Profana, 1861. The Berne palimpsest leaves (which Dr. Hort has designated by the letter t) are in like manner printed from Professor Hermann Hagen's article in Hilgenfeld's Zeitschrift for 1884, pp. 470484. These excellent scholars will, I believe, not be sorry to find the material which they have published collected into a single volume. In determining the relation of these texts to other old-Latin versions, I have had the great advantage of the assistance of my late colleague, Professor Wm. Sanday, whose essay on the Latin text of the Bobbio MS., which forms §§ 10-15 of this Introduction, deserves especial notice. He has also investigated the affinities of the other fragments. In these sections, and in his article on the Corbey St. James with Studia Biblica (Oxford 1885), we have the firstfruits of a detailed study of the history of these versions, from which great light may be expected. § 2. The Bobbio MS. (k). Title and number. The volume is now in the National Library at Turin, and is numbered there G. VII. 15. With regard to the older titles there is an unfortunate difficulty, Tischendorf's account not agreeing with what we at present find in the MS. At the top of his transcript of fol. I appears the following note, as far as it can be read :— Vorn darin Bobiensis divi Columbani Asceteri Pezz Hyacinthus ertone 55 dann (?) Volumen m.s. ex membranis in 4o continens Evangelia pme editionis vetustissimum quod ut traditum fuit illud est idem liber quem B. Columbanus Abbas in pera secum ferre consueverat. In his printed account in the Wiener Jahrbücher der Literatur, Band 120, Anzeige-Blatt, p. 45, 1847, which is evidently based on that in the transcript, Tischendorf says distinctly that this was on the first leaf auf dem ersten Blatte (dem Inhalte nach ist es das letzte).' He repeats it word for word with the exception of the enigmatic expression 'ertone 55,' which he omits, probably because he did not understand it. At present, however, no words at all except CATA. MARC. (so Professor Rossi assures me) appear on the top of the first leaf, and the first part of the note, containing the name of Pezz and the number, is found nowhere in the book. The second note, beginning 'Volumen m. s.,' &c. as Tischendorf gives it in print (but with 'Beatus' for 'B.' &c.), is now found on the third paper fly-leaf in a 17th century hand. At the bottom of the page is the sign Q, which Tischendorf also mentions, and on the back of the same paper leaf are the words 'Codex Monasterii Bobiensis,' which he does not quote. All my efforts to explain this discrepancy have been at present fruitless. Hyacinthus Pezz is unknown by name in the Turin Library, and my friend Dr. Ceriani, who seemed most likely to know, can tell us nothing about such a person. The only conjectures I can offer are— (1) That Tischendorf saw the first words on a paper fly-leaf, which may since have been torn out, and wrote them on the top of the first leaf of his transcript, and then mistook the meaning of his own note; (2) that 'ertone' has lost its first letter and should be 'Dertone,' and that Pezz was librarian once at Tortona (Lat. Dertona). If so the MS. would have been No. 55 in an intermediate collection before it finally arrived at Turin. Tortona lies as a matter of fact between Turin and Bobbio, being about the same distance from Bobbio on the N. W. as Piacenza is from it on the N. E. Blume (Iter Italicum, i. p. 74) mentions two private libraries there, and hints at a public library or municipal archives, which had apparently disappeared. Leaving this matter for further elucidation, and turning to the original home of the MS., we may notice that we have two ancient catalogues of the Bobbio Library, one probably of the 10th century, the other of the year 1461, of which some account will be given below. In the second of these, which was printed by Amedeo Peyron in 18241, apparently before he became acquainted either with our MS. or the vulgate Bobbio Gospels (Turin F. VI. 1), there only appears one entry, which can plausibly be identified with our book, viz. 8. Textus quatuor evangeliorum in littera capivers. antiqua asser. Ni.' i. e. according to Peyron's explanation, 'The four Gospels in old uncial (or majuscule) character, bound in boards (asseres) of black colour.' 1 Ciceronis Orationum pro Scauro, &c. Fragmenta, ed. A. Peyron, Praefatus est de Bibliotheca Bobiensi, p. 2, Stuttgart 1824. Cp. p. xxxiv. for an explanation of the terms used in this catalogue. Capiversa apparently means such characters as scribes used at the beginning of chapters and verses. This identification is however not quite certain, and will be further discussed below, § 5. Lachmann, who first made a critical use of the MS. in the Preface to the first volume of his New Testament (p. xv. foll. Berlin 1842), quotes it as Bobiensis. The symbol k by which it is usually cited in the series of old-Latin MSS. is due to Tischendorf, who continued the method of nomenclature first applied by Lachmann to the MSS. known as a, b, c, d, and others. § 3. External description'. The form of the volume is a middlesized quarto, now containing ninety-six leaves of vellum, the pages being 18.7 centimeters high by 16.7 broad (73 x 6 inches), and having each fourteen lines to a page besides the headline. The vellum varies much in character, being generally pretty fine and thin, so extremely thin sometimes as to be worn into holes. It has also suffered much from damp, and the writing has in many cases been taken off on the opposite pages. The writing, as our facsimile will sufficiently show, is angular rather than round. There is no ornament or flourish, but the text is the work of a very firm and practised hand like that of a professed scribe. The initial letters of paragraphs are only slightly larger than the rest of the letters. In the MS. they stand, as usual, a little to the left of the rest of the text, but convenience of printing has led me to indent the paragraph a little the other way. The ink throughout is yellowish brown in colour, and according to Tischendorf is very like that of the Codex Claromontanus of St. Paul's Epistles (D and d) in Paris. The writing is ascribed by Tischendorf to the fifth century; Fleck says 'aetas codicis VI aut forsitan V seculi est.' It appeared to me, as far as I could judge, of the earlier date. If so it is one of our earliest Latin New Testament MSS. The punctuation consists of a point opposite the middle of the letters. It is often absent where it would be expected, and often 1 This section is based to a great extent upon Tischendorf's description in the Wiener Jahrbücher der Literatur, B. cxx. Anzeige-Blatt, p. 43 foll. 1847, and his autograph MS. notes which lie before me, as well as my own observations. Fleck's Introduction is very poor. He gives, however, a moderately good lithographed facsimile of the same page as our frontispiece. b introduced in the most absurd places in the middle of words. Often a space is left to indicate a full stop in the middle of the text, without any point; but the point is sometimes found in these cases. I have endeavoured to make the printed text as exact a representation as possible in this as in other respects, but the punctuation is so strange and often so faint that I have probably omitted some of these points. The ruling consists of single horizontal lines to the right and left, with cross lines coming up to, but generally not passing beyond them. Needle pricks are not noticeable at the beginning of the lines. Besides the first hand the text has been corrected by two others. The second hand is very like the first in character and colour, but smaller. Tischendorf considered that he was a contemporary of the first, and probably a professional reviser or duopowrns. The third scribe is much later, perhaps several centuries. His work is coarse and indistinct, and his ink darker. It is like the work of an amateur or owner of the book. The character of his letters is Irish, and of course it is just possible that he may have been St. Columban himself. The book is made up in quaternions, the signatures of which appear in roman numerals towards the lower right hand corner of the last leaf of each gathering. Tischendorf takes no notice of this arrangement. At first I almost despaired of finding any signatures, but after a while I discovered some fragments of numbers set off on one of the opposite pages. Starting from these I recovered several others, but in most cases it was impossible to discover any. The following is a summary of the quaternions : : Fol. 8 is the end of a quaternion which was numbered xxxIII, but the number cannot now be read. Fols. 16, 24, 32, and 40, were equally the last of quaternions XXXIIII, XXXV, XXXVI, and xxxvii, but these numbers also have disappeared. At fol. 48 is the end of a quaternion, after which a leaf has been lost. This loss apparently took place some time back, as the signature (xxxvII) is taken off by damp on the opposite page, fol. 49. This first gave me an insight into the composition of the book. Fol. 55 has the signature On fol. 63 only x remains of the XL. Fol. 71 has no signature, but is the end of quaternion XLI. Fol. 79 has the signature XLII. Fol. 87 is the end of quaternion XLIII, but the number has perished. The last leaf of quaternion XLIIII is lost as well as the first three and three last of quaternion XLV, of which the central fold (fols. 95, 96) is all that now remains. Fol. 79 is, XXXVIIII. I believe, the only one which has a perfectly distinct signature (XLII), but one such is of course sufficient as a basis from which to recover the rest with certainty. § 4. Contents. The MS. at present contains portions of St. Mark and St. Matthew, in an order which to us at present appears inverted. Roughly speaking these portions are chaps. viii-xvi. of St. Mark and i-xv. of St. Matthew. The following is the exact statement of the contents:- - Mark viii. 8-11 } 14-16 S fol. 1, which is mutilated at the bottom. viii. 19-xvi. 9, which is the end, fols. 2-41. Matthew i. 1-iii. 10 (after which a leaf is lost), fols. 42-48. iv. 2-xiv. 17 (after which four leaves are lost), fols. 49-94. In each case the verses named above are incomplete. Fleck, followed by Tischendorf, assigns the contents of the first leaf to St. Matthew rather than to St. Mark, but this is a mistake, especially as the headline reads CATA. MARC. (for so, as I have said, Professor Rossi assures me). They were probably misled by the word 'Mageda,' for which the most correct texts of St. Mark have 'Dalmanutha.' It is certainly a curious coincidence that the portion of St. Mark should begin, and St. Matthew should end, almost exactly at the same verse after the feeding of the four thousand. But even apart from the evidence of the headline a comparison of the number of words lost according to the two alternatives is decisive in favour of St. Mark, so also is the detail'et obliti sunt inponere panes cumque unum solummodo panem haberent in naui fregerit (i. e. precepit) illis dicens,' &c. which occurs only in Mark viii. 14. The argument from the headline alone would not be conclusive either way since folios 32 and 33 are both headed wrongly CATA. MATH. On the other hand, the reading Magedan for Dalmanutha in Mark viii. 10, though at first sight in favour of Fleck and Tischendorf, is in reality not so; for it is the reading in some form or other also of a, b, c, d, ff, i, r; while the Greek Dalmanutha is read only by f, 81.2 1 9, that is, by MSS. which are known often to represent a later stage of correction. With regard to the original contents of the volume when it was |