Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS 108 folio 170 recto. From Nigel Wilson's catalogue of the Greek manuscripts in that library.
Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS 108 folio 170 recto. From Nigel Wilson's catalogue of the Greek manuscripts in that library.
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Corpus Christi College, MS. 108 is the Earliest Surviving Copy of Aristotle's Biological Works

Circa 850 CE
Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS 108, folio 38r. Reproduced from Nigel Wilson's catalogue of the Greek Manuscripts in that library
Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS 108, folio 38 recto. Reproduced from Nigel Wilson's catalogue of the Greek Manuscripts in that library. It was unusually difficult to find a a single image of this codex when I searched in 2019 and 2020. Wilson's catalogue appeared to be the only readily available source at that time.

A Greek manuscript of Aristotle's Biological Works, written in Constantinople in the mid-9th century, and preserved at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (Corpus Christi College, MS. 108) is most probably the oldest surviving manuscript of the texts that founded the science of biology. It contains annotations in Greek hands of the 12th and 13th centuries.

"A list of contents has been added on the last page (fol. 183v) in an English hand of the mid-13th century, which may be that of Robert Grosseteste, one of the earliest Englishmen to study Greek. Two titles and a few words of the 13th-cent. Latin translation by William of Moerbeke were added. . . in an English humanistic hand possibly identifiable as that of John Farley (d. 1464), fellow of New College and registrar of Oxford University, whose study of Greek is known from other manuscripts" (Hunt, R.W., The Survival of Ancient Literature, Oxford: Bodleian Library [1975] No. 54.).

The manuscript was given to Corpus Christi College, Oxford by Henry Parry in 1623.

"The surviving corpus of Aristotle derives from medieval manuscripts based on a 1st century BC edition. There were no commentaries on the biological works written until they were collectively translated into Arabic. The first appearance of Aristotle's biological writings in the West are Latin translations of an Arabic edition by Michael Scot, which forms the basis of Albertus Magnus's De animalibus. In the 13th century William of Moerbeke produced a Latin translation directly from the Greek. The first printed editions and translations date to the late 15th century, the most widely circulated being that of Theodorus Gaza. In addition to the three works traditionally referred to as History of Animals, Parts of Animals and Generation of Animals, there are a number of briefer ‘essays’ on more specialized topics: On animal motion, On animal locomotion, On respiration, On life and death, On youth and old age, On length and shortness of life, On sleeping and waking, On the senses and their objects (the last six being included in the so-called Parva naturalia). Whether one should consider De Anima (On the soul) part of this project or not is a difficult question. What is certainly clear, however, is that there are important connections between the theoretical approach to the relationship between body and soul defended in that work and the distinctive way that Aristotle approaches the investigation of animals" (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-biology/).

N. G. Wilson, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Greek Manuscripts of Corpus Christi College, Oxford  (Oxford, 2011) pp. 20-21, Plates 43-46. (This catalogue has the advantage of reproducing all the photographs of the manuscripts in their actual size.)

Timeline Themes