Book Tour in the Burnam Classics Library

The following presents highlights from our distinguished collections with the help of contributors from the UC classics department and library and beyond.

LOVERS OF OLD AND WONDEROUS BOOKS, ENJOY!

"The AMFOGE Maps in the Mediterranean Map Collection," presented by Dr. Jack Davis, UC Classics

Map collections sometimes conjure up images of rare book rooms, the history of mapmaking, or collectors who have money to burn at auction.

The cabinets of the Burnam Library, in contrast, hold useful maps, individually inexpensive, but, in the aggregate, invaluable for historians and archaeologists.

Many of these are difficult, even impossible, to find outside Greece. That is true for three maps found among donations to the Burnam Library in 1966 and 1975 by Herbert (Herb) P. Lansdale.

Lansdale was paterfamilias to a lineage of Americans that to this very day continues to serve Greece. Herb’s son, Bruce, presided over the American Farm School in Thessaloniki from 1955-1990. His son Jeff is currently its president. Following Bruce’s retirement, William (Bill) McGrew, a University of Cincinnati Ph.D. in modern Greek history, eventually assumed the office of president, after he himself had retired from nearby Anatolia College in 1999.

Ties between Cincinnati and the American Farm School have long been strong and a booster club in the Queen City (the “Cincinnati Committee of Friends of the Farm School”) made possible the construction of “Cincinnati Hall” on its campus, the cornerstone for which was laid in 1961 by Cincinnatian Aletheia Pattison, daughter of the 43rd Ohio governor.

It was in the course of a visit to Cincinnati to address the “Committee of Friends” on the occasion of the 60^thanniversary of the founding of the Farm School that Bruce Lansdale made a suggestion that ultimately resulted in parts of his father’s map and book collection coming to our Burnam Library. Bruce then mentioned to Peter Topping, director of the modern Greek program in our Department of Classics, that his father was downsizing. Herb had served as director of the YMCA in Thessaloniki from 1925-1931. Then, in the later 1940s, he had become involved in the reconstruction of Greece that followed the defeat of the Third Reich.  

Topping reported his conversation with Bruce to Blegen.

Blegen then wrote to Lansdale on March 4, 1965 (ASCSA Carl W. Blegen Papers, Box 11, folder 4):

“For 35 years and more I have been building up a collection of books in Modern Greek in almost all branches of study as well as in poetry and literature and in periodicals. By now I think it must be one of the outstanding collections of its kind in the U.S….It would be wonderful if your fine collection could be joined to the one of Greek books already in the Library of the University of Cincinnati.”

A year later, on April 18, 1966, Lansdale responded (ibid.):

“The chief items that I would now give are: a collection of books and pamphlets in Greek and English which were published by Constantine Doxiadis under the aegis of the Ministry of Reconstruction in the mid 1940s; a series of paperbound departmental reports of the American Mission for Aid to Greece [AMAG], 1947-48 - these are documents that I assembled and had bound for later reference. I doubt that they are available elsewhere outside of the State Department…”.

His many donations to the Burnam Library ultimately comprised his own 1948 Final Report of AMAG Field Service, as well as maps composed for AMFOGE (the Allied Mission to Observe Greek Elections in 1946).  The purpose of AMFOGE was to ensure free and democratic elections in the face of threats from the strong communist parties that had played important roles in resisting the German occupation in WW II. Our map collection contains three maps composed for AMFOGE II, the second phase of the Allied Mission of 1946.

AMFOGE was established by Great Britain, France, and the United States in the wake of the Varkiza Agreement of February 12, 1945, following the defeat of the National Popular Liberation Army (ELAS) at the hands of the Greek government’s army and police in the Battle of Athens. At Varkiza, the rival factions in the Greek Civil War agreed to a plebecite on the future of the monarchy and to open and free elections for the Greek Parliament. A second mission (AMFOGE II, officially the “Allied Mission to Observe the Revision of Greek Electoral Lists”) was charged with checking election rolls.

More than a thousand foreigners worked for AMFOGE I. These included about 100 civilians, mostly Americans. The majority of the observers were uniformed army officers and other military personnel, but AMFOGE also included statistical experts. They were charged with applying modern scientific sampling survey methods in order to evaluate the fairness of the elections.

AMFOGE’s staff confidently reported:

“The Mission […] concludes that notwithstanding the present intensity of political emotions in Greece conditions were such as to warrant the holding of elections, that the election proceedings were on the whole free and fair, and that the general outcome represents a true and valid verdict of the Greek people.”

Within Greece this conclusion was controversial. 

Burnam Library is fortunate to have three maps produced by AMFOGE II. 

AMFOGE II. MAP 1. Boundaries of Greek administrative districts (nome) and AMFOGE II district boundaries.

AMFOGE II: MAP 2. Centers of observation in AMFOGE II, PHASE 1

AMFOGE II: MAP 3. Centers of observation in AMFOGE II, PHASE 2

References

Allied Mission to Observing the Greek Elections (AMFOGE), Handbook of Greece, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=9p40AAAAIAAJ&rdid=book-9p40AAAAIAAJ&rdot=1

“The Herbert Parker Lansdale, Jr., papers,” https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/finding-aids/D126

“Herbert Parker Lansdale, Jr., papers,” https://archives.lib.umn.edu/repositories/7/resources/878

Jean-Guy Prévost, “The 1946 Allied Mission to Observe Greek Elections. An Experiment in Quantitative Political Science,” Histoire et Mesure 32-2, 2018:
https://journals.openedition.org/histoiremesure/8146

“Salonica-Cincinnati Friendship Cemented at Cornerstone Laying of Cincinnati Hall,” The Sower XI, no. 3, Summer 1961.

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See all the searchable Greek maps in the Burnam Library collection, on campus or off campus . Please note that this resource is restricted to UC users.  

"The Duodecimo 1629 Elzevir Edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses," presented by Dr. Angelica Wisenbarger, Burnam Classics Library

So many oblique connections can be drawn out of an old book, so I’ll start with one. In 1999 a film called The Ninth Gate came out, a film based on Arturo Perez-Reverte’s sublimest bit of bibliographically stimulating trash fiction, The Club Dumas. In this tale, a ‘thoroughly unscrupulous’ book dealer named Corso, played by Johnny Depp, finds himself on a spree of life-threatening detective work through Europe. He’s gone there to compare three volumes of an occult work from 1666, all of which purport to be the last remaining copy of the De umbrarum regni novem portis (On the nine gates of the kingdom of shadows). Its cutthroat collectors have a good reason to want its authenticity verified. This book, Corso discovers, can supposedly summon the devil; for this book, the editor/collaborator/publisher, Aristide Torchia (a totally fictional dude) was burned at the stake. In the film and the book, it is mentioned that Aristide Torchia was apprenticed in Leiden with the Elzevier family of printers before his return to Venice and collaboration with uh ... Lucifer. He would have learned his trade at the very presses which, just a few years before, churned out the volume I am about to discuss.

Every time a book is published, an author’s text is transformed: reformed to fit pages of a certain size, set in a typeface of a certain character, joined to notes, appendices, illustrations. All manner of printers’ decisions affect our experience of the work. The words are, to steal Ovid’s own, mutata in nova corpora.

This book comes to us from 1629. It is one of the famous Elzevir editions of the classics in the ‘duodecimo’ size, very small books, about 7 inches high, 4.5 wide. Duodecimo refers to the 12ths into which the printer’s sheet was folded for pages of this size, though it seems these were in practicality trigesimo secondo, folded in 32 pages. Printing was a hands-on, physical process with a lot of room for mistakes, and we can see artifacts of this in the object. If you look closely at the bottom of some pages for instance you’ll see a “catchword,” the first word on the next page—a way of keeping the pages in order in their gatherings.

This is the second of three Ovid volumes in the series, and its text is a long poem called the Metamorphoses (a word on that to come). A pocket-sized, cheaper volume like this was supposed to appeal to a wide and somewhat casual audience. And they were popular. Testimony from the Abbé de Fontenai in 1776 regarding the Elzevier duodecimos runs thus, as Daniel Updike quotes in his Printing Types: “the Elzevirs have made Holland celebrated for printing, through an elegance of type which the most famous printers of Europe have never been able to attain, either before or since. This charm consists in the clearness, delicacy, and perfect uniformity of the letters, and in their very close fitting to each other”; and “the taste of young people for literature very often shows itself by a great fondness for these little Dutch editions, which give so much pleasure to the eye.”

Though this book was small and cheap, it lacks none of the bells and whistles. The editor of this 1629 edition was Daniel Heinsius of the University of Leiden, who lived from 1580-1655. Heinsius is best known today as an editor of Greek and Latin texts, but he wrote his own poems in Latin as well—tragedies and notably a number of elegies involving a girl named Rossa. Who better to edit Ovid than a poet! This book begins with Willem Canter’s synopses of the Metamorphoses’ 15 books, followed by quotations from Lactantius and the Latin stylemaster Marc-Antoine Muret in praise of the author.

Ovid’s own prefatory remarks from the Tristia face the first page of the text. It has an index and notes. An index! A ‘copiosus’ index! The Elzeviers knew that that is what separates !tRaSh! from a useful book. Appended as well in one of the three volumes of this set are remarks on the manuscripts by the famous Scaliger. A lot of big names for little books, and a lot more scholarly material than we might be accustomed to in a casual edition these days!

The Elzeviers (also spelled Elseviers or Elzevirs, etc.) were a big, prolific family of printers who started off in Leiden under big daddy Lodewijk/Louis in 1592 (I say big daddy emphatically—the man had 7 sons!). They spread to Amsterdam and into France as the generations advanced. Louis’s sons, Bonaventure and Louis, are the Elzeviers under whom this book was printed and the duodecimo series launched. Of the family name, perhaps an adaptation of al-Zifr (the cypher), there is no fixed spelling. Mostly what this means is that you have to google three times to get all the relevant results—but the spelling Elzevir is the typical name applied to these distinctive, collectible small volumes. You can still buy a new ‘Elsevier’ today. The modern company has its roots in the 1890s, long after the original family’s 1712 exit from the trade, but it still uses one of the printer’s devices from the 17th century—the very same in this book:

The thing that appears to be a backwards C in the date is actually combined with the I, more recognizable now as the single character D, the 500 of Roman numerals. The ‘non solus’ on the banner means ‘not alone’, referring perhaps both to the collaboration of the vine with the elm tree (depicted) and to the symbiotic relationship of printers/publishers and the scholars they serve and print. The man is possibly, as often claimed, a hermit; perhaps not alone thanks to books. The modern Elsevier website offers a different interpretation.

You are far more likely to find today’s Elsevier publishing books (and journals) on, say, genetics or optics than the classics. In fact, trying to sell the classics nearly bankrupted the publisher. It seems there is more money in titles like 3D Printing in Orthopaedic Surgery.

It is worth noticing just how small the type is. At the time this book was printed, so-called ‘Garalde’ fonts held sway. That name is a mashup of Garamond, a type designer, and Aldus, that is, the printer Aldus Manutius. Those Garalde types left room for improvement in clarity of presentation at such small sizes, and as we just heard the Abbe de Fontenai say, the Elzevir editions delivered. The man behind this straighter, more geometrically regular face was Christoffel van Dijck, only twenty-four when these little volumes began to appear in 1629. If, like me, you are thirty-one and have designed only half of a font using bootlegged software, this is infuriating to contemplate.

Gulielmus Canterus’ is the person whose book-by-book synopses appear up front. He is the guy in the picture here.

Willem Canter was a philologist from Utrecht who lived in Leuven--that is, for the short while he lived (1542-1575). Short-lived, but prolific. He was a student of Macropedius (who also taught the Mercator of map fame). I like to play around with degrees of separation from the scholar Erasmus when I think about old books, and it’s easy to get to him from here: Erasmus wrote a ton of letters, and Macropedius was one of Erasmus’s correspondents. No one escaped Erasmus. Someone recently drew my attention to a person named, fantastically, Achilles Rose, whose description of Erasmus was “the whale in philology”—he is indeed too big to see around.)

Anyway, the verses under Willem Canter here, written by his contemporary, the historian Aubert le Mire, amount to “you were productive, but you really should’ve taken a break now and then.” Canter died in the 1570s of a fever probably brought on by overworking himself, just 33 years old. A fate I will avoid with ease!

So who’s the poet? Ovid was more baldly witty and perhaps more cinematic than the other famous Augustan poets, Horace and Vergil. Whether epic or elegiac, his work was touched with a playfulness that could bring the Roman calendar to life, as in the Fasti; he could make missive puppets of the great heroines of myth and literature, as in Heroides; he could guide a clueless lover to cynical success and back out of it, as in the Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris. There was too much of the touch of poetry in all his words for the life of lawyering his father envisioned—as Pope might say, “[He] lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.” With the possible exception of his works from exile, it was this playfulness, not just in content, but with words and literary forms themselves, that most marked his poetry. (Indeed I suspect he would have enjoyed The Club Dumas, a book about difficult and deceptive books with its narrative in nesting frames. It is Ovid’s Metamorphoses that remains most compelling for its singular peculiarities. It is an epic poem in form, a poem in hexameters spanning from the rise of matter and the world to the apotheosis of Caesar, with all the tales in between united by the common thread of transformations: chaos to cosmos, women to birds, couples to trees, men to gods—and that is only a taste. The tales (mythological, epic, tragic, aetiological, historical, etc.) link by oblique detail in seamless shifts, sometimes nested, sometimes in chains and coils. It is easy to see why the printers chose to include Canter’s synopses at the beginning of its 15 books. One story bleeds into another, and there are so many that finding just one, or remembering how far away a certain other might be, can be a challenge.

The amount of literary influence Ovid has exerted in just about every century since 43 BC is almost unparalleled. His poetic techniques echo through the so-called Silver Latin poets; the poems were used as school texts in the Middle Ages; the Old French poem Ovide Moralisé justifies the often lascivious and naughty tales of the Metamorphoses with attempts to draw lessons out of them. There would be no Shakespeare as we know him without Ovid. Chaucer and Ted Hughes, Titian and Waterhouse, Handel and Britten, all have found, stolen, transformed bits and pieces of his work. It is difficult to find a sphere of art the Metamorphoses has not infected—and this is in no small part thanks to editions like this that made the poetry accessible.

"Venetian Manuscripts (14th-18th century)," presented by Dr. Rolf Bagemihl, Istituto Lorenzo de' Medici, Florence, Italy  

The Venetian manuscripts in the Burnam Library consists of 7 books, 6 bound volumes with parchment documents, and one book with parchment leaves. The uniformity of bindings indicates a common provenance. From around the seventeenth century onwards it was a common practice to bind together, for ease of consultation, parchment documents that were originally rolled or folded.

Many of the records show the assemblage and consolidation of family properties as well as family ties in the provinces of Vicenza and Treviso. The records add to known information about the extensive land holdings of the da Mula of Venice in the Piave area. They also reveal the property holdings and family ties for several families of varying degrees of status, such as the minor family of the Tommasini at Zenson di Piave. Documents allow one to trace property and family histories for the Marangoni and Zanotti. Other documents show the marriage of members of the Cerratti family to the family of a surgeon and his son a notary (Slaverio), but also to the high-status Vicentine family of Dall’Oglio. One large cache of Cinquecento records concerns the Menegazzi, a forgotten family. The chief Menegazzi in the records was Vendramino, a successful apothecary. This cache reveals ties of family and friendship to such families as the Tribani, Costantini (Castellani), Grandi, Sangiovanni or Sanzuane, Capobianco, and others. Records mention the families of two literary families of Vicenza: the family of Camillo Scroffa, author of Italian poems satirizing pedantry, and the family of GianGiorgio Trissino, the humanist perhaps best known as the mentor of the architect Palladio.

Included are records promulgated by three different doges of Venice between 1578 and 1585, in 1618, and between 1631 and 1646. There are relatively few ecclesiastical records. One document was drawn up by a country priest in 1495. The 1458 act in which property of a religious hospital was rented mentions eminent churchmen including an abbot and the deputy of the bishop of Treviso, Marco Barbo, whose career advanced thanks to his kinsman Pietro Barbo, a cardinal and later pope Paul II (r. 1464-71). 

Through some records one seems to glimpse hardship (the thatch and burnt wall in #44), but also generosity and kindness (a disabled person allowed quarters in #57; a dowry paid in cash when that was not strictly required in #77). There were many prominent and powerful families living in the Veneto area who are continuously referenced in the records. Many of the records regard the area around Treviso, and the nearby settlements on the Piave, and many regard Vicenza. In one group are a number of property records for the Venetian patrician family da Mula.

They were a “new family” in the 15th and 16th centuries, whose name is still attached to a palace on the Grand Canal, not far from the Guggenheim Museum in Dorsoduro. Some of these records, for lands at Villa Zenson and Noventa, are not unlikely connected with the villa and farm properties of the da Mula villa at Romanziol—a grand villa which has been ascribed to Jacopo Sansovino, the most important Venetian architect besides Palladio. This common denominator makes it likely that at least part of the Cincinnati collection was assembled by the da Mula themselves.

Early modern and modern Italians gathered records both as individuals (e.g., scholars) and in group associations such as government offices, religious institutions and offices (e.g., bishops, convents, parishes), hospitals, and families. A reasonable supposition is that the UC records belonged to the da Mula family archive. As patricians, the da Mula played an important role in Venetian life, and their name appears in publications and records of various kinds across many centuries.  Some genealogical and heraldic material exists.  No doubt, some da Mula records also appear in the archives of families they married into, and this collection may reflect such a passage of records. However, almost nothing seems to be known of the history of the family’s own archive. It may have been recorded in unpublished inventories.  Thus, the survival of the Cincinnati documents fills a real lacuna.

Few family members achieved more than local fame, except for Marcantonio da Mula (1506-1572). His unexpected nomination as a cardinal while he was Venetian ambassador to the pope (1560) caused some consternation and censure in Venice. A portrait of him attributed to Tintoretto has recently resurfaced. While a sampling of the Venetian manuscripts does not directly regard the villa, it reveals glimpses of the long process by which the estate was amassed, and it documents work on the Piave embankments (cf. #74, #96).

Unfortunately, the main part of the da Mula villa at Romanziol was destroyed and the rest badly damaged in furious battles along the river in 1917-18, when the area became the front line of the war with Austria.  “Piave” is still today synonymous with the tragic experience and devastation of this area of Italy in World War I.  It is possible that the dispersal of the Cincinnati documents relates to war damages, but that is conjecture.  What is certain is that many of these documents offer a precious record of an area that is etched in Italian memory, merging national and local history, and for which little physical evidence has survived.  They offer an equally precious reminder that cultural heritage everywhere is vulnerable to armed conflict.

An examination of the full set of the Venetian manuscripts has revealed substantial documentation for Vicenza and about a dozen towns in its district. These Vicentine records include a large cluster for the family and property of Vendramino Menegazzi, an almost unknown apothecary (his shop emblem was “fortuna”), between about 1580 and 1640. There is documentation of high-status marriages, e.g., of the Cerratti into the Dall’Oglio family. Records for about a dozen different Vicenza localities expand our picture of local society such as for Vicenza itself and also for Montecchio Maggiore, Monte San Lorenzo, Marostica, Pedescala, Sovizzo, Forni and Rotzo in the Val d’Astico, among other towns.

Locations in the Treviso area include Treviso, Oderzo, Zenson, Romanziol, Fossalta, Noventa, Isola di Piave, and numerous others.  

Besides da Mula and Menegazzi, the third-largest group of personal records is for the Mocenigo. Many Venetian patricians are named in the context of state or family business, mostly in the Mocenigo grouping, but throughout the UC archive, and they include the Contarini. Most Mocenigo documents here regard terraferma properties, near Vicenza, but one is no less than a division of the San Stae palace in Venice between family members, and others concern inheritances and dowries.

Three of the most prominent family names in the Venetian manuscripts were joined in a single person, namely Polissena Contarini da Mula Mocenigo (d. 1833), dogaressa or consort of the third-to-last doge of Venice. From sources outside the UC archive we know of marriages between the da Mula and the Mocenigo, and between the Contarini and the da Mula, in the course of the seventeenth century. Circa 1710 the Contarini Da Mula family line had emerged. Although we know from sources outside the UC records that by 1722 the da Mula had property at Bertesina (VI), so far the Venetian manuscripts reveal no direct Da Mula connections to Vicenza.

The Mocenigo, on the other hand, had property at Marostica by 1557, and between 1746 and 1866 they contracted at least four marriages with high-status families from Vicenza. We know, again from outside sources, that considerably later Giovanni Alvise V Mocenigo (1822-1893), a gentleman scientist and inventor, lived most of his life at Vicenza and sold off numerous family properties. In short, strands of external evidence describe a patrimonial situation that moves one closer to explaining the origin of the UC documents. One of the manuscripts, indeed, bears the name of the abovementioned Polissena along with the date of 1807. (This is a 1518 copy of a 1406 record in which tax farming rights for goods from Legnago and Casaleone, rights that had been sold by the recently overthrown ruler Francesco Novello da Carrara, are regularized by Verona’s new Venetian governors.)

Beyond this matter of provenance, examination has confirmed that the manuscripts are a rich mine for diverse historical investigations. Many speak to the complex issues of Venetian rule of and investment in the terraferma, whether this may be seen in records about legal jurisdiction, water rights, or vernacular agricultural buildings, not to mention information about property values. Numerous records belong to the era of Palladio. If none of them mentions the architect, or any of his works, some do refer to the family of his humanist mentor Giangiorgio Trissino, to the families of his patrons, or to those of other humanists (e.g., the family of the satirist Camillo Scroffa).

The manuscripts, among other things, show the dogged, long-term efforts to stitch together those landholdings and agricultural enterprises which, all around Vicenza and at places such as Romanziol (for the da Mula), were managed from splendid country villas.

See jpeg images of all the Venetian documents, 

As the librarian was dusting and reviewing books in the former Pal cage to prepare for a book move, she came upon a large size book (16 x 22 inches), an original medieval choir book on parchment with a wooden cover adorned with metal bosses and metal studs at the edges. She could not find either a title page or a call no. In fact, the book had not been cataloged and neither staff of 48 years nor previous librarians were aware of its existence.  The librarian set out to try to solve the mystery of its provenance and date, but also its acquisitions history. She could find no information in the minutes of the UC Trustees, or in any library history, so the acquisitions history may never become fully known. The manuscript was included in the Adopt-a-Book event in Langsam in March of 2019 which generated interest and a generous donation for conservation work.

It was an exciting find in an obscure corner of our Library where no one knew of its existence until the librarian stumbled upon it in 2019. Thanks to Prof. Platts, and to the anonymous donor who gave us the financial support we needed, we will now be able to catalog and conserve and formally add this magnificent 15th-century Italian choir book to the John Miller Burnam Classics Library’s manuscript collection.  

See pdf images of the entire Choir psalter and read the observations of Dr. Consuelo Dutschke, Columbia U.  

"Italian Medieval Choir Psalter," presented by Dr. Christopher Platts, UC DAAP

The manuscript’s front and back covers consist of metal (brass or bronze?) that is stamped with emblems of the Lamb of God, the Christogram IHS, and flowers. These are most likely generic Christian and decorative symbols and do not tell us specifically about the particular type of Christian community that originally used the book.

On f. 2r, the large initial P (“Primo die…”), was added after the stave lines were drawn in, indicating that the folio was first ruled, then the scribe added words and musical notations, and finally an illuminator added the large initial. Note also the erasures on this page.

On f. 6r, the large initial Q includes “shell gold” decoration in which gold leaf was pulverized to create pigment that the illuminator could paint with. This decorative use of gold is different from applying small areas of gold leaf that an illuminator would lay on and then burnish with a dog tooth or smooth stone.

On f. 27r, there is a tear in the parchment that has been sewn up at an early date. This is an early example of repairing a manuscript. Across the gutter on f. 26v, you can see the catchword at the bottom of the page, which is repeated as the first word of the text at the top of f. 27r.

On f. 62r, there is an elegant example of a “cadelle” initial, which is beautifully calligraphic but not illuminated with gold or paint.

On f. 141v is the only surviving “inhabited” initial, painted with a figure of an Augustinian beato (blessed) or saint. The presence of this inhabited initial suggests that at the beginning of some or all of the canonical hours in this manuscript there would have been a similar inhabited initial, and that the manuscript has lost up to 8 other inhabited initials during the course of its life. Regarding the inhabited initial on f. 141v, it is important to note that the Augustinian figure carries a cross but does not seem to hold a rosary, as Dutschke suggested. At least, I do not see a rosary here.

Also, the Augustinian holy figure does not have a full, gilded halo but rather golden rays issuing from his head, suggesting he is a blessed and not a saint.

On several other folios where we would expect there to be inhabited initials at the beginning of a new section of the manuscript devoted to another canonical hour, we do not find an inhabited initial. This suggests that not every section of the manuscript received an inhabited initial. But, in several other places in the manuscript, we find stubs of folios, where the folios have been removed. Several of the locations where we find these stubs are significant because they are situated where another canonical hour would start in the manuscript, such as between Prime and Terce, Terce and Sext, Nones and Vespers, and Lauds and Prime. This suggests that at some point the folios were cut out, probably because they had beautiful, inhabited initials painted on them. This likely occurred in the 19th or 20th century when there was a growing art market for illuminated manuscript pages and fragments.

There is supporting evidence for these significant losses in the form of an off-set image visible on the folio just before the stub that separates the canonical hours Lauds and Prime. In other words, on the verso of the folio we can see a faint, mirror impression of the now-lost inhabited initial that was originally on the recto of the following folio, which was cut out and is now only a stub. This is telling evidence for the manuscript having had additional painted figures inhabiting initials between some of the major divisions of the text.

On f. 156v, the last page of the manuscript (and one of several pages added in the 18th century based on the more modern script), there is an emblem of a heart pierced by an arrow. This is important because this emblem was specifically a symbol of the Augustinian (monastic and mendicant?) order(s) in the 16th and 17th centuries and later. The emblem represents Saint Augustine’s love for God and for his fellow brethren, and it is based on a quote from Augustine’s Confessions. It would be valuable to know if both the Canons Regular of Saint Augustine and the Augustinian friars used this emblem; if one did and the other did not, then we can more precisely pinpoint the provenance of the manuscript.

The emblem in the manuscript indicates that, at least by the 18th century, this manuscript was in the possession of an Augustinian church or friary. It is also very likely that this manuscript was originally created for an Augustinian church or friary in the fifteenth century, assuming that the original owners passed it on to another related community at some point between the 15th and 18th century. The saint or blessed figure on f. 141r wears a black habit, as did both Augustinians and Benedictines in the Renaissance. Because of the Augustinian provenance of the manuscript, it is highly likely that the figure is an Augustinian holy figure. The preponderance of evidence suggests an Augustinian provenance for this book, probably – based on the style of the illumination – in northeastern Italy.

I am hoping to hear from Gaudenz Freuler, Joanna Cannon, and Federica Toniolo about the style of the illumination of the Augustinian beato and his identity. These three scholars are experts in the field of Italian Renaissance illumination and religious iconography of the monastic and mendicant orders.

Librarian's note: Since Dr. Platts wrote the above, we invited musicologist Dr. Stephanie Schlagel, CCM, to examine the manuscript. She noted that the leaf on which the Augustinian emblem appears is part of an attachment of leaves most likely dated to the nineteenth century. This could either indicate that the antiphonary originally belonged to the Augustinian order following Dr. Platt's identification or to the Franciscan order following Dr. Dutschke's identification of the tonsured man, or perhaps another order. The attachment could simply indicate that a bookseller in the 1800s inserted some leaves from another antiphonary into missing leaves in our manuscript, so it may not prove the identification of our choir book one way or the other. Also, Dr. William Duba, University of Fribourg, who has seen digitized images of the choir book, suspects that the manuscript should be dated to the sixteenth century because of its large size which is more indicative of the sixteenth than the fifteenth century. However, the script and historiated initial seem to point to an earlier date.  This is the beauty of scholarship. If we had all the answers, there would be no need for research or scholarly debate.      

A while back as the librarian was doing some research on an unrelated topic, she came across a reference to Karamanlidika materials in the Burnam Library. As she was not aware of this kind of material in the library and others who had worked in the library for many years also did not know about these possible items, the librarian began to search for them. They were eventually found in cardboard boxes in a different library, the Archives and Rare Books Library! It was another exciting and unexpected find. Maybe discovering the more than 3,000 year old Tomb of the Griffin Warrior surpasses the excitement of locating 200-300 year old books no one knows exist, but it's still pretty cool. And Karamanlidika materials do not exactly fill most libraries in the U.S.  Fortunately for us, Professor Davis knows just about every scholar in the field of ancient to modern Greek studies, including two leading experts in the field of Karamanlidika, Evangelia Balta and Anastasia-Aglaia Lemos, who subsequently helped us identify the material and translate the pages of text sent to them. The materials have not yet been digitized.  

"Karamanlidika," presented by Dr. Evangelia Balta, Emerita Director of Studies (Program of Ottoman Studies) at the National Hellenic Research Foundation (introduction) and Dr. Anastasia-Aglaia Lemos, Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Modern Greek Studies, King’s College, London (description, transcription, translation)

"Introduction to Karamanlidika," presented by Dr. Evangelia Balta, National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens, Greece

Karamanlidika literature is the cultural heritage of the Turkish-speaking Christian Orthodox populations who lived in Anatolia until the Population Exchange (1923). It includes everything from inscriptions on tombs and buildings to manuscripts and archival material, books, and media (more than twenty newspapers and periodicals), everything written and printed with Greek characters in Turkish. Unfortunately, the Κaramanlidika book production remained outside the body of Greek book production until recently. It was likewise excluded from the Turkish bibliography because of the use of the Greek alphabet.

The first book appeared in 1718, and its presence continued until 1935, when the last Karamanlidika printed work appeared. Notably, the Karamanlidıka book was the first book published in Turkish since the first book with Arabic characters circulated in 1729 (Kitab-i lughat-i Wankuli) by Sa’id and Ibrahim Müteferrika.

The number of recorded titles in the Karamanlidika bibliography compiled by Sévérien Salaville, Eugène Dalleggio, and Εvangelia Βalta exceeds 750. From observation of the titles and the publication rates of Karamanlidika printed works, it emerges that the religious book dominates the sum of this book production. Secondly, the Tanzimat ushered in a new period, during which intensive publishing activity peaked in the 1890s. In a period lasting more than a century (1718-1856), less than 200 books were published, equivalent to ¼ of the total book production. The remaining ¾ were issued following the Tanzimat until a few years after the Population Exchange. The categories of printed matter increased in number after the mid-19^th century, and newspapers and periodicals appeared. Most of these are represented by ecclesiastical, liturgical books, etc., yet the new categories now include publications for professional or practical use and popularized books suited to the general public.

Religious books dominate the Karamanlidika book production. The sacred book prevailed for one hundred years until about the mid-nineteenth century. It was published to protect the religious identity of the Turkish-speaking communities initially from conversion to Islam and subsequently from missionary propaganda. The aim of the publishers and translators of these religious books, as is expressed in their titles and prefaces, was to enlighten the Orthodox Christians of Anatolia; the introductions accompanying the texts frequently state that these last, ‘since they have forgotten the Greek language, did not understand what was read in the church and so have strayed away from the way of God.’ The religious works were Psalters, Lives of Saints, Catechisme, etc., which are condensed versions of related books that circulated in the Greek language and were read in Greek regions in the same period. For a hundred years or so, until the mid-nineteenth century, translators and publishers of Karamanlidika books –and not only of religious content– were clerics: Zacharias the Athonite and Serapheim Antalyalı, a monk in the Kykkos monastery in Cyprus and later Metropolitan of Ankara. The pioneer was the Metropolitan of Naupaktos and Arta, Neophytos Mavromatis, who published 1718 the first Turkish book with Greek letters.

Many books (30%) in the religious category were published by missionary organizations, such as the British and Foreign Bible Society and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, which published, in addition to the Bible, also hymns and moralizing stories for schools. The missionary publications circulated many copies and were distributed freely through ecclesiastical organizations, schools, and charitable foundations.

The production of Karamanlidika secular books significantly increased in the second half of the nineteenth century and continued thus until the Exchange of Populations. There was a proliferation of popularized books on practical medicine, farming methods, accounting, etc. In addition, books were published on subjects of general education, and literary works appeared, novels – mainly French, by Xavier de Montépin, Eugène Sue, Charles-Paul de Kock, and others. Many novels by European authors and Ahmet Mithat were published in 1882-1892, mainly at the printing press of Evangelinos Misailidis’ newspaper Anatoli, where they first appeared in installments. There are bibliographical indications that other fiction works circulated, but copies of these have not been located to date.

Karamanlidika, Armenian Turkish, and Ottoman editions of the same work appeared concurrently or with only a few years difference between them. Equally popular books, judging by their number of editions of them, were Kioroglou, Ashik Garip, Shah Ismaïl, Ashik Kerem, Ashik Omer, Nasreddin Hodja, etc. Also published in the same period were charters-regulations of the societies and associations founded in Constantinople by immigrants from Central Anatolia, who reproduced their ‘community’ in their place of settlement. The affluence of these Anatolian communities and their involvement with trade in the urban centers of the Ottoman Empire imposed the publication of legal codes and interpretations of laws, which circulated from 1853 until 1891. Constantinople was the center of publication, and Venice was abandoned; a few books were printed in Athens, Odessa, Smyrna, Samsun, and, after the Exchange of Populations, in Thessaloniki.

There was a marked increase in the names of authors and translators after the second half of the nineteenth century. Notable are prolific writers, alms collectors, adapters, translators, editors-publishers such as Agapios Papazoglou from Ankara, Anastasios Pnevmatikas, Dimitrakis Hadjiephraim Daniil from Antalya, Philippos Aristovoulos from Nevşehir, Theodoros Kasapis, Ioannis Gavriilidis, Savvas Aliagozoglou, Ioannis Kalfoglou, Ioannis Sadeloglous, and many others, as also the anonymous translators of moralistic Protestant narratives. Predominant in the output of these printed works is Evangelinos Misailidis, who was responsible for at least a hundred publications, which is 30% of the total production. Misailidis and his newspaper Anatoli were the nuclei around which congregated intellectuals in Constantinople and students from Anatolia who came to the schools in the capital and returned to their birthplace as teachers and clerics. Financial sponsors of the whole publishing effort were the Cappadocians domiciled in Constantinople, who prospered through their mercantile activities.

Very few secular Karamanlidika books are original works. They are compilations from various books. Judging from the number of editions, the Karamanlidika books that circulated and were read most widely were the traditional religious book and the popular printed matter. Titles that appear only once are in most utilitarian printed works or books of general education. The first supplied the new needs: practical medicine, manuals of bookkeeping and business correspondence, legal codes, diaries/calendars, etc. Such books on general education multiplied when schools became more numerous with the reforms introduced in the Ottoman Empire. In addition, newspapers and periodicals were published, through which knowledge and scientific discoveries were promoted, significant events and personalities were presented, etc. Karamanlidika literature after Tanzimat increasingly followed the Ottoman intelligentsia in Constantinople. It was affected by periodicals such as Servet-i Fünûn, Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete, circles of authors in the tradition of Ahmet Midhat, and others with French influences.

"Transliteration and Translation from Karamanlidika Texts in the Burnam Library,"  presented by Dr. Anastasia-Aglaia Lemos, King's College, London

Altınoluk Anılan Kitapta, Istanbul, 1815

[Sévérin Salaville et Eugéne Dalleggio. Karamanlidika Bibliographie analytique d’ ouvrages en langue turque imprimé en caractères  grecs vol. I  (1584-1850). Collection d’institut français D’ Athènes 47 : Centre d’ètudes d’Asie mineure ; Athènes 1958, no. 50, pp.167-172]

First page (Title page):

Right

ORIGINAL:

ΠΟΥ ΑΛΤΗΝΟΛΟΥΚ

ΑΓΙΛΑΝ ΚΗΤΑΠΤΑ

Πάζι Μάρτυροσλαρην βέ Ὅσιοσλαρην νακλιγετλερί

Χριστός ἰτζούν τζεκτικλερή καργετλέρ πεγιάντηρ

Τηγνεγενέ βε οκουγιανά τζόκ τατλίτηρ.

Τουρλοῦ κηταπλαρτάν τεβσιρλιμίστηρ οὐρούμτζα διλην-

τέν τούρκ λισανινά  τεφσίρ ολουνμούστουρ, Καΐσερι

μανσιπιντάν, νεμσεχερλί Παπᾶ Γεώργιος-

ταν χριστιγιανλιγήν κι Φαγετλιγή ἠτζοῦν,

χαγίρ σεβιτζιλερίν μασραφλαρή-

γιναν Σταμπολτά πασμαγιά

βεριλμήστιρ.

Ἰσταμπόλ Πατρηγί Ἐφεντημιζίν Κύριος Κύριος

ΚΥΡΙ´ΛΛΟΖΟΥ῀Ν

ἰζνίγιναν πασμαγιά βεριλτί

Ἀσιταντέ Πατρικχανετέ ολάν Πασμαχανετέ

Πίν σεκίζ γιούζ ὄνπες Σενεσιντέ. 1815

MODERN TURKISH ORTHOGRAPHY:

BU ALTINOLUK

ANILAN KİTAPTA

Bazı Martirosların ve Osiosların nakliyetleri

Hristos için çektikleti kariyetler beyandır

Dinleyene ve okuyana çok tatlıdır

Türlü kitaplardan devşirilmiştir urumca dilın

den türk lisanina tefsir olunmuştur, Kayseri

mansıbından Nemşeherli Papa Georgios-

dan  Hıristiyanlığın ki fayetliği için,

hayır sevicilerin masrafları-

ğınan  Stambol’da basmağa

verilmiştir.

İstampol Patrığı Efendimizin Kirios Kirios

KYRİLLOZ’UN

İzniğinan basmağa verildi

Asitanete Patrikhanede olan basmahanede

Bin sekiz onbeş Senesinde, 1815

TRANSLATION:

In this book in which an ALTINOLUK [literally “golden gutter” used to refer  to that on the Kaaba at Mecca] is brought to mind, are set out narrations of the sufferings endured for the sake of Christ by certain Martyrs and Confessors [and] are sweet for listeners and readers.

They were selected from various books in the Greek idiom and translated into the Turkish language in the monastery of Kayseri by papa Georgios of Nevshehir for the benefit of Christians at the expense of those who love good  was given to the press in Istanbul. It was given to the press with the permission of our lord Kyrillos the Patriarch of Istanbul.

At the press of the Patriarchate of the Royal City 1815

Second pagε:

Right

[Table of contents]

Third page:

Left

[List of Bishops]

Θύρα της Μετανοίας  (The Gate of Penitance): author Abraham Hieromonk, Asitane [Istanbul], 1818

[Sévérin Salaville et Eugéne Dalleggio. Karamanlidika Bibliographie analytique d’ ouvrages en langue turque imprimé en caractères  grecs vol. I  (1584-1850). In Collection d’institut français D’ Athènes 47 : Centre d’ètudes d’Asie mineure ; Athènes 1958, no. 57, pp. 185-187]

First page (title page):

Right

ORIGINAL:

ΘΥΡΑ

ΤΗΣ

ΜΕΤΑΝΟΙΑΣ

Τοβπέ ἠτμενίν Καπησί, Γάγετ φηρκάτ,

Κετηριτζή τζανά φαγητελί Κιτάπτηρ.

Ι῎λκ  ἐββέλ Ῥώμ Λησανηντά ἰκεν, σσίμτηΤούρκ Λησανηνά τερ-

τζουμέ ὀλουνμούσστουρ, Καΐσερη ἀλεγιετή ἐντερλίκ κιοβουντέν

ΑΒΡΑΑΜ ΙΕΡΕΣΤΑΝ

βέ πασμαγιά βερηλτί ζίκρ ὁλουνάν καργιετλού χριστιανλαρίν χάρτζ

μασρουφλερή ἰλέ Ῥώμ λησανηντάν ἀγνάμαγιαν χριστιανλαρίν

φααγιτλερί ἰτζούν,

Παναγιώτατος Οικουμενικοζούν Πατρίκ Ἑφέντημηζην ἰζνηγί ἰλεν

Κύριος Κύριος

ΚΥΡΙΛΛΟΣΣΟΥΝ

Ἀσητανετέ Πατρίκχανετέ ὀλάν Πασσμαχανετέ

1818 Σενεσηντέ  

MODERN TURKISH ORTHOGRAPHY:

Thyra tis Matanoias [Tövbe Kapısı]

tövbe etmenin kapısı gayet fırkat

getirici cana faydalı kitaptır.

İlk evvel Rum Lisanındayken, şimdi Türk Lisanına  tercüme olunmuştur

Kayseri aleyeti Enderlik köyünden

AVRAAM IEREAS’TAN

Ve basmağa verildi zıkr olunan kariyetli Hıristiyanların harc

masraflarıyla Rum lisanından anlamayan Hıristiyanların

faideleri için.

Panayotatos Oikoumenikozun Patrik Efendimizin izniği ilen

Kyrios Kyrios

KYRİLLOSSUN

Asitanede Patrikhanede olan Basma hanede

1818 senesinde

TRANSLATION:

The Gate of Penitance. It is the book which brings many thoughts useful to the soul. While it was first written in the Greek idiom it is now translated into the Turkish language by Father Abraham from the village of Enderlik in the province of Caesarea, and was given to be printed with the funds of those Christians mentioned for the use of the Christians who do not understand Greek. With permission of His Holyness Kyrios Kyrios Cyril, Ecumenical Patriarch. At the printing house of the Patriarchate in the Royal City 1818.

Second page:

Left (title)

Για Μουχαπετλή Ὀρθόδοξος Χριστιάν καρτασσλαρημήζ           

Ya Muhabetlı Ortodoksos Hıristiyan kardaşlarımız           

Hail our affectionate Orthodox Christian Brothers

[Names of subscribers]

[At the bottom of the page the stamp in Greek]:

ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΟΝ ΤΥΠΟΓΡΑΦΕΙΟΝ ΕΝ ΤΟΙΣ ΠΑΤΡΙΑΡΧΕΙΟΙΣ

Greek Printing House  In the Patriarchates

Right (title)

Ποῦ κιταπά πεϊτναμέ           

Bu kitaba beyitname

Couplets for this book

Third page:

Left (title)

ΚΙΟΓ ΓΙΟΥΖΟΥ ΠΑΤΗΣΑΧΛΗΓΙΝΗ ΧΑΤ. ΤΟΥΤ.

GÖKYÜZÜ PADIŞAHLIĞINI HAT. TUT. [Abbreviation for hatır and tut?]

[Keep rememberance of ?} the Kingdom of Heaven

Bottom:

ΤΕΚΜΗΛ

Tekmil

Completed

Hacetname Kitabı  (The Necessary Book): author Hieromonk Serafeim from Antalya

Venice 1809 (N. Glykys)

[These pages come from a prayer book for morning and evening prayer printed in Venice (Nikolaos Glykys) in 1809.

Sévérin Salaville et Eugéne Dalleggio. Karamanlidika Bibliographie analytique d’ ourages en langue turque imprimé en caractères  grecs vol. I  (1584-1850). In Collection d’Institut Français d’ Athènes 47 : Centre d’ètudes d’Asie mineure ; Athènes 1958, no. 42, p. 143. This edition is a reprint of an earlier one of 1802 (no. 31, p. 112-113 which in turn has the same title as that of the 1756 edition up to: Venedikte basilti, no. 7, p.26-29]

[The pages supplied are the following]:

First page [title page]:

Right

ORIGINAL:

ΧΑΤΖΕΤ ΝΑΜΕ ΚΙΤΑΠΗ

ΣΟΥΛΤΑ΄Ν ΒΑΛΙΤΟΥΛΑ΄Χ

ΠΑΝΑΓΙΆ ΜΕΒΛΟΥΤΟΥΛΛΑΧΗ΄Ν

Νιαζιμέτ παράκλησιλερι, βέ γιρμιτόρτ σελαμλαμασί, βέ Ἁμαρτω-

λῶν Σωτηρίατα μπεάν ολάν χεκμετναμελερί, βέ Ε᾽ξάψαλμος, Βέ Α᾽πόδειπνον, βέ ταχί ἰκτιζαλί σεγλέρ μπούρατα μεβτζούττουρ, ον

λάρκι χέρ Χριστιανά λαζίμ

βε ἰκτιζάτηρ, σαπάχ ακσάμ οκουγιᾶ.

Σίμτι Ι῎λκ ἐββέλ τεφσίρ ὀλουνούπ Πασμαγιά βεριλτί, ποῦ ζήκρ ολου-

νανήν  χάρτζ μασραφήγιλαν, γιαβάνι Ρ῾ώμτζα τιλιντέν Τούρκ λισα-

νινά, ζίατε ζαχμέτιλεν,

Α’ΤΑ´ΛΛΙΑΛΟΥ

ΣΕΡΑΦΕΙΜ ΙΕΡΟΜΟΝΑΧΟΣΤΑΝ

ΧΡΙΣΤΙΑΝΛΑΡΙΝ ΚΙΦΑΕΤΛΙΓΗ´ Ι’ΤΖΗ´Ν.

Α’ΓΙΑΝΛΑΡΙΊΝ Ι’ΖΝΊΓΙΛΕΝ ΒΕΝΕΤΙΚΤΕ´ΠΑΣΙΑΤΙ´

ΝΙΚΟΛΑΩ ΓΛΥΕΙ ΤΩ ΕΞ ΙΩΑΝΝΙΝΩΝ

1809

Τζοῦμλενιζ Χριστοζοῦν Ι’ζινέ γιορούγιουν.

MODERN TURKISH ORTHOGRAPHY:

Hacetname Kitabı Sultan Valitulah

Panayia Mevlutullahin

Niyazimet Paraklisileri, ve yirmi dört selamlamesi, ve Amarto-

lon Sotiriata beyan olan hikmet nameleri, ve Exapsalmos, ve

Apodipnon, ve dahi iktizalı şeyler burada

mevcuttur, onlar ki her Hıristiyana lazım

ve iktizadır, sabah akşam okuya

Şimdi İlk evvel tefsir olunup Basmağa verilti, bu zıkr

olunanın harç masrafığılan, Yunanı [?] Rumca dilin-

den Türk lisanına ziyade emek zahmetilen

A’TA’LLİALU

SERAFEİM IEROMONAHOSTAN

HIRİSTİYANIN KIFAYETLIĞI İÇİN

AYANLARIN İZNİYLEN VENEDİK’TE BASILTI

NIKOLAO GLYKEI TO EKS IOANNINON [Yanyalı Nikolaos Glykys’a]

1809

Cümleniz Hristos’un iznini yürüyen

TRANSLATION:

The Necessary Book. Prayer to the most Holy Queen the Mother of God; her twenty four salutations, the counsels of the salvation of sinners, together with the Hexapsalm and Compline and other necessary things which are found here and which it is essential for every Christian to read morning and evening. Here for the first time translated from the customary Greek into the Turkish language with much labor and effort and printed at the cost of the afore mentioned person, the hieromonk Serafeim of Antalya for the benefit of Christians. Printed at Venice with the permission of the Senators by Nikolaos Glykys from Ioannina. 1809. All of you follow the path of Christ.

Second page:

Right           

ORIGINAL:

ΤΖΕΜΙ’Ι Ο᾽ΡΘΟ´ΔΟΞΟΣ

ΧΡΙΣΤΙΑΝΛΑΡΑ,

Η’ΛΣΕΛΑΜ, ΜΟΥΧΑΠΕ´Τ.

ΣΕΡΑΦΕΙΜ ΙΕΡΟΜΟΝΑΧΟΣΤΑΝ

MODERN TURKISH ORTHOGRAPHY:

CEMİİ ORTODOKSOS

HIRİSTİYANLARA

ILSELAM, MUHABET

SERAFİM IEORMONAHOS’TAN

TRANSLATION:

Greetings and Affection to all the Orthodox Christians from Hieromonk Serafeim

[A text follows with advice comparing spiritual with bodily illness].

Left

[The photograph has cut off some of the text. It is a note by the publisher Nikolaos Glykys explaining that the book was reprinted for the benefit of the  Eastern Christians ( the word is Anatol which could mean Anatolian, but it is impossible to say) at the expense of one Hadji Yannaki].

Third page:

Left

[It looks as the last page of the contents].

"The Vienna Dioscurides," presented by Dr. Rebecka Lindau, Burnam Classics Library

I will present just a single book but a book which offers fascinating glimpses into a thousand years of history, religion, medicine, and magic. While it is an enchanting and beautiful object, it also demonstrates that antiquity offers a unique and potent knowledge base to inspire and educate subsequent cultures, including our own. In addition to original medieval manuscripts, our library owns facsimiles of many important and early manuscripts of ancient texts such as this facsimile of the so called Vienna Dioscurides, which is an early 6th-century Byzantine manuscript with the Greek title Περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικῆς or as it is commonly known in western Europe in Latin, De materia medica, about herbal or pharmaceutical materials, by a Πεδάνιος Διοσκουρίδης. 

We do not know much about Dioscurides (western convention dictates that the Latin form of ancient Greek names be used). We know that he was born in the ancient city of Anazarbus, as he is referred to by contemporary sources as Dioscurides of Anazarbus, which was a town in Cilicia, Asia Minor, now more or less corresponding to Armenia near Cyprus and Syria some 2,000 years ago in the first century of the Common Era. He was probably a doctor in the Roman army under emperors Claudius and Nero, and as doctors were in those days, he would also have been a botanist and pharmacologist, or herbalist since ancient medicine was based largely on herbs.

The codex is a kind of encyclopedia, a so called pharmacopeia, in 5 volumes. In volume 1, for example, we learn about aromatic plants used in ointments -- Roman everyday products used for personal hygiene. A nutritious diet, exercise, and hygiene were all emphasized in ancient Greek and Roman medicine, so we learn that shampoo was made from walnut, dandruff shampoo from myrtle and pomegranate, soap from elm, toothpaste from myrrh, etc. Other volumes catalog plants used more for what we generally think of as medicine, to treat illnesses, rather than preventing them.

In looking at the manuscript or book itself, we see that it is written in so called uncial script (seen to the right on the page above), an elegant, rounded letter script in all caps., popular from the 4^th to the 8^th centuries. Producing this very large, thick and tall, and heavy manuscript would sadly have entailed the killing of several hundred animals, usually sheep, goats, and calves to produce the almost 500 folios made of vellum or parchment, animal skin.  A folio consists of 2 pages, recto and verso, front and back, so ca. 1,000 pages altogether.  The manuscript contains ca. 400 extant, some are missing, full-page illustrations of medicinal plants describing some 600 plants and many more herbal cures.

In addition to the text by Dioscurides, the manuscript has appended to it other interesting works such as a poem in hexameter (seen above) about herbs attributed to Rufus of Ephesus, another early physician; an ornithological treatise, in fact, the earliest preserved work on birds (seen below), some 1700 years before Audubon, by a certain Dionysius, identified with either Dionysius of Philadelphia or Dionysius Periegetes, the author of a travel guide; and a work by Greek physician Nicander of Colophon on the treatment of snake bites (seen below).

Dioscurides’ treatise most likely drew from his own observations of plants in western Turkey and eastern Greece, also as he moved with the Roman legions, and he had access to the great library of Alexandria, so he would also have researched earlier sources which for the most part have not survived such as those of Crateuas, nicknamed ὁ ῥιζοτόμος, the root cutter, roots forming an important part of a pharmacologist’s toolkit. Dioscurides himself credits Crateuas, but says that Crateuas’ treatise was incomplete, and of course many centuries of oral tradition, not the least based on the knowledge of anonymous female herbalists, doctors and midwives. In fact, many plant descriptions in De Materia Medica address the reproductive health of women.  Also, the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians wrote accounts of curative herbs, which Dioscurides would have seen. And, certainly, he would have been familiar with the Greek philosopher Theophrastus in the 4^th c. BCE who wrote his famous Inquiry into Plants, describing plants from all corners of the then known world, also noting their curative properties.

The Vienna Dioscurides is not the only manuscript of De Materia Medica which has survived. In fact, there are many, a testament to its popularity. Some of the more important ones include a manuscript at a monastery on Mount Athos, and in libraries in Naples, of which the Burnam Library possesses also a facsimile (to the left in the image above), New York, the Pierpont Morgan Library, and Michigan, the latter is the oldest and in the form of a papyrus-plant fragment. There are also a number of illustrated Arabic, Persian and Indian manuscripts. However, among these early manuscripts the most famous and oldest illustrated treatise is our lavishly illuminated Vienna Dioscurides.

The original manuscript was created in the Byzantine capital Constantinople for an imperial princess, Anicia Juliana, who lived 462-527, the daughter of Anicius Olybrius who was one of the last of the Western Roman Emperors, thus it is sometimes referred to as the Juliana or Juliana Anicia codex. Interestingly, Boethius, the author of the influential De consolatione philosophiae, was a relative, and among her illustrious ancestors were none other than emperors Constantine and Theodosius, so Juliana’s lineage was as impeccable as her wealth was impressive. She financed several building projects in the capital, one of which was the Church of St. Polyeuctus, a monumental forerunner to the Hagia Sophia built some years later. The church has been excavated and is in ruins, fragments of which can be found incorporated into other churches as far away as in Basilica di San Marco in Venice thanks to Venetian crusaders (or marauders).  Juliana’s life and influence speak to the prominent role of upper-class women in Byzantium, not the least as patrons of the arts.

In addition to the plant and animal illustrations, the manuscript contains several full-page miniature paintings in the front matter. On folio 6 verso (seen above), for example, we see Anicia Juliana in the oldest extant dedication portrait. We do not know if perhaps the manuscript was commissioned by Juliana or simply dedicated to her as a token of gratitude for her financing the building of a church which may also have served as a healing center.

There is a barely visible inscription, a poem, lauding Juliana for building a “temple of the lord” in the district of Honoratae, a suburb of Constantinople, identified with a church dedicated to Virgin Mary constructed in 512 C.E., providing an approximate date for the creation of the manuscript.  Perhaps the portrait itself points to Juliana having also commissioned the manuscript as she is seated on a throne wearing purple and gold, red shoes, and a diadem, flanked by personifications of Μεγαλοψυχία (“Greatness of Soul,” a concept we know from Aristotle’s Nichomachaean Ethics) and which could have negative connotations as well but in this context is usually translated as “Magnanimity” or “Generosity,” and Φρονῆσις “Wisdom,” or “Practical Wisdom” often translated as “Prudence,” and a personification of Ευχαριστία τεκνῶν, “Gratitude for the Arts,” which in antiquity also included medicine, kneeling at Juliana’s feet and kissing her red shoe. Juliana in the meantime hands out or sprinkles gold coins into an open book. If this book is our codex, it’s perhaps another clue that she in fact paid for its production. The handing out of gold coins was otherwise an act performed by a new consul taking office or by an emperor, so maybe Juliana also had political ambitions although both her husband and son were consuls, so the act of distributing gold coins could perhaps also be interpreted as an extension of her as a consul’s wife and mother. Phronesis holds a large closed book with red cover and one of the putti has one as well. If this is our codex, it could indicate that initially it had a red cover. Juliana sits in an eight-pointed star enclosed by a circle, formed by an intertwined rope or chain, which is an unusual iconography not easily interpreted, but is considered to have had an apotropaic, something that protects from harm, function, pointing to protection for both Juliana and her manuscript, perhaps not an entirely satisfactory explanation. The eight-pointed star in cosmography usually refers to the four elements and the four directions representing the universe. However, it is also reminiscent of monograms of Byzantine emperors, so perhaps this was Juliana’s monogram or that of her gens/family? The frame forms triangles in which the name Juliana (ΙΟΥΛΙΑΝΑ) is written in large gold letters -- Iota, omicron, upsilon, lambda, iota, alpha, nu, alpha.

I should mention that almost all of what I have said so far is conjecture. What we do know from contemporary accounts is that the codex was used as a text or reference book in the imperial hospital of Constantinople and elsewhere throughout Europe and the Arabic and Ottoman east for many centuries. It was translated fully into Arabic in the 10^th c. Plant names written in Latin, Hebrew, Turkish, Arabic, and several other languages demonstrate not only its popularity, but also its continued use and geographic reach.

Not many years after the production of the Vienna Dioscurides, many people in Mediterranean Europe and the Near East, including emperor Justinian, seen above in a detail from the Burnam Library of a mosaic in San Vitale in Ravenna, were afflicted with a plague, the so called Plague of Justinian, which no doubt would only have enhanced the use and significance of this pharmacopeia. Justinian, by the way, recovered. It is not known which herbs may have aided his recovery although reading De Materia Medica one could perhaps venture a guess; for example, frankincense, juniper, lavender, and rosemary, all referenced as anti-plague medicines.

Still in Constantinople in 1406, extensive scholia, commentary (seen to the left on the page above), were added in Byzantine Greek minuscule, a cursive script, by a notary, later monk, called Ἰωάννης Χορτασμένος, commissioned for a monk and physician in the Monastery of St. John Prodromos where it was housed, and the manuscript was also rebound at this time.  

After the Muslim conquest of the city in 1453, the codex fell into the hands of the Ottoman Turks, and Turkish and Arabic names were added to the Greek (seen to the right of the leaves in the plant image above). We also know that the manuscript in the late 1500s, still in what was now Istanbul, a century after the fall of the city, was acquired by Moses Hamon, the Arabic-speaking Jewish physician to sultan Suleiman I, also known as the Magnificent, famed ruler of the Ottoman Empire, and Moses Hamon or his son may have added the Hebrew names of the plants to the manuscript (seen by the root in the plant image above). The work also records plant names in Thracian, ancient Egyptian, North African (Carthaginian or Punic) and other languages, names in languages which would have been lost to us were it not for this manuscript. And finally, in 1569 Emperor Maximilian II of the Habsburgs acquired the codex for the imperial library in Vienna, later the Austrian National Library, hence the name Codex Vindobonensis.

Now let’s take a closer look at the manuscript. As I mentioned, the front matter consists of a series of miniature paintings, the first being this remarkable image of a peacock. It’s curious that it is a frontispiece of a book on herbal medicine rather than part of the ornithological treatise that we saw contained in a latter part of the manuscript, so maybe when the codex was rebound, a mistake could have been made? Another explanation can perhaps be found in the decoration of the Church of Saint Polyeuctus, which I mentioned earlier, and which Juliana Anicia had financed, featuring peacocks in this kind of pose, frontal and with the feathers spread out. It was the symbolic bird of an empress, and, of course, also of the goddess Juno or Hera, in Ancient Greece it was a symbol of immortality, symbolism which was adopted by the early Christian church, so the peacock illustration may in fact be a Christian symbol of immortality, perhaps a reference to a prophesized immortality for the manuscript, I am thinking of Horace, or even a symbol of Juliana or her aspirations or the aspirations of others for her? In 512, in fact there was a power struggle and Juliana’s husband was approached by one faction to become emperor, which he declined, so there was much political turmoil in Constantinople at the exact time of the creation of the codex, a fact which may be significant for the interpretation of the role of Anicia Juliana in this codex and in Constantinople at that time.

This miniature (seen above) on folio 3v depicts 7 physicians and of course they had to be 7 being a sacred number as in the 7 sages, among whom is the famous Galen of Pergamum (2^nd c.) in the center, so a hundred years after Dioscurides. In his works, Galen makes frequent references to De Materia Medica. He is flanked by Crateuas (ca. 2^nd c. BCE), whom I mentioned earlier, and Dioscurides himself, which may convey the influence on Galen of both Crateuas and Dioscurides. It is the earliest known miniature painting to use a solid gold-leaf background, which of course came to characterize religious Byzantine art, from household icons to mosaics adorning churches.

In another miniature on folio 2v (seen above) featuring doctors or authors of medical texts we see the centaur Cheiron in the center, whom the natural historian Pliny the Elder credited with discovering botany and pharmacology, the science of herbs, and medicine. One could probably speculate about Cheiron being juxtaposed to Galen in the center, old medicine versus new perhaps?

Another interesting miniature on folio 4v (seen above) depicts the author seated opposite Heuresis, personification of Discovery or invention, as in Heureka (Eureka!), holding a mandrake, of Harry Potter fame, presumably giving it to humans represented by Dioscurides himself, depicted, I think, almost as pivotal as the gift of fire given by Prometheus to the human race, maybe even a veiled reference to the “Prometheus herb,” φάρμακον Προμήθειον, referencing most likely the mandrake, in Apollonius Rhodius’ epic Argonautica, but also speaking to its significance as something of a panacea, able to cure everything from asthma, to toothache to depression and even leprosy. It was also used as an anesthetic in surgery, which no doubt Dioscurides himself would have employed as an army doctor. Dioscurides prescribes mixing the juice from the mandrake root with wine and vinegar to put patients to sleep before surgery. 

But because of its supposed human-like form and its narcotic properties, it also had magical dimensions. At the bottom of the image lies a dog killed by what was later thought to be the lethal scream of the mandrake when uprooted.  Harry Potter fans out there certainly know about this scream or cry. The use of a dog is first attested in western literature in Roman-Jewish historian Josephus in the 1st c., a contemporary of Dioscurides, but he does not mention a scream, which seems to be a medieval addition. In his work Jewish War, Josephus writes the following regarding the mandrake:

        ...flame-colored and towards evening emitting a brilliant light [most likely another superstitious         element], it eludes the grasp of persons who approach with the intention of plucking it, as it         shrinks up and can only be made to stand still by pouring upon it certain secretions of the         human body. Yet even then to touch it, is fatal…a mode of capturing it, is as follows. They dig all         around it, leaving but a minute portion of the root covered; they then tie a dog to it, and the         animal rushing to follow the person who tied him, easily pulls it up but instantly dies... (Joseph. BJ         7.6.3)

This painting on folio 5v (seen above) also speaks to the prominent role of the mandrake in this manuscript in which a personification of Knowledge holds out the mandrake for an artist to copy while Dioscurides writes in a codex, so maybe this scene depicts the creation of our codex and if so, it may demonstrate that some of the plants were in fact painted from actual real-life samples?

Finally, let’s take a look at a couple of examples of plants and their supposed curative properties.

σίκυς ἓμερος (sikus hemeros), cucumber (seen above)
"Eases the bowel; is appropriate to use for the bladder, and it revives those who faint if they should smell it."

σινἐπι κεπαἰον (sinepi kepaion), mustard (seen above).
"Suitable for hip diseases, and afflictions of the spleen. Treats baldness."

If your curiosity has been piqued and you wish to learn more about ancient medicinal plants or about this unique manuscript, with so many firsts, the first dedication portrait, the first gold-leaf background which came to characterize Byzantine art, the first ornithological treatise, names of plants which would not have come down to us were it not for this manuscript, and the intriguing and enigmatic role of a female patron of the arts some 1500 years ago, you are welcome to save a trip to Vienna and instead come to our library and examine this faithful and exquisite copy of the original.