Roger Pearse

The July Poems in the Chronography of 354

The image for July is preserved once again only in a single manuscript of the Chronography, MS Vienna 3146, which never contains the text of the poems, only the pictures. So for the text of the poems, once again we are reliant on other, unillustrated, manuscripts, or the indirect tradition. Here is the 4-line poem (tetrastich), with the draft translation that I made earlier in the year.  Comments…

It’s been a busy couple of weeks.  I’ve been moving house, for the first time in 24 years.  I made the decision less than three weeks ago, the let of the property was only agreed about 10 days ago, and I took possession 5 days ago.  Today they installed an internet connection, which  took most of the day, and means that now I can connect properly to the web once more. Of course I have had no time…

Not much is happening.  The mundane “business” of living has taken over my life.  I’ve barely been able to keep up with correspondence. I apologise to those who had to wait for replies. I had intended to post the poems for June, from the Chronography of 354, at the start of the month.  I had a few moments today and put the post together.  In future I must remember NOT to post translations done in…

The June Poems in the Chronography of 354

Once again only a single manuscript of the Chronography contains an image for the month of May.  This is MS Vienna 3146, which never contains the text of the poems, only the pictures. So for the poems, once again we are reliant on other, unillustrated, manuscripts, or the indirect tradition. Here is the 4-line poem (tetrastich): Nudus membra dehinc solares respicit horas Iunius ac Phoebum…

From my diary – thoughts about the text of John the Deacon’s Life of St Nicholas

I have now scanned in the text of Corsi’s edition of John the Deacon, and found that – as he says – it is really a transcription of the Berlin manuscript, with better punctuation, plus a collation with the 1751 Falconius edition. He didn’t look at the Mombritius or Mai editions. But that’s just fine.  It means that we can do an electronic comparison of Corsi’s text – the Berlin manuscript – with…

It is a very long time since I have had to order a journal article through my local library.  The price of doing so became so enormous that it was impossible.  But a few weeks ago I realised that I really did need a copy of the following article: P. Corsi, “La ‘‘Vita” di San Nicola e un codice della versione di Giovanni Diacono”, in: Nicolaus: Rivista di teologia ecumenico–patristica, VII/2…

My apologies for the silence.  My central heating died the final death last week, after 32 years, and I’ve been getting a new boiler installed.  Anything major like that takes over your life, really it does.  The new boiler is now up and running, I can heat my house and my hot water once more.  All that remains is to make the inevitable complaint about shoddy workmanship, which I have done. …

Finding and downloading medieval manuscripts online that you can print

In my last post, I realise that I did something that I always find infuriating – I assumed stuff.  I started up the ladder, but omitted the first step.  Here’s a quick post on stuff you have to do first, then. Once you decide to edit a text which has never received a critical edition, then you need to find some manuscripts that you can start work with.  You may have a list of manuscripts, but…

Printing out medieval manuscripts in preparation for editing

At the start of my working life, fresh out of university, I was trained as a computer programmer and then assigned to a maintenance project.  This involved doing bug-fixes and small enhancements to an already rather elderly system, written in a near-obsolete language, and running on an IBM mainframe.  If I tell you that the annual run required the creation of a punched card, to be fed into a…

Getting Started With Collatex

Collatex seems to be the standard collation tool.  Unfortunately I don’t much care for it.  Also interestingly, the web site does not actually tell you how to run it locally!  So here’s a quick note. Collatext is a Java program, so you must have a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed, for version 8 or higher.  I think Windows 10 comes with a JRE anyway, but I can’t tell because long ago I set…

A way to compare two early-modern editions of a Latin text

There are three early modern editions of John the Deacon’s Life of St Nicholas.  These are the Mombritius (1498), Falconius (1751) and Mai (1830-ish) editions.  I have already used Abbyy Finereader 15 to create a word document for each containing the electronic text. But how to compare these?  I took a look at Juxta but did not like it, and this anyway is ceasing to be available.  For Collatex I…

Back to John the Deacon’s Life of St Nicholas. I’ve now completely retranslated chapter 1, the prologue, which I made an attempt at last year.  I’ve been comparing the text of the Falconius (1751) edition, which I am translating, with the Mombritius (1498) and the Mai (1820-ish) editions, and finding small differences, and noting them. Over the last week I started downloading copies of…

This afternoon I found myself debating with a Muslim polemicist online who was rubbishing the bible, and suggesting that we don’t even have the words of Jesus.  The polemicist dealt with my replies by ignoring them and simply making further claims, so our debate did not last long.  But in the process I was treated to a quotation, which struck me as quite extraordinary: A good number of the books…

The May Poems in the Chronography of 354

As with April, only a single manuscript of the Chronography contains an image for the month of May.  This is MS Vienna 3146, which never contains the poems. So again we are reliant on other unillustrated manuscripts, or the indirect tradition, for the poems. Here is the 4-line poem (tetrastich): Cunctas veris opes et picta rosaria gemmis liniger in calathis, aspice, Maius habet. Mensis…

I have now run all the way through John the Deacon’s Life of St Nicholas and made a first pass at translating it.  However I find that I will have to redo the first two chapters, which I attempted last year, as they are no good.  This is rather disconcerting, considering the sheer hard graft that I put into them, but there’s no doubt about it at all.  Fortunately I can reuse some little notes I…

Working with pre-critical Latin texts

Which comes first?  The text or the translation?  The question is not as simple as it seems. There is no finer way to come to grips with a text than by preparing an exact translation of it into another language.  This forces the translator to look at every case ending, every -ae and -um; every verb tense and mood and voice.  It highlights, very rapidly, areas of the text that have some kind of…

A small personal amendment to the Lord’s prayer

A few weeks ago I was asked to attend a memorial service for someone that I never met in my life.  Such are family commitments.  The service was for a child, and was every bit as sentimental and content-free as I had feared. I have never suffered from any urge whatsoever to be “religious”.  As I endured the empty words, inevitably the temptation emerged to, shall we say, modify them…