Download PDF | Alain Touwaide - A Census of Greek Medical Manuscripts_ From Byzantium to the Renaissance-Routledge (2016).
453 Pages
Manuscripts containing Greek medical texts were inventoried by author and work at the beginning of the 20th century by a group of philologists under the direction of Hermann Diels. Useful as it was— and will continue to be—Diels’ catalogue omitted authors and works, misidentified manuscripts, and overlooked codices. Furthermore, since the publication of the catalogue, some libraries have adopted a new system of classification, manuscripts have been destroyed, items have changed location, and new ones have come to light.
The present Census is a checklist of the Greek medical manuscripts currently known in collections worldwide. It is both an amended and updated index of Diels’ catalogue, and a list of the items missed or overlooked in Diels, or located since. Although it does not supersede Diels’ catalogue, it is the indispensable instrument for a New Diels, and will be the reference for years to come for any new critical edition and medico-historical research based on manuscripts, besides providing the basis for a broad range of other historical inquiries, from codicology to the history of medicine and science, including Byzantine intellectual history, Renaissance studies and humanism, history of the book and early printing, and the history of medical philology and learning.
Alain Touwaide, Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions, Washington, DC, USA
Foreword
As many other catalogers of ancient manuscripts—this has been my profession for more than 40 years—I sometimes need to describe Greek codices containing medical or related treatises. To this end, I have regularly consulted the well-known catalogue compiled by Hermann Diels and his collaborators, which has, and will continue to be, extremely useful. However, as Alain Touwaide appropriately reminds us in the Introduction to the present work, its limits, its shortcomings and its mistakes have long made it desirable to have, if not a completely revised edition of Diels’ catalogue, at least a list of the many corrections and complements made possible thanks to the scholarly research over the past 60 years. The author of the present Census provides such a list.
Having followed for several decades—though episodically—Alain Touwaide’s painstaking and time-consuming investigation, I can bear witness to the perseverance with which he has performed and completed his endeavor. Now having carefully and patiently read his impressive volume, I can attest to the extreme accuracy, as well as to the sheer magnitude, of his accomplishment. His work is the result of long and difficult research in the catalogues of manuscript collections and scholarly literature, completed by personal in-situ inspection of many codices. With the present volume, all the data resulting from this quest are made available to the scholarly community.
The present Census is not a New Diels, but the indispensable foundation for such a new catalogue. To compile such a work, all the Greek treatises, compilations and medical fragments contained in all the manuscripts that can be traced through history or that have been preserved through present day should be identified and described precisely enough to be distinguished from any other (be it in their original form or in later rearrangements). Then, their presence in all the manuscripts in which they are said to be found should be verified or negated on the basis of a direct analysis of the codices. Alain Touwaide’s Census provides two major instruments toward such a new catalogue: first, his Census is an index that makes it possible to trace all the mentions of all the manuscripts listed in Diels.
This index goes further, however, as it provides verification of the identification of all the manuscripts listed in Diels’ catalogue (location and shelfmark), and also of their contents. His work does not supersede Diels’ catalogue, however, as it does not repeat Diels’ data once it has established their accuracy. Second, Touwaide’s work lists a great number of manuscripts omitted by or unknown to Diels, together with a short, yet precise, description of the medical texts they contain.
The most significant contribution of the Cezsus—one that I cannot stress enough—is that, in the many cases where Diels’ catalogue provides incorrect information, Touwaide goes from one clue to another like a detective, and succeeds not only in catching the culprits of manuscript misidentifications in literature, sometimes going as far back as the Renaissance, but also—if not above all—in rescuing their victims and establishing the correct identity of the manuscripts misidentified in the scholarly tradition up to Diels and his collaborators. Those who work in the field know how much talent, flair, intuition, and patience such inquiries require.
I will not expand on the astute presentation of data in the Census, which deftly combines and clearly distinguishes between Diels’ material reproduced ad litteram and Touwaide’s own corrections and additions. I stress instead some of his strategic choices, aimed to make consultation of the work straightforward. For the many manuscripts incorrectly cited several times in Diels’ lists, correct data are provided only for the first occurrence, instead of using cross-references which, in the footnotes of some publications, force readers through annoying gymnastics.
Also, abandoning 19th- and even 20th-century scholarly usage, Touwaide provides an English translation for all the library and collection names originally in other languages, although one might regret that nowadays this is useful, if not necessary. For the identification of the contents of the manuscripts, however, Touwaide maintains the traditional usage of authors’ names and titles in Latin, something that will be particularly useful in the future for catalographic purposes. In the bibliography, he deliberately applied the adage quod abundat non vitiat which, by way of consequence, causes pleasure when reading the endless titles cherished by 16th-, 17th- and 18th-century classical scholars.
Working from Touwaide’s Census, it will be interesting to evaluate Diels’ data and to make some statistic approximations. This could be done, for example, with the number of apparently different manuscripts listed in Diels which refer, in fact, to the same codices or are simply incorrect. One could also do similar evaluations about wrong or inaccurate locations of manuscripts, erroneous shelfmarks, or inexact identification of contents. Similar quantitative evaluation could be applied to the number of manuscripts added to those listed in Diels’ catalogue by Touwaide.
As an example, and limiting myself to the first 250 manuscripts mentioned in Diels, I have calculated the number of codices newly introduced and analyzed by Touwaide: they total 194, that is, a number equivalent to 78 per cent of the sample of 250. Bearing in mind that the 250 items do not correspond by any means to 250 actual manuscripts, but to a smaller number because of inexact, inaccurate or redundant information in Diels’ catalogue, it becomes immediately clear that Touwaide’s Census richly increases the number of Greek codices with medical contents currently known.
If we add to this all the supplementary data and corrections provided by the Census, we can only acknowledge the magnitude and the accuracy of Alain Touwaide’s achievement, congratulate him for his contribution to scholarship, and thank him for such a magnum opus.
Mgr. Paul Canart Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana June 2015
Introduction!
In the study of ancient Greek medicine, manuscripts are of fundamental importance as they provide the primary sources without which no documented history can be written. In spite of centuries of activity,? no comprehensive inventory is available. The present volume aims to compensate for this lacuna and offers a world census of currently known Greek manuscripts with medical content.
This census is not entirely unprecedented as lists of Greek medical manuscripts have already been compiled in scholarship, from the Bibliotheca botanica and the Bibliotheca medicinae practicae by the Swiss physician, naturalist and encyclopedist Albrecht von Haller (1707-1777), published in 1771-1772 and 1776-1788, respectively, to Die Handschrifien der antiken Arzte, Griechische Abteilung, edited by the German historian of ancient Greek philosophy and science Hermann Diels (1848-1922) and published in 1905-1908 by the Berlin Academy of Sciences. However, these and similar compilations list only the manuscripts containing the treatises of a select number of ancient physicians.
In addition, they do not offer in all cases exhaustive lists of manuscripts for the works under consideration, and even the most recent, Diels’ Handschriften der antiken Arzte, is now obsolete because new manuscripts have come to light since its publication, others have changed location, and further still, others were destroyed during the two World Wars of the 20th century.’
An attempt toward a systematic inventory of manuscripts was made in mid-19th century by the French librarian and historian of medicine Charles Daremberg (1817-1872). In order to compile a Catalogue raisonné des manuscrits médicaux,' Daremberg traveled extensively so as to personally inspect entire manuscript collections and identify all relevant items.’ In spite of his efforts, however, he could not complete his project.
progress in the inventory and description of ancient manuscripts worldwide, and the introduction of computerization in the humanities.
Building on available literature, the census presented here is largely an index of the manuscripts listed in Diels’ Handschrifien der antiken Arzte. This index includes a full discussion of the notinfrequent manuscript citations that are incorrect in Diels (be it iz toto or in parte). Examination of the contents, history or cataloguing of such items does not aim to replace Diels, even though the results provide data towards a New Diels.
The aim is only to allow for proper identification of these manuscripts by providing correct shelfmark, collection, library or location according to the cases. The census goes beyond this corrected index of Diels: besides providing the current name of the cities and libraries mentioned in Diels in the original language and according to current English usage, it introduces many new items as a result of an expansion of the field in two directions: medical topics and chronology.
Medicine is understood here in a broad sense that encompasses many components during the period of the texts contained in preserved manuscripts: not only the canonical works of the so-called “Founding Fathers” Hippocrates and Galen, but also treatises of Christian anthropology, analytical medicine,’ psychology including oniromancy* and physiognomy, lists of materia medica and illustrated botanical reference compilations,’ pharmaceutical formularies and hospital pharmacopeias, and literary works medical in nature.”
Translations into Greek have also been taken into consideration, mostly from Arabic and Persian, but also from Latin. Lexica (mostly botanical) are included as a corollary of the translations, since they were tools for the practice of medicine in a multilingual and multicultural society. Manuscripts are also included for forms of medicine that may be deemed non-scientific by present standards, but were a part of contemporary medicine, medicinal practice, or world of medicine, health and disease. This is the case for iatromathematics, for example, the Cyranides, and the different forms of what is called the Physiologus.
Timewise, Diels is limited to the period spanning Hippocrates to Paul of Aegina, from the 5th century BCE to the 7th century CE. Although a few later physicians are present in the 1906 issue and the 1908 supplement, they are not numerous.’ Many major and minor authors and works of the mid- or late-Byzantine periods are omitted, such as Theophanes Chrysobalantes, the Efodia, Symeon Seth, Nicephorus Gregoras, Nicephorus Blemmydes, Demetrius Pepagomenus, the many translations from Arabic or Persian, hospital manuals, or Johannes Argyropoulus to note just a few. I have tried to include as many post-7th-century CE physicians as identifications of authors and descriptions of texts in catalogues, relevant publications or personal inspection of collections in situ made possible.
For economy’s sake, Diels’ and new data are merged in a unique list. Several devices have been created to facilitate consultation: cross-referencing where appropriate, running titles on top of the pages, graphic presentation and organization of data on the pages, and also an index. All such finding aids are explained in the Notes for consultation that follow this introduction.
This census is the result of three decades of research im persona in libraries all over the world, of constant and repeated travels (including to remote locations), of innumerable contacts started in a time when neither the Internet nor email existed, of long hours spent over catalogues in search for information that could not be found at first glance, of patient scrutiny of ancient and more recent lists of manuscripts, of tenacity and sometimes also of serendipity, and of active collaboration, the admirable erudition of many of my contacts, and most generous sharing of information.
I have been fortunate to receive help from many colleagues, curators, experts in auction houses, antiquarian book dealers, and specialists across the globe whose names appear in the Acknowledgements that follow the Notes for consultation. The length of the list is an eloquent witness to the generosity with which all of them have replied to my many questions.
Also, I have benefitted from the services of the often-anonymous personnel in reading rooms of libraries worldwide who made it possible for me to consult the many manuscripts I requested. Without all of them—known or anonymous, named in the Acknowledgements or not—I would not have been able to collect the information presented here. All are in a certain way the co-authors of this volume, though they do not share the responsibility for its imperfections, imprecision or mistakes, all of which are mine.
For the preparation of this census, I have collected information from available bibliographies, indexed relevant literature, made or acquired images of manuscripts, and, with the development of computerization, increasingly stored relevant information on digital media, and generated computerized databases allowing for multi-criteria retrieval. All this material is held and curated by the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions in Washington, DC, where it is available for consultation by any scholar interested in Greek medical manuscripts and the history of ancient and Byzantine medicine.
Likewise, scholars working on specific manuscripts, texts, or ancient physicians are invited to share their discoveries and communicate the results of their investigations—published or not—so that the inventory and description of manuscripts, together with the identification of their texts, will improve, making it possible to shorten the time until a complete New Diels is compiled. In the meantime, all material received by the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions will be deposited in its library and will be made available for study to the scholarly community.
Acknowledgements’
Research for this census started in a structured form as early as 1986 and benefitted at that time of the advice of Charles Astruc, Bibliothéque nationale, Paris; Paul Canart, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana; Dieter Harlfinger, Freie Universitat Berlin; Jean Irigoin, then at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes Paris; Joseph Sonderkamp, Freie Universitat Berlin and, slightly later, Bonn Universitat; and Simone Van Riet, Université catholique de Louvain.
Activity has been greatly facilitated thanks to the collaboration of Marie Louise Cauwelaert in Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium) in 1986-1988; Emanuela Appetiti in Barcelona and Madrid (Spain) in 1993-1999, and Washington, DC (USA) in 2002-2014; and Patricia Kellogg and Kiilly Pitsal in Washington, DC (USA) in 2007-2009 and 2009-2011 respectively.
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