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Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum Filium tuum qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus sancti Deus per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.

Judge, who liveth and reigneth
one God with the Father and
Holy Ghost, world without end.
Amen.

III

When I was working in the University Library at Würzburg in May 1909 I came across a collect in the Würzburg Breviary which reminded me of the Christmas collect in the Book of Common Prayer. The same collect is in an incunabula edition as well as in that of 1518, and it is said at none on Christmas Day. It appeared afterwards that Dr Neale had come across some prayer of the same kind; for he says 'We have noted something like our own Collect in more than one German Missal: a fact which ought to be known to English liturgical scholars'.'

It is quite possible that the Würzburg Collect given below may be that which Dr Neale noticed as like to the collect in the Book of Common Prayer. It is indeed to be found in other liturgical books: for instance, at none on Christmas Day in the Eichstädt breviary of 1525 and the Constanz breviary of 1561: also at none on Christmas Day in the breviary of Uzès of 1493; and in the Lyons diurnal of 1738; at sext on Christmas Day in the Pampeluna breviary of 1562; in the list of Christmas collects in the breviary of the canons of St Augustine at Coimbra of 1531.

From its appearance in so many different parts of Europe, it will be gathered that the collect is old; and by the aid of Mr H. A. Wilson's invaluable Index to the Roman Sacramentaries it will be found in the Gelasian Sacramentary as the collect of a mass for Christmas. It occurs also, as Mr Wilson points out, in a list of collects for use at Christmas in the Gregorian Sacramentary.3

A likeness of the collect in the Gelasian Sacramentary to that in the Prayer Book had been noticed by Mr Henry Bailey as long ago as 1847; but his observation does not seem to have been remarked by many. Cranmer was not likely to have been acquainted with manuscripts of the Gelasian or the Gregorian Sacramentary; whereas it is quite possible that in his expeditions to Germany he may have come across a German breviary with this collect and taken from it the idea of

1 J. M. Neale Essays on Liturgiology &c., London 1863, p. 52.

2 L. A. Muratori Liturgia Romana Vetus, Venetiis 1748, t. i, col. 495

3 Ibid. t. ii, col. II.

4 Henry Bailey Rituale Anglo-Catholicum, London, J. W. Parker, 1847, p. 113.

'adoption' and 'grace', which he afterwards planted into the latter part of the Edwardine collect. Nor does the early part of the collect seem so dissimilar that it might not have been suggested by the Latin collect. But in this I do not expect to find that all the world agrees with me. It will be enough if I have pointed out a possible source in the German collect for the reference which had escaped Dr Neale, and which possible source he desired should be known to Englishmen.

I will now give the two collects printed side by side:

WÜRZBURG BREVIARY 1518
(ad nonam in die nativitatis
Domini).

Omnipotens sempiterne Deus: qui
hunc diem per incarnationem
Verbi tui et partum beatae
Mariae Virginis consecrasti:

da populis tuis in hac celebritate consortium ut qui tua gratia sunt redempti, tua sunt adoptione securi. Per eundem.

FIRST BOOK OF EDWARD VI (Christmas Day at the second communion). Almighty God which hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him and this day to be born of a pure Virgin :

Grant that we being regenerate

and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit. Through the same, &c.

J. WICKHAM LEGG.

AN EXAMINATION OF SOME OMISSIONS OF THE CODEX SINAITICUS IN ST JOHN'S GOSPEL.

WHILE examining some of the readings of the Codex Sinaiticus for another purpose, I noticed that the two omissions in John iii 20, 21, which are, I think, peculiar to * and were practically beyond doubt not omitted in the exemplar from which & was copied-they are restored by ca-could be much more naturally explained if the lines in this exemplar contained on the average about eleven letters each.1 This is

1 Scrivener suggests (Collation of the Codex Sinaiticus p. xv) that the Codex Sinaiticus must have been derived from one more ancient, in which the lines were similarly divided—i. e., into lines of 12 to 14 letters (p. xiii; the average is, however, rather over 13, there are sometimes 17 letters in a line). He adds as his reason for this opinion that the writer occasionally omits just the number of letters which would suffice to fill a line, and that to the utter ruin of the sense; as if his eye had heedlessly wandered to the line immediately below. Instances of this want of care will be found in Luke xxi 8, xxii 25, perhaps John iv 45, xii 25, where complete lines

easily seen if a restoration of the exemplar is made on this assumption as follows:

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Tà pya avrov in line 12 is not the reading of B but it is of Nca and of L. In the first omission * stands practically alone, in the second apparently quite alone.1

Before going any further, it is important to note that the measuring of lines by the number of letters they contain, however convenient, may be misleading, especially for those used to the long lines and divided words of a modern prose work. In an ancient prose work the division of the lines, and therefore the number of letters in each line, depended first and chiefly on the horizontal space which the scribe decided to give to his writing-often very little, considering the size of the lettersand then on the way in which the syllable-divisions fell. Thus, if the

are omitted; John xix 26; Heb. xiii 18 (partly corrected); Apoc. xviii 16, xix 12, xxii 2, where the copyist passed in the middle of a line to the corresponding portion of the line below'. None of these instances is, however, in the least convincing. In Luke xxii 25 the reading of the exemplar of N is very uncertain; in John xii 25 we have an omission of 11 or 12 letters (øvdá§e avτýv); in the passages from the Apocalypse of 17, 17 (or 18), and 26 (or fewer) letters respectively; while Luke xxi 8, John xix 26, and Heb. xiii 18 (John iv 45 is discussed below) are very puzzling, and rather suggest that causes of more kinds than one have been at work, a possibility which has always to be borne in mind. It is almost needless to add that we must be prepared for variety in the length of line of the original even between gospel and gospel and may even expect it between the various groups of books. OV-KEσTIV (Scrivener op. cit. p. xiv) is, of course, the natural Greek division of the words or should we say word-which we write ouk σTw and similarly with many elisions.

1 Here as later the portions omitted by N are indicated by square brackets. Homoeoteleuta at the ends of lines, which would help omissions, are underlined. I have used uncials, as I think they help the eye, and the common compendia.

space available was, as I think probable in the instance before us,1 a trifle over two inches and would contain on the average eleven letters, and if a syllable came to an end, say, at the tenth letter, the scribe might have to choose between ending the line there, leaving perhaps a vacant space, and including in the line the whole of the next syllable, and his choice would depend (1) on the thinness or otherwise of (say) the first ten letters, (2) on the length of the next syllable and the thinness or otherwise of the letters of which it was composed, and (3) on the way in which the division would affect ease of reading, a consideration by no means neglected by good scribes (see infra, p. 570). Caeteris paribus, a good scribe would prefer to end a line with a word; and some letters (for instance I or A) occupy less space normally than others or lend themselves more readily to a contracted space (o, for instance, or the combination ay).

The other instances in the Gospel according to St John may be given in the order in which they occur.

(2) Jn. iii 3:

Апекрівної
[KEITTENAYTW]

ΑΜΗΝ ΑΜΗΝ ΛΕΓΩ

* apparently alone omits these 12 letters (or K +9). ca corrects.

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*apparently alone omits these 29 (or 28) letters; a restores; proper names prefer a line to themselves.

(4) Jn. iv 45:

WCOYNHABEN
ΕΙΣΤΗΝ ΓΑΛΙΛΑΙ

ΑΝ ΕΔΕΞΑΝΤΟ

ΑΥΤΟΝΟΙ Γαλιλαι]

Οι εωρακότες

** apparently alone attests this omission of 22 (or rather 24) letters; Na restores apparently with the addition of távra after ewpakóτes.

*

1 This is on the assumption that the letters in the exemplar were about the size of those of N. In suggesting a reading of the exemplar of N I have been guided mainly by the reading of its later hands or by the reading of manuscripts which often go with it elsewhere.

stands alone in reading of ewpakóres, which is Greek, but probably not the Greek of the exemplar. Fallatos and its cases are words which lend themselves to squeezing, as & itself proves-even aytonosai would be a short line. Talıλaîav, moreover, ends a line in &, which would explain the borrowing of the termination from line 3, if after Týv it required any explanation. After finishing the word and the line and the clause the scribe's eye went back to the rama of line 4. ὡς οὖν begins a new section.

(5) Jn. v 26:

ФСГАР ΟΠΑΡΖΩΗΝΕχει [ENEAYTWOYTWC

και τωγω εδω

KENZWHNEXEI]

ΕΝΕΑΥΤΩ

* alone apparently attests this omission of some 33 letters; there is some confusion, but I restore what seems to have been the reading of the first hand of ca, which reads, however, exiv.

(6) Jn vi II:

ΚΑΙ

ЄAWKENTOIC
[ΜΑΘΗΤΑΙΣΟΙ ΔΕ
MAOHTAITOIC]

ANAKEIMENOIC

"Edwкev not diédwkev is the reading of & with D and I and certain cursives. cb D and T with eleven other uncials read the words in brackets. 23 letters are omitted. I very much doubt whether the exemplar contained these words, in any case this example is of a very different character to the rest.

(7) Jn. vi 38, 39:

αλλα

ΤΟ ΘΕΛΗΜΑ ΤΟΥ

TTEMWANTOCME

[TOYTOAEECTIN

ΤΟ ΘΕΛΗΜΑ ΤΟΥ

TTEMYANTOCME]

ΙΝΑΠΑΝΟΔΕδω

** is apparently alone in omitting these 33 (or 34) letters; ca restores. A new section begins with Toûro dé, which also begins a line.

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