THE MANUSCRIPTS
There are two manuscripts of the Gospel of Barnabas extant, one in Italian and one in Spanish, or, to be more precise, there is an Italian manuscript extant and there is an extant copy of an incomplete Spanish manuscript which manuscript is itself no longer extant. This is an important distinction, and one that has not been made often enough in many recent studies of the work. It is common to speak of both the Italian and Spanish versions and to speak of these as interchangeable with Italian and Spanish manuscripts. But, in fact, the Italian manuscript is the only manuscript of the work we now possess. There was, we know, once a Spanish manuscript but it has been lost. At some stage, in the eighteenth century, an English speaker made a copy of that Spanish manuscript, and that copy was rediscovered in the 1970s. It reveals that the Spanish manuscript from which it was made was in fact missing a considerable number of chapters, almost a third of the chapters found in the Italian manuscript. Strictly speaking, therefore, we must say that the Gospel of Barnabas has survived only in an Italian manuscript - our knowledge of the Spanish manuscript which once existed is secondhand; we depend entirely on the accuracy of the Englishman's copy for our knowledge of the Spanish version and we know that it was, in any case, incomplete. This means that many sections of the work have only survived in the Italian language and cannot be compared to a Spanish text and it means that evidence of orthography, ink and paper and so forth is not available for a Spanish manuscript. For practical purposes, therefore, the Gospel of Barnabas should be considered first and foremost as a work of Italian vernacular literature, which is how it was approached by the Raggs when they translated it into English early in the 20th C.
The rediscovery of the Englishman's copy of the Spanish manuscript in the 1970s has, however, brought new impetus to studies of the Gospel of Barnabas by Spanish scholars some of whom have proposed that the Spanish and not the Italian version was the earliest written. The fact that the Spanish manuscript was lost and that a copy of it was unknown for so long has, they argue, led to an undue emphasis on the Italian version; the Spanish connections in the work have been underestimated. But proposing that the Spanish version was primary and the Italian derivative flies in the face of what the Spanish version itself tells us. In its Preface we are told explicitly that the Spanish version was translated from the Italian by a certain "Mustafa de Aranda". It has become a popular theory among students of the Spanish version to propose that this information is misleading and should be considered part of a hoax; they have tried to demonstrate that the Spanish was written first and that the Italian manuscript was translated from it and not the other way around. The notice regarding Mustafa de Aranda, they claim, is contrary to and designed to conceal the actual course of events. Such theories are probably, in part, an over-compensation for the fact that for many decades the Spanish connections of the work were indeed overlooked. But they also unnecessarily complicate the picture and fall foul of Ocham's razor. There is, as David Sox concluded in his study of the question, little reason to doubt the assessment of the Raggs that the Barnabas text issues from an Italian (and not a Spanish) provenance. The influence of Dante on the text points to this. The Raggs were interested in the text because they were Dante scholars and the composition (not just the Italian version) bears traces of dependence on Dante. This strongly suggests that the work was composed in Italian, not translated into Italian from the Spanish.
The Italian Manuscript
The complete Italian manuscript is now in the National Library of Austria in the collection of fine and rare books of Prince Eugene of Savoy. It is in good condition and is handsomely bound in black-green Turkish binding. It only measures about 6 inches to 5 inches in size but is quite thick; 255 leaves of a heavy coarse paper. The writing throughout is steady, clear and methodical with an orthographic style that places it in the latter half of the sixteenth century. The watermark of the paper - an anchor in a circle - comes from the same period and has been identified as being of northern Italian origin. There seems little doubt that the manuscript was produced in Italy in the later decades of the sixteenth century, probably in the 1580's or 90's. But why was it produced? For what reason? By whom?
There are no tell-tale marks that give away the identity of the hand that wrote the manuscript, but the safest assumption to make from the steadiness of the writing and the scale of the production is that it was written by a professional scribe. This is especially likely given some of the other features of the work. For a start, it is a carefully planned piece of writing and shows that its creator was adept at manuscript production - it is not a copy scribbled off for private use by an amatuer. On the other hand it seems to be a unique copy and not one of a large-scale production. Some features suggest that the manuscript was perhaps being prepared for a compositor who, in the next stage of production, would reproduce the manuscript in printer's blocks ready for the printing press. If this is the case, however, it seems the work never reached the presses, for the Italian manuscript has not been completed in its entireity. While the whole of the text of the Gospel has been written out and spaced into chapters, only some chapters have been supplied with headings. In most cases the spaces for the chapter rubics are blank, but it was clearly the intention of the writer to add headings in every case. Why has this task not been completed? For some reason, it seems, the project was abandoned. After going to great pains (and probably considerable expense) in organising the production the writer seems to have stopped work after filling in the first twenty or so chapter rubics. It would barely have taken an afternoon's work to finish what he had started but for some reason the finishing touches were never added. If the manuscript was being prepared for a publishing house, perhaps they grew nervous about being involved in the project and cancelled the scribe's commision? Perhaps the scribe died or was discovered? This is one of the more inpenetrable mysteries surrounding the work. Having been composed and then written up into such a highly organised form as the Italian manuscript, nothing ever came of it. Why not? If the work was some sort of hoax, then it was a hoax that was never perpetrated. Why not? If the work was being prepared for publication in the Italian vernacular, then by what publishing house, where, for what readership, and why did they fail to go through with the undertaking?
These questions are further compounded by Arabic margin notes found throughout the text. While the Italian hand has failed to complete the task of adding chapter rubics, an Arabic hand writing in red ink has added Arabic chapter rubics in most cases as well as further notes and rough translations of selected passages as marginalia. The purpose and origins of these Arabic notes is far from clear. The Arabic is poor and is almost certainly by someone for whom Arabic was not a natural language. This has given rise to speculation that the Arabic notes were made by the same writer as the Italian text, although no one has given a convincing reason why the Italian writer would do this. Are the Arabic margin notes the first tentative notes towards the preparation of an Arabic translation from the Italian? Are they supposed to lend the text some sort of spurious authenticity? Are they to help an Arabic reader find his way about in the text? Are they, as one scholar suggested, a device to ensure that Muslims did not destroy the book through ignorance of its contents, a device to ensure its preservation? The most natural answer would be that they are not directly related to the making of the manuscript but were added by a later reader. We do not know the movements of the Italian manuscript before it came to rest in the collection of Prince Eugene, but we can be sure that it passed through the hands of several owners.
The Raggs, when they examined the manuscript in Vienna, were struck by the binding and described it as either authentic Turkish binding typical of the sixteenth century or as a startingly good imitation of the same. Sox, when he examined the manuscript was also struck by the binding and offered the opinion that, to him, it looked like the original binding of the codex rather than a later addition. But this is most unlikely, for the simple reason that the manuscript, as explained above, is unfinished - it is unlikely that the person who made the manuscript would have had it bound (at some expense) without first finishing the chapter rubics. It is more likely that the binding was supplied by one of the manuscripts' subsequent owners, a collector who valued it finished or not. Conspiracy theories abound in studies of the Gospel of Barnabas; the suggestion that the Turkish (or pseudo-Turkish) binding was also part of an elaborate hoax, perhaps designed to throw researchers off the trail, as has been suggested, cannot be given any credence. Again, who would bind an unfinished manuscript? How would it further a hoax to have the work bound before it was complete?
Philological studies of the Italian in the manuscript have proven to be a fruitless line of investigation. Other than showing dependence on Dante, the Italian is, according to experts, a combination of Tuscan and Venetian dialects, but it also shows many pecularities which may suggest that Italian was not the first language of the writer. The spelling is remarkably idiosycratic and, unaccountably, the writer is in the habit of placing the letter 'h' before vowels, so that "anno" (year) becomes "hanno". The writer shows knowledge of and dependence on the Vulgate Latin Bible, but no knowledge of other languages except for once describing the Hebrew festival of Tabernacles by its Greek name 'Senofegia'. Along with the Arabic margin notes, this information all spells philogical confusion. Indeed, as Jan Slomp wrote "There is no other manuscript extant with such a strange combination of linguistic elements as far as morphology, syntax, strands of dialect etc. are concerned." Some have tried to account for the incongruities in the language by suggesting that it was the work of a Spaniard living and perhaps studying in Italy. Others have suggested it was written in an Italian speaking community somewhere outside of Italy, such as those in the Middle East or Cyprus. Experts consulted suggested that it was perhaps a Tuscan work being rendered by a Venetian scribe, or perhaps the other way around. As with most questions regarding the Gospel of Barnabas the evidence is contradictory and confounding and there is little agreement as it what it all signifies.
The Spanish Version
The existence of a Spanish manuscript was noted by George Sale in his Preface to his English translation of the Koran in the early 1700s. It was also known to academics at Oxford in the 1780s. Sale furthermore records that the "Moriscos of Africa" possessed a Spanish version. The whereabouts of the original Spanish manuscript - or manuscripts - is today unknown. What is known is that a copy of it made by an English speaker was found in Sydney Australia in the 1970s. It was found in the Fisher Library at the University of Sydney among the books of Sir Charles Nicholson, one of the founders of the University and one of the guiding intellectual lights in the early history of the colony in New South Wales. At the beginning of the papers among which it was found is the Nicholson armorial book-plate and an informative note that reads: "Transcribed from ms. in possession of the Revd Mr Edm. Callamy who bought it at the decease of Mr George Sale...and now gave me at the decease of Mr John Nickolls, 1745." It is likely that the copy (transcription) was purchased for the Nicholson collection in Ireland. On arrival in Sydney it was lost among Nicholson's papers until accidentally discovered by library staff in the 1970s. It is, we must assume, a faithful rendering of the manuscript once in the hands of George Sale. As mentioned above, it records that the manuscript from which it was copied was "wanting" a substantial number of chapters. Otherwise, there are few obvious differences to the Italian manuscript with which it is almost always in agreement. There is a descrepancy of one in the chapter numberings of the last few chapters and other minor (possibly significant) differences and then there are peculiarities of style, syntax and vocabulary unique to the Spanish, but on the whole this Spanish Gospel of Barnbabas is one and the same as the Italian book of the same name. The Spanish version - we will call it the Nicholson manuscript - includes, however, one very important addition: a preface not found in the Italian manuscript (although there are a few blank pages at the beginning of the Italian manuscript that may have been set aside for a corresponding Preface in Italian.) This Preface, mentioned by Sale, not only tells us that the Spanish text it prefaces was translated from the Italian by 'Mustafa de Aranda" but also discloses the circumstances leading to the discovery of the Gospel of Barnabas in the first place. It tells an intriguing tale about the intellectual fortunes of a certain "Brother Marino" who, we are told, discovered and then stole the Gospel of Barnabas - presumably the Italian version is intended, although we are not told - from the library of Pope Sixtus V. It also describes a trail of errant texts that had been handed over to "Brother Marino", an employee of the Inquisition, that led him to discover what he describes in the Preface as his "celestial treasure". The rediscovery of a copy of this Preface was a great boon for studies of the Gospel of Barnabas for it provides an explicit account of what the Gospel of Barnabas is, where it came from and who brought it to light. Whether the story told in the Preface is true or not is another matter - if it is not true, it still provides invaluable information about the deception of which it is then a key part.
SAMPLES OF THE MANUSCRIPTS
Sample 1. A page from the Italian ms.
Sample 2. The Arabic margin notes - Italian ms.
Sample 3. Blank chapter headings - Italian ms.
©Copyright R. Blackhirst 2015