HKB
fresher and clearer of the two. Yet the reasons alleged above, which are quite independent of the appearance of the handwriting, leave scarcely a doubt that Tischendorf’s judgement was correct.
The Roman edition, projected by Vercellone and Cozza under the auspices of Pius IX, was designed to consist of six volumes, four containing the Old Testament, one the New, another being devoted to the notes and discrimination of corrections by later hands. The New Testament appeared in 1868(154), a second volume in 1869, containing the text from Genesis to Joshua; three more have since completed the Old Testament (1870, 1871, 1872). The learned, genial, and modest Vercellone (b. 1814) died early in 1869, so that the later volumes bear on their title-page the mournful inscription “Carolum Vercellone excepit Caietanus Sergio Sodalis Barnabites” as Cozza’s associate. These editors fared but ill whether as Biblical critics or as general scholars, under the rough handling of Tischendorf, whom the wiser policy of Vercellone had kept in good humour, but whose powers his successors greatly undervalued. There seems, however, to be no great cause, in spite of their adversary’s minute diligence in fault-finding (Appendix N. T. Vatic. 1869, p. xi, &c.)(155), for doubting their general correctness, although they persist in placing on the page with the rest of their text readings which are known or credibly stated to be of decidedly later date, in spite of the incongruousness of the mixture of what was original with matter plainly adscititious(156). Thus in the Roman edition αδελφων μου των Matt. xxv. 40, imputed by Tischendorf to B2 and B3, stands in the margin just in the same way as ο γαμος Matt. xxii. 10, which he refers to the first hand. But this is only one instance of a lack of judgement which deforms every page of their performance: e.g. Matt. xix. 12; xxiii. 26; 37; xxv. 16; xxvii. 12; 13; 45; xxviii. 15; Acts xv. 1: all which places exhibit, undistinguished from emendations of the original scribe or his “corrector,” readings in the margin or between the lines which Tischendorf asserts to belong mostly to B3, a few to B2.(157)
At length, after baffling delays only too readily accounted for by the public calamities of the Papal state, the concluding volume of this sumptuous and important work was published late in 1881. Sergius had now retired through failing eyesight, and his place was taken by “Henricus Canonicus Fabiani,” Cozza (who is now Abbot of the Grotta Ferrata at Tusculum near Frascati, the chief seat of the monks of the Greek order of St. Basil) still holding the second place. From the laudatory tone in which the latter is spoken of (p. xiv), it would seem that the Preface was written by his new colleague, who acknowledges the help of U. Ubaldi and the Basilian monk Ant. Rocchi, all three “adjutoribus et administris miratis equidem se tantis viris adjutores et successores datos” (p. xv). This Preface consists of twenty-two pages, and contains almost nothing that is interesting to the critic, much that displays superficial and newly-acquired acquaintance with the whole subject. Fabiani assigns the end of the fourth century as the date of the manuscript, regarding it as only a few years older than the Sinaitic copy(158), whose discovery he hails without a vestige of ungenerous jealousy: “Quorum tale est demum par, ut potius liber Vaticanus gaudere debeat quod tam sui similem invenerit fratrem, quam expavescere quod aemulum” (p. viii). Since that time a splendid edition has been issued of the New Testament in 1889, and the Old in 1890, under the care of the Abbate Cozza-Luzi, in which the whole is beautifully exhibited in photograph: so that all students can now examine for themselves the readings and characteristics of this celebrated manuscript with all but the advantage which is given in an examination of the original vellum itself (Novum Testamentum e Codd. Vat. 1209, &c. Rom. 1889, 4to): and gratitude is due from all textual scholars to the authorities of the Vatican.