Manuscript Tradition Research Articles

CONJECTURES AND OBSERVATIONS ON CATULLUS 63

Abstract This article discusses textually problematic passages in Catullus 63, a particularly corrupt poem from a particularly corrupt manuscript tradition. It proposes new conjectures and revives several old ones. Throughout there are notes on punctuation, conjecture attribution and an analysis of the structure of Attis’ lament.

Ancient and Medieval North Pole Stars


 
 
 In this article, the identification in different civilizations and eras of some cir-umpolar stars as the north pole star are reviewed, the main principles behind and crucial considerations in the past for forming the criteria for north pole star identification are scrutinized, and some profound differences in ancient and medieval views of it are discussed. The point of departure is the identification of the north polar star in Euclid’s Phaenomena as the star HR 4646, and its identification in the Pahlavi Bundahišn and al-Ṣūfī’s Ṣuwar al-kawākib as HR 4893. Because of the inevitable transitory nature of the north pole star, the location of al-Ṣūfī’s north pole star in the manuscript tradition of his magnum opus during the centuries after him is also investigated in detail. A supplementary discussion is included on the confusion between two different entities—the pole of the celestial sphere and the pivot of an indigenous Arabic asterism envisioned as a millstone—in philological, lexical, and literary Islamic works, which chiefly stems from the vague terminology employed.
 
 

Space invaders? slavery, gender, and the remapping of Eighteenth-Century Portuguese imperial geographies

ABSTRACT This article explores the site of the Rossio square in Lisbon as a contested urban space between the dispossessed and the Portuguese imperial authorities over the eighteenth century. Focusing on the aftermath of the Lisbon earthquake, it examines how enslaved and freed women of African and Afro-Brazilian heritage from the Portuguese colonies used and reconfigured the Rossio through their direct confrontations with the imperial authorities. Reading against the grain of traditional manuscript sources, this article demonstrates how contestations of the Rossio not only illuminated and underscored the dependence of the metropolis on the labour of Afro-diasporic enslaved and freed women, but also enabled these women to create alternate geographies of empire and power that pushed back against imperial spatial constructions.

LUCAN'S SILVAE IN THE VITA VACCAE: A PREDECESSOR OF STATIUS’ OCCASIONAL POEMS?

Abstract An anonymous biography of Lucan known as the Life of Vacca attributes to the poet the composition of a work called Siluae. This information has been accepted by scholars with regard to both Lucan and Statius, thus transforming Lucan into a predecessor of Statius’ Siluae. This article seeks to demonstrate that neither the manuscript tradition of Lucan's biography nor alleged references to Lucan's Siluae in Statius’ collection substantiate the affirmation that Lucan composed a work called Siluae. It is argued that the Life of Vacca is most probably late and its very long catalogue of works (mostly problematic or otherwise unknown) aggrandizes Lucan in response to the need for a commendatory biography of the poet when he became a school author. Pomponio Leto is responsible for perpetuating the mention of Lucan's Siluae by including it in his influential biography of Lucan (the first to reach the printed press). It is further argued that the circumstances of the tradition of Statius’ Siluae explain Leto's acceptance of Lucan's work of the same title. Leto was working on a commentary on the recently rediscovered Siluae, which explains his inclusion of a work called Siluae in his biography of Lucan, a great poet who had preceded Statius. Finally, this article deconstructs the theories that find references to Lucan's Siluae in Statius’ Siluae or that justify Statius’ silence about Lucan's Siluae with its political motifs.

The Dispute between the Nestorian Patriarch Timothy I and the Caliph al-Mahdi: Versions, Manuscripts, Editions and Translations

This paper serves as an introduction to the forthcoming translation of the disagreement between Patriarch Timothy I of the Church of the East and the Abbasid Caliph al-Mahdi. It provides the historical context of the text, discusses the importance of the debate for the study of Arab-Muslim polemics, and explores its dating. Author provided additional information about Syriac and Arabic manuscript traditions and presented an updated stemma of these manuscripts containing the dialogue text. Additionally, she thoroughly reviewed editions and translations of the dispute in both Syriac and Arabic, and systematically analyzed differences between all existing versions. A general comparison is presented between the Syrian original and the nearest Arabic translation, which serve as the foundational versions of this text.

The Latin Polycarp, the Division Hypothesis, and Polylingual Text

Abstract Polycarp’s Letter to the Philippians (Pol.Phil.) is poorly attested. All extant Greek manuscripts (G) stem from one source, Vaticanus Graecus 859 (V), which preserves only a portion of the text. Accordingly, editors reproduce G, supplemented as needed with the old Latin translation (L), preserved in its entirety, and with Greek fragments preserved in Eusebius. I argue that L ought to be treated as a discrete witness to the epistle, and not merely as supplement to G. The paper proceeds in two parts: first, I offer a careful analysis of the translation, concluding that L offers a relatively faithful, literal translation and a comparably well-preserved attestation to the epistle. Second, I demonstrate that the well-known “division hypothesis” relies upon an incomplete analysis of L. In short, I contend that the construction of composite, polylingual critical editions of Pol.Phil. has occasioned textual problemata unreflected in the text’s individual manuscript traditions.

Between Material Philology and Reception History: Patristic and Papyrological Evidence for the Sibylline Oracles

Abstract This article adapts insights from Material Philology to rethink the reception of the Sibylline Oracles by looking at the full range of evidence for the collection’s early development and circulation. Since the “rediscovery” of the Oracles in 1545, the Renaissance-era manuscripts and modern critical editions have been privileged as if equivalent to the “original,” ancient text. To move away from mediating our knowledge of the Oracles solely through later interpreters, this article brings materials from the margins – papyrological fragments from the second centuries BCE and CE and quotations in Josephus, Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, and Theophilus – to the very center of the discussion. Increased attention to Jewish and Christian witnesses provides a snapshot of how the Sibylline Oracles were read, received, and redacted over time. Comparing the material evidence with the manuscript tradition yields startingly different concerns regarding the Oracles’ textual fluidity, Book 3’s Jewish origins, and the Sibyl’s prophetic authority.

The Manuscript Transmission of Troubadour Poems Linked with the Catalan Nobility

Abstract: This article offers an initial analysis of the manuscript tradition of a set of thirteenth-century troubadour compositions that can be linked to the Catalan nobility, specifically the noble houses of Urgell, Cabrera, and Foix. It is part of a broader project aimed at shedding light on the role of the nobility in the production and dissemination of troubadour poetry within the Crown of Aragon. The data obtained allows for a re-evaluation of certain aspects of the manuscript transmission within Catalan noble circles and lays the groundwork for future research on the diffusion of troubadour poetry connected with Catalan-Aragonese courts.

The Manuscript Tradition of Maimonides' Letter to Samuel Ibn Tibbon

The Manuscript Tradition of Maimonides' Letter to Samuel Ibn Tibbon

The Riddle of the Thread: On Arabic ghazal

Ghazal is the Arabic word for “amatory verse”, and in other languages of the Islamic world it designates a sonnet-like poetic form. The notion that the word stems from Arabic ghazl “spinning thread” is widely held, despite the absence of support for this in classical lexicography and poetry criticism. Comparison to Semitic cognates points to an alternative derivation of ghazal from a verb of speaking – specifically, speech that is ambiguous and suggestive – by way of attraction to the gazelle (Arabic ghazāl), an ancient Near Eastern idiom for the beloved. While ghazal poetry emerged in Western Arabia during the first century of Islam, the genesis of ghazal as a term of art predates the literary record, as may be appreciated in a poem by ʿAmr ibn Qamīʾa (6th century CE) that has been called the earliest complete qaṣīda in Arabic manuscript tradition.

Epistle on the Celebration of Easter (CPG 4612): Transmission and Context of the Slavonic Version in the Late 15th–16th Centuries

This article examines the Slavonic version of the Epistle on the Celebration of Easter (CPG 4612) by focusing on the issues of transmission and context. It begins with a brief overview of the manuscript tradition and the title of this writing, and then asks what function the epistle carried in medieval Russia where it was copied. The author argues that this function was primarily theological rather than technical (related purely to paschal calculations and calendar). For that purpose, the author does several things. First, he shows that there are good reasons to assume that this epistle was perceived as part of the Athanasian corpus of Orations against the Arians, whose copying was occasioned by the rise of the Judaizers – a group of Russian heretics that denied the most fundamental Orthodox doctrines and exploited the eschatological crisis in 1492 to lead the Christians astray. And second, the author explores the evidence from Iosif Volockij and comes to the conclusion that his Enlightener contains similar theological concerns about the celebration of Easter as we find in the epistle.

БЫЛИННАЯ ТРАДИЦИЯ РУССКОГО УСТЬЯ

Russian epic tradition of the village Russkoe Ustye, standing on the Indigirka River, is the subject of the study. The relevance of the research lies in the need to describe one of the regional epic traditions of Siberia at the modern stage in connection with the work of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the series “Bylinas” of the Russian Folklore Code. Accordingly, the purpose and objectives of the study are determined by a systematic approach to material, meaningful in connection with the history of inhabiting the region, the history of the recording epics in the region, and the consistent characteristics of each recorded epic plot. The article reviews the history of inhabiting the Russian Estuary: the discovery of the mouth of the Indigirka by the Cossack Ivan Rebrov in 1638, the construction of the town of Zashiversk in the middle reaches of the Indigirka, inhabiting the mouth of the river from Zashiversk and from the sea. The oral family traditions of the Russkoustians are given. The article also describes the history of the recording epics in Russkoe Ustye and from its inhabitants: political exile I. A. Khudyakov (1867–1869); V. M. Zenzinov (1912); graduate of the ethnographic department of Leningrad State University D. D. Travin (1928); Yakut local historian M. A. Krotov (1931–1932); Yakut writer, member of the ethnographic and linguistic expedition of the Institute of Language, Literature and History of the Yakut branch of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences N. A. Gabyshev (1946); major Moscow bylinologist Yu. I. Smirnov (1982) and famous ethnomusicologist T. S. Shentalinskaya (1985). The main content of the article is the characteristics of local epics (25 texts). There is an almost complete absence of epics about Ilya Muromets (the only text is “Ilya Muromets and the Idolishche”). The popularity of the plot “Dobrynya and the Serpent” (six variants) is indicated, in which the name of Maria Izyaslavna, absent in European Russia, appears (instead of the traditional Zabava Putjatichna), linking (through the patronymic Izyaslavna) the epics of Russkoe Ustye with the onomasticon of Ancient Russia. The epic “Mikhail Danilovich – the minor hero” (six variants) is analyzed, in which the enemy Titus appears, unknown in the Russian North. It is assumed that this name in Russkoe Ustye was borrowed from the “History of the Jewish War” by Josephus Flavij, a monument of late Antique literature (75–79 A.D.), known in Russia in translation and very popular in the manuscript tradition. Probably one of the lists was brought to Russkoe Ustye. Josephus' Titus is the son of Emperor Vespasian, an enemy of Judea. In the “Arrival of the Lithuanians” (three variants), the names of “our” heroes – Tsar Elizar and his sister Maria Elizarovna (names that are absent in the Russian North) – may also be echoe of the “History of the Jewish War”, where several characters with the name Eleazar are called among the Jews. Other epic plots are also considered – “Surovets”, “Duke Stepanovich”, “Sadko”.

Questioni di filologia dantesca

This essay offers some linguistic remarks on food-related words in Dante’s Comedy, with particular attention to variants in the manuscript tradition. This preliminary analysis is related to the research conducted within the Project PRIN AtLiTeG (Atlante della lingua e dei testi della cultura gastronomica italiana dall’età medievale all’Unità), which aims to provide the first Corpus, Vocabulary and Atlas of ancient and modern Italian food language.
  
  

Preparing Big Manuscript Data for Hierarchical Clustering with Minimal HTR Training

HTR (Handwritten Text Recognition) technologies have progressed enough to offer high-accuracy results in recognising handwritten documents, even on a synchronous level. Despite the state-of-the-art algorithms and software, historical documents (especially those written in Greek) remain a real-world challenge for researchers. A large number of unedited or under-edited works of Greek Literature (ancient or Byzantine, especially the latter) exist to this day due to the complexity of producing critical editions. To critically edit a literary text, scholars need to pinpoint text variations on several manuscripts, which requires fully (or at least partially) transcribed manuscripts. For a large manuscript tradition (i.e., a large number of manuscripts transmitting the same work), such a process can be a painstaking and time-consuming project. To that end, HTR algorithms that train AI models can significantly assist, even when not resulting in entirely accurate transcriptions. Deep learning models, though, require a quantum of data to be effective. This, in turn, intensifies the same problem: big (transcribed) data require heavy loads of manual transcriptions as training sets. In the absence of such transcriptions, this study experiments with training sets of various sizes to determine the minimum amount of manual transcription needed to produce usable results. HTR models are trained through the Transkribus platform on manuscripts from multiple works of a single Byzantine author, John Chrysostom. By gradually reducing the number of manually transcribed texts and by training mixed models from multiple manuscripts, economic transcriptions of large bodies of manuscripts (in the hundreds) can be achieved. Results of these experiments show that if the right combination of manuscripts is selected, and with the transfer-learning tools provided by Transkribus, the required training sets can be reduced by up to 80%. Certain peculiarities of Greek manuscripts, which lead to easy automated cleaning of resulting transcriptions, could further improve these results. The ultimate goal of these experiments is to produce a transcription with the minimum required accuracy (and therefore the minimum manual input) for text clustering. If we can accurately assess HTR learning and outcomes, we may find that less data could be enough. This case study proposes a solution for researching/editing authors and works that were popular enough to survive in hundreds (if not thousands) of manuscripts and are, therefore, unfeasible to be evaluated by humans.

The Autograph of Ali Akbar Khitaʾi’s Khiṭāynāma (Book of China) and Its Manuscript Tradition

Abstract This article discusses a poorly acknowledged autograph copy of the Khiṭāynāma by Ali Akbar Khitaʾi in Persian. Unlike most studies on the work, it argues that MS Istanbul, Aşir Efendi 249 (henceforth AE 249) in the Süleymaniye library is an autograph copy completed in 1516 and presented to Süleyman I (r. 1520–1566) when he was still a prince. It also argues that the author prepared two recensions for two patrons, Selim I (r. 1512–1520) and Süleyman I, around the same time. The article further demonstrates that the appellations sultan and shah were commonly used for Ottoman princes and appeared in various manuscripts. Hence AE 249’s usage of the term sultan for Süleyman is not an inconsistency casting doubt on the date of the manuscript and its character. The article additionally provides the most comprehensive list and information on Persian manuscripts of the original work and its two different Ottoman Turkish translations. In this way, it clarifies various confusing references to the manuscripts of the work in modern scholarship. Moreover, it provides a more secure foundation for future research on the Khiṭāynāma as well as on how to discuss the titles of Ottoman patrons and how to conceptualize them in manuscript studies. Ultimately, it hopes to demonstrate that the political context may provide insights to better deal with similar works from the era.

The Frontispiece as Patron’s Statement

Abstract The Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-ṣafāʾ wa-khullān al-wafāʾ (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity and Loyal Friends), copied in Baghdad in 686/1287 and kept in the Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul, is known for its double page frontispiece, headed by the names of the authors and the book title, and painted with an image of debating scholars surrounded by luxurious architecture [Fig. 1]. The copy features diagrams and tables and is of interest for the study of medieval manuscript traditions of the Rasāʾil. This article re-examines the codex, expanding observations and insights into its history. It discusses the function of the frontispiece, which has been perceived as an authors’ portrait in the succession of pre-Mongol Arab book painting, but is unique among known Rasāʾil copies. Reviewing the text on the double page and considering that the Rasāʾil was an anonymous book, we argue that the frontispiece advertised a particular opinion and reference regarding the authorship, visualized and emphasised through the medium of the figural image. Situating the copy in the scholarly book production of early Ilkhanid Baghdad under the Persian Juwaynī governors from early Ilkhanid Iran, the article examines how that time and place are referenced in the painting. Extending the question to the unknown patron and his milieu, it discusses figures with portrait-like faces presenting a book as possible references to the Juwaynīs. We suggest to see the novelty of the painting not only in its style and close text-image relation, but in its function as editorial statement and in the layered references. These evidence a concept of visual commentary on both history and present, that has been argued for Ilkhanid painting of northwest Iran, but was used here several decades earlier in Baghdad.

PROTO-RULE OF JOSEPH VOLOTSKY

The Rule of Joseph Volotsky (1439-1515) was known to his first biographers of the 19th century, P.S. Kazansky, N.A. Bulgakov and I. Khrushchov. All of them worked with the Rule incorporated in the Great Menaion Reader by Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow and All Russia. Ya.S. Lur’e at 1950th discovered a different version of the Rule, the brief one, which consists of 11 Discourses, and several collections with an incomplete set of Discourses and potential Discourse 12. The brief version was published by Ya.S. Lur’e together with potential Discourse 12 in 1959. He characterized the manuscript tradition of the Rule as very stable in contrast to another work, the Enlightener. The author of the article found the manuscript in OR GIM (Manuscript Department of the State Historical Museum), Diocesan Collection, N 248. It is indicated as Discourse 12 of the Enlightener in the description, but, after having examined the manuscript, the author identified this text as fragments of Joseph Volotsky’s Rule, which can be dated to the late 15th century, and thus it is a lifetime fragments of the Rule. The verification of the versions helps to establish that the first fragment is Discourse 11 of the Extended Rule. It is followed by the previously unknown Discourse 12, which is very much alike with Discourse 13 of the Menaion version. It is followed by Discourses 2 and 3 of the Brief Rule, and by a substantially shortened text of Discourse 13. The author concludes that originally the Brief Rule may have contained 13 instead of 11 Discourses. At the same time the Brief Rule consists of two “wills”, and the second one contains Discourses 12-14. Ya.S. Lur’e established that much of their content duplicates the first 11 Discourses. In the Moskovskiye tserkovnyye vedomosti the auther found a note with references to the lost manuscript N 482 from the Volokolamsk Monastery, which could contain only the “second” will without the first. He concludes that the Menaion redaction could originally contain 11 Discourses instead of 14, and the merging of the two wills occurred after the death of Joseph Volotsky.

Philostrats ,Briefe‘ – Einheit in der Vielfalt, Vielfalt in der Einheit?

Abstract The complex manuscript tradition of Philostratus’ ‘Letters’ cause a row of problems and uncertainties: it is unclear, for example, which of the several surviving versions of the letter collection is the original one, which sequence of the letters is authorial, which version of some letters that have survived in different lengths is authentic, why some letters differ that much in form and content from others, and, last but not least, if the collection was written by Philostratus at all. These questions seem to pose insurmountable difficulties for the project of a new edition. Therefore, we still rely on editions from the nineteenth century for Philostratus’ ‘Letters’. The question is whether the problems of the formation of the epistolary corpus and the evaluation of its multiple versions can be explained by traditional textual criticism. I argue that a codicological, palaeographical, and historical examination of the individual textual witnesses could shed new light on the open research questions by focusing on the overall context, position, and function of Philostratus’ ‘Letters’ in each manuscript. At the same time, research on the still uncertain purpose and function of the ‘Letters’ could possibly contribute to understand the mechanisms of ( manuscript ) tradition of the corpus.

Phalaris & co.

Abstract The letters of Phalaris are among the letter collections assembled by Rudolf Hercher in his, ‘Epistolographi graeci’, published in 1873. They differ from other collections in that volume in the size of the corpus ( 148 letters ) and the breadth of the manuscript tradition ( more than 132 manuscripts ). Moreover, the number and the order of the letters vary greatly from one manuscript to another. These characteristics explain why there is no modern critical edition of the letters of Phalaris. This paper addresses a methodological issue: how can we get a comprehensive view of the transmission of the letters of Phalaris? It examines these letters from the perspective of the collection, given that the letters of Phalaris are often transmitted within manuscripts that combine several corpora of letters, thus forming large epistolary collections. This paper shows to what extent the results obtained by the editors of other epistolary texts can be applied to the letters of Phalaris and what is gained, on a literary level, by replacing these letters in their context of transmission.

Transmission problems? An embedded approach for unification of Latin prefixes and text variants during text matching

Abstract The manuscript tradition of pre-modern texts poses a specific problem for scholars in the field of Digital Humanities: before printing made the production of standardized editions of texts feasible, copying texts by hand (and often by different people) was inherently an error-prone process, which not only led to differences in wording but also in spelling—across multiple transmitted variants. This applies especially to ancient texts, where the temporal distances to the archetypes tend to be fairly large. In computerized research, especially in the case of text matching within the field of citation research and text mining, these differences in wording and spelling—however small they might be—may prevent a successful matching of texts. This case study presents a solution for the problem of textual differences arising from (non-)assimilated prefixes in Latin, a feature where modern editions mostly differ from author to author, but sometimes even between two editions of the same text. With regard to the letters of the church father Jerome as well as Virgil’s Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid, two approaches are compared in terms of error rate and efficiency for a given set of prefixes: (1) performing and (2) reversing corpus-wide assimilation. Moreover, the broader implications of the (in-)accessibility of text-critical data in digital editions are discussed. Finally, general desiderata regarding text-critical data for computerized research on classical texts are elaborated.