On the Life And Works of St Gregory of Nyssa

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40 Pages

Page 37

For the Letter to Adelphius, and that (on Church Architecture) to Amphilochius, J. B. Caraccioli (Professor of Philosophy at Pisa) furnishes a text (Florence, 1731) from the Medicean ms. The Letters in this collection are seven in all. Of the last of these (including that to Amphilochius) Bandinus says non sincerâ fide ex Codice descriptas, and that a fresh collation is necessary.

For the treatise On the Making of Man, the text employed has been that of G. H. Forbes, (his first Fasciculus was published in 1855; his second in 1861; both at Burntisland, at his private press), with an occasional preference for the readings of one or other of the mss. examined by him or by others on his behalf. Of these he specifies twenty: but he had examined a much larger number. The mss. which contain this work, he considers, are of two families.

Of the first family the most important are three mss. at Vienna, a tenth-century ms. on vellum at S. Mark's, Venice, which he himself collated, and a Vatican ms. of the tenth century. This family also includes three of the four Munich mss. collated for Forbes by Krabinger.

The other family displays more variations from the current text. One Vienna ms. "pervetustus" "initio mutilus," was completely collated. Also belonging to this family are the oldest of the four Munich mss., the tenth-century Codex Regius (Paris), and a fourteenth-century ms. at Christ Church, Oxford, clearly related to the last.

The Codex Baroccianus (Bodleian, perhaps eleventh century) appears to occupy an independent position.

For the other Treatises and Letters the text of the Paris Edition of 1638 (plenior et emendatior' than that of 1615, according to Oehler, probably following its own title, but "much inferior to that of 1615" Canon Venables, Dict. Christ. Biog., says, and this is the judgment of J. Fessler) and of Migne have been necessary as the latest complete editions of the works of Gregory Nyssene. (All the materials that had been collected for the edition of the Benedictines of St. Maur perished in the French Revolution.)

Of the two Paris Editions it must be confessed that they are based for the most part on inferior mss.' (Oehler.) The frequent lacunae attest this. Fronto Ducaeus aided Claude, the brother of F. Morel, in settling the text, and the mss. mentioned in the notes of the former are as follows:

1. Pithoeus' "not of a very ancient hand," "as like F. Morel's (No. 2.) as milk to milk" (so speaks John the Franciscan, who emended from one corrupt mutilated manuscript,' i.e. the above, the Latin translation of the Books against Eunomius made by his father N. Gulonius.)

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