Le bœuf du prêtre Thêodore, ou la datation du Cod. Barcinonensis 399

Abstract

Cod. 399 of the Central Library in Barcelona (containing Pindar and Theocritus, the latter in Moschopoulos’ recension) bears on the verso of the last folio a note written in a later and nearly illegible hand and ending with a date. This was read by P. Pericay as μην. αυγ. ΄ςωκ΄ (= 1312), which would be a solid terminus ante quem and at the same time would place the MS among the oldest witnesses of the Moschopoulos recension. The correct reading, however, is μην(ὶ) αὐγ [ ]ςω κ´, without any mention of the year. The author offers a transcription and a French translation of the entire note: written by an illiterate person, far from being an elaboration of the text, as Pericay had suggested, is in fact an acknowledgment signed by a certain priest named Theodorus to the effect that he has borrowed the sum of fourteen nomismata from the prior of the monastery of Enkleistra pledging for the repayment of the loan an ox of his. Although the note is of no immediate assistance for the dating of the MS, it gives us a sure indication regarding its provenience: the mention of Enkleistra and the Cypriot dialect in which it is written point to Cyprus; and the note appears to have been written before ca. 1500. As for the date of the MS itself, the bombycine paper pleads for the first half of the 14th century, while the script argues rather for the second.