A Lost Greek Manuscript of a work by the Byzantine physician Actuarius?
MS Bruxelles, Bibliothèque royale II.4237
In his 1964 Census of Libraries and Catalogues of Greek Manuscripts, French classical philologist and expert in Greek manuscripts, Marcel Richard (1907-1976), made a brief mention of five Greek manuscripts of the Bibliothèque royale in Brussels that had not been previously catalogued1. According to his explicit statement, he became aware of these codices through Martin Wittek (1929-2025), who was serving at that time as a Librarian at the Cabinet des Manuscrits of the Bibliothèque royale. One of these manuscripts was described by Richard as "Jean Zacharie, extrait, XVIe s." (Iohannes Zacharias, fragment, 16th century) and seemed to contain a fragment from an unidentified work by the Byzantine physician Iohannes Zacharias Actuarius (ca. 1275-ca. 1330).
For nearly six decades, this manuscript remained unknown to the scholarly community2. It is briefly referenced in a footnote within the 2020 monographic study on the Byzantine physician Iohannes Zacharias Actuarius3, and, seemingly on this basis, it is listed on the website PINAKES4and, following suite, also on BIBLISSIMA5, with an unspecified content (Opera) and a mention of the 16th century.
A digital reproduction of the manuscript is now available on the site of Brussels library6. The title page of the manuscript does not announce a work by Actuarius, but a dialogue on ornithology with a title partially in Greek, a reference to names of birds in Greek, Latin and German, and the mention that “this erudite work is particularly useful to all scholars for the reading of poets”. The title page reads as follows:
ΔΙΑΛΟΓΟΣ│DE AVIBUS ET EA=│rum nominibus Graecis│Latinis, Germanicis,│Non minùs festivus quà[m]│eruditus, & omnibus│studiosis ad intelligendos│Poëtas maxime utilis │Per Dn. Gybertu[m] Longolium│artium & medicinae Doctore[m]│clarissimum, paulò ante mor=│tem conscriptus│EPITAPHIUM│Authoris ad libelli fine[m]│adiecimus│Cum gratia & Privilegio│1544
A later hand added: “Colonie apud Gymnicum”.
The most striking characteristic of this title page at first sight is its layout, which recalls that of printed books.
The catalogue of the library consulted through the link provided in the digital version of the manuscript does not provide any other information than a reference to the 16th century.
Perusing the manuscript, the initial impression created by its title page is progressively validated: the Brussels item exactly reproduces a printed book7: the Dialogus De avibus by Gijsbert van Langerack (1507-1543), more commonly known under the Latinized form of his name, Gybertus Longolius as in the Brussels manuscript8. The work was published in 1544 in Cologne, by the well-known printer Johann Gymnich (Iohannes Gymnicus in the Latined form of his name) (ca. 1480-1544) . The differences between the manuscript and the printed volume are the imprint9, and the layout of the pages.
Without delving into the question of whether the Brussels item is the model of the printed book or a reproduction of it10, we can page the work and read the dialogue announced in its title, which fictitiously stages the author and a student of his named Pamphilus. The two discuss fragments on ornithology compiled from a great variety of classical and later texts by Longolius and duly attributed by him to their author.
At folio [F7] recto of the printed edition and 39 recto-verso of the manuscript, we discover a brief text in Greek11. As per the introductory phrase, this Greek text comes from “some more recent Greek physician, Iohannes Zacharias, called Actuarius” (... recentiorem quendam Graecum medicum, Ioannem Zacharian, quem Actuarium vocant ...). It provides a description of a bird identified as Woodlark according to contemporary taxonomy (Lullula arborea [Linnaeus 1758]).
Whereas the other extracts from classical texts in the Dialogus can be identified in the works from which they are said to come, this one, instead, cannot be found in any of the works by or attributed to the Byzantine physician Iohannes Zacharias Actuarius (circa 1275-circa 1330) that are currently known. This raises questions regarding the authenticity of the fragment and the identification of its author, particularly because inauthentic texts abundantly circulated from Antiquity to the Renaissance and beyond.
The exchange between the two interlocutors that immediately follows the Greek fragment anticipates in a very deftly crafted way the inquiries that Longolius expected from readers12:
Pamphilus: This Actuarius certainly described well this big sparrow, and I often wondered why you withhold such a remarkable book (librum), so much so because it adds (to the text) pictures and descriptions of herbs and numerous animals following Dioscorides, something that other [authors or manuscripts] did not do.
Longolius: I was frequently told that Jean Ruel, this Parisian glory, decided to publish all Actuarius’ works. This is the reason why, since my book (liber) is acephalus and some parts of its texts (ex sermonibus suis) are missing, I did not want thus far to present a truncated and partial manuscript (codicem) to the specialists of medicine; however, if those in whose hands the manuscripts (codices) of Ruel ended up—since Ruel has died—were to withhold them longer, I will publish the one that I happen to have.
Carefully read, this exchange provides several keys. As per Pamphilus’ comment, Longolius possessed a manuscript (librum in Pamphilus comment and liber et codicem in Longolius’ reply) that, unlike others, added “illustrations of plants and numerous animals” to the text (... herbarum, animaliumque multorum picturas ... adiungat) following Dioscorides, author of De materia medica, the largest encyclopedia of antiquity on the natural products used in medicine whose text was illustrated with representations of plants mostly in several manuscripts. Pamphilus did not identify the work by Actuarius contained in Longolius’ manuscript, but we may hypothesize that it was about natural history or, possibly also, materia medica as the mention of Dioscorides suggests.
In his reply, Longolius added some elements of description of this manuscript. However magnificent it might have been (tan insignem as Pamphilus qualifies it), it was incomplete as per Longolius’ own admission: it was “missing the beginning and some passages of the text” (ἀκέφαλος and ex sermonibus suis aliquot deesse, with the repetition truncatum et mutilum).
The story did not end there because Longolius referred to another manuscript of Actuarius’ works to which he compared his own. This second codex was owned by the French scholar Jean Ruel (1474-1537), best known for his Latin translation of Dioscorides, De materia medica. This translation was not Ruel’s only one. There was also that of Actuarius, Epitome medica, which was limited, however, to the last two books of the work13. Now, according to Longolius, Ruel had announced that “he had decided to publish (edere) all Actuarius writings” (... omnia ... scripta edere instituisse ...). Assuming that he achieved such work (which, in any case, was probably not an edition, but a translation), he did not publish it because of his death. As Longolius continued, Ruel’s manuscripts (codices) ended up in the hands of undefined people (... illi in quorum manus Ruellii codices pervenere ...) who had not made them public (... suppresserint ...). This is where Longolius’ copy became important.
If the owners of Ruel’s manuscripts were “to persevere in not releasing” these codices (... diutius suppressering ...), Longolius would “publish the one he happened to possess” (... dabo qualem mihi habere contigit). He had been “reluctant to publish the manuscript until then” (... nolui hactenus ... codicem obiicere ...) precisely because it was lacunary. He did not want “to give physicians a manuscript [= a text] that was acephale and lacunary” (... nolui ... medicinae studiosis truncatum et mutilem codicem obiicere). Longolius’ sudden death in 1544 prevented him to accomplish such a program and not even to publish his Dialogus de avibus, which was printed in an edition curated by William Turner (1508-1568).
Neither Ruel nor Longolius’ manuscript have been hitherto identified. Regarding Longolius’ copy, his wife sold his books to the German humanist Johannes Cincinnius (1485-1555), who was the librarian and archivist of the Benedictine Abbey of Werden in the Rhineland. Cincinnius, in turn, donated his books to the library of the Abbey. With secularization in the early years of the 19th century, the holdings of the library left the Abbey, thus including those of Longolius or what was left of them. Their location remained unknown until 1985, when some of Longolius’ books were discovered in the collections of Dusseldorf University. No Greek copy of a work on ornithology, natural history or materia medica by Actuarius owned by Longolius appeared among them or has been recovered thus far.
Returning to the Brussels manuscript, it contains on the verso of its last folio (f. 48) a handwritten note mentioning two name individuals (Remus [= Remy] and Lefebvre) who have not been identified until now. The same note also refers to Flanders and Augustinian Friars, which allows us to hypothesize that the manuscript was part of the library of a religious community in Belgium, which remained unidentified thus far. As per the inventory, the Bibliothèque royale received the manuscript in 1907 as a donation from Belgian bibliophile and art collector Arthur Blomme, who served as the president of the Termonde tribunal. 14.
The Brussels manuscript is a reproduction of the 1544 printed edition of Longolius’ dialogue De avibus probably made for the personal use of an unknown scholar. Whoever this scholar was, he might not have been a highly skilled hellenist as the mistakes in the Greek text of the manuscript suggest, unless he hastily copied the printed text in a notebook, as a pro-memoria for further study. At some point in time, the manuscript was in the possession of a local religious community and later passed through the hands of one or more private collectors. It has been lost since. The only direct evidence of its existence is the printed edition. Its Brussels copy attests to the enduring interest in classical texts on ornithology among scholars in the Renaissance and possibly beyond.
Whatever its origin and history, the Brussels item should not be listed as a manuscript of a still unidentified work by the Byzantine physician Iohannes Zacharias Actuarius. Only the 1544 printed version of Longolius, Dialogus de avibus, should be included as a substitute of a short fragment from a now lost copy apparently illustrated of a work by Actuarius on ornithology or, possibly, on materia medica that bore some similarity to the illustrated copies of Dioscorides, De materia medica.
Alain Touwaide
1 Marcel Richard, Répertoire des bibliothèques et des catalogues de manuscrits grecs. Paris: Editions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1964, p. 17.
2 A mention of the manuscript (limited to its shelfmark) can be found, however, in the 3rd edition (revised and augmented) of Richard’s Census by Jean-Marie Olivier, Turnhout: Brepols, 1995, p. 175.
3 See Petros Bouras-Vallianatos, Innovations in Byzantine Medicine. The Writings of John Zacharias Aktouarios (c. 1275-ca.1330) (Oxford Studies in Byzantium). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020, 235n5. As per his explicit statement, the author was alerted about this manuscript by Dr. Lucien Reynhout, specialist of Latin manuscripts, codicology, and medieval libraries at the Bibliothèque royale in Brussels.
4 https://pinakes.irht.cnrs.fr//notices/cote/10016/ with a reference to the work cited in note 1.
5 https://portail.biblissima.fr/fr/ark:/43093/mdata7ca8a1a4e48a6693ec79f3aeea7e6b9d3694b87b with a reference to the page of the site PINAKES above.
6 https://uurl.kbr.be/1814014.
7 Dr Nathaël Istasse, Senior Researcher specialized in ancient manuscripts at the Bibliothèque royale, who is compiling a catalogue of the part of the collection of manuscripts that includes the present item, confirmed this identification in email exchanges in May 2025. I wish to thank him here for his collaboration. See also below.
8 For a digital version of the printed text, see https://viewer.onb.ac.at/1099DEA5.
9 “Coloniae excudebat Io. Gymnicus,│Anno M.D.XLIIII.” in the printed volume and “Colonie apud Gymnicum” introduced by a second hand in the Brussels manuscript.
10 Whereas watermarks in the paper of the manuscript could provide some chronological indication about the date of the manuscript and, on this basis, on it being the model or a copy of the printed edtion, the watermark visible on one folio has no equivalent in watermark repertories. Communication by Dr Istasse. The manuscript does not present any of the marks typical of use in a printing workshop. At any rate, a comparison between the Greek text in the manuscript and the printed edition does not favour the hypothesis that the manuscript is the model of the printed edition. See the transcription of the Greek fragment in both works, with the differences between them.
11 The text makes 13 lines in the full-page layout in the printed edition and 29 in the 2-column layout of the manuscript.
12 Pamphilus: Bellè sanè depingit Auctuarius[sic!] iste passere[m] magnum, saepéq[ue] miratus sum tan insignem librum à te supprimi, maximè cùm & herbarum, animaliumq[ue] multorum picturas & descriptiones, quòd alii non fecere, post Dioscoridem diligentissimè adiungat.
Longolius: Saepè mihi dictum est, parisiensium ornamentum Ioannem Ruellium omnia Auctuarii [sic!] scripta êdere instituisse, qua de causa, cùm meus liber ἀκέφαλος sit, & videntur ex sermonibus suis aliquot deesse, nolui hactenus medicinae studiosis truncatum & mutilum codicem obiicere: verùm si illi, in quorum manus Ruellii codices pervenêre, cùm iam vita functus sit Ruellis, diutius suppressererint, dabo quale[m] mihi habere contigit.
13 This translation was published posthumously in 1539.
14 Information provided by Dr Nathaël Istasse.