THE VATICAN CODEX
Among the numberless objects of interest to be seen in Rome, a very
high place must be assigned to the Codex Vaticanus, probably the
oldest vellum manuscript in existence, and the richest treasure of the
great Vatican Library. This famous manuscript, which Biblical scholars
designate by the letter B, contains the oldest copy of the Septuagint,
and the first Greek version of the New Testament. In addition to the
profound interest which its own intrinsic value has inspired, it has
been invested with a halo of romance seldom associated with dry
palæographical studies--on account of the unreasonable jealousy and
capricious conduct of its guardians. For a long time it was altogether
inaccessible for study to Biblical scholars, and few were allowed even
to see it. These restrictions, however, have now happily to a
considerable extent been removed; and provided with an order, easily
obtained from the Vatican librarian, or from the Prefect of the sacred
palaces, in reply to a polite note, any respectable person is
permitted to inspect it.
The first feeling which one has in the Vatican Library is that of
surprise. You might walk through the Great Hall and adjoining
galleries without suspecting the place to be a library at all; for the
bookcases that line the lower portion of the walls are closed with
panelled doors, painted in arabesque on a ground of white and slate
colour, and surrounded by gilded mouldings, and not a single book is
visible. The vaulted ceiling of the rooms is glowing with gold and
ultramarine; the walls are adorned with beautiful frescoes
representing the different Councils of the Church; and magnificent
tables of polished Oriental granite, and of various precious marbles,
vases of porphyry, malachite, and alabaster, and priceless candelabra
of Sevres china--the gifts of kings and emperors--occupy the spaces
between the pillars and pilasters, and cast their rich shadows on the
gleaming marble pavement. A vast variety of objects of rare beauty,
artistic value, and antique interest arrest the attention, and would
amply reward the study of weeks.
The nucleus of the present magnificent collection of books and
manuscripts was formed in the Lateran Palace in the year 465 by Bishop
Hilary; and, augmented by succeeding pontiffs, the accumulated stores
were transferred in 1450 by Pope Nicholas V., the founder of Glasgow
University, to the Vatican. What Nicholas began was completed by
Sixtus IV. The library was classified according to subjects and
writers, and Demetrius Lucensis, under the direction of Platina, made
a catalogue of it which is still in existence. During this period
Vatican MSS. were lent out to students, as attested by authentic
registers containing the autographs of those who enjoyed the
privilege. A little later the celebrated Vatican printing press was
annexed to the library; and the office of correctors or readers for
the accurate printing of ancient books which were wanting in the
library was instituted. Pope Sixtus V. erected the present splendid
edifice, and used every effort to increase the great collection.
Several valuable accessions were made to it after this date, including
the library of the Elector Palatine of Germany, the library of the
Dukes of Urbino, the libraries of Christina, Queen of Sweden, of the
Ottoboni, commenced by Pope Alexander VIII., and of the Marquis
Capponi, and the MSS. taken from the convent of S. Basilio at Grotta
Ferrata. Under Innocent XIII. in 1721 an attempt was made to prepare
for the press a full catalogue of all the MSS. in every language. It
was edited by Joseph Simon Assemani and Stephen Evodius, and three
volumes were published. But the task was found too great for any one's
strength, and was given up finally on account of the political
disturbances of the time.
The library is a vast unexplored mine of wealth. Unknown literary
treasures are contained in the closed cabinets. Among the thirty
thousand manuscripts may be hid some of the ancient classical and
early Christian treatises, which have been lost for ages, and whose
recovery would excite the profoundest interest throughout the
civilised world. A large number of these manuscripts had once belonged
to the library of the famous Monastery of Bobbio, in the north of
Italy, founded in the year 614 by the Irish St. Columbanus. The Irish
and Scotch monks who inhabited this monastery were in the dark ages
the most zealous collectors of manuscripts in Europe. At the close of
the fifteenth century the convent was impoverished and deserted by its
lawful occupants; and the Benedictine monks who succeeded them gave
away their literary treasures partly to the Ambrosian Library at Milan
and partly to the Vatican Library. Cardinal Angelo Mai, who discovered
more lost works and transcribed more ancient manuscripts than any one
else, found among these treasures in Milan and Rome several most
interesting treatises that had long passed into utter oblivion.
But though permission is freely granted to duly accredited visitors
who may be desirous of consulting manuscripts, the labour of searching
among the huge bewildering piles would be overwhelming, and the
thought of it would at once paralyse effort. There is no proper
catalogue of the printed books; and the list of manuscripts is so
deficient as to be altogether worthless. During six months, from
November till June, the library is open for study every day, except
Thursday and the numerous saints' days, whose recurrence can be
easily ascertained beforehand so as to prevent disappointment. I
cannot imagine a greater privilege to a student. It is the highest
luxury of learning to explore the literary wealth of these princely
apartments, that seem to have a climate of their own, like the great
Basilica close at hand--the climate of eternal spring--and whose
atmosphere breathes the associations of much that is grandest and most
memorable in human history. To the charms of some of the noblest
productions of human genius working by pen, or pencil, or
chisel--adorning roof, and wall, and floor--and vanishing down the
long vista in a bright perspective of beauty--Nature adds her crown of
perfection. For nothing can exceed the loveliness of the views from
the windows of the Papal gardens outside, with their gay flowery
parterres, sparkling fountains, depths of shadowy glades and
half-hidden sculptured forms of rarest beauty; and, beyond, a purple
mountain range, summits old in story, closing up the enchanted vista
through the ruddy stems and deep green foliage of tall stone-pines;
the whole glowing in the brilliant sunshine and the exquisite violet
transparency of the Roman sky. How delightful to spend whole days
there and forget the commonplace present in converse with the master
minds of the ages, and in dreams of the heroic past; the half-closed
shutters and drawn curtains producing a cool and drowsy atmosphere, in
delicious contrast with the broiling sun without! Learning, however,
would be too apt to fall asleep, and be shorn of its strength on the
Delilah lap of such splendid luxury.
A few of the most interesting books and manuscripts are now contained
in two handsome cabinets placed in the centre of the Great Hall of the
library. These cabinets have two cases, an outer and an inner one, and
are carefully double-locked. The librarian opened them for me, and
displayed their contents, which are usually seen only through a thick
plate of protecting glass. In the one cabinet were a manuscript of the
Latin poet Terence, of the fourth and fifth century; the celebrated
palimpsest of Cicero de Republica, concealed under a version of St.
Augustine's Commentary on the Psalms, the oldest Latin manuscript in
existence; the famous Virgil of the fifth century, with the well-known
portrait of Virgil; the Homilies of St. Gregory of Nazianzum; the
folio Hebrew Bible, which was the only thing that Duke Frederico of
Urbino reserved for himself of the spoil at the capture of Volterra in
1472, and for which the Jews in Venice offered its weight in gold; a
sketch of the first three cantos of the Gerusalemme Liberata in the
handwriting of Tasso; a copy of Dante in the handwriting of Boccaccio;
and several of Petrarch's autograph sonnets. In the other cabinet is
the great gem and glory of the Library--the Codex Vaticanus, in
strange association with a number of the love-letters of Henry
VIII. and Anne Boleyn, in French and English. This curious
correspondence--which, after all that subsequently happened between
the English monarch and the Papal Court, we are very much surprised to
see in such a place--is in wonderful preservation. But though
perfectly legible, the archaic form of the characters and the numerous
abbreviations make it extremely difficult to decipher them. The tragic
ending of this most inauspicious love-making invests with a deep
pathos these faded yellow records of it that seem like the cold, gray
ashes of a once glowing fire. In the same cabinet is seen another and
altogether different production of this royal author--namely, the
dedication copy of the "Assertio Septem Sacramentorum adversus
Martinum Luther," written in Latin by Henry VIII. in defence of the
seven Roman Catholic Sacraments against Luther, and sent to Leo X.,
with the original presentation address and royal autograph. The book
is a good thick octavo volume, printed in London, in clear type, on
vellum, with a broad margin. Only two copies are in existence, one in
the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and the other in the Vatican. For this
theological dissertation Henry VIII. received from the Pope the title
of "Defender of the Faith," which has descended to the Protestant
monarchs of England ever since, and is now inscribed on our coinage.
Luther, several of whose manuscripts are in the Library, published a
vigorous reply, in which he treated his royal opponent with scant
ceremony. The author himself had no scruple in setting it aside when
his personal passions were aroused. And Rome has put this inconsistent
book beside the letters to Anne Boleyn, as it were in the pillory here
for the condemnation of the world.
But deeply interesting as were these literary curiosities, I soon
turned from them and became engrossed with the priceless manuscript of
the Greek Scriptures. I had very little time to inspect it, for I was
afraid to exhaust the patience of the librarian. In appearance the
manuscript is a quarto volume bound in red morocco; each of the pages
being about eleven inches long, and the same in breadth. This is the
usual size of the greater number of ancient manuscripts, very few
being in folio or octavo, and in this particular resembling printed
books. Each page has three columns, containing seventeen or eighteen
letters in a line. It is supposed that this arrangement of the writing
was borrowed directly from the most primitive scrolls, whose leaves
were joined together lengthwise, so that their contents always
appeared in parallel columns, as we see in the papyrus rolls that have
recently been discovered. This peculiarity in the two or three
manuscripts which possess it, is regarded as a proof of their very
high antiquity. The writing on almost every page is so clear and
distinct that it can be read with the greatest ease.
What astonishes one most is the admirable preservation of this Codex,
notwithstanding that it must be nearly sixteen hundred years old. It
has quite a fresh and recent look; indeed many manuscripts not fifty
years old look much more ancient. No one, looking at the faded
handwriting of Tasso, Petrarch, and Henry VIII., beside it, would
imagine that they were newer by upwards of twelve hundred years. This
peculiarity it shares in common with the architectural remains of
imperial Rome, which time has dealt so tenderly with that they appear
far more recent than the picturesque ruins of our medieval castles and
abbeys. This singular look of freshness in the Vatican manuscript is
owing to three causes. In the first place, the vellum upon which it is
written is exceedingly fine and close-grained in texture, and
therefore has resisted the dust and discoloration of centuries, just
as the thin and close-grained Roman brick has withstood the ravages of
time. Every one is struck with the wonderful beauty of this vellum,
composed of the delicate skins of very young calves. And this feature
is a further proof of the high antiquity of the Codex, for the oldest
manuscripts are invariably written on the thinnest and whitest vellum,
while those of later ages are written on thick and rough parchment
which speedily became discoloured. In the second place, we have reason
to believe that the manuscript was for many ages almost hermetically
sealed in some forgotten recess of the Lateran and Vatican Libraries,
and thus unconsciously guarded from the attacks of time. In the third
place, a careful scrutiny of the individual lines reveals the curious
fact that the whole manuscript, six or seven centuries after it had
been written, was gone over by a writer, who, finding the letters
faint and yellow, had touched them up with a blacker and more
permanent ink.
It is a strange circumstance that none of the facsimile
representations of the pages of the manuscript that have been
published give a correct idea of the original, with the exception of
that of Dean Burgon in 1871. Not only do the number of lines in a
given space in all the so-called facsimiles differ from that of the
manuscript, but the general character of the letters is widely
different. The importance of seeing the original, therefore, for
purposes of study, is apparent. The uncial letters are very small and
neat, upright and regular, and their breadth is nearly equal to their
height. They are very like those in the manuscript rolls of
Herculaneum. Originally the manuscript had no ornamental initial
letters, marks of punctuation, or accents; a small interval of the
breadth of a letter at the end of particular sections serving as a
simple mode of punctuation. The number of such divisions into sections
is very considerable,--one hundred and seventy occurring in St.
Matthew; sixty-one in St. Mark; one hundred and fifty-two in St. Luke;
and eighty in St. John,--and in this respect the Vatican Codex is
unique. Where these divisions do not occur, the writing is continuous
for several consecutive pages. Thus, while each of the beatitudes,
each of the parables, and each of the series of generations in the
genealogies of our Lord, are marked off into separate paragraphs by
the small empty spaces referred to, there is no break in the text from
the twenty-fourth verse of the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of
St. Matthew to the seventeenth verse of the twentieth chapter. So much
has space been economised, that when the writer finished one book he
began another at the top of the very next column; and throughout the
manuscript there are very few breaks, and only one entire column left
blank. This empty space is very significant; it occurs at the end of
the eighth verse of the sixteenth chapter of St. Mark's Gospel,--thus
omitting altogether the last twelve verses with which we are familiar.
That this was done purposely is evident, for it involved a departure
from the writer's usual method of continuous writing. The blank column
testifies that he knew of the existence of this gap at the end of the
Gospel, but did not know of any thoroughly trustworthy material with
which to fill it up. And acting upon this authority our Revisers have
printed the passage that has been supplied as an appendix, and not as
a portion of the original Gospel of St. Mark. The only attempt at
ornamentation in the Vatican manuscript is found at the end of
Lamentations, Ezekiel, St. John's Gospel, and the Acts of the
Apostles, where "an arabesque column of crossed lines, with dots in
the intersections at the edge," and surmounted by the well-known
monogram of Christ, so frequent in the inscriptions of the Catacombs,
composed of the letter P in a cruciform shape, has been delicately and
skilfully executed by the pen of the scribe. Most of the books have
also brief titles and subscriptions.
Such was the original state of the Codex, but the critic of the ninth
or tenth century already referred to introduced a great many changes.
Not only did he deepen the colour of the ink; he, as Dean Burgon tells
us, also accentuated the words carefully throughout, marking all the
initial vowels with their proper breathings. He also placed instead of
the small initial letter of each book an illuminated capital six times
the size of the original uncial, painted in bright red and blue
colours which have still retained nearly all their old brilliancy. At
the top of the column, whenever a new book commenced, he also placed a
broad bar painted in green, with three little red crosses above it.
Nor was this all; he exercised his critical judgment in revising the
text, and marking his approval or disapproval by certain significant
indications. "What he approved of he touched up anew with ink, and
added the proper accents; what he condemned he left in the faded brown
caligraphy of the original and without accentuation." In this way the
Codex may be called a kind of palimpsest, in which we have some
portions of the original manuscript, and the rest overlaid with the
later revision. We must discriminate carefully between these two
elements; for it is obvious that it is the oldest portion that is most
interesting and suggestive.
The Codex consists of upwards of one thousand five hundred pages, of
which two hundred and eighty-four are assigned to the New Testament.
Originally it contained the whole Bible, and also the Apocrypha and
the Epistle of St. Clement to the Corinthians; which last was so much
esteemed by the early Christians that it was regularly read in the
churches, and bound up with the Scriptures--to which circumstance,
indeed, we are indebted for its preservation to our own time. At
present the greater part of Genesis and a part of the Psalms are
missing from the old Testament; while, in the New Testament, the
Epistle to Philemon, the three Pastoral Epistles, the latter part of
the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Apocalypse, in the original
handwriting, are lost; their place having been supplied, it is said,
in the fifteenth century, from a manuscript belonging to Cardinal
Bessarion. From the evidence of its materials--arrangement and style
of writing--the very high antiquity of this Codex may be inferred. It
is generally supposed to have been written in the beginning of the
fourth century. Vercellone, who edited Cardinal Mai's version of it,
argues, from the remarkable correspondence of its text with that used
by Cyril of Alexandria in his Commentary on St. John, that it must
have been written at Alexandria, where there was a band of remarkably
skilful caligraphists. He believes that it was one of the fifty
manuscript copies of the Holy Scriptures which Eusebius, by order of
the emperor Constantine the Great, got prepared in the year 332 for
the use of the Christian Church in the newly-formed capital of
Constantinople. And a circumstance that seems to corroborate this
opinion is, that the Vatican Codex does not contain, as has already
been mentioned, the last twelve verses of St. Mark's Gospel, a
peculiarity which Eusebius says belongs to the best manuscripts of the
Gospels. On this supposition, the Vatican Codex would be the very
first edition of the Bible that had the seal of a sovereign authority.
But it may be of even older date than the time of Constantine, for its
marginal references do not correspond with the Eusebian canons; and
this fact would seem to imply that it belonged to the third century.
Its only rival in point of antiquity is the famous Sinaitic Codex,
known by the Hebrew letter [Hebrew: alef], discovered in a most
romantic way by Tischendorf in the Convent of St. Catherine on Mount
Sinai. Tischendorf has pronounced a decided opinion, not only that
this manuscript is of the same age as the Vatican one, but that the
Vatican manuscript was written by one of the four writers who, he
infers from internal evidence, must have been employed upon the
Sinaitic Codex. This opinion, however, has been disputed by other
scholars; and it seems improbable, for the Sinaitic Codex has four
columns to the page, whereas the Vatican Codex has only three. Its
uncial letters are also much larger and plainer than those of the
Vatican manuscript; and it has the Ammonian sections and Eusebian
canons written in all probability by the original hand.
There can be little doubt that the Vatican manuscript goes, if not
farther, at least as far back in date as the Council of Nice, and is
the oldest and most valuable of extant monuments of sacred antiquity.
It may have been transcribed directly from some Egyptian papyrus, or
through the medium of only one intervening prototype. Perhaps it was a
single copy saved from the fate of many surrendered to be burned by
the class of Christian renegades called _traditores_, who averted the
martyr's death in the great Diocletian persecution by giving up the
sacred books of their religion to their enemies. For this pagan
emperor endeavoured not only to deprive the Christian Church of its
teachers, like his predecessors, but also to destroy the sacred
writings upon which the faith of the Church was founded, and whose
character and claims were beginning at this time to be generally
recognised. The Alexandrine Codex--which is placed first on the list
of uncial manuscripts, and therefore distinguished by the letter
A--belongs undoubtedly to a more recent time. It is said by tradition
to have been written by a noble Egyptian martyr named Thecla about the
beginning of the fifth century, and was sent as a present to Charles
I. by Cyrillus Lucaris, patriarch of Constantinople, who brought it
from Alexandria. It is now one of the greatest treasures of the
British Museum. The voice of tradition is confirmed by internal
evidence, for it has only two columns in a page, while capital letters
of different sizes abound, and vermilion is frequently introduced--all
marks of the period indicated.
How or when the Codex Vaticanus was brought to the Vatican Library is
a matter that is altogether involved in obscurity. It probably formed
part of the library in the Lateran Palace, which goes nearly as far
back as the time of Constantine, and was transferred along with the
other contents of that library to the Vatican in 1450 by Pope Nicholas
V. We first hear of it distinctly in a letter written to Erasmus in
1533 by Sepulveda; although there is a somewhat obscure reference to
it a few years earlier in the correspondence of the Papal librarian
Bombasius with Erasmus. A Roman edition of the Septuagint portion
based upon the Vatican MS. appeared in 1587. After that period to 1780
it was several times collated; among others, by Bartolocci, the
Vatican librarian; by Bentley, who employed for the purpose the Abbate
Mico and Rulotta; and by Birch of Copenhagen, who travelled under the
auspices of the King of Denmark. Along with many of the best
sculptures and most valuable art-treasures of the Vatican, the
precious Codex was taken to Paris in 1810 by order of Napoleon
Buonaparte, that unscrupulous robber of foreign palaces and churches
for the aggrandisement of his own capital; and while there it was
carefully examined by the celebrated critic, J.L. Hug, who was the
first to determine, from the nature of its materials and its internal
evidence, its very great antiquity. When it was restored, along with
the other spoils of the great Roman Palace, it was sealed up by its
jealous possessors, and could no longer be consulted for critical
purposes. In 1843 Tischendorf could only see it for two days of
three hours each. Tregelles, who went to Rome in 1845 for the
special purpose of consulting the Codex, provided with a
strongly-recommendatory letter of introduction from Cardinal Wiseman,
was only permitted to see it, but not to transcribe any of its
readings. His pockets, as he himself tells us, were searched, and his
pen, ink, and paper taken away, before he was allowed to open it; and
if he looked at a passage too long the manuscript was snatched rudely
from his hands by the two prelates in watchful attendance. When Dean
Alford, in 1861, made use of the manuscript for four days, his labours
of collation were carried on in the face of much opposition from the
librarian, who insisted that the order of Antonelli permitted him only
to see the manuscript, but not to verify passages in it.
The reason alleged to the scholars of Europe for this childish
jealousy was that the authorities of the Vatican were themselves
preparing to publish a thorough collation, and they did not wish the
glory of the achievement to pass away from Rome. Cardinal Mai began,
indeed, to prepare an edition for publication in 1828; but it did not
appear till 1857, three years after the cardinal's death, under the
learned editorship of Vercellone. There was a rumour copied into the
_Edinburgh Review_ from Sir Charles Lyell's work on the United States,
that the cardinal was prevented from publishing his work by Pope
Gregory XVI., on account of its variations from the Vulgate, which had
been solemnly sanctioned by the decrees of the Council of Trent and
the Church's claims to infallibility. It was further asserted that he
finally obtained permission to publish his edition on condition that
he inserted within brackets the celebrated text 1 John v. 7, which was
wanting in the manuscript. Whether this was true or not, it is certain
that what the learned cardinal gave to the world was more an edition,
a critical recension of the text, than a faithful transcript of the
Vatican Codex. Although he had the MS. with him at his residence in
the Palazzo Altieri--a circumstance which gave rise to the belief at
the time that it had disappeared during the French occupation of
Rome--he could only bestow upon the arduous task the scanty leisure
available from more engrossing duties. The work was therefore so
imperfectly done that the cardinal himself was reluctant to publish
it; and the learned and honest Barnabite under whose editorial
auspices it appeared was obliged to append a formidable list of
errata, and to make a gentle apology in his preface for his friend's
inaccuracies. But, with all its defects, the five quarto volumes of
the cardinal's reprint has added largely to our critical knowledge of
the Codex; and it derives a special interest from the circumstance
that it was the first time the Greek Scriptures had ever been
published in Rome.
Since then Tischendorf, during his second visit to the Eternal City,
had an audience of Pope Pius IX., and offered to bring out at his own
expense an edition of the Vatican Codex similar to that which he had
prepared, under the auspices of the Russian emperor, of the Sinaitic
Codex. This request the Pope refused, under the old pretext that he
wished to publish such an edition himself. Tischendorf, however, was
allowed to use the manuscript more freely than on the former occasion;
though several times it was taken away from him, and his labours
interrupted, because of alleged breaches of faith on his part. The
result of this unusual privilege was that the great Textuary has
issued by far the most accurate and satisfactory edition which we
possess at present. Pius IX. carried out his intention of publishing a
Roman edition in five volumes, printed by the famous press of the
Propaganda. The New Testament instalment appeared under the editorship
of Vercellone and Cozza in 1868; but Vercellone dying soon after, the
subsequent volumes were prepared under less able supervision. The
famous manuscript therefore labours under the disadvantage of
uncertainty, there being no guarantee that any reading is really that
of the original. And while the Alexandrine Codex has been reproduced
by photography, and the Sinaitic Codex has been faithfully published,
the exact palæography, or the genuine text as it stands, of the
Vatican Codex is still a desideratum among scholars.
The total disappearance of all manuscripts previous to the Vatican
Codex is a matter of surprise, for it has been calculated on
sufficient evidence that many thousands of copies of the Gospels were
circulated among Christians at the end of the second century. The loss
may be attributed to the fact that the older manuscripts were written
on less enduring materials. Previous to the second century the
principal writing material was paper made of papyrus, a plant found at
one time not only in Egypt, but also in the north of Palestine and
various parts of southern Italy and Sicily, although now almost
extirpated; and we have reason to believe, from one or two incidental
notices in St. John's writings, that it was the material employed by
the apostles themselves. This papyrus paper was of a very perishable
nature, and manuscripts written on it, apart from the wear and tear of
continual use, would succumb to the process of decay in a
comparatively short period. We are indebted for the preservation of
all the papyrus manuscripts that have come down to us from a remote
antiquity to the fact of their having been kept in exceptionally
favourable circumstances, as in the hermetically-sealed interiors of
Egyptian tombs. Those exposed to the air have all disappeared ages
ago. In the second century parchment was brought into common use as a
writing material, and papyrus paper gradually fell into disuse. And
with the change of material the shape of manuscripts was changed; the
ancient form of the papyrus-roll giving place, in manuscripts written
on parchment, to the form of books with leaves. How we should value
the original rolls which contained the handwriting of the evangelists
and apostles! With what profound interest should we gaze upon the
signature and salutation of St. Paul affixed to the Epistles which he
dictated to an amanuensis on account of his defective eyesight! How we
should prize the apostolic autograph of the Epistle to the Galatians,
of which the writer says, "Ye see how large a letter I have written
unto you with mine own hand." What a thrill would pass through us at
the sight of those two pastoral Epistles, at the close of which St.
John says,--"I had many things to write, but I will not with pen and
ink write unto thee"! Our legitimate veneration, however, would be apt
to pass over into idolatrous superstition. We should worship such
precious documents as the early Christians worshipped the relics of
the saints. It was, therefore, a wise providential arrangement that
such a temptation should have been taken out of the way. All the
original manuscripts of the sacred writings disappeared, on account of
the fragile character of their materials, probably in a few years
after the death of the writers, no special care having been taken to
preserve them; and, as Dr. Westcott has remarked, not a single
authentic appeal is made to them in the religious disputes regarding
the exact words of certain passages in the Gospels and Epistles in the
writings of the second century.
But though the Vatican Codex is the oldest manuscript of the New
Testament in existence, it does not follow from that circumstance that
it is the most reliable. Widely different views of its critical value
are entertained by scholars. By some it has been accepted as the most
authoritative of all versions, while others have regarded it as one of
the most corrupt and imperfect. Indeed the conjecture has been
hazarded that the very circumstance of its continued preservation
during so many centuries is a proof that it was an unreliable copy
long laid aside, and therefore exempt from the wear and tear under
which genuine copies of the same date have long ago perished. These
extreme views, however, are unjust. While it is not free from many
gross inaccuracies and faults, it presents upon the whole a very fair
idea of the Greek Vulgate of the early Church, and is worthy of as
much respect at least as any single document in existence. The chief
peculiarity of the Codex is the large number of important omissions in
it; so that, as Dr. Dobbin says, it presents an abbreviated text of
the New Testament. A few of these omissions were wilfully made, while
the large majority were no doubt caused by the carelessness of the
writer in transcribing from the copy before him; for there are several
instances of his having written the same words and clauses twice over.
On the supposition of the MS. being one of the fifty prepared at
Constantine's order, the extreme haste with which such a task would be
executed would account for the multitude of clerical errors. Besides
the last verses of the Gospel of St. Mark already alluded to, and no
less than three hundred and sixty-four other omissions in the same
Gospel of greater or less moment, the doxology at the end of the
Lord's Prayer, in Matthew vi. 13, is wanting; as also the description
of the agony of the Saviour and the help of the angel in Luke xxii.
43, 44; the important clause, "For he was before me," in John i. 27;
the miraculous troubling of the water in the Pool of Bethesda in John
v. 3, 4; the narrative of the adulterous woman in John vii. 53 to
viii. 11; the question of Philip and the answer of the Ethiopian
eunuch in Acts viii. 37; the significant and affecting incidents in
Paul's conversion mentioned in Acts ix. 5, 6; and the well-known
disputed text of the _Three witnesses in Heaven_, in 1 John v. 7.
These omitted passages, which, from internal evidence, apart from the
external testimony of the largest number of critical documents, we
must acknowledge to be genuine, are the most serious of the lacunæ,
amounting altogether to the extraordinary number of two thousand four
hundred and fifty-six. They give the document a very distinctive
character; while even the less striking disappearances from the text,
which can only be apprehended on a close collation, more or less
affect the sense. German critics have stamped several of these
omissions with their approbation, especially those referring to the
supernatural, owing to their well-known repugnance to the miraculous
element in Scripture.
There are other peculiarities of the Codex which greatly interested me;
but the discussion of them would require me to go too much into critical
details. I must mention, however, the occasional use in the manuscript
of a Latinised orthography. The name of Silvanus, for instance,
mentioned in 1 Peter v. 12, is rendered into the Latinised Greek
_Silbanou_, instead of Silouanou, the common Greek form; and in 2 Peter
iii. 10, instead of the last word of the verse, _katakaêsetai_, "shall
be burned up," occurs the singular word _eurethesetai_,--which means,
"shall be found." The Syriac and one Egyptian version have the reading
"shall not be found"; and either the "not" was accidentally omitted when
the Vatican Codex was copied from an earlier exemplar that had that
reading, or the writer had some confused idea of the Latin word
_urerentur_, "shall be burnt up," in his mind, and adopted the word
_eurethesetai_ from its resemblance to it--as a Latin root with a Greek
inflection. Some curious examples of Latin forms and constructions might
be given; and this circumstance has led to the hypothesis that the
origin of the Vatican manuscript might, after all, have been Italian,
and not Alexandrian as is commonly supposed. The Codex has also been
accused of theological bias; for in John i. 18, "only begotten God" is
substituted for "only begotten Son." This is considered by some to be a
reference to the polemics of the fourth century regarding the Arian
doctrines; although this supposition would make it of later date. The
order of the books of the New Testament in the Codex is different from
that with which we are familiar. The Catholic Epistles from James to
Jude follow the Acts, according to the order of the ancient Greek
Church; then come the Pauline Epistles; and the Epistle to the Hebrews
comes in between the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians and First
Timothy. Its sections, however, are numbered as if it had originally
been placed between the Epistles to the Galatians and Ephesians; thus
showing that this was the arrangement in the older document from which
the Codex was copied. One of the Moscow manuscripts, it may be
mentioned in connection with this novelty in location, places the
Epistle to the Hebrews in a position as abnormal as in the Vatican
manuscript--namely, before the Epistle to the Romans.
In the formation of the Received Text of our New Testament, the
Vatican manuscript was not employed. The basis of the early printed
editions--the Elzevir and those of Robert Stephens the celebrated
Parisian printer--was the Greek New Testament of Erasmus, published in
1516, compiled with the aid of such manuscripts as he found at Basle,
and the Complutensian Polyglot--so called after Complutum, the modern
Alcala, in Spain, where it was printed in 1522, under the patronage of
Cardinal Ximenes, whose text was said to have been formed from
manuscripts sent from the Papal Library at Rome--the Vatican Codex
certainly not being among the number, as abundantly appears from
internal evidence. But though the Vatican manuscript was not employed
in the construction of our Authorised Version, it has recently been
used as the chief authority by the New Testament Revisers. Drs.
Westcott and Hort have built up their Greek text with special
deferential regard to it; and this exclusive devotion has been
severely condemned by several critics, such as Dean Burgon, who regard
it as an endeavour to balance a pyramid upon its apex. But apart from
the contradictory views of such textuaries, there can be no doubt that
the Vatican Codex has been of the greatest service in these later days
in correcting the Authorised Version, and helping to restore the
sacred text as nearly as possible to the purity of the original
autographs. And it has added its most valuable testimony to that of
the many other ancient manuscripts of the Sacred Writings in
existence, that, notwithstanding unimportant variations of readings
naturally caused by the great multiplication of copies, the sacred
text from the time when it first appeared to the present has been
preserved substantially uncorrupt; so that we have the same divine
truth presented to us that was presented to the Christians of the
ages immediately succeeding the time of the apostles.
With all these remarkable associations and points of interest
connected with the Vatican manuscript, it is not to be wondered at
that I should gaze upon it with a species of veneration. It
transported me in imagination to a period when the canon of the New
Testament was as yet in a state of flux. The evidence of the
Muratorian fragment in the Ambrosian Library at Milan shows to us that
the separate books of the New Testament had indeed been collected into
one; and a belief in their Divine inspiration equally with the Old
Testament Scriptures had begun to be entertained. But there was as yet
no prevailing unanimity of opinion as to what books should be admitted
into the Canon and what books should be excluded. No formal attempt
had as yet been made to reconcile conflicting testimonies; or, if
made, the recensions undertaken did not meet with general acceptance.
Even a good many years afterwards, as late as at the Council of
Laodicea in 361, doubts were still expressed as to the claims of the
Apocalypse to canonicity. This book was not originally included in the
Vatican Codex; for the manuscript copy of it bound up in the volume is
of much later date, and in a different handwriting. And this
hesitation regarding the full recognition of certain books, proves the
great care that was exercised, and the deep sense of responsibility
that was felt, in the collection of the other books. The formation of
the sacred Canon was done gradually and imperceptibly; but the result
to every thoughtful mind is more suggestive of the inspiration of that
Spirit whose operation is like the wind that bloweth where it listeth,
and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it
cometh and whither it goeth--than if the process had been more formal
and conspicuous.