The Accidents of Transmission: On a Surprising Multilingual Manuscript Leaf

A finely illuminated Ethiopic Psalter dating to the fifteenth-sixteenth century, sold on auction in 1983 and still in the possession of an unknown private collector, was made the object of two distinct publications in 1986. Ewa Balicka-Witakowska focused on the art-historical importance of the manuscript, while Richard Pankhurst dealt with its guard-leaves containing additional notes in Portuguese and Latin and their significance. Almost unnoticed or largely misunderstood remained a small Ethiopic text belonging to the primitive layer of the fly-leaves, that probably held the last place in a larger multiple-text manuscript, of which one loose leaf might have survived. So far unpublished, the text is the Ethiopic version of the Lex lata Constantini Augusti de Arii damnatione (CPG nos 2041 = 8519). Along with the Ethiopic version of the Epistula Constantini imperatoris ad ecclesiam Alexandrinam (CPG no. 8517), unpublished as well, the former is also attested by the earliest Ethiopic canonicoliturgical collection known as the Aksumite Collection.