The Missing Petrus Roll

The second of the Vatican's two magnificent timelines by Peter of Poitiers has just arrived online at last. This is a big deal for the history of diagrammatic chronicles, an academic field which looks at how history was taught in medieval and early modern times. I will not introduce this art category again, as one click will take you to my post two weeks on this blog.

A much-delayed book on the topic, Geschichte und Weltordnung, by Andrea Worm is due out soon. She uses the term "synoptic" for the timeline layout: What happens at the same time is laid out side by side. In the abstract below by me, you see columns respectively for chief priests, prophets, kings of Judah, of Israel and of foreign powers:

The two rolls offer a study in contrasts. Vat.lat.3782 of the late 13th century is tightly packed, more restrained in its colors, mainly black text and red figures, and has the sobriety of a 19th century architectural diagram. Here is the section matching the abstract above:

Vat.lat.3783 of the 14th century is jumpier. It generously uses blank space to order its sections, employs thinner lines, hurls more blues and golds into the diagram and presages a more 20th century style.

You'll find a long list of digitized versions of Petrus rolls (including these two) on my website, where the table can be rearranged in any order, including date, location, type and so on.

Here is the full list of  the week's 12 new releases:

1. Ross.2,
2. Vat.lat.2338,
3. Vat.lat.3004,

   New online at @DigitaVaticana and listed by @JBPiggin. Important copy of Aristotle's Politics in William of Moerbeke's Latin. This marginal note was made by a medieval reader who had spotted the reference to the History of Animals!https://t.co/DeWUBItaou pic.twitter.com/rxC81NGq5m

   — Pieter Beullens (@LatinAristotle) September 29, 2018

4. Vat.lat.3097 (Upgraded to HQ), 15th century manuscript of science, see eTK for all entries. For example, ff. 103ra-146rb contains a text beginning: Circa primum librum de generatione et corruptione notandum ...
5. Vat.lat.3554 (Upgraded to HQ),
6. Vat.lat.3725,
7. Vat.lat.3735,
8. Vat.lat.3783, Compendium of Petrus Pictaviensis (above)
9. Vat.lat.3912 (Upgraded to HQ),
10. Vat.lat.3935,
11. Vat.lat.3939,
12. Vat.lat.3946,

This is Piggin's Unofficial List number 179. Thanks to @gundormr for harvesting. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to DigiVatLib.

Vatican Petrus Roll

The Vatican possesses at least two scrolls containing one of the most famous medieval timelines of biblical history, that drawn up in about 1180 by a Paris university professor, Peter of Poitiers, (Latin name Petrus Pictaviensis Cancellarius).

In the past week, the first of these, Vat.lat.3782 of the late 13th century, was digitized and arrived online in the past week. The other, Vat.lat.3783, cannot be far behind.

Peter's chart for the schoolroom, now commonly known as the Compendium, was drawn as a roll four or more metres in length so it could be scrolled between an upper and a lower roller like a movie reel. Fancy penmanship (see Adam - Eva above) was part of the good example it offered. It was also available sectioned up into ten or so book pages, which must be why Alberic of Trois-Fontaines sixty years later spoke of it in the plural, calling it arbores historiarum, diagrams of history.

Most books about the history of trees and timelines (for example Rosenberg and Grafton's Cartographies of Time) introduce the Compendium, although it had a little-known predecessor nearly 800 years earlier, the Great Stemma, which did much the same on a left-to-right scroll. Peter may not have known a late antique forerunner existed, as his work seems entirely original and not modelled on the Great Stemma.

Peter placed Adam at the top end of the roll and Jesus at the bottom, connecting them by the ancestry given in Genesis and the Gospel of Matthew. He omitted the entire line given in the Gospel of Luke, while introducing additional parallel lines including high priests, Assyrian oppressers, Seleucid emperors and other figures important to Palestine, endeavouring to gather in the secular political context surrounding the biblical story. Everybody is named in roundels like this:

As might be expected with a classroom classic, the Compendium can be found all over Europe in public and private collections. There's a comprehensive overview of these, Peter's Stemma, on my website, and I have posted on the topic in the past on this blog. The Vatican possesses copies in sectional form (as alluded to above by Alberic) as well, three of which are already online:

• Pal.lat.963
• Pal.lat.1723
• Vat.lat.1972 

The full list of 45 digitizations in the past week follows.

1. Ross.1,
2. Ross.25,
3. Vat.gr.505,
4. Vat.lat.2119,
5. Vat.lat.2336,
6. Vat.lat.2340,
7. Vat.lat.2436,
8. Vat.lat.2670,
9. Vat.lat.2686,
10. Vat.lat.2705,
11. Vat.lat.3087 (Upgraded to HQ),
12. Vat.lat.3479,
13. Vat.lat.3553,
14. Vat.lat.3581,
15. Vat.lat.3645,
16. Vat.lat.3712,
17. Vat.lat.3743,
18. Vat.lat.3750 (Upgraded to HQ),
19. Vat.lat.3751,
20. Vat.lat.3752,
21. Vat.lat.3762 (Upgraded to HQ),
22. Vat.lat.3765,
23. Vat.lat.3782, Compendium of Petrus Pictaviensis (above)
24. Vat.lat.3796,
25. Vat.lat.3804,
26. Vat.lat.3809,
27. Vat.lat.3815,

    Calcidius' Latin translation of Plato's Timaeus in a 12th-c. copy, including some elaborate drawings, now available @DigitaVaticana. HT to @JBPiggin for including it in his weekly list.https://t.co/uEqPnLkn7G pic.twitter.com/qKRkwC8ZrS

    — Pieter Beullens (@LatinAristotle) September 8, 2018

28. Vat.lat.3820 (Upgraded to HQ),
29. Vat.lat.3825 (Upgraded to HQ),
30. Vat.lat.3826,
31. Vat.lat.3830,

    I hereby present you the "Gregorian reformer's handbook": follow the instructions if you ever need to confront simoniacs or married priests!
    
    Amazing canon law collection made in 11thC Central Italy among the latest uploads @DigitaVaticana HT @JBPiggin
    ➡️https://t.co/ksPSYfKvf4 pic.twitter.com/tXOhuJi9s2

    — GiorgiaV (@ParvaVox) September 10, 2018

32. Vat.lat.3843,
33. Vat.lat.3845,

    A harlequinesque king Rothari greets you from this 12thC Italian lawbook gathering Lombard & #Carolingian legislation. It's an early witness of the so-called Lombarda reordering content by legal theme rather than chronological order!
    ➡️https://t.co/CzuiidyaZc#MondayMotivation pic.twitter.com/RTAib0Xwna

    — GiorgiaV (@ParvaVox) September 10, 2018

34. Vat.lat.3851,
35. Vat.lat.3862 (Upgraded to HQ),

    Beautiful 9thC copy of Victorinus's commentary on Cicero's De inventione just digitised @DigitaVaticana HT @JBPiggin!
    The #manuscript is connected to Lupus of Ferrières, the only #Carolingian scholar who had a thorough knowledge of Ciceronian rhetoric!
    ➡️https://t.co/JCJeolLltf pic.twitter.com/Z4SVTRfsyz

    — GiorgiaV (@ParvaVox) September 11, 2018

36. Vat.lat.3881.pt.1,
37. Vat.lat.3881.pt.2,
38. Vat.lat.3885,
39. Vat.lat.3894,
40. Vat.lat.3907,
41. Vat.lat.3910,
42. Vat.lat.3921,
43. Vat.lat.3947 (Upgraded to HQ),
44. Vat.lat.3949 (Upgraded to HQ),
45. Vat.lat.3989,

This is Piggin's Unofficial List number 176. Thanks to @gundormr for harvesting. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to DigiVatLib.

Peter and Parker

Half a year ago, a kind reader revealed to me that the Compendium of Petrus Pictaviensis, a remarkable medieval chart of time that dates from around 1180 just kept going and going and turns up in English translation in one of the early English vernacular bibles, that edited by Matthew Parker and printed in London from 1568 onwards.

There are several copies of this famous work of 16th-century printing on Early English Books Online (which is behind a paywall). Otherwise check out Princeton's copy incomplete at archive.org.

The English text of the diagram has been usefully abstracted by the Text Creation Partnership (here is the transcript). What one notices is that this text is longer than that of Petrus, heavily interpolated and rather liberally translated from the Latin.

I was interested to see how the diagram shaped up graphically, and as I usually do, I looked at the end rather than the beginning of the chart, where there are several characteristic ways of laying out the Holy Family and Apostles, one of Petrus's hobby-horses. Here's how it is shown in the Parker Bible:

Below is my own abstract of the three most characteristic layouts to be found in the older manuscripts:

You'll see at a glance that the Parker Bible use the layout at top right. This is useful to anyone who wants to research the origins of the Parker diagram and the work involved in converting it to print. I haven't continued my research past that simple check, but knowing about this connection may be useful to others studying this diagram, so I will leave this note online.

A Costly Petrus Roll

Last week in New York, Sotheby's sold at auction for $250,000 a parchment roll containing a 13th-century copy of the Compendium of Petrus Pictaviensis, a timeline of biblical history compiled in Paris in the late 12th century for use in education. Of about 200 extant copies of this huge diagram, the auctioned item is probably the only one left in private ownership.

It is one of the items listed in my manuscript survey, which offers links to many of the digitized rolls. The sale description notes that the just-sold item, of English origin, is "inscribed with a few sixteenth-century annotations, attesting to the roll’s continued usefulness as a guide to biblical and other history."

This week, Digita Vaticana added 15 new items to its posted index, including another copy of the Compendium, this one in book form. Pal.lat.963 dates from the 15th century and was made in Germany with many fine miniatures. The New York sale gives a rough idea of the immense market value of the Rome item. In Pal.lat.963 we can admire the dynamics of Abraham being stopped as he is about to sacrifice Isaac:

The second image is a fine little Nativity from the same book. Mary seems to have a very comfortable bed in this stable, but Joseph looks tired and cold. The manuscript is not completely fresh online. It was available last year or even earlier on Heidelberg's Biblioteca Palatina portal, but is now on the Vatican's server as well.

Here is the full list of 15 new postings:

1. Pal.lat.939,
2. Pal.lat.941,
3. Pal.lat.962,
4. Pal.lat.963, Petrus Pictaviensis, with Candelabra and Compendium
5. Pal.lat.1014,
6. Pal.lat.1024,
7. Ross.884, Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, and Terence, Eununchus, now believed to have been copied out by Machiavelli himself. See Alison Brown's discussion. (And all praise to the scanner for opening up the foldouts.)
8. Vat.lat.376, Augustine of Hippo: On Epistles of John and other extracts
9. Vat.lat.377, Ado of Vienne, Martyrologium, etc.
10. Vat.lat.392, John Chrysostom, in Latin
11. Vat.lat.393, John Chrysostom, Homilae, Epistulae
12. Vat.lat.1894, Diogenes Laertius, Latin translation by Ambrose Traversari, of De vitis philosophorum - 15th century
13. Vat.lat.3306, a 12th-century manuscript of the Comedies of Terence (possibly with glosses from the Commentum Brunsianum)
14. Vat.lat.3594, De regno, by Leodrisio Crivelli. Text here (PDF).
15. Vat.lat.3833, the Collectio Canonum by Deusdedit, written between 1083 and 1087. This is the sole complete manuscript of this legal work. See Lotte Kéry. Notable for tabular material, but no diagrams. This is a palimpsest with four Vulgate gospels from the 7th or 8th century underneath (see Trismegistos).

As a later addition to this post (in January 2016), I will list the 34 most recent BAV manuscripts issued online on Biblioteca Palatina. These were all announced by its RSS feed on December 7, 2015.

1. Pal. lat. 646 Io(annis) Mo(naehi) apparatus sexti libri decretalium (14-15th century)
2. Pal. lat. 650 Bonifatii VIII sextus decretalium cum apparatu Ioannis Andreae (14-15th century)
3. Pal. lat. 652 Bernardi (Circa) prepositi papiensis breuiarium decretalium (14th century)
4. Pal. lat. 654 Nicolai (Siculi) episcopi panormitani lectura super 2a parte et sic super toto 2° libro decretalium (1460)
5. Pal. lat. 660 Nicolai Siculi: Nicolai Siculi abbatis episcopi panormitani lectura super primo decretalium (15th century)
6. Pal. lat. 661 Nicolai Siculi: Nicolai Siculi episcopi lectura super prima parte secundi libri decretalium (15th century)
7. Pal. lat. 662 Nicolai Siculi: Nicolai Ciculi (l. Siculi) doctoris excellentissimi in monasterio sce. Marie de monacbis in Sicilia lectura in tertium librum decretalium (15th century)
8. Pal. lat. 663 Nicolai Siculi: Nicolai Sciculi (l. Siculi) episcopi panormitani tractatus in secundum librum deeretalimn: Lectura de prima parte secundi libri decretalium (15th century)
9. Pal. lat. 665 Nicolai Siculi: Dni. (Nicolai) abbatis de Scicilia (sic) famosissimi et monarchae iuris canonici doctoris lectura super quinto decretalium (15th century)
10. Pal. lat. 666 Nicolai Siculi: Sammelhandschrift (15th century)
11. Pal. lat. 669 Tractatus in constitutiones clementinas (15th century)
12. Pal. lat. 670 Ioannis Andreae: Novella primi (1407)
13. Pal. lat. 674 Iohannis Caldarini bonon. tabula auctoritatum et sententiarum biblie inductarum in compilacionibus decretor. et decretalium ; Flores ex libris sacrorum canonum et legum nec non ex libris reuerendorum doctorum dedic. Eberardo praeposito ecclesie Hoyern (15th century)
14. Pal. lat. 677 Reinheri ord. predicatorum liber hereticorum ; Articuli mgri. lohannis Wiclef condempnati in Anglia per . XIII . episcopos et XXX . magistros in theologia . in Conuentu frm. predicatorum anno dni. 1380; Dni. Petri de ordine celestinorum inquisitoris hereticorum processus (15th century)
15. Pal. lat. 678 Sammelhandschrift (13th century) 
16. Pal. lat. 679 Sammelband (15th century), in two parts
17. Pal. lat. 680 Fris. Nycolai Eymerici ord. pred. sacre theologie magistri Cappellani domini nri. pape etc. in terris domini Regis Aragonie inquisitoris liber inquisicionis (15th century)
18. Pal. lat. 681 Fratris Nicolai Eymerici directorium inquisitionis haereticae pravitatis (15th century)
19. Pal. lat. 682 Fratris Martini (Poloni) ord. praedicatorum tabula decretorum et decretalium ordine alphabetico (15th century)
20. Pal. lat. 683 Sammelhandschrift (15th century)
21. Pal. lat. 684 Egudii Bellimere (sic) decisiones in ius canonicum ; Bertrandi de Arnassana sacri palatii causarum auditoris ordinacio decisionum antiquarum (praecedentium) redacta sub congruis titulis in hoc presenti compendio (15th century)
22. Pal. lat. 685 Sammelhandschrift (15th century)
23. Pal. lat. 686 Sammelhandschrift (15th century)
24. Pal. lat. 690 Martiniani (i. e. Martini Poloni) summa iuris canonici (15th century)
25. Pal. lat. 692 Bartolomaei Pysani
26. Pal. lat. 693 Sammelhandschrift
27. Pal. lat. 694 Bartholomaei Pisani 
28. Pal. lat. 696 Bern(ardi) Papi(ensis)
29. Pal. lat. 700 Sammelhandschrift
30. Pal. lat. 701 Liber formularum, in two parts
31. Pal. lat. 706 Iohannis 
32. Pal. lat. 698 Tabula super summam Beymundi (de Pennaforti) (13th century)
33. Pal. lat. 699 Tabula iuris
34. Pal. lat. 1906 Epigrammata et Epistolae

If you can contribute more data, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for more information.

Cassiodorus Digital

Since I first published several years ago a hyperlinked listing of the 37 diagrams "made up" by Cassiodorus for his Institutiones, two key sources have become available digitally: the great 8th-century codex from Monte Cassino now at Bamberg, Msc. Patr. 61, which contains the complete set, probably in the final form approved by Cassiodorus for publication, and Mazarine 660, which contains some peculiar variations in the motifs used in the diagrams. The tabulated listing now includes links to all these images, making it an excellent tool for comparing their evolution in the first millennium. The drawings from Mazarine 660 are to be found on the Liber Floridus illuminations site.

It is remarkable how much has changed in the 13 years since the definitive article on the Cassiodorus diagrams by Michael Gorman was published and included this comment:

Today it is relatively cheap and easy to buy a microfilm of a manuscript and print it out on paper, but in the 1930s this was a luxury that could probably not even be imagined ... I hope this note is sufficient to stimulate interest in preparing a facsimile of the Bamberg manuscript ... (pages 39, 41)

Since that was written, another unimaginable barrier has been breached and it has become possible for anyone to see these manuscripts at no charge via the internet, making facsimiles less necessary.

This update is one of three data upgrades to the Macro-Typography website that have been accomplished in the past month. The collation of the Great Stemma now contains a properly checked fifth and last set of text variations, from the Gamma manuscripts. This was previously bodged together from Fischer's Genesis edition and my transcription of the Urgell Beatus. The Gamma text is now based on a sounder manuscript, that in the San Juan Bible, with the Urgell Beatus only required to fill gaps. This data entry was a lot of work at an unwelcome time, but means that I can now close off the transcription phase with a good conscience.

The third of the upgrades has been some supplementing of the Petrus Pictaviensis table on my website. The major new find there has been a digitization (by Heidelberg) of one of the manuscripts in the Vatican Library. I have also restored the Walters digitization which for some inexplicable reason I had deleted from the list. This means there is an even wider range of quality digitizations -- 22 -- of the Compendium available for comparison.

In addition to these, I continue to keep an eye out for any more additions to the Stemma of Boethius tabulation I completed in the late spring.

Gorman, Michael. “The Diagrams in the Oldest Manuscript of Cassiodor’s Institutiones.” Revue Bénédictine no. 110 (2000): 27–41.

Books, Books, Books

I have just refreshed the bibliography on the Great Stemma which now runs to more than 180 items. The  major change is that it is now annotated, following the urging of Phoebe Acheson of the University of Georgia (Athens) Miller Learning Center, who founded the Ancient World Open Bibliographies (AWOL). She added the original bibliography to her list in May 2011, where it is tagged under both information architecture and paragraphy.

Additions include the article by Helena de Carlos which I recently posted about as well as a rather shallow discussion by Carlos Miranda in 2000 of the differences between the Great Stemma, Lesser Stemma and Compendium of Peter of Poitiers:

Miranda García, Carlos. ‘Mnemonics and Pedagogy in the Compendium Historiae in Genealogia Christi by Peter of Poitiers’. In Genealogia Christi, edited by Maria Algàs, translated by Anne Barton de Mayer, 29–89. Barcelona: Moleiro, 2000.

This appears in a very interesting volume devoted to a Rome manuscript in roll form of the Compendium. To my astonishment this is quite a rare book: there is only one copy as far as I know in any research or public library in the north of Germany (and only two in the south, at Passau and Munich). As an insert, it contains a printing of what I would guess is the first-ever digital plot of a medieval stemmatic diagram. The work on this very impressive poster-style, fold-out sheet is credited in the book (page 15) to Enrique de Castillo. I will give it a bibliographic reference of its own when I do a medieval book-list.

Finding Bernhard Pez

Bound into Heinrich Brauer's papers on the Compendium of Peter of Poitiers (the subject of my preceding blog post) is a library research report dated 1951 May 9 compiling reference-book data on this 12th-century work. It was drawn up by the Staatsbibliothek (then the Öffentliche Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek in the Soviet-controlled sector of Berlin).

It is evidence of the industrious help that could once be obtained from research library staff, back in the days before the budgets of such institutions were cut. Brauer was living and working in Celle, half a day's train ride from Berlin, but was able to save himself the trip to Berlin by simply writing and asking for an "Auskunft". We are immeasurably better off nowadays with the instant access available via the internet.

The reply from Berlin is of no great scholarly value and is defective in not containing any mention of the principal survey of Peter's work then in print, that published by Moore in 1930. The librarian also promises to inquire at other German libraries, but as there is no letter on file with any such results, this probably led nowhere. However one of its references, to Bernhard Pez, caught my eye.

The compilation duly mentions the editio princeps by Zwingli the younger published in 1592 in Basle and quotes from a series of reference works:

• Georgi: Allgemeines europäisches Bücherlexikon
• Jocher: Allgeneines Gelehrten-Lexikon
• Nomenclator literarius theologiae catholicae
• Wetzer und Welte: Kirchenlexikon
• The Catholic Encyclopedia
• Histoire littéraire de la France, vol 16

The last of these can be consulted on Google Books and the librarian quotes its mention of an edition by Pez based on the manuscript from "Metsen" in the diocese of Passau, Bavaria. This is a misprint or authorial error for the Benedictine house Kloster Metten.

Bernhard Pez was the librarian of the Benedictine abbey of Melk in Austria and volume 1 (published in 1721) of his Thesaurus anecdotorum novissimus notes that he found a copy of the Compendium in the monastic library during a visit to Metten. The Thesaurus has been digitized by the MDZ (click on the link and go to page 59 of the scan). A researcher has usefully added the handwritten information that the Compendium is at folio 101 of the codex, and Pez states:

Petri Pictaviensis Compendium historie veteris ac novi Testamenti, quod incipit: considerans historiae sacrae prolixitatem etc.

One presumes this manuscript is now in the state library in Munich.

Study in 1951 of a Peter Roll

Heinrich Brauer, a German art historian, undertook a transcription in 1951 of a roll version of Peter of Poitiers' Compendium. As far as I know this typewritten text (the first modern edition since that by Ulrich Zwingli?)* has never been published. The only known copy is deposited at the Herzog August Bibliothek (HAB) in Wolfenbüttel, Germany. I interloaned it last week for a look.

Brauer seems to have included both rolls, Blankenburg 305 and Blank.305a, in an exhibition he organized at Celle Palace, where he was art curator and the transcription and correspondence were apparently part of his work as a public official. The letters may be of some wider interest and I am therefore providing an English translation. Both were addressed to Erhart Kästner, director of the HAB.

The first of the letters from the Kunstgutlager in Schloss Celle was dated 1951 June 18:
 
Dear Dr Kästner,
I ought to have reported back much sooner on my work on the Stemma of Christ manuscript rolls kindly loaned to me by the Wolfenbüttel Library. I would ask you to let me keep the two rolls for a little longer. I completed the transcription of the text some time ago and I am sending it to you to give you some idea, although it is obviously in need of improvement.
We are preparing to hold an exhibition on "Applied Arts and Manuscripts of the 15th century (Kunsthandwerk und Handschriften des 15. Jahrhunderts)". I had been thinking of asking you to permit the Wolfenbüttel rolls to be exhibited in this show, but did not know if a suitable placement would emerge for them. 
I now realize that both can be very well displayed as part of the overall context, which is why I have waited until today to ask for an extension of the loan. We will also be obtaining a pictorial tapestry from Wienhausen for the exhibition, and the rest will come from the stock of the Kunstgutlager, enabling us to assemble quite an impressive show. The inauguration is to take place on July 8 and I hope I will see you then here in Celle.
With best wishes, also to Dr Butzmann,
Greetings and thanks,
H. Brauer

The second is dated 1951 October 8:

Dear Dr Kästner,
When the manuscripts loaned from you were returned I was delighted to hear that my transcription of Blanc 305 ended up with Dr Butzmann. I have now been able to improve the text in many places with the help of the printed edition of 1592.
Blanc 305 and the unnumbered roll contain the same text, which begins with the word "Considerans ..." (....) and is attributed to Petrus Pictaviensis (chancellor of the University of Paris from 1192, died 1205). His works are printed in Migne PL 221 but there is no mention of the Considerans text. 
The Royal Library in Brussels has nine copies of this text, with a person called Gallus listed as the author. The British Museum catalogue names the author as Petrus Pictaviensis or Petrus Comestor without deciding the point. A manuscript (number 128) of the same text from the middle of the 13th century can be found at Admont and is entitled "Ottonis de S. Blasio Chronika prima", cf. Verzeichnis IV,1, editor Buberl (Leipzig, 1911), with two images of it. Buberl: "probably done in Salzburg".
Its script along with the characteristic initials is very similar to Blanc 305. I would therefore propose that Wolfenbüttel parchment roll Blanc 305 of the Stemma of Christ is also a product of Salzburg from the middle of the 13th century.
The paper roll without any Wolfenbüttel number is signed at the end by the scribe: "Pater Gallus presbyter ordinis Sancti Benedicti, Conventualis monasterii Sancti Galli." When I inquired to (the monastery of) Maria Laach, Rev. Dr. Volk replied:

The P. Gallus whose name is in the photo was Father Gallus Kemly of St Gall, born 1417 Nov 18, died soon after 1477. From 1465 he copied P. Comestor, Historia scholastica (i.e. Ms 605 of the St. Gall Library) as well as Excerpta ex historia scholastica et vitis patrum (i.e. Ms 607 of the St. Gall Library); cf. R. Henggeler, Professbuch der fürstl. Benediktinerabtei der Heiligen Gallus und Otmar zu St. Gallen, Zug, 1929, pages 234-236.

I understand the Considerans text circulated widely: it was translated into French, English and German (perhaps into Spanish and Czech too) and was often extended and revised. It is conceived for the education of students and is not just theological in purpose but is at the same time a tabulation of history as well, rather like our Plötz**. It employs Scripture as an historical source and its author sees no dilemma between faith and scholarship.
The text always accompanies the genealogical tables and is often employed as an introduction to the Historia scholastica of Petrus Comestor Trecensis although it contrasts strangely with that wholly theological work. A manuscript in Munich from Metten combines the Considerans text with the Biblia pauperum. Its scribe recognizes its historiographic character since he includes with it the Chronicle of Popes and Emperors of Martinus Polonus of Troppau. This may have been done in the 14th century. The Stemma of Christ precedes the Diadocheen of the Popes, with the emperors laid out in parallel, leading back via Caesar, Alexander, Darius, Cyrus, Nebuchadnezzar by a circuitous route to the archaic parents. It provides an historical vision of monumental simplicity.
We find it in the printed Universal Chronicles such as the Rudimentum of Lübeck of 1475, the Fasciculum temporum of Cologne by Rolevink of 1474 and the Chronicle of Schedel of 1493, which all derive from the Considerans text and even give it as their source. The Lübeck one names the author as Petrus Trecensis. Rolevink names Isidore, not for the entirety, but, as the context shows, as author of a short work dealing with the period of the Old Testament, which is namely our text.
Yours,
Dr. H. Brauer

Schloss Celle, a former royal palace in Celle, north of Hanover, seems to have hosted a large store of displaced art. Brauer's entry in the Katalog der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek indicates a date of birth of 1900 (data 1, data 2), while the German Archaeology Society indicates he died in 1983 (notice). He was an associate of Rudolf Wittkower (subject of a previous post), but I do not know anything else about him.

* [In fact the third: see my listing. Note added 2015]
** Der Große Ploetz, a standard reference book for German secondary schools by Karl Ploetz (1819-1881) which was in print from 1855 to 2008.

A List of Peter Manuscripts

I have previously briefly mentioned the Compendium genealogiae of Peter of Poitiers. This roll, probably designed to hang on walls, shows the genealogy of Christ, with Adam at the very top and Holy Family at the bottom, linked by stemmatic lines.

As far as I know, the biggest recent listing of available manuscripts was compiled by Laura Alidori in 2002, before many of them had been digitized. I decided to update the list, and at the same time found that the digitized catalogs of German archives identified a good many more manuscripts which appeared to belong on the list. So far the total number is running at 185, and I suspect this is not exhaustive.

The list is on a new page of the piggin.net website, and as always, I welcome corrections or additions. The most impressive digitized version is that at the Houghton Collection in Harvard, Massachusetts.

I have not yet explored the differences between Peter's original and the roll-form Chronique universelle d'Orléans or the Histoire sainte abrégée. There are some interesting online images of the latter at Lyons (enter 863 as the search term).

A comparison with Dan Embree's list at Repertorium Chronicarum may help to weed out what does not belong. On the positive side, Embree allocates the various chronicles to authors. On the negative side, his list does not appear to be so all-embracing.

Peter's Compendium

So far this blog has not directed much attention to the Compendium historiae in genealogia Christi, a 12th-century work by Peter of Poitiers which presents a completely new stemmatic diagram. Peter was a believer in the Trinubium, the three marriages of St Anne, and his vast genealogical infographic went into wide circulation in medieval Europe. There is no evidence the Compendium is adapted from the Great Stemma, though it seems plausible that Peter would have known of the Great Stemma and would have been inspired by it to design his own diagram ab initio.

In his 1943 article in Estudios Biblicos on the Great Stemma, Teófilo Ayuso claims that one of the codices where it is reproduced is a 14th- or 15th-century bible at the University of Barcelona, which his 1943 article terms Barc1, though it later becomes Barc3 in his peculiar numbering. This is online: I found a digital version yesterday. Its call number is Sig. Ms. 762. (There is another fine Barcelona University bible online, Sig. Ms. 856, but this does not contain any stemmata.) Sig. Ms. 762 is described at volume 2, page 308 of Miquel Rosell's printed catalog as follows: Ff. 2-7. Genealogias. Inc.: De Cain. Cain agricola dolens ... Expl.: De Tiberio ..., sub quo Dominus est passus. It also contains an Interpretationes Hebraicorum Nominum.

It is clear from only superficial examination that including this bible in the Great Stemma camp is another of Ayuso's blunders. The Barcelona bible very clearly contains the Compendium diagram, not the Great Stemma.

This can be readily seen by comparing it to other codices. There are several good online presentations of the Compendium. An impressive one is Ms Typ 216 at the Houghton Library of Harvard University, a roll-manuscript (probably intended for use as a wall-chart). It can be viewed in sections here.

There is a finely drawn 12th-century (?) version in codex form in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, spread over 10 pages in an anonymous seven-folio document, Plut.20.56 (5v is the final page of the diagram). An early 13th-century manuscript from England now in Paris, Lat. 15254, contains the same chart. I expect there are many others, but this is what some searching today turned up. [An excellent starting point is Nathaniel Taylor's survey, and I see the Met Museum also has a damaged scroll which is online in low resolution.]

As far as I know, there has been no printed version since the rather inaccurate editio princeps of the Compendium published by Zwingli in 1592, which differs in signal ways from the manuscripts above. MDZ offers it digitized. I have not done a bibliography on the Compendium yet, but it is discussed at length by Christiane Klapisch-Zuber in chapter 6 of L'Ombre des Ancêtres and there are some articles mentioned in a footnote by Stork.