Original - The Coptic Orthodox Church

XXVIII
manuscript
INTRODUCTION.
will be not unwelcome. A certain arbitrariness
in the treatment of the text was, it is true, unavoidable; I
have, for example, generally
scribe as ^ for Jj>; but
corrected such faults of the
the MS. is responsible for incon
sistencies such as the addition or omissionof the hamza
and ^"VS *-^ and f*^ )
of nouns, or c. <f.
...JO^o
o> QJ
" tllc f rms and
o-5 C^~ as th
and f^oC^o of
jr verbs; further, xu^
and :<-uAx, ^3 and pb, Jo^ and Jj^, ^^ and ^i.
The Berlin MS. was collated throughout with photographs
of two MSS. of the Macarius text, viz.
1. Cod. Vatic. CXLIX, CL (7;. Mai, Scr. Vet. Nov. Coll.
IV. 275), a paper volume, of 178 foil. The subscription, fol.
86 (Icgc 80), is given as: Absolutus est liber liic benedictus,
qui complectitur omnes sacros ecclesiae canones, mcnse emscir
(februario) anno ss. martyrum millesimo octogesimo octavo
(Christi i 372), quorum benedictionesDeus nobis impertiatur. Amen.
2. Cod. Paris., no. 251 in De Slane s Catalogue, where it
is described as follows: A collection of canons, brought
together by Maquara (s^Ux), a priest of the monastery of
St. John the Dwarf, which is situated in the desert of Scete
(^^fj^). He extracted his documents from a large number
of books found, either in the desert monasteries or at Cairo.
After several years of laborious work, the collection, of
which the present MS. is an exact copy, was completed.
It contains the following pieces:
. . . . 40. (fif. 323 339). Canons of the Church, set in order
by St. Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria, and numbering
107. At the end of the work, Michael bishop of Tennis
( -^j) informs us that he had rearranged
more convenient order
these canons in a
Paper; 336 foil. Height 34 ^ cm., width 25 cm.; lines in
a page, 24. The MS. is dated AM. 1069 = AD. 1353. (Sup
plement 83, Saint Germain 41).