PAI-AT1XK COUXTIB8. 



PALIMPSEST. 



HI 



ill cbarty explain UM nani 

 .4 UMS* wmt.al dfcnitiea. 

 km noabtl*** ol of UM u*e 



PALATINE COUNTIES. Three of UM Kngiish counties, Chester. 

 I is*r. and lurbam are oounti. pebtin.. by preeeription. The 

 county of Pembroke, in Wtles, was abo a eoet pabttne, till the 

 mrr- J7 Henry VIII.. c. M. The archbishop of fork. previously 

 to UM rein of Klimr-rth obisBed to be a count pabtine within his 

 poiHMonsof Hexbam and Heshamahire, in Northumberland, and i* so 

 termed In sosns ancient statute* ; this was put an end to by the stat 

 1* mi_ - i 



> an of feudal origin ; and a reference to their hbtory 

 g of UM title, uxl man? of UM incidente 

 golden says, "tbe name was received 

 _ of the empire of France, and in the like 

 i as H had fa that UBS" ('TiUesof Honour,' part ii.). In the 

 court of the ancient kings of Fiance, before tbe time of Charlemagne, 

 her* was a high judicial oAcer. called the Comes Pabtii. a kind of 

 aster of the h.usiknH. whose function* nearly resembled thoes of the 

 Hmhstus Pnstorio in the elder empire. Thb offlcer bad supreme 

 jndbbl authority in all causes that came to the king's immediate 

 Jim f TH. of Hon.,' part ii, chap, SJ.) Wbsn the seat of em; .in- 

 wnstranaJsned to France, UuetiUe and office still continued, but tlie 

 nOTMldfeBity.es wall a* a degree of jurisdiction and power anabgou* 

 to thoaeetfUie ancient functionary, were abo given to a different cbas 

 of persona. When the sovereign chose to confer a peculiar mark of 

 i upon the balder of a certain fief or province, be expressly 

 a to him UM right to exerctM the same rank, power, and juris- 

 , wiUun hi* fief or province as the comes pabtii exercised in the 

 I luce be abo obtained the name of comes pabtii or paUtinus, 

 and by virtue of tbb grant be enjoyed within his territory a supreme 

 and peculiar jurisdiction, having royalties, or jura iiu|~-ni, by which 

 be wa* distinguished from the ordinary come*, who hod only an in- 

 ferior and dependent authority within his district or county. This wa* 

 the origin of the distinction between the Pfahtgtmf and the Graf in 

 Ueruany, and between the count palatine and the ordinary count or 

 earl fc* ffnsjsnd Selden says that he had not observed the word 

 " pabtin* " thu* used in England until about the reign of Henry II. 



In conformity with this view, tbe counts palatine of England had 

 jura regalia within their counties, subject only to the general superi- 

 ority of" the Crown sovereign ; or, a* Bracton expresses it (lib. iii. cap. 8), 

 " mpjlssn habent potestatom in omnibus, salvo dominio Domino Regi 

 cut princtpi." The* bad each a Chancery and Court of Common 

 Pica*; they appointed their judge* and magistrates and bw officers ; 

 th<rr pardoned ti oastim, murders, and felonies ; all writs and judicial 

 piuiexllimi laeusd and were carried on in their names ; and the king's 

 write were of no force within their counties. Many of these powers, 

 each as the appointment of judge* and magistrate* and the privilege 

 of pardoning, were abolished by the (tat 27 Henry VIII. c. 24, which 

 abo provided that all write and process in counties pabtine should 

 from that time bear the king'* name. Tbe statute, however, expressly 

 stipulates that write shall be always witnessed in tbe name of the 



The county of Chester b a county pabtine by prescription, being 

 ' supposed to have been first given with regal jurisdiction l.y 

 . to Hugh d'Avranche*. (' Tit. of Hon.,' part ii.) It was 

 to the crown, by letter* patent, in the reign of Henry III., 

 and since that time it has always given the title of Karl of Chester to 

 the eldest son of the sovereign, being preserved in the crown as a 

 county pabtine when there i* no Prince of Wales. 



Lancaster appear* to have been first made a county pabtine by 

 Edward III., who, in the twenty-fifth year of his reign, in his patent of 

 sieaUon of Henry, the first duke, granted him the dignity of a count 

 pabline, and afterwards, in the fiftieth year of his reign, granted the 

 same dignity by letters patent to hi* son John, Duke of Lancaster. 

 Henry TV. was Duke of Lancaster, by inheritance from his father 

 John of Gaunt, at the time of hi* usurpation ; but be avoided the 

 ion of the duchy with the crown by procuring an act of parliament, 

 which declared that UM dnrhy of Lancaster should remain with him 

 and hi* heirs for ever, in the same manner as if he had never been 

 king of England. Upon the tiMainilffr of his grandson Henry VL, eoou 

 after the accession of Edward IV., the duchy became forfeited to the 

 crown, and an act of parliament fssurt to incorporate the county 

 nsmtme with the duchy of Lancaster, and to vest the whole in 

 Edward IV. sad his heirs, king* of England, for ever. Another act of 

 nsribment passed hi the reign of Henry VII., confirming the duchy to 

 the king and hi* heirs for ever ; and from that time to the present It 

 has continually been united to the crown. 



Durham, like Chester, b a county pabtine by prescription ; but it is 

 probable that the pabtine jurisdiction did not exist long, if at all. 

 before the Norman Conquest. (Surtee's ' HUtory of Durham,' Introd., 

 p. 15. > " There b colour to think," say* Selden (' Tit. ..f Hon..' portii. 

 c. 8), " that the pabtine jurisdiction began then in Bishop Walcher, 

 whom king William L made both epbcnpna and dux provinciie, that 

 he might fnraare rebsOionem genti* gbdio, et reformer* mores el. -.pii.., 

 as William of Malmesbury says,' Durham continued a* a county 

 pabtine in the hands of a subject till 18-V), tho bishop being prince 

 pabtine, and poMMng jura regalia. By stet ft 7 Will. 1 V., c. 19, 

 pabttne jurisdiction was transferred to the crown, subject to certain 

 lestiietious which have been removed by later statute*. 



PALI. [bAMcaiT LASUVAUB ASD LTTKBATCBC.] 



PALIMPSEST (weAiMrVv, from iraAu- again, and <M" to cleanse 

 11 a term applied to a manuscript, from whii-h tlie original text 

 has been erased, in order to make room for a second subject ; a process 

 which was aoooni|>lished by nibbing it with pumice-stone or other similar 

 substances till the trace* of the original writing disappeared, and then 

 smoothing it down with a roller or polisher. That this practice was 

 adopted by the aneiente, appears from a passage in Cicero's letter to the 

 jurisconsult Trebatius, where he praises his friend for having been so 

 economical a* to write on a palimpsest, but says that he should like to 

 know what those thing* could have been which were considered of less 

 importance than hi letter. C Ad Familiares.' vii. 18.) Palimpsests arc 

 abo mentioned by Plutarch and Catullus, but these appear to have been 

 rather leaves of 'books, *o prepared that one writing could easily be 

 expunged ami another substituted, and were frequently used by authors 

 for correcting thuir works, as U evident from tho satire of Catullus : 



" I'uto MM ego illl millit tut decent tut plurs 

 I'encriptu : nee sic, ut flt, in palimpsuto 

 Rrlata ; chartic rt-glir, novi libri, 

 N"vi umbilici, lort rub, mcmbrtna 

 Hircctu plumb.), et pumice oinnia icquata." 



CilXKX, xxl!., 1. 5 rl irq. 



It was not, however, till the 9th or 10th century that this practice 

 became at all general, and then it was more frequently resorted to l.y 

 the Latins than the Greeks. In the llth century it appears to have 

 been at its height. In the 13th and 14th centuries edicts forbidding it 

 were issued in Germany ; and it had not entirely ceased iu tl. 

 century: as Knittel, in his account of the palimpsest monuseri 

 the Augustan library at Wolfcnbiittel, tells us that in the early times 

 of the art printed books were sometimes worked off mi vellum 

 which an lent \vritingshad been erased, and instances particularly an 

 edition of the Clementine Constitutions, printed by Nicole. 

 1470 upon parchment, which hod undergone this process of obliteration 

 to prepare it for the purpose. 



The earliest observations on palimpsest manuscripts were -made in 

 France, in 1692, by M. Boivin, of the Bibliothoque du Koi, who 

 discovered beneath the Greek text of St. Ephrem, written in the 1 Ith 

 century, a portion of the Greek Bible, in uncial letters of the cth 

 century. This wns followed, in 1755, by a similar discovery made by 

 F. A. Knittel in the Augustan library at Wolfenlmttel, of a palin 

 manuscript of the Origines of Isidorus, under which was a translation 

 of the Epistle to the Romans, by Ulphilas, bishop of Gothland, who in 

 the 4th century was known to have translated tlie whole of the 

 Scriptures into the language of that country, and to have invented a 

 new character, consisting of letters borrowed chiefly from the Greek 

 for that purpose, but of whose labours only the four Gospel* 



i -\y known to exist in the Codex Argenteut at Upsala. In 17'!-, 

 Knittel published, in 4to, the greater portion of the missing vl 

 which, although not identical with the Codex Aryentmt, as originally 

 supposed, proved to be a portion of a similar manuscript. 



By far the greatest discoveries hi the field of palimpsest maim 

 were, however, made by Cardinal Mai. In his researches in the 

 Ambrosian library at Milan, of which he was keeper, he dim-' 

 several fragments of Cicero's orations; these comprised the orations 

 against Clodius and Curio, that ' De ^Ere alieno Milonin,' not pre- 

 viously known, and the oration ' De Rege 1 These tr. 

 had lain concealed for centuries under a Latin translation of tl. 

 of the Council of Chalccdon, and were adjudged by the discoverer to 

 belong to the 4th century. In another manu.-eiipt he detected .- 

 fragments of the orations of Symmaclms, who had previously been 

 known only from his epistles; ami the whole of tlie comedies of 

 Plautus, including a fragment of the ' Vidularia,' a lost comedy, of 

 which all that previously existed were twenty lines, preserved by 

 Priscian and Nonius. 



Being promoted to the librarianship of the Vatican, he discovered in 

 that library the treatise of Cicero, ' De Republics,' of which nothing 

 had been known, in modern times, beyond the fragments preserved in 

 the writings of Macrobius, Loctantius, Augustin, Nonius, and others. 

 This priceless manuscript came from the celebrated Abbey of St. 

 Colunibanus, in Bobio, iu the Milanese territory, having IKVU pur- 

 chased by Pius V., who appears to have been acquainted with its value 

 as a palimpsest ; yet no attempt was made to decipher it till two and a 

 half centuries later, when Cardinal Mai brought out hU famous edit i n 

 at liome in 1821. This manuscript, which contains 300 pages, is in 

 double column!., each consisting of fifteen lines. The writing is in line, 

 large, Roman uncials, the words not divided. It is .truly .me of the 

 earliest palimpsest MSS. yet discovered, and is referred l.y Cardinal 

 Mai to the 2nd or 3rd century of our era. Above tho treatise was a 

 copy of St. AuguBtine'- ( 'ommcnt.-iry on the Psalms, in a handwriting 

 earlier than that of the 10th century. 



These researches of Canlii a new zest to the study of 



palimpsest writing)), and shortly after Niebuhr examined several of tho 

 manuacript-i iu the lilnary of the chapter at Verona, one of which v\.i.< 

 discovered by him to contain a palimpsest of some ancient jurisconsult., 

 which he suggested to lie tbe Institutions of Gaius, a conjecture whi. Ii 

 wa* verified by the Berlin Academy of Sciences, under whose auspices 

 the first edition of this work appeared in 1820, scarcely a ninth of the. 

 whole book having been found illegible. This palimpsest is more par- 



