The Mystery of Fr-Bn Copte 13 and the “Codex St.-Louis”: When Was a Coptic Manuscript First Brought to Europe in “Modern” Times?
Journal of Coptic Studies 6 (2004) 5–23 THE MYSTERY OF FR-BN COPTE 13 AND THE “CODEX ST.-LOUIS”: WHEN WAS A COPTIC MANUSCRIPT FIRST BROUGHT TO EUROPE IN “MODERN” TIMES? BY STEPHEN EMMEL The present investigation seeks to clarify statements in the secondary Coptological literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries con- cerning the existence of a “Codex St.-Louis,”1 that is to say, a Coptic manuscript supposedly brought to Paris by Louis IX at the end of the Sixth Crusade in 1254.2 The Objects of Investigation (1) Bibliothèque Nationale de France (FR-BN), manuscript Copte 13. A beautifully illustrated Tetraevangelium (the four Gospels) in Bohairic Coptic, copied and illuminated between 1178 and 1180 by Michael, 1 So called by René-Georges Coquin in correspondence between us in the early 1990s. 2 Most of the basic research for this investigation was done a little over a decade ago, and I now take the occasion of the Eighth International Congress of Coptic Studies (Paris, June/July 2004, with an accompanying exhibition titled “Pages d’une autre Égypte: les manuscrits des Coptes” planned by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France to include the manuscript in question, Copte 13) to report it. I owe special debts of gratitude for assis- tance of one sort and another to Anne Boud’hors, Jacques Debergh, Michel Garel, Iris Hinerasky, and Bentley Layton. To Dr. Boud’hors I am indebted for the following obser- vation (made in a letter dated 21 March 1991), which eventually altered the course of my thinking on this topic decisively: “Finalement je me demande si tout cela n’est pas une légende, et si ce manuscrit [le “Codex St.-Louis”] n’est pas le Copte 13 (qui aurait pu passer par l’Oratoire?).
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