There were two famous schools in Palestine…one at Caesarea, where Pamphilus, the friend of Origen and martyr for the cause of Christianity, established his celebrated library; and the other at Bethshan, Baisan, or Scythopolis, where Procopius, who also suffered martyrdom for the faith, carried on his literary labors of enriching the Syriac with translations from the Greek. But the largest and most famous academy of Aramaic learning was at Edessa, the ancient Ur of the Chaldees, and the modern Orfa; here, and at the monasteries in the neighborhood, it was that several of the most ancient and valuable of the manuscripts now in the British Museum were transcribed.

They were obtained from the monks of the convent of St. Mary, named Deipara, or Mother of God, situated in the valley of the Ascetics, called thence Scete or Scithis, and also Nitria, from the Natron Lakes adjoining; but hither they had been brought originally from Mesopotamia, and had lain for 900 years after their migration, before they were transferred to the centre of the British Metropolis. In the year 925, the Vezir Ali Ibn Isa Ibn Al-Jarrah arrived in Egypt, abolished several of the immunities which the Christian bishops and monks had previously been allowed to enjoy, and further imposed upon them certain taxes. In consequence of this proceeding, a deputation, of which Moses of Nisibis, at that time superior of the Syrian Convent of St. Mary in the Valley of the Natron Lakes, was a member, was sent to the Court of Bagdad to lay their case before the Khalif, AI-Muctadir-Billah, and to petition that they might be still allowed the same privileges which they had ever enjoyed under the Moslem rule, even from the period of the conquest of Egypt by Omar.

This Moses of Nisibis, who seems to have been both a learned man himself and a lover of books, turned his journey to a good account, and procured, during his sojourn in Mesopotamia, a great addition of literary treasures for the library of his own convent. He returned home with no less than 250 precious volumes… a very large number indeed of books for that period, many of which were even then of great antiquity. Doubtless he felt proud of having been enabled to confer so great a benefit upon the community over which he presided, as to have enriched their library to such an extent; and in order to preserve the memory of what he had effected, he took the pains of transcribing in many, perhaps in all, the volumes which he had been fortunate enough to obtain, a record of that event. There are at this moment in the British Museum a considerable number of manuscripts which still retain this inscription and, in all probability, in his own handwriting. It may not be uninteresting to insert here a translation of it, as it is supplied by Mr. Cureton.

"To the honor and glory and magnificence of this monastery of Deipara of the Syrians, of the Desert of Scete, Moses, mean and a sinner, the Abbot, who is called of Nisibis, gave diligence and acquired this book together with many others, two hundred and fifty; many of which he bought, and others were given to him as a blessing, when he went to Bagdad on account of this holy Desert, and of the monks who are in it. May God, for whose glory and for the benefit of those who read in them (he obtained the books), pardon him and the dead belonging to him, and every one who has been in communion with them. It is not permitted to any one by the living word of God, that he should act dishonestly with respect to any one of them, in any way whatever, nor appropriates them to himself. Neither that he should wipe out this memorial, or make any erasure, or cut or order another to do so, nor give them from this monastery. Whosoever dares to do this let him know that he is accursed. The books arrived with the above mentioned Abbot Moses, in the year of the Greeks 1243" (that is, A.D. 931)

We have no means of ascertaining what was the extent of the library of this convent of the Syrians, before the great addition made to it by the Abbot Moses. Besides the volumes which he obtained during his travels, he also caused others to be transcribed within the walls of the convent. After his decease, many other hooks were added, by the gift of individuals and from other sources, down to the 14th century of our era. The latest date of transcription of any volume mentioned by Mr. Cureton is A. D. 1292. After that period, great ignorance seems to have prevailed among the good brethren of the convent. No attempt was made by them to increase their stock of books, either by the production of new works, or the transcription of old. It is certain, however, that in its most flourishing period this library of the Syrian convent must have been very extensive. There are now in the British Museum several hundreds of volumes which once belonged to it; and from these, which in many cases are made up of fragments of different works, it is evident that the number must have amounted to thousands, before neglect and ill-usage had injured and broken so many of them to pieces. Many, too, of the works contained in these manuscripts, and those alas! the most ancient and the most precious, were purposely erased by barbarous and ignorant hands to save the trouble or the expense of obtaining new materials for service books and legends of the saints, such as were in daily use in the church: this is shown by the vast number of Palimpsests of this class of books now existing in the collection. Besides the volumes which are in the British Museum, several others which once belonged to the same convent are now in the Vatican at Rome. It appears also that some have found their way to the Ambrosian library at Milan. A few are in the possession of the Hon. Robert Curzon, others have been scattered abroad in different parts of the East, as the fragments obtained by various travelers show, and there may also be some still remaining in the convent itself, for many facts can be adduced to prove that the word of the monks, by which they have affirmed that they had delivered up all that they possessed, cannot in any way be relied upon.

The valley of the Natron Lakes, where the convent of the Syrians is situated, has been a favorite retreat of ascetics from the very earliest days of Christianity. During the persecutions to which the Christians were exposed from their pagan neighbors, about the middle of the second century, one Fronto withdrew to the solitudes of these lakes, in order that he might enjoy liberty of conscience with freedom from persecution amongst the arid sands of the Libyan waste. From that period, the number of those who retired from the world to devote themselves to the rigid duties of asceticism rapidly increased, even after the decrees of Constantine had not only rescued Christians from persecution but raised them to honor. Ruffinus, who visited this valley of the ascetics about the year 372, speaks of fifty convents or tabernacles existing there at that period; and Palladius, who himself passed twelve months in the same place a few years later, informs us, that the number of devotees in the several convents amounted to five thousand.

Among these convents was one especially belonging to the members of the Syrian churches, who spoke the Syriac language, which was dedicated to the Virgin Mary with the title of Mother of God. At what precise time this convent was founded or became exclusively attached to the Syrians, we have no means of ascertaining; but we have already seen that at the beginning of the tenth century it was held to be one of sufficient importance to entitle its Superior to be chosen a member of the deputation to the Court of Bagdad, and that he was personally possessed of sufficient influence to acquire during his Journey, partly by presents, but mainly by purchase, no less than two hundred and fifty volumes even then of great antiquity and of immense value as well pecuniary as literary, and thus was enabled to enrich the library of the convent over which he presided, by so large and precious a treasure at one time. Neither have we any materials for the history of this convent subsequently, beyond certain notices in the inscriptions recording the donation of particular volumes to the Syrian convent, which are still found in the manuscripts now on the shelves of the British Museum. These notices mention the names of the various donors, and the number of the volumes presented by them, and often state who were the persons that occupied the chief offices in the convent at the several times when the books were offered. Macrizi, whom we have already cited, informs us that the number of convents in the valley of Scete or Nitria was once computed at a hundred, but that in his time that is at the beginning of the 15th century they were reduced to seven, one of which was the convent of the Syrians.

In the 17th century, about the year 1678 or 1679, Robert Huntingdon, then British Chaplain at Aleppo, and afterwards successively Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, and Bishop of Raphoe, made a visit to this convent. This journey he undertook at the instigation of Dr. Fell, then Dean of Christ Church, and afterwards Bishop of Oxford, in the hope that he might be able to obtain there a copy of the Syriac version of the Epistles of Ignatius, to the existence of which attention had been drawn by Archbishop Ussher. His visit, however, proved unsuccessful. Probably he incautiously stated to the good brethren of the convent the object of his coming; and certain it is that he could not have devised a more effectual method of frustrating it. It is quite evident that the monks concealed from him, or at least did not make known to him, the existence of their very-extensive collection of Syriac books, which were, even then, useless to themselves and falling to decay. The only volume which Huntingdon mentions having seen in their possession, was an ancient copy of the Old Testament in the Estrangelo character. The very work, however, which he had traveled so far in order to obtain, existed then in their library in more copies than one. These have since been transferred to London, and have furnished in our time the means of testing more fully the whole of the Ignatian question, which in those days was so long and ably debated so far as the then known materials would admit.

At the beginning of the 18th century the existence of immense literary treasures in this Syrian convent was made known at Rome by one Gabriel Eva, a monk from Mount Lebanon; and Pope Clement XI., anxious to transfer the whole, or at least a part of them to Rome, to increase the riches of the Vatican, dispatched Elias Assemani, cousin of the learned author of the 'Bibliotheca Orientalis' furnished with letters of recommendation to the Coptic Patriarch at Cairo, on a mission into Egypt, for the purpose of endeavoring to get possession of the library of the Syrian monks at Scete. His exertions were not altogether unsuccessful. He obtained between thirty and forty manuscripts, which had the misfortune to be upset as they passed down the Nile in a boat. They were, however, happily rescued from destruction in the water, and arrived safely in Rome without much damage, about the end of the year 1707. These upon examination proved to be so very favorable a sample of the rest, that the same Pope resolved to make still greater exertions to procure the whole; and commanded Joseph Simon Assemani to proceed to Egypt for this object. His attempts, however, were less successful than those of his cousin. He was well received by the fraternity of the convent, and allowed free access to all their books, from which he selected about a hundred of the most precious, hoping to be allowed to purchase them; but the monks, now made aware of the intrinsic worth of their collection, and probably attributing to it even a greater value than it possessed, from the desire which they now perceived the Court of Rome had to obtain it, refused to treat with him at all for the purchase, and he was compelled to be content with a very few books, which they at last consented to allow him to take.

Several of those precious volumes, which he had selected to augment the stores of the Vatican, are now the property of the British nation; and still bear on them the marks of having been handled by that illustrious scholar and retain his handwriting. We learn from the Jesuit Claude Sicard, who visited the convent in 1712, that at that period the number of the Syriac monks did not exceed twelve or fifteen. Twenty years later, as we are informed by Granger, who spent some time in this convent, the books of the library were fast falling into decay, and were utterly useless to the monks, who were become altogether unable to read them. The church and buildings of the convent were also in a very dilapidated state, and the Patriarch had recommended the sale of their library as the means of obtaining resources for the reparation of the edifice. The good brethren, however, turned a deaf ear to his advice, and declared that they would rather choose to be buried in the ruins of their walls than to alienate the library which belonged to them.

In 1799 there were eighteen members of this convent, as the General Andr6soy informs us. About seven years before this time they had been visited by one of our countrymen, Mr. W. G. Browne. He informs us that the Superior of the convent stated to him that they possessed at that time about eight hundred volumes; but that he positively refused to sell any or even to grant him permission to see them. In the year 1828 Lord Prudhoe, the present Duke of Northumberland, crossed the desert from the Nile to the Valley of the Natron Lakes, in the laudable endeavor to procure materials to assist the lexicographical and other labors of Archdeacon Tattam. He was fortunate enough to obtain several valuable Coptic manuscripts, which, with his usual kindness and liberality, he presented to Dr. Tattam.

The works which Lord Prudhoe had presented to Dr. Tattam very naturally excited in him the desire of obtaining still further aids for his Coptic labors, such as he doubted not might be procured from the same quarter. Encouraged by several persons of influence, among whom we would mention with honor the present Duke of Bedford, Dr. Tattam resolved to undertake a journey into Egypt himself, in quest of manuscripts. Accordingly in the year 1838, accompanied by Miss Platt, the accomplished daughter of Mrs. Tattam, he proceeded to Egypt, and, after some months' absence, returned to England with a considerable acquisition of manuscripts, obtained chiefly from the Syrian convent in the valley of the Natron Lakes.

An interesting account of this expedition has been printed by Miss Platt, but not published, having been designed solely for private circulation. The books which Dr. Tattam needed for his own works and researches were chiefly those in the Coptic language; the Syrian manuscripts, therefore, which he had been fortunate enough to acquire, being in no way requisite for his own labors, were disposed of by him to the Trustees of the British Museum, and consigned to the custody of the keepers of the manuscripts. A short examination sufficed to show their extreme value, not only on account of their very great antiquity, dating from the beginning of the fifth century downwards, but also from their contents. Besides works by original Syriac writers, of which no copies had hitherto reached Europe, they were found to comprise translations from the Greek made into Syriac at a very early period, touching closely upon the times when the authors themselves lived, transcribed, too, some centuries before the earliest copies of the Greek now known to exist; and among them several versions of important works, of which the original Greek had been lost. Moreover it was evident from the note by the Abbot Moses, of which we have already spoken, found in several of the volumes, that there were still remaining within the convent about two hundred manuscripts, which must have been transcribed at the latest about 1000 years.

There appears to have been no delay on the part of the keepers of the manuscripts in communicating these facts to the then governing body of the British Museum, nor any remissness on the part of the Trustees to adopt such measures as were requisite to endeavor to obtain the remainder of this most valuable and curious library. Mr. Cureton informs us that the late Duke of Northumberland took the initiative in this matter at the Board, and we think it due to the memory of his Grace to mention this honorable fact. Application was accordingly made to the Lords of the Treasury for a special sum for this purpose, which was liberally granted; and Dr. Tattam, at the request of the Trustees, undertook another journey into Egypt, to endeavor to procure the remainder of the library of the leaves and fragments were the reward of his exertions. These arrived safely at the British Museum on the 1st of March, 1843.

It was supposed that the whole of the collection, which had so long been lying idle and moldering to dust in a cellar of the convent of the Nitrian desert, had now been delivered up by their former owners the monks; at least they had given their word to that effect and it was so stated to Dr. Tattam, who did not, upon this occasion, visit the convent himself, but employed native agents, whom he deemed likely to be more successful than himself, while he remained in a boat on the Nile, ready to receive the books upon their arrival. When they were delivered into his hands he could not help remarking that their bulk did not appear to him to be so great as when he had seen them lying in a heap in the convent on his former visit. The vendors, however, affirmed that they had left none behind, but faithfully brought all that they possessed. The sequel will show that the eye of our countryman was more correct and true than the tongue of the Ascetics.

It was among the volumes comprised in this second acquisition by Dr. Tattam, that Mr. Cureton discovered one of the copies of the Syriac version of the Three epistles of Ignatius; and also found among the loose quires and separate leaves, considerable fragments of the Festal or Paschal Letters of Athanasius, which are not known to exist in the original Greek, and had been supposed to have perished altogether in the lapse of ages, with the exception of a very few passages cited by Theodorus Balsamon and Cosmas Indicopleustes. Although these letters, thus discovered, were in a very imperfect state, Mr. Cureton thought that he should be rendering a service to literature and theology, by transcribing and publishing all the fragments which he had found of a work by so celebrated an author of which hitherto so little had been known. We will state in his own words the motive which led him to undertake this task, and give his own account of the means by which he was afterwards enabled to render it more complete. This will embrace a short history of the acquisition of the third portion of this extraordinary collection of Syriac MSS., which has appeared in no other publication, and certainly seems to us to be sufficiently interesting to deserve to be more generally known.

At the time when this portion of the volume was printed, I did not venture to cherish the hope of ever recovering any other parts of the manuscript to which the fragments then in my hands belonged. I believed that the entire Syrian library of the monks of the convent of St. Mary Deipara had been removed; nor did I then suppose that these precious relics of the ancient learning of the oriental churches, which I was arranging with affectionate and reverential care in the British Metropolis, had left others of their fellows, not less venerable and equally precious, in the same degraded and neglected condition as they had occupied for centuries, in a miserable cell in one of the most lonely deserts of the world. So eminently successful had Dr. Tattam's expedition been, that I could not hope for more success, and so abundant were the treasures with which he returned, that I naturally concluded the mine to be exhausted. The event has proved this conclusion to have been ill-founded.

Among all the curiosities of literature I know of none more remarkable than that of the fate of this matchless collection. Written in the country which was the birthplace of Abraham the Father of the Faithful, and the city whose king was the first sovereign that embraced Christianity, in the year of our Lord 411, it was at a subsequent period transported to the Valley of the Ascetics in Egypt, probably A.D. 931, when 250 volumes were collected by Moses of Nisibis during a visit to Bagdad, and presented by him on his return to the Monastery of St. Mary Deipara, over which he presided. In A.D. 1086, about 155 years later, some person with careful foresight, fearing lest the memorial of the transcription of so valuable, beautiful, and even at that remote period so ancient a book should be lost, in order to secure its preservation took the precaution to copy it into the body of the volume. At how much earlier a period, the fears which he anticipated became realized, I have no means of ascertaining, but in 1837, 'the end of the volume' bad been torn off, and in that state, in 1839, it was transferred from the solitude of the African desert to the most frequented city in the world. Three years later, two of its fragments followed the volume into England; and, in 1847, I had the gratification of recovering almost all that had been lost and of restoring to its place in this ancient book the transcriber's own record of the termination of his labors, which, after various fortunes in Asia, Africa, and Europe, has already survived a period of ONE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED and THIRTY-SIX years.

Having thus given a brief account of the acquisition of the library formerly belonging to the Syrian Convent in the valley of the Natron Lakes, in which the Festal or Paschal Letters of Athanasius, so long believed to be lost, were at length discovered, we will bring our remarks to a close.