534 Mr. Soane on the connexion of Pope Gerbert 



and calculated to throw light on the subject has been carefully col- 

 lected by the learned and able author, Blume divides the different 

 MSS. into four classes : — 1, that of which the Arcerian is the repre- 

 sentative ; 2, the MSS. containing the extracts from the Digest ; 

 3, the MSS. of Nipsus ; 4, those of Boethius. In the course of the 

 article he has endeavoured to trace, as far as his data permitted, the 

 history of the several MSS. which pass under review, and particu- 

 larly of the celebrated Codex Arcerianus, which he identifies with 

 the MSS. said to have been discovered by Thomas Phsedrus in the 

 Monastery of Bobbio, in the year 1494, and transferred by him to 

 Rome*. The Arcerian is also considered by him to be the source of 

 the fourth-class MSS., or those containing the treatise attributed to 

 Boethius. t 



After insisting that the genuineness of the Euclid is bound up 

 with that of the Deraonstratio, Blume goes on to say : — " Rather 

 may Gerbert be considered the compiler of this Appendix. For in- 

 dependentl)'^ of Gerbert's probable connection with the Arcerian at 

 Bobbio, and without reference to the MS. of the third class, in which 

 Goesius says he found the Epistola ad Celsum ascribed to Gerbert, 

 we must most especially take into consideration a MS. belonging to 

 De Thou, which was used by Rigaltius, and is thus described in the 

 Catalogue of De Thou's library : — 'BoetiiMusica, Arithmetica, Ger- 

 berti Geometria et Rhythmomachia J.' " It was from this MS. that 



* Though it is difficult to deny the extreme probability of this supposition, yet 

 there are difficulties which make the author hesitate. The known connection be- 

 tween John Lasco and the celebrated Erasmus would seem to raise a presumption 

 that the Erasmus whose «ame appears on the MS. was no other than that great 

 philologist. But this would go far to show that the Arcerian was not the same 

 with the Bobbio MS. The MS. is not mentioned either in the Catalogue of the 

 Bobbio library, printed by Muratori in the third volume of the Antiq. Ital., nor yet 

 in the one compiled in the year 1461, and published by Peyron in his ' Commen- 

 tatio de Bibliotheca Bobiensi.' In the first-mentioned list, which is as old as the 

 tenth century, we find ' Libros Boetii iii. de Aritmetica et alterum de Astronomia.' 

 •}• " Mir scheinen nun schon aller Handschviftern, in welchen der Name des Boe- 

 thius mit vorkomt, zur Arcerianische Familie zugehoren," p. 198. In a subsequent 

 page, after pointing out the supposed resemblance of a part of the introduction to a 

 passage in Ageiius Urbicus, he proceeds: — "Das Uebrige schliesst sich dem Arce- 

 rianus meidt wortlick, und oft selbst biichstablich in sichtbar corrumpirten Lesarten 

 an : doch steht auch Einiges darunter, was sich sonst teils gar nicht, teils wenigstens 

 iiichtin Arcerianus erhaltenhat," ih. p. 299. Though this is undoubtedly true, still in 

 many places it deserts the Arcerian, and agrees with the Erfurdt MS. which belongs 

 to the third class. See, for instance, 395, 20 ; 396, 4, 5, 15 ; 403, 8, 10 ; 409, 17, 

 20-25. If p. 27, 12 is to be considered as the original of what we have in Boethius, 

 p. 397, 6 and 409, 6, then the writer must have had a MS. of the third class before 

 liim, for in neither of the other two classes is the first-mentioned passage to be 

 found. The definition of measure, which Boethius attributes to Frontinus 

 (p. 415, 11), is in the Jena MS. (a transcript of the Arcerian) given to Balbus; 

 in the Gudian, which belongs to the second class, to Frontinus ; and in those of the 

 third class, to Nipsus. 



X According to Oudin, this MS. came into Colbert's collection, and from thence 

 into the National Library at Paris. (Suppl. in Bellarmin. p. 313.) This leads us to 

 identify De Thou's MS. with the one numbered 7185 in that collection, and which 

 is said in the printed catalogue to have belonged to Peter Pithou and afterwards to 

 Colbert. It seems to be a collection of distinct MSS. bound up together. The 

 Arithmetic of Boethius is of the eleventh century, and the Musica of the fourteenth, 



