For Medievalists

Dr Nathaniel Taylor has published a very acute news summary on the RootsWeb Gen-Medieval news list of what is new in Great Stemma research as a result of the Oxford Patristics presentation. He offers this succinct summary:

Jean-Baptiste Piggin has now convincingly shown the whole to derive from a single long scroll of Late-Antique origin, likely 4th century, which he has named the 'great stemma'. All existing copies come through a (lost) early Visigothic intermediary in which the scroll was copied into a series of folio pages in codex form, but the process of reducing the scroll format to sequential pages introduced various errors and subsequent recensions degraded the logic of the original in ways Piggin has been able to trace.

Nat also wrote up my website's findings last year on the same list:

These biblical genealogical stemmata are now the subject of a fantastic set of analytical webpages by Jean-Baptiste Piggin. His page cited below is a table with links to many online images of the tables of biblical kinship found in the Beatus manuscripts and 10th-century Spanish bibles, as well as the Codice de Roda ...

Detective Story

Does the Liber Genealogus contain work by Lactantius? A detective story is developing around this unexpected proposition. I have only just discovered that the Liber Genealogus etymologies were comprehensively studied by the German philologist and Old Testament scholar Franz Wutz in his 1914-1915 book Onomastica Sacra. Unfortunately he did not notice during his years of study that the source he was using was in fact identical with the Liber Genealogus as published by Theodor Mommsen. This is a grand example of two great ships passing one another unseen in the night which has not, as far as I know, been brought to wide attention. Without Mommsen, Wutz's broad conclusions are weakened, although his fine detail bears continued reading.

Wutz (1882-1938) (short biography) was extending the work done two generations earlier by Paul de Lagarde (1827-1891) who had published a compilation of materials on biblical onomastics with a limited critical apparatus but without commentary, also entitled Onomastica Sacra, the first edition in 1870 and the second in 1887. Lagarde had presented a paper in 1890 with complete transcriptions of the Lucca (L) and Turin (T) recensions of the Liber Genealogus, and would doubtless have used these to proceed to a third edition of his Onomastica handbook, had it not been for his early death.

It was thus left to Carl Frick (1848-?)to begin a more thorough investigation of these documents. He published an edition of T in 1892 as part of his Chronica minora, with each biblical name carefully linked to certain Greek etymologies which Lagarde had published in his Onomastica compilation. Wutz thus had coherent texts available to him in printed form and could proceed to their analysis.

Wutz arrived at a most curious conclusion. He refers throughout his book to the set of etymologies in T and L as the "Laktanzgruppe", literally, the "Lactantius Group". He also included in the Laktanzgruppe those parts of Lagarde's Greek which Frick had painstakingly linked, word by word, to T. Wutz concluded that some lost Greek work had somehow been included in a manuscript of mixed notes and was able to distinguish two coherent fragments of it (reproduced below, denominated V3 and V4). His designation of T, L, V3 and V4 as the Laktanzgruppe implies he had solved a great mystery, but as it turns out, this nomenclature may have been simply a little joke by Wutz.

Wutz appears to have realized only at the last moment that Mommsen had published a wider-ranging collation of the Latin witnesses, binding T and L to the other recensions of the Liber Genealogus, in his MGH series (note 1, page xviii: Mommsen's Ausgabe des Lib. genealogus ... ist mir leider entgangen.) Had Wutz known of the St Gall (G) and Florence (F) recensions while he was conducting his research, he would probably not have attached the name "Lactantius" to the work and might well have reached different conclusions.

He was approaching the topic from a very different perspective to our own, and it is interesting to consider the basis on which he was thinking. As far as I have been able to understand his argumentation, Wutz suspected T was a Latin translation by Lactantius from a Greek work by a now unknown author and that Lactantius had attached it as an appendix to his Epitome. T appears just after the Epitome in the sole manuscript to have transmitted that ancient work more or less entire. This 6th- or 7th-century codex is at Turin: Archivio di Stato IB. 11.27 (formerly IB. VI.28), CLA IV. 438. Charles McNelis, who examined it in 1999, provides the following useful listing of its contents:

• f. 2-42v, Lactantius, De opificio dei (CPL 87);
• f. 42v-61, Lactan­tius, Epitome divinarum institutionum (CPL 86);
• f. 61-62, extracts from the Latin translation of Hegemonius, Acta Archelai (CPG 3570);
• f. 62­-71, Liber genealogus (Incipit origo generis humani and Explicit de generationibus);
• f. 71v-81, Quintus Julius Hilarianus, De ratione paschae et mentis (CPL 2279);
• f. 81 v-122v, Origenes, Omelie iv de Exodo. i. De can­tico; ii. De amaritudine aquae Merhae; iii. De Decalogo; iv. De tabernaculo (CPG 1413);
• f. 122v, Augustinus, Sermo ad Caesareensis ecclesiae plebem Emerito presente habitus (CPL 284, ser. 339).

It will be clear from this juxtaposition why Wutz was able to believe the Liber Genealogus to be a work by Lactantius, whereas Bruno Krusch had earlier believed it to be the work of Q. Julius Hilarianus. Monceaux (vol. 6, p. 253) appears not to have known of Wutz's assessment and in any case favoured Krusch, writing, "Le Taurinensis contient à la fois le De ratione Paschae d'Hilarianus et le Liber genealogus." At the same time he was not 100 per cent convinced (Rouse and McNelis over-estimate Monceaux's certainty: sans doute (Monceaux) is the lowest degree of certitude in French, not the highest, rather like the exhortative English "surely"). In my own view, both Krusch and Wutz were barking up the wrong trees.

Since the T text of the Liber Genealogus ends with the life of Christ, there is no easy way to date it. I have only recently shown that it is in fact a descendant from the Liber Genealogus of 427.

Wutz devoted considerable effort to backing up his Lactantius hypothesis, and here I summarize from his German, with page numbers in parentheses:
The Lactanzgruppe (hereafter LGr) of Greek and Latin texts is "completely new" and "completely independent of the Origen Group" (56). The names are presented in genealogical order, not the order of the biblical texts (57). The author's purpose was to present a 'stemma' of Christ and he thus limited his supplementary material to the tribes of Israel only (57). This shows the list is of purely Christian origin, and not Jewish (58). The Origen Group and LGr were created completely independently of one another. If the LGr were really the work of Lactantius, we would be well on the way to understanding how this onomastic work came to be written: Lactantius died in about 330, whereas Jerome did not translate the Philo/Origen list until 390, meaning the LGr would have existed in Latin translation 70 to 90 years earlier, only decades after Origen had completed his work (62). Supposing the Greek text is the prior one, it must therefore date from well before [the year 330] (63). Even though the Latin text is more comprehensive than the Greek fragments at many points, for example in the Exodus material, it too must derive from a Greek vorlage. The order of the Latin text we know must be that which originally prevailed in the lost Greek text, and this proves that the existing Greek fragments are not the vorlage (76). The actions of Jerome, who undoubtedly is the translator of the Origen Group, and had plainly intended to translate everything of this nature that he could lay hands on, indicate that either the LGr did not exist in Jerome's day or that it was unknown to him. The former is unlikely, since the Greek forms of certain names indicate a very early date. So the tradition that Lactantius translated this Greek Onomastica has historical plausibility behind it and should not be rejected without significant reason. Therefore Jerome did not know of the LGr. This is particularly remarkable insofar as other Origen Group lists do consult the LGr (77). Wutz's conclusion bears translating in full:

This thorough examination of the LGr has yielded some remarkable conclusions: A completely independent study of biblical names was composed in Greek by a Christian. If as tradition holds, a translation [into Latin] was performed on African soil at a very early point, six to eight decades before Jerome, then the Greek work must be dated much earlier to a point before the Origen Group. This does not necessarily mean its author worked in Africa. All that we can say is that he had a very good knowledge of Syrian, most probably the Christian Palestinian [dialect]. We have found no evidence to cast doubt on tradition. Up to the time of Jerome, this Onomastica remained almost hermetically sealed off from the numerous Origen Group explanations in circulation, but thereafter it influenced one fork of the Origen Group (96).

Once this false idea of Lactantius's role in the work had been placed in the world, it naturally put down roots. Ilona Opelt in her 1965 encyclopaedia article Etymologie appears to misunderstand Wutz's citation of T and L and compounds the error, describing these Latin codices as "zwei Hss. des Laktanz aus dem 6. und 7. Jh." I cannot see any material from Lactantius listed in the descriptions of codex L by Mommsen and Lagarde.

Let us now turn to the Greek texts of the Laktanzgruppe. Wutz performed a major service by re-edited these. They had earlier been printed by Lagarde and had originally been published by Jean Martianay (1647-1717) and later Dominic Vallarsi (1702-1771). Lagarde had applied the somewhat misleading heading "Onomastica Vaticana" to the pages where the two fragments are printed, although neither of them is in the Apostolic library at the Vatican. Roger Gryson in 1966 proposed fixed sigla, and possibly relying on Opelt 828 and Wutz 238, suggested that a fourth onomastic group be distinguished:

• L (Laktanzgruppe)
• O (Philo-Origen)
• V (Onomastica Vaticana)
• C (Glossae Colbertinae)

Wutz states (page xviii) that the Greek redaction of the Laktanzgruppe is to be found in seven manuscripts, while pointing out (page 3) that one 10th-century Rome manuscript, Biblioteca Vallicellana 66,4 (link), contains the source text (249v-254r) of the six others. He differentiates the following two fragments (page 4), but take the view that they once formed separate parts of a single text, now lost:

• Lag. 177,63 -- 179,23 (Martianay: fragmentum tertium) == V3
• Lag. 179,24 -- 181,83 (Martianay: fragmentum quartum) == V4

We start with V3, whereby line numbers are printed on one margin at every fifth line and the opposite margin contains biblical references keyed to those line numbers. The other numbers are possibly pages of Martinay's and Vallarsi's editions. Obviously, lines 56 to 61 are references, but are not visible on this blog entry because they are not part of V3. I have omitted the footnotes.

Fragmentum tertium (V3)

Fragmentum quartum (V4)

Wutz edited V3 and V4 with a more advanced apparatus than Lagarde had provided and published this at 685-703 of his book. Here is a summary of the names in English, with Lagarde's line numbers in bold, and Wutz's line numbers in italics. Some of the names I could not understand, but I have nevertheless transcribed them:

63 1 65 [Filum of Christ according to Matthew:] Adam 67 Abel 68 Cain Seth Enosh 69 9 Kenan Mahalalel 70 Jared Enoch Methuselah 71 Lamech Noe Shem 72 Ham Japheth [from Shem:] Arpachshad 73 Shelah Eber 74 Nahor 75 Esrom Thara Abram 76 Abraham 77 Isaac 78 Jacob [filum stops here] Esau 79 21 Reuben Simeon 80 Levi Judah 81 Issachar Zebulon Dan 82 Nephtali Gad Aser 83 Joseph Benjamin 84 Melchisedech 86 [Jacob's family from Gen 46:8-25:] Reuben Pallu 87 Carmi 88 31 Simeon Jemuel Jamin Ohad 89 Iachin Zohar 90 Levi Gershon Kohath 91 Merari 92 Judah Er Onan 93 Shelah Perez Zerah 94 Issachar Tola Puvah Iob? 95 Solomon? 96 Zebulun Sered 97 Elom Jahleel 98 Dan [see Wutz 66; sons of Gad:] Ziphion Haggi Shuni 99 48 Ezbon Eri 100 Areli 1 [sons of Dan:] Naphtali Jahzeel 2 Guni Jezer 3 Shillem 4 Gad 5 Asher Imnah Ishvah 6 Ishvi Beria 8 Joseph Ephraim Manasseh 9 Asenath Potiphera 10 Benjamin 11 62 Becher Ashbel Gera 12 Naaman Ehi Rosh 13 Muppim Huppim 14 [From Exodus:] Pithom Rameses Shiphrah 15 Moses 16 Reuel 17 Jethro 18 Perez Hezron Hamul 19 [Additional LXX Josephites:] Ephraim Southalaam Taam 21 Manasseh Galaad 22 Beriah Eber Melchiel 24 Ermeneia (2) 25 78 [Biblical women:] Eve Sarah 26 Agar Rebecca 27 Deborah 28 Zipporah Rachel 29 Aeia? 30 Bersabee Saraa? Tamar 31 Maria 32 Miriam 33 Ruth 34 Serah 36 [Filum of Christ according to Matthew resumed] Perez Hezron Ram 37 Amminadab Nahshon 38 Salmon* Boaz* 39 93 Jesse* David 40 Solomon 41 Rehoboam* Abijam* 42 Asa* 44 Jehoshaphat Jehoram Uzziah* 45 Jotham* Ahaz 46 100 [omissions!] Zedekiah [1st insert:] Madiam 47 Iesba (Jezebel?) Samareia Raasson 48 Romelion Pharaoh 49 Bathouel Chettoura 50 Chet Gerson [Num. 13:6:] Caleb Jephunneh 51 Elias Elissaie 52 Chebron Asaph 53 Gelbone Nelcha 54 110 Edem Gaidad Maiel 55 Adda Sella 56 Thobel Neomin 57 Iarer Chanaan 58 [Races of Japheth:] Gomer Magog 59 Medes Meshech Tiras 60 [of Gomer:] Ashkenaz [of Javan:] Elishah Tarshish 61 Kittim [Races of Ham:] Cush 62 Misraim 63 Put Seba Dedan 64 Nimrod 65 [Place-names:] Babel Erech Shinar 66 Ashur Nineveh Canaan Sidon Chethatha 68 127 [Races of Shem:] Elam Arpachshad 69 Aram Job Gamer 70 Mosoch Eber Joktan Almodad 72 Uzal Obal Abima-el 73 Ored Havilah 74 Aram? Jobab [mixed list:] Nachor 75 Aot Chaldaeans Suchem 76 Bethel Haggai (prophet?) Amarphal (Gen 14:1?) 77 Ariol Heschod 78 Onam 79 [Sinai (corr. Wutz 80-81)] batos* [peoples of Canaan:] Canaan Amorites 80 Girgashites Jebusites [2nd insert:] Daron (=Aaron) 82 143 Sinai? Israel.

The asterisks mark material that Wutz also found in the hypothetical "Lexikon" used by Ambrose of Milan. It is noticeable that the overall order of the names has some similarities to that in the Liber Genealogus, although considerable amounts of material (particularly Fila B and Fila D) are omitted.

Now the plot thickens. The Liber Genealogus has been written about by a series of scholars in the past hundred years, most notably by Paul Monceaux, Hervé Inglebert and Charles McNelis. Frick's exploration of the etymologies was known to them, but as far as I know, none mentions the very important analytical contribution a generation later by Wutz, an oversight which is understandable, since Wutz did not use the current title for the work. As a result, a century of research has proceeded along two tracks. This blog post is, as far as I know, the first time the two tracks have again met.

So the question is, did Lactantius write a glossary of biblical names that was expanded, 100 years after his death, into the Liber Genealogus of 427? Attractive as the idea is, it relies on only the weakest of supports: Wutz's modern "tradition" that associates Lactantius with the text because it is in the Turin manuscript. There does not seem to be any other evidence for such a link. But we do not have any idea who the true author of the etymologies is. One suspects that Wutz, having spent years looking at fanciful names and etymologies, smiled to himself one morning and made up a fanciful name of his own to leave to posterity. I believe that we should continue to use the term Laktanzgruppe, since it has the weight of a century of (somewhat obscure) tradition, while recognizing that it is a misnomer and misleading.

Wutz argues that the Greek text on which V3 and V4 are based is older than the Latin text of 427, and moreover that there is an Armenian branch of the Laktanzgruppe (document cited in a note by Erwin Preuschen (Wutz, 84), further study apparently conducted in 1981 by Michael E. Stone). If this is so, we are obliged to consider how the Laktanzgruppe of etymologies might have diffused. We can conceive of two paths by which it could have reached Donatist North Africa:

• A Latin translation, now lost, could have been prepared in the 4th century, and could have lain side by side on the table with the Great Stemma while the Liber Genealogus was being written.
• The manuscript may have remained in Greek, untranslated, until a Donatist scholar conceived the bold idea of translating it while using a familiar document, the Great Stemma, as a giver of structure.

The second of these choices is marginally more plausible, given that the underlying motive for writing the Liber Genealogus remains unclear. I have suggested that in the broadest terms it was an ekphrasis of the diagram, but we remain uncertain as to what the incentive to publish it was. A new translation, especially of a work that remained "untainted" by the touch of Catholic writers including Jerome, might perhaps have seemed a rewarding project for a Donatist to undertake.

References

• Gryson, Roger. "L'interprétation du nom de Lévi (Lévite) chez saint Ambroise." Sacris Erudiri 17, 2 (1966), 217-229.
• Krusch, Bruno. Studien zur christlichen-mittelalterlichen Chronik, Leipzig, 1880.
• Lagarde, Paul de. Onomastica Sacra: Pauli De Lagarde Studio Et Sumptibus Alterum Edita. Göttingen, 1887.
• Monceaux, Paul. Littérature donatiste au temps de Saint Augustin. Vol. 6. 7 vols. Histoire littéraire de l'Afrique chrétienne depuis les origines jusqu'à l'invasion arabe. Paris, 1922.
• Opelt, Ilona. "Etymologie". Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum (RAC), 6, col. 829. 1965.
• Rouse, Richard, and Charles McNelis. “North African literary activity: A Cyprian fragment, the stichometric lists and a Donatist compendium.” Revue d'histoire des textes 30 (2000): 189-238.
• Wutz, Franz. Onomastica sacra: Untersuchungen zum Liber interpretationis nominum hebraicorum des hl. Hieronymus (2 vols). Leipzig, 1914-15. Archive.org: PDF complete.

Miraculous Birds

Rudolf Wittkower offers the following English translation of the Bird and Serpent text which accompanies many copies of the Great Stemma. It seems worth bringing it online in a searchable, copiable format:

It is maintained that there is a bird in a country of the Orient which, armed with a large and very sharp beak, provokes the snake which he wants to fight with audacious hissing. He covers himself purposely with dirt and also covers the pearls of different colours with which nature has lavishly adorned him. Having thus given himself an insignificant appearance he surprises the enemy by this unfamiliar impression and deceives him, so to speak, by the security which the latter feels in front of his shabby appearance. Holding his tail as a shield in the manner of a warrior before his face, he boldly attacks the head of his furious adversary, pierces the brain of the surprised beast with the unexpected weapon of his beak and thus kills his monstrous enemy by his marvellous intelligence.
Christ girded himself with human weakness and enveloped himself with the dirt of our flesh to fight in the shape of man for the benefit of salvation and to deceive the godless deceiver with pious fraud, and he concealed his former shape with the latter, throwing, as it were, the tail of his humanity before the face of divinity, and extinguished as if with a strong beak the poisonous malice of the old murderer of men through the word of his mouth. Therefore the Apostle says: Through the word of his mouth he will kill the wicked.

From: Rudolph Wittkower. 'Miraculous Birds.' Journal of the Warburg Institute (1938), Volume 1, Issue 3, pages 253-257. DOI: 10.2307/750013 http://www.jstor.org/stable/750013. Wittkower probably intended the last phrase to be "the sword of his mouth," but this has been spoiled by an officious proof-reader. The biblical text referred to is Revelation 2:16.

The text has a French translation in: Bord, Lucien-Jean, and Piotr Skubiszewski. L’image de Babylone aux serpents dans les Beatus: Contribution à l’étude des influences du Proche-Orient antique dans l’art du haut Moyen Age. Paris: Cariscript, 2000.

Wittkower and Neuss located the image in five Beatus manuscripts: three of them alongside Alpha recensions of the Great Stemma (Gerona, Turin, Manchester). The others were Urgell (Gamma) and Saint-Sever (Sigma). The image, without the text, is also found near a Great Stemma, in a biblical Delta manuscript, the San Millàn Bible, spread across two pages.

The Rylands version of the image in Manchester is online. Moleiro has a watermarked version of the Gerona image online. The French website Encylopedie Universelle reproduces a detail of the same (about 975, folio 18v). It also has a relatively large image from the Saint-Sever Beatus (about 1060, folio 13). Turin and Urgell are not imaged online as far as I know.

The Latin, as transcribed by Wilhelm Neuss, is as follows:

Quedam esse avis in regione orietentalis asseritur, quae grandi et perduro armatoque rostro contra draconem quem audacibus lacessit sibilis pugnaturam coenum de industria expetit, e cuius volutabro teiro habitu infecta sordescit et diversorum gernmas colorum quibus eam indulgentiam natura depinxit. Et humili despecta vestitu ita hostem novitate deterreat et quasi vilitatis suae securitate decipiat. Caudam velut scutum ante faciem suam quadam arte bellatoris opponit audaci impetu in capud adversarii furentis adsurgit, improviso oris sui telo stupentis bestiae cerebrum fodit, et sic mirae calliditatis ingenio immanem prosternit inimicum.
Informa hominis pugnaturus ad militiam salutis publicae humana se infirmitate praecinxit ac luto se nostrae carnis involvit ut impium deceptorem pia fraude deciperet, et postremis priora celavit ac velut caudam humanitatis ante faciem divinitatis objecit, et tamquam rostro fortissimo venenatam veteris homicidae malitiam verbo sui oris extinxit. Unde et apostolus dicit: verbo oris sui interficiet impium.

Office Buildings

I have already described my presentation in Berlin on August 18 to the German chapter of the Society for News Design (report).

It was curious that my host there brought along some images of extremely disciplined trees: persons represented by rectangles, each generation rigidly parked in its own storey, rather like an office building. This fierce axial character contrasts with the much looser attitude to space of the Great Stemma author. Late Antique stemmata are really about paths through space, and are not at all like grids.

Stemma, Maps and Matrices

Now that we have the Great Stemma published online, it's a good time to consider what sort of commonalities it has with the "arbor juris" diagrams in Isidore's Etymologies and with the Peutinger Map. The most important observation is that all three are in a sense calques of the board game, where the meaning arises from traversing through the diagram, much as you jump a counter over the squares or circles of a board towards a goal.

As an itinerarium, Peutinger is all about paths and distances, and not at all about spatial arrangements. One might argue that this is an adaptation to fit its roll form, but I wonder if this isn't a kind of deliberate elaboration from what would be needed for a mere map into something more sophisticated. As it happens, today's IHT edition of the New York Times reports on an ingenious new way of representing cities that overlaps a perspective view into a bird's eye view. It was designed by London's Berg studio and is an exhibit at the NY Museum of Modern Art. The Peutinger Map may not be a broken or primitive map, but instead a highly sophisticated meta-map like the Berg one (I won't comment here on the Richard Talbert proposal that the map is more show-off than practical).

One could argue that the common feature of Peutinger, the arbor iuris, the Great Stemma and also items such as the arbor porphyriana is the invitation to the reader to discover and explore paths, usually crooked paths. That is what the fila and the hypothetical timeline of the Great Stemma are about. The open question is about how accurately the fila and timeline were aligned with one another.

One important ancillary point, to my mind, is that our knowledge of all these graphic schemes is diminished by the difficulty that every scribe, whether Antique or medieval, must have had in accurately copying technical drawings by hand. Last year, I copied the triangular version of the "arbor iuris" and found it a very tricky task, even with good graphics software to help me.

Practice at copying these ingenious graphics has been helpful in understanding their transmission. When I am looking at a poor copy of a drawing, I now assume that its predecessor was more observant of the regularities generally. The more accurate predecessors of these drawings might have had a lot more fine-scale axial information, which is the easiest feature to get out of alignment, as we also seen in the Eusebian Chronological Canons.

But we cannot even begin to reverse this degradation unless we know what equipment such a copyist used when reproducing such drawings, and there I am afraid I have not read enough research. My understanding is that desks were uncommon: according to Kurt Weitzmann, texts were commonly copied onto papyrus rolls by a scribe sitting tailor-style, wearing a tight skirt as the support for his papyrus, which was laid obliquely over the left knee. In the early codex period, the folios were also inscribed on two knees (at least that is true of the Spanish monastery depicted in one of the Beatus codices). It seems to me that big graphics like the Great Stemma could not be competently copied that way, especially if straight axes had to be preserved. I have not studied how paintings were reproduced, but would guess that this done on tables or easels, since the artist had to be at some distance from his canvas to wield his brush.

When we consider how a pen-drawing was copied, I can only speculate. My guess would be that this was a job for a specialist. A tracing through translucent "paper" of some nature? Hardly likely, as the customer would surely expect a product on a robust support. In the 19th century, technical draftsmen used technology such as pantagraphs, but I doubt if these were known in Late Antiquity.

Again, I am only guessing, but I would suppose that the most efficient method would be to stretch a net over the source, another net over the destination, and plot each square or hexagon from one to the other. If a non-specialist scribe were given the task, he might not have the equipment, or the training, or the wit, or the time to do this. If he were particularly incompetent, he would not even complete each panel left to right but might simply hurl squiggles on the page to represent his "overall impression" of the model, then fill the gaps. The Urgell Beatus version of the Great Stemma exemplifies that sort of chaotic, ill-planned copy. It is hardly surprising that we have rather little of the pen-drawings of Antiquity.

Now, I think this encourages us to contemplate the question of Antique "technical" drawing with more attention to the intelligence behind each drawing than to the deficiencies in execution of any of its copies (this was my criticism of Klapisch-Zuber). To some extent, we may be able to at least discover the right questions to ask by looking at collective memory, the practices in other periods, and even our own perceptions. The answers to those questions naturally depend on evidence, but we should try to connect to the intelligence or the intention of the Antique authors.

Infographics Meeting

I did a presentation on Thursday to a monthly meeting of the Society for News Design in Berlin, and there is a short note on it here by Dagmar Gehl, a PhD candidate at the University of Trier who has been completing a thesis on how adequately people understand "multimodal print clusters" (that is, graphics and text).
The questions fom the listeners as I went along were helpful in showing what audiences find surprising about this material.
One immediate question was: why there were so few daughters in the "family tree of Christ"? The answer: the Great Stemma author, working circa 420 A.D., is faithfully reproducing material that was nearly 1,000 years old in his own time. So the heavily male bias merely reflects the bias of the material he was given. The 540 names in the Great Stemma are certainly a selection from two or three times as many biblical names, but gender is not a factor in the selection.
Other questions focussed on why people wanted to construct genealogies in the first place, or how "true" they are. That is such a wide question that I usually steer away from discussing it, since I would like my audiences to focus more on the "how" of producing a flow chart, or organization chart, or dendrogram, or family tree, and why the visualization can be more useful as a communication medium than a text. But of course it can be legitimately discussed, and I do intend to broach the wider issue in the book I am writing about the research.

Oxford Patristics Conference

I've done the presentation at last of the Great Stemma, to a qualified audience at the Oxford Patristics Conference today, followed by fruitful chats with three leading professors with close knowledge of the issues it raises. There were about 50 people at the session. After all these years of speaking, it still feels a bit strange to have an audience staring at you, seemingly unresponsive, though they are actually busy mentally processing what you say. They were great, and it was a kind of out-of-nowhere topic. Conference participants who had been told about it in advance were prepared, and said encouraging things afterwards. There was even a little murmer of laughter when I suggested the Great Stemma was like a PowerPoint slide. Thanks for being a great audience!

Liber Genealogus Text

Just in time for the Oxford Patristics Conference, I have completed a new, structured edition of the Liber Genealogus and published it online here: www.piggin.net/stemmahist/libertext.htm.
Last summer I wasted a couple of weeks marking up a different recension of the Liber, that of Turin, in the mistaken belief that it was the earliest. This time I seem to have tracked down the recension that is truly the first, that of St Gall. It contains a subscription indicating it was written in 427 CE. I have keyed the transcript to the pages of the St Gall manuscript (I will make these hotlinks when it comes online). The manuscript page numbers begin with 299 (this particular codex is numbered by pages, not by folios). I have placed the etymological glosses in a column of their own at the right, which helps to make clearer how the author worked as he read his data from the Great Stemma diagram. The numbering is Mommsen's. It breaks the text into sections of wildly varying size, and I find it illogical, but it has been established as authoritative. Perhaps we can devise a better numbering system in the future.

Oxford Patristics Conference

Here is the Oxford Patristics Conference web announcement of my paper to be delivered August 11: The Great Stemma: A Late Antique diagram of Christ's descent from Adam. They have put me in Room 10 at the Examination Rooms among the communications taking place on the Thursday on Art. I'm looking forward to it a lot.

Reconstruction

A first reconstruction of the Great Stemma is complete. This has been accomplished using OpenOffice Draw, separating the various elements into approximately 10 layers. The reconstruction will be issued at the Oxford Patristics Conference in August.

E-Codices

Some very good news from Professor Christoph Flüeler of the E-Codices manuscript digitization project in Switzerland. I asked him if Cod. Sang. 133, a little codex that is hugely important to the history of books, was likely to be released on the E-Codices website, and he replied that his team would speed this one up and make sure it is issued on the web in the next few months. This is magnificent. I am a big fan of E-Codices, which is a key source in Antiquity studies.

Cod. Sang. 133 in the Abbey Library at St. Gall in Switzerland is an important source in understanding the antique book trade, since it contains a set of more or less intact stichometric lists. These were computations of the length of books, calibrated in στιχοι or stichoi, that were used to set both the cost of transcription (the scribe's wages) and the book price (what the bookseller charged).

Cod. Sang. 133 contain fourth-century measurements of the books of the Bible and the 28 works of Cyprian. We know from the writer Galen (quoted here by Diels) that a Greek stichos or unit was 16 syllables, and this source confirms a Roman stichos, or verse, was similarly 16 Latin syllables.

Once described by Bernhard Bischoff as the "oldest document of the Christian book trade" and used by scholars such as Bruce Metzger to estimate the bulk of early bibles, this record gives us an insight into the economics of book publishing. The content is of course dry, for example:

This translates as:
The Four Gospels:
Matthew, 2700 lines
John, 1800 lines
Mark, 1700 lines
Luke, 3300 lines
All the lines make 10,000 lines.

But there are some interesting observations. The author lets fly for example at exploitative Roman booksellers for their slack and cheating ways with his beloved Cyprian:
Because the index of verses in Rome is not clearly given, and because in other places too, as a result of greed, they do not preserve it in full, I have gone through the books one by one, counting sixteen syllables per line, and have appended to each book the number of Virgilian hexameters it contains (Rouse translation).

The St. Gall manuscript, written during the late 8th or early 9th century, probably at St. Gall itself, and another manuscript, Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele II, Vitt. Em. 1325 (handwritten catalog entry in Italian here, formerly Cheltenham or Phillipps 12266), written at Nonantola in the 10th or early 11th century, are the key practical records we have about the stichometric method.

These North African lists, the so-called indicula, were discovered (it seems) by the great Theodor Mommsen, who wrote them up in 1886. Mommsen expanded his fame with this codex in the late 19th century, publishing the Liber Genealogus in his MGH series. It also contains a curious work, the Inventiones Nominum, which mentions a good many unusual biblical names that never made it into canonical scripture.

The St. Gall codex was revisited in 2000 by eminent US professor Richard Rouse, who argued that the 11 items discovered by Mommsen in the collection (see below) were not a random group of texts, but formed an intact North African reference book or compendium. It had travelled through the centuries together and had been put together by Donatist scholars, according to Rouse and his co-writer Charles McNelis.

The St Gall codex is of quite a small format, which explains why the Liber Genealogus, not a very long work, fills 49 of its folios: there is not that much writing on each side. The script is very clear and the parchment clean, which suggests it was probably not very heavily used in its day. This text of the Liber is the earliest recension (the direct description of the Great Stemma) and therefore the most important.

Here is Mommsen's Latin description of the compendium, interspersed with text from Scherrer's 1875 St. Gall printed catalog, with one or two additions by me (the English bits, obviously):

Cod. Sang. 133

Pgm. 8° s. VIII u. IX; 657 (656) pages.

Scherrer: Drei oder vier Handschriften in einem Band. [Preceded by Eusebius/Jerome on Holy Land place-names. Followed by Isidore Chronicon pp 523-590 and 'Incipit cuius supra Goti de Magog Jafet filio orti' pp 590-597. Pages 598-601 blank.]

Mommsen: saec . IX formae octonariae praeter alia quae recenset catalogus editus p. 48 [Scherrer] a glutinatore demum cum his compacta medio loco p. 299-597 continet commentaries qui sequuntur:

1. p. 299 – 396 librum genealogum infra editum. [Scherrer: S. 299-396: 'Inc. liber genera(tio)num vel nominum patrum vel filiorum vet. test. vel novi a s. Hieronimo prbo conpraehensum etc. Incipit genilocus sci Hieronimi prb.' Am Ende: 'Explicit liber genealogus.' (Unbekannt und nicht von Hieronymus; reicht, laut p. 396, bis zum Jahr der Welt 5879 oder bis zum Consulat 'hieri et ardabii.')]

2. p. 397 – 420 incipiunt prophetiae ex omnibus libris collecte. quae prophetiae membra habent .... cecidisse in hanc voluntate perseverantes caeci a dei fide lapsi sunt ignorantes. expl . coll . prophet . veteris novique testamenti. [Scherrer: S. 397-426: 'Incip. prophetiae ex omnibus libris collecte.' (Katechese).]

3. p. 420′– 421 incipiunt virtutes Haeliae quae eius merito a domino factae sunt. prima virtus. clausit caelum . . . sublatus est in caelo.

4. p. 421 – 426 incipiunt etiam Helisei virtutes. prima virtus. de melote divisa est .... post mortem suam revixit. expl.

5. p. 427 – 454′ inc̅p̅t̅ inventi̅o̅n̅ nomi̅n̅ , duo sunt Adam , unus est protoplaustus .... et alius est Domires vir sponsor Teclae: inter ambas autem sunt an̅n̅ ferme DCCLXX. [Scherrer: S. 427-492: 'Incipt. invention. nominum.' (Aufzählung von Personen- und Völkernamen des A. T.).]

6. 454′– 484′ sequitur liber generationis cum praescriptione hac: haec sunt diutissime . . . . . . anni sunt v̅dccccxviii (vide infra p . 89), sed c . 240 – 331 ad brevem epitomam redactis et ad eius finem inserta computatione quae statim referetur adsunt rursus nostrae editionis c. 333 – 361, abest pars extrema c . 361 – 398: subscriptum expl .

7. p. 484 – 485 item interpretationes filiorum Iacob de Hebreo in Latino. amen vere. Ruben dei spiritus cet.

8. p. 485 – 488 item interpretationes Hebreas in Latin translatas . Hebrea lingua triplex .

9. p. 488 – 492 incipit indiculum veteris testamenti , item novi et Caecili Cipriani, quos indices versum numerum per singulos libros enuntiantes ex gemello libro Cheltenhamensi edidi in Hermae volumine 21 p . 142 seq. librarius iam is qui archetypum scripsit indices eos ad librum generationis non pertinentes neque ei continuatos ad titulorum eius laterculum adiunxit (v. p. 89 not.).

10. p. 492 item interpretationes Hebreas in Latinum . Maria domina cet. [Scherrer: S. 492-522: 'Interpretationes hebreas in latinum etc. Nomina locorum et interpr. nominum de hebreo in latinum. (Excerpte aus Hieron. Liber de interpr. nom. hebr. Opp. ed. Mart. II, von p. 3 bis circa p. 83.)

11. p. 493 – 522 nomina locorum et interpretatio nominum de Hebreo in Latinum. Hermon regio Hebreorum cet. similesque interpretationes aliae.

There is a very old Wikipedia article on stichometry, which I have just fixed a bit. Not just old in the sense of posted in 2005, but old because it was copied from a 100-year-old Encyclopaedia Britannica: it stated that one of the codices is at Cheltenham in Sir Thomas Phillipps's collection. In fact that collection was broken up and sold a century ago. This codex was purchased by the Italian state, and I have altered the Wikipedia article accordingly.

At the Oxford Patristics Conference

I have been accepted to present a paper on the Great Stemma at the Oxford Patristics Conference which takes place in England August 8-12. The paper will be a short communication delivered during one of the parallel sessions when participants can divide up according to the area that interests them.

Here is my abstract (I think I am allowed to publish this, though the paper itself is under wraps until delivery):

The annotated diagram which spans eight folios of Florence Laurenziana Plutei 20.54, ff 38r-45v is demonstrably Late Antique in origin. This little-studied Latin work, partly published by Wilhelm Neuss and Bonifatius Fischer, presents a genealogy from Adam to Christ. It is also found in a cluster of Spanish bibles and the Apocalypse commentary of Beatus of Liébana. The anonymous author worked entirely from the Vetus Latina rather than from Jerome's Vulgate. We can study how a Late Antique author used complex graphics in place of prose to include a non-canonical figure, Joachim, as father of the Virgin within the genealogy of Christ. He structured the diagram around a timeline based on Eusebius's Chronological Canons. The paper will present a reconstruction of the diagram's archetype, arguing that it was originally a chart displaying synchronisms between scripture and history. It suggests that information graphics were a tool in early Christian literature.

Ekphrasis

In the classic sense, ekphrasis means a poem that vividly describes a work of art or other physical artefact. During the Greek period, such texts might describe weapons, exceptional clothing, household items of superior craftsmanship (urns, cups, baskets) and splendid buildings.

This form of expression connects with the Roman pride in showing off one's education (paideia) at dinner parties which Michael Squire describes (p. 219) in his book Image and Text in Graeco-Roman Antiquity: Learned discussions of myths and philology were the bread and butter of the cena and convivium, and it seems to have been de rigueur to intersperse dinner with all manner of literary entertainments, he notes. Even Petronius's Trimalchio appreciates that 'one must know one's philology at dinner' (oportet etiam inter cenandum philologiam nosse: Petron. Sat. 39.3), though getting his own woefully wrong, Squire notes.

Squire traces this back to Hellenistic examples, quoting (p. 239) a passage in Greek (Dom. 2) from Lucian's On the Hall: When it comes to what we see, the same law does not apply for ordinary as for learned men. For the former, it is enough to do the usual thing: simply to gaze, look around ... But when a man of learning looks upon what is beautiful, he would not, I think, be content with harvesting his delight in looking alone, nor would he allow himself to witness their beauty in silence; instead, he will do all he can to take his time and to reciprocate the image with speech.

Lucian's speaker later says: 'Visual judgement lies not in the act of looking, but a rational eloquence also concurs with what is seen' (Dom. 6, quoted Squire p. 240). Addressing this Hellenistic 'etiquette of viewing', Squire adds (p. 243): 'The art of being an educated viewer once again becomes the art of being equipped with paideia - of having the terms, language and knowledge to articulate what is remarkable in an image.

The remainder of Squire's argument, that 'verbally mediated responses might actually force viewers to look harder at what they saw' (p. 247), need not concern us here. Instead, I am concerned with the relationship between the Great Stemma and the Liber Genealogus. The one is a very large and impressive diagram, the other an extended text which muses, in list order, on the etymology of biblical names and drops in various tendentious remarks of a Donatist nature about the Church of Rome. In the order of the material, the earliest, G recension of the Liber Genealogus closely follows the diagram. It is all but inconceivable that this order would have been independently adopted without reference to the diagram.

We are thus left with the issue of how and why the Liber Genealogus was written.

It seems to me that the practice of ekphrasis offers a plausible hypothesis to explain its creation. Much of what we read in the Liber seems to be a response to the visualization, perhaps by a Christian displaying both classical learning and biblical knowledge. It might be too fanciful to imagine three or four Christian literati going out to dine with a secretary at hand to jot down what they say and the Great Stemma pinned up on the wall of the dining room. But certainly the Liber does seem to be written with the purpose of dazzling somebody with the eloquence and resourcefulness of its etymological speculation about Hebrew names of the Bible.

Liber Genealogus

A 9,000-word study of the links between the Liber Genealogus and the Great Stemma more or less completes my detailed research into the oldest stemma diagram known. I have just placed this new article online. I do not pretend it offers any great amusement: it is rather dry stuff. But we need the detail to assemble the case that the Liber is the textual account of someone who had read the Stemma, or something like it. I don't think many people read the Liber Genealogus: it is difficult to see what use it ever was to any reader. Mommsen's edition of the Liber does not help the contemporary reader much either. It is not particularly easy to use, given that the composite Mommsen text overlays the original G recension with material from the Origo Humani Generis and a lot of Donatist disputation. It might have almost been easier for me to just read a manuscript. Unfortunately, the best and oldest one is not online. The excellent Swiss e-codices project has not yet digitized Cod. Sang. 133, which contains the G recension dating from the late 8th or early 9th century. That is quite impressive: this codex was penned less than 400 years after the Liber Genealogus was written in 427. In the absence of this much-needed digital work, one can only consult Plutei 20.54 in Florence, which contains the inferior F recension. This is in fact the same codex that contains the most primitive form of the Great Stemma.

Greek Place-Names

An interesting blog post from last year by Nick Nicholas on old Greek names for a stretch of coast that is much in the news at the moment. Hippolytus's Chronicon comprehensively lists places that a mariner might need to know about on the desert coast of North Africa.

New Revisions

So we now have two new pages on the site: one deals in more detail with Eusebius and the likely debt of the Great Stemma to his Chronological Canons. The other explores in more detail the oddities of the Ordo Romanorum Regum. I have also fully revised the bibliography to make it more comprehensive.

Ordo Annorum Mundi

A new page, dealing with the Ordo Annorum Mundi, has now been placed on the Macro-Typography website. It seems to me that the OAM may be a piece of writing by the Great Stemma's author, but I am still looking for the killer evidence. The OAM seems to appear only in Iberian-origin manuscripts, but has achieved wider diffusion through its incorporation in the Commentary on the Apocalypse of Beatus of Liebana.

Note added in August 2012: No killer evidence found. It seems more than likely that the Ordo Annorum Mundi is not by the Great Stemma author, who probably worked from a chronology drafted by Hippolytus of Rome. However the OAM's history seems intimately entwined with that of the diagram. It could well be the work of someone who revised and altered the diagram at a later stage, altering it to reflect a chronology of world history computed by Eusebius of Caesarea. Professor José Carlos Martín of the University of Salamanca will soon be issuing an editio princeps of the Ordo Annorum Mundi, and we are keenly awaiting this important publication.

The Vetus Latina Hispana of Ayuso

In 1953, Teófilo Ayuso Marazuela published the first volume of his Vetus Latina Hispana. It was an ambitious project, presumably with government funding, to recover the bible texts that circulated in Iberia before the introduction of Jerome's Vulgate. It was in direct rivalry with the Vetus Latina that was being reconstructed at the Abbey of Beuron in Germany, and it was awarded a prize (marked on the title page) in the name of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.

Ayuso devised his own numbering system for the codices and other manuscripts he used. The numbers seem to have fallen completely out of use, but are still essential in reading scholarly Spanish articles of the period, in particular Ayuso's own writing, about biblical manuscripts. Since the numbers seem to be nowhere on the internet, I am tabulating them online in the hope they can be of service to modern scholars.

The left column comprises the VLH or Ayuso numbers themselves, followed by the abbreviations commonly used and the sequence numbers for each manuscript of the same provenance. For example, Leg² or Legionense² is the Codex gothicus. Burgense¹ is the Burgos Bible, also called Biblia de San Pedro de Cardena. The last column lists the (1953) locations of the manuscripts.

1	Guelf		Vaticano -Guelferbitano	Vaticano
2	Tur		Turonense	Paris
3	Fragm. To		Fragmentos toledanos	Toledo
4	Freís		Fragmentos de Freising	München
5	Palimps		Palimpsesto de León	León
6	Ottob		Ottoboniano	Vaticano
7	Lugd	1	Lugdunense	Lyon
8	Lugd	2	Lugdunense	Paris
9	Escu	1	Eseurialense	El Escorial
10	Ov	1	Ovetense (Desaparecido)	Oviedo
11	Luxeuil		Leccionario de Luxeuil	Paris
12	Ov	2	Ovetense (Desaparecido)	Oviedo. Escorial
13	Cav		Cavense	Cava
14	Cav dpdo		Cavense duplicado	Vaticano
15	To	1	Toledano	Madrid
16	To dpdo		Toledano duplicado	Vaticano
17	Co	1	Complutense	Madrid
18	Co	2	Complutense	Madrid
19	Leg	1	Legionense	León
20	On		Oniense	Salamanca
21	Leg	2	Legionense	León
22	Leg dpdo		Legionense duplicado	Vaticano
23	Leg	3	Legionense supuesto (Desaparecido)	León
24	Emil	1	Emilianense	Madrid
25	Burg	1	Burgense	Burgos
26	Valv		Valvanerense (Desaparecido)	Escorial
27	To	2	Toledano	Toledo
28	Pin		Pinatense	Madrid
29	Moz		Breviario Mozárabe	Madrid
30	Psalt	1	Salterio	Madrid
31	Psalt	2	Salterio	Madrid
32	Psalt	3	Salterio	Madrid
33	Psalt	4	Salterio	London
34	Psalt	5	Salterio	Nogent-sur-Marne
35	Psalt	6	Salterio	Escorial
36	Psalt	7	Salterio	Madrid
37	Psalt	8	Salterio	Santiago
38	Cant		Liber Canticorum	Madrid
39	Com	1	Liber Commicus	Toledo
40	Com	2	Liber Commicus	París
41	Com	3	Liber Commicus	León
42	Com	4	Liber Commicus	Madrid
43	Seg	1	Seguntino	Sigüenza
44	Esc	2	Escurialense	El Escorial
45	Tolos	1	Tolosano	Toulouse
46	Tolos	2	Tolosano	Toulouse
46*	Esc		Escurialense Misceláneo (not a bible)	El Escorial
47	Lugd	3	Lugdunense	Lyon
48	Teod		Teodulfiano	Paris
49	Anic		Aniciense	Le Puy
50	Bern		Bernense	Bern
51	Hub		Hubertiano	London
52	Sang		Sangermanense	Paris
53	Sang		Sangermanense	Paris
54	Sang		Sangermanense	Paris
55	Riq		Saint Riquier	Paris
56	Laud		Laudiano	Oxford
57	Mon		Monacense	München
58	Aur		Aureo	Escorial
59	Cas	1	Casinense	Monte Cassino
60	Cas	2	Casinense	Monte Cassino
61	Cas	3	Casinense	Monte Cassino
62	Cas	4	Casinense	Monte Cassino
63	To	3	Toledano	Toledo
64	Matr	2	Matritense	Madrid
65	Matr	3	Matritense	Madrid
66	Matr	4	Matritense	Madrid
67	Matr	5	Matritense	Madrid
68	Matr	6	Matritense	Madrid
69	Matr	7	Matritense	Madrid
70	Matr	8	Matritense	Madrid
71	Purp		Purpúreo (Desaparacido)	Urgel
72	Urg		Urgelense	Urgel
73	Rip		Ripollense	Vaticano
74	Roa		Rodense	Paris
75	Vic	1	Vicense	Vich
76	Vic	2	Vicense	Vich
77	Vic	3	Vicense	Vich
78	Vic	4	Vicense	Vich
79	Par	1	Parisiense	Paris
80	Par	2	Parisiense	Paris
81	Par	3	Parisiense	Paris
82	Esc	3	Escurialense	El Escorial
83	Mall		Malloricense	Palma
84	Leg	3	Legionense	León
85	Leg	4	Legionense	León
86	Leg	5	Legionense	León
87	Leg	6	Legionense	León
88	Leg	7	Legionense	León
89	Osc		Oscense	Madrid
90	Matr	9	Matritense	Madrid
91	Burg	2	Burgense	Burgos
92	Burg	3	Burgense	Burgos
93	Cal		Calagurritano	Calahorra
94	Emil	2	Emilianense	Madrid
95	Ler		llerdense	Lérida
96	Co	2	Complutenses	Madrid
97	Av		Avilense	Madrid
98	Esc	4	Escurialense	El Escorial
99	Alf		Alfonsino (Desaparacido)	Barcelona?
100	Avig		Avignoniense (Desaparcido)	Avignon?
101	Barc	1	Barcinonense	Barcelona
102	Barc	2	Barcinonense	Barcelona
103	Barc	3	Barcinonense	Barcelona
104	Barc	4	Barcinonense	Barcelona
105	Barc	5	Barcinonense	Barcelona
106	Bil	1	Bilbilitano	Calatayud
107	Bil	2	Bilbilitano	Calatayud
108	Burg	4	Burgense	Burgos
109	Burg	5	Burgense	Burgos
110	Cal		Calagurritano	Calahorra
111	Conc		Concentainense	Concentaina
112	Dar		Darocense	Daroca
113	Esc	5	Escurialense	El Escorial
114	Esc	6	Escurialense	El Escorial
115	Esc	7	Escurialense	El Escorial
116	Esc	8	Escurialense	El Escorial
117	Esc	9	Escurialense	El Escorial
118	Esc	10	Escurialense	El Escorial
119	Esc	11	Escurialense	El Escorial
120	Esc	12	Escurialense	El Escorial
121	Esc	13	Escurialense	El Escorial
122	Esc	14	Escurialense	El Escorial
123	Esc	15	Escurialense	El Escorial
124	Esc	16	Escurialense	El Escorial
125	Esc	17	Escurialense	El Escorial
126	Esc	18	Escurialense	El Escorial
127	Esc	19	Escurialense	El Escorial
128	Esc	20	Escurialense	El Escorial
129	Esc	21	Escurialense	El Escorial
130	Esc	22	Escurialense	El Escorial
131	Esc	23	Escurialense	El Escorial
132	Esc	24	Escurialense	El Escorial
133	Esc	25	Escurialense	El Escorial
134	Esc	26	Escurialense	El Escorial
135	Hisp		Hispalense	Sevilla
136	Mall	2	Malloricense	Palma
137	Mall	3	Malloricense	Palma
138	Matr	10	Matritense	Madrid
139	Matr	11	Matritense	Madrid
140	Matr	12	Matritense	Madrid
141	Matr	13	Matritense	Madrid
142	Matr	14	Matritense	Madrid
143	Matr	15	Matritense	Madrid
144	Matr	16	Matritense	Madrid
145	Matr	17	Matritense	Madrid
146	Matr	18	Matritense	Madrid
147	Matr	19	Matritense	Madrid
148	Matr	20	Matritense	Madrid
149	Matr	21	Matritense	Madrid
150	Matr	22	Matritense	Madrid
151	Matr	23	Matritense	Madrid
152	Matr	24	Matritense	Madrid
153	Matr	25	Matritense	Madrid
154	Matr	26	Matritense	Madrid
155	Matr	27	Matritense	Madrid
156	Matr	28	Matritense	Madrid
157	Matr	29	Matritense	Madrid
158	Matr	30	Matritense	Madrid
159	Matr	31	Matritense	Madrid
160	Matr	32	Matritense	Madrid
161	Matr	33	Matritense	Madrid
162	Matr	34	Matritense	Madrid
163	Matr	35	Matritense	Madrid
164	Matr	36	Matritense	Madrid
165	Matr	37	Matritense	Madrid
166	Matr	38	Matritense	Madrid
167	Oxorm		Oxomense	Burgo de Osma
168	Par	4	Parisiense	Paris
169	Plas	1	Plasentino	Plasencia
170	Plas	2	Plasentino	Plasencia
171	Salm		Salmanticense	Salamanca
172	Segov		Segoviense	Segovia
173	Segunt		Seguntino	Sigüenza
174	Ser		Serenense	Villanueva de la Serena
175	Sor		Soriano	Soria
176	Tar		Tarraconense	Tarragona
177	Tir		Tirasonense	Tarazona
178	To	4	Toledano	Toledo
179	To	5	Toledano	Toledo
180	To	6	Toledano	Toledo
181	To	7	Toledano	Toledo
182	To	8	Toledano	Toledo
183	To	9	Toledano	Toledo
184	To	10	Toledano	Toledo
185	To	11	Toledano	Toledo
186	To	12	Toledano	Toledo
187	To	13	Toledano	Toledo
188	To	14	Toledano	Toledo
189	To	15	Toledano	Toledo
190	To	16	Toledano	Toledo
191	To	17	Toledano	Toledo
192	To	18	Toledano	Toledo
193	To	19	Toledano	Toledo
194	To	20	Toledano	Toledo
195	Urg	2	Urgelitano	Urgel
196	Urg	3	Urgelitano	Urgel
197	Valent	1	Valentino	Valencia
198	Valent	2	Valentino	Valencia
199	Valent	3	Valentino	Valencia
200	Valent	4	Valentino	Valencia
201	Valv	2	Valvanerense	Valvanera
202	Vat		Vaticano	Vaticano
203	Zar	1	Zaragozano	Zaragoza
204	Zar	2	Zaragozano	Zaragoza

You are welcome to copy my list and reproduce it as you wish, though a credit would be appreciated. As far as I can assess, the list in the book can no longer be subject to copyright, and in any case I have modified it to present it here on the web.
There is one peculiarity, perhaps a lapse in attention by Ayuso. Pages 25-6 (IV. Lista de codices espanoles o de origen hispanico estudiados, numeros y siglas correspondientes) list 203 sources only, while pages 347-83 (Los manuscritos bíblicos espanoles) contain a list that is one element longer (204). The extra item in the latter list comes at position number 113, Escurialense⁵, which is inexplicably missed from the summary table, so that every item below it is displaced by one position when the two lists are compared. In the above tabulation, I have followed the numbering on pages 347-83, since this seems to be correct. Perhaps there is an errata page, or a handwritten correction, in a copy in a Spanish library, and I would be grateful to anyone willing to check this. But there is no such correction in the Hamburg State Library copy, which is kept in the city's Bergedorf stack and does not seem to have been much used down the years.
[A later note:] Ayuso's earlier articles use quite different sigla, including A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, 7-8. These are apparently the items in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid (lines 64-69 above). A2 for example is the Bible of San Juan de la Peña, and these are listed in the print catalog (Tomo 1) here. His earlier "Bu" is the Burgos Bible in line 25, as noted above. Ayuso renumbered the León bibles, since 3 Legionense in line 23 is a lost one, whereas the Leg3 he had referred to in 1943 was clearly the Second León Bible which is very much in continued existence. In line 12, 2 Oventense is the lost Gospel Book of Justus which I discuss in another post.

A Latin Counterpart to Eusebius?

Six years ago, Roger Pearse led a magnificent distributed effort to create an English translation of the Chronological Canons of Eusebius. This was a work in Greek, now mostly lost, that we know through a Latin translation by Jerome and through Armenian translations from the Greek. The translation of the Canons is freely available as two (very large) HTML tables, beginning here on Tertullian.org or mirrored at CCEL here. They may take a while to download to your screen. The Latin of Jerome has also been tabulated on the same websites.
The chronological canons explore synchronisms in the histories of the cultures arrayed between Rome and Persia, keyed to biblical history starting at the birth of Abraham.

So what has this got to do with the Great Stemma? Well, it seems that both are essentially about the same thing, synchronisms. Eusebius created what was in a sense the world's first spreadsheet, with a patient scribe doing the autofill of dates in sequence down the left column. Eusebius then filled in events across the rows from the chronicles of the various civilizations he knew, Graeco-Roman and barbarian. Anthony Grafton in Christianity and the Transformation of the Book explores how revolutionary this method of visualizing information was. One point he might have made, but I don't think he did, is the importance of blank space in this content. The blanks are a key to reading the tabulation. There's a certain tension about it, because Eusebius obviously knew a lot of the content was rubbish, but he puts it in and lets the reader judge.

Now, the Great Stemma, in my view, must have done the same thing, but working left to right, and takes another step forward technically by eliminating the scale of years.
I've now posted a hypothetical reconstruction (link) of how the chronographical elements in the Great Stemma might have looked.

How was it progress to simplify Eusebius? The chart shows the reader the various synchronisms in the Bible: the descendants of Seth with the offspring of Cain, the offspring of Nathan with those of Solomon, the kings of Judah with those of Samaria, the founders of Rome with the Persians. But it finds a way to mix the resolution of the matches. In some cases it can state in a gloss to an exact year what is synchronous. In other cases it gives just a rough estimate of synchronicity, give or take a few hundred years. The author was probably teaching his students that the offspring of Cain were wiped out by the Great Flood, but thanks to his page design he does not need to say exactly when Lamech the Boaster lived or when Noema introduced her a capella music: he just draws them as a series of roundels crawling along the foot of the page till they stop. Big fat roundels don't need to be precisely placed. So in a sense, the Great Stemma is the first mind map: information in bubbles. If it had any kind of exactitude, this was probably confined to a separate tabulation. Perhaps the Ordo Annorum Mundi is that tabulation. We'll have to keep looking into this.

Eusebius obviously had the same issue to contend with. In fact he explains that some of his data is less exact, with a resolution in the order of decades only, not years, or at least that is one of the implications I draw from the following remark. Here is Grafton's translation (p. 140) of Chronici Canones, 14:

To prevent the long list of numbers from causing any confusion, I have cut the entire mass of years into decades. Gathering these from the histories of individual peoples, I have set them across from each other, so that anyone may easily determine in which Greek or barbarian's time the Hebrew prophets and kings and priests were, and similarly which men of the different kingdoms were falsely seem as gods, which were heroes, which cities were founded when, and, from the ranks of illustrious men, who were philosophers, poets, princes and writers.

Eusebius's thoughts on this are useful to an understanding of the Great Stemma. Understanding that Eusebius decided to simply ignore what he saw as prehistory, the time before Abraham, suggested to me that the Great Stemma author also probably decided to treat it differently, arranging it in unform arches and not bothering too closely about its possible synchronisms.
It still seems odd that the Great Stemma seems serenely unaware of Eusebius. Still, if the author worked entirely from Latin sources and did not have any of Jerome's translations to hand, neither the Vulgate nor the Chronici Canones, that would be understandable.
The Roger Pearse translation and Latin allows me to hunt and look for any resemblances and I find no matches in the proto-text of the Stemma. Something only shows up in a later recension, Urgell, where we have: Sexaginario Isaac nascuntur filii gemini: primus Esau, qui est Edom, a quo gens Iudamaeorum; secundus Jacob, qui posthea Israhel, a quo Israhelitae, qui nunc Iudaei. This matches Jerome's Latin translation of Eusebius: Sexagenario Isaac nascuntur filii gemini: primus Esau, qui et Edom, a quo gens Idumaeorum. Secundus Jacob, qui postea Israel, a quo Israelitae, qui nunc Judaei.

Now I don't wish to suggest that the Great Stemma is contemporary with the Canons, which were drawn up in the decade or so after 300 CE. The Stemma might have been drawn up 100 or even 150 years later. But in a wonderful way it is a kind of Latin counterpart to the Canons, finding new conventions to visualize a similar kind of content, preferring traditional roll form to new-fangled codex format, devising new ways to mix exactitude and vagueness, yet very successfully getting its message about synchronisms in biblical history across to the student who reads it. Or more correctly, who read it, past tense. By the time the document reached Spain, most of the careful parallelisms had probably been ruined by careless scribes, and the reader was left to guess at what episode above matched which episode in the rows below.

Léon Abbreviations

The great Léon bible known as the Codex Legionensis or Leg² (to distinguish it from Leg³, a copy made 100 years later, and Leg¹, also known as ....) has never been published online as far as I know. I was able to see a facsimile of it in the summer at the Prussian State Library in Berlin: it is brought to you in a suitcase-sized wooden box, and the volume would probably not be transportable as hold baggage without paying a supplement: it weighed over 20 kilograms.

In the end I decided against transcribing its version of the Great Stemma and preferred that in the Facundus Beatus. However the Léon bible is sometimes considered the greater treasure by scholars. I have just been looking at Téofilo Ayuso's 1960-61 article in Estudios Bíblicos which comprehensively describes it. Ayuso offers some useful instructions on how to read it, summing up its abbreviations and punctuation. Most of these features are applicable in the other documents in Visigothic script, and are worth reproducing here:

Nexos y Abreviaturas
No vale la pena insistir. Son los propios de la escritura de la época, sin rarezas.
Son normales los nexos y abreviaturas de at, bis, en, er, es, et, ex, nt, per, re, rtem, rum, se, ti, ter, tre.
Normalmente usa ȩ (e con cedilla) en los diptongos ae, oe: uitȩ, suȩ, quȩ, prȩdicasse, etc. A veces la omite: celum, etc. A veces la pone en falso rȩcedent, ȩgo, ȩnim. En alguna ocasión tiene et diptongo.
Ya hemos insinuado algunas abreviaturas por suspensión:
que: usq^s, neg^s, dixeruntq^s;
y la de bus: trib^s,quib^s, etc.
Igualmente ius, mus, pus, etc.: hui^s, sum^s, temp^s, y la de bis, con una especie de cedilla: noḅ.
En cuanto a las abreviaturas por apócope, en las mayúsculas suele ser una raya horizontal gruesa ( ¯¯ ) con adornos o doble suspensión; y en las minúsculas dos o tres puntos: cü ...dṡ ..., bien para la supresión de una letra uitulü, bien para la contracción aüm.
Para e' relativo (q^ve, q^vem), suele usar una v pequenita, volada.
A base de eso las abreviaturas suelen ser las ordinarias:

apsl	apostolus
aum	autem
dd	dauid
dns	dominus
ds	deus
epla	epistola
gla	gloria
gra	gratia
fr	frater
ihrslm	iherusalem
ihs	ihesus
kmi	karissimi
ms	meus
nmn	nomen
ns	noster
oms,	omnis
ppls	populus
qm	quoniam
ppr	propter
pprea	propterea
scdm	secundum
sps	spiritus
scs	sanctus
srl	srahel
usa	uestra
xps	christus

Signos de puntuación
Valen todas las observaciones que hicimos sobre la Biblia de Oña.
Usa con bastante regularidad los signos correspondientes al incisum o subdistinctio, media distinctio y ultima distinctio o punto final. Estos signos son ^·(punto alto); · (punto en medio de linea); y ., o de .' (punto bajo, seguido de una comita un poco mayor, ya sea al mismo nivel, ya un poco mas elevada). Como es sabido, indican, poco más o menos, lo que nuestra coma, punto y coma, dos puntos y punto final.
[A note of explanation here: this is the medieval system of punctuation as developed by Aristophanes of Byzantium which we generally ignore in transcriptions, since it does not match current notions of grammatical punctuation:
media distincto: midlevel pause (≈ comma)
subdistincto: pause (≈ semicolon)
distincto: long pause (≈ period)]
Después de ., o de .' suele seguir mayúscula. Unas veces a ren­glón seguido, otras comenzando la linea siguiente.
Usa, como dijimos, una cedilla para expresar los diptongos ae, oe,
Usa un puntito sobre 'a y levantada.
Usa corrientemente un signo de interrogación, chie consiste en una pequeña espiral o rayita quebrada, sobre et espacio que signe a la última letra.
Para indicar la división de capitulos, bien en et margen, bien en medio de linea, usa un ángulo recto, alto, dentro del cual incluye los números romanos correspondientes: I, II, etc.