apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

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MANUSCRIPTS AND VERSIONS. 11
the very few Greek scholars of his age. Among
his followers were
John of Basingstoke, archdeacon of Leicester, who studied at Athens,
and Nicolas, a prebendary of Lincoln, who was himself a Greek. The
former of these brought back with him from Athens a number of Greek
Mss' ;
the latter is known to have assisted the bishop in translating the
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs^. Among
other Greek works of
which the bishop caused a Latin version to be made were the writings
of the supposed Dionysius the Areopagite^; and, as these writings are
found frequently in mss bound up with the Ignatian Epistles, it
seems not improbable that the latter were imported from Greece in
the same or a companion volume, and translated by these or other
Greek scholars under Grosseteste's direction \ It
may further be
observed, as strengthening this circumstantial evidence, that Grosseteste
left his books to the convent of the Franciscan Order at Oxford', and
that John Tyssington and William Wodeford, who quote these epistles
in the latter years of the fourteenth century, belonged
to this convent".
^
Leland in Tanner Bihl. p. 431; see
the band of scholars who were gathered Tyssington.
Pegge's Life of Grosseteste pp. 15, 67, 345. possible.
5
^
Matthew Paris Chron. Maj. Pegge p. 230 sq.
s. a.
1242 (iv. p. 232, ed. *
Luard) 'Tcstanietita For the quotations see Churton in
Duodecim PatriarcJiartim de Graeco fideli Pearson's Vind. Ign. p.
1 1 1
(comp. p. 90).
interpretatione transtulit in Latinum .
Tyssington cites Stiiyrti. 7 (comp. § 4),
coadjuvante magistro Nicolao Graeco, clerico
Ephes. 20, and RoDi. 7. In the first of
abbatis S. Albani.' John of Basing-
these passages he writes 'Considerate
stoke informed Grosseteste that he had qualiter anthropomorphi, i.e. illi haeretici
seen the book while studying at Athens ;
contrarii sententiae Dei, a commu-
whereupon the bishop sent to Greece nione et oratione sanctorum recedunt,
and procured it; Matthew Paris Chron. propter non confiteri eucharistiam etc,'
Maj. s. a. 1252 (v. p. 285). See also where he combines an expression in § 4
Pegge's Life pp. 163, 289 sq, 345 sq. (rwi' 6i]picov tQv dvOpwrrofjLopcpioi' 'beasts
This version is conveniently accessible in in human form ')
with a passage in § 7,
Fabricius Cod. Pseudepigr. Vet. Test. I. and entirely misapprehends the meaning
p. 519 sq.
of 'anthropomorphi.' The verbal agreements
* See Pegge 1. c. p. 290.
in
Tyssington's quotation leave
*
Funk (Echtheit etc. p. 143) sees so no doubt that he is
citing our version,
much difference in style between the and he refers to the Epistle to the
Version of the Testaments and that of Ephesians as the third in number, which
the Ignatian Epistles, that he hesitates agrees with the order as found here.
to assign the latter to Grosseteste, and At the same time the differences seem
thinks it
may even have been some to show that he is
quoting
it from
centuries earlier. But Ussher probably memory. Wodeford alludes to the same
does not mean more by the attribution to passages, Smyrn. 7 and Pom. 7, but evidently
Grosseteste than that it emanated from
takes his quotations directly
from