The Biblical Stemmata

Notes

[This version, last edited 2012.04.05, was online mid-April 2012 and is referred to in a forthcoming publication by Jose Carlos Mart�n. It has been replaced by an updated version.]

This page tabulates hyperlinks to all the online digital editions of the Great Stemma, principally in bible and Beatus manuscripts. The original work has no standard title, but the Beuron directory of early Christian authors gives it the code PROL gen.[*]Gryson, Roger, Répertoire général des auteurs ecclésiastiques latins de l'antiquité et du haut moyen âge (Freiburg: Herder, 2007).

The first three columns of this table are: (1) my own index numbers, (2) the recension codes proposed by Zaluska and (3) the sigla set by Wilhelm Neuss and Zaluska. Each section is in order of date of creation. The dates are not precise datings, but merely intended as a unified notation to establish this approximate order in the table.

Notes

The first part of the list above counts 18 original manuscripts of the Great Stemma. The list does not include a 19th copy of the Great Stemma in the now-lost bible of Oña made in 943, of which only a few pages (without the stemma) now exist.[*]John Williams argues that Oña was the model for both Leon bibles, but notes Ayuso's argument that both León bibles derive from yet another other lost bible known as Legionense supuesto: “A Model for the Leon Bibles.” Madrider Mitteilungen VIII (1967): 281-286. See also Klapisch-Zuber, 63.

There was almost certainly another lost codex at León which Ayuso terms the Legionense supuesto and from the early 1950s termed Leg 3. It is described as containing the genealogical table too.The only question that has been raised about this lost bible is whether it might not have been identical with Oña. On balance that seems implausible. Descriptions of Legionense supuesto are extant from Manuel Risco and José María Eguren. Williams (1965) quotes the latter: Contiene este códice, como el anterior [Bible of 960], la genealogia de Jesucristo desde Adam, y en dos espacios circulares de noticia de la época en que empezaron a profetizar los profetas mayores y menores; concluye la genealogia de Jesucristo, y al fin de la misma hay una miniatura que representa Anunciación, y dentro de un círculo se lee: colligitur omne tempus ab Adam usque ad Christum VCXCVIIII (5199). En la misma miniatura se ve el catálogo de los reyes de Roma ... Es completo y bien escrito de letra del siglo IX. No consta el año en que se hizo, ni el nombre del transcriptor.

The table above is a combination of my own research and the Beatus tabulation and folio numbering compiled by John Williams, as well as the marking up by Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. [*]Klapisch-Zuber's text refers in the past tense to the two chronicles and eight Spanish bibles known to have contained genealogies. She offers no explicit listing of those bibles, but apparently counts among the eight the lost León bible, L. supuesto, and the fragmentarily extant bible Oña bible. Zaluska's second article [*]Zaluska, Composition. authoritatively confirms that the sum total of extant specimens of the Great Stemma (including the Avila derivative, which I set apart above) is 19.

Links to high-resolution web versions of the Great Stemma are highlighted with a different background colour in the cells.

The tabulation above is organized according to the common, 14-codex-page order of the Great Stemma in the Beatus manuscripts and Roda Codex, and each column displays a "tool tip" which is visible when the cursor is hovered over it. For the order, see for example these thumbnails. The content is disposed as follows, and the seven-page and 16-page manuscripts are fitted to the 14 columns in accordance with this:

• 1: Adam, and his family. [Epsilon compresses the first two pages into one.]
• 2: Jareth, down to Lamech, as well as Jubal, father of players of the lyre and flute.
• 3: Noah, and his non-Semite descendants.
• 4: Sem and Joktan.
• 5: Peleg-Terah and Lot's Sin.
• 6: Abraham and the Ismaelites (his secondary descendants).
• 7: Esau (and his descendants) and the Horrites (a large "political" section devoted to the neighbouring people of Mount Seir).
• 8: Leah (with her children sired by Jacob) and kings of Edom. [Spread over two pages in Epsilon.]
• 9: Zelpha, Rachel and Bara and their children sired by Jacob.
• 10: Judges and Saul. [Spread over two pages in Epsilon. Usually with the Levites too, but Beta places them on the preceding page.]
• 11: Prophets I and Disunity (the division into northern and southern kingdoms). Commencement of the parallel ancestries of Christ, as stated in Mt 1, 6-16 and Lk 3, 24-31. [Spread over two pages in Epsilon. Usually with David, but Beta shifts David and family back to the previous page.]
• 12: Prophets II and Exile.
• 13: Rome: an account of the kings, the Achaemenid rulers during the Exile, and the parallel ancestries continued.
• 14: The Incarnation.

A critical edition of the first nine pages, collated from four of the bibles, was published by Bonifatius Fischer in his 1951-1954 edition of the Vetus Latina Genesis.[*]Fischer, Genesis. Fischer omitted some panels, such as the commentary on Lot, and suppressed such apocryphal details as the names of Noah's daughters in law. Wilhelm Neuss published a partial transcription in 1931 of the panels on the first two pages. Zaluska collated many of the stemmata, but as far as I know did not publish the collation. The transcription, issued in 2010 on this website of all the roundels is, to the best of my knowledge, the first beginning-to-end publication of the core content of the Great Stemma since the invention of type.

For more details on the Beatus series, see an unsigned article (in Spanish) in Arte Historia describing the Beatus series in general (including those manuscripts for which no genealogy is extant) (Bing Translation) and Pablo García-Diego's list of pre-romanesque manuscripts on his Guía del Arte Prerrománico Español website.

Other than the two Burgos bible pages displayed on Guía del Arte Prerrománico Español, I am not aware of any online editions of bibles containing the School Stemma, but I will continue to check the project pages for Spanish, British Library and Bibliothèque Nationale de France digitizations.

Zaluska rightly does not include in the list a 20th item, a 14th- or 15th-century bible at the University of Barcelona, which Ayuso claimed to be one of the series. Ayuso's 1943 article terms it Barc1, but it later becomes Barc3 in his peculiar numbering. This is Sig. Ms. 762, described at volume 2, page 308 of Miquel Rosell's printed catalog as follows: Ff. 2-7. Genealogias. Inc.: De Cain. Cain agricola dolens ... Expl.: De Tiberio ..., sub quo Dominus est passus. It also contains an Interpretationes Hebraicorum Nominum. A cursory examination of the digital version makes clear that it contains a much later evolution of the idea, the Compendium historiae in genealogia Christi of Peter of Poitiers, so it does not count as an example of the Great Stemma per se. An additional early stemma at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence is a finely drawn 12th-century stemma spread over 10 pages in an anonymous seven-folio document, Plut.20.56. This diagram, cut into the body of the text, adopts the Joachimite ancestry and also suggests kinship relations between Christ and his disciples, probably employing the legendary Trinubium of Anne. This too is a codex version of Peter of Poitiers' Compendium, similar to the early 13th-century manuscript from England now in Paris, Lat. 15254. See my blog.

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