Two British Library records show why “a Picatrix manuscript” is not a sufficient caption: one is a Hebrew abbreviation, the other a later Latin copy.
- Or 9861
- Hebrew, sixteenth century
- Sloane MS 1305
- Latin, seventeenth century
- Institution
- British Library
Or 9861: a Hebrew abbreviation
The British Library describes Or 9861 as a sixteenth-century paper codex containing several magical works. Its first component, folios 1r–38v, is catalogued as an abbreviated Hebrew version of Picatrix or Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm. The record notes cryptic alphabet characters on folios 5v, 6v, and 36r. This is a specific observation about one item; it does not prove that every copy or translation carried the same characters.
The same codex continues with other texts, some attributed to figures such as Diocles and Plato. That compilation context matters. A random digital leaf can belong to a neighboring component rather than Picatrix. The physical codex has a date and history of its own, distinct from the tenth-century composition of the Arabic tradition.
Sloane MS 1305: a later Latin copy
The British Library dates Sloane MS 1305 to the seventeenth century and describes a Latin text in four parts on 153 folios. Its detailed catalog entry preserves an opening preface and the Alfonso X translation statement. These catalogued words help locate the manuscript within a transmission story, although a late copy cannot by itself settle how the thirteenth-century Castilian intermediary was made.
Sloane MS 1305 is the held seventeenth-century object; Pingree’s 1986 Picatrix is an edited scholarly text; an English translation is another layer. These stages differ in date and purpose. The codex preserves a particular Latin copy, whereas an edition may bring several witnesses into comparison. Its four-part structure and 153 folios belong to the library’s description of this one manuscript, not to every historical form of the work.
Two different kinds of Picatrix witness
Or 9861 is a Hebrew abbreviation within a composite codex; Sloane MS 1305 is a later Latin copy catalogued in four parts. Neither is the Arabic work’s original manuscript, and their dates do not date its composition. The abbreviated Hebrew text may omit or compress material present in a longer version. A figure found in one copy is therefore not an automatic illustration of wording from the other merely because both bear the conventional Picatrix name.
The two objects also illuminate different paths of reception. Or 9861 places the abbreviation among other magical works in a sixteenth-century paper codex. Sloane MS 1305 preserves a Latin preface with a claim about translation under Alfonso X, but its own physical copy is seventeenth-century. Their languages, contents, and settings show how far the work traveled after its Arabic composition. The surviving codices preserve those later moments rather than a single uniform medieval book.
Worked comparison: an abbreviation and a four-part liber
In Or 9861 the Picatrix abbreviation occupies folios 1r–38v of a 63-folio volume. The next text begins on the same folio where the abbreviation ends, and a work attributed to Plato follows at folio 40r. A final group contains virtues, amulets, remedies, and alchemical recipes. The codex therefore asks the reader to cross from an abbreviated astral-magic work into neighboring authorities and practical collections. Its uniform one-column layout and larger square headings give those different works a shared physical rhythm, while the folio boundaries keep their textual identities visible.
Sloane MS 1305 devotes 153 folios to a four-part Latin Picatrix with prologue, chapter tables, and named authorities. Prayer and a chapter on recognizing one’s degree open the work; an operation for love and friendship closes it. Those bookends turn “four parts” into a reading sequence rather than a catalogue label.
The Hebrew witness compresses the work and embeds it in an anthology; the Latin witness expands it as a self-contained liber with internal navigation. The cryptic characters on Or 9861 folios 5v, 6v, and 36r remain inside its abbreviated Picatrix portion, but another set on folio 57v belongs to the later remedies and alchemy collection. That boundary is a worked warning against turning every unusual mark in the volume into a “Picatrix alphabet.” Abbreviation changes what is carried forward, compilation changes what stands beside it, and a four-part table changes how a reader sees the work’s argument.