A New Leaf Found at the University of Pennsylvania
from the
“Kurdian/Chicago New Testament Praxapostolos[?]
in Old Armenian”

The “Find-Place” of this Fragment
is a Surprise
also for Our Research on “Otto Ege Manuscripts”

[In our series of blogposts on Manuscript Studies, Mildred Budny (see Her Page) reports the unexpected discovery of another leaf from the same dismembered manuscript with portions of the New Testament in Old Armenian featured in an earlier blogpost, published on 28 September 2015, with an illustrated Report available for download.  Now we prepare for an updated, downloadable Report by describing the New Find and its location.]

Cover for “Two Detached Manuscript Leaves containing New Testament Texts in Old Armenian” (2015).

First the Report So Far. As part of the process of exhibiting images from manuscripts, documents, and other written materials — for example in our Galleries of Scripts on Parade and Texts on Parade, and in our Reports on Manuscript Studies — we offered a Report on ‘Two Detached Manuscript Leaves containing New Testament Texts in Old Armenian’ by our Associate, Leslie J. French.  The Report focuses upon the evidence of some New Leaves (as they came into our view), considering their materials, layout, text, apparatus, and language, with reference to the knowable features of other remnants of the manuscript, particularly the Chicago Leaf, and some relatives among other representatives of New Testament texts in Old Armenian written in bolorgir script and accompanied in the margins by the Euthalian apparatus.

The Report booklet is available for download in 2 versions. They respect options for printing which might be available to you.

• ArmenianPages set out in individual letter-sized (or quarto) pages

• ArmenianBooklet laid out on 11″ × 17″ sheets for folding into a 20-page booklet in consecutive reading order

Specifically for that Report, Armenian characters in both lower case and upper case were added to the multi-lingual digital font Bembino of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence.  For information about the font and its current version, free for download and use, see Bembino.  A booklet demonstrates specimens in multiple languages, Armenian included, of the appearance on the page of Multi-Lingual Bembino.

Booklet ‘On Demand’

Folio Ir of Armenian New Testament fragment. Acts of the Apostles

This Report is available below for download as PDF. In the form of a booklet, it presents its materials laid out in the official font of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, Bembino, a multilingual digital font (which you see on this website), and in accordance with the principles of our Style Manifesto. Such an approach resembles the presentation of our Newsletter ShelfMarks in booklet form, likewise available freely for download — as are the Style Manifesto and the descriptive booklet, with specimens, for Bembino. The font itself is also FREE for download here (now in Version 1.3).

The Report examines and illustrates two detached leaves in Old Armenian which came to our attention when preparing their presentation among other specimens in various languages in our Gallery of Scripts on Parade. Then, identifying the passages of text and the elements of textual apparatus on the leaves proceeded hand in hand with an exploration of the available evidence, or records, for other parts of the same manuscript dispersed in several collections. Designing Armenian characters, lowercase and uppercase, for Bembino (in its next version, still in progress, responding to requests) allowed for the collation of the texts in full, as an aid to decipherment for readers who may be unfamiliar with the language or the medieval script forms. And so the booklet took shape.

The Manuscript in Question

These leaves, now in several collections, both private and institutional, preserve parts of dismembered manuscript in Old Armenian written in bolorgir minuscule script of the 15th or 16th century CE. The remnants contain parts of the New Testament (some observers say a Lectionary), plus a Prayer (or its opening line) and a Scribal Colophon (of unknown contents), now dispersed in parts among several collections worldwide.

Specimens in Our First Report

Those specimens include “Folio I” (now in a private collection), showcased in our first blogpost, along with “Folio II” and some siblings.  Of its animal skin, Folio I places the flesh side on the recto and the hair side on the verso.  The “peppered” aspect of the verso shows the partly “shorn” follicles of black hairs on the hair side.

Folio I v of Armenian New Testament fragment. Acts of the Apostles

The New Find-Place:  Who Knew?

And now the New Discovery.  Welcome to the Philadelphia Set of Otto Ege’s Portfolio Album, in its Deluxe Edition, of Original Leaves from Famous Bibles in Nine Centuries.

When you or I order that specific Album for consultation here is how it arrives.   (P.S.  Permission is granted to reproduce our own scholarly photographs, through the enlightened policy for the collection.  Thanks!)

The Portfolio Cover, Front & Center

University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Special Collections, Portfolio Bible 1 (Catalogue ID 6035076), Album Front Cover. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

To sum up its situation:  It’s Complicated.  Interesting, too.  Here is where some background knowledge, integrating all sorts of bits and pieces of information. from here and there, turns out to be very useful indeed.

Be it noted:  Keep On Looking.  The More, The Better.  A Corollary:  You Never Know When The Bits & Piece of Knowledge Turn Out To Be Useful.  Here is a great story.  Who’d have guessed?  Not Me!  However, I’m glad to be Here.

We have already had occasion to consider some different Sets and the several Editions of this Portfolio, while on the Quest to locate and to examine dispersed leaves from “Otto Ege Manuscript 61”, one way or another — that is, in person or via photographs, when they emerge.  Here is a sample page, which took center stage in our first blogpost on that dismembered manuscript, with a follow-up reporting More Discoveries for “Otto Ege Manuscript 61”.

Ezekiel Leaf verso. The Leaf in My Conservation Studio.

The Newer Leaf

And here is the leaf from the Old Armenian manuscript added by the bookseller, together with his/their explanatory typescript slip, added as an unrecorded extra to the Portfolio Set at the University of Pennsylvania:

Matching the Paperclip Rust-Marks, Even After the Offending Paperclip Had Been Removed.

Who Knew?

Opening the clam-shell Album, here is what greets us.  Not only the usual stack of Leaf Specimens for the Ege Portfolio itself.  There is More.  A Manila Folder with Extras awaits.

First, the typescript sheet, annotated in pencil, listing the Contents of the Portfolio.  Its signed annotations, dated “12/18/96”, record the reason (“for patron request”) for their existence.  Some or One of the larger-format Extras peep out behind.  Folio CXII from the Nurenberg Chronicle foremost.   (More about that book and its relation to our quest below.)

University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Special Collections, Portfolio Bible 1 (Catalogue ID 6035076), Assembly of Extras at the top of the Stack. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

Moving beyond the Typescript Sheet and opening the Manilla Folder, there emerge a set of disparate leaves starting with the sales receipt for the Portfolio itself.

University of Pennsylvania Libraries. “Extras” within the Manilla Folder at the top of the Stack. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

Receipt from Dawson’s Book Shop, Los Angeles

Here, dated 4/24/37, to a customer in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia.

Dawson’s “Armenian Leaf” for Philadelphia

Recto and Verso

Dawson’s “Armenian Leaf” Recto

Dawson’s “Armenian Leaf”, Verso

The text on the leaf begins with Epistle I to the Corinthians 3:6.

In the outer margin, against the text of 1 Corinthians 3:18, there is  marginal annotation:

ատտիկ
եցիէկա
նոնս

Bits Already Known

First, a description of the nature and context of the leaves sets the stage for the Report, which speaks for itself, images included. There the images are reproduced at larger scale.

Acts of the Apostles
From within Acts 23:1 to within 23:19

Older “New Leaf” I

Leaf I recto

Leaf I verso

The two detached leaves, now in a private collection, came from a dismembered manuscript in Old Armenian written in bolorgir minuscule script of the 15th or 16th century CE. The remnants of its former manuscript contain parts of the New Testament (some say a Lectionary), plus a Prayer (or its opening line) and a Colophon (of unknown contents), now dispersed in parts among several collections worldwide.

These 2 New Leaves were purchased from different sellers (both based in the United States), as parts of a manuscript dismembered at an earlier stage. That they belong to the same manuscript is undeniable on account of the similarities of layout, script, and other features. Within the manuscript, they stood at a distance of some leaves from each other — a number yet to be determined.

Measuring circa 100 × 137mm (with a written area of circa 69 × 100mm), the leaves have double columns of 26 lines (with a run-over into a 27th centered line in one column). The text is written in black ink, with elements in metallic red pigment (partly oxidized) and bright vegetal red pigment. Each leaf begins abruptly within the passage of text.

We show both recto and verso of the 2 New Leaves, newly identified as containing respectively portions of the Acts of the Apostles and Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, with the Euthalian Apparatus. This set of cross-references, devised apparently by Euthalius (active sometime between the 4th and 7th centuries CE), divides the text into chapters and verses, along with a system of cross-references, or testimonia, linking passages in the New Testament to Old Testament readings. The Report demonstrates the system in action.

The leaves also have a few corrections, as well as a set of textual apparatus and cross-references.

Simple embellishment appears in the contrast between the black ink of the text and marginalia and the red pigments of the the rubricated elements.

Note the use of not one, but two types of red pigment. Opening initials, enlarged and mostly inset within the columns, are rendered in metallic red pigment, which has partly oxidized over time, with blackened bits. Some first lines of sections (Leaf I recto, column a and verso, column a) and the segmented section-ending markers (Leaf II verso, columns a and b) are written in vegetal red pigment, which remains bright. The vegetal pigment (on that same verso) sometimes overtraces the ink punctuation, and sometimes supplies the punctuation itself.

Simple effects, and effective.

Detail of verso of New Leaf I, with Acts 23:12 and notation in the margin for ‘Chapter 34’.

Known Remnants

Other leaves from the manuscript are known.  Let us say that the order of the different Books of the New Testament followed this sequence (until better information comes forward).

I. Acts of the Apostles

Acts 4:26b – 5:11, plus a ‘prayer’

MS 773 (detached leaf), known as the ‘Ananias Fragment’
Goodspeed Manuscript Collection at the University of Chicago
Reproduced with permission

Goodspeed Manuscript Collection, MS773-1, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Goodspeed Manuscript Collection, MS773-2, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

The Prayer

Bottom of the verso, with the conclusion of Acts 5:11 and the prayer ‘O Lord forgive my sins’. Detail of Goodspeed Manuscript Collection MS 773-2, Special Collections Center, University of Chicago Library. Reproduced by permission

Acts 23:1 to within 23:19

“New Leaf I”

Leaf I recto

Leaf I Verso

Acts 24:5–25

Los Angeles, California, Philosophical Research Library, MS Arm. 3
described in Avedis K. Sanjian, A Catalogue of Medieval Armenian Manuscripts in the United States (1976), page 65.

[We have not yet had the chance to have information about, or photographs of, this leaf.]

II.  Epistles of Paul

IIa.  Epistle to the Romans

From within Romans 15:23 to the end of 16:23

“New Leaf II”

Leaf II recto

Leaf II verso

III. Catholic Epistles

A larger portion formerly resided in the collection of Armenian manuscripts of Harry Kurdian (1902‒1976) of Witchita, Kansas.  Now it is presumably in Venice, Mekhitarian Monastery of San Lazzaro, which received his manuscripts following his death. As described while still in Kurdian’s collection by Allen Wikgren (December 1945), page 533, their fragmented texts form several groups, with leaves missing between each of them (folios 1–7, 8–9, 10–11, 12–15 in the Epistles) and between them and the scribal colophon (folio 16r).

For now, we use Witgren’s description as a focus point, deserving of close study.   (Standard Practice for most of the research work for dismembered manuscripts cast into American and other collections.  See our blogposts.)  Until it might become possible to see this portion, whether in person or in photographic representations, we regard Wikgren’s description as a primary witness.

The 16 leaves, partly continuous, are reported to contain parts of the Catholic Epistles. That is, they contain parts of James, I and II Peter, I–III John and Jude, plus a scribal colophon.

Section I

Folios 1r–7v
James 1:21 – I Peter 5:2

(1 folio missing)

Section II

Folios 8r–9v
II Peter 1:9 – 3:1

(1 folio missing)

Section III

Folios 10r–10v
I John 1:1 – 3:6

(1 folio missing)

Section IV

Folios 12r–15v
I John 4:3 – Jude 1:15

[Missing? Jude 1:15 – 25
Or in a different section?]

Section V

Folio 16r

[Here instead? Jude 1:15 – 25]

Scribal Colophon (presence recorded by Witgren; its text as yet unknown)

Plus the Binding

Tantalizingly, the description by Witgren mentions the scribal colophon but does not relate its contents.  He records the presence (but not the form or locations) of ‘Quire signatures’.  He observes ‘some red ornamental illumination in margins’ (ditto).  He mentions the presence of the/a binding with ‘covers of wooden boards covered by brown leather with hand tooled ornamentation’, as well as the 2 reused vellum front endleaves from an ‘early Latin commentary on part of II Samuel 9–10’.

Wish we knew more.  Well might we wonder about that ‘early Latin commentary’, what Wigren meant by ‘early’, and what form those reused leaves retained of their original span.

The Newer Leaf Reviewed

Matching the Paperclip Rust-Marks With the Label, Even After the Offending Paperclip Has Been Removed.

Detective Works

Remember the first set of leaves which aroused our attention, featured in our first blogpost and Booklet?  Come to think of it, they also carry some tell-tale rust-marks characteristic of such proximity to a metal paper clip (now removed and lost, albeit not without trace).  Now we might, with a reasonable degree of confidence, observe that those marks may well point to a point of transmission through Dawson’s.  Further research may illuminate more of those habits, as a clue and cue toward discerning the provenance of some — or perchance all — of the dispersed leaves.

Leaf II verso

If you think that these are small and seemingly insignificant details, you are right.  Except about the insignificance.  Such clues, earnestly observed and keenly pursued, may be more readily familiar to all of us when arising in forensics and detective work pertaining to other spheres, crimes included.  Such clues, wherever they appear, once understood in their own right, may provide the keys to discerning or deciphering steps in the unwritten, or mute, history of the monument — which can thereby become eloquent.

A Note on Red Ornamentation

Without assuming that this would have been the form of red ornamentation in the margins of the Kurdian Fragment, we might observe the foliate embellishment in a manuscript, also in the Goodspeed Manuscript Collection, MS 229, which offers useful comparisons also in other ways for its coverage of the portions of text represented by both the Ananias Fragment and the New Leaves.

More information about these comparisons appears in the Booklet, while the detail here exhibits a form of such a kind of marginal decor, which functions as a lively, undulating frame for the corresponding Passage reference, as a complement to the decorative opening initial in the text.

Detail of folio 46 verso from Acts 23 of Goodspeed Manuscript Collection MS 229-98, Special Collections Center, University of Chicago Library. Photograph reproduced by permission

Plus a Binding and a Pair of Reused Latin Endleaves

One might wish to know more about these various features, while taking note of their existence. For example, it is difficult to know at a distance whether the reported binding was an original part of the production of the manuscript, a later addition, or a composite structure of several dates, with repairs and/or additions, including perhaps the reused front endleaves from a different discarded book.

Among the range of extant bindings for Armenian manuscripts at such a date or later which employ brown leather with hand-tooled patterns, usually plus flap at the lower cover to enable a box-like cover, some examples — particularly for Gospel manuscripts — are described and illustrated here, with further directions for exploration. For comparison and context, we could note that Goodspeed Manuscript 229, comparable also in other ways, retains not only its 257 leaves of the New Testament, plus colophons, but also its brown-leather-covered binding with fairly simple decoration, shown online at both front and back. In the case of that manuscript, the several colophons and prayers cumulatively record the place of origin of the transcription, the nature of the exemplar, and the names of the scribe, his teacher, and the priest who commissioned the volume. Such features in full show what the dismembered manuscript represented only by dispersed fragments may have had to lose.

We should not stop there. Recognizing that, say, to an Armenian manuscript specialist, an ‘early’ Latin biblical commentary for part of the Old Testament might mean almost anything in terms of date, particularly without an identification of its script and layout to offer some specifics, we may wistfully register awareness of a possible clue which that pair of reused endleaves — whether as a bifolium or separate leaves — might offer toward deciphering something more of the history and travels of the volume. Not to mention the possible significance for the transmission of biblical commentaries in the Latin tradition, including into other linguistic realms, even if simply as some accessible binding material for another text.

Excerpts & Left-Overs

London, Wellcome Library, MS Armenian Manuscript 1, folio 120v. Image @ Wellcome Library, London. Via Creative Commons.

Perhaps the imposition of the ‘lacunae’ among the groups of consecutive leaves in the Kurdian Fragment involved the extraction of desirable leaves with heightened decoration or illumination. The observation therein of ‘some red ornamental illumination in the margins’ does not give much to go on. Examples of decoration in New Testament manuscripts written in bolorgir minuscule script include the Gospel manuscript of 1495 in the Wellcome Library, London: MS Armenian Manuscript 1, shown here within the Gospel of Luke (at Chapter 5:7–14).

Some other cases of New Testament or Gospel manuscripts in bolorgir script involve much more elaborate decoration and illustration, with ornamental initials, historiated scenes, frontispieces, canon arcades, and more. An example viewable online (only for some high points in terms of the ‘art’) is the Gospel Book now at the Morgan Museum and Library, MS M 749, dated 1461 CE. But there is no evidence in sight that the dismembered manuscript represented by the Remnants in the Los Angeles Leaf / New Leaf I / Chicago Goodspeed Leaf / New Leaf II / Kurdian Leaves attained anything approaching such heights of splendor.

Instead, its isolated Remnants, as illustrated by the 2 New Leaves and the Chicago Leaf, resemble the mostly “plain” detached leaf of New Testament text in bolorgir script, with restrained red-and-black layout of text and initials, now part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As Accession Number 2009.65, it can be viewed online (its text, we know, extends from within 2 Timothy 2:10 to the middle of 2 Timothy 2:20, and continues on the verso directly thence to the middle of 2 Timothy 3:5, with large red initials beginning Verses 11 and 14 on the former and Chapter 3 on the latter).

Gaps

The amounts of text missing from between the groups of leaves in the Kurdian Fragment — which, as described in the Report, comprise respectively 7, 2, 2, and 5 consecutive leaves, before the last leaf with the colophon — apparently indicate the losses of single leaves (designated with an asterisk, as ‘*1’) between those groups (7 + *1 + 2 + *1 +2 + *1 + 5), and an unknown number between them and the colophon, and between them and the preceding parts. Among those single leaves were the openings respectively of II Peter, I John, and I John 4.

Perhaps embellishments of some kind(s) for the openings of such Books rendered their leaves attractive for and susceptible to extraction. No openings of the biblical Books appear to survive for this manuscript. Maybe there is a reason for that. As in, take the ‘good’ parts, discard the rest. But without more precise evidence, this form of guesswork is exactly that.

The Report

The Report itself focuses upon the evidence of the New Leaves in particular, considering their materials, layout, text, apparatus, and language, with reference to the known (or knowable) features of other remnants of the manuscript, particularly the Chicago Leaf, and some relatives among other representatives of New Testament texts in Old Armenian in bolorgir script with Euthalian apparatus.

The Report booklet is available for download in 2 versions. Aware of the logistics available (or not), we thoughtfully offer options for printing which might be available to you.

• ArmenianPages set out in individual letter-sized (or quarto) pages

• ArmenianBooklet laid out on 11″ × 17″ sheets for folding into a 20-page booklet in consecutive reading order

For this Report, Armenian characters in both lower case and upper case have been added to the next version (still in progress) of the multilingual digital font Bembino of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence. For information about the font and its current version, FREE for download and use, see Bembino.  We welcome your feedback, suggestions, questions, and recommendations for this font. #YourRequestsFocusTheDesigns.  #LetUsKnow. #ContactUs.

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We thank the owner of the New Leaves for permission to study and publish them. We also thank the staff and Director of the Special Collections Research Center, The University of Chicago Library, for permission to reproduce materials in the Edgar J. Goodspeed Manuscript Collection both in the booklet and here. Thanks are happily recorded to both Christine Colburn and Daniel Meyer for their help in responding to that request regarding the Goodspeed Manuscript Collection.

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Please let us know of other leaves from the manuscript. We welcome suggestions and improvements.

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