Search

In this paper, a chapter of an Old Salentino medieval text is edited and analyzed, for the first time, as a source of linguistic information. The so-colled Grigoriu is an anonymous vernacular translation of the Tetrastichae Sententiae, a 4th century Greek poetic work by Gregory of Nazianzus. The Old Salentino translation, written in the Greek alphabet, survives in a unique manuscript, the codex Vaticano Greco 2252, copied in Terra d'Otranto around the 1330s. The Sententiae are here translated along with the commentary on the text by Nicola / Nilo Dossapatre, written in the 12th century. A linguistic analysis shows the importance of the data provided by the Vatican manuscript for the reconstruction of the historical grammar of the Salentino dialects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to continue the discussion begun at the end of the 19th century comparing the reliability of both the 'indirect tradition' of Contra Celsum (represented by the Philocalia) and the 'direct tradition' (preserved only in the manuscript Vaticanus graecus 386 = A). In the first part of this paper, important conclusions resulting from the above discussion are recalled. Since some readings of Manuscript A are still considered problematic to this day, the second part of this paper deals with the question of whether the reliability of the 'indirect tradition' text has been underestimated in specific cases. Based on recent research on the Alethes Logos and a new analysis of Origen' s reply to Celsus' polemic, it is shown that in three selected fragments (fr. I 9, fr. VI 3 and fr. VI 1) the original words used by Celsus are to be found in the Philocalia instead of Manuscript A, i.e. the source that the modern editors of Contra Celsum followed. In part three of this paper it is shown that by preferring the words of the Philocalia for fr. VI 1, a door opens for a reinterpretation of the larger context of the passage for both the Alethes Logos as well as Contra Celsum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the MS 29 (70) of the Bibliothèque Municipale of Chartres, a 10th century witness of Joseph Flavius’ Antiquitates Iudaicae and Bellum Iudaicum. The manuscript was severely damaged by the fire from 1944 and 211 fragments of it survive in different state of conservation, out of the 245 folios that once formed the codex. The research has allowed to reestablish the correct textual sequence of the fragments, all digitized in the Bibliothèque virtuelle des manuscrits médiévaux, describe the codicological and paleographical features of the manuscript, date it to the second half of the 10th century and make an hypotesis on its localisation between Fleury and Saint-Père of Chartres, two abbeys tightly connected from the second half of the 10th century inwards. The paper also gives some hints on the position of the manuscript in the textual transmission and investigates its relations with the MS 183 from the Burgerbibliothek of Bern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I put together some preliminary notes on the Latin translation of al-Gāfiqī's Kitāb al-adwiya al-mufrada. This translation, known as Liber de simplici medicina, was translated by a certain, not yet identified, "magister G." in Lerida in 1258, and has not been examined in full so far. In this paper, I provide some new information about the Latin translation and its manuscript transmission, as well as on its characteristic. The article is completed by an appendix in which I provide a transcription of some selected chapters taken from the Liber and the Capitula de simplicibus medicinis, a short pharmacological collection handed over by the same manuscripts transmitting the Liber de simplici medicina, and attributed to Arnold of Bamberg. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts from an analysis of the role of astronomy in the De congressu and De opificio by Philo of Alexandria. As a 'queen' among the encyclical disciplines, astronomy represents the vehicle which allows the attainment of philosophy and the aspiration to the knowledge of God. Centuries later, again in Alexandria, in another homonymous De opificio preserved in the same manuscript as that of Philo, John Philoponus seems to put into practice what was theorised by Philo. More mature from a scientific point of view, he will make astronomy his exegetical tool to interpret the cosmogony of Genesis while maintaining the interweaving of exegesis and philosophy already visible in Philo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper intends to examine the importance of the medieval Armenian versions from Greek texts: the versions of the so-called Hellenistic School (Yunaban dprocʽ) have a very characteristic feature because they translate the texts in a strictly literal manner: for these characteristics they often allow the philologist to go back to the original Greek text. In particular, the paper investigates and discusses several passages of the translations from Nemesius’ De natura hominis and from Dionysius Areopagites. In the case of pseudo-Dionysius, we can remark that the Armenian version in some passages agrees with the ancient Syriac version, in opposition to all the Greek manuscript of the direct tradition [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a critical edition of an anonymous and unpublished poem in praise of Caterina Cornaro (1454-1510), taken from the manuscript Bergamo, Biblioteca Comunale "Angelo Mai", Cassaforte 3 01 (copied between 1490 and 1510). Some textual and biographical elements would lead to assigning the operetta to Giuliano Perleoni, known as Rustico Romano, chancellor of the King of Naples, Ferdinand of Aragon, and author of the Perleone (Naples, for the types of Aiolfo de Cantono, 1492). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti wrote, around 1490, the Gynevera de le clare donne, a collection composed by thirty‐three biographies of exemplary women dedicated to Ginevra Sforza Bentivoglio, wife and counsellor of Giovanni II, de facto lord of Bologna. The text of the work, preserved exclusively by two autograph manuscripts, remained unpublished until 1888, when Corrado Ricci and Alberto Bacchidella Lega edited it for the “Scelta di curiosità letterarie inedite o rare”, directed by Francesco Zambrini and published by the printing house Romagnoli‐Dall’Acqua at Bologna. This work, which was published again in a facsimile edition in 1969 by the Commissione per i testi dilingua, has many shortcomings, both as regards the reliability of the text and with respect to certain statements made by Ricci and Bacchi della Lega in the introduction that precedes the work. In this paper we propose to analyse the weak points of the edition of the Gynevera edited by these two scholars in order to identify the main aspects to be corrected in a future publication of the work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an analytical study and a commented critical edition of Era di stelle il cielo ancor dipinto, an anonymous song on poverty included in the manuscript 222 of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the Yale University. In particular, it aims to both place the poem in its fourteenth-century context (especially the tradition of the theme of poverty in lyrical poetry) and define the profile of its author, identifiable as Fazio degli Uberti on the basis of internal and external evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the domain of Indo-European linguistics, Tocharian is now playing a more important role, which has been favoured by the increasing availability of the texts. The present article examines the concept of "creativity" in historical linguistics, by analysing palaeographic and linguistic matters related to hapax legomena, emendations, and conjectural readings in Tocharian manuscripts. The goals of this short paper are twofold: (1) on the one hand, it aims to provide a new reading of the line b4 in the Tocharian B fragment B530 and comment on the new discovered word TB nekīta '±destroyer'; (2) on the other hand, it is finalised at analysing the apparent irregularities of the paradigm of TB pīto 'price, cost'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay attempts a reappraisal of the content and form of a Latin epigram attributed to Antonio Tebaldeo. It is dedicated to a presumed portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli by Leonardo da Vinci which some critics have identified with the famous Leonardo portrait of the Belle Ferronnière datable to 1493-1494 (Paris, Louvre Museum, on loan at the Louvre in Abu Dhabi). As known, Tebaldeo's Latin text is handed down by two slightly different manuscripts: one appears in the Codex Atlanticus of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana (c. 456, formerly 167 rectoc) dated to the 1490s; the other, an early 16th-century apograph, is comprised in the section "pictura" of the Codex Ottobonianus 2860, c. 160r (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana). So far, neither version has properly been investigated, and this has prevented us from reaching a correct evaluation of Tebaldeo's epigram. In an earlier essay (still unpublished), I made an endeavor to evaluate both versions: this may provide us with some clues to the fortuna critica of the epigram from the late 15th century onwards. In the present abbreviated paper I shall briefly investigate both poems with regards to notions of Beauty and Nature. Leonardo's inventiveness, his ability to portray Crivelli's likeness and convey immortality to it through his art, are exalted in both versions. Literally speaking, Tebaldeo's epigram highly praises Lucrezia's beauty, being considered a great gift of Nature to her which, however, is doomed to perish as a consequence of time. Yet, Lucrezia's physique will remain ineffaceable thanks to Leonardo's pictorial art, thus becoming timeless. The essay briefly explores both concepts contained in Tebaldeo's epigram: that of immortal beauty created by art and considered a real and threatening challenge to Nature; and that of human beauty perpetuated through art; in this case, Leonardo's marvelous pictorial invention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the wide collection of Leonardo da Vinci's Machines, interpreted and built by Giuseppe Manisco, which represent the items in the Museum dedicated to them in Galatone (Lecce), the Binoculars have a prominent position. A small but revolutionary object, as it was surprisingly conceived a century before scientists like Galileo Galilei - whose invention is linked to - did. Through a careful analysis of Folio 25 of Manuscript F by Leonardo da Vinci, further confirmed by detailed considerations, this paper aims at drawing attention, this time in the field of optics, on the greatest genius of all time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to trace the history of the manuscript tradition of the Metaphrasis in Theophrastum by the Greek philosopher Priscian of Lydia (6th cent. CE), with a view to constituting a new critical edition of the text. A detailed analysis of the eight extant codices shows that Laur. Plut. 87. 20 is the common ancestor of the others. Nevertheless, Monac gr. 461 should also be given due consideration, since it testifies to Marsilio Ficino's textual emendations, which are also reflected in his Latin translation of the Metaphrasis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Acts of Peter and Paul are an apocryphal text well known and appreciated both in the Western and Eastern worlds, spuriously attributed to one Marcellus (‘pseudo-Marcellus’) who is also mentioned in other apocrypha. After providing a general introduction to the Acts of Peter and Paul in the Greek, Latin, and Armenian traditions, this paper focuses on a comparison between the Greek text and its Armenian translation, providing relevant examples thereof. The philological analysis shows that the Armenian translation depends on a well-attested Greek text and clarifies on which branch of the Greek manuscript tradition it is most likely based. It also offers some possible explanations for the discrepancies between the two texts that cannot be ascribed to accidents occurring in the Greek manuscript tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Susan Barbara Tallmon Sargent Collection, one of the numerous digital collections at the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah centered upon the papers of Susan Tallmon Sargent, a physician who served as a medical missionary in China in the early 20th century. The collection includes correspondence relating to her education which culminated in her graduation from Northwestern in Chicago in 1902 and other documents about medical missionaries in China.

In the last few years Italian libraries and public/private cultural institutions have organized several workshops on manuscripts and ancient books, specifically addressed to children and teenagers. The paper analyzes these educational activities paying particular attention at the different locations where the workshops took place and at the different skills of the professionals involved in each project. The paper then focuses on the opportunity to shape specific educational projects taking into consideration the specific target of these activities as well as their significance, as for the younger public this could be the first -- and perhaps unique -- chance to approach the libraries' historical collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers guide for authors on how to present a paper for publication in the journal.