HKB
Testament (N. T. Vatican. Proleg. p. xxi), whereof four are represented in the Roman edition of 1868, with two more which Tischendorf considers as simple points (Acts vii. 13, 14).
Tischendorf says truly enough that something like a history might be written of the futile attempts to collate Cod. B, and a very unprofitable history it would be. The manuscript is first distinctly heard of (for it does not appear to have been used for the Complutensian Polyglott(141)) through Sepulveda, to whose correspondence with Erasmus attention has been seasonably recalled by Tregelles. Writing in 1533, he says, “Est enim Graecum exemplar antiquissimum in Bibliothecâ Vaticanâ, in quo diligentissimè et accuratissimè literis majusculis conscriptum utrumque Testamentum continetur longè diversum a vulgatis exemplaribus”: and, after noticing as a weighty proof of excellence its agreement with the Latin version (multum convenit cum vetere nostrâ translatione) against the common Greek text (vulgatam Graecorum editionem), he furnishes Erasmus with 365 readings as a convincing argument in support of his statements. It would probably be from this list that in his Annotations to the Acts, published in 1535, Erasmus cites the reading καῦδα, ch. xxvii. 16 (“quidam admonent” is the expression he uses), from a Greek codex in the Pontifical Library, since for this reading Cod. B is the only known Greek witness, except a corrector of Cod. א. It seems, however, that he had obtained some account of this manuscript from the Papal Librarian Paul Bombasius as early as 1521 (see Wetstein’s Proleg. N. T., vol. i. p. 23). Lucas Brugensis, who published his Notationes in S. Biblia in 1580, and his Commentary on the Four Gospels (dedicated to Cardinal Bellarmine) in 1606, made known some twenty extracts from Cod. B taken by Werner of Nimeguen; that most imperfect collection being the only source from which Mill and even Wetstein had any acquaintance with the contents of this first-rate document. More indeed might have been gleaned from the Barberini readings gathered in or about 1625 (of which we shall speak in the next section), but their real value and character were not known in the lifetime of Wetstein. In 1698 Lorenzo Alexander Zacagni, Librarian of the Vatican, in his Preface to the Collectanea Monumentorum Veterum Eccles., describes Cod. B, and especially its peculiar division into sections, in a passage cited by Mill (Proleg. § 1480). In 1669 indeed the first real collation of the manuscript with the Aldine edition (1518) had been attempted by Bartolocci, then Librarian of the Vatican; from some accident, however, it was never published, though a transcript under the feigned name of Giulio a Sta. Anastasia yet remains in the Imperial Library of Paris (MSS. Gr. Supplem. 53), where it was first discovered and used by Scholz in 1819, and subsequently by Tischendorf and Muralt, the latter of whom (apparently on but slender grounds) regards it as the best hitherto made; others have declared it to be very imperfect, and quite inferior to those of Bentley and Birch. The collation which bears Bentley’s name (Trin. Coll. B. xvii. 3, in Cephalaeus’ N. T. 1524) was procured about 1720 by his money and the labour of the Abbate Mico, for the purpose of his projected Greek Testament. When he had found out its defects, by means of an examination of the original by his nephew Thomas Bentley in 1726, our great critic engaged the Abbate Rulotta in 1729 for forty scudi (Bentley’s Correspondence, p. 706) to revise Mico’s sheets, and especially to note the changes made by the second hand. Rulotta’s papers came to light in 1855 among the Bentley manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge (B. xvii. 20), and have lately proved of signal value(142); Mico’s were published in 1799 at Oxford, by Henry Ford, Lord Almoner’s Reader in Arabic there (1783-1813), together with some Thebaic fragments of the New Testament, in a volume which (since it was chiefly drawn from Woide’s posthumous papers) he was pleased to call an Appendix to the Codex Alexandrinus. A fourth collation of the Vatican MS. was made about 1780 by Andrew Birch of Copenhagen, and is included in the notes to the first volume of his Greek Testament 1788, or published separately in three volumes which were issued successively 1798 (Acts, Cath. Epp., Paul.), 1800 (Apoc.), and 1801 (Evans). Birch’s collation does not extend to the Gospels of St. Luke and St. John, and on the whole is less full and exact than Mico’s. In 1810, however, when, with the other best treasures of the Vatican, Codex B was at Paris, the celebrated critic J. L. Hug sent forth his treatise “de Antiquitate Vaticani Codicis Commentatio,” and though even he did not perceive the need of a new and full collation when he examined it in 1809, he has the merit of first placing it in the paramount rank it still holds as one of the oldest and most venerable of extant monuments of sacred antiquity. His conclusion respecting its date, that it is not later than the middle of the fourth century, has been acquiesced in with little opposition, though Tischendorf declares rather pithily that he holds this belief “non propter Hugium sed cum Hugio” (Cod. Ephraem. Proleg. p. 19). Some of his reasons, no doubt, are weak enough(143); but the strength of his position depends on an accumulation of minute particulars, against which there seems nothing to set up which would suggest a lower period. On its return to Rome, this volume was no longer available for the free use and reference of critics. In 1843 Tischendorf, after long and anxious expectation during a visit to Rome that lasted some months, obtained a sight of it for two days of three hours each(144). In 1844 Edward de Muralt was admitted to the higher privilege of three days or nine hours enjoyment of this treasure, and on the strength of the favour published an edition of the New Testament, ad fidem codicis principis Vaticani, in 1846. Tregelles, who went to Rome in 1845 for the special purpose of consulting it, was treated even worse. He had forearmed himself (as he fondly imagined) with recommendatory letters from Cardinal Wiseman, and was often allowed to see the manuscript, but hindered from transcribing any of its readings(145).