A Non-Manuscript of Papias of Hierapolis

Abstract

Uncertainty has attached to a medieval library catalogue entry mentioning Papias cum sermonibus diversis at Stams Abbey. Most recent editors of Papias have suspected that it refers to the medieval lexicographer rather than the second-century Christian author of the same name. This note calls attention to a marginal citation in a Stams manuscript from the lexicographer that helps put to rest the hypothesis of a full Latin manuscript of Papias of Hierapolis.

In 1879, Gustav Bickell published an article in which he called attention to a medieval manuscript catalogue from the year 1341 of the holdings at Stams Abbey, a Cistercian foundation in Tyrol in modern-day Austria.¹ On the basis of a line in that catalogue – Papias cum sermonibus diversis – he hypothesised a full Latin manuscript of the early second-century Christian author Papias of Hierapolis, author of ‘five books on the oracles of the Lord’, otherwise lost except for fragmentary quotations. Bickell was unable to find the manuscript, and some years later, Adolf von Harnack spent a week in the Abbey looking for the manuscript but did not find anything.²

J. B. Lightfoot had already pointed to the possibility of confusing Papias of Hierapolis with the eleventh-century grammarian and lexicographer Papias (sometimes referred to as Papias of Lombardy, though the geographical designation is not secure, and for that matter the name itself might be a pseudonym).³ Otto Bardenhewer suggested that Bickell made precisely this confusion:

Bickell zweifelte nicht daran, daß unter „Papias“ eine lateinische Übersetzung der Erklärungen von Aussprüchen des Herrn zu verstehen sei; ich möchte eher glauben, daß es sich um den lateinischen Grammatiker Papias vom Jahre 1053 gehandelt hat. Von einer lateinischen Übersetzung des alten Papias ist schlechterdings nichts bekannt, abgesen etwa davon, daß Hieronymus sich veranlaßt sah, dem Gerüchte entgegenzutreten, er habe „sanctorum Papiae et Polycarpi volumina“ übersetzt (Ep. 71, ad Lucin., 5).⁴

In his recent magisterial collection of Papias testimonia and fragments, Stephen Carlson agrees and classifies the reference among the spuria (Z4 in his enumeration). As Carlson notes, Bickell argued that the reference to Papias could not have been to the lexicographer because it was bound with theological material and because the dictionary itself would have been too large to bind with other material, but he demonstrates that neither consideration is persuasive. He concludes, ‘Without any other identifying information, then, the probabilities are that an unadorned “Papias” is a reference to the popular dictionary.’⁵ This note calls attention to a piece of information that might supply a bit of ‘adornment’ and tip the balance further in favour of identifying the Papias of the catalogue with the lexicographer rather than the early Christian author.

In a typewritten inventory of the Abbey's manuscripts produced in 1966 but now posted online, the cataloguer, Maurus Grebenc, calls attention to the presence of a marginal note on Codex 31a, fol. 72v (in modern foliation, fol. 79v), which he partially transcribes, which mentions Papias explicitly.⁶ Codex 31a is a manuscript of sermons (described by Grebenc as sermones diversi). A full transcription of the note from the bottom margin reads as follows:

Cristus super Mattheum. Testimonium studiosi agricole est messis fecunda assidui doctoris ecclesia plena negotiatoris multiplex theca. Theca dicitur ab eo quod aliquid receptum tegat.c. littera per.g. posita alii greco nomine thecam uocari asserunt quod ibi reponatur aliquid unde et bybliotheca librorum repositio dicitur ut dicit Papias.⁷

The final sentence here, mentioning Papias, recalls the lexicographer's entry for biblioteca in his Elementarium doctrinae rudimentum: Bibliotecha librorum reconditio: nam bibli libri dicuntur: quia ex biblis quasi iuncis fiebant: ide bibliotecarius repositor librorum.⁸ Papias, in turn, seems to have derived his information at least partially from the Liber glossarum, one of his major sources, which offers as one of its glosses for biblioteca, ‘librorum repositio’, and also cites Isidore, Etym. 6.3, who gives the etymology, ‘Biblio, librorum, Teca, repositio interpraetatur’.⁹

So we have a manuscript of sermons from Stams that has a marginal citation of Papias the lexicographer. The most natural assumption is that a reader based at the Stams monastery used the materials at their disposal, probably a copy of the Elementarium, to comment on the sermon. Although the Stams collection no longer contains a manuscript of Papias’ dictionary, this seems to be relatively clear evidence that it once did. This also makes sense with what we know about the circulation of manuscripts of Papias’ Elementarium in the medieval period. As Violetta de Angelis writes on the basis of her survey of numerous manuscripts of the work,

I numerosi segni di possesso che ancora restano sui codici dell’Elementarium indicano che un libro di questo sfarzo, sovente in due, e persino in tre volumi (Paris. lat. 7610), era accessibile quasi esclusivamente alle comunità monastiche o ai capitoli delle cattedrali e talvolta ai più facoltosi vescovi. Con buona frequenza fra le note di possesso troviamo le abbazie cistercensi e i canonici regolari, ma anche i Domenicani e i Benedettini.¹⁰

Note that she specifically points to the presence of Cistercian abbeys, like Stams, among the types of institutions that had manuscripts of Papias’ Elementarium.

This marginal citation of Papias, therefore, seems to offer confirmation of the judgement of Carlson, et al., that the Stams catalogue refers to the lexicographer rather than the commentator on the oracles of the Lord.