Latin and Visualization

In Latin, the classic justification for visualization usually argues that verbalization may not be enough to explain complex topics. One of these texts has just shown up on the Vatican Library online portal in connection with an arbor juris diagram in a law textbook, Vat.lat.2707:

Quod si non fuerint aures tibi sufficientes
Aspiciant oculi sic designata legentes.

The idea on this bit of doggerel is that what won't go in your ears might well reach your understanding via your eyes. The oldest mention of this idea goes back to Cassiodorus (see my webpage about him). The verse is written in this 12th century manuscript of the Decretum abbreviatum at the head of a page to introduce a diagram of kinship:

The diagram is of considerable interest in itself. Its layout is classified as Schadt Type 5 (see my handbook to the types) and it is notable for having a double "self" (the little busts at the centre: perhaps implying the legal subject may sometimes be female) and for eliminating one degree of lateral kinship (it leaves the ultimate cousin squares blank).

In all 63 new manuscripts came online in the past week:

1. Barb.lat.2161,
2. Barb.lat.3981,
3. Chig.C.IV.109, a beautiful book of hours
   

   Chig.C.IV.109 is almost certainly mid 15th C from Paris.

   — AaronM (@gundormr) February 25, 2018

4. Ott.lat.2453.pt.A, a newspaper-style news-of-the-past-year summary from 1644: Diario Venentiano Sopra L'Anno. Not great journalism though: the reporter often notes just the weather:
   
5. Vat.lat.2179,
6. Vat.lat.2332,
7. Vat.lat.2396 (Upgraded to HQ),
8. Vat.lat.2422,
9. Vat.lat.2494 (Upgraded to HQ),
10. Vat.lat.2501,
11. Vat.lat.2565,
12. Vat.lat.2575,
13. Vat.lat.2577,
14. Vat.lat.2614,
15. Vat.lat.2643,
16. Vat.lat.2647,
17. Vat.lat.2648 (Upgraded to HQ),
18. Vat.lat.2654,
19. Vat.lat.2660 (Upgraded to HQ),
20. Vat.lat.2661,
21. Vat.lat.2665,
22. Vat.lat.2677,
23. Vat.lat.2685,
24. Vat.lat.2687 (Upgraded to HQ),
25. Vat.lat.2689,
26. Vat.lat.2691 (Upgraded to HQ),
27. Vat.lat.2693 (Upgraded to HQ),
28. Vat.lat.2699,
29. Vat.lat.2701,
30. Vat.lat.2706,
31. Vat.lat.2707, a law book (above). See Schadt, Hermann, Die Darstellung der Arbores Consanguinatis, pp 148, 150, 192

    In this list figures Val. Lat. 2707, a manuscript with the Decretum Gratiani, has been digitized, not just "a law book", but influential from the mid-twelfth century up to 1917 https://t.co/QK2J0SnQzX

    — GlossaeIuris (@GlossaeIuris) February 27, 2018

32. Vat.lat.2708,
33. Vat.lat.2709,
34. Vat.lat.2710 (Upgraded to HQ),
35. Vat.lat.2713 (Upgraded to HQ),
36. Vat.lat.2716,
37. Vat.lat.2717,
38. Vat.lat.2718,
39. Vat.lat.2723,
40. Vat.lat.2727 (Upgraded to HQ),
41. Vat.lat.2728,
42. Vat.lat.2729,
43. Vat.lat.2732,
44. Vat.lat.2736,
45. Vat.lat.2740 (Upgraded to HQ),
46. Vat.lat.2743,
47. Vat.lat.2746,
48. Vat.lat.2748,
49. Vat.lat.2751,
50. Vat.lat.2762,
51. Vat.lat.2768,
52. Vat.lat.2770,
53. Vat.lat.2771,
54. Vat.lat.2773,
55. Vat.lat.2778,
56. Vat.lat.2779,
57. Vat.lat.2786,
58. Vat.lat.2796,
59. Vat.lat.2797,
60. Vat.lat.2887,
61. Vat.lat.2938,
62. Vat.lat.2986,

    Aristotle, Physica, tr. Georgius Trapezuntius. Seeing double? H/T @JBPiggin https://t.co/qaqa2ln5F9https://t.co/7I6jZkxP6c pic.twitter.com/OyBCGi5O2D

    — Pieter Beullens (@LatinAristotle) February 26, 2018

63. Vat.turc.218,

This is Piggin's Unofficial List number 151. Thanks to @gundormr for harvesting. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to DigiVatLib.

Dead Monk Tweets

One of the more charming features of Twitter is its voices of the past, and a favorite of mine is Constantinus Africanus, who introduces himself thus: "Native Tunisian. Merchant-turned-monk. Medical translator (from Arabic) and editor. Cultural influencer. Died 22 Dec., before 1098/99."

To expand on that a little, Constantine was a Christian from Tunisia who spent the final part of his life as a Benedictine at Monte Cassino Abbey in Italy. As a translator of the medical greats, he helped change the course of primitive western medicine. So he does have an affinity with today's social media hepcats.

I can't understand how Constantine is still writing 920 years after his death, but it's possible he is getting social-media coaching from a digital humanities hero, Professor Monica H. Green of Arizona State University. So far Constantine has just 188 Twitter followers and he really needs a boost, considering all the hard work he put into making people well. So hop over to Twitter and follow him.

Incidentally, Constantine's work shows up in at least two of the seven codices digitized by the Vatican Library this week:

1. Vat.lat.649, a 12th-century Haymo of Halberstadt: In Epistolas Pauli omnes on the epistles. Here's an initial for De Virginibus praeceptum:
   
2. Vat.lat.2132 (Upgraded to HQ), Paul of Venice on logic
3. Vat.lat.2416 (Upgraded to HQ), a densely written 14th-century compendium of mainly Arab medicine, including fols. 51v-55v: Constantinus Africanus, De stomachi affectionibus liber, cap. 1-25. eTK lists incipits: Abaseph id est puncti III; Alasef id est puncti rubei
4. Vat.lat.2424, the Brevarium, a medical work, by Yahya ibn Sarafyun (9th century) a Syriac physician, known in Europe as Johannes Serapion
5. Vat.lat.2441, medicines
6. Vat.lat.2454, 14th-century compilation of translations by Constantine Africanus
7. Vat.lat.2940, a 15th-century student's compendium with everything from Cicero and Pliny to Boccaccio

This is Piggin's Unofficial List number 150. Thanks to @gundormr for harvesting. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to DigiVatLib.

William of Moerbeke

William of Moerbeke (Wikipedia), a Flemish Dominican, translated many Greek classics into Latin in the 13th century. His work, essential to Europe's appreciation of Aristotle, is well represented in the Vatican Library. Reader @LatinAristotle has pointed out many of these in recent months.

This week they have been joined by Vat lat 2083, an illuminated full-price manuscript dated 1284 and thus scribed during William's lifetime. It contains various Aristotle texts, including On Coming to Be and Passing Away, with this thoroughly appropriate couple in bed as the opening initial.

This week's digitization effort seems to have been rather feeble, with just 17 new items:

1. Ott.lat.3364,
2. Ott.lat.3365,
3. Patetta.1749,
4. Vat.lat.2083, a William of Moerbeke translation of Aristotle (above), dated 1284

   Although the MS was written less than two decades after the completion of the translations, it already has the composition and the order of the "Corpus recentius", which would be the standard text book to teach Aristotle for two centuries!

   — Pieter Beullens (@LatinAristotle) February 11, 2018

5. Vat.lat.2160,
6. Vat.lat.2343 (Upgraded to HQ), law commentaries
7. Vat.lat.2458,

   And another newMS of @EgoConstantinus from @DigitaVaticana. (And again, h/t to @JBPiggin.) This is Constantine's translation of Hunayn ibn Ishaq'd treatise on the eyes. Here, Constantine's original prologue is missing. Vatican, BAV, Vat. lat. 2458, f. 1r: https://t.co/atSt0P58d7 pic.twitter.com/XqN1iEbB0e

   — Constantinus Africanus (@EgoConstantinus) February 12, 2018

8. Vat.lat.2461, Galen and Hippocrates in Latin (14th century). One text inc. Intentiones habemus in presenti conscriptione; see eTK

   More @EgoConstantinus from @DigitaVaticana, w/ thanks to @JBPiggin for notice. This week, another #Articella collection, this one from 14thC and very, very densely annotated. Citation: Vatican, BAV Vat. lat. 2461, f. 1r, opening of Johannitius, Isagoge: https://t.co/JS4wO1wzKc pic.twitter.com/HnKWmE5T1k

   — Constantinus Africanus (@EgoConstantinus) February 12, 2018

9. Vat.lat.2508,
10. Vat.lat.2573,
11. Vat.lat.2642,
12. Vat.lat.2664,
13. Vat.lat.2711,
14. Vat.lat.2712 (Upgraded to HQ), Servius Grammaticus on Vergil. Odd: a page from a printed Greek book has been used to stiffen the front board of the binding.
15. Vat.lat.2726 (Upgraded to HQ), Leonardo Bruni
16. Vat.lat.2884,
17. Vat.lat.2909, a 13th-century Cicero

This is Piggin's Unofficial List number 149. Thanks to @gundormr for harvesting. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to DigiVatLib.

The Animated Tabula

The latest update to the Tabula Peutingeriana Digital Plot on my website almost doubles the number of animations, and for the first time shows, using movement, how text entries were misplaced during a copying process lasting from about 350 to 1200 CE.

This digital version has been renamed the Tabula Peutingeriana Animated Edition to reflect these enhancements. In most of the left half of the chart you can now see color-coded routes and the emendations to them which have been proposed over the past century. The emendations are made visible by hovering on or touching the pale yellow squares which serve as triggers.

These interpretative additions make the chart a good deal less confusing. Column rules have also been added so that it will be easier to compare this digital edition with Talbert's.

Also new online is a brief article describing the Tabula in the context of diagram studies. This differs from those encyclopaedia entries which put the Tabula's clues to Roman history in the foreground or those which treat it primarily as a source of information about ancient settlements and place names.

Wellness Database

Health tips for laypeople have been one of my minor journalistic lines of business, so I was delighted to see a manuscript of the Tacuinum Sanitatis arrive online in full color this week on the Vatican Library portal. Vat.lat.2427 could be described as a wellness database, with a 380-row lookup table to check compatibility between foods and ailments.

It did not serve to educate doctors, but rather to inform wealthy patients who desired to second-guess their doctors. It is based on the Taqwīm as‑siḥḥah تقويم الصحة ("Maintenance of Health"), an 11th-century Arab medical treatise by a Christian doctor of Baghdad, Ibn Butlan. See Wikipedia.

This and its companion codex Vat.lat.2426 (both date from the 14th century) arrange all this tabular material in pretty red-and-blue lattices:

This presentation seems to pre-date the absolute de-luxe versions that started coming out in Italy in about 1380 with lushly painted miniatures of country life, gardens and stately homes, the lifestyle edition so to speak.

In all there are 41 new manuscripts at the Library portal:

1. Barb.lat.2653,
2. Barb.lat.2814, diary 1582-89
3. Reg.lat.77,
4. Reg.lat.78,
5. Reg.lat.104, Petrus Lombardus, Glossae continuae. eTK makes a mistake in indicating this codex contains Gynaecia, incipit Cum in Alexandria sum certatus cum auctoritatibus, at ff. 94v-99v. Reader @monicaMedHist says this is probably an error in eTK for Reg. lat. 1004, which does indeed have a text on women's medicine (Genecia) attributed to "Actius Justius."
6. Reg.lat.1561,
7. Reg.lat.1636,
8. Urb.lat.122,
9. Urb.lat.190,

   New in the list of @DigitaVaticana by @JBPiggin: works of the Dominican author Albert the Great. The copyist adds his own name in the colophon: "noua ec(c)l(es)ia".https://t.co/Nk3W4LbLGM pic.twitter.com/JX7XYkUqSD

   — Pieter Beullens (@LatinAristotle) February 5, 2018

10. Vat.lat.1136,
11. Vat.lat.1313,
12. Vat.lat.2079,
13. Vat.lat.2216,
14. Vat.lat.2318,
15. Vat.lat.2319,
16. Vat.lat.2384 (Upgraded to HQ), medieval Latin Galen. Note the much earlier ms used for an endpaper
17. Vat.lat.2390,

    Never particularly lovely to begin with, and now rather sad in its present state, this latest among the digitized collections of Galenica in @DigitaVaticana gives us a sense of the value of such a compendium of ancient authority. Here is the opening of @EgoConstantinus's .. 1/n pic.twitter.com/CuSRoI0CP3

    — Constantinus Africanus (@EgoConstantinus) February 9, 2018

18. Vat.lat.2417, Creavit deus ex concavitatibus cordis sinistram; by Avicenna. See eTK
19. Vat.lat.2427 (Upgraded to HQ), Tacuinum Sanitatis, popular medieval health guide (above).
20. Vat.lat.2433,
21. Vat.lat.2438,

    Another important Moerbeke MS in @JBPiggin's list: one of only three copies of his partial translation of John Philoponus' lost commentary on Aristotle's "De anima" III,4-8. (1/4)https://t.co/P0bOSvUSAf pic.twitter.com/7FpWpFYwEC

    — Pieter Beullens (@LatinAristotle) February 7, 2018

22. Vat.lat.2447,
23. Vat.lat.2449, Cum quidem iam pervenimus ad expositionem egritudinum (14c); De egritudinibus. See eTK
24. Vat.lat.2495,
25. Vat.lat.2548 (Upgraded to HQ), Bernardus Compostelanus, m. 1267 Apparatus in Decretales, 14th-century copy
26. Vat.lat.2572,
27. Vat.lat.2576,
28. Vat.lat.2581,
29. Vat.lat.2584,
30. Vat.lat.2585,
31. Vat.lat.2586,
32. Vat.lat.2588,
33. Vat.lat.2590,
34. Vat.lat.2615,
35. Vat.lat.2625 (Upgraded to HQ), Bartolus de Saxoferrato
36. Vat.lat.2673,
37. Vat.lat.2676,
38. Vat.lat.2692, 13th-century law textbook which contains an analysis of the Iuris Canonici. For diagram history this is interesting, as fol. 50r includes a passage explaining the use of an arbor juris in working out degrees of kinship. Mentioned by Schadt in his Darstellungen der Arbores Consanguinatis.
39. Vat.lat.2733,
40. Vat.lat.5256 (Upgraded to HQ), Odorico da Pordonone, in Italian
41. Vat.lat.13358,

This is Piggin's Unofficial List number 148. Thanks to @gundormr for harvesting. If you have corrections or additions, please use the comments box below. Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for news of more additions to DigiVatLib.

Backbone of Europe

The oldest chart of the western world, the Tabula Peutingeriana, would be better known to map enthusiasts if it were an approachable document. But on a first look, the scroll, which was designed in the Roman Empire, seems pretty incomprehensible. Of course it's in Latin, but that's not even the biggest problem. The chart is not to scale, but uses a strange squashed "projection", and it's infernally hard to guess where any of its roads go.

Help is at hand at last with my new chart of northern France, Germany, northern Italy, Austria and Slovenia which picks out what you need to know about the part of the Tabula covering Europe's most prosperous areas today.

What is striking is that the ductus of the Tabula -- and an awareness of the geography on the ground -- points to our designer having chosen a main road leading all the way from Boulogne, France to Rimini, Italy as his centerpiece.

This backbone, colored wine-red in my analytical diagram, passes through Reims, Besançon, Lausanne, the Great St Bernard Pass and Cesena. It's not the same as the medieval Via Francigena which led from Canterbury via Florence to Rome, but both the high roads served the same traffic and had many stretches in common.

Another big takeaway: the Tabula Peutingeriana is not oriented north-south. "Up" is north-west. Use the interactive control "Landmass" to see the coasts which the late antique designer had in mind. Of course the match is not perfect: Boulogne ends up on top of London, Leiden in the North Sea and Milan perched on the bank of the Rhine. But it's remarkable that anything matches in something that initially appears so chaotic.

What we are seeing is a very different take on Europe from that we are familiar with in modern maps. This is Roman Europe, with a fortified border in the north along the valleys of the Rhine and Danube (the dark blue line at top). It's also a Europe where most long-distance travel is obstructed by the Alps. The interactive control "Passes" shows how these seal off northern Italy. You can't go round them (except by ship): you have to over them as the playground song tells us.

To prove I haven't cheated, use the interactive control "Manuscript Sections" to see how the places form columns. The vertical layout precisely matches that in the Tabula, a UNESCO Memory of the World treasure now kept in a vault in Vienna. Tell me if you spot any errors. And if you want to see a similar chart of southern Europe, check out my previous blog post, Two Frances.