An Important Greek Manuscript Rediscovered and Redated (Codex

Burdett-Coutts III.42)

Robert Mathiesen

The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 76, No. 1. (Jan., 1983), pp. 131-133.

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 NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS

AN IMPORTANT GREEK MANUSCRIPT REDISCOVERED

AND REDATED (CODEX BURDETT-COUTTS 111.42)*

In 1864 the future Baroness Burdett-Coutts, acting through an

agent, purchased from a dealer at Ioanina in Epeiros a collection of
more than one hundred Greek MSS, which she had transported to Eng-
land in 1870-71. There they were painstakingly examined by the bib-
lical textologist F. H. A. Scrivener, who not only used them extensively
in his own work, but also brought them to the attention of other
scholars.
Among those Burdett-Coutts MSS which Scrivener used most
heavily was codex 111.42, a Euchologion according to the Byzantine
Rite.' In addition to its liturgical and ritual contents, this MS contained
an extensive NT lectionary (ff. 164-2631, which Scrivener used as a
source for his valuable calendar of the NT lections used in the Greek
Orthodox Church. Eventually C. R. Gregory listed it among the lec-
tionaries (as number 315) in his census of Greek NT MSS.
Scrivener generally assigned codex 111.42 to the fourteenth century,
but in one place more cautiously spoke of it as "dating from the four-
teenth or fifteenth ~ e n t u r y . " ~Gregory and his successors have
registered it as a fourteenth-century MS.
It was from Scrivener that C. A. Swainson learned of codex 111.42.
In his influential and historically important edition of the Greek litur-
gies and related texts, he published the liturgies of St. John Chrysos-
tom, St. Basil the Great, and the Presanctified Gifts from this MS (ff.
124-63) in their e n t i r e t ~ Because
.~ of this publication, codex 111.42 is
much better known to liturgiologists than it is (as lectionary 315) to
biblical textologists.
For reasons which he never made entirely clear, Swainson ascribed

'The author would like to express his thanks to Samuel A. Streit, Assistant University
Librarian for Special Collections, who generously allowed the MS to be deposited for
study in the Annmary Brown Memorial.
IF. H. A. Scrivener, A Plain Introduc~ionto the Criticism of the New Testament (3d ed.;
CambridgeILondon, 1883 [1861, 18741) 78 - 86, 235, 296, 304; Adversaria Critica Sacra
(Cambridge, 1893) xvi, xxi-xxv, Ixviii-lxxi.
*Adversaria Critica Sacra, Ixviii-lxix.
-'C. A. Swainson. The Greek Liturgies Chiejiy Jrom Original Authorities (London. 1884)
xxi-xxii, 100- 187.
 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

codex 111.42 to the eleventh century, and because of its presumed date
he gave it a central position in his account of the development of the
Byzantine Rite. It served him, so to speak, as the middle panel in a
textological triptych, connecting the eighth-century text of the oldest
extant MS (codex Vaticanus Barberini graecus 336) with the text of the
earliest sixteenth-century printed editions.
Not many Greek Euchologia of the eleventh and earlier centuries
have survived. There are perhaps two dozen such MSS, about half of
which come from Italy (Magna Graecia) and thus do not quite
represent the main line of development in the history of the Byzantine
Rite. As an eleventh-century MS not of Italian origin, codex Burdett-
Coutts 111.42 would merit the treatment which Swainson gave it.
The true date of the MS is thus a matter of some interest, espe-
cially to liturgiologists. Unfortunately, the MS itself dropped out of
sight when the Burdett-Coutts collection was sold in 1922, so that it
could not be examined with the aid of modern methods in palaeography
and codicology. All that was known was that it had not been acquired
by any of the institutions or dealers who bought substantial parts of the
Burdett-Coutts collection.
One of the very few Greek MSS at Brown University is described in
the Library's card catalogue as a "Greek prayer book, including the
liturgies of St. Chrysostom and St. Basil, n.p., ca. 1400?"4 A brief
examination of this MS is sufficient to reveal that it is the long-lost
codex Burdett-Coutts 111.42: not only do its text, its several colophons,
and its physical form correspond in every particular to the descriptions
of Scrivener and Swainson, but its cover still bears the shelf-number
111.42, and inserted in it are copies of Swainson's description and the
entry for it in the sale catalogue of J. & J. Leighton, Ltd.
The acquisition records kept by the University Library show that
the MS came to Brown University as a part of a collection given in
memory of a former University Librarian, Harry Lyman Koopman.
This collection had been assembled by an alumnus of the University,
Philip D. Sherman, who had served as Professor of English at Oberlin
College, Ohio. Professor Sherman legally gave his collection to Brown
University on 7 February 1925, but retained possession of it until his
death, so that it did not actually come to Brown University until 1957.
Perhaps it was because of their ambiguous status that the MSS in Pro-
fessor Sherman's collection were not registered either under his name
or under the name of Brown University in S. De Ricci and W. J.
Wilson's Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United
States and Canada (New York, 1935 -40).

4Call-number: BX360, A2, 1400, Koopman Collection, MSS

 NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS 133

For the last year the author had been working on a descriptive
catalogue of the medieval MSS held by Brown University, and in this
connection he examined the former codex Burdett-Coutts 111.42 more
closely than he had done b e f ~ r e He
. ~ can now report that the age of the
MS can be determined with considerable certainty, and that even
Scrivener's more cautious dating is too early, to say nothing of
Swainson's dating. The MS is on paper; and the great majority of the
sheets (gatherings 7 - 381, including the sheets with the texts published
by Swainson, exhibit anchor watermarks which belong to V. MoSin's
type It.IV.2.f. As MoSin has shown, watermarks of this type are found
only in Italian paper manufactured between ca. 1550 and ca. 1600.6
Thus the MS cannot have been written before the earlier of these two
dates, and is not likely to have been written much after the later of
them: it is a MS from the second half of the sixteenth century or the
very early seventeenth century, and it is younger than the first printed
editions of the Greek Orthodox E u c h ~ l o g i o n .All
~ results of earlier
liturgical scholarship which depend on Swainson's dating of codex
Burdett-Coutts 111.42 in the eleventh century, or even on his view that
it provides a form of the text intermediate between that of the oldest
MS and that of the early printed editions, must now be reviewed, and
perhaps corrected.

ROBERT MATHIESEN
Brown University

5A full description of the MS may be found in this catalogue, which the author and C.
J. D enning are preparing for publication.
6V. MoSin, Anchor Watermarks (Monuments Chartae Papyraceae Historiam Illustran-
tia 13; Amsterdam, 1973) 50-63, watermarks 1530- 1982.
'Among the Greek Orthodox Euchologia which have been described in detail there is
only o n e which greatly resembles codex Burdett-Coutts 111.42 in its contents: MS 523 in
the collection of the Dionysiou Monastery o n Mt. Athos, described by A. Dmitrievskij,
Opisanie IirurgiFeskix rukopisej, xranjaitiwsja v bibliorekax Pravoslavnago C'osloka. vol. 2:
Euchologia (Kiev, 1901) 963-67. The fact that this closely related MS was written,
according to its colophon, in 1613 may further confirm the ascription of codex 111.42 to
the second half of the sixteenth century o r the very early seventeenth century.