Introduction:
This manuscript is the third part of a four-volume copy of the Panoplia Dogmatike of
Niketas Choniates, completed in 1632. The author was a high official of the Byzantine
government in the late 12th and early
13th centuries, best known for his history of his own time, which includes the principal
Byzantine account of the fall of
Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Following this disaster, Choniates took
refuge in Nicaea, seat of an emerging Byzantine government in exile, but failed to
regain steady employment in imperial service. It was there that he completed this
text, a vast theological compilation, which
includes allusions to the straitened circumstances in which he now lived.
The main purpose of the work was the refutation of heresies and other religions, including
paganism,
Judaism, Islam, and non-Orthodox strands of Christianity from antiquity to the present.
Among these is the western, Catholic
Church, whose emerging schism with the Orthodox Church had both contributed to and
been inflamed by the outcome of the Fourth
Crusade. Drawing heavily on existing texts, the work's most original sections concern
various theological controversies that
had occurred within 12th-century Byzantium. The early chapters were closely based
on the similar work of the monk Euthymios
Zigabenos, composed a century earlier.
This copy was produced by the clergyman Thomas Bayly or Bailey, as part of his project
to produce an
edition and Latin translation of the text. The first five of its 27 books had previously
been translated into Latin by Pierre
Moreau, but it otherwise remained unavailable in print. Bayly's undertaking was never
completed, but extensive evidence of his
approach is present in his marginal annotations to the four volumes and a variety
of associated papers which have been
preserved alongside them. Although presently bound in four volumes, and referred to
as such in Bayly's papers, the original
pagination of the manuscripts is in two sequences, one covering the first and second
volumes and the other the third and
fourth. This suggests that they had perhaps been produced as a two-volume set originally
but soon rebound as four when this
proved unwieldy.
Besides Moreau's publication, Bayly's only access to the work of Choniates itself
was the single
Bodleian Library manuscript which served as the exemplar for this copy, but he aimed
to improve and expand upon the text by
collating it with the texts of works on which Choniates had drawn. These included
works of the Fathers of the Church which
Bayly consulted through their printed editions, and the work of Euthymios Zigabenos,
consulted via a manuscript copy in
Trinity College, Cambridge. The four volumes are extensively annotated with proposed
emendations from these sources, and Bayly
also envisaged incorporating additional passages from Zigabenos which Choniates had
omitted in his adaptation of the earlier
work. Copies of some of these passages survive among the associated papers, along
with notes regarding the planned translation
and other texts which may have been intended to supplement the edition. There are
also two sections of Latin translation, one
a brief excerpt, while the other, longer section, comprises the early part of Book
6 of the text. Since Moreau's translation
had extended to the end of Book 5, this presumably represents the beginning of Bayly's
main work of translation, and may well
be as far as he ever got with the task.
Like Choniates, Bayly's life was afflicted by warfare infused with religious controversy.
A committed
Royalist with Catholic sympathies during the English Civil War, he served in the defence
of Raglan Castle in 1646, despite his
clerical vocation. He also published tracts regarding the king's religious opinions
and discussions with his own patron, the
Catholic Henry Somerset, Marquess of Worcester, which had occurred while all three
men were at Raglan. It was perhaps due to
unemployment after the surrender of Raglan and Worcester's imprisonment that in December
1646 Bayly sold his manuscripts of
Choniates to the London bookseller Cornelius Bee. However, in March 1647 he was able
to retrieve two of the four volumes,
along with a number of printed books. The circumstances are unclear, but evidently
the four were subsequently reunited. Bayly
was briefly imprisoned in 1649 after publishing writings in defence of the recently
executed king and against the new regime
of the Commonwealth, and subsequently left the country, converting openly to Catholicism.
The manusripts presumably remained
in England, where they were acquired by another clergyman, Richard Drake, who donated
them to Pembroke College in 1663.
Dr Christopher Wright
Language(s): Greek
1. f. iii recto
Contents list
Includes Books 13-27, marked for the volume division between this manuscript and MS 295
ff. i recto-ii verso and iii verso are blank.
2. ff. 1r-149v
Choniates, Nicetas, approximately 1140-1213,
Πανοπλία Δογματική
Panoplia Dogmatike
Thesaurus Orthodoxae Fidei
Books 13-20 and the beginning of Book 21
Filiation: The manuscript was copied from
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Roe 22
. It was omitted from those consulted by
J. L. Van Dieten, Zur
Überlieferung und Veröffentlichung der Panoplia Dogmatike des Niketas Choniates (Amsterdam,
1970).
Incipit:
f. 1r Τὴν, ἅγιος ὁ Θεὸς, ἅγιος ἰσχυρὸς, ἅγιος ἀθάνατος, ὑμνολογίαν ἀρχῆθεν ἡ ἐκκλησία
παρείληφεν
Explicit:
f. 149v ἐν οἷς καὶ θαυμασίως ὁ μέγας ἐπισημαίνεται· ὅτι δὶς ἐνταῦθα
παραληφθέντος
TLG 3094.006 (extract)
PG 139, coll. 1093-1444; PG 140, coll. 9-284
f. 6r has been left blank apart from a supplementary note by the scribe; f. 6v is blank
Form: codex
Support:
Western paper, folded in folio. Watermark: Bird (
54 × 52 mm.
) in the centre of the folio, similar to Heawood 174. This example is dated to 1628.
Extent:
Codex:
1 + 151 leaves.
399 × 265 mm.
Foliation: The manuscript is foliated with the numbers i + ii-iii, 1-149 in pencil, in Arabic
and Roman
numerals, recto, upper right.
Foliation: ff. 1v-5v, 7r-149v are
paginated with the numbers 2-306 in brown ink, in Arabic numerals, recto, upper right,
original to the production of the
manuscript. The largely blank f. 6r-6v is not paginated. The number 172 appears
erroneously in place of 171 on f. 87r, but 172 appears again on f. 87v, so this numbering sequence is not disrupted thereafter. This is part of a single
pagination
sequence for the last two volumes of the work, this manuscript and MS 295.
Collation
The manuscript consists of 25 quires, of which one is a quaternion and the rest are
ternia.
- Quire 18
ff. ii-6
- Quires 2-136
ff. 7-78
- Quire 146-1
ff. 79-83
The fifth folio has been cancelled, without loss of text.
- Quires 15-256
ff. 84-149
Catchwords appear on every page.
Condition
There are occasional small holes (e.g. f. 135, a few worm-holes in the later
folios (ff. 136-149) and a minor tear from the edge of f.
45. The deckle edges are brittle. There are some areas of dirt.
Layout
A single column of 29 lines.
291 × 160 mm.
Hand(s)
The manuscript was copied by Thomas Bayly in a calligraphic mixed minuscule script,
slanting to the right, in brown ink, with moderate variation in letter size. There
are deletions by expunctuation and
strikethrough.
Syllabic abbreviations appear throughout the line. Breathings are round and mute iota is
subscript, often appearing as a dot rather than a line. Use of the double dot is functional
only, while nomina sacra are uncontracted. Accents are sometimes joined to letters and abbreviations.
Marginal quotation marks are in use.
The modern eta, modern nu, sigma telikon and
loop epsilon are present, and there are inclusions of letters within omicron.
Punctuation used includes the middle and upper points, lower and middle commas, question
mark and full stop.
Additions
There are numerous marginal annotations in Greek and Latin by the copyist, including
the collation of variant
readings with the text of
Euthymios Zigabenos (c. 1050-c. 1118)
, Panoplia dogmatica ad Alexium Comnenum (TLG 3038.001; PG 130, coll. 20-1360) in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.8.9. On ff. 40r-41v, 73r, 74r-77r,
80r and 81v marginal letters indicate the intended
position for supplementary passages from Euthymius Zigabenos, which were copied in
a booklet accompanying MS 292 (Part II, ff. [b] recto-[o] verso). There are
also Greek and Latin annotations by other hands.
Binding
Bound in a 17th-century limp vellum binding, with a plain paper pastedown inside the right cover. Four leather straps have been inserted through holes in the
cover for fastening, of which part of one survives in part while only stumps of the
other three remain. The classmark and
the title ‘Niceta Panoplia, volumen 2’ are written in ink on the spine. On the outside of the left cover is a
note regarding the purchase of this manuscript and its companion volumes, along with
a number of other books: ‘Memorandum. Mr Thomas Baylie delivered to Mr Cornelius Bee
4 volumes M.S. of Nicetas in Greeke. Whereof
Mr Baily had two returned him again, with these books, underwritten. March. 11. 1647.
Scappula Lexicon. folio. Basil.
Epiphanii Opera. Graece folio. Idem Latine. folio. plus. Memorandum. Mr Thomas Baily
had of Mr Bee £5 five pounds the
8th December. 1646.’
410 × 278 × 42 mm.
Both inner joints are fully split. The left endleaf is loose. There is a hole in the
left cover.
Accompanying Material
The left endleaf f. i consists of a different paper from the main body of the
manuscript, probably the same paper as the right pastedown,
which occupies the same position in the structure but is pasted to the cover. The
following leaves ff. ii-iii are blank apart from the contents list and are excluded from the original and modern
numbering systems of the main body of the manuscript, but consist of the same paper
as the main body and form part of its quire
structure.
Origin: The manuscript was copied by the clergyman
Thomas Bayly (d. 1657)
. The four-volume set to which it belongs was completed in
1632, as indicated by the colophon of
MS
295, f. 136r.
Provenance and Acquisition
Bought along with the other volumes from Bayly by the London bookseller
Cornelius Bee (1636-1672)
, 8 December 1646, as indicated by the note on the outside of the
left cover.
Two of the four volumes, along with a number of printed books, were retrieved by
Thomas Bayly on 11 March 1647.
Donated 24 June 1663 by
Richard Drake (1609-1681)
, as recorded in the Book of Benefactors (MS LC
II.77, f. 90r).
