Medieval Manuscripts in Cambridge Libraries

A catalogue of Western manuscripts and papyri at Cambridge University Library, the Fitzwilliam Museum and selected Cambridge colleges

Cambridge, Pembroke College, MS 295

Diktyon no.: Diktyon 11893

Contents

Introduction: This manuscript, copied in England and completed in 1632, is the fourth and final part of a four-volume copy of the Panoplia Dogmatike of Niketas Choniates. 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 manuscripts presumably remained in England, where they were acquired by another clergyman, Richard Drake, who donated them to Pembroke College in 1663. Dr Christopher Wright

History

Origin: The manuscript was copied by the clergyman Thomas Bayly (d. 1657) . It was completed in 1632, as indicated by the colophon on f. 136r. The supplementary material on the accompanying sheet was probably produced around the same time.

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 a note on the cover of MS 294.

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) , Fellow of Pembroke and Chancellor of the Diocese of Salisbury, as recorded in the Book of Benefactors (MS LC II.77, f. 90r).

Part 1 [Cambridge, Pembroke College, MS 295, ff. i, 1-136]

Contents

Language(s): Greek

1. f. i recto
Contents list

Includes Books 22-27

f. i verso is blank.

2. ff. 1r-136r
Choniates, Nicetas, approximately 1140-1213 , Πανοπλία Δογματική Panoplia Dogmatike Thesaurus Orthodoxae Fidei

The end of Book 21 and Books 22-27

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 τε τῶν ἱερῶν γραμμάτων τοῦ ἱεροῦ Γρηγορίου
Explicit: f. 136r τῇ χάριτι καὶ ἁπλότητι τοῦ εὐαγγελικοῦ κηρύγματος
Final rubric: f. 136r Ἐνταῦθα τὸ πέρας τῆς δογματικῆς Πανοπλίας. Δόξα μόνῳ τῷ Θεῷ, Κᾀμοὶ ἐν Χριστῷ ἔλεος. Ἐγράφη ἡ παροῦσα βίβλος ἐν ἔτει ἀπὸ τῆς ἐνσάρκου οἰκονομίας ͵αχλβʹ

TLG 3094.006 (extract)

PG 139, coll. 1093-1444; PG 140, coll. 9-284

Some of the quires containing this text are bound out of order. The correct order of the text runs ff. 25r-30v, 13r-24v, 1r-12v, 71r-136r.

ff. 51v-52v and 136v-139v are blank.

Physical Description

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 + 138 + 1 leaves. 399 × 265 mm.
Foliation: The manuscript is foliated with the numbers i + 1-138 + 139 in pencil, in Arabic and Roman numerals, recto, upper right.
Foliation: ff. 1r-51r, 53r-135v are paginated with the numbers 343-366, 119-123, 324-342, 307-317, 118, 367-403, 405-408, 409-435, 336-338, 439-574 in brown ink, in Arabic numerals, recto, upper right, original to the production of the manuscript. The numbers 118-123 and 336-338 have been written in error for 318-323 and 436-438 respectively. The other anomalies are due to quires having been bound in the wrong order. This is part of a single pagination sequence for the last two volumes of the work, this manuscript and MS 294.

Collation

The manuscript consists of 23 quires, of which two are binia, two are quaternia and the rest are ternia.

  • Quires 1-86 ff. 1-48
  • Quire 94 ff. 49-52
  • Quires 10-126 ff. 53-70
  • Quire 134 ff. 71-74
  • Quire 148 ff. 75-82
  • Quires 15-226 ff. 83-130
  • Quire 238 ff. 131-138

Catchwords appear on every page.

Condition

There are tears to the edges of the endleaves and creasing to them. 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 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. 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 one survives in part while only stumps of two others remain and the fourth has been lost.

415 × 283 × 42 mm.

Both inner joints are partially split. There is broken and loose sewing at the left endleaves and the first, second, third, fourth and last sections. All gatherings are detached. Much of the spine covering is missing.

Part 2 [Cambridge, Pembroke College, MS 295, ff. [a]-[b]]

Contents

Language(s): Latin

3. f. [a] recto, lines 1-20
Explanatory notes

These notes appear on a folded sheet of paper is inserted loose between ff. 137 and 138, and describe the text and the copying and collation of this manuscript. The full text is transcribed here

Incipit: f. [a] recto Historica Collectio omnium fere opinionum et haeresium earumque Refutatio per Nicetam Choniatam Iudicem Veli, Iudiciorum inspectorem generalem Regii cubiculi praefectum et Secretorum magnum Logothetam; viginti septem tomis, sive libris comprehensa. Quorum quinque priores Latine tantum extant, ex interpretatione Petri Morelli Turonensis Geneva 1592. Reliqui Latine facti a T.B. et omnes simul Graece et Latine edendi. Exemplar unde describebantur servatur in Archivis Roanis Bibliothecae Bodleianae Oxonii, eum quo diligenti facta collatione concordant. Praeterea Patrum testimonia (qua multa sunt et satis ampla) ad impressorum ipsorum operum fidem examinantur, et variantes lectiones observantur. Denique ex Euthymii Panopliae Dogmaticae manuscripto Codice Collegii Sancti Trinitatis in Academia Cantabrigiensi (qui pleraque eum sexto Nicetae tomo habet communia) multae variae lectiones, aliaque notatu digna colligunt
4. f. [a] recto, line 21-f. [a] verso
Contents list
Rubric: f. [a] recto Capita Librorum
Incipit: f. [a] recto Liber 1. Historia Sertarum
Explicit: f. [a] verso 27. De Doctrina divinorum Mysteriorum, i.e. Sacramentorum

Includes Books 1-27

f. [b] recto-[b] verso is blank

Physical Description

Form: sheet
Support: Western paper. Watermark: Pot ( 69 × 31 mm. ) in the centre of the folio.
Extent: Sheet 2 leaves. 316 × 198 mm.

Condition

There are tears from the edges of the sheet and some creasing.

Layout

A single column of 28 lines. 268 × 140-160 mm.

Hand(s)

Copied by Thomas Bayly

Additional Information

Availability

Researchers should note that Pembroke College's western European medieval manuscripts are housed at Cambridge University Library. Scholars who wish to consult Pembroke College manuscripts should contact the Special Collections Reading Room to arrange their visit; all University Library admissions procedures will apply. For information on eligibility and admissions procedures, see Joining the Library. For further enquiries, and to confirm the availability of the manuscript, please contact the Special Collections Reading Room.

Bibliography

    A descriptive catalogue of the manuscripts in the library of Pembroke College, Cambridge, James, M.R. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1905)

Funding of Cataloguing

The Polonsky Foundation

Digital Images

Cambridge Digital Library

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