall into the following categories: Gospels and related traditions of NT figures, apocryphal acts and related traditions, epistles, and apocalypses. However, departing from both Elliott’s edition and the first volume of this series, this volume also includes a fifth section on church orders that contains one text (The Teaching of the Apostles). The inclusion of this fifth section is particularly important as it signals the intentional departure from the classification of apocryphal works that follow the categories found within the NT canon. It also reflects the shift in recent studies on the apocryphal works, which are no longer considered to reflect the composition and reception of the NT canon. This shift also justifies the inclusion of works that can be dated in the medieval period.The section on Gospels and related traditions of NT figures contains a number of texts on relatively minor characters in the Gospel traditions (e.g., The Rebellion of Dimas, The Book of Bartholomew, The Story of Joseph of Arimathea) as well as texts on characters who have attracted considerable attention in the early Christian traditions (e.g., The Life of Judas, The Life of Mary Magdalene). The impressive range of material included in this collection is best illustrated by The Adoration of the Magi, a work extant only in the Old Uyghur (a Turkic language used only in the 9th to 13th centuries); the text is based on a number of manuscripts purchased in Turfan, China.The second section covers the apocryphal acts and related traditions. The five apostles memorialized in the widely circulated “great” apocryphal acts (John, Paul, Peter, Andrew, and Thomas) continue to be the focus of later works in these traditions, as reflected in four of the six selected texts in the section. The fifth work, The Acts of Nereus and Achilleus, is also associated with the Peter traditions, while the sixth, The History of Philip, is a Syriac work related thematically to the Greek Acts of Philip.The third section on epistles contains only one work, The Epistle of Pelagia, though even this work is closer in form and content to the apocryphal acts than the canonical epistles. It contains legends of the apostle Paul, and it is associated with the traditions behind The Acts of Paul.The fourth section on apocalypses contains nine works, most of which are connected with the traditions surrounding John, the figure behind the NT canonical apocalypse. Particularly difficult to classify is The Questions of James to John, which lacks heavenly or messianic mediation, and in which the focus is on the fate of the individual soul rather than public eschatology. The 9th-century dating of this work may explain the waning influence of Jewish and even early Christian apocalypses in pockets of the Christian traditions.The final section on church orders contains The Teaching of the Apostles, which belongs to the apocryphal collection as it contains framing narratives that place the 11 apostles in the “upper room” for the establishment of the 27 canons of ecclesiastical rules.For each of these works, introductory comments are provided on the content of the work, manuscripts and editions, language, date and provenance, literary and theological considerations, notes on translation, and a bibliography. Any informed reader will appreciate the mere collection and publication of these texts, while students and researchers alike are indebted to this team of scholars for the meticulous and careful collation of manuscripts, evaluation of versions and individual readings, as well as translation of texts.Those who have benefitted from this and the previous volume will be glad to learn of the anticipated third volume that will contain more than 30 additional works. The publication of these additional texts will further force the wider circle of scholars to question the criteria through which apocryphal works are to be evaluated. The consideration of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, dubbed “the most recent modern apocryphon” (p. xiii), as belonging to such a collection of material problematizes the whole notion of “New Testament Apocrypha” to an extent that the title may cease to be a useful one for the grouping of such material. For now, however, we are all grateful for the relatively ancient texts that are now made available to the modern readers.

The Excerpta de comoedia Attributed to Aelius Donatus: Preliminary Observations for a New Edition

Based on a new and complete collation of manuscripts and ancient editions, this paper will discuss some stemmatic and textual problems concerning the “Excerpta de comoedia” attributed to Aelius Donatus.

Une femme et la guerre à la fin du Moyen Âge: le ‘Livre des faits d’armes et de chevalerie’ de Christine de Pizan. Études réunies par Dominique Demartini, Claire Le Ninan, Anne Paupert et Michelle Szkilnik.

By focusing on a single — as yet unedited — work by Christine de Pizan that has previously received little scholarly attention (the Livre des faits d’armes et de chevalerie), and putting forward a variety of perspectives from scholars from a range of fields, including palaeography, art history, and military history, this collection of essays demonstrates the enduring originality of Christine studies. Far from being inaccessible but to specialists, the Introduction to the collection works as much as an introduction to Christine’s works as to the Fais d’armes itself. The goal of the volume (and of the 2013 journée d’études of which this is the proceedings) is in part to make the case for a critical edition of the Fais d’armes. In her essay Gabriella Parussa sets out the preliminary challenges to such an edition, which, she argues, will need to be based upon a collation of manuscripts rather than a single base manuscript. Christine Reno’s contribution also describes some of the codicological differences between two of the surviving author manuscripts. Karen Fresco turns to an examination of the links between the various works in compilation manuscripts that include the Fais d’armes, in which the manuscript’s visual programme proves key. The next three essays discuss the practical advice on warfare contained in the manual. Thierry Lassabatière examines the vocabulary Christine uses to describe military roles, and the configuration these had in her sources; next Loïc Cazaux focuses on the terms of service under which Christine argues that professional soldiers should be employed; finally, by looking closely at the ending of the Fais d’armes, Inès Villela-Petit’s essay concerns Christine’s conception of heraldry and the right to bear arms. She argues that Christine creates a coat of arms for herself, which stands in contrast to her earliest surviving manuscript, in which she is depicted without. This might have fed into a wider discussion of the self-representation of the author in the Fais d’armes more generally. Three essays by Claire Le Ninan, Bernard Ribémont, and Hélène Biu form a sub-section on Christine’s use of her source material, especially Honorat Bouvet and Vegetius. The first two focus on the figure of Minerva, who is seen to underscore the bipartite nature of the Fais d’armes, and Ribémont and Biu’s contributions offer contrasting views of the didactic roles carried out by Christine and Bouvet. The final essays focus on the reception of the work as witnessed in Jean de Bueil’s Jouvencel (for which Michelle Szkilnik argues that the Fais d’armes was a direct source) and in fifteenth-century England (Andrew Taylor) and France respectively (Liliane Dulac and Earl Jeffrey Richards). The final contribution is one of several to address the question of why Christine’s name came to be erased from the ‘group B’ manuscripts: the authors suggest it comes down to Christine’s conflation of wisdom and chivalry, which had become unpopular by the mid-fifteenth century. The essays in the volume will be of interest to students and scholars from a range of fields, who may anticipate a rich critical edition in due course.

THE COLLATION OF MANUSCRIPTS OF THE QASHIDAH "BANAT SU'AD" OF KA'B BIN UHAIR

Kontroversi seputar metode periwayatan berbagai materi sejarah dan keilmuan yang berasal dari masa Jahiliyah hingga awal-awal Islam terus berlanjut dan telah menjadi titik tolak perdebatan tentang otentisitasnya. Banyaknya ketidakcocokan antar berbagai varian dari teks yang sama mengarahkan sejumlah ilmuan untuk beranggapan bahwa transmisi mayoritas teks dilakukan secara lisan; dan fakta tentangada ya pemalsuan teks menyebabkan materi-materi tersebut, sebagian atau keseluruhan, dianggap tidak historis.Tiga manuskrip yang diteliti di sini, berasal dari abad ke 17 dan ke 18 M yang masing-masing berisikan qashidah Banat Su'ad karya penyair Mukhadhram (antara Jahiliyah dan Islam) Ka'b bin Zuhair, menunjukkan bahwa proses pengkopian teks dari sumber tertulis ternyata tidak selalu aman dari munculnya penyimpangan teks. Dengan membandingkan ketiga manuskrip tersebut, tampak jelas adanya perbedaan antara yang satu dengan yang lainnya, baik pada tingkat cara penulisan dan perubahan kata. Bahkan terjadi juga perbedaan letak dan penambahan atau pengurangan baris/bait puisi. Bahwa dua yang terakhir ini terjadi juga pada sumber-sumber di masa awal, maka diduga kuat berasal, dan sebagai akibat dari, periwayatan secara lisan.Namun demikian, meskipun patut diakui bahwa periwayatan secara lisan tidak memiliki tingkat akurasi yang sama dengan periwayatan secara tertulis, tetapi tidak berarti bahwa perbedaan pada teks selalu dapat menjadi acuan bagi klaim terhadap otentisitasnya.Kata Kunci: qashidah, transmisi text, Ka'b bin Zuhair, Banat Su'ad

The Importance of Being Doctor: The Quarrel over Competency between Humanists and Theologians in the Renaissance

In modern usage the Renaissance Man is associated with wide-ranging interests and encyclopedic learning, but in the age that brought forth men like Pico della Mirandola and Michelangelo Buonarotti, the ideal of the uomo universale often conflicted with the institutional reality of compartmentalized, hierarchic universities. Records and published polemics from the fifteenth and early sixteenth century document the desire of faculties a rigid delineation of disciplines and a tendency of university teachers to jealously guard their professional turf against outsiders. The resulting maneuvers and jockeying rank and position led to dissension and issued in pamphlet wars, in which theologians and humanists often found themselves in opposite camps.(1) In many cases their disputes were pugnacious versions of the conventional laudato disciplinae; in others the polemics had wider implications. One of the most serious issues involved the question whether the philological method championed by the humanists could be applied to scriptural texts. It was a complex issue touching not only on competency and academic qualifications, but on theological principles as well. Humanists were clamoring a revision of the biblical text based on a collation of manuscripts and a clear and correct translation following classical usage. Traditionalists protested that the Bible was divinely inspired and therefore flawless.(2) Their notions of textual tradition were hazy, however. Jerome was generally regarded as the author of the Vulgate, and any criticism of that text was condemned as blasphemy and an insult to the honor of the great Church Father.(3) Lorenzo Valla pointedly asked the actionaries: is Holy Not every translation of the Old or New Testament qualified that title, he noted. There were numerous versions in circulation. Where among them was Holy Writ? Strictly speaking, only what the saints themselves wrote in Hebrew or Greek is Holy Writ: he observed, for there is nothing in Latin(4) As always, the majority occupied a middle ground between reactionaries and pioneers of textual criticism. They acknowledged that the revealed text had been corrupted by human error and accepted the need some revision, but rejected radical changes, especially if they affected doctrine. Another question remained undecided: Even assuming that textual criticism of the Bible was a legitimate undertaking, was it within the competency of humanists? Many theologians denied that it was and accused humanists of encroaching on their professional territory. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, the wariness and misgivings of the theologians had become the stock-in-trade of satirists. The essence of the complaints against meddling humanists is captured in an anonymous skit, pitting three theologians against Erasmus and Reuchlin. In this dialogue Magister Lupoldus dissuades the humanists from revising the Bible. business of yours is it to correct the Magnificat? he fumes. The exchange continues: Erasmus: What is our business, then? Will you explain this to us, so that we may be made wiser by your counsel and mend our ways. Lupoldus: Take care of your Latin, compose verses, make grand orations, print books about Latin composition. Reuchlin: And nothing concerning God? Gingolphus: Nothing, by the devil] Nothing, it's none of your business] Erasmus: Whose business is it then? Ortvinus: That of the most illustrious and most zealous magistri nostri, who know the art of arguing and against propositions.(5) The satirist indicates that the theologians were willing to acknowledge the expertise of the humanists in philology and language studies, but wanted to limit the application of these skills to the secular sphere. Two positions, generally accepted throughout the Middle Ages, sup ported such a limitation: Theology occupied a unique place among academic disciplines; indeed, it was the queen of all sciences; and only those were entitled to discuss, interpret, translate, or paraphrase Scripture, who were divinely inspired, authorized by the Church, and/or academically qualified by a degree in theology. …

A New Look at the Manuscripts of Xenophon'sHipparchicus

Over the last fifty years the world of the palaeographer has been revolutionized by the widespread use of photography. Today a scholar can study a microfilm of almost any codex in the western world in the comfort of his home and compare it with any number of other codices within a matter of minutes. It is no longer necessary to travel long distances, set aside large blocks of time, and spend substantial sums of money in the collation of manuscripts. This fact should encourage modern palaeographers to review the work of their predecessors who were denied these blessings to see if the work of the past lives up to today's standards.

Unpublished Lyrics of William Morris

At the end of a letter to Andreas Scheu giving some biographical details about himself, William Morris wrote: 'I should have written above that I married in 1859 and have two daughters by that marriage very sympathetic with me as to my aims in life.'l The comment on his daughters was no empty platitude. Both Jenny and May Morris took a profound interest in all of their father's activities: they embroidered, they helped with the arrangements for socialist meetings, they made fair copies of his poetry. Because of chronic illness, Jenny could not undertake strenuous tasks, but May energetically devoted her life, as Sir Basil Blackwell said, 'to keeping her father's memory not only green but dynamic'.2 Her edition of her father's work in twenty-four volumes, published by Longmans between I9IO and 1915, was undertaken with prodigious care and love: manuscripts were diligently sought out and copied; the collation of manuscripts with earlier editions was scrupulously undertaken; editorial emendation was kept to a minimum and was made only after taking advice from Morris's executors (notably Sir Sydney Cockerell, formerly Morris's secretary); and the critical commentary offered was intelligent and full of insight. The task was, however, an enormous one, the manuscripts were scattered, and May was not entirely systematic. As a result, The Collected Works of William Morris is, in places, confusingly and repetitively organized. Nevertheless, by the twenty-fourth volume May had managed to include virtually all of what was available to her except for items that she deliberately, though often reluctantly, excluded. Unfinished poems and drafts were generally not printed in full, though they were often drawn from in the introductions to the volumes; and much of Morris's journalistic and lecturing work was passed over. Her pencilled comment on an unfinished ballad of which she quoted part is 'I see no reason to print more of this, as we are not printing early fragments wholesale'.3 In general she accepted Cockerell's opinion: 'the three existing volumes of lectures contain the greater part of what he wished to stand as his message on art and socialism. I do not think his reputation will gain by a gathering together of everything by him that can be collected, the bulk of his writing being already very large.'4 Even while the edition was in progress, though, May seems to have felt that she had been too rigid in excluding certain material, and when the opportunity was provided by Sir Basil Blackwell to bring out two supplementary volumes (William Morris: Artist, Writer, Socialist, 1936) she included many more lectures and journalistic items, many more fragmentary drafts and notes. But perhaps the most interesting items were drawn from a manuscript that had come to light only after the completion of The Collected Works. It was a set of very early poems discovered in

The Folio Text of 2 Henry IV

ECENTLY, in an article in R.E.S., N. Ser., II (i95i), and in her book on Textual Problems in First Folio (I953), Miss Alice Walker has revived idea that folio text of 2 Henry IV was printed from a copy of quarto of i6oo which had been collated with a complete authoritative manuscript. The determination of copy used in printing folio is hardly a matter of first importance since everybody agrees that quarto, as far as it goes, is authoritative text, but Miss Walker's point that, if basis of F is Q, former is not an altogether independent witness, is well taken. Since I am, in a manner of speaking, sponsor of a rival theory that F was printed from a manuscript (Variorum 2 Henry IV, I940, pp. 5o8Aff.), I have examined Miss Walker's argument with lively interest. But, although Miss Walker has unquestionably made out a case for her theory, I cannot convince myself that it is really acceptable, and I think it may be well to state reasons why it does not carry conviction. In first place, there is some improbability or at least inconvenience in anybody's comparing a printed book with a manuscript containing a considerable number of variants and painstakingly transferring all variants to pages of printed book. The process would be toilsome and fatiguing in extreme, especially if Miss Walker is right in thinking that the collation of manuscripts with quartos to serve as Folio copy was normally diplomatic in intention (p. I56). She herself estimates that, in Richard 111, her collator made 1500 alterations, not including changes in stage-directions and speech-prefixes and those he made in 500 lines based on Q3. Sig. C2V in quarto of 2 Henry IV contains 393 words. The corresponding portion of F contains 374. To bring Q text into conformity with F it would be necessary to strike out I2 words and to alter I5 more, substituting 8 different words for them (one or two of these alterations may have been accidental). The Q page contains 47 marks of punctuation, F 57. Of 47, i6 are reproduced exactly in F. Of remainder, 27 are changed and 4 omitted. F adds I4 new marks of punctuation.' Miss Walker's collator would therefore have had to put his pen through 27 words and 3I marks of punctuation on this page and write I4 carets in places where punctuation was to be added; then he would have written 8 words and 4I marks of punctuation in margins besides sundry signs of dele-