Salvian, On the Government of God (1930) Preface to the online edition
Salvian of Marseilles wrote a number of works, many now lost. The following survive: De gubernatione dei (On the government of God); Ad ecclesiam (To the church, on greed); and nine letters.
The translation following of On the Government of God was published in 1930. A search of copyright records reveals that the copyright was not renewed after 28 years, and so the translation is in the public domain in the USA.
A public domain translation exists of Ad ecclesiam : "Quis diues saluus. = How a rich man may be saued. Written to the Catholike Church, by Saluianus priest, afterwards Bishop of Massilia in France, about the yeare of Christ 480. With annotations out of the Holy Fathers. Translated into English by N.T" -- translated by Joseph Creswell, printed at the English College Press at Saint-Omer in 1618. A reprint was made in 1973, ISBN 0859671429, in the series "English recusant literature, 1558-1640 ; vol. 170". However the text is incomplete, as the text to fill various lacunae, including a missing prologue, were only discovered in the 20th century.
No public domain translation of the letters seems to exist.
The most recent English translation, which includes all the works, was made by Jeremiah F. O'Sullivan, The writings of Salvian, the presbyter , in the Fathers of the Church series (vol. 3), and published by the Catholic University of America Press in 1947, reprint 1978 (ISBN 0813200032), and is available from Amazon.com.
Manuscripts of De gubernatione dei
When Salvian wrote, his work was disseminated by hand-written copies; and further copies made from those copies, and so on, down the years. The oldest copies available to us are three medieval copies-of-copies-of-copies.
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A Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale Français BNF lat. 13385. This manuscript comes from the abbey of St. Peter at Corbie, in North France. It is no doubt the copy which is listed in the catalogues of the 11th century . During the wars of the 17th century, it was removed with other Corbie Mss. to the new headquarters of the Benedictine order, the abbey at Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris. At the revolution their property was seized, and the manuscripts passed into the Bibliothèque Nationale.
The manuscript contains 69 folios of parchment, each 245 x 225 mm in size. A much later paper leaf precedes these, indicating the author, the supposed title ( De Prouidentia ), the origin ( Corbiensis monasterii ), and the shelf mark ( Sti Germani a Pratis, n. 776, olim 248 ). The 69 leaves are in 9 quires of 8 leaves, so 3 folios are lacking -- one at the front and two at the end. The text thus commences in the middle of the preface. There are 23 lines per page. There are two sets of corrections in the manuscript, of the same date as the script, both correcting the text against the original copy.
10-11 century
B Brussells, Bibliothèque Royale BR 10615-729 (for De gubernatione , code 10628). The codex contains a great many other works, including poetry and works by Paulinus of Nola.
It is unclear where the codex was written. L. Traube suggested the scriptorium of St.Eucher of Treves, but did not convince others. It was discovered somewhere by Nicholas of Cues (Cusanus) in the 15th century, and all the renaissance copies were made directly or indirectly from it. On Cusanus' death, his library went to a charitable foundation in his home town, Bernkastel-Kues, where it still is. However B is found some time later in the hands of the Bollandists at Anvers, from whom it passed into the library of the Dukes of Bourgogne. The French revolutionaries conquered Belgium, and B then briefly entered the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; but it returned to Belgium in 1815, and entered the Royal library in Brussells where it still is.
The parchment leaves are 272 x 185 mm, and contain up to 70 lines. The scribe appears to have tried to cram as much writing on the pages as possible, and for this reason some works in this codex have still not been edited scientifically. The text of De gubernatione is found on ff. 22-35, and is thankfully clearly legible. Two different hands have corrected the manuscript. The incipit reads: In hoc codice continentur sancti Saluiani epi [ scopi ] libri numero octo dati ad sanctum Salonium episcopum. De gubernatione dei. Incipit liber primus sancto episcopo [ salonio added in margin by corrector B2] Saluianus in domino episcopus salutem. Omnes admodum... etc. Then after the preface and before book 1 is a marker inviting us to look at the head of the page where it reads: De iusto dei p [ rae ] sentique iudicio incipiunt dialogi disputantis . (In Mss. A and C this text is at the end of the preface). 13 century?
C Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale Bib.Mun. 895. This manuscript was written at the abbey at Clairvaux: there are two ex libris (on folio 1v and 194v) of the 12th century ( liber sante Marie Clareuallensis ), and of the 14th century ( liber sante Marie Clareuallis ). There are also some ancient shelfmarks of the abbey: B 43 (f. 1v, in a hand of the end of the 14th century), E 31 (f.1v, 15th century) and E 13 (f.1v, f.193v, and inside of the end-board). This last reflects the catalogue of Pierre de Viery, made in 1472.
The manuscript contains three independent parts, which were put together in one manuscript in the middle ages, and are of different page sizes. The first (ff. 1-81, 220 x 132 mm, 10 quaternions and fol.81 in quires of 8, 29 lines per page) contains De gubernatione . The second (ff. 82-121, 218x140mm, 27 lines per page) contains Epistula VII of Ferrandus of Carthage, Ad Reginum Comitem (PL 67, col. 928-950), followed by 6 unpublished verses attributed to the same author, and Vigilius of Thapsus, Dialogus contra Arianos (PL 62, col. 155-180), although the name of the author is not given in the manuscript. The third part (ff. 122-194, 220 x 135/140mm, 8 quaternions and 1 quinion, of which the last leaf is missing, 27 lines per page) contains Victorinus of Pettau, Commentarii in Apocalypsim (recensio Hieronymi) (this is MS. 'C' in CSEL 49), and Angelome de Luxeuil, Ennarationes in Cantica Canticorum (PL 115, col. 551-628).
The manuscript of De gubernatione was made by a careful, skilled scribe, who avoided the crass errors of many medieval scribes. Two contemporary corrector hands are visible, who use the original exemplar to make corrections. The Incipit is the same as in B, ( In hoc codice...Omnes admodum ) except that prefatio replaces the mistaken liber primus in B. 12 century
B became known first; A is a better manuscript; C is of the same family as B, but not descended from it. A common ancestor must have existed in late antiquity, from which two copies descended. The first of these is the ancestor of A; the other of B and C.
A number of more recent manuscripts exist, all derived from B.
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