Efforts continue to explain ancient manuscripts

Sep. 19—A Tahlequah man has continued his efforts to not only reunite 1,100-year-old-plus manuscript texts, but to help determine how the separation came about.

Winfred Belcher, a student of Greek paleography and a licensed professional counselor in Muskogee, discovered a second leaf — called MS 6273 — from St. John Chrysostom's "Expositions/Commentaries On Psalm 118-150" in November 2022.

"John of Antioch, nicknamed 'Chrysostom' — which means 'Golden Mouthed One' — was originally trained in one of the finest pagan Roman schools of oratory, where he had planned an eventual career, possibly as high as the Roman Senate, before converting to Christianity," Belcher said in a past TDP article from March 29, 2023. "He has written more works than any other of the Greek Early Church Fathers. He was made bishop of Constantinople, a position that he never sought or wanted, and during the year 398 A.D., Chrysostom wrote his 'Commentaries On The Psalms' and wrote commentaries on all 150 Psalms, though perhaps only 58 of them have survived."

The first leaf of Belcher's, which was called the Warrendale Fragment, was found by him in February 1984 at a Pennsylvania supermarket/antique store after it was bought at an auction in Butler, Pennsylvania — about 39 years before the second fragment was discovered.

The two pieces, one in Portland, Oregon, and the other in Ann Arbor, Michigan, have now been reunited electronically online using Pinakes since March 2023, with Belcher's donation of the Warrensdale Fragment at the University of Michigan — Ann Arbor. Since the reunification of the texts, Belcher said some new aspects have arisen. One is that the Warrensdale Fragment is now called the Michigan Manuscript 306.

Belcher said the question that has stuck with him is, how did a 10th to 11th century manuscript, Michigan Manuscript 306, end up in an auction in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the other fragment, MS 6273, wound up in Portland, Oregon? Belcher has continued his search by backtracking through the University of Portland.

After emailing Pierre Augustin, member of the Greek section of the Institute of Research and History of Texts 1 Paris, France, Belcher was told by Augustin the two fragments belonged to a prominent man among the first American collectors of ancient manuscripts, George Benton. He had acquired a series of manuscripts, including Chrysostom's commentaries, in 1844 from Crete. After the manuscript arrived in the U.S., Belcher said, it is believed someone sold the codex piece by piece at some point.

"This was a common practice. You can make more money breaking up and tearing up a manuscript and selling it by the page than you can selling it whole," Belcher said.

Recently, Dr. Nadezhda Kavrus-Hoffman, Catalogue of Greek Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Collections of the U.S. project director — who helped guide Belcher in his hunt for the fragments — reached out to Belcher to publish his findings on the ancient codex in some Italian specialized journals.

Since then, both Belcher and Kavrus-Hoffman have been invited to work on an article together in Scriptorium. The article will be diving into how Belcher found the texts and the history of the codex since 1844. The group will then try to form a hypothesis about the manuscripts' earlier history.

"For me, this is like going out in the ninth inning of a baseball game at your last bat and hitting a grand slam," Belcher said.

Belcher said the fragments are also being discussed as possibly being dated earlier than the 11th century, when they originally thought the piece was formed.

"On the manuscripts, if you'll zoom in real close, you'll see these lines they write the letters on — just like we write on ruled notebook paper. So what happened is, at the beginning of the period when they were writing this small case cursive, with all these abbreviations and stuff — which would have been back in the last quarter of the 10th century — they started out writing the letters on top of the ruled line," Belcher said.

The fashion for this writing at the end of the period inevitably went from the top of the line to suspending them from the line above. Belcher said the words on the manuscript in question are written on top of the line, making the text date earlier than they originally conceived.

"If the ninth to 10th century dating stands [for another French manuscript in Paris], then basically what that means is, [then these fragments maybe] the second-oldest portion of the text in existence," Belcher said. "However, if they made an error, and the French manuscript is 11th century dating, then [these two two fragments maybe] the earliest portion of text in existence."

Belcher said his search for the other missing pieces of the codex is still underway, and he hopes his taking part in this portion of research will help get the word out about the ancient text.

"Some of these dispersed leaves of this manuscript that got broken up are gathering dust in various libraries all over the United States, so this is kind of like when they put out an Amber Alert for a missing child," Belcher said. "Basically, we're putting out an alert here for pieces of a missing manuscript — an All-Points Bulletin — so people will be alerted now."