Discovering the work
Checking the endnotes against their sources turned up five things worth saying on their own. Each is a reading of the facts, not a fact about the manuscript, and each says what is not known. The sources are in the endnotes.
01
The hidden cup has neighbours
On folio 004r, Lucifer and a hidden cup appear again and again.
That the cup is stolen hangs on a single guessed sign, so the theft itself is not shown. It cannot be told whether Lucifer is hiding the cup, or hiding himself by means of it.
No known source places a cup at the fall of Lucifer and the rebel angels, and a search of the forty-seven codices in the Old Hungarian Corpus turned up none at the fall either. But stories about the devil stealing holy things were told nearby. In a Bulgarian tale, Satanael steals the robe, wreath and sceptre made for God. In Romanian carols, Judas steals the little jug of wine from paradise.
The Grail is no help. A thirteenth-century German poem has a stone fall from Lucifer's crown, but the cup was added to that story in 1832, by the scholar Albert Schulz, who wrote as San Marte. Whether the author knew any of these stories is not known.
02
Adam healed by the branch has a Hungarian relative
In the Golden Legend, Seth comes back with the branch and finds Adam dead.
In the Teleki codex, Hungarian, 1525 to 1531, and nowhere else, Adam is still alive. On 006r he is alive and more: his eyes are opened.
No source has the healing. It is the book's own.
03
Elijah at the fall of the angels
An angel tells Elijah of Lucifer's fall (004v to 008v). The book keeps Elijah and a companion alive to come back and bear the sword (101r, 133v).
The companion is Noah, where tradition has Enoch.
In the 1890s, villages near Szeged told of Elijah throwing down the fallen angels with lightning. Whether the book is an early witness to that belief, or one of its sources, is not known.
04
The author cites what he was taught
At 107v he credits Augustine with a reading of the Samaritan's two pence that is not Augustine's.
At 084r he tells of Augustine and the child emptying the sea into a hole, a story first printed in 1483.
Both are what a preacher picks up from sermon books and church pictures. That fits a man writing from memory.
05
The infancy story follows the Latin books
The infancy story runs from folio 016v to 022r. It was compared with the Protevangelium of James, the Greek text behind all later tellings, and with the two Latin books that carried it west: the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Golden Legend. Where they differ, the codex agrees with the Latin books in six details. Joachim and Anne divide their goods in three parts. A priest turns Joachim away. The angel names the Golden Gate. An ox goes to Bethlehem with the ass. Christ is born in a barn with a manger, not in a cave. The idols fall in Egypt. It agrees with the Greek text in two details of Mary's age: twelve when Gabriel comes (018r) and sixteen on the road to Bethlehem (019v). The Latin books say fourteen and give no age at the birth. The story is the one told in the Latin sermon books. Where the two ages came from is not known.
06
The end of the world
The book dates itself: 5,199 years from the creation to Christ's birth, and 1,560 years since the Ascension. With Christ's thirty-three years, that gives 1593.
The leaf says two thousand years (222r). Counted from the Ascension, as the book does two lines earlier, that is 2033.
The idea of the world's last two thousand years is old: Melanchthon printed it in 1532.
The facts these rest on are in the endnotes of Book One, and every text they cite is listed under Sources.
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