SOURCE: De Jonge, M. “Robert Grosseteste and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.” Journal of Theological Studies 42, Part I (April 1991): 115-25.

[In the following essay, de Jonge explores the reasons for Grosseteste's interest in the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, also speculating on why the text was considered so significant by his contemporaries.]

I. INTRODUCTION

This article is devoted to the introduction of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs in the West by Robert Grosseteste, who had it brought from Greece to England and translated it into Latin in 1242.

Modern scholars number the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs among the pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, and generally regard them as a Jewish writing with substantial Christian interpolations. In his dissertation and in subsequent writings, the present author has argued that much more than interpolation is involved.¹ In 1953 he treated the Testaments as a Christian writing, but since then he has adopted a more cautious attitude.² At the least this is a case of thoroughgoing redaction, and it is impossible to reconstruct the original Jewish Testaments (if they existed at all) by means of literary criticism. The text as we have it is a Christian text, probably dating from the end of the second century ce.

In the course of a succession of years I have, in co-operation with H. J. de Jonge, Th. Korteweg, and H. W. Hollander, worked on a critical edition of the Testaments which was completed in 1978.³ Three years earlier, a volume appeared with preliminary studies and other contributions by the collaborators in the critical edition.⁴ Both this edition and the earlier volume demonstrate the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of establishing the text which the first readers had before them. From the early Church we have only two references to the Testaments (no verbatim quotations, unfortunately): by Origen (preserved only in Latin) and Jerome. The oldest Greek manuscript we have is Cambridge Univ. Library Ff 1. 24, fos. 203^r-261^v, dating from the end of the tenth century—the one brought to the West at the instigation of Robert Grosseteste, for which reason we shall return to it later. By far the most important among the ancient translations is the Armenian, of which no less than fifty-one manuscripts are known. Until recently, the oldest manuscripts we knew dated from 1269 and 1282-3, but recently M. E. Stone of Jerusalem, a specialist in the field of Armenian pseudepigrapha, has published the text of fragments of the Armenian Testaments found on fos. 251^r-252^v of Erevan Matenadaran MS 2679, going back to 981.⁵ Dr Stone is of the opinion that the new find proves that the Armenian translation must have been made in the beginning of the ninth century at the latest. Personally, he thinks it stems from the eighth century, leaving open the possibility of an even earlier date in view of the nature of the Armenian used.

The question of the dating of the Armenian translation is of importance because its Greek Vorlage belongs to the collection of manuscripts called ‘family II’ which is clearly distinct from ‘family I’ consisting of only two manuscripts (b = Cambridge Univ. Libr. Ff 1. 24 and k = Venice, Bibl. Marc. Codex Gr. Z 494 (= 331), fos. 263^r-264^v from the thirteenth century, containing excerpts only). H. J. de Jonge,⁶ in an important study of the variants between these two families, has demonstrated that in thirteen cases we very probably have to do with a different transliteration of Greek majuscules. This, in his opinion, means that when in the ninth century Greek texts written in uncials were copied in minuscule script, the Testaments were transcribed twice. In other words, the extant text-tradition does not go back to one ninth- or tenth-century minuscule codex copied from an uncial codex lost since then, but to two uncial codices which will have been copied from one common archetype at an earlier date. This archetype in any case goes back beyond the ninth century; it is obviously impossible to establish the date of origin more precisely. In theory, anything may have happened between the second and, say, the eighth centuries, but that eludes our observation for want of reliable older data.

Before engaging in literary and historical criticism of the Testaments, one has first to pay due attention to textual criticism; and textual criticism presupposes a thorough study of the textual history which, in its turn, leads to the study of the history of the codices in which the Testaments have been transmitted. Indeed H. J. de Jonge, in the volume of studies of 1975, has devoted two articles to the history of b and k and one to the marginal annotations in MS. d = Cod. Vatic. Gr. 1238, fos. 350^r-379^v, dating from the end of the twelfth century.⁷ In the following the present author gratefully falls back on these studies, as well as on his contribution ‘Die Patriarchentestamente von Roger Bacon bis Richard Simon’.⁸

II. ROBERT GROSSETESTE'S INVOLVEMENT WITH THE TESTAMENTS

Very little is known about the first part of Robert Grosseteste's life. He was born around 1170 in a place near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. He was of humble descent, and it is not clear where he spent his school-days. R. W. Southern, author of the most recent biography of Grosseteste,⁹ considers it probable that he received his entire education in England. In any case he developed into an independent and universal scholar; he was an influential teacher at Oxford from 1225 until 1235, and a forceful and conscientious bishop of the very extensive diocese of Lincoln from 1235 until 1253.

On his arrival at Oxford Grosseteste, after long years of scientific study, applied himself to theology. In the years that followed he taught and wrote about the Bible (writing, for example, a commentary on the first hundred Psalms) and studied the Fathers. Being deeply interested in the original Greek sources, he applied himself to the study of Greek.¹⁰ It is quite possible that he was taught Greek by John of Basingstoke, who in his youth had lived in Athens for a considerable period, and who in time to come was to play an important part in the acquisition of the Greek codex of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs by Robert Grosseteste which is now preserved at Cambridge. Grosseteste knew him well and had great confidence in him; indeed only a few months after his accession to office as bishop of Lincoln he made John archdeacon of Leicester (an office Grosseteste himself had held from 1229 until 1232).

Matthew Paris, in his Chronicle,¹¹ tells us that John of Basingstoke informed Robert, the bishop of Lincoln, that during his student days in Athens he had heard from Greek experts about all sorts of writings unknown to Latin readers, among them the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. The bishop, says Matthew Paris, thereupon sent messengers to Athens to locate and secure these Testaments; on acquiring them he translated them from Greek into Latin. Earlier in his chronicle it is said that this happened in or around the year 1242, and that Grosseteste was assisted in this work by magister Nicholaus Graecus, a priest attached to the abbey of St Albans.¹² We find much the same information in the colophon that already at a very early date is found in manuscripts of the Latin translation of the Testaments.¹³ It does not mention John of Basingstoke, though we do read how the bishop sent ‘diligentissimos exploratores’ to Greece, and urged them to get hold of this writing at any cost. This colophon also mentions the year 1242 and the co-operation of Nicholas the Greek.

The information to be gained from Matthew Paris and the contents of the colophon are closely connected. Matthew Paris, a monk of St Albans, reports on matters he has personally witnessed: he must have known Nicholas the Greek. In view of the date of the oldest manuscript containing the colophon, this must have been added at a very early date—possibly by Nicholas himself.¹⁴ How important a part he played in the realization of the translation is not clear. Matthew Paris and the colophon speak about coadiuvare and iuvare respectively. Both sources also emphasize that the translation was done thoroughly and meticulously (‘plene et evidenter’ and ‘evidenter et fideliter’ respectively, and ‘de verbo in verbum’). It has often been remarked that the translation of the Testaments is less literal and easier to read than other translations for which Grosseteste was responsbile. D. A. Callus ascribed this to a considerable contribution by Nicholas,¹⁵ but C. A. Dionisotti has given a more convincing explanation: the other translations were intended for scholars and therefore were profusely provided with footnotes and comments. Not so the Testaments:

It seems to me significant that this translation has no glosses or notes, no learned apparatus. It was not meant to be studied by scholars, but to be read as widely as possible. And it succeeded: seventy-nine copies survive today; no doubt there were many more. Are we really entitled to assume that Grosseteste himself could not adapt his skills to different purposes?¹⁶

The number of manuscripts of Grosseteste's translation is indeed remarkably great. In the list in S. H. Thomson's The Writings of Robert Grosseteste we find no less than eight manuscripts from the middle of the thirteenth century and six from the second half of that century. H. J. de Jonge, in a supplementary list of manuscripts, mentions yet another thirteenth-century manuscript.¹⁷ Obviously Grosseteste's initiative found considerable response. This is also evidenced by a number of other facts. Vincent of Beauvais, in his Speculum Historiale which appeared in 1253, incorporated excerpts from the Testaments because of the extremely clear and superbly beautiful prophecies concerning Christ, ‘quas nuper transtulit magister robertus grossum caput, lincolniensis episcopus de greco in latinum’.¹⁸ Bonaventura, in his commentary on the Sententiae of Petrus Lombardus written ca. 1250-1252, in a particular passage refers to Gen. 28: 1-5 with the words: ‘et illud [viz. the annihilation of the seed of Canaan in the land] clare insinuatur in textu et clarius in quodam libello, qui dicitur Testamentum Patriarcharum’.¹⁹ Finally, there are two references to the Testaments in Roger Bacon's Opus Maius, written ca. 1266-1268.²⁰

Why was Robert Grosseteste at such great pains to acquire the Testaments from Greece and then to translate them? And why the overwhelming response?

III. THE TESTAMENTS OF THE TWELVE PATRIARCHS IN THE VIEW OF ROBERT GROSSETESTE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

In his article ‘La bibliothèque de Michel Choniatès’ H. J. de Jonge considers it possible that Grosseteste's translation of the Testaments should be connected with plans to convert English Jews.²¹ In ‘Die Patriarchentestamente von Roger Bacon bis Richard Simon’ he is more positive:

Die lateinische Übersetzung der Testamente hatte also apologetische und missionarische Ziele, und stand im Dienst einer Campagne zur Bekehrung der Juden in England. Den Grund dafür ersehen wir aus den Ausführungen von Roger Bacon.²²

In the article first mentioned reference is made to L. M. Friedman, Robert Grosseteste and the Jews.²³ This author adduces three arguments. First, he quotes Matthew Paris's statement that Grosseteste translated the Testaments ‘ad majorem Judaeorum confusionem’ (iv. 233) and infers from this that the bishop wrote it ‘as a missionary tract for the Jews’ (p. 8). This is a misrepresentation. Grosseteste followed an apologetic course, and wanted to demonstrate conclusively that the Jews held wrong views. In the passage mentioned Matthew Paris speaks about ‘illum gloriosum tractatum’ and says that the translation was made ‘ad robur fidei Christianae et ad majorem Judaeorum confusionem’.²⁴

Friedman's second argument concerns the construction of a ‘domus conversorum’, a house for converted Jews, in Oxford in 1231, in the period in which Grosseteste taught at Oxford. In the same year Grosseteste wrote a letter to Margaret de Quincy, the widow of the Earl of Winchester, who wanted to admit Jews who had been driven away from Leicester, where Grosseteste was archdeacon (pp. 11-12).²⁵

Friedman's third argument is that in the same period Grosseteste started on his writing De cessatione legalium which he (along with earlier authors) considered as a writing that could be used in disputations with the Jews with a view to converting them to Christianity (p. 21).

Friedman's last two arguments also cannot be accepted. In the introduction to the new edition of De cessatione legalium²⁶ R. C. Dales and E. B. King remark that this writing is characteristically intended for scholars and stands in a scholarly tradition: ‘Grosseteste's interest in this subject was undoubtedly stimulated by the extensive debate on the Mosaic law current in the schools of late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century Europe’ (p. xii).²⁷ Dales and King further quote Matthew Paris's information about two houses founded by King Henry III in London and Oxford for converted Jews²⁸ and draw the conclusion that it was a matter of protecting those who were converted in order to preclude their reverting to their old belief rather than a matter of missionary activity. It seems, moreover, that in that period it was not unusual for Christians to become Jews.

There remains the letter Grosseteste wrote to the Countess of Winchester. This should obviously be read within the context of contemporary views, but even so R. W. Southern is right in remarking ‘it does not show Grosseteste in an attractive light’.²⁹ Any effort to convert the Jews is out of the question: not until the end of time will the Jewish people be converted to Christ (Rom. 11: 25, 26), and only then will the nation's exile come to an end. In the meantime Christian princes will have to follow a strict course: on the one hand they have to prevent Jews from being killed, on the other they have to see to it that the Jews with their usurious practices will not oppress others. Let them earn their meagre wages with hard physical labour! Princes should not show favours to Jews and in no way profit from their usurious practices. Just as Abel is a prefiguration of Christ, Cain is a prototype of the Jew: he is damned but nobody is free to kill him; he has to work hard and will be a vagrant and fugitive on earth. Grosseteste concludes: ‘Secundum hanc itaque Domini praelocutionem maledictus est populus ille dum perstat in infidelitate et blasphemia.’

It is interesting, however, that he infers the prohibition to kill Jews from Ps. 58: 12 (in the Vulgate),³⁰ quoting St Augustine's interpretation.³¹ This author has stated that the Jews are not to be killed because they ‘portant codices nostros, de quibus prophetatus et promissus est nobis Christus’. Grosseteste continues: ‘Ac per hoc sunt testes fidei Christianae contra infidelitatem Paganorum.’

This last passage is of interest because it fits in with what we read in the colophon to Grosseteste's translation of the Testaments and in Matthew Paris. These texts repeatedly emphasize the many and unambiguous prophecies concerning Christ found in the Testaments. Thus, for instance, we read at the end of the colophon (already partly quoted above) that thanks to Grosseteste's translation ‘sic luculentae prophetiae, quae in hoc scripto, luce clarius, coruscant, in majorem confusionem Judaeorum et omnium haereticorum et inimicorum Ecclesiae gloriosius prorumpant’.³² Matthew Paris also speaks about the ‘manifestas, quae in eisdem patent de Christo prophetias’.³³ In the same connection he says of the Testaments: ‘quae constant esse de substantia Bibliothecae.’ In the Middle Ages, the term ‘bibliotheca’ is often used to denote the Bible.³⁴ Matthew Paris, then, wants to make clear that it was an established fact that the Testaments contained genuine biblical material. Of course they did not belong to the canonical books, but as to their substance they were on a par with these writings. Really very old witnesses were speaking in the Testaments, and consequently their testimony concerning Christ was reliable and convincing.

But how was it that these important witnesses had remained unknown for so long a time? The Jews kept them hidden for the very reason that they spoke in such unequivocally clear terms about Christ. In this connection Matthew Paris and the colophon mention the ‘invidia Judaeorum’ and the machinations of the ‘Judaeorum antiquorum malitia’. That is the reason why many wise and learned men of the Church never quote the Testaments. We owe it to the Greeks, ‘omnium scriptorum diligentissimi investigatores’,³⁵ that this writing was translated from Hebrew into Greek³⁶ and preserved over a long period, so that now, thanks to Robert Grosseteste, it could shed its glorious light.

Robert Grosseteste as well as his contemporaries (as is evidenced by their response) clearly considered the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs to be of utmost importance. The patriarchs' testimony to Christ ranked with that in the writings of the Old Testament. Everybody reading the Testaments could read in unmistakable terms that the Jews were wrong in rejecting Christ. Their efforts to suppress these prophecies had proved vain in the end; their very own ancestors now turned out to have been witnesses of Christ. On the basis of the remarks in the colophon and Matthew Paris's chronicle we have no choice but to say that the Testaments were not used for missionary purposes but to make clear, once and for all, to Jews (and probably also to those sympathizing with Judaism) as well as to all who opposed orthodoxy, that salvation can only be expected from Christ and the true Church which obeys Holy Scripture.

For Vincent of Beauvais, whose Speculum historiale appeared immediately following the translation of the Testaments, it was specifically the prophecies concerning Christ that occasioned him to incorporate a number of suitable fragments from the Testaments in his book. In a number of manuscripts of the Testaments we find written in the margin peri tou christou, put there by anonymous readers. They are especially plentiful in d (inter alia Latin ones borrowed from the Speculum historiale). Peri tou christou was added close on thirty times by the writer of the manuscript written in Calabria in 1195.³⁷ It is also obvious that the excerpts in k were selected primarily because of their Christological interest.

In conclusion, we have to discuss at greater length Roger Bacon's view of the Testaments on which, as remarked above, H. J. de Jonge's ‘Die Patriarchentestamente von Roger Bacon bis Richard Simon’ offers some highly interesting observations. Bacon speaks about the Testaments in two places. In Pars II, cap. XVI he emphasizes that the philosophers are dependent on the patriarchs and the prophets, whose books are recorded in Holy Scripture. These patriarchs and prophets have also written other books which are not incorporated in the canon but which nevertheless ‘sancti et sapientes Graeci et Latini usi sunt a principio ecclesiae’. Indeed did not Judas in his letter (VV. 14-15) already acknowledge the authority of Enoch, later followed by St Augustine in his De Civitate Dei? In this connection also the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs are brought up:

Nam praeter caeteros libros liber de testamentis patriarcharum […] quae de Christo adimpleta sunt. Quilibet enim patriarcha in [Illegible Text] praedicavit filiis suis et tribui suae, et praedixit eis ea quae de Christo tenenda sunt, sicut manifestum ex libro illo.³⁸

Here, again, the emphasis is on the prophecies concerning Christ; they are reliable because they originated with the patriarchs. True, these words had not been incorporated in the canonical books, but their authority had been acknowledged of old by holy and wise men.

In Pars VII, pars IV Bacon returns to this subject:

Item in libro duodecim Patriarcharum docetur manifestissime de Christo. Nam quilibet Patriarcha docebat tribum suam certificationem de Christo, sacut adimpletum est.³⁹

If one would object that those writings are apocryphal, in other words that their authorship is not established, one should bear in mind: ‘hoc non tollit veritatem quia libri hi recipiuntur a Graecis, Latinis et Judaeis.’

This does not only apply to the Testaments but also to a great many other writings. Lack of authenticity does not preclude authority; we may safely rely on the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and other writings because their authority has been acknowledged by wise and reliable men.

All this has been lucidly expounded in H. J. de Jonge's article. We may now add that Bacon in the two passages mentioned works out what Matthew Paris indicates with the words ‘quae constant esse de substantia Bibliothecae’. Whoever exactly may have been the author of the Testaments, the words of the sons of Jacob they contain are as true and reliable as the testimonies of Christ contained in Holy Scripture.

Notes

1. See The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. A Study of their Text, Composition and Origin (Assen, 1953).

2. See, e.g., H. W. Hollander and M. de Jonge, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. A Commentary, SVTP 8 (Leiden, 1985), 82-5 and ‘The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: Christian and Jewish’, NTT 39 (1985), 265-75.

3. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. A Critical Edition of the Greek text, PVTG i. 2 (Leiden, 1978). This ‘editio maior’ followed on the ‘editio minima’ Testamenta XII Patriarcharum edited according to Cambridge University Library MS Ff 1.24, Fol 203a-216b, PVTG i (Leiden, 1964, 2nd edn. 1970).

4. M. de Jonge (ed.), Studies on the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. Text and Interpretation, SVTP 3 (Leiden 1975).

5. ‘The Epitome of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs’, Revue des Études Arméniennes, NS 20 (1986-7), 69-107.

6. See his ‘The earliest traceable stage of the textual tradition of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs’, in M. de Jonge (ed.), Studies, 63-86.

7. See, resp., ‘La bibliothèque de Michel Choniatès et la tradition occidentale des Testaments des XII Patriarches’, in Studies, 97-106; ‘Additional notes on the history of MSS. Venice Bibl. Marc. Gr. 494 (k) and Cambridge Univ. Libr. Ff. 1.24 (b)’, 107-15 and ‘Les fragments marginaux dans le MS. d des Testaments des XII Patriarches’, 87-95.

8. In Studies, 3-42. I have been so fortunate as to be able to profit from the written as well as from the oral tradition in writing this article: H. J. de Jonge kindly discussed some problems in connection with this article with me.

9. R. W. Southern, Robert Grosseteste (Oxford 1986, 2nd edn. 1988). The book carries the programmatic subtitle ‘The Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe’.

10. See on this R. W. Southern, Robert Grosseteste, 181-6 and A. C. Dionisotti, ‘On the Greek Studies of Robert Grosseteste’ in A. C. Dionisotti, Anthony Grafton and Jill Kraye (eds.), The Uses of Greek and Latin. Historical Essays, Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts 16 (London, 1988), 19-39.

11. H. R. Luard (ed.), Matthaei Parisiensis, Monachi Sancti Albani, Chronica Majora, 7 vols. (London 1872-83), esp. vol. v, p. 285. On his time in Athens see vol. v, pp. 286-7. Both passages are discussed in detail in H. J. de Jonge, ‘La bibliothèque de Michel Choniatès’. He argues that the manuscript of Grosseteste was in the library of Michel Choniatès until 1204.

12. Chronica Majora iv. 232-3. Among the events in 1242 he mentions: ‘Ipsis quoque temporibus, episcopus Lincolniensis Robertus, vir in Latino et Graeco peritissimus, Testamenta duodecim Patriarcharum de Graeco fideli interpretatione transtulit in Latinum.’

13. Already in London B. M. Royal 4.D.VII, fos. 232^c-246^c, 248^c-249^a; see S. H. Thomson, The Writings of Robert Grosseteste Bishop of Lincoln 1235-1253 (Cambridge, 1940), 42-4 (esp. 43). The text is to be found in, for instance, the printed edition Hagenau 1532.

14. H. J. de Jonge assumes that M. Paris was dependent on the text of the colophon (see ‘Die Patriarchentestamente von Roger Bacon bis Richard Simon’, cq. n. 7; ‘Les fragments marginaux dans le MS d, 93 n. 1).

15. See his ‘Robert Grosseteste as Scholar’ in D. A. Callus (ed.), Robert Grosseteste. Scholar and Bishop (Oxford, 1955), 1-69, esp. 55-6.

16. ‘On the Greek Studies of Robert Grosseteste’, 29.

17. ‘Les fragments marginaux dans le MS d’, 91 n. 1. In the two lists mentioned we find eighty-two manuscripts.

18. See on this H. J. de Jonge, ‘Les fragments marginaux dans le MS d’, passim. For the introduction to the fragments see p. 93 n. 1. For the dating see D. A. Callus, ‘Robert Grosseteste as Scholar’, 61.

19. See Commentaria in Quattuor Libros Sententiarum IV = Opera Omnia IV (ed. Quaracchi, 1899). Dist. XXIX, Qu. III, p. 703. For the dating see E. W. Platzeck, ‘Bonaventura’, L. Th.K. 2, 582-4.

20. On Bacon see in more detail H. J. de Jonge, ‘Die Patriarchentestamente von Roger Bacon bis Richard Simon’, esp. 4-10.

21. Pp. 100–01.

22. Pp. 9-10.

23. Cambridge (Mass.), 1934.

24. See in the colophon: ‘ad robur fidei christianae’ and: ‘in maiorem confusionem Judaeorum et omnium haereticorum et inimicorum Ecclesiae.’ See also D. A. Callus, ‘Robert Grosseteste as Scholar’, 61: ‘a powerful apologia in favour of the Christian religion against the Jews.’

25. H. R. Luard (ed.), Roberti Grosseteste Episcopi quondam Lincolniensis Epistolae (London, 1861), Epistola V (33-8). English translation in Friedman, pp. 12-18.

26. Robert Grosseteste, De Cessatione Legalium, ed. R. C. Dales and E. B. King (London 1986) (= Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi VII), see esp. pp. ix-xv.

27. In this, Dales and King follow Beryl Smalley, ‘The Biblical Scholar’ in D. A. Callus (ed.), Robert Grosseteste, Scholar and Bishop, 70-97, esp. 81: ‘Grosseteste wrote for the student rather than the missionary.’

28. Chronica Majora, iii, 262-3 (see p. x).

29. Robert Grosseteste, 245. See the entire section ‘The Jews of Leicester’, 244-9. Cf. also Letter CVII, probably written in 1244 to the archdeacons of his diocese (ed. Luard, 317-18), in which Grosseteste categorically enjoins: ‘et cohabitationem Christianorum cum Judaeis quantum vobis possibile est, impedire curetis.’ In passing it may be pointed out that Grosseteste, in Epistola cxxiv to Henry III (ed. Luard, 348-51; probably from 1245), dealing with the relationship between royal and priestly power, very appositely quotes T. Jud. 21: 2-4. See also R. W. Southern, Robert Grosseteste, 268-9.

30. ‘Deus ostendit mihi super inimicos meos, ne occidas eos, ne quando obliviscantur populi mei. Disperge eos in virtute tua, et depone eos, protector meus, Domine.’ In the argumentation the emphasis is on ‘ne occidas’ as well as on ‘depone’ (Grosseteste stresses that the text does definitely not say ‘exalta’).

31. S. Aurelii Augustini, Enarrationes in Psalmos, vol. 2 (CCL 39; Aurelii Augustini Opera 10. 2) (Turnhout 1956), Sermo 1. 22 (p. 744): ‘Ipsi habent codices de quibus prophetatus est Christus, et nos tenemus Christum. Et si quando forte aliquis paganus dubitaverit, cum ei dixerimus prophetias de Christo, quarum evidentiam obstupescit, et admirans putaverit a nobis esse conscriptas, de codicibus Iudaeorum probamus quia hoc tanto ante praedictum est.’

32. Cf. also in the beginning ‘propter evidentissimas et manifestissimas, ac crebras de Christo prophetias, quae in illis scribuntur’, and further on: ‘… ut memoriam lucidissimarum prophetiarum, ad robur fidei Christianae perpetuaret.’

33. Chronica Majora v. 285. Cf. in iv. 232: ‘Propter manifestas prophetias de Salvator in eis contentas.’

34. See the dictionaries of Du Cange, J. F. Niermeyer, and A. Blaise, and the Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch s.v.; see also R. E. Latham, Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources i (London, 1975), 196c.

35. So Matthew Paris, iv. 232. The colophon here speaks of ‘veterum scripturanum exploratores diligentissimi’.

36. This is an inevitable assumption if one considers this writing a collection of the words of the sons of Jacob. It does not necessarily mean that people were aware of the existence of Hebrew Testaments.

37. See H. J. de Jonge, ‘Les fragments marginaux dans le MS d’, 88.

38. J. H. Bridges (ed.), The ‘Opus Majus’ of Roger Bacon, suppl. vol. (London, 1900), 71-2.

39. Ed. J. H. Bridges, vol. ii (Oxford, 1897), 391.