THE LATIN TRANSLATION OF THE "VITA SABAE" BY CYRIL OF SCYTHOPOLIS. INVESTIGATIONS ON THE MANUSCRIPT TRADITION

The Latin version of the Greek Beta iota omicron sigma Sigma alpha beta beta alpha sigma by Cyril of Scythopolis turns out to be one of the most remarkable enterprises among the translations from Greek to Latin realized during the Early Middle Ages. It is very likely that this translation, which was so far unstudied and is still unpublished, has been realized in Rome, within the alive Greek-Latin monastic milieu of the city. The Latin Vita Sabae has a surprisingly wide manuscript tradition, since it is conveyed by fourty-eight witnesses, dating back from the early 11th century (which is the only reliable terminus ante quem for the translation) to the 16th; a full inventory with bibliography is provided. Generally, the Latin text matches quite precisely the wording of the Greek original. Nevertheless, there are many passages where the Latin text, compared to the Greek, has been slightly shortened and modified; moreover, some brief sections have been cut off. These features are shared by all but one manuscript: the ms. Roma, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, tomo V, in fact, preserves a fragment of the Vita Sabae which was copied from a strict verbum-de-verbo translation of the original Greek (the fragment is edited in the Annexes). Such a significant discovery allows us to demonstrate that the extant and widespread Latin redaction is a rewriting of a previous, literal and rough translation, that afterwards had almost disappeared. All the 47 manuscripts with the rewritten redaction are indeed epitomes. Two chapters of the Greek (nn. 44 and 65) are missing from all of them, and only two codices contain nearly the whole remaining text (Bruxelles, BR, 9920-31 and Vatican, Arch. S. Pietro A.5); the other 45 transmit different selections of episodes. The collation of the fifteen main witnesses, with the survey of some others, shows that this tradition stemmed from an already shortened archetype, and that it early split into a Roman and a Beneventan branches. Moreover, this collation allows to establish some criteria that will prove reliable towards a full recensio, in view of a critical edition of the Latin Vita Sabae.