Editio Princeps

As far as I know, the editio princeps of the Liber Genealogus is the edition of the Codex Taurinensis published at Paris by Christoph Pfaff in 1712. It can found on Google Books. The full title is Firmiani Lactantii Epitome Institutionum Divinarum ad Pentadium fratrem. For a German note about Pfaff, see Wikipedia.

Primacy of Latin

If God had spoken Latin, western Christians believed, he would have dictated the scriptures in Jerome’s Latin words. The great Complutensian Polyglot Bible, published in Madrid 45 years before Hernando del Castillo collated Justus's Gospel Book, had placed the Greek, Latin and Hebrew texts in three parallel columns.

Its preface stated: Mediam autem inter has latinam beati Hieronymi translationem velut inter Synagogam et Orientalem Ecclesiam posuimus: tanque duos hinc et inde latrones medium autem Iesum hoc est Romanam sive latinam Ecclesiam collocantes (Prolog. II).

Here is a translation following Basil Hall (in Greenslade, E.L. ed., The Cambridge History of the Bible):

We have placed the Latin translation of blessed Jerome as though between the Synagogue and the Eastern Church, siting them like the two thieves, one on each side, and Jesus, that is the Roman or Latin Church, between them.

This sardonic statement appears at the start of the bible, a masterpiece of typography and Catholic scholarship, which was printed between 1514 and 1517 in Alcalá de Henares (Complutum in Latin). The Complutensian Bible is available as a PDF from Archive.org.

Vetus Names

In her publication on the Great Stemma in 1984, Yolanta Zaluska asserted that all the existing recensions contained a mixture of Vetus Latina and Vulgate names:

Lé fond commun de la Vieille Latine est sensible dans tous les témoins consultés, mais à des degrés variés. Il est indiscutable que la Vulgate a été utilisée à plusieurs reprises tantôt pour corriger les lignées, tantôt pour compléter les textes explicatifs.

She characterized these differences as follows:

Recension α: ... texte mixte, en général très corrompu, disposé toujours sur quatorze tables; à partir d'Abraham (table VI), n'a presque pas été retouché sur la Vulgate.
Recension β: ... texte corrigé d'après la Vulgate, néanmoins dans l'ensemble assez corrompu, et fortement interpolé, en grande partie, semble-t-il, à l'aide des Etymologies d'Isidore; peut être commodément désigné comme une recension longue.
Recension σ transmise par le Beatus de Saint-Sever (S), apparaissant pour l'essentiel comme un texte de type α corrigé d'après la Vulgate, mais fournissant quand même des textes qui lui sont propres ...
Recension γ: ... texte ne montrant que des retouches occasionnelles d'après la Vulgate; partie caractéristique à la page des Juges; plusieurs omissions.
Recension δ: ... Le premier texte (Bible de San Millán de la Cogolla, Madrid) est probablement celui qui reflète le plus fidèlement la tradition de la Vieille Latine; le texte de [Bible de Calahorra] en revanche suit généralement la Vulgate, à partir d'Abraham; des interpolations communes dans la première partie du texte.

Zaluska never presented any statistical data or analysis to back up these characterizations, so I have done some sampling of my own. Below is a tabulation containing a rough scoring of 39 Genesis names from the period down to Abraham. I have included a recension, Epsilon, that Zaluska left out of account. I have not included Zaluska's Sigma in this survey.
The assessments are subjective, which is to say I judged the different spellings and rated how closely they resembled the Vetus Latina orthography (which is based on the Septuagint Greek). The scoring system offers a continuum between forms that show no influence from Jerome and forms that could only be corruptions of Jerome's orthography. This is not highly scientific, but it is a start. Here are the numerical values I employed:

• -2 signifies an obviously LXX/Vetus form, but with extreme scribal deformation;
• -1 is the pure LXX/Vetus type;
• 0 means a name containing a consonant or vowel that uncertainly suggests the LXX/Vetus type;
• +1 a name of Vulgate type;
• +2 signified variants that are very unlike the Vetus but do resemble the Vulgate type

The columns, from left to right, represent Epsilon, Delta, Gamma, Alpha, Beta; the last three columns comprise Fischer's form of the Vetus name, the Clementine Vulgate form and the Stuttgart Vulgate form.

2	1	0	1	1	Gamer	Gomer	Gomer
1	-1	-1	-1	-1	Iuvan	Iavan	Javan
-2	-2	1	1	1	Thobel	Tubal	Thubal
-1	-1	-1	0	0	Cham	Ham	Ham
-1	-1	-1	1	1	Mestrem	Mesraim	Mesraim
1	1	-1	-1	1	Evilat	Hevila	Hevila
-1	1	0	1		Sabacatha	Sabatacha	Sabatacha
1	1	1	1	1	Iudadan	Dadan	Dadan
0	1	-1	0	-1	Nebroth	Nemrod	Nemrod
2	2	0	1	0	Labiim	Laabim	Laabim
1	1	-2	1	-2	Neptabiim	Nepthuim	Nephthuim
1	1	1	1	1	Patrosin	Phetrusim	Phetrusim
1	1	1	1	1	Caslonin	Cesluim	Chasluim
1	1	1	1	1	Captorim	Capthurim
1	1	-1	1	1	Chetteum	Ettheum	Hethæum
1	1	1	1	2	Euveum	Eveum	Hevæum
1	1	1	1	1	Aruceum	Araceum	Aracæum
2	1	-1	1	1	Asenneum	Sineum	Sinæum
-1	-1	-1	1	1	Samareum	Samariten	Samaræum
1	1	2	2	1	Aelam	Elam	Ælam
-1	-1	-1	-1	-1	Arfaxat	Arfaxad	Arphaxad
2	2	2	2	2	Obs	Us	Us
0	1	0	0	0	Ul	Hul	Hul
1	2	2	2	1	Gather	Gether	Gether
-2	-2	-2	0	0	Mosoch	Mes	Mes
-2	0	0	0	0	Helmodat	Helmodad	Elmodad
1	1	1	1	1	Odorrem	Aduram	Adoram
1	1	-1	1	1	Ezel	Uzal	Uzal
1	0	-1	1	1	Gebal	Ebal	Ebal
1	1	-2	1	1	Abimeel	Abimahel	Abimaël
1	1	1	1	1	Ufir	Ophir	Ophir
1	1	1	1	1	Evilat	Evila	Hevila
-1	-1	-1	-1	-1	Falec	Faleg	Phaleg
-1	-1	-1	-1	-1	Ragau	Reu	Reu
-1	-1	-1	-1	-1	Seruch	Sarug	Sarug
1	1	-1	1	1	Nachor	Nahor	Nahor
-1	-1	-1	-1	1	Thara	Thare	Thare
1	-1	-1	1	1	Nachor	Nahor	Nahor
1	-1	-1	-1	-1	Sarra	Sarai	Sarai

This list has been filtered to only comprise 39 names in Genesis where there seems to be a distinction between the Vetus Latina and Vulgate forms.
Now it is striking that none of the five recensions above consistently follows the Vetus Latina type, which would be indicated by one of the columns consisting mostly of scores of -2 or -1.

When transcribing the manuscripts, my impression was that the concentration of Vetus Latina names was highest in Delta, but in this scoring, Delta has a median value of +0.3. In fact it is Gamma which is closest to the Vetus, with a median score of -0.2 . As for the rest, the medians are Epsilon +0.4, Alpha +0.5 and Beta +0.5.

I have converted the table to a graph below. If anyone can think of a more expressive graph, I would be glad to hear advice on how this could be presented in line with current methods.

It will be clear to the readers from both the table and from the graph that there is no obvious consistency in the way that medieval editors revised the five recensions. The variants swerve wildly to both sides. In this sample of names from Genesis, the data does not seem to support Zaluska's conclusion that Gamma contains "occasional retouchings" drawn from the Vulgate," whereas Delta is the "most faithful" to the Vetus Latina. If anything, Gamma is more faithful.

What can we say about the names from those parts of biblical history subsequent to Genesis?

We cannot expect to find any differences in the names from Christ back to the Exile, because these names only existed in the Greek manuscripts of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and no Hebrew evidence for them exists. Jerome of Stridon did not alter their Latin transcriptions, so these names are invariant between the Vetus Latina and the Vulgate.

As for the names from the Exile back to Saul, we also cannot expect to find much significant variation. We do not yet possess scholarly editions of the Vetus Latina text of 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles, 1 Kings and 2 Kings (they will take several more decades to arrive). To fill the gap, I have instead collated the Septuagint forms, which were of course the basis for the Vetus Latina. The reader can construe the likely Latin transcriptions, and compare these to the Stuttgart Vulgate forms. The following selection shows that Jerome left the bulk of the pre-existing Latin forms pretty well unchanged.

Αχινααμ	Ahinoem	1Sa	25:43, 2 Sa 3:2
Αβιγαιας	Abigail	1Sa	25:42, 2Sa 3:3
Μααχα	Maacha	2Sa	3:3
Αγγιθ	Aggith	1Ch	3:2, 2Sa 3:4
Αβιταλ	Abital	2Sa	3:4
Αιγλα	Agla	2Sa	3:5
Βηρσαβεε	Bethsabee	2Sa	11:3
Αμνων	Amnon	2Sa	3:2
Δαλουια	Chelaab	2Sa	3:2, 1Ch 3:1
Αβεσσαλωμ	Absalom	2Sa	3:3
Ορνια	Adonias	2Ch	3:4
Σαφατια	Safathia	1Ch	3:3, 2Sa 3:4
Ιεθερααμ	Iethraam	2Sa	3:5
Θημαρ	Thamar	2Sa	13:1
Ιβααρ	Ibaar	1Ch	3:6, 14:5, 2Sa 5:15
Ελισαε	Elisama A	1Ch	14:5, 3:6, 2Sa 5:16
Ελιφαλετ	Eliphalet / Helifeleth	1Ch	3:6, 14:5, 2Sa 5:16
Ναγε	Noge	1Ch	3:7, 14:5
Ναφαγ	Napheg / Nepheg	1Ch	3:7, 14:5, 2Sa 5:15
Ιανουε / Ιανουου	Iaphie	1Ch	3:7, 14:5, 2Sa 5:15
Ελισαμα / Ελισαμαε	Elisama B	1Ch	3:8, 14:5
Ελιαδα	Helida / Heliade	1Ch	3:8, 14:5, 2Sa 5:16
Ελιφαλετ	Eliphalet / Helisua	1Ch	3:8, 14:5, 2Sa 5:15
Σαμμους	Samua	2Sa	5:14
Σωβαβ	Sobab	2Sa	5:14
Σαλωμων	Salomon	Mt	1:6, 2Sa 5:14
Ιεροβοαμ / Ναβατ	Hieroboam	1Kgs	11:26
Ναδαβ	Nadab	1Kgs	15:25
Βαασα / Αχια	Baasa filius Ahia	1Kgs	15:33
Ηλα	Hela filius Baasa	1Kgs	16:8-16
Ζαμβρι	Zamri	1Kgs	16:9
Θαμνι / Γωναθ	Thebni filium Gineth	1Kgs	16:21
Αχααβ / Αμβρι·	Ahab filius Amri	1Kgs	16:29
Ιεζαβελ	Hiezabel	1Kgs	16:31
Οχοζιας	Ohozias	1Kgs	22:40
Ιωραμ / Αχααβ	Ioram filius Ahab	2Kgs	3:1, 1Kgs 22:50
Ιου / Ναμεσσι	Hieu filius Namsi	1Kgs	19:16, 2Chr 22:7
Ιωαχας	Ioachaz	2Kgs	10:35
Ιωας	Ioas filius Ioachaz	2Kgs	13:10
Ιεροβοαμ	Hieroboam	2Kgs	13:13
Ζαχαριας	Zaccharias filius Hieroboam	2Kgs	15:8
Σελλουμ / Ιαβις	Sellum filius Iabes	2Kgs	15:13
Μαναημ / Γαδδι	Manahem filius Gaddi	2Kgs	15:14
Φακεϊας	Phaceia filius Manahem	2Kgs	15:23
Φακεε / Ρομελιου	Phacee filius Romeliae	2Kgs	15:25
Ωσηε / Ηλα	Osee filius Hela	2Kgs	17:1

As luck would have it, where differences do occur in the above list, it is not always easy to see a pattern in the Great Stemma's uptake of the forms. First of all we find certain odd distortions. The first Elisama, for example, appears not as Elisae, but as Elisbe. Secondly, some of the variations completely contradict Zaluska's generalizations: Zambri with a B appears in three recensions (Epsilon, Alpha, Beta), but has been "corrected" to Jerome's Zamri without a B in Delta and Gamma, which are normally the most conservative texts.

Zaluska's assertion that the balance in Alpha swung, after Abraham, to almost pure Vetus Latina forms is therefore interesting and provocative, but needs to be treated with a certain amount of caution. My guess is that her generalization was in fact largely argued from her very perceptive analysis of the Horrite names in Genesis 36. I wrote a survey of these in 2010 where I tabulated the names and provided the proof that is missing from her article, though implied. The differences among the Horrite names between Alpha and Beta are especially striking and this section of the collation is crucial in proving that the Great Stemma is indeed drawn from a Vetus Latina tradition.

I have not yet studied the Vetus/Vulgate distribution of the names making up the Twelve Tribes of Israel: it would be interesting to follow this up at a later time.

In conclusion, I would say this. The Great Stemma and the Liber Genealogus were clearly originally written in a time and place where Jerome's Vulgate was not available and were then haphazardly modified by medieval editors. But the process of modification was not as simple or as linear as Zaluska suggests, and her conclusions are too sweeping. The Great Stemma manuscripts are anything but unambiguous evidence for the onomastics of the Vetus Latina. Bonifatius Fischer was correct to collate the Great Stemma from four Spanish bibles as a somewhat compromised source, while treating it with the greatest of caution.

Footnote: there is a further discussion of this issue a couple of years later: http://macrotypography.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-old-latin.html

Marathon

I glimpsed an ARD television news report four weeks ago on the Berlin round of the Visualizing Marathon but cannot find the news clip any more. There is some coverage of the event on Vizworld.

Hypothetigraphy

Many theories of diagrams are limited in scope to just one or two manifestations of abstract drawings. Diagrammatic representation of numerical data has been well studied since Edward Tufte's Visual Display of Quantitative Information, but stemmatic drawings like the Great Stemma are rarely well explained. I have been impressed at the theoretical work of Manfredo Massironi (1937-) of the University of Verona in Italy. Massironi has devised a concept he calls hypothetigraphy to describe drawings that present hypothetical, invisible, abstract ideas. It is presented in his 2002 book, The psychology of graphic images: seeing, drawing, communicating (Link: Google Books). (The English translation from the Italian is not perfect, and sometimes makes no sense: the term itself is sometimes spelled "hypothesigraphy" in the text, varying in orthography from one line to the next (e.g. p. 164), but "hypothetigraphy" is the form used in the headings and index.)

He says he departs from the idea that "illustrating is a way of emphasizing, by visual means, those contents that cannot be effectively conveyed by verbal expression." He proposes that hypothetigraphy has two roles: (a) a connective function (connecting into a unitary pattern a body of knowledge [which is] fragmented and apparently not well organized) and (b) a reconstructive function (reconstructing the various phases of a process for purposes of illustration and interpretation, starting from observable results).

According to my definition, hypothetigraphy defines a rather homogenenous class of drawings, which I call hypothetigraphs ....
The first feature, and one that is most easily noted, is the use of simple geometric figures.... The "true" objects and their appearance are not important in this endeavor, for the phenomena under consideration have to do with relationships and with dynamic interactions between elements.... The shape of elements per se is usually an irrelevant piece of information, which is best left out or represented simply by the most abstract of shapes, the circle.
A second and most immediately noticeable feature of hypothetigraphs is the addition of brief written text to the picture.... The inclusion of written text is always necessary in hypothetigraphy which would otherwise lose its communicative function... Verbal and visual information are inextricably and necessarily connected.
Another distinguishing feature of hypothetigraphy is the the almost exclusive use of precise marks, drawn using the ruler ... Precise, clear lines contribute in conveying the impression that the depicted forms are mental constructs, not representations of natural objects.
Typical of hypothetigraphy is ... the use of object lines ... Object lines are not used to mimic some aspect of reality but to illustrate relationships, correspondences or connections.... Relationships and connections and trajectories ... lend themselves naturally to an interpretation in terms of threads, ropes and connecting cables.
A fifth feature of hypothetigraphy is the number of represented dimensions, which tends to be as small as possible within the constraints of the logic of the representation.
Finally, hypothetigraphy tends to place the viewpoint frontally relative to the picture plane, an tends to present figures without a background.... The second of these ... contributes to focus the attention of the viewer, avoiding unwanted contextual effects.

This is all very useful. The six "features" listed above are all applicable to the Great Stemma:

1. Its graphic elements are circles of various sizes. They do not represent heads or anything else physical but are entirely abstract, representing generations and dynasties.
2. Text within the roundels, along the connecting lines and in the final Sicut Lucas evangelista section, is there to expand the effect of the drawn figures.
3. Its lines are generally straight, except for the final meeting of the two fila, and the whole structure is drawn with a certain sterility to emphasize its abstract meaning.
4. The connecting lines represent succession, and ramifications where necessary.
5. The drawing is strictly two dimensional
6. It has no background colour or images. My attachment of a yellow timeline band to the reconstruction is in fact out of harmony with the austerity of the original.

Massironi makes no mention of the Great Stemma. In fact he does not mention any stemmatic drawings at all. But his observations are so acute that they apply to the stemma without any modification being required of them.

Graph of Time

Some time ago, my attention was drawn to the graph of planetary displacement from the elliptic with respect to time that was devised for medieval schools. Until 50 years ago this was thought to be unique to a Latin manuscript in Munich, BSB Clm 14436, 61r, but it seems to in fact exist in numerous manuscripts.

Bruce Eastwood discusses it in Plinian astronomical diagrams in the early Middle Ages (1987) and returned to it in more detail in Planetary Diagrams - Descriptions, Models, Theories (2000, co-authored with Gerd Grasshoff, online) and Planetary diagrams for Roman astronomy in medieval Europe (2004, also with Grasshoff, online). If I am reading these articles correctly, the diagram is what the authors classify as "Plinian latitudes - rectangular" in their 2004 catalogue:
1 Avranches BM, 226, f.88r
8 Bern BB, 347, f.24v
10 Cambridge, St John's CL, lat. I.15, p.287
11 Cambridge, St John's CL, lat. I.15, p.353
12 Cambridge, Trinity CL, R.15.32, f.3v
13 Durham CathLibr, Hunter 100, f.66r
15 Erfurt StB, Ampl. 4°.8, f.1r
20 Genève FB, 111, f.41r
21 Glasgow UL, T.4.2, f.117r
22 Leiden UB, BPL 168, f.56r
24 London BL, Add. 11943, f.49v
27 London BL, Cott.Tib. E.IV, f.141r
32 London BL, Roy. 13.A.XI, f.143v (image in Eastwood/Grasshoff)
38 Milano BN, E.5 sup., f.1r
39 Milano BN, E.5 sup., f.53r
54 München SB, clm 6364, f.24v
57 Oxford BoL, Canon. Class. lat 279, f.34r
59 Oxford BoL, Lyell 154, f.26v
70 Paris BNF, lat. 5239, f.38v
71 Paris BNF, lat. 5239, f.39r
72 Paris BNF, lat. 6367, f.1v
79 St Gallen StiB, 250, p.2
81 Strasbourg BU, 326, f.122r
89 Vaticano BAV, Palat. lat. 1577, f.82v
94 Vaticano BAV, Regin. lat. 1573, f.53r
105 Wroclaw UB, IV.O.11, f.59r
108 Zürich ZB, Car.C. 122, f.42r

But perhaps I have not understood this correctly, since the specimen which is numbered Plin45 (clm 14436, 61v, link at the top of this blog entry) is absent from the above list, as is the specimen numbered as Plin83 in the 2004 article (Strasbourg, same codex as above, but folio 123r, reproduced in the 2000 article), along with six other references Eastwood gave in 1987:
Madrid 9605, f.12v
Zurich Car. C 176, f. 193v
Bern 265, f. 59r
London Cott.Vit. A XII, f. 9r
Baltimore Walters W, 73, f. 5v (mentioned in the note on page 11 of Eastwood's 2004 catalogue)
Oxford, St Johns, 17, f. 38r
London BL Eg. 3088, f. 83v
There is one corrigenda page in the Google Books edition, but these are not mentioned there. I do not know if further errata have been published. Perhaps I have overlooked some kind of filter that Eastwood and Grasshoff may have mentioned in their book, and I would be grateful if any reader could explain this to me.

Hans-Christoph Liess, supervised by Grasshoff and Eastwood during his doctoral studies at the University of Berne, later assembled a database of Eastwood's images, and published a description. The title page of this 2001 database project, code-named Compago, is still online, as is the diagram index page, and, perhaps most important, an interactive mind-map of the manuscripts listed above. A handbook was also published. But the back end with the actual images and the required software module, code-named Alcatraz, seems to have either been taken down or to have been put behind a wall. Google Chrome is able to open the interface, but a user name and password are required to proceed further. Liess completed his doctoral dissertation in 2002 (large file) and this is online. Both Liess and Grasshoff have since moved from Berne to Berlin.

What is curious is that all three authors are sure that the diagram is a simplification of a circular diagram of the Plinian latitudes which is found in 12 manuscripts. Pliny had presented the data as numerical data only. Then a Carolingian editor devised the circular diagram just before or following a conference on computus in 809 EC and "solved the problem of presenting to students the spatial meaning of the Plinian text" (Eastwood, 2000). Eastwood and Grasshoff continue:

Within a few decades after its creation, the circular latitude diagram was replaced by another, a rectangular diagram, which reduced the amount of theoretical content added to the relevant Plinian text and also offered a more easily produced and more quickly read image.

Edward Tufte reproduces the Munich rectangular diagram on page 28 of Visual Display of Quantitative Information, but curiously enough misses its significance for the history of simplification. He only cites an outdated 1936 article by Funkhouser on it. In fact, the diagram turns out to be exemplary of Tufte's principles of subtracting and simplifying to make graphics clearer and more communicative, and his term "reduction of data ink" to describe economy in an infographic:

A few graphics use every drop of their ink to convey measured quantities.

A Lost Spanish Gospel Book

A fascinating story of a vanished codex is told in an article by Mariano Revilla which was published in Spain 1918-20. As far as I know, it has never appeared in English, so I have used Google Translate to create a quick English version of the first half, and have edited this slightly, cutting parts that emerged as complete gibberish. The original can be read on Archive.org in the pages of La Ciudad de Dios, which published the article in four parts: 117, 118, 120:1 and 120:2. US readers may be able to read the re-publication in book form on Google Books.

The reason for my interest will be plain to the reader. Part of the text in the Codex Ovetensis comes from the Great Stemma.

The Codex Ovetensis of the Gospels and the Bible of Valvanera

“Colligite... fragmenta, ne pereant.” (Jn, 6:12.)

Modern critics seem to completely ignore the existence of these two ancient codices, of which Ambrosio de Morales speaks with great praise in several of his writings. Did they perhaps perish in one of many unfortunate accidents that our archives and libraries have suffered, or are they hidden at the bottom of them still unexplored? The research we have done in order to clarify this point has brought us to the sad conviction that were lost in the seventeenth century, but we dare not declare it in a categorical and definitive way because the arguments that underpin our conviction, are more negative than positive and perhaps new and more lengthy investigations can give a more satisfactory and promising answer. Fortunately, our work has not been entirely barren, for we have been provided with the remarkable discovery of fragments of these two codices where least expected, to wit, in the margins of a copy of the Vulgate printed in Venice in 1478. This magnificent incunable, which by the fineness of its vellum, the precision of its typography and the daintiness of the pen illuminations which adorn it seems made for the use of a Renaissance prince, belonged to the bishop of Plasencia, Dr Pedro Ponce de León, and when he died, it was bought with many others of the same origin for the Library of the Escorial. Ambrosio de Morales, in his report on the books of the bishop to be taken to the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo, describes the Bible as follows:

Sacred Bible. Slightly less than one hundred years old, printed on very fine parchment and with illuminations. Glosses have been placed with great diligence in the margins of this bible using a very ancient Gothic bible for the Old Testament and a different bible, of Oviedo, for the New Testament. [...]: On account of the diligence ... and taking account of the parchment and the illumination, valued at thirty ducats. Gilded margins. (1)

(1) Memoria de los libros que se deben tomar para El Real Monesterio de San Lorencio, de los que tenía el obpo de Plasencia Don pero Ponce de León (Memorandum of books to be taken to the Royal Monastery of St Lawrence formerly owned by the bishop of Plasencia, Dr Ponce de León). Ms. Esc etc.-II-15, fol. 239v.

The author of the marginal notes was that famous preacher of Philip II, the no less celebrated historian of the Dominican Order, Friar Hernando de Castillo, as he states in a foreword on folio 1 of the said Escorial Bible, which reads as follows:

"To the reader, from Ferdinandus de Castillo, O.P. Dear friend and reader, this bible has been glossed in reliance on many others, of which the great part were in manuscript form, in the [oldest?] Gothic script. One book, containing only the four Gospels, was written 700 years ago and was kindly loaned to me by the church of Oviedo. Another, of venerable antiquity, containing both the Old and New Testament, came from the reserves of the fathers of the Monastery of St Mary of Valvanera (“Benedictine” added in the margin)."

Although this asserts that Hernando de Castillo’s marginal variants were readings obtained from “many” examples, the great majority of the manuscripts consulted consist, if the truth be told, exclusively of the Codex Ovetensis of the Gospels and the Bible of Valvanera, as noted on folio 2r, and this was apparent to Ambrosio de Morales, since for the avoidance of doubt on this point, the same Father Hernando de Castillo states it strictly in the following note from folio 2v, written in his own hand by authority of Philip II:

"I, Hernando de Castillo of the Order of St Dominic, professor of sacred theology, preacher to King Philip II of Spain, made faithful inspection of all the holy Bible, placing variant readings of the New Testament in the margins sixteen years ago from two of the most ancient copies in Gothic script (on the one hand from the fathers of the Monastery of Our Lord of Valvanera, on the other hand from the church of Oviedo) carefully comparing the differences with the authentic Latin. In witness whereof I undersign the above by the authority of his Catholic majesty and this codex is hereby placed in the Royal Library, in the Royal Monastery of St Lawrence, in the month of July 1577. Signed: Hernando de Castillo."

Lacking the original manuscripts, it seemed difficult to ascertain to what extent this was a true and accurate collation of these manuscripts by de Castillo. We have, however, quite clear evidence of his fidelity and diligence including the scrupulous preservation of the original spelling. A comparison of his spellings with the marginal notes in the Gothic Codex Legionensis of the College of San Isidoro, whose text, as we shall see, belongs to the same family, passes this test favourably. Even to the extent of his exquisite calligraphy, the illustrious Dominican manifests a rare care and attention. It seems, therefore, that his work of collation guarantees all the fidelity required by modern criticism. Thanks to him we can now add a brief chapter, perhaps not lacking in interest, to the history of the Latin versions of the Bible in Spain.

Our first proposal to discover these ancient fragments was sent to the Benedictine Fathers who form the Pontifical Commission for the revision of the Vulgate so they could study them easily and use the variant readings, but without detracting from this we believed an examination would also contribute to learning, since these Spanish codices, apart from their intrinsic merit, have a value as venerable relics of our cultural roots in the heroic early days of the Reconquista. We will say, then, what we know about the origin, vicissitudes and critical value of these manuscripts and we will publish a selection of the fragments, since we cannot publish all that was preserved by de Castillo, as we had originally hoped.

I. - The Codex Ovietensis of the Gospels

a. - History of the manuscript

We know the original source and purpose of this manuscript by an instrument of donation that the author wrote at the end of the codex which de Castillo preserved with his usual fidelity on folios 2v and 3r of the Escorial incunabula described above. Here is this interesting document:

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, this book of the Gospels imbued with the sacraments and arguments was assembled by me, a useless and lowly servant of Christ by the name of Justus. I am not worthy of merit and my wrongs cannot be redressed. Through the intercession of the saints, grant unto me to be acquitted and at last be reconciled to my Lord and to be freed from the bonds of all my sins. This has been the reason for my devotion, and I ask that the present book be placed on the holy altar where my body is to be buried and where I swore to fulfill my vows of office. I ask all the priests [who read from this book] to constantly pray to Our Saviour and beseech God through whose hands I came into the world for the salvation of my soul and not to weary in it. For thus it is written: he who prays for others, God commends. But if any man in the church wills harm on others, let him [...] remain in everlasting punishment with Satan and his demons. Thus I go to my judgment before Our Lord.

Then follows a note, probably written shortly after the death of the notary Justus:

Justus, the servant of God, died in 810 of the Era on January 12.

So according to these documents, the Oviedo codex was written around the middle of the eighth century by a scribe named Justus, whose death occurred in 810 of the Hispanic Era or 772 CE and it was bequeathed to a church where he was to be buried so that priests would remember him in their prayers and offer prayers for the repose of his soul during holy mass. Use of the Hispanic Era also makes it clear that the codex is Spanish in origin, for which we will later see additional evidence. However we do not know for certain what region this was in, though perhaps it was Asturias, of which Oviedo is the capital, since it was preserved there until the sixteenth century, as evidenced by several of the documents cited and confirmed by Ambrosio de Morales. He writes thus:

"In the Library of the Church of Oviedo is ... a New Testament, which from its parchment and lettering seems notably older than the other Gothic manuscripts. In plain script at the beginning it states: “The Book of Justus.” And at the end it says: “Justus, the notary, died in DCCCL of the Hispanic Era on January 12."(1).

(1) Viage de Ambrosio de Morales, por orden del Rey D. Phelipe II, a los Reynos de León y Galicia y Principado de Asturias... Madrid, 1765, pages 93-95. Facsimile

This codex, improperly called a New Testament here, is, without doubt, the Codex Ovetensis of the Gospels described by de Castillo, as de Morales indicates in his report on the books of the Bishop of Plasencia that I have quoted cited above, although the date of death of the notary Justus reported by de Morales (DCCCL) is forty years off the date given by de Castillo (810). Clearly, one of the two made a mistake in transcription, and given the choice, we have preferred the date indicated by the latter, who studied the codex with more attention and diligence than de Morales could have done during his rapid journey through the churches of León, Galicia and Asturias. Our codex is thus a contemporary of the famous Codex Toletano, which is the oldest biblical manuscript preserved in Spain, with the exception of palimpsest fragments of a manuscript of León dating back to the sixth or seventh century.

The history of the manuscript from the sixteenth century onwards is unknown. We made repeated inquiries of the archivist of the Cathedral of Oviedo through a friend of ours and he has responded by saying that it is not to be found in the archives entrusted to him. The news is no surprise to anyone who knows the sad fate of the Library of Oviedo, of which [Manuel] Risco has said: "What I can state though it must cause severe pain to all those interested is that of the many books which existed in the church of Oviedo, only one of those which Ambrosio de Morales reported exists, and it is in reality just a mortuary of ancient deeds." (1).
(1) España Sagrada, Madrid, 1793, t. 38, pág. 115. Facsimile

Nor is there any trace of it in the Escorial, into which library a not inconsiderable number of the manuscripts of Oviedo were brought, and we have sought it in vain in modern works dealing with biblical codices or in the bibliographies of Spain, for it is either not mentioned at all or what is said by Ambrosio de Morales is simply repeated. It is therefore to be feared that it has perished, like so many other precious manuscripts from the same source. Therefore, the fragments preserved in the Escorial Library acquire a unique value.

b. - Description of the manuscript and review of its contents.

With the data provided by de Castillo and de Morales, we arrive at the following description of the manuscript of Oviedo: an 8th-century Gothic manuscript on parchment, written continuously, i.e. without regard to chapters and verses. It contained: (1) the four Gospels, (2) some prologues or notes, (3) the instrument of donation, which we have already copied. (2)
(2) "In the aforesaid book, no distinction of chapters occurs: it flows on in the manner of perpetual prayer as in the Greek-language codices of old. There is moreover prefatory matter, which we have not transcribed, since we are not concerned here with its content."

The prologue and note matter which de Castillo does convey to us is in large part, as we will see, a simple indication of the number of miracles narrated in each of the Gospels. The only matter of some interest is the prologue to the Gospel of St. Matthew and a historical note or gloss to Chapter II thereof. In this gloss the names of the Magi who came from the East to worship Jesus in Bethlehem are stated. The names given are slightly different from those found in other medieval documents. More noteworthy is the prologue, since it sets out a special system for reconciling the genealogies of Jesus Christ, according to which that in St. Luke is the genealogy of the Virgin Mary and that in St. Matthew is the genealogy of Joseph. This prologue, written in the middle of the eighth century, gives a resounding refutation of modern critics who have maintained that such a system, already rejected by St. Hilarius, not only was not supported by any other author but had not even been known of throughout the Middle Ages until Annius of Viterbo, a writer of the late XV century, proposed it. (1)
(1) See article by Prat in Dict. de la Bible, de Vigouroux, III, p. 169.

The biblical text contained in the Codex Ovetensis was that of St. Jerome's Vulgate. The Escorial fragments could serve as a basis for reconstituting it in its entirety if we could be sure that de Castillo had glossed all the places where the codex was different from the Venice edition of 1478, but since this is not established with certainty, we will refrain from such an attempt at reconstruction.

The variants that we have printed from de Castillo closely represent the interpolated readings of a Vetus Latina character which distinguish manuscripts of the Spanish family, to which the Codex Ovetensis seems to have belonged. Text scholars divide the Spanish Latin Bible into three groups as follows: the primitive, which is represented by the Codex Toletanus, from which the other two are derived: the Leonese, to which the Codex Gothicus Legionensis and the Emilianus etc., belong; and the Castilian, including the first Bible of Alcala and the Noailles Bible. Our codex cannot, in our opinion, be classified as belonging to either the Leonese or the Castilian group, for the simple reason that the Codex Ovetensis already existed before either of these recensions had been created, nor do we see any reason to support a direct mutual dependency between it and the Codex Toletanus, since there are quite numerous differences between them (1).
(1) The readings of the Codex Ovetensis which de Castillo has preserved match up with the Toletanus in 40 passages only, with the Emilianus in 38 and with the Compl. in 46.

We also collated our ancient codex with the Liber Comicus sen Lectionarias Missae (1) of the Church of Toledo and noted some remarkable agreement as well as not inconsiderable discrepancies. All this seems to prove that the Codex Ovetensis is a Spanish text, but in a recension somewhat different from that known, which can be indirectly confirmed by the preface to the St Matthew Gospel we discussed in the previous part, which is so singular that it is not to be encountered in any of the numerous manuscripts consulted by S. Berger. (2)
(1) Liber Comicus seu Lectionarius Missae, quo Toletana Ecclesia ante annos mille et ducentos utebatur. Edidit D. Germanus Morin. Maredsoli, 1893.
(2) Les Prefaces jointes aux livres de la Bible dans les manuscrits de Vulgate. Mémoire posthume de M. Samuel Berger. Paris, 1902.

In many places (at 81, if we have not miscounted), the readings of the Codex Ovetensis agree with the text edited by Wordsworth-White, which is based, as the reader knows, mainly on the AASY Northumbrian manuscripts, according to these authors, the most faithful representatives of the Vulgate of St. Jerome. When it does not agree either with the Spanish manuscripts or with the Northumbrians, it usually agrees with Colbertinus, the Corbeyensis, the Sangermanensis I and II and other Vetus Latina manuscripts. It should not be overlooked finally, that there are in the Codex Ovetensis some variations which are new, or at least very rare. These are: Mt IV, 25 et curavit omnes, XIII, 40 colligunt, XXI, 23 docentes, XXXIII, 18 debitorem, XXVII, 9 Zachariam; the omission of part of verses 55 and 56 of chapter IX of Luke (3), and so on.
(3) This omission is also noticed in the cod. Sangerm. I and in many Greek manuscripts.

As we are far from being masters of the difficult art of textual criticism, it would be temerity to deliver our opinion on the critical value of each of these readings, some of which would be judged as certain by the textual critics and others of which would be thought doubtful.

All that we intend to do here is to narrate the story and draw attention to the nature and importance of the Codex Ovetensis. We finish our brief survey with the publication of some small fragments of it which are preserved in the Escorial Bible, omitting only that which we consider of little or no use, namely those readings that deviate from the Venice edition of 1478 (which was the base text for the collation by de Castillo) but concord with the Clementine Vulgate.

Variations and variant readings in the Codex Ovetensis

Gospel of Matthew
1. Sicut Lucas eua~gelista per Nathan marie origine~ ducit: ita et Matheus eua~gelista per Salomone~ Joseph origine~ demo~strauit idest, ex tribu Juda: vt appareat eos de vna tribu exire, et sic ad xp~m secu~du~ carne~ peruenire, vt co~pleatur quod scriptu~ est: vicit Leo de tribu Juda radix Dauid. Leo ex Salomone: radix ex Nathan.
2. Sunt in hoc libro curati. 23. signa quinque, exceptis his quae. 12. discipuli a dn~o missi in locis fecere diuersis.
3. Nomina Magorum Bater, Tagarma et Melchi.

Gospel of Mark
In hoc libro sunt curati 18. Signa quinque ex ea quae missi a dno discipuli in diuersis locis fecerunt.

Gospel of Luke
In hoc libro sunt curati. 23. signa tria ex ea quae a domino missi discipuli eius seu duodecim in locis fecere diuersis:

Gospel of John
In hoc libro sunt virtutes quatuor signa quatuor.

[Revilla gives several columns of variants, mostly single words, which the reader can easily consult in the Archive.org edition, as no Spanish is required to understand them. The additions appear with the notation + (= addit) and omissions with - (= omittit). Revilla adds that sometimes, for clarity, he also quotes in brackets the corresponding reading from the Clementine Vulgate and precedes this with the letter l (= loco). The remainder of his article is concerned solely with the Valvanera Bible and is not translated here. I would appreciate readers offering any improvements to the above translation by way of the comment box below.]

A 1990 note on Hernando de Castillo OP (-1593), giving this and further literature, can be found in Klaus Reinhardt's Bibelkommentare spanischer Autoren (1500-1700). De Castillo also played a key role as a royal minister and influenced the Inquisition. This is discussed in Spanish political histories, for example in a book by Bruce Taylor, Structures of reform: the Mercedarian Order in the Spanish Golden Age. I have used the name spelling de Castillo, rather than del Castillo, since this seems to be more common. Reinhardt suggests the lost book should be called the Codex Ovetensis secundus, and this matches Ayuso's coding, which calls it Ov2. I remain unsure what the primary Codex Ovetensis is, but it seems this may be the inventory of deeds mentioned by Manuel Risco, which survived at the Escorial.

The story of the bishop of Plasencia and his library is told by Antolín, and an abstract of Escorial &-II-1 may possibly be in Catálogo de los Manuscritos Castellanos de la Real Biblioteca de el Escorial [RBE, Catálogo], 3 vols. (San Lorenzo de el Escorial, 1929) (try 272-74). See the RBE's own introduction as well.

Mariano Revilla Rico (1887-1936), incidentally, was shot during the Spanish Civil War, and seems to have later been beatified as a martyr by the Catholic Church of Spain.