2017-07-16

The Unknown Pacian

I discovered a few weeks back that I had overlooked a whole block of Vatican Library digitization releases in late May. I know that many of my readers rely on this blog for news of releases. I trust in a combination of apps, memory and eyesight to catch new arrivals. And being human and worn, I fear occasionally one of those three breaks down.

The 47 skipped items come from the Reg.lat. series, the fabled library bought from the heirs of Christina Vasa, Queen of Sweden. The omission was gently brought to my attention by Pierre Chambert-Protat (@chaprot on Twitter), who had been lying in wait for a key codex among the 47. He was in delight to finally see online a 9th-century French book of theology extracts from Augustine of Hippo and other authors. It is the working copy used by Florus of Lyon (he left his notes all over the margins):

The example above is from 14v. Notice the big difference of the two (contemporary) hands. The codex is also celebrated as the sole mediator of the writings of Pacian of Barcelona, and here I will let Pierre explain:
Pacian lived in the 4th century. But his works didn’t spread, it seems, in the five next centuries, since we preserve no manuscripts from that time, nor later copies that would descend from those older copies. Only in the 9th century the Lyonnais clerics ran into some of Pacian’s works, and they took a copy for themselves: our Reg. lat. 331. This situation explains another strange little fact: when he quotes Pacian, Florus feels obligated to say that Jerome spoke about him in good terms. He never does that for any other author — but he knew Pacian’s authority wouldn’t be acknowledged just like that, simply because no-one actually knew Pacian at the time. Lyon’s cathedral library rediscovered him, saved him from oblivion, and they were very much aware about it.
You may have heard that Pierre is one of the people working to reconstitute Florus's library virtually, using links to the different libraries that own and have digitized Florus books. Read Pierre's blog (from which I have just quoted) for the full story about this treasure, which also happens to have a key place in the history of text.

Here is my list of the shelfmarks of the missing Reginenses codices, with my apologies for the delay:
  1. Reg.lat.13, Psalterium Romanum with the Book of Canticles (psalms 1 to 26 missing). Beuron number 354, late 11th century from near Naples or Benevento. This text is the pre-Vulgate one, traditionally considered a light revision by Jerome of Stridon before he did a heavy reworking that is termed the Psalterium Gallicanum.
  2. Reg.lat.14, 10th-century evangeliary transmitting an Old Latin prologue to John's Gospel, attributed to his legendary pupil Papias of Hierapolis (HT to @ParvaVox)
  3. Reg.lat.30,
  4. Reg.lat.33,
  5. Reg.lat.34,
  6. Reg.lat.36,
  7. Reg.lat.53,
  8. Reg.lat.54, a 10th-century manuscript containing Bede's De schematibus, Cassiodorus' De Anima and Jesus' legendary letter to King Abgar (HT to @ParvaVox)
  9. Reg.lat.55,
  10. Reg.lat.127,
  11. Reg.lat.146,
  12. Reg.lat.238,
  13. Reg.lat.252, the BAV note gives only Augustine of Hippo and John Chrysostom as authors in this 10th or 11th-century (the fine initial below is rather traditional for the date), whereas the eTK points to a 13th-century incipit on folio 45v of the same shelfmark: Quia sancta evangelia dicunt factas tenebras a vi hora usque ix ..." I cannot find that. Is the latter note miscopied or mistaken?
  14. Reg.lat.254,
  15. Reg.lat.268,
  16. Reg.lat.302, if you are interested in the strange monogram in this, check out a tweet series by @ParvaVox!
  17. Reg.lat.312, HT to @LatinAristotle who points out this is the Liber de exemplis sacrae scripturae of Nicolas de Hanaps. Jean Destrez examined this in a celebrated 1958 study to distinguish datings of codices by authorial, exemplar and scribal dates, so this codex is particularly interesting as a type, on account of its note in red pointing out that the exemplar was defective.
  18. Reg.lat.325,
  19. Reg.lat.331, the 9th-century theology codex from Lyons which Pierre Chambert-Protat was waiting for
  20. Reg.lat.334, liturgical music, 11th or 12th century, from southern Italy. Admire the notation for the chant. This is one of Lowe's examples of Beneventan script: 
  21. Reg.lat.349,
  22. Reg.lat.366,
  23. Reg.lat.375,
  24. Reg.lat.390,
  25. Reg.lat.396,
  26. Reg.lat.400,
  27. Reg.lat.402,
  28. Reg.lat.406,
  29. Reg.lat.408,
  30. Reg.lat.411,
  31. Reg.lat.413.pt.1,
  32. Reg.lat.413.pt.2,
  33. Reg.lat.417, a 10th-century copy from Reims of the Carolingian Collectio Ansegisi bound with a number of capitularies issued at Worms (a. 829) (HT to @ParvaVox)
  34. Reg.lat.423,
  35. Reg.lat.425, Collectio Dacheriana, a canon-law collection, in a 10th-century manuscript (HT to @ParvaVox)
  36. Reg.lat.427,
  37. Reg.lat.433,
  38. Reg.lat.436,
  39. Reg.lat.443,
  40. Reg.lat.454,
  41. Reg.lat.460,
  42. Reg.lat.464,
  43. Reg.lat.476,
  44. Reg.lat.603,
  45. Reg.lat.622,
  46. Reg.lat.656,
  47. Reg.lat.663, Gerardi de Fracheto O.P.
Meanwhile it looks like it's Roman Holiday time in the Vatican Library's digitization workshop, with only 13 items that I can find brought online in the past week.
  1. Barb.gr.461
  2. Barb.or.7
  3. Reg.lat.71
  4. Reg.lat.109
  5. Reg.lat.702
  6. Reg.lat.724
  7. Reg.lat.783
  8. Reg.lat.872
  9. Reg.lat.1000.pt.B
  10. Reg.lat.1032
  11. Vat.gr.1973
  12. Vat.lat.1405
  13. Vat.lat.1413 
The readers are already being turned away at the gates. Look at all these empty seats in the reading room in this tweet:
This is Piggin's Unofficial List number 121. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to DigiVatLib.
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