Parergon

This is an example of the meticulous, detailed codicological study of a single, puzzling but unimpressive object, with the object of drawing conclusions of wide cultural significance. The object is a manuscript, The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, MS 73 J 6, containing Constantine the African’s Pantegni, formerly dated to the twelfth century, recently redated by Kwakkel c. 1080 (before 1086). That makes it the earliest known copy of this influential medical encyclopedia, which was a translation and adaptation by Constantine of Ali ibn al Abbas al’Magusi’s Kitab Kamil as-sina’a at-tibbiya (Complete Book of the Medical Art). The manuscript, at first sight unexceptional, is of the greatest interest for the many curious problems it raises. First of all, although undoubtedly written at the great southern-Italian abbey of Monte Cassino, it is written not in the Beneventan script that was locally dominant, but in Caroline minuscule. Then, although it is the earliest surviving copy of the Pantegni, later manuscripts contain earlier versions of the text. Moreover, it contains only the first part (Theorica) of the work, less useful than the second (Practica), and even then originally incomplete but finished about a century later. And then, the text contains nine longish lacunae, apparently registering Constantine’s uncertainty about to how to translate a particular term or passage. The book’s long, thin format is a strikingly unusual shape. Finally, it contains an introduction in the three parts that were to become standard, but here Part 2 comes last, and is written in a different hand in red, with a signe de renvoi to show where it is meant to fit. All of these problems the authors both discuss and propose solutions to. The solutions shed light on one of the most important constituents of the ‘Twelfth-Century Renaissance’: the translation of scientific (mainly medical and astronomical) texts from Arabic and Greek.

The authors begin (in Chapter 1) with the scribe, whom they identify in other manuscripts from the abbacy of the great Desiderius (1058–1087, when he became, briefly, Pope Victor III), and even give him a name, Geraldus. The evidence for this is his alleged subscription to the document Monte Cassino, Archivum, Aula II, Caps. CIII, Fasc, no. 10, dated June 1061: ‘Ego Geraldus indignus presbyter et monacus interfui et subscripsi’. However, neither in the authors’ Figure 1.8, nor in the (much better) Plate 194 of Newton’s The Scriptorium and Library at Monte Cassino 1058–1105, does the script of the subscriber appear to be the same as the copyist of the charter; nor is Geraldus called a scribe. I think that the main copyist of the Hague manuscript and others must still (alas) go nameless.

Chapter 2 examines those codicological aspects of the manuscript that shed light on Constantine’s translation practices, with special attention to the nine lacunae that suggest that the text represents a revision stage. Chapter 3 introduces the individuals who made up ‘Team Constantine’, helping him with the translation [End Page 225] and its dissemination. In Chapter 4 the authors discuss the oddly long, thin shape of the manuscript (‘Holster’ format), showing that most books of this shape were for use in the classroom. This chapter contains a valuable, wide-ranging discussion of this format as found in books dating from before c. 1200. But if the Hague manuscript was planned to be so used, was it actually so used? It shows no signs (such as marginal annotation) of this, nor can it have been truly useful, given its incomplete state. What can we make of this? The authors do not say, nor is it possible to guess, beyond the general notion of a project that went off the rails. Chapter 5 proposes the idea...