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standing a word of Arabic, was enabled by his great geometrical skill to state and demonstrate the several propositions from the schemes in the manuscript of the Bodleian.

Versions were also made from the Greek into the Armenian at a very early period, especially of ecclesiastical works. The publication of the Armenian translation of the Chronicon of Eusebius, has been of essential service to history, and has confirmed the criticism of Scaliger respecting the original. The Book of Enoch, first made known to Europe by the translation of the late Archbishop Laurence, shows that something has been already recovered from the Ethiopic: and the Coptic too may yet make us better acquainted with writings hitherto only known to us by the tradition that they once existed.

But it is above all to the Syriac or Aramaic that we may look for the recovery of works lost in the original Greek. This language, which with slight variations prevailed from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates, and from the confines of Arabia and Egypt to Armenia, not only possesses a peculiar interest for us as being that used by our Saviour and his disciples, but also as being the vernacular tongue of many writers who hold a high rank in Grecian literature; whose works therefore can hardly be entirely free from some of the idiomatic expressions of their native land. The New Testament is, as we may naturally expect, full of Aramaisms; and one of the Evangelists is believed, not without good grounds, to have written his Gospel in that tongue. The earliest version of the New Testament is undoubtedly the Syriac; and after the Septuagint, that of the Old Testament also. This is not the place to discuss the question as to the period when those versions were made; but better arguments than occidental scholars have hitherto been willing to admit, support the belief of those branches of the Christian Church which first made use of them, that they touch upon Apostolic times. The work of translating from the Greek into the Syrian was certainly commenced very early. We are told by Eusebius in his account of the Martyrdom of Procopius, A.D. 303, that he had been employed in translating from the Greek into Aramaic. This passage does not indeed occur in the Greek text of the Martyrs of Palestine, as it has come down to us, but it is found both in the Syriac and in the ancient Latin version. Indeed the age of the manuscript itself in which the Syriac translation of the Acts of the Martyrs of Palestine and the Theophania of Eusebius, together with the Recognitions of St. Clement and the treatise of Titus of Bostra against the Manicheans, are found, shows that considerable progress in the work of translation from the Greek into Syriac must have been made as early as about A.D. 400.

Dr.

Dr. Lee has given us in one volume the Syriac text of the Theophania, and in another his own version of it into English-with a preface and notes displaying great and varied erudition. But what we propose at present to consider is not the contents of the book, but its external history; the discovery of a very considerable theological treatise by Eusebius, of which only two or three fragments had been known, must excite a desire to learn what circumstances have at length brought it to light, and what reasons we may consequently have to hope for further acquisitions of a similar nature.

About six years ago the Rev. Henry Tattam, of Bedford, made a journey to Egypt, with a view of collecting MSS. serviceable towards an edition of the Scriptures in Coptic. Besides Coptic treasures, he brought back about fifty volumes of Syriac MSS.some extremely ancient. Dr. Lee says :

'It was in looking over these manuscripts that I had the extreme pleasure of discovering that of which the following work is a translation. . . . . The manuscript containing our work is very neatly written in the Estrangelo or old Church-hand-writing of the Syrians, on very fine and well-prepared skin. It is of the size of large quarto, each folio measuring about 14 inches by 112, and containing three columns, each of the width of 21 inches.'

The Professor then translates a note from one of the margins, which states that the transcript was made at Edessa in Mesopotamia, in the year of our Lord 411. The age of the manuscript therefore, according to this note, the veracity of which there is no ground to question, is 1434 years. At first sight, notwithstanding all our readers have heard of the dryness of the Egyptian climate, the date assigned may startle them; but we can assure them that in the collection of upwards of three hundred manuscripts amongst which this was discovered, there are many from the fifth to the thirteenth century as to which there can be no doubt. They are all noted with the year of the era of the Greeks (Seleucida); some also with that of the Martyrs; others, which are more recent, with that of the Hijrah likewise; and these notices are accompanied by so many particulars as to the scribe himself, as to the convent where each manuscript was transcribed, who was its superior, who its principal officers, who was then bishop of the diocese, and who the supreme patriarch, as to leave no possibility of mistake as to the date. By comparing the style of the handwriting, the nature of the vellum, and other particulars of those manuscripts which are not dated, or in which the note of the year is either erased or lost, with such as still retain the record of the year, we are enabled to decide, with a tolerable degree of certainty, the age even of the manuscripts without a date. There

are

are in the collection one dated manuscript of the fifth and many early in the sixth century, and from comparing Dr. Lee's volume with these, we could not attribute it to a later date than that in which he acquiesces.

The manuscript was purchased by Mr. Tattam from the convent of St. Mary Deipara, in the desert valley of Nitria, situated between 30 and 31 degrees both of latitude and longitude, about 35 miles to the left of the most western branch of the Nile. The name of Nitria belongs properly to the northern part of the valley, where the famous natron lakes are situated; the southern part is more correctly the Valley of Scithis, or Scete, and is also called the Desert or Valley of Macarius, from the convent dedicated to one of the three saints who bore that name. Each of these three appellations may however be applied generally; and Mohammedans commonly call the whole valley Wadi Habib, after one of their own saints, who retired hither about the end of the seventh century.

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This valley, most probably from its lonely situation, and possibly also, as Jerome seems to hint, from some fancied virtues of purification in the lakes themselves, in allusion to the passage of Jeremiah (xi. 22), For though thou wash thee with nitre,' &c., has been celebrated as the resort of ascetics from the earliest times. About the middle of the second century we read of one Fronto who retired thither with seventy brethren. At the beginning of the fourth century, Ammon, who, although there were ascetics before his day, has generally been reputed the originator of monasticism, withdrew from the world to this spot. The fame of his compulsory marriage, of the resolution of virgin purity which he persuaded his bride to adopt, and his retirement to the desert so soon as the death of his parents left him at liberty, gained for him many followers. But a very few years afterwards, Macarius is said to have instituted the first establishment in that part of the valley which to this day bears his name. To this place Arsenius, the preceptor of Arcadius and Honorius, retired upon the death of Theodosius. The number of ascetics increased, in a short time, to an almost incredible amount. Rufinus, who visited them about the year 372, mentions some fifty convents or tabernacula; and Palladius, who fifteen years later passed twelve months here, reckons the devotees at five thousand. Jerome visited this desert about the same period. From the narratives which these have given, with the accounts of Evagrius and Cassien, we may gather a very accurate knowledge of the manners of these monks at the end of the fourth century. Subsequently we have few materials for their history down to the middle of the seventh, when Egypt was taken by the Arabs.

From

From this period the only information is to be gathered from Arabic writers. The convents and their inmates seem to have been regarded with peculiar interest even by those who had embraced the religion of the Koran. Not only were several immunities granted them upon different occasions, but they even formed a favourite subject of poetry for the Moslem writers of the third and fourth century of the Hijrah. Abu'l-Faraj AlIspahani, a celebrated Arabian who died A.D. 967, published the Kitáb al-Diárát, or Book of Convents, which contained all the best poems inspired by the aspect of the Christian convents and the habits of their inmates. If any reliance is to be placed upon Al-Makrizi, in his famous work on the History, Antiquities, and Topography of Egypt, Monasticism must have increased most rapidly in about two hundred and fifty years: for he says that after the conquest of Egypt by Amr Ibn Al-A's, seventy thousand monks met him at Teraneh, each with a crook in his hand, to implore that he would grant them a deed of security. To this request the Arab assented. The number seventy thousand seems enormous; but both the manuscripts which we have consulted agree on this point.

About the end of the seventh century the Khalif imposed a tribute of a dinar each upon all the monks, but they appear to have remained without further molestation during the whole of the eighth century. Shortly after the death of Harún Al-Rashid, at the commencement of the ninth, the Kharigites having seized upon Alexandria, made an excursion also into the Wadi Habib, plundered and burnt the monasteries, and carried away many of the monks for slaves. Such as could escape were scattered abroad into different countries, and many found an asylum in the convents of the Thebaid. With this event the decline of monasticism in Egypt seems to have commenced. We find, however, that under Jacob, the next Patriarch, many of the monks returned to Scete, and some of its convents were rebuilt. In the days of the 52nd Patriarch we are told that they were again in a thriving condition. Under Sanutius, the 55th in succession upon the throne of St. Mark, an order was obtained from the Mohammedan sovereign to liberate their monks from the payment of tribute. The Patriarch, who had been himself formerly steward of the Monastery of Macarius, seized upon this as a favourable opportunity to restore that edifice. He not only completely rebuilt it, but surrounded it with a high wall to protect it against sudden incursions of the Arabs, labouring with his own hands in the work. Elmacin informs us that the Patriarch Gabriel restored some of the convents at the beginning of the tenth century, but does not specify which they were. It seems

probable,

probable, however, that at this period the Syrian convent of St. Mary Deipara, concerning which we are most interested, was in a flourishing state, as we find that in the year 932 Moses of Tecrit, who was then Abbot, having had occasion to make a journey to Bagdad, brought with him upon his return an accession to the library of not less than two hundred and fifty volumesamong which in all probability was the manuscript containing the Theophania.

About a century after this we have mention also of the library of the Monastery of Macarius. Severus, Bishop of Aschmounin, to whom Renaudot is indebted for most of the facts in his work on the Patriarchs of Alexandria, informs us that he consulted for the compilation of his history various MSS. both in Greek and Coptic, then existing in that library. There is little mention in such books as are accessible to us, of the condition of these monasteries during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. We are told that it was a practice of the Patriarchs of Alexandria to visit the Convent of Macarius immediately after their election, and also that they used to pass the season of Lent there.

According to Al-Makrizi, writing at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the number of monasteries had once amounted to a hundred, but at his time they were reduced to seven. That of St. Macarius was still a fine building, but even its inhabitants few, and the other buildings in a ruinous state.

In later times several Europeans have visited these convents. Gassendi relates, in his Life of Peiresc, that a Capuchin monk named Egidius Lochiensis (Giles de Loche), who had resided seven years in Egypt for the purpose of studying oriental languages, informed Peiresc that there existed in several of the monasteries great quantities of manuscripts, and that he himself had seen in one of them a collection of about eight thousand volumes, many of great antiquity, some as old as the time of St. Anthony. This monk had doubtless given a somewhat exaggerated statement. The monastery to which he alludes is, in all probability, that of St. Mary of the Syrians, near the Natron Lakes, as from all the accounts which have reached us, this possessed by far the greatest number of books. Vansleb, during his visit to Egypt in the year 1672, had formed the resolution of making an excursion to the Natron Lakes; and, although frustrated in this design, he did visit the convent of St. Anthony in the desert near the Red Sea. We mention this because he was admitted into the library, which was situated, as is generally the case, in the strong tower where all their valuables are kept. This collection, he says, consisted of three or four chests of ancient Coptic and Arabic manuscripts, chiefly church books and

books

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