"The Greek manuscripts, which have descended to our time, are written either on vellum or on paper; and their external form and condition vary, like the manuscripts of other ancient authors. The vellum is either purple-colored or of its natural hue, and is either thick or thin. Manuscripts on very thin vellum were always held in the highest esteem. The paper, also, is either made of cotton, or the common sort manufactured from linen, and is either glazed, or laid (as it is technically termed), that is, of the ordinary roughness. Not more than six manuscript fragments on purple vellum are known to be extant; they are described in the following sections of this chapter. The Codex Claromontanus, of which a brief notice is also given in a subsequent page, is written on very thin vellum. All manuscripts on paper are of a much later date; those on cotton paper being posterior to the ninth century, and those on linen subsequent to the twelfth century; and if the paper be of very ordinary quality, Wetstein pronounces them to have been written in Italy, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

"The letters are either capital (which in the time of Jerome were called uncial, or cursive, i. e., small; the capital letters, again, are of two kinds, either unadorned and simple, and made with straight, thin strokes, or thicker, uneven, and angular. Some of them are supported on a sort of a base, while others are decorated, or rather burdened, with various tops. As letters of the first kind are generally seen on ancient Greek monuments, while those of the last resemble the paintings of semi-barbarous times, manuscripts written with the former are generally supposed to be as old as the fifth century, and those written with the latter are supposed to be posterior the ninth century.

"All manuscripts, the most ancient not excepted, have erasures and corrections; which, however, were not always effected so dexterously, but that the original writing may sometimes be seen. Where these alterations have been made by the copyist of the manuscript, (a prima manu, as it is termed,) they are preferable to those made by later hands, or a secunda manu. These erasures were sometimes made by drawing a line through the word, or what is tenfold worse, by the penknife. But, besides these modes of obliteration, the copyist frequently blotted out the old writing with a sponge, and wrote other words in lieu of it; nor was this practice confined to a single letter or word, as may be seen in the Codex Bezæ. Authentic instances are on record in which whole

books have been thus obliterated, and other writing has been substituted in the place of the manuscript so blotted out; but where the writing was already faded through age, they preserved their transcriptions without further erasure.

"These manuscripts are termed Codices Palimpsesti or Rescripti. Before the invention of paper, the great scarcity of parchment in different places induced many persons to obliterate the works of ancient writers, in order to transcribe their own, or those of some other favorite author in their place; hence, doubtless, the works of many eminent writers have perished, and particularly those of the greatest antiquity; for such as were comparatively recent were transcribed to satisfy the immediate demand, while those which were already dim with age were erased. It was for a long time thought that this destructive practice was confined to the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, and that it chiefly prevailed among the Greeks; but this destructive operation was likewise practised by the Latins, and is also of a more remote date than has usually been supposed.

"In general, a Codex Rescriptus is easily known, as it rarely happens that the former writing is so completely erased, as not to exhibit some traces; in a few instances, both writings are legible. Many such manuscripts are preserved in the library of the British Museum. Montfaucon found a manuscript in the Colbert Library, which had been written about the eighth century, and originally contained the works ascribed to St. Dionysius; new matter had been written over it, three or four centuries afterwards, and both continued legible. Muratori saw in the Ambrosian Library a manuscript comprising the works of the venerable Bede, the writing of which was from eight to nine hundred years old, and which had been substituted for another upwards of a thousand years old. Notwithstanding the efforts which had been made to erase the latter, some phrases could be deciphered, which indicated it to be an ancient pontifical. The indefatigable researches of Cardinal Angelo Maï (for some time the principal keeper of the Vatican Library at Rome) have discovered several valuable remains of biblical and classical literature in the Ambrosian Library at Milan."

Among all the codices of the world, four stand preeminent, and of these the CODEX VATICANUS, B (1209), is the greatest.

"CODEX VATICANUS B, 1209, is one of the oldest vellum manuscripts in existence, and is the glory of the great

Vatican Library at Rome. (See plate on opposite page.) This book seems to have been brought into the Vatican Library shortly after its establishment by Pope Nicholas V. who died in 1455, but nothing is known of its previous history.

"The Vatican manuscript is written on parchment or vellum, in uncial or capital letters, in three columns on each page, all of which are of the same size, except at the begining of a book. It is without any divisions of chapters, verses, or words, but with accents and spirits. The shape of the letters, and color of the ink, prove that it was written throughout by one and the same careful copyist. The abbreviations are few, being confined chiefly to those words which are in general abbreviated, such as OC, KC, IC, XC, for Oeos, Kupios, Inσous, XpioTos, God, Lord, Jesus, Christ. Originally this manuscript contained the entire Greek Bible, including both the Old and New Testaments; in which respect it resembles none so much as the Codex Alexandrinus, though no two manuscripts vary more in their readings. The Old Testament wants the first forty-six chapters of Genesis, and thirty-two psalms, viz. from Psal. CV. to CXXXVII. inclusive; and the New Testament wants the latter part of the Epistle to the Hebrews, viz. all after Chapter IX. verse 14, and also Saint Paul's other epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, and the whole Book of Revelation. It appears, however, that this last book, as well as the latter part of the Epistle to the Hebrews, has been supplied by a modern hand in the fifteenth century, and, it is said, from some manuscript that had formerly belonged to Cardinal Bessarion. In many places the faded letters have also been retouched by a modern but careful hand; and when the person who made these amendments (whom Michaelis pronounces to have been a man of learning) found various readings in other manuscripts, he has introduced them into the Codex Vaticanus, but has still preserved the original text; and in some few instances he has ventured to erase with a penknife."

All who have inspected the Codex are loud in the praises of the fine thin vellum, the clear and elegant hand of the first penman, the simplicity of the whole style of the work; capital letters, so frequent in the Codex Alexandrinus, were totally wanting in this document for several centuries. In several of these particulars our manuscript resembles the Herculanean rolls, and thus asserts a just claim to high antiquity, which the absence of the usual divisions into Kepáλaia, of Ammonian sections and Canons of Eusebius, and the substitution in their room of another scheme of chapters

445

KLIECHнonoroc OyToS
ANENAXHпPоCTONON
MÁNTARILY TOYεrÉNE
TOKAIXWPICAY TOYère
με το γλεΕΝΟ ΓΕΓΟΝ
ENAY TÛZWÀÂN KÀIH
ZWHHN TOOŵCKAITO TWAN

NEIKAIHCKOJÍMAYTO

ΟΥ ΚΑΤΕΛΑΣ ΕΓΕΝΕ

ΜΕΝΟΣ ΠΑΡΑΘΥΟΝΟΜΙ
AY TWI WẨNHCOYTOC

NAM

of its own, beyond question tend very powerfully to confirm. Each column contains about forty-two lines, each line from sixteen to eighteen letters, of a size somewhat less than in the Codex Alexandrinus, with no intervals between the words, a space of the breadth of half a letter being left at the end of a sentence, and a little more at the conclusion of a paragraph. It has been doubted whether any of the stops are prima manu, and (contrary to the judgment of Birch and others) the breathings and accents are now generally allowed to have been added by the second hand. This hand, apparently of about the eighth century, retraced, with as much care as such an operation would permit, the faint lines of the original writing (the ink whereof was perhaps never quite black), the remains of which can even now be seen by a keen-sighted reader by the side of the more modern strokes; anxious at the same time to represent a critical revision of the text, the writer left untouched such words or letters as he wished to reject. In these places, where no breathings or accents and scarcely any stops have ever been detected, we have an opportunity of seeing the manuscript in its primitive condition; before it had been tampered with by the later scribe. There are occasional breaks in the continuity of the writing, every descent in the genealogies of our Lord (Matt. I., Luke III.), each of the beatitudes (Matt. V.), and of the parables in Matt. XIII., forming a separate paragraph; but such a case will oftentimes not occur for several consecutive pages. The writer's plan was to proceed steadily with a book until it was finished: then to break off from the column he was writing, and to begin the next book on the very next column. Thus only one column perfectly blank is found in the whole volume, that which follows ¿poßoûvτo yàp in Mark XVI. 8; and since Cod. B is the only one yet known, except Cod. N, that actually omits the last twelve verses of that Gospel, by leaving such a space the scribe has intimated that he was fully aware of their existence, or even found them in the copy from which he wrote. The capital letters at the beginning of each book are likewise due to the corrector, who sometimes erased, sometimes merely touched slightly, the original initial letter, which (as in the Herculanean rolls) is no larger than any other.

These later capitals in blue or red, three-quarters of an inch high, and the broad green bar, surmounted with three red crosses, which habitually stands at the head of a book, are in paint, and by the same second hand."