[3] These
forged Testaments were translated by Nicholas the Greek,
and as no fewer than thirty-one copies of the Latin version
still remain they must have had a good circulation.[4]
Possibly the Greek Octateuch (Genesis to Ruth), now in
the Bodleian Library, was imported into this country by
Grosseteste or by somebody for him; at one time the
manuscript was in the library of Christ Church, Canterbury.[5]
Among other Greek books which Grosseteste used and
translated, or had translated under his direction, were the
Epistles of St. Ignatius, a Greek romance of Asenath, the
Egyptian wife of the patriarch Joseph, and some writings
of Dionysius the Areopagite. At Ramsey, where the
bishop's influence may be suspected, Prior Gregory (fl. 1290)
owned a Graeco-Latin psalter, still extant.[6] Possibly all the
importations were of similar character, and the number of
them cannot have been great or we should have heard more
of them.
[1] Paris, Chron. Maj., iv. 232-3; cp. Bacon, Op. ined., 91, 434.
[2] Stevenson, 224, 227; Camb. Mod. Hist., i. 586; James, lxxxvi.
[3] MS. Ff. i. 24; Paris, C.M. iv. 232; cf. v. 285.
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