Roger Pearse

I must have misled you here, for which I am sorry. I'm sure others are wondering too, so let me try to clarify things.

Theophylact's works reach us in old copies written before the age of printing, and written by hand ("manuscript copies" or "manuscripts"). He lived around 1100 AD. Now I don't know what manuscripts exist, but I would expect perhaps a dozen manuscripts of the 14-16th centuries, say. His work is popular in Russia and the Slav lands, so probably a Russian translation also exists, in various handwritten copies and modern editions printed from them without much alteration.

At the renaissance, all the ancient and medieval Greek texts were printed, because it was commercially profitable to do so. Publishers could make money by printing a previously unknown text and selling it to gentlemen and scholars. Mostly the Greek texts were first printed in a Latin translation (starting in the 15th century); then in the 16th century as Greek fonts developed, Greek printing took off (usually accompanied by a Latin translation, not always of the Greek text actually printed, but sometimes a reprint of the older translation). Greek manuscripts were still being copied on an industrial scale at Venice during the 16th century, tho.

I may be wrong (and can't check now), but I think Theophylact was printed in the 17th century, also at Venice. Copies of that printing are in rare books rooms in major libraries.

In the 19th century J.-P. Migne issued his monster 200+ volume series, the "Patrologia Graeca". He did this by copying earlier editions. His four volumes of Theophylact were a reprint of the Venice edition. He used cheap printing, as you can see by the bitmaps.

The manuscripts of Theophylact are still around, of course. I don't know where they are. Until you asked, I had never paid attention to this author.

I don't know whether anyone has ever decided to do a critical edition of Theophylact. If I had to guess -- and I sort of do, because of your question -- I would guess that they have not.

So someone needs to search for all the manuscripts of Theophylact held in all the world's libraries, draw up a list, get microfilms of them, compare them, and create a scholarly edition based on the best text (rather than on whatever happened to be floating around in Venice ca. 1700 when a publisher saw the chance for a quick buck for an edition of an unknown text).

Does that help clarify things?

The other reason we all use Migne, of course, is that it is actually available! (The fact that the text is pre-critical won't matter a damn for our purposes; the critical editions only tweak the text as a rule, often in ways that don't even show up in translation).

All the best,

Roger Pearse

PS: I did a quick search of www.hmml.org. It brought up 13 manuscripts in Vienna. The first was a Latin translation of one of his commentaries. The others seem to be Greek, of various of his works. There's no indication of age; but I suspect they will all be renaissance copies. Ms. 141 is from 1550, I see. (Mss. of that date were often dated in the colophon at the end).

PPS: There are a couple of Slavonic mss. at the end of the list -- as I thought might exist. Codex Vindobonensis Palatinus. Theol. gr. 150 is a manuscript of the Commentary on Acts: 331 leaves in size; Author: Theophylactus, episcopus Acridae in Bulgaria. Supplied Title: Expositio in Acta Apostolorum, in Epistolas Catholicas, et in omnes Epistolas S. Pauli, collecta ex S. Joannis Chrysostomi aliorumque variorum veterum patrum operibus.

This ms. was written about 1330 AD. It's on paper. Sizes: 255/261 mm x 169/175 mm. Folios 1r to 56r -- since the pages are not numbered, but the leaves are, each leaf has a front (='recto') and a reverse (='verso') -- are the commentary on Acts. There are notes in the margin in ff. 7r-45r by the chap who copied the ms, quoted from Didymus the Blind, Severus of Antioch, Severian of Gabala, Cyril of Alexandria, Basil the Great, and Ammonius of Alexandria -- all typical people to appear in catenas, and the notes are probably copied from a catena.

There are Latin marginalia in the hand of the renaissance chap John Sambucus. Apparently he bought the ms. in Padua for 7 ducats (it says so on folio 1). Sambucus wrote to Theodor Zwinger on 1st March 1560 about it. Sambucus lent it to a chap called Laurentius Siphanius, who printed an edition (in Latin!) from it in 1567. It looks as if the Austrian Emperor Maximilian II acquired Sambucus' books, and so they end up in the Austrian national library today. The catalogue is here.

vid

Yes, you made it clear. Thanks.

Roger Pearse

Note that a translation of Oecumenius has recently appeared from John N. Suggit (Catholic University of America, 2006).

There is also a very useful book review:

John N. Suggit, trans. "Oecumenius: Commentary on the Apocalypse"
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5441
Reviewed by Pieter G. R. de Villiers