A New Witness to the Fayyūmic Version of First Corinthians (P.MorganLib. 265). Part I: Notes on Codicology, Language, Provenance and Date

This is the first part of a two-part article focused on a fragmentary parchment codex, whose three extant leaves, designated in Leo Depuydt's catalogue as P.MorganLib. 265, are housed at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. These fragments bear witness to 1 Cor 2.12–3.18; 7.16–30; 15.3–30 in the ‘classical’ variety of Fayyūmic Coptic (dialect F5). Most of these verses have been hitherto unattested in Fayyūmic and thus allow us to attain better insight into the history and text of the Coptic Bible. In the first part of this article, I discuss the codicology of P.MorganLib. 265, its linguistic features, provenance and date.

Rabbit Uroscopy and the Virgin Mary with Christ Child

Objectives The depiction of a rabbit with a urinary matula on the same page with the Virgin Mary and the Christ child in a medieval text, the Book of Hours, has raised interests among art and medical historians. We will describe the complex interplay between the rabbit, the matula, and the Virgin Mary. Methods We studied the original illuminated texts from the medieval (ca. 1475) Book of Hours archived in the Morgan Library, New York. We reviewed articles and historical publications from art history and medical literature. Results The Book of Hours was composed for use by lay people who wished to incorporate elements of monasticism into their devotional life. There was often an amalgamation of religious and secular themes within these illustrated texts. The use of uroscopy to diagnose ailments was prevalent and popular during the Middle Ages and the depiction of a matula was not uncommon in medieval manuscripts. As a result, the urine flask came to be identified with and used as a symbol of the physician, much like the caduceus is today. From the fourth century to modernity, the rabbit has been an averter of evil and bringer of good luck. Rabbits functioned as motifs in many medieval manuscripts. The physician rabbit in the Book of Hours depicted charity, healing, and scholarship. Conclusions The bespectacled rabbit holding a ‘matula’ is utilized in this Christian religious text as a symbol of the healing properties and resurrection attributed to Jesus, potentially contributing to the reader’s religious experience.

‘Pruning a genius’: marginalia by Richard Dadd

After falling into mental illness as a young man, the British artist Richard Dadd (1817–86) spent some 20 years as a patient at Bethlem Hospital in London. A rare example of his writings from these years survives in the form of marginalia in a copy of Lectures on Painting and Design by Benjamin Robert Haydon, held in the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. This article presents a transcription of the notes, along with an introduction setting them in the contexts of Dadd’s career and his relationship with the senior staff at Bethlem.

The Origin and Characteristics of the Image of the Aerial Spirits

The parallels between the books of the Enoch cycle and the Coptic literature have not yet been fully investigated, and meanwhile they allow us to find out some data on the origin and meaning of the books of Enoch. For example, the Coptic Encomium to the Four Living Creatures from the Pierpont Morgan Library has a section which must be considered as a very close retelling of one episode from the 2nd (Slavonic) Book of Enoch. Subsequently, the image of four animals influenced the description of zoomorphic mythological characters, the so-called “leontocephals”, in the apocryphal literature. In the encomium there are a number of parallels with the 2nd Enoch, which allow to determine more precisely the date and features of this pseudepigraphon.