Western Medieval Manuscripts : Compilation of notes and transcriptions of Greek texts

Western Medieval Manuscripts

<p style='text-align: justify;'>This manuscript contains a <i>Compilation of notes and transcriptions of Greek texts</i>, copied by the 17th-century clergyman and writer Abednego Seller, around 1686. Most of the content was copied from identified manuscripts at Lincoln College, Oxford, where Seller studied, and at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. The principal text is a commentary on Aristotle's <i>Metaphysics</i> which is the primary surviving work of the 5th-century Neoplatonist philosopher Syrianus. The rest of the manuscript's content consists of excerpts, from texts including other commentaries on the works of Plato and Aristotle, a commentary on the <i>Odyssey</i>, mathematical and astronomical works and Procopius of Caesarea's history of the building works of the Emperor Justinian I. The excerpts from the <i>Topographia Christiana</i> of Cosmas Indicopleustes, which include a number of descriptions of animals, have been illustrated with two ink drawings of animals on p. <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(21);return false;'>6 bis</a>. One other work appears in full, a short medical text from the Hippocratic corpus. The works featured are mainly of ancient or Byzantine origin, but include an excerpt from a commentary on Aristotle's <i>De caelo</i> by Theophilos Korydalleus (c. 1570-1646), a rare text which can have been only a few decades old when this manuscript was produced, but whose authorship was unknown to Seller and his English contemporaries..</p>