Alchemy and Exegesis from Antioch to Constantinople, 11Th Century By
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Matter Redeemed: Alchemy and Exegesis from Antioch to Constantinople, 11th century by Alexandre Mattos Roberts A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Maria Mavroudi, Chair Professor Susanna Elm Professor Asad Ahmed Professor Michael Cooperson Spring 2015 © 2015 by Alexandre M. Roberts Abstract Matter Redeemed: Alchemy and Exegesis from Antioch to Constantinople, 11th century by Alexandre Mattos Roberts Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Maria Mavroudi, Chair This dissertation examines how scholars in eleventh-century Constantinople and Antioch (un- der Byzantine rule, 969-1084) understood matter and its transformation. It argues that matter, a concept inherited from ancient philosophy, continued to be a fertile and malleable idea-complex endowed with cultural and religious meaning in medieval thought-worlds of the Eastern Mediter- ranean. The first three chapters form a case study on the unpublished Arabic translations oflatean- tique Christian texts by the 11th-century Byzantine Orthodox deacon ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Faḍl of An- tioch (fl. c.1052). They proceed by increasing specificity: chapter 1 surveys Ibn al-Faḍl’s Greek- to-Arabic translations; chapter 2 turns to one of these translations, of a famous and highly influ- ential commentary on the first chapter of the Book of Genesis by Basil of Caesarea (c.330–?379), his Homilies on the Hexaemeron; and chapter 3 reads Ibn al-Faḍl’s marginalia to his translation of Basil’s Hexaemeron. Together, they provide insight into a culturally Byzantine milieu in which the primary language of communication was Arabic, exploring how intellectuals in that context understood matter, where this understanding came from, and why it resonated in this cityatthe edge of the empire. A second case study, on Byzantine alchemy, is the subject of chapter 4, which focuses on the earliest extant Greek alchemical manuscript (10th/11th century). It argues that this manuscript can be a rich source not only for ancient alchemy but also for its Byzantine reception and ap- preciation. Just as translation reshapes and repackages an ancient work for new contexts, so too this manuscript’s transmission and compilation sheds light on how alchemical texts ranging in date from late antiquity (and perhaps earlier) to the ninth century (and perhaps later) were read, understood, and repurposed in the middle Byzantine period in the empire’s capital. 1 Contents Contents i List of Tables ii List of Figures ii Acknowledgments iii Introduction 1 1 The Translation Program of a Christian Deacon of Byzantine Antioch 11 I A Sage and Deacon of Antioch ............................. 14 II The Translations ..................................... 18 III Motivation and Purpose of the Translation Program . 55 IV Matter in an Antiochian Curriculum .......................... 66 V Conclusion ........................................ 78 2 Ibn al-Faḍl’s Translation of Basil’s Homilies on the Six Days of Creation 81 I Translations of Basil’s Homilies on the Hexaemeron . 82 II The manuscripts ..................................... 89 III T1, T2 and the Greek manuscript tradition . 100 IV The translations: style and vocabulary of matter . 113 V Conclusion ........................................139 3 Reading Creation in Eleventh-Century Antioch 140 I Logic and Cosmology ..................................141 II Detailed examination of two cosmological scholia . 149 III Conclusion ........................................169 4 Framing a Middle Byzantine Alchemical Codex 173 I The Marcianus: description and reconstruction . 180 II What is alchemy? A middle Byzantine perspective . 192 III Opening the Marcianus .................................199 IV Conclusion ........................................233 Conclusion 236 i Bibliography 237 Abbreviations .........................................237 Primary Sources ........................................240 Secondary Literature ......................................245 List of Tables 1 Works translated by Ibn al-Faḍl ............................... 20 2 Manuscripts containing an Arabic translation of Basil’s Hexaemeron . 90 List of Figures 1 Saint Nicholas of Myra in the ‘Leo Bible’ (10th century) . 47 2 Colophon of Jurayj’s translation of Basil’s Hexaemeron (T3) . 98 3 Quire arrangements of all eight irregular quires of Marc. gr. 299 . 183 4 Diagram of Saffrey’s reconstruction of Marc. gr. 299, quire 0 . 184 5 Diagram of my hypothetical reconstruction of Marc. gr. 299, quire 0 . 192 ii Acknowledgments A seminar Maria Mavroudi taught is the reason I am in this field, and in the emphases and ap- proaches of the present project, I owe a great deal to her. I am grateful for her guidance and her detailed, substantive comments on all of the chapters which follow. I am also thankful for the advice, suggestions, critique, and corrections which Asad Ahmed, Michael Cooperson, and Su- sanna Elm provided throughout this project. The many insights and improvements which Iowe to them will, I hope, be apparent from the notes. Alexander Treiger and Samuel Noble generously shared with me unpublished results and material from their research. My work has also bene- fited from conversations with Harvey Lederman, Katerina Ierodiakonou, Pavlos Kalligas, Eleni Perdikouri, Richard Janko, and others. Much of this dissertation was written during a year in the stimulating and collegial atmosphere of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (2013–2014), where I had the chance to present some of its material in January 2014. I thank those who offered their comments and suggestions on that occasion (and others), including Jim Wright, Richard Anderson, Jody Cundy, Maria Georgopoulou, and Michèle Hannoosh. I would also like to thank Maureen Miller, who played a formative role in my graduate education and kindly agreed to serve as the chair of my comprehensive examination committee. This dissertation was researched and written between January 2013 and May 2015. Inthis time, a number of grants have allowed me to devote my attention to the project: the Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Fellowship, the M. Alison Frantz Fellowship at the Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, a grant from the Mediterranean Studies Travel Fund of the Mediterranean Seminar/University of California Multi-Campus Research Project, and Dean’s Normative Time and Mellon Sawyer Graduate Fellowships at the University of California, Berkeley. To the Istituto Ellenico di Studi Bizantini e Postbizantini di Venezia and the institute’s Director Georgios Ploumides goes my gratitude for the warm hospitality I encountered during my stay in Venice. Libraries, public and private, in Berkeley, Los Angeles, Basel, Paris, Athens, Rome, and Venice have shaped my project and made it possible. Marie-Geneviève Guesdon at the Bibliothèque na- tionale de France, Susy Marcon at the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, and the staff of the Bib- lioteca Apostolica Vaticana made possible my work on manuscripts in their care. The Österre- ichische Nationalbibliothek and the Bibliothèque Orientale de l’Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut furnished me with manuscript reproductions. The dissertation’s chapters were proofread by Gre- gory Maskarinec. The chance to study I owe to my parents. For her perspicacity and perspective, especially great is my gratitude to Maya. iii Introduction The nature of the material world and its potential to be transformed were of great religious, philo- sophical and scientific importance in Byzantium and the Middle East. This dissertation examines how scholars in Constantinople and Antioch (under Byzantine rule, 969–1084) grappled with theories about matter and its transformation. Discourse on matter extends far into Greek antiquity,¹ and the medieval Mediterranean and Middle East inherited that tradition. But authors writing in Greek, Syriac, Arabic and other languages were not mere glossators or imitators of their predecessors. They wrote about matter for their own purposes. Their work was affected by a wide range of doctrinal positions, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or other, whose details were often up for negotiation and renegotiation — though usually in the name of tradition. Their activities took place at a time of momentous political and social change. The Arabcon- quests of the seventh century had taken away a significant portion of the Eastern Roman (i.e., Byzantine) empire, and some of its most productive provinces in North Africa, Egypt, and Syria. In the eighth century, a reorganized Byzantine military and administrative system (and accidents of human geography)² preserved the Byzantine state even as the Sasanian empire collapsed. Lim- ited datable evidence survives from the eighth century, which has usually been seen as a ‘dark age’ (brought on, in older narratives, by Iconoclasm, an important political and religious contro- versy of the eighth and first half of the ninth century, although it is still an open question how much this view is due to the propaganda of the anti-Iconoclast parties who won out in 843 and wished to portray Iconoclast emperors as having a detrimental effect on all aspects of life, includ- ing learning).³ Byzantine armies began to campaign successfully against external powers in the ninth and early tenth century. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, Byzantine military expansion continued,