Searching for “Giorgi Fragmentum Copticum”

One of the earliest enthusiasts for Coptic literature was Cardinal Stefano Borgia (1731-1804), a Papal bureaucrat who created a museum in the Borgia Palace in his home town of Velletri. He spent considerable sums acquiring material for it, and especially material from Egypt. There is a 1781 publication which describes how he obtained some Coptic fragments which we now know to come from the White Monastery in Sohag in middle Egypt. The publication is referenced by Stephen Emmel in his ground-breaking Shenoute’s Literary Corpus, in vol. 1 (2004), p.20 with the bibliography in vol. 2, p.964. The same material appears in other papers, including one by Paola Buzi (online here).1 Buzi gives the reference thus: GIORGI A., Fragmentum Copticum ex Actis S. Coluthi Martyris Erutum ex Membranis Vetustissimis Saeculi V ac. Latine Redditum, Romae 1781, p. 3-4. This is not an easy item to find. Indeed at one point I wondered if it even existed. But it does exist, and indeed it is online here.…