Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/112

 CODEX

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CODEX

divided into sections, which in the Gospels correspond closely to the Ammonian Sections. There are no marks of punctuation, but the skilled reader was guided into the sense by stichometric, or verse-like, arrangement into cola and commata, which corre- spond roughly to the principal and dependent clauses of a sentence. This manner of writing the scribe is believed to have modelled upon the great Bible of Cassiodorus (q. v.), but it goes back perhaps even to St. Jerome; it may be shown best by an example: —

QUIA IN POTESTATE ERAT

SERMO IPSIUS Et in SYNAGOGA ERAT HOMO HABEN.S

D.EMONIUM INMUNDUM ET EXCLAMAVIT VOCE MAGNA

DICENS _

SINE QUID NOBIS ET TIBI IHU

NAZ.\RENE VENISTI PERDERE NOS SCIO TE QUI SIS SCS Dl ET INCREPAVIT ILLI IHS DICENS

It will be noticed that the section " Et in" and the cola begin at about the same perpendicular line, the commata begin further in under the third or second letter, and so likewise does the continuation of a colon or comma which runs beyond a single line (see facsimile page). This arrangement, besides aiding the intelligence of the text, gave a spacious, varied, and rather artistic appearance to the page. The initial letter of a section was often written in ink of a different colour, and so also was the first line of a book. Beyond that there was no attempt at decorating the text.

The codex (or pandect) is usually said to contain the whole Bible; but it should be noted that the Book of Baruch is missing, though the Epistle of Jeremias, usually incorporated with it, is here appended to the Book of Jeremias. Besides the text of the Scriptural books, it contains St. Jerome's "Prologus Galeatus" and his prefaces to individual books; the capitula, or summaries of contents; and, in the first quaternion, certain materials which have been much discussed and have proved of the greatest service in tracing the history of the codex, among them dedicatory verses, a list of the books contained in the codex, a picture of the Tabernacle (formerly thought to be Solomon's Temple), a division of the Biblical books according to Jerome, another according to Hilary and Epiphanius, and a third according to Augustine. Part of Solo- mon's prayer (III K., viii, 22-30) in an Old Latin text is reproduced at the end of Ecclesiasticus. A Greek inscription at the beginning of Leviticus, re- cording that "the Lord Servandus prepared" this codex or part of it, has entered largely into the dis- cussion of its origin.

The recovery of the history of Codex Amiatinus, which has important bearings upon the history of the Vulgate itself and of the text of the Bible, was due to the labours of many scholars and the insight of one man of genius, de Rossi. At the beginning of the pandect, as we have 'mentioned, there are certain dedicatory verses; they record the gift (of the codex) to the venerable convent of St. Saviour by a certain Peter who was abbot from the extreme territory of the Lombards. The Latin text is as follows: —

CE.VOBHM AD EXIMII MERITO

VENERABILE SALVATOKIS QUEM CAPUT ECCLESI.B

DEDICAT ALT.\ FIDES FF.TUVS LAXGOIIAUnoKIM

EXTREMIS DE PINIH. ABBAS DEVOTI AFFECTUS

PIGNOKA MITTO MEI

St. Saviour's is the numo of the monastery on Monte Amiata (whence .4OTm;(n«.s) near Siena; here this codex was kept from tlie ninth century till the

year 1786, when it was brought to Florence after the suppression of the monastery. Naturally, the codex was supposed to be a gift to this house, but nothing was known of the donor. Bandini, the librarian of the Laurentiana, into whose hands the codex came, noticed that the names of neither the donor nor of the recipient belonged to the original dedication. They were written in a different hand over parts of the original inscription, as betrayed by evident signs of erasure. The letters italicized above were by the second hand, while the initial letter c of the first line and the E in the fifth were original. Ban- dini noticed, also, that cenobium replaced a shorter word and that the last five letters of salvatoris were written on parchment that had not been erased, and so that the ten letters of this word replaced five of the original word. The metre also was entirely at fault. The clue for reconstructing the original lines he found in the expression caput ecclesice, which he judged referred to St. Peter. And as in the Middle Ages a favourite title for the Apostolic See was culmen aposlolicum, he reconstructed the line in this fashion: —

CULMEN AD EXLMII MERITO VENERABILE PETRI

This conjecture produced a correct hexameter verse, retained the original initial c, supplied a word of proper length at the beginning and another at the end, and afforded a sense fitting in perfectly with the probabilities of the case. In the fifth line, instead of Petrus Langobardorum, Bandini suggested Servandus Lain, because of the inscription about Servandus mentioned above. This Servandus was believed to be the friend of St. Benedict, to whom he made a visit at Monte Cassino in 541 ; he was abbot of a monastery near the extremity of Latiurri.

These conjectures were accepted by the learned world ; Tischendorf, for instance, writing seventy-five years later, said Bandini had so well proved his case that no doul>t n.-iiKiini'il. Acrnrdinuly, it was settled that the Codi\ Aiiiini iims d.iiid licni the middle of the sixth cculurv, «:i> the (l^l(•^l manuscript of the Vulgate, and was written in Southern Italy. A few protests were raised, however; that, for instance, of Paul de Lagarde. He had edited St. Jerome's trans- lation of the Hebrew Psalter, using freely for that purpose a codex of the ninth century; Amiatinus he judged, with a not unnatural partiality, to be "in all probability" from the hand of the scribe of his ninth- century Psalter, written "at Reichenau on the Lake of Constance". But, to quote Corssen, it was G. B. de Rossi, " that great Roman scholar, whose never- failing perspicacity and learning discovered at once the birthplace of our famous manuscript" (Academy, 7 April, 1888).

De Rossi followed Bandini in his reconstruction of the first verse, but he thought it unlikely that an abbot, presenting a book to the pope at Rome, should speak of "the extreme limits of Latium", really but a short distance from Rome. Anziani, the librarian of the Laurentiana, pointed out to him that the space erased to make room for Petrus Langobardorum "was greater than called for by the conjecture of Bandini. De Rossi was at the time engaged on an inquirj- into the ancient historj' of the Vatican Lilirary, and, recalling a passage of Bcde, he divined that the lost name was Ceoljridus. The erasures, which were irregular, seeming to follow the letters very closely, corresponded perfectly to this conjecture. He pro- posed then the verse: —

CEOLFRIDUS DRITONUM EXTREMIS DE FINIB. ABBAS

The i^hrase exactly suited an abbot from the end of the world, as England was then regarded and styled; and the story of (\>olfrid made de Ro-ssi's conjecture acceptable at once, especially to English scholars. Ceolfrid was thi; disciple of Benedict Biscop (n. v.), who founded the monasteries of Wcarmouth anu Jar-