William Sherard and the Prices Edict - article ; n°159 ; vol.6, pg 83-107

Michael Crawford

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Revue numismatique - Année 2003 - Volume 6 - Numéro 159 - Pages 83-107
Summary. — The article analyses the epigraphic manuscripts of William Sherard, as preserved in the British Library. These manuscripts contain copies of numerous inscriptions from Western Asia Minor, including the Stratonicea copy of Diocletian's Prices Edict, discovered by Sherard. The article argues for a different relationship between multiple copies of the same text from that hitherto accepted, with important consequences for the establishment of the text of inscriptions that are no longer preserved; and goes on to discuss Sherard's methods of work, in the context of the history of epigraphy at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Résumé. — Cet article analyse les manuscrits épigraphiques de William Sherard conservés à la British Library. Ils contiennent des copies de nombreuses inscriptions d'Asie mineure occidentale, notamment l'exemplaire de l'Édit du maximum de Dioclétien à Stratonicée découvert par Sherard. L'article propose une reconstitution des liens entre les diverses copies de ce même texte différente de celle qui était admise jusque-là, ce qui n'est pas sans conséquence pour l'établissement du texte de ces inscriptions qui ne sont plus conservées. La méthode de travail de Sherard est d'autre part située dans le contexte de l'histoire de l'épigraphie au tournant des XVIP et XVIIIe siècles.
25 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

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• Publié par: REVUE_NUMISMATIQUE
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 12
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

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Michael Crawford
William Sherard and the Prices Edict
In: Revue numismatique, 6e série - Tome 159, année 2003 pp. 83-107.
Abstract
Summary. — The article analyses the epigraphic manuscripts of William Sherard, as preserved in the British Library. These
manuscripts contain copies of numerous inscriptions from Western Asia Minor, including the Stratonicea copy of Diocletian's
Prices Edict, discovered by Sherard. The article argues for a different relationship between multiple copies of the same text from
that hitherto accepted, with important consequences for the establishment of the text of inscriptions that are no longer preserved;
and goes on to discuss Sherard's methods of work, in the context of the history of epigraphy at the turn of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries.
Résumé
Résumé. — Cet article analyse les manuscrits épigraphiques de William Sherard conservés à la British Library. Ils contiennent
des copies de nombreuses inscriptions d'Asie mineure occidentale, notamment l'exemplaire de l'Édit du maximum de Dioclétien
à Stratonicée découvert par Sherard. L'article propose une reconstitution des liens entre les diverses copies de ce même texte
différente de celle qui était admise jusque-là, ce qui n'est pas sans conséquence pour l'établissement du texte de ces inscriptions
qui ne sont plus conservées. La méthode de travail de Sherard est d'autre part située dans le contexte de l'histoire de
l'épigraphie au tournant des XVIP et XVIIIe siècles.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Crawford Michael. William Sherard and the Prices Edict. In: Revue numismatique, 6e série - Tome 159, année 2003 pp. 83-107.
doi : 10.3406/numi.2003.2506
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/numi_0484-8942_2003_num_6_159_2506Crawford* Michael
William Sherard and the Prices Edict
preserved from Summary. Western in the Asia — British Minor, The article Library. including analyses These the Stratonicea the manuscripts epigraphic copy contain of manuscripts Diocletian's copies of Prices numerous William Edict, Sherard, inscriptions discovered as
by Sherard. The article argues for a different relationship between multiple copies of the same
text from that hitherto accepted, with important consequences for the establishment of the text
of inscriptions that are no longer preserved; and goes on to discuss Sherard's methods of work,
in the context of the history of epigraphy at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Résumé. — Cet article analyse les manuscrits épigraphiques de William Sherard conservés
à la British Library. Ils contiennent des copies de nombreuses inscriptions d'Asie mineure
occidentale, notamment l'exemplaire de l'Édit du maximum de Dioclétien à Stratonicée
découvert par Sherard. L'article propose une reconstitution des liens entre les diverses copies de
ce même texte différente de celle qui était admise jusque-là, ce qui n'est pas sans conséquence
pour l'établissement du texte de ces inscriptions qui ne sont plus conservées. La méthode de
travail de Sherard est d'autre part située dans le contexte de l'histoire de l'épigraphie au tournant
des XVIP et XVIIIe siècles.
More distinctive with every year that passed, the work of Cyriac of Ancona
continued for three centuries to provide the scholarly world with almost all it
knew of the epigraphy of the Greek East, the notes of someone who was first
and foremost a man of business in the east either side of the fall of
Constantinople, trading with the Turks while advocating a crusade against
them, and all the while copying inscriptions and drawing buildings.1 There were
of course isolated figures like Busbeq, who was the first traveller to copy the
Res Gestae of Augustus at Ankara;2 and there were many who visited the
Ottoman Empire without copying inscriptions. But it was in the expatriate
community at Smyrna, at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
that a widespread interest in research into the epigraphy of the eastern
Mediterranean was reborn; and of the men there, William Sherard, consul in
Smyrna from 1703 to 171 8, 3 may certainly be regarded as one of the founding
fathers of the modern epigraphic habit, the habit of journeying in pursuit of
* University College London, Gover Street, London WC1 E6 ВТ.
1 1 use 'copy' for texts made in front of the stone, 'transcribe' for texts taken from other texts.
2 CIL, III, p. 769-799; Z.R.W.M. von Martels, Augerius Gislenius Busbequius. Leven en
werk van de Keizerlijke gezant aan het hofvan Suleyman de Grote, 1989.
3 See E. Chishull, Antiquitates Asiaticae, London, 1728, Praefatio; and, e.g., Add. 61535,
f. 58.
RN 2003, p. 83-107 Michael Crawford 84
new inscriptions. Slightly earlier, in 1675-1676, Jacob Spon and George
Wheeler had copied inscriptions while travelling in the Greek east together;4
John Covel had also travelled widely in Turkey, while chaplain to the Levant
Company of Turkey Merchants between 1670 (new style) and 1679, and made
copies of inscriptions;5 and in 1687, 1690 and 1692, Daniel Cosson had from
Smyrna sent Gisbert Cuper the texts of some new inscriptions.6 Edmund
Chishull had himself served as chaplain in Smyrna between 26 January 1698
(new style) and 1 1 December 1701, going on to become Chaplain to the Queen
in 1711 and Rector of Southchurch, Essex, in 1731. He travelled widely and
copied some inscriptions, his account of his journeys being published
posthumously, with a preface by Richard Mead.7 Despite this activity, it was the
four epigraphical journeys of Sherard that both furnished the bulk of the
material for Chishull 's Antiquitates Asiaticae of 1728 and was one of the major
sources for August Boeckh's Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum of 1828
onwards, even if what was perhaps Sherard's major discovery, the Stratonicea
text of the Prices Edict, remained largely unknown until the early nineteenth
century.8
The proclaimed purpose of the first journey, in 1705, was to visit the other
six of the Seven Churches of Asia, of the Revelation of St John the Divine:
Ephesus, Pergamům, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea, in addition
to Smyrna. At least since the journey of Thomas Smith in the 1660s, such visits
had involved trying to find out about the nature of the communities in antiquity,
their monuments and documents, as well as about the current state of the Greek
Orthodox church in them. By the time of the second journey, in 1709, the
epigraphic exploration bug had bitten Sherard, whose principal claim to fame
is nonetheless as a botanist (there is much botanical material in BL, Sloane MS
4063). His interest on that journey was particularly aroused by the Prices Edict,
as we shall see; and his later success as a botanist perhaps consoled him for the
relative lack of interest the world showed in his great discovery.9
4 Voyage d'Italie, de Dalmatie, de Grèce, et du Levant fait aux années 1675 & 1676 par
Jacob Spon ... et George Wheler ..., Lyon, 1678; G. Wheeler, A Journey into Greece in Company
of Dr of Lyons, London, 1682; some of the texts copied were then used in Spon's
Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis, Lyon, 1685. On Spon, see M. Kreeb, Zur Beschreibung
Athens im Reisebericht Jacob Spons von 1675/1676 in Wissenschaft mit Enthusiasmus ... K.
Fittschen, Rahden, 2001, p. 1-26.
5 See J.-P. Grélois, Dr John Covel. Voyages en Turquie 1675-1677, Paris, 1998.
6 Clarorum Belgarum ad Ant. Magliabechium ... epistolae, I, Florence, 1745, 8, 15-16, 26.
7 Travels in Turkey, London, 1747.
8 The mistakes of J.M.R. Cormack, Notes on the Inscribed Monuments of Aphrodisias,
Reading, 1955 (hereafter cited by the name of the author), p. 41-54, begin with the statement that
Sherard made three journeys; I am of course conscious that I have not identified every element
in the MSS. L. Robert, Hellenica, 13, Paris, 1965, p. 158-167, does not discuss them.
9 See Discovery, autopsy and progress: Diocletian's jigsaw puzzles, in T.P. Wiseman (éd.),
Classics in Progress, London, 2002, p. 145-163.
RN 2003, p. 83-107 William Sherard and the Prices Edict 85
The manuscript material is now for the most part in the British Library; but
it was apparently sorted into eleven volumes by Chishull and further sorted into
five volumes by John Ward, Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College from
1720, FRS 1723, FSA 1736 (new style), Trustee of the British Museum
1753.10 Ward's account both of Chishull's and of his own arrangement is
preserved in BL, MS Add. 6269, ff. 52-62, as well as in notes inserted into the
material itself11 Making sense of the material is rendered harder by the fact
that it was originally organised by Chishull and his successors with a view to
identifying unpublished inscriptions, not to understanding what Sherard was up
to; and by the elimination of notes that seemed useless at the time.12
Chishull published one volume, drawing on the copies made in 1705 by
Antonio Picenini, to whom we shall come in a moment, and on successive