The so-called Vatican Mythographers (Latin : Mythographi Vaticani) are the anonymous authors of three Latin mythographical texts found together in a single medieval manuscript, Vatican Reg. lat. 1401. [1] The name is that used by Angelo Mai when he published the first edition of the works in 1831. [2] The text of the First Vatican Mythographer is found only in the Vatican manuscript; the second and third texts are found separately in other manuscripts, leading scholars to refer to a Second Vatican Mythographer and a Third Vatican Mythographer.
Taken together, the works of the Vatican Mythographers provided a source-book of Greek and Roman myths and their iconography throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The texts, which were being copied in manuscripts as late as the 15th century, were parsed allegorically to provide Christianized moral and theological implications, "until in time the pagan divinities blossomed into full-fledged vices and virtues". [3] Their testimonia , sources, and parallel passages constitute central documents in the transmission of classical culture to the medieval world, which is a major theme in the history of ideas in the West—though the texts have also been described as "highly deceptive sources which should be used with much caution". [4]
Mai made many slips in rapidly transcribing the manuscript under difficult conditions, and he was in the habit of substituting euphemisms where the original was too sexually explicit to transcribe and publish, even in Latin. A revised, indexed edition of 1834, corrected by Georg Heinrich Bode [5] without access to the Vatican manuscript, is the version that replaced Mai's first edition and has been drawn on in popular 20th-century anthologies of Greek mythology, such as those by Edith Hamilton, Robert Graves, and Karl Kerenyi.
The work of the First Vatican Mythographer is essentially a pared-down "fact-book" of mythology, stripped of nuance, not unlike the Fabulae of Hyginus, who, however, had provided no Roman stories and so could not suffice. No classical authors are quoted directly, but the author seems to have used the commentary on Virgil by Servius and the scholiasts on Statius as sources. A modern edition of the text was published in 1995 by Nevio Zorzetti. On the basis of the latest source cited in it and the date of the first source to cite it, Zorzetti dates the composition of the work between the last quarter of the 9th century and the third quarter of the 11th century.
Ten manuscripts are known for the second text, and more than forty for the third. The work of the Second Vatican Mythographer, which draws on that of the first, though it is considerably longer, perhaps dates to the 11th century. A modern edition of it was produced by Péter Kulcsár in 1987. The work of the Third Vatican Mythographer, which differs from the others by containing "extensive allegorical interpretations", [6] has often been attributed either to a certain Alberic of London, who is named in a number of the manuscripts, or to Alexander Neckam. [7]
In Greek mythology, Cerberus, often referred to as the hound of Hades, is a multi-headed dog that guards the gates of the Underworld to prevent the dead from leaving. He was the offspring of the monsters Echidna and Typhon, and was usually described as having three heads, a serpent for a tail, and snakes protruding from his body. Cerberus is primarily known for his capture by Heracles, the last of Heracles' twelve labours.
The Judgement of Paris is a story from Greek mythology, which was one of the events that led up to the Trojan War, and in later versions to the foundation of Rome.
Aegle is the name of several different figures in Greek mythology:
In Greek mythology, Hypsipyle was a queen of Lemnos, and the daughter of King Thoas of Lemnos, and the granddaughter of Dionysus and Ariadne. When the women of Lemnos killed all the males on the island, Hypsipyle saved her father Thoas. She ruled Lemnos when the Argonauts visited the island, and had two sons by Jason, the leader of the Argonauts. Later the women of Lemnos discovered that Thoas had been saved by Hypsipyle and she was sold as a slave to Lycurgus, the king of Nemea, where she became the nurse of the king's infant son Opheltes, who was killed by a serpent while in her care. She is eventually freed from her servitude by her sons.
The Bibliotheca, also known as the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus, is a compendium of Greek myths and heroic legends, genealogical tables and histories arranged in three books, generally dated to the first or second century Anno Domini. The author was traditionally thought to be Apollodorus of Athens, but that attribution is now considered to be pseudepigraphic. As a result, "Pseudo-" has been affixed to Apollodorus.
The Codex Vaticanus, designated by siglum B or 03, δ 1, is a Christian manuscript of a Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Greek Old Testament and the majority of the Greek New Testament. It is one of the four great uncial codices. Along with Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Sinaiticus, it is one of the earliest and most complete manuscripts of the Bible. Using the study of comparative writing styles (palaeography), it has been dated to the 4th century.
Gaius Julius Hyginus was a Latin author, a pupil of the scholar Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus. He was elected superintendent of the Palatine library by Augustus according to Suetonius' De Grammaticis, 20. It is not clear whether Hyginus was a native of the Iberian Peninsula or of Alexandria.
Angelo Mai was an Italian Cardinal and philologist. He won a European reputation for publishing for the first time a series of previously unknown ancient texts. These he was able to discover and publish, first while in charge of the Ambrosian Library in Milan and then in the same role at the Vatican Library. The texts were often in parchment manuscripts that had been washed off and reused; he was able to read the lower text using chemicals. In particular he was able to locate a substantial portion of the much sought-after De republica of Cicero and the complete works of Virgilius Maro Grammaticus.
Gaius Julius Phaedrus, or Phaeder was a 1st-century AD Roman fabulist and the first versifier of a collection of Aesop's fables into Latin. Nothing is recorded of his life except for what can be inferred from his poems, and there was little mention of his work during late antiquity. It was not until the discovery of a few imperfect manuscripts during and following the Renaissance that his importance emerged, both as an author and in the transmission of the fables.
In the Western Church of the Early and High Middle Ages, a sacramentary was a book used for liturgical services and the mass by a bishop or priest. Sacramentaries include only the words spoken or sung by him, unlike the missals of later centuries that include all the texts of the mass whether read by the bishop, priest, or others. Also, sacramentaries, unlike missals, include texts for services other than the mass such as ordinations, the consecration of a church or altar, exorcisms, and blessings, all of which were later included in Pontificals and Rituals instead.
The Roman Ritual, also known as Ritual is one of the official liturgical books of the Roman Rite of the Latin Church of the Catholic Church. It contains all of the services that a priest or deacon may perform; and are not contained in the Missale Romanum, Pontificale Romanum, or Caeremoniale Episcoporum, but for convenience does include some rituals that one of these books contains.
Fabius Planciades Fulgentius was a Latin writer of late antiquity. Four extant works are commonly attributed to him, as well as a possible fifth which some scholars include in compilations with much reservation. His mythography was greatly admired and highly influential throughout much of the medieval period, though less influential today.
Natale Conti or Latin Natalis Comes, also Natalis de Comitibus and French Noël le Comte (1520–1582), was an Italian mythographer, poet, humanist and historian. His major work Mythologiae, ten books written in Latin, was first published in Venice in 1567 and became a standard source for classical mythology in later Renaissance Europe. It was reprinted in numerous editions; after 1583, these were appended with a treatise on the Muses by Geoffroi Linocier. By the end of the 17th century, his name was virtually synonymous with mythology: a French dictionary in defining the term mythologie noted that it was the subject written about by Natalis Comes.
Vespasiano da Bisticci was an Italian humanist and librarian of the early Renaissance period.
The anonymous Digby Mythographer was the compiler of a twelfth-century Fulgentian handbook of Greek mythology, De Natura deorum that is conserved among the Digby Mss, collected by Sir Kenelm Digby, now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. An intensely renewed interest in the classics, extending to classical mythography in Latin texts, was expressed in twelfth-century France and England, an aspect of the reviving humanism of the twelfth-century renaissance. Myth was read in allegorical mode, where the surface detail was simply the visible cloak (integumentum) of the hidden Platonic truths they bodied forth. Medieval commentaries on Boethius, Martianus Capella, Ovid, and Virgil also reached a peak during this period, under the impetus of the new cathedral schools.
Mar Timothy II was Patriarch of the Church of the East from 1318 to c. 1332. He became leader of the church at a time of profound external stress due to loss of favor with the Mongol rulers of Persia.
Amentes was an ancient Greek surgeon, mentioned by Galen as the inventor of some ingenious bandages. Some fragments of the works of a surgeon named Amynias still exist in the manuscript "Collection of Surgical Writers" by Nicetas, and one extract is preserved by Oribasius in the fourth volume of Angelo Mai's collection Classici Auctores e Vaticanis Codicibus. His date is unknown, except that he must have lived in or before the 2nd century AD. He may perhaps be the same person who is said by the Scholiast on Theocritus to have been put to death by Ptolemy II Philadelphus, around 264 BC, for plotting against his life.
In Greek mythology, Thoas was a son of Jason and Hypsipyle, and a grandson of the Lemnian king Thoas, and the twin brother of Euneus. Thoas and Euneus took part in the funeral games of the Nemean king Lycurgus' infant son Opheltes, after which they succeeded in rescuing their mother Hypsipyle from her servitude.
The Fragmenta Vaticana are the fragments of an anonymous Latin work on Roman law written in the 4th century AD. Their importance to scholars stems from their being untouched by the Justinianic reforms of the 6th century.
In Greek mythology, Myrina or perhaps more correctly Myrtea is a minor mythological figure, a young priestess connected to myrtle and Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty and love. Her story is attested in the works of two authors; Maurus Servius Honoratus, a Latin grammarian who lived during the early fifth century AD, and the anonymous second Vatican Mythographer, whose work survives in a single manuscript that was found in 1401.