Surpassing 5,000

With an enormous and unexpected display of energy, the Vatican Library released 253 new digitizations online on July 26, 2016 to surpass the bar of 5,000.

Only philanthropy can make this happen. The key assistance appears to be coming from NTT Data, the Japanese software company, which this month put some pepper in the fund-raising programme by announcing an attractive incentive for large donors: an ultra-close facsimile of a page from the Vatican Vergil (to be made by Canon). Contribute if you can: it will take immense resources and years of work to bring all 80,000 Vatican codices, rolls, papyri and sheafs of letters online.

Remarkable in this surge is the sudden arrival of 166 manuscripts from the great Renaissance library of Federico da Montefeltro (1422-1482), duke of Urbino, whose Italian library was perhaps the most costly cultural institution of his age. A new collection where digitization has just started is the Pergamene di Terracina.

The posted total of 5,131 continues to understate the true extent of the digitizations, as it does not include the many Pal.lat. manuscripts now online in an ancillary programme or isolated cases such as the Vatican's Bodmer Papyrus VIII. Here is the list of new arrivals:

1. Arch.Cap.S.Pietro.B.56 - Details
2. Arch.Cap.S.Pietro.C.116 - Details
3. Arch.Cap.S.Pietro.G.33 - Details
4. Arch.Cap.S.Pietro.G.41 - Details
5. Borg.copt.109.cass.XIX.fasc.70 - Details
6. Borg.copt.109.cass.XIX.fasc.72 - Details
7. Borg.ebr.16 - Details
8. Borg.ebr.17 - Details
9. Borg.turc.6 - Details
10. Borgh.338 - Details
11. Cappon.131 - Details
12. Cappon.306 - Details
13. Ferr.562 - Details
14. Ott.lat.1210 - Details
15. Ott.lat.1368 - Details
16. Ott.lat.1417 - Details
17. Perg.Terracina.1 - Details
18. Perg.Terracina.2 - Details
19. Perg.Terracina.3 - Details
20. Perg.Terracina.4 - Details
21. Perg.Terracina.5 - Details
22. Perg.Terracina.6 - Details
23. Reg.lat.1500 - Details
24. Urb.gr.83 - Geography by Ptolemy. Full discussion in my separate blog post. Details
25. Urb.lat.29 - Details
26. Urb.lat.34 - Details
27. Urb.lat.55 - Details
28. Urb.lat.69 - Details
29. Urb.lat.77 - Details
30. Urb.lat.78 - Details
31. Urb.lat.89 - Details
32. Urb.lat.94 - Details
33. Urb.lat.114 - Details
34. Urb.lat.118 - Details
35. Urb.lat.125 - Details
36. Urb.lat.142 - Details
37. Urb.lat.144 - Details
38. Urb.lat.163 - Details
39. Urb.lat.166 - Details
40. Urb.lat.181 - Details
41. Urb.lat.211 - Details
42. Urb.lat.222 - Details
43. Urb.lat.223 - Details
44. Urb.lat.233 - Details
45. Urb.lat.249 - Details
46. Urb.lat.284 - Details
47. Urb.lat.290 - Details
48. Urb.lat.296 - Details
49. Urb.lat.303 - Details
50. Urb.lat.304 - Details
51. Urb.lat.337 - Details
52. Urb.lat.341 - Details
53. Urb.lat.351 - Details
54. Urb.lat.354 - Details
55. Urb.lat.372 - Details
56. Urb.lat.407.pt.1 - Details
57. Urb.lat.448 - Details
58. Urb.lat.449 - Details
59. Urb.lat.470 - Details
60. Urb.lat.472 - Details
61. Urb.lat.479 - Details
62. Urb.lat.485 - Details
63. Urb.lat.489 - Details
64. Urb.lat.494 - Details
65. Urb.lat.502 - Details
66. Urb.lat.503 - Details
67. Urb.lat.506 - Details
68. Urb.lat.507 - Details
69. Urb.lat.509 - Details
70. Urb.lat.512 - Details
71. Urb.lat.517 - Details
72. Urb.lat.518 - Details
73. Urb.lat.519 - Details
74. Urb.lat.521 - Details
75. Urb.lat.533 - Details
76. Urb.lat.535 - Details
77. Urb.lat.536 - Details
78. Urb.lat.540 - Details
79. Urb.lat.544 - Details
80. Urb.lat.545 - Details
81. Urb.lat.549 - Details
82. Urb.lat.557 - Details
83. Urb.lat.558 - Details
84. Urb.lat.564 - Details
85. Urb.lat.567 - Details
86. Urb.lat.572 - Details
87. Urb.lat.573 - Details
88. Urb.lat.578 - Details
89. Urb.lat.583 - Details
90. Urb.lat.587 - Details
91. Urb.lat.588 - Details
92. Urb.lat.591 - Details
93. Urb.lat.593 - Details
94. Urb.lat.594 - Details
95. Urb.lat.609 - Details
96. Urb.lat.611 - Details
97. Urb.lat.612 - Details
98. Urb.lat.614 - Details
99. Urb.lat.622 - Details
100. Urb.lat.626 - Details
101. Urb.lat.628 - Details
102. Urb.lat.629 - Details
103. Urb.lat.631 - Details
104. Urb.lat.632 - the sole surviving copy of a treatise on 3D geometry, De quinque corporibus regularibus by Piero della Francesca, one of the card-carrying Renaissance men. Francesca is now known as a notable painter only, but in his time he was also an eminent mathematician. Here is a drawing (apparently by his own hand) from fol. 13r:
     
     More details in English. This featured in the Rome Reborn exhibition. More on the BAV details page.
105. Urb.lat.634 - Details
106. Urb.lat.635 - Details
107. Urb.lat.636 - Details
108. Urb.lat.637 - Details
109. Urb.lat.640 - Details
110. Urb.lat.641 - Details
111. Urb.lat.642 - Details
112. Urb.lat.643 - Details
113. Urb.lat.646 - Details
114. Urb.lat.647 - Details
115. Urb.lat.648 - Details
116. Urb.lat.649 - Details
117. Urb.lat.650 - Details
118. Urb.lat.651 - Details
119. Urb.lat.652 - Details
120. Urb.lat.653 - Details
121. Urb.lat.654 - Details
122. Urb.lat.655 - Details
123. Urb.lat.658 - Details
124. Urb.lat.659 - Details
125. Urb.lat.660 - Details
126. Urb.lat.661 - Details
127. Urb.lat.664 - Details
128. Urb.lat.665 - Details
129. Urb.lat.667 - Details
130. Urb.lat.668 - Details
131. Urb.lat.670 - Details
132. Urb.lat.671 - Details
133. Urb.lat.672 - Details
134. Urb.lat.675 - Details
135. Urb.lat.676 - Details
136. Urb.lat.681 - Details
137. Urb.lat.683 - Details
138. Urb.lat.684 - Details
139. Urb.lat.685 - Details
140. Urb.lat.686 - Details
141. Urb.lat.690 - Details
142. Urb.lat.691 - Details
143. Urb.lat.692 - Details
144. Urb.lat.693 - Details
145. Urb.lat.694 - Details
146. Urb.lat.696 - Details
147. Urb.lat.697 - Details
148. Urb.lat.698 - Details
149. Urb.lat.699 - Details
150. Urb.lat.701 - Details
151. Urb.lat.702 - Details
152. Urb.lat.703 - Details
153. Urb.lat.704 - Details
154. Urb.lat.705 - Details
155. Urb.lat.708 - Details
156. Urb.lat.709 - Details
157. Urb.lat.710 - Details
158. Urb.lat.713 - Details
159. Urb.lat.714 - Details
160. Urb.lat.716 - same content at Urb.lat.717 below - Details
161. Urb.lat.717 - A book of esotericist poetry, De Gentilium Deorum Imaginibus by Lodovico Lazzarelli, from about 1475. Details in English at SLU. This also featured in Rome Reborn.
     
     This rather stoned person is Melponeme. It contains 27 full-page miniatures of personifications, including the planets, the muses, gods and goddesses, based on an educational prints series current at the time, the Mantegna Tarocchi. See also the BAV details.
162. Urb.lat.719 - Details
163. Urb.lat.720 - Details
164. Urb.lat.721 - Details
165. Urb.lat.724 - Details
166. Urb.lat.727 - Details
167. Urb.lat.728 - Details
168. Urb.lat.729 - Details
169. Urb.lat.730 - Details
170. Urb.lat.735 - Details
171. Urb.lat.736 - Details
172. Urb.lat.737 - Details
173. Urb.lat.738 - Details
174. Urb.lat.739 - Details
175. Urb.lat.741 - Details
176. Urb.lat.742 - Details
177. Urb.lat.743 - Details
178. Urb.lat.744 - Details
179. Urb.lat.746 - Details
180. Urb.lat.751 - Details
181. Urb.lat.767 - Details
182. Urb.lat.769 - Details
183. Urb.lat.780 - Details
184. Urb.lat.782 - Details
185. Urb.lat.783 - Details
186. Urb.lat.784 - Details
187. Urb.lat.785 - Details
188. Urb.lat.804.pt.2 - Details
189. Urb.lat.815.pt.2 - Details
190. Vat.ar.136 - Details
191. Vat.ar.175 - Details
192. Vat.ar.468.pt.1 - Details
193. Vat.ar.468.pt.2 - Details
194. Vat.ar.1614 - Details
195. Vat.ebr.1 - Details
196. Vat.ebr.12 - Details
197. Vat.ebr.13 - Details
198. Vat.ebr.19 - Details
199. Vat.ebr.21 - Details
200. Vat.ebr.29 - Details
201. Vat.ebr.100 - Details
202. Vat.ebr.101 - Details
203. Vat.ebr.102 - Details
204. Vat.ebr.103 - Details
205. Vat.ebr.118 - Details
206. Vat.ebr.126 - Details
207. Vat.ebr.133 - Details
208. Vat.ebr.135 - Details
209. Vat.ebr.186 - Details
210. Vat.ebr.190 - Details
211. Vat.ebr.196 - Details
212. Vat.ebr.197 - Details
213. Vat.ebr.199 - Details
214. Vat.ebr.200 - Details
215. Vat.ebr.203 - Details
216. Vat.ebr.204 - Details
217. Vat.ebr.206 - Details
218. Vat.ebr.207.pt.1 - Details
219. Vat.ebr.210 - Details
220. Vat.ebr.211 - Details
221. Vat.ebr.212 - Details
222. Vat.ebr.264 - Details
223. Vat.ebr.269 - Details
224. Vat.ebr.276 - Details
225. Vat.ebr.278 - Details
226. Vat.ebr.281 - Details
227. Vat.ebr.282 - Details
228. Vat.ebr.287 - Details
229. Vat.ebr.300 - Details
230. Vat.ebr.302 - Details
231. Vat.ebr.306 - Details
232. Vat.ebr.307 - Details
233. Vat.ebr.530.pt.2 - Details
234. Vat.estr.or.111 - Japanese calligraphic roll: gold ink on dark blue paper
235. Vat.lat.180 - Details
236. Vat.lat.278 - Details
237. Vat.lat.624 - with this extraordinary revision of a (classical?) Roman arbor juris (kinship diagram) in pyramidal form at fol. 105r:
     
     Note how the number of circles increases by one with each row as you follow it downwards. The scheme is a medieval revision of the so-called Type 4 arbor consanguinatis, as defined by  Hermann Schadt - see my Missing Manual (DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.4283.8002) for more information about this - Manuscript Details
238. Vat.lat.795 - Details
239. Vat.lat.797 - Details
240. Vat.lat.803 - Details
241. Vat.lat.809 - Details
242. Vat.lat.823 - Details
243. Vat.lat.838 - Details
244. Vat.lat.845 - Details
245. Vat.lat.848 - Details
246. Vat.lat.853 - Details
247. Vat.lat.854 - Details
248. Vat.lat.863 - Details
249. Vat.lat.884 - Details
250. Vat.lat.13946 - Details
251. Vat.lat.14745 - Details
252. Vat.turc.139 - Details
253. Vat.turc.391 - Details

This is Piggin's Unofficial List 62. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to Digita Vaticana.

Vatican Shadows

A couple of days ago, the Vatican library opened free online access to hi-res photos of what is generally believed to be one of the oldest books in the world, P75, the remains of a papyrus book of the Christian Gospels in Greek that is commonly dated to the third century. That turned out to be the story of the year on this blog, with over 900 reads, 85 retweets and 7,500 Twitter impressions.

[The next two grafs have been revised, after I realized that I had posted on the same topic in January this year, and clean forgot.] P75 got me interested in the library's other Bodmer papyrus, donated to it in 1969, the famous P72, shelved as Pap.Bodmer.VIII. The new digital site neither indexes nor mentions it on the front page of the digital manuscripts site.

The old BAV portal's link still gives you access to Pap.Bodmer.VIII, a booklet of epistles, containing all the text of 1 Peter, 2 Peter, and Jude. [This link I am giving you is not a secret, but rather one forgotten by the designers of the new portal. My apologies for overstating the case, when I first put this post up and claimed I had "discovered" the link.]

The writing on the P72 papyrus is thought to date to the 3rd or 4th century, roughly of the same period as the Codex Vaticanus, probably the world's oldest intact parchment codex.

The Wikipedia entry notes that P72 was dismembered from the "Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex," a little book dug from the sands of Egypt in which other works were: Nativity of Mary, the apocryphal correspondence of Paul to the Corinthians, the Eleventh Ode of Solomon, Melito's Homily on the Passover, a fragment of a hymn, the Apology of Phileas, and Psalm 33 and 34.

We don't know if  P72, where you can see the folds in the folios, is the oldest papyrus codex in existence, but Brent Nongbri, the Australian scholar, has recently argued: "It would seem that P.Bodm. VIII had a previous life, in which it preceded another work that was later removed when P.Bodm. VIII became part of the ‘Miscellaneous’ or ‘Composite’ codex." So it could be years or decades older than other parts of the codex.

You can read his short paper on his Academia.edu page, as well as a blog post he wrote.

As for P75 (the gospels), its date of making has long been estimated to be the 3rd century, but Nongbri published a critique this year in the Journal of Biblical Literature where he argued that this date is slapdash (my word, not his) and that the correct date is more likely to be 4th century, more or less of the same period as the Codex Vaticanus. I'll have more as the story continues.

Aside from all this excitement, the BAV has this week released an additional 34 items. Here is the full list:

1. Vat.ebr.32,  - Details
2. Vat.ebr.33, - Details
3. Vat.ebr.230, - Details
4. Vat.ebr.250, - Details
5. Vat.ebr.270.pt.1, - Details
6. Vat.ebr.270.pt.2 - Details
7. Vat.ebr.271 - Details
8. Vat.ebr.283 - Details
9. Vat.ebr.286 - Details
10. Vat.ebr.289 - Details
11. Vat.ebr.296 - Details
12. Vat.lat.276 - a 12th-century Augustine in Caroline minuscule with some Beneventan script on fols 258v-260v (my thanks to AaronM on Twitter for this info: https://twitter.com/gundormr/status/756196478452924416), Details
13. Vat.lat.288 - Ambrose of Milan, Details
14. Vat.lat.295 - Ambrose, Details
15. Vat.lat.296 - a 10th-century Ambrose, Details
16. Vat.lat.373 - made for the Renaissance bishop Pietro del Monte (c. 1400–57), from fol 111 he added the prologue to his Repertorium utriusque iuris, a major legal text - Details
17. Vat.lat.650 - a 10th-century compilation with Alcuin and others, many very faint pages have also been scanned with what seems to be ultraviolet light. Details
18. Vat.lat.674 - 14th century theological and scientific: here are some shape diagrams in the margin in a geometrical piece (140v, rotated):
    
      second half empty, Details
19. Vat.lat.740 - Aquinas, Details
20. Vat.lat.773 - Details
21. Vat.lat.775 - Details
22. Vat.lat.778 - Details
23. Vat.lat.779 - Details
24. Vat.lat.786 - Details
25. Vat.lat.789 - Details
26. Vat.lat.813 - Details
27. Vat.lat.819 - Details
28. Vat.lat.834 - Giles of Rome, Quaestiones, Details
29. Vat.lat.836 - Giles of Rome, c. 1243-1316, Commentarius in librum II Sententiarum, Details
30. Vat.lat.837 - ditto, Details
31. Vat.lat.852 - Details
32. Vat.lat.866 - Details
33. Vat.lat.875 , Details,
34. Vat.lat.14747 , an 18th century fair copy cataloguing the authors in the papal collection of printed books, the seventh volume, arranged by names, S-Z. Here is the pen drawing for S:
    

This is Piggin's Unofficial List 61. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to Digita Vaticana.

Maybe This Is the Oldest Book

Over a year ago, we debated on this blog and on Twitter what was the oldest bound book in the work. See the first post: Is this the world's oldest bound book? and the second post: Older than the Oldest.

Some authoritative experts said the crown should not go to the Codex Vaticanus, a parchment bible which is still bound, but to the 102 battered and now separated pages of Pap.Hanna (the sole Hanna Papyrus), also known as P75, which is a little 3rd-century booklet containing most of the Gospels of Luke and John.

On July 18, all the extant pages of this booklet were placed online by the digitization program at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Rome.

It's a battered little papyrus book from Egypt, originally sewn together in a codex and now kept between sheets of glass. This is among the most famous of the so-called Bodmer Papyri discovered in Egypt in 1952 and is an important source of the gospels within 200 years of their composition. It also contains an early Christian "brand logo", the Tau-Rho symbol or staurogram.

In all, 50 new items were placed online in this summer batch. Here is my full unofficial list:

1. Cappon.229
2. Cappon.297 
3. Pap.Hanna (the bibliography page for this item still uses the former shelfmark, Pap.Bodmer.XIV-XV).
4. Vat.ebr.25
5. Vat.ebr.26
6. Vat.ebr.27
7. Vat.ebr.28
8. Vat.ebr.30
9. Vat.ebr.31
10. Vat.ebr.214
11. Vat.ebr.215
12. Vat.ebr.220
13. Vat.ebr.221
14. Vat.ebr.222
15. Vat.ebr.223
16. Vat.ebr.225
17. Vat.ebr.229
18. Vat.ebr.232
19. Vat.ebr.234
20. Vat.ebr.235
21. Vat.ebr.236
22. Vat.ebr.239
23. Vat.ebr.241
24. Vat.ebr.242
25. Vat.ebr.244
26. Vat.ebr.247
27. Vat.ebr.249
28. Vat.ebr.252
29. Vat.ebr.257
30. Vat.ebr.260
31. Vat.ebr.261
32. Vat.ebr.262
33. Vat.ebr.265
34. Vat.ebr.266
35. Vat.ebr.267
36. Vat.ebr.268
37. Vat.ebr.273
38. Vat.ebr.275
39. Vat.ebr.277
40. Vat.ebr.279
41. Vat.ebr.284
42. Vat.ebr.285
43. Vat.ebr.290
44. Vat.ebr.292
45. Vat.ebr.293
46. Vat.ebr.295
47. Vat.ebr.298
48. Vat.ebr.299
49. Vat.ebr.303
50. Vat.lat.9973

This is Piggin's Unofficial List (PUL) number 60. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to Digita Vaticana.

Imperial Handbook

Among the most precious documents to survive from late antiquity is the Notitia Dignitatum, a handbook to the Roman Empire's civil government and military structures as of about 400 CE.

It survived in a book known as the Codex Spirensis which vanished before 1672, but was copied out half a dozen times by interested readers. One of those copies, the Vatican's arrived online on July 7 and this is a major event for anyone interested in this extraordinary sourcebook. Dr Ingo Maier, who has spent many years studying the handbook, has a website devoted to many of its details.

Fairley's English partial translation of the text (1899) is online at Fordham. Online, you can compare the Vatican copy, Barb.lat.157 with three other online copies: the two in clm10291 in Munich and that in BNF lat. 9961 in Paris (jump to fol. 72r to begin reading the latter). As far as I know, the Trent codex is not online and from the Oxford codex, only the pictures are on the internet.

Below is the Vatican codex's copy of the Provincia Dalmatiae page, compared to the W copy (Munich) below it. It is plain that the Vatican copy is more fanciful and that the artist has willfully converted the town into an early modern one.

However the other manuscripts are hardly more accurate, as you will see from the Luke Ueda-Sarson Praeses Dalmatiae (i.e. Governor of Dalmatia) composite page. Many of the images, including the specific shields of the military units, require considerable expert interpretation to understand.

Even this figure of a coach and horses needs interpreting:

My especial personal interest in the Notitia is that the Codex Spirensis also preserved a major Roman legal diagram which acquired the medieval name arbor juris or arbor consanguinatis and which is among the important classical precursors to the invention of information visualization in late antiquity:

Here is the full list of 38 uploads by Digita Vaticana on July 7 bringing the posted total to 4,794

1. Arch.Cap.S.Pietro.F.28 - Details
2. Barb.lat.157 - Notitia Dignitatum (above) - Details
3. Borg.copt.109.cass.XVIII.fasc.64 - Details
4. Capp.Giulia.XVI.16 - Details
5. Chig.H.VI.188 - Details
6. Ott.lat.1190 - Details
7. Vat.gr.186 - Details
8. Vat.lat.401 - Details
9. Vat.lat.424 - Details
10. Vat.lat.466 - Details
11. Vat.lat.534 - Details
12. Vat.lat.724 - Details
13. Vat.lat.751 - Details
14. Vat.lat.762 - Details
15. Vat.lat.764 - Details
16. Vat.lat.769 - Details
17. Vat.lat.774 - Details
18. Vat.lat.777 - Details
19. Vat.lat.798 - Details
20. Vat.lat.799 - Details
21. Vat.lat.800 - Details
22. Vat.lat.801 - Details
23. Vat.lat.802 - Details
24. Vat.lat.805 - Details
25. Vat.lat.806 - Details
26. Vat.lat.810 - Details
27. Vat.lat.811 - Details
28. Vat.lat.816 - Details
29. Vat.lat.817 - Details
30. Vat.lat.824 - Details
31. Vat.lat.825 - Details
32. Vat.lat.830, Details,
33. Vat.lat.839, Details,
34. Vat.lat.842, Details,
35. Vat.lat.843, Details,
36. Vat.lat.11543, Details,
37. Vat.lat.12939, Details,

This is Piggin's Unofficial List 59. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to Digita Vaticana.

Romantic Love

One might argue that western ideas of romantic love have their roots in certain ideas of the Renaissance, when the Roman poet Ovid was re-interpreted through a Christian lens and seen as a harbinger of courtly and noble love. In fact, Ovid was probably just a Boris Johnson of ancient Rome, a public school cad with a gift for words, and not a person particularly worth following.

The Vatican Library has just digitized an Epistulae of Ovid drawn ca. 1430-1440, possibly in northern Italy, which depicts in its margins ten pairs of lovers framing the start of each letter (see article by Rabel).

Leaf through Ross.893 to see them. Here for example is Leander of Abydos clutching the M of "Mittit Abydenus ..." like a shield as he writes in Heroides Letter 18 of his desire to swim long distance to see his girlfriend:

You can also admire him wearing a most extraordinary Italian Renaissance high hat as letter 19 arrives by return of post from lovely Hero:

Here is the full list of 32 digitizations uploaded on July 5, 2016:

1. Borg.copt.109.cass.IX.fasc.29 - Details
2. Borg.copt.109.cass.XIX.fasc.71 - Details
3. Borg.copt.109.cass.XIX.fasc.74 - Details
4. Borg.copt.109.cass.XVII.fasc.62 - Details
5. Borg.copt.109.cass.XVII.fasc.63 - biblical fragments including a page of Luke's Gospel - Details
6. Borg.copt.109.cass.XVIII.fasc.65.1 - Details
7. Borg.copt.109.cass.XVIII.fasc.66 - Details
8. Borg.copt.109.cass.XVIII.fasc.67 - Details
9. Borg.copt.109.cass.XVIII.fasc.68 - Details
10. Chig.H.VII.229 - Horace - Details
11. Ott.lat.3382 -historical? Armenia and Persia - Details
12. Ross.893 - Ovid, Epistulae (above) - Details
13. Urb.lat.679 - Rambaldi's commentary on Dante's Divine Comedy Details
14. Vat.lat.101 - glossed bible, later books Details
15. Vat.lat.293 - Ambrose, Details
16. Vat.lat.309 - John of Damascus, attrib. Details
17. Vat.lat.310 - John of Damascus, Chrysostom, Anselm - Details
18. Vat.lat.331 - Jerome on prophets, Details
19. Vat.lat.351 - Collection of Epistulae, Details
20. Vat.lat.652 - Johannes Scotus Eriugena and his famed exposition on the heavenly hierarchy, from which derives our modern use of "hierarchy" as a key abstraction - Details
21. Vat.lat.669 - Bernard of Clairvaux, Details
22. Vat.lat.687 - Augustine plus bits and bobs including this nifty circular calendar for 1401 onwards,
    
    
23. Vat.lat.690 - Peter Lombard, Sententiae Details
24. Vat.lat.699 - Psalms commentary attributed to Innocent III - Details
25. Vat.lat.708 - Albertus Magnus, bishop Regensburg, Summae theologiae, Details
26. Vat.lat.753 - Details
27. Vat.lat.794 - 14th century copy of Thomas Aquinas commentary on gospels. It seems from notes in it that Bermond de Montferrier, a Montpellier law professor was involved in transferring the codex to a convent in that city. With fine initial (below) showing the angelic doctor - Details
    
28. Vat.lat.812 - Franciscan sermons Details
29. Vat.lat.828 - works of Aegidius Romanus Details
30. Vat.lat.856 - Henry of Ghent, 15th century, first exemplar? Details
31. Vat.lat.12504 - letters of Enea Silvio Piccolomini, humanist, diplomat and pope, Details
32. Vat.lat.14741 - Giorgio Grippari's 1694 handwritten list of the printed books in the Biblioteca Vaticana. This is only initial letters A-B. Details

This is Piggin's Unofficial List 58. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to Digita Vaticana.

New BAV Portal

The Vatican's launch of a new portal for the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana reached maturity July 4 when the portal, which had been slowly filling since May, finally surpassed the old site in its posted total of content, reaching 4,724 items with the addition of thirty Hebrew manuscripts.

The numbers may still by slightly out of whack, with some subtotals not up to the old site's levels, but I would say that now is the time to change your links, begin using the new portal, and grin and bear its inadequacies. I have already built a whole new suite of searches with scripts to monitor it, and will no longer be monitoring the old site from now on.

Here is the full list of novelties, with notes taken from Malachi Beit-Arié's codicological descriptions:

1. Neofiti.4, Details
2. Neofiti.7, Details
3. Neofiti.9, Details
4. Neofiti.11, Details
5. Neofiti.14, Details
6. Neofiti.15, Details
7. Neofiti.22, Details
8. Neofiti.23, Details
9. Neofiti.24, Details
10. Neofiti.30, Details
11. Neofiti.31, Details
12. Neofiti.32, Details
13. Neofiti.34, Details
14. Neofiti.36, Details
15. Neofiti.40, Details
16. Neofiti.41, Details
17. Neofiti.43, Details
18. Neofiti.44, Details
19. Neofiti.45, Details
20. Neofiti.46, Details
21. Ross.328, Hebrew Details
22. Ross.359, Hebrew Details
23. Ross.362, Hebrew Details
24. Ross.363, Hebrew Details
25. Ross.436, Mahzor, Roman rite. Italy, about 1400. Details
26. Ross.477, Canon (Book II, Fens 1–2) by Avicenna, in the translation of Nathan ha-Meati. Details
27. Ross.599, Sefer Mizvot Gadol by Moses b. Jacob of Coucy. Incomplete. Details
28. Ross.601, Pentateuch, Former Prophets and treatises in Hebrew, written out by scribe Joseph b. Jacob ibn Janah in Huesca, Spain in 1275. Details
29. Ross.883, Hayyim b. Joseph Vital's kabbalistic work Ozerot Hayyim in an 18th-century Italian manuscript with this concentric diagram at fol. 1v. Details
    
30. Ross.1015, Genesis i:1–xxvi:32. Probably copied by a Christian hand. Details

This is Piggin's Unofficial List 57. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to Digita Vaticana.

Trithemius, Graphic-Minded Historian

Tabulated chronicles have a special place in the history of infographics, since they convert a story into a semi-graph. They tabulate events so that our human vision can make sense of what normally has to be handled by human aural comprehension. A timeline may look natural and obvious to the reader, but is in fact the product of a great deal of research and arranging.

Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516), the pioneering literary historian, gets a prized place as the introductory figure at the start of Anthony Grafton's and Megan Hale Williams' Christianity and the transformation of the book: Origen, Eusebius and the library of Caesarea, a book that is a favorite of every classics+graphics reader.

He is important to the evolution of infographics because he thought tables and indices were not just "back-matter" but really do matter. On his outstanding work, I will quote from a Hill exhibition catalog:

The Annales of Hirsau, finished in 1514 ... was Trithemius’ greatest achievement as an historian. The work was commissioned in 1495 by Abbot Blasius of the monastery at Hirsau but proved to be a slow and complex undertaking. [His theory of history was] embraced by the Christian humanists, among whom Trithemius was a major figure [via the Wayback Machine].

Trithemius offered his readers different views of the same material so they could literally "figure it out": a narrative, an index, and an arrangement of all the events in date order in his autograph second recension (1514) which is online at the Bavarian State Library in Munich. Grafton/Hale see it as a modern beacon pointing back to inventions by Eusebius and Origen.

Complementing the Munich codices now is the first recension Trithemius wrote by his own hand 1495-1503, which lacks the tables, but opens with an index:

This famous first edition, Pal. lat. 929, part of the Vatican collection, has arrived online in the last few days thanks to the efforts of a program in Heidelberg, Germany to digitize the Pal. lat. collection. Here is the list of eight novelties (whereby Trithemius was on the tail of the last group, but I overlooked it at first):

1. Pal. lat. 745 Infortiatum (14. Jh.)
2. Pal. lat. 746 Infortiatum (13. Jh.)
3. Pal. lat. 749 Digestum novum (14. Jh.)
4. Pal. lat. 750 Digestum novum (13.-14. Jh.)
5. Pal. lat. 751 Digestum novum (13.-14. Jh.)
6. Pal. lat. 752 Digestum novum (13.-14. Jh.)
7. Pal. lat. 753 Digestum novum (13. Jh.)
8. Pal. lat. 929 Trithemius, Johannes: Chronicon insigne monasterii Hirsaugiensis ordinis S. Benedicti (Sponheim, 1495-1503)

This is Piggin's Unofficial List 56. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to Digita Vaticana.