of papyrus. Rolls of papyrus, indeed, exist, bearing texts written in the hieratic Egyptian characters which are opisthographs, or written on both sides, and ten or fifteen centuries anterior to Pliny and Lucian. If Greek and Latin critics had known of the existence of such rolls, they would never have attributed to Julius Cæsar the introduction of a practice which is of so much higher antiquity.

The material on which the roll is written is thick and soft cotton paper. It consists of fifteen sheets, each being fifteen inches high, and joined together lengthways, with the surface polished on each side, according to the custom of the orientals.

The ninth century has been fixed upon as the period when cotton paper was first employed. Modern Latin writers term it charta bombycina or bambycina, cotton being named by the Greeks indifferently, βάμβαξ or βόμβυξ. By writers of antiquity the same terms were given to silk, but as applied to paper the equivoque is not admitted. Palæographical writers have observed also, that during the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries the number of manuscripts written upon parchment was greater than upon cotton; whereas the contrary was the case in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries*.

The text is ingeniously arranged on the two sides of the roll. The commencement is found at the top of the recto, and the text is continued to the bottom of the roll, on turning which the succeeding line of the text at once presents itself; so that the termination on the verso corresponds with the commencement on the recto. From constant use the beginning and the end of the text, at the top of the roll, are worn off.

It contains the Greek mass of St. James the Apostle, according to the ritual of the Melchites, accompanied with long marginal comments in Greek and Arabic, the more ancient of the latter being the better written. It was brought

*Montfaucon, Palæographia Graca, pp. 17-19.

from Syria to Rome in the year 1583, having been sent by the Archbishop of Otranto, by the hands of Pachomius, a Melchite monk*.

The origin of this term given to a Christian sect extends back to the fifth century, and belongs to the history of the Egyptian Church. St. Mark was its first patriarch, and his twenty-fourth successor, Dioscorus, adopted the Eutychian heresy, which was condemned by a synod held at Constantinople, afterwards restored by the second council of Ephesus, and finally anathematized in the general council held at Chalcedon, in A.D. 451. The decrees of this council were published in Egypt, and commanded to be adopted, under pain of death; and as the orthodox Greeks exercised great cruelties upon the unfortunate Coptic-Egyptians, whom they regarded as heretics, the latter applied the name of Melchites, or Imperials, to their persecutors, as partizans of the Emperor, who supported the canons of the Council+. The manuscript roll contains therefore the office of St. James, according to the form of the orthodox Greek Church.

It is written in thick, round, inelegant, cursive Greek minuscules, the letters inclining indifferently to the left or right, with spirits and accents of the modern form; the letters being conjoined; abounding with abbreviations, and punctuated. The divisions of the text have the titles in large uncial letters, mixed with minuscules, destitute of regularity and elegance, written in vermilion, as are also the large initial letters, some of the more elegant of which are represented at the foot of the Plate.

The two lines of the rubric are to be read, + ETXH ПICΤΩΝ Α ΜΕΤΑ ΤΟ ΑΠΛΩΘΗΝΑΙ ΤΟ ΕΙΛΗΤΟΝ +, being the first prayer of the faithful, after unrolling the manuscript.

*It is now in the Bibliothèque Royale at Paris.-ED.

+ J. M. Vansleb, Histoire de l'Eglise d'Alexandrie, 8vo. Par. 1677. Joh. Morini, Antiq. Eccles. Orientalis, 8vo., 1682.

The prayer itself begins with the words, Ευχαριστημεν rol, etc.

All the characters of this roll fix its age to the fourteenth century.

PLATE LXXXIX.

UNCIAL AND MINUSCULE GREEK WRITING.

XVTH CENTURY.

CATENA UPON GENESIS AND EXODUS.

THE term Catena Patrum, or simply Catena, is applied to the series or chain of commentaries written by the Greek and Latin Fathers of the Church upon the text of the Scriptures, either arranged with the names of their authors, or in the order of the verses, chapters, and books, to which they relate, or merely following each other, without division, in the order in which they were composed.

The manuscript now under notice is a work of this nature, the mere text of which offers but little interest, having been often transcribed, as well as printed.

It is written upon paper, with the edges gilt and figured, and is copied by a skilful scribe from more ancient manuscripts, and bears the No. 1889 in the old, and No. 130 in the new catalogue of Greek manuscripts in the Bibliothèque Royale. It contains the Catena of the Commentaries on Genesis, and on the first twelve chapters of Exodus (ending with the ten plagues), and its text is precisely similar to that contained in the manuscript numbered 128 (formerly No. 1825), which is more than 200 years older.

This manuscript is considered as the autograph of a Greek scribe, named Gregoropulus, who lived at the period of the

renaissance. Montfaucon, in his Palæographia Græca, mentions two scribes of this name-George, who transcribed the Paris manuscript, No. 1805, in the fifteenth century, and Manuel, the writer of the manuscript No. 1884, in the year 1503. It is uncertain to which of these writers the present volume is to be attributed, but other manuscripts exist written by the same hand (Nos. 148 and 132, Bibliothèque Royale), all of which may also be ascribed to the latter half of the fifteenth century; a period when Italy and France exhibited so much honorable hospitality to the few remaining scholars of Greece.

This volume formed part of the royal library at Fontainebleau. Its binding is of the time of Francis I., and it bears the arms and cypher of this king, by whom the library was founded, and to which he added that of Blois, including the Greek manuscripts brought from Naples to Blois by the celebrated Lascaris. About sixty others were procured for the king by Girolamo Fondulo*, and others were sent as presents by learned Greeks; of all which a catalogue was made in 1544, by Angelus Vergecius, (another celebrated Greek scribe,) which still exists, and which contains a notice of 540 volumes. Some of these were bound in the reign of Henry II., by order of Pierre Chastelain. The ability of the scribe Gregoropulus will be seen by the specimen given in the Plate.

The rectangular frame-work at the head of the text is ornamented with a white arabesque on a red ground, and in the five circles are inserted in tall ornamental uncial capitals, ΦΩΣ ΧΥ ΦΑΙΝ ΠΑ Cr, that is, Φῶς Χριςοῦ φαίνεται πᾶσι, (the light of Christ appears to all.) The title of the work is in the open space of the frame-work, written in similar letters, which are

* A native of Cremona, skilled both in the Greek and Latin languages. He was secretary to Cardinal Salviati, and Francis I. invited him to Paris to preside over the education of the Dauphin, afterwards Henry II. See Arisius, Cremona Literata, tom. ii., p. 139. Parm. 1705, fol.-Ed.

moreover more or less conjoined, enclosed within each other, and floreated. This title is to be read thus, without abbreviations, EPMHNEIA EIE TO BIBAION* THE TENECENC, etc. (Commentary on the Book of Genesis.)

The line following is the first sentence of the Greek Bible, in semi-uncial, mingled with cursive, letters, commencing with a capital floreated €. The remainder of the text is in a small round, and occasionally tall, minuscule, slightly conjoined; the words punctuated, with spirits and accents of the ordinary form. The rubricated letters at the foot of the Plate are ornamental initials copied from other pages of this fine volume.

PLATE XC.

CURSIVE GREEK WRITING.

MIDDLE OF THE XVTH CENTURY.

ARISTOTLE AND DEMETRIUS PHALEREUS, IN THE LAURENTIAN LIBRARY.

THIS manuscript, in addition to its elegance and regularity, is of importance, from bearing the date of its execution. It belongs to the rich Mediceo-Laurentian Library at Florence, and is written on vellum, of a 4to size. It contains the Greek text of the books of the Morals of Aristotle, and the Treatise on Elocution by Demetrius Phalereus, and consists of 205 leaves.

Upon the 118th leaf, at the end of the work of Aristotle, we read three heroic verses in Greek, thus translated into Latin :

* This word is omitted in the French text, probably on account of the difficulty in reading it.-ED.