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© 2007 The Author Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd History Compass 5/5 (2007): 1521–1549, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00452.x How to Use Modern Critical Editions of Medieval Latin Texts Eric Knibbs* Yale University Abstract Critical editions provide access to the texts of the medieval and ancient world. To use these editions effectively, we must be aware of the theories, assumptions, and conventions that underlie them. This article examines how most critical editions of Medieval Latin texts are constructed and presented to the reader, and includes a model edition to serve as a concrete example. With a better under- standing of modern critical editions, readers should be able to study how texts were read and used in the Middle Ages, and how they changed in the course of manuscript transmission. They should also be able to critically evaluate editorial choices and understand the reasoning behind them. All Western European texts written before the introduction of printing were transmitted to the modern world through manuscript copies. Even after the invention of the printing press, manuscripts continued to circulate, and in many cases they remain our only access to texts dating from the Renaissance and the Early Modern periods. Medieval and Early Modern manuscripts thus provide crucial access to the culture, literature, and history of the pre-modern era. Copied according to widely varying conventions in different centers across many centuries, they are also complicated and contradictory sources. No two copies of a single work agree in every detail. Textual features like orthography (spelling), punctuation, word order, chapter and book divisions, chapter and book order, and frequently even authorial attribution, vary from copy to copy. This often-abundant variation can be difficult to interpret with any certainty. Autographs or other obviously authorized copies are rare even for late works, and though some manuscripts may appear to be closer to their authors in date and provenance than others, there is no guarantee that they are more reliable. Given this widely varied and problematic evidence, modern editions of medieval texts must serve several functions at once. First and foremost, they reduce the variation of the manuscripts to a single, readable, and citable copy. In their editions, editors expand abbreviated words and pro- vide punctuation. They identify grammatical or logical deficiencies of

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Page 1: Knibbs E. - How to Use Modern Critical Editions of Medieval Latin Texts

© 2007 The AuthorJournal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

History Compass

5/5 (2007): 1521–1549, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00452.x

How to Use Modern Critical Editions of Medieval Latin Texts

Eric

Knibbs

*

Yale University

Abstract

Critical editions provide access to the texts of the medieval and ancient world.To use these editions effectively, we must be aware of the theories, assumptions,and conventions that underlie them. This article examines how most criticaleditions of Medieval Latin texts are constructed and presented to the reader, andincludes a model edition to serve as a concrete example. With a better under-standing of modern critical editions, readers should be able to study how textswere read and used in the Middle Ages, and how they changed in the course ofmanuscript transmission. They should also be able to critically evaluate editorial

choices and understand the reasoning behind them.

All Western European texts written before the introduction of printingwere transmitted to the modern world through manuscript copies. Evenafter the invention of the printing press, manuscripts continued to circulate,and in many cases they remain our only access to texts dating from theRenaissance and the Early Modern periods. Medieval and Early Modernmanuscripts thus provide crucial access to the culture, literature, and historyof the pre-modern era. Copied according to widely varying conventionsin different centers across many centuries, they are also complicated andcontradictory sources. No two copies of a single work agree in everydetail. Textual features like orthography (spelling), punctuation, wordorder, chapter and book divisions, chapter and book order, and frequentlyeven authorial attribution, vary from copy to copy. This often-abundantvariation can be difficult to interpret with any certainty. Autographs orother obviously authorized copies are rare even for late works, andthough some manuscripts may appear to be closer to their authors in dateand provenance than others, there is no guarantee that they are morereliable.

Given this widely varied and problematic evidence, modern editions ofmedieval texts must serve several functions at once. First and foremost,they reduce the variation of the manuscripts to a single, readable, andcitable copy. In their editions, editors expand abbreviated words and pro-vide punctuation. They identify grammatical or logical deficiencies of

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their texts, and they use their linguistic and historical knowledge to sug-gest solutions. They insert paragraph and sentence divisions and identifybiblical citations and other sources. They may also standardize orthography.Because many of these tasks necessarily require a certain amount of sub-jective interpretation and even creativity, we should be critical of everyedition we read. Before building an argument upon a passage we find inan edition of a medieval text, we should ask how that passage might readdifferently with altered punctuation, or how variant readings in othermanuscripts might undermine our interpretation.

Modern editions of medieval texts also function as tools for catalogingthe manuscript evidence. They include not only the single, citable copydescribed above, but also list manuscript variants that the editor hasrejected. They may also keep track of variant readings in the citations oflater authors (known as the ‘indirect tradition’), and they generally list anddescribe the manuscripts that the editor has investigated. Using all of thisdata, editors are in a position to reconstruct how their texts circulated, andhow the extant manuscripts descended. An ambitious edition contains awealth of information that amounts to a textual history of the editedwork. The scholars responsible for these editions not only perform allof the subjective, interpretative tasks necessary for creating a readilyuseable text, but they also provide (in theory at least) enough data aboutthe textual tradition to permit attentive readers to depart from theirinterpretation.

To read and understand medieval texts requires familiarity with thetheories, assumptions, and conventions that underlie modern editions. Inthis overview, I hope to provide some guidance about editorial principles,manuscripts, textual traditions, and the printing conventions used inmodern editions. To better illustrate how editions function, I include amodel edition of a text written by Alcuin of York around the year 802.The text, a credal statement known from its first word as the

Credimus

(‘We believe . . .’), appears as one of two appendices to Alcuin’s dogmatictreatise

De fide sanctae et indiuiduae Trinitatis

(‘On faith in the holy andindividual Trinity’).

1

It will exemplify points throughout the discussion.

The Types of Editions

Modern editions of Medieval Latin texts fall broadly within two categories,depending upon their textual foundations. There are editions that derivetheir text from a single source, and there are editions that derive their textfrom multiple sources.

Modern scholarship accepts only one means of using multiple sourcesto construct a text. Editors who produce such editions are expected tosynthesize the evidence of multiple witnesses through a process known asrecension, and then to emend the resulting text. To conduct recension,the editor compares the different manuscript readings and establishes what

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How to Use Modern Critical Editions of Medieval Latin Texts 1523

is common to every manuscript, and what is subject to variation amongthe manuscripts. The medieval copying of manuscripts involves the accu-mulation of variant and corrupt readings. In theory, each subsequentscribe reproduces the text of the manuscript to be copied (the ‘exemplar’),complete with all the variants and corruptions that it contains, and in theprocess introduces new irregularities. The recensionist posits successivegenerations of lost copies to account for manuscripts that share particularsets of variants, ultimately arriving at hyparchetypes, or lost but recon-structed manuscripts at one remove from the overall archetype. Thedescent can be represented visually with a genealogical tree known as a

stemma codicum

(‘tree of books’), which is typically printed in the intro-duction of the edition. It illustrates how much weight the editor has givento various manuscripts, and which texts are most likely to provide the bestguidance about the archetype at the head of the tradition. After recon-structing the archetype as nearly as possible, the editor then advances tothe second step, emendation. At this stage the editor identifies corrupt orotherwise unsatisfactory

loci

in the reconstructed archetype and, wheneverpossible, proposes solutions. This step is necessary because even thearchetype at the head of most traditions cannot be ascribed to the author.Like its descendents, the archetype is generally assumed to be the productof a succession of copies, and thus to have accumulated inauthentic textualvariants.

2

Karl Lachmann was among the earliest and foremost practitioners ofrecension in the first half of the nineteenth century, and for a long timehe was considered to have been the principal architect of the method.Though even today recensionist editions are often called ‘Lachmannian’,recent work has shown that the practice of recension developed graduallyacross several centuries.

3

Significant contributions were made in the eight-eenth century by scholars engaged in the project of producing a criticaledition of the Greek New Testament.

4

The method matured in the fol-lowing century, when many of the principles learned in this project weretransferred to the study of the textual traditions of classical texts.

5

In thefirst half of the nineteenth century scholars began sketching

stemmatacodicum

and selecting readings based upon reconstructions of the manu-script tradition.

6

Medievalists adopted recension as an editorial standard inthe second half of the nineteenth century. The editors of the

MonumentaGermaniae Historica

were among the first to apply recension to medievaltexts;

7

by the early twentieth century, the practice had become widespread.Today most modern editions of Medieval Latin texts are still producedthrough recension, and recensionist editions are accordingly the mainobject of this article. The model edition of the

Credimus

is intended to bea typical recensionist edition.

Editions that derive their text primarily or exclusively from a single sourcedo not all share a common methodological basis. The category insteadadmits of a variety of sub-types. Many older editions either propagate

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emended ‘vulgate’ texts reprinted from earlier editions, or depend upona single manuscript. Today, many editors produce single-source editions ofliturgical and diplomatic texts. There are also modern ‘optimist’ editions,primarily of medieval vernacular literature, dependent upon a singlemanuscript.

In the Renaissance and Early Modern periods, editors routinely creatednew editions by reprinting the text of earlier editions and adding theirown emendations. The text that came to be transmitted from generationto generation is referred to today as the ‘vulgate’.

8

Much of Greek andLatin classical literature, as well as widely read Christian texts like theBible, circulated in vulgate editions through the eighteenth and evennineteenth centuries. In subsequent reprintings, editors would provideemendations and corrections for passages that they found problematic, butwould otherwise adhere to the text that they had inherited.

9

Of course,only texts that were printed repeatedly could develop vulgates. MuchMedieval Latin literature saw print only once, and the editors of these

editiones principes

(‘first editions’) generally drew their texts from singlemanuscripts. The manuscripts they used were not necessarily the oldest ormost reliable, but often simply whatever was nearest at hand. Most of theolder editions used by medievalists today, particularly those included byJacques-Paul Migne in the

Patrologia Latina

and the

Patrologia Graeca

, areearly single-manuscript editions.

10

Modern editorial projects like the

CorpusChristianorum

aim to replace these old editions with new ones based uponrecensionist principles.

Of course, modern scholars often edit a text from a single manuscriptas well. Sometimes the process of recension drives an editor to concludethat all known copies of a work descend from a single surviving manu-script. In such cases the archetype survives and requires no reconstruction,though editors may note the variants of later manuscripts, and would stillbe expected to emend the text of the single manuscript if necessary. If aneditor can prove that a text exists in the form of an autograph or author-ized copy, recension itself is unnecessary.

11

Liturgical and diplomatic textsare also typically edited from a single manuscript. Though the text of agiven liturgical book may contain omissions, corruptions, and interpola-tions with the same frequency as the manuscript text of other works,each liturgical manuscript constitutes a record of liturgical celebrations aspracticed in a given place at a given time.

12

Each copy is therefore just asimportant as the archetype at the head of the tradition. Similarly, evenwhen diplomatic texts survive only in copies and not the original, thevariants, alterations and interpolations are full of legal and historical sig-nificance. Though diplomatists may theorize about the original form oftheir texts, they usually print from a single manuscript.

13

Single-manuscript editions are also favored for medieval vernaculartexts, whatever the state of their manuscript traditions. The editors ofthese texts may be called ‘optimists’, for their belief that a reliable text can

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How to Use Modern Critical Editions of Medieval Latin Texts 1525

be extracted from a single, corrected

codex optimus

(‘best book’).

14

Thisbelief dates to the beginning of the twentieth century, when it arosepartly in response to the widespread and dogmatic application of recen-sionist principles, and partly because of the peculiar problems vernaculartexts pose for their editors. The greatest champion of single-manuscripteditions in the face of widespread ‘Lachmannianism’, or recensionism,was Joseph Bédier. In 1928 Bédier argued for a return to the traditionalpractice of editing works from a single manuscript, at least for editions ofmedieval French texts.

15

Recensionist methods, he showed, were prob-lematic when applied to the manuscript tradition of a medieval Frenchpoem, the

Lai de l’Ombre

, which survives in seven manuscripts that donot lend themselves to easy stemmatic classification. Bédier argued thateditors who worked according to recensionist methods sometimes arrivedat highly questionable conclusions. Why risk confusing a text and mixingits various recensions through the use of uncertain and questionable edi-torial methodology, he asked? He thought it safer to print a text from onemanuscript, and to correct this text only in cases of ‘extreme and evidentnecessity’.

16

Textual variation may tend to be more fluid in vernacular traditions,where scribes are engaged in copying their own language and may feelreadier to alter the text ‘to suit their own sense of style’.

17

George Kane,for example, declares in his edition of the

A

text of

Piers Plowman

that‘Recension is not a practicable method for the editor of the

A

manu-scripts’.

18

For a number of reasons, including the poem’s ‘relevance tocontemporary circumstances’, he observes that many of the copyists appearto have acted as ‘amateur, uncritical and anonymous editors, uncheckedby the editor’s sense of resonsibility’.

19

Their fluency in the language ofthe copied text, coupled with their active interest in its contents, led themto introduce so many variants that it is impossible to reconstruct themanuscript tradition with any reliability. Kane’s solution was to edit threerecensions of

Piers Plowman

, in each case relying upon a

codex optimus

,corrected as necessary from other manuscripts. While ‘wild’ traditions likethat of

Piers Plowman

are mainly attested for vernacular traditions, manyMedieval Latin texts were also extensively reworked and recomposed bytheir readers.

20

Nevertheless, the ‘optimist’ method has provoked contro-versy when applied to Medieval Latin texts.

21

The Manuscript Sources

Whether optimist or recensionist, modern editions provide a lot of infor-mation about medieval manuscripts. To use these editions effectively, wemust cultivate some understanding of the general points of the history ofmanuscripts in the West. There are many studies and reference works thatwill reward repeated consultation. One brief, accessible, and thoroughintroduction to the study of medieval scripts is James John’s essay, ‘Latin

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Paleography’.

22

The basic introductions to paleography and codicology byMichelle Brown and Barbara Shailor are also useful, and contain manyhelpful reproductions.

23

Throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the standards ofwritten language evolved in ways highly relevant for the transmission oftexts. The earliest manuscripts are written in majuscule (or capital) scripts,without spaces between words (

scriptura continua

), and with very littlepunctuation or abbreviation. Minuscule scripts (like our modern ‘lower-case’ alphabet) were developed and used from the sixth century.

24

Copyistson the British Isles were the first to insert spaces between words.

25

Shortly thereafter, the Carolingian period saw the development and wideremployment of more sophisticated systems of punctuation.

26

A seconddevelopment of the Carolingian period involves the replacement of thevarious regional scripts, which developed after the decline of the RomanEmpire, with Carolingian minuscule. This script, which developed invarious centers in the Carolingian realm at the end of the eighth century,proved so useful that it continues to influence typeface down to thepresent day. The volume of material to be copied increased dramaticallyfrom the Carolingian period onward. In response, writing became morecompressed and more prone to abbreviation, so that scribes might makebetter use of the expensive parchment (stretched and dried calf- orsheepskin) on which they wrote.

27

From the twelfth century onward textscopied in two columns become more common. Running titles in theupper margins, and other readers’ aids, were introduced in the thirteenthcentury. Scripts continued to evolve: Carolingian minuscule underwent aseries of gradual changes, resulting by the thirteenth century in the scriptknown as Gothic.

28

In the Renaissance, antiquarianism and a renewedinterest in the classics led to a revival of Carolingian letter forms and thedevelopment of Humanist minuscule.

29

Manuscripts were copied by a variety of people in the Middle Ages,among them nuns, monks, professional scribes, students, and cathedralcanons.

30

Medieval books were accordingly kept in many differentmonastic, cathedral, university, and private libraries. Today, most of thesehave long since been dispersed. Many of their books have been collectedin modern libraries throughout Europe and remain accessible to scholars.The British Library in London, the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris inFrance, the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Vatican City, and the Bayer-ische Staatsbibliothek in Munich are but a few of the greatest amongthese. Some, like those of Sankt-Gallen and Monte Cassino, remain at themonasteries where they were copied and collected in the Middle Ages.

31

Still others are kept in inaccessible private collections. The varied fate ofmedieval manuscripts means that the problem of finding the extant man-uscripts of a text can be among the editor’s greatest difficulties. Editorsfind manuscripts principally by plodding through catalogs of the majorand minor European collections.

32

Because the omission of an important

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manuscript can render an edition misleading and deeply problematic, weshould always ask how many of the known manuscripts an editor hasexamined, and how he or she has decided which to describe in theintroduction and include in the apparatus.

All good modern editions of medieval texts include an account of themanuscripts used to construct the text. The manuscript descriptions thateditors provide are valuable, and under-used, sources of information aboutthe histories of medieval texts. These almost always begin with basiccodicological information: the dimensions of the manuscript, the numberof folios, the size of the written space on each folio, the ruling, the sizeand number of the gatherings (often called the ‘collation’),

33

the numberof columns per page, the nature of the binding, the number of text linesper page or column, the description of decorative features (illuminatedinitials, paintings, drawings), an enumeration of damaged or missing folios,and sometimes even the color of the ink and the number of scribes. Takentogether, this information helps the reader to build a useful picture of themanuscript. Is it a small book, with narrow margins, filled with many linesof cramped writing – a textbook, or perhaps a student’s copy? Or is itrather a large, rich manuscript, with many illuminations and wide margins?Was it copied in haste, in sections, by many scribes simultaneously? Or isit the work of a single copyist?

The editor will also attempt to date all the manuscripts consulted.Though dates are never a certain guide to the reliability of a manuscripttext, they do have many implications. In the first place, they allow readersto place the manuscript against the general backdrop of the history ofscripts and book production. Is the codex in question very early, perhapscopied with very little punctuation and in

scriptura continua

? Or is it a verylate manuscript, produced by a professional scribe for the use of a laypersonor a university student? These considerations will naturally influence one’simpression of the relative importance and reliability of a manuscript.Dates are also useful because they allow us to relate the manuscripts towhat we know of the author’s biography and the history surrounding thetext. Can any portion of the tradition be dated to within an author’slifetime? Was the text much copied early on, or did it only circulate longafter the author had died? It is important to work out how an editor datesthe manuscripts. No editor is necessarily a paleographer or codicologist,and most rely on the scholarship of other experts. All extant codicescopied before 800 are reliably dated and carefully discussed in the series

Codices Latini Antiquiores

.

34

Ninth-century codices are not as systematicallytreated, but the majority have been described with competence. BernhardBischoff provides reliable dates and descriptions for many Carolingianmanuscripts.

35

For the later Middle Ages, the paleographical scholarshipbegins to thin out, and editors are increasingly forced to rely on manuscriptcatalogs (when they exist) and their own judgment. Dates based upon oldcatalog descriptions are unreliable and should be treated skeptically.

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During much of the nineteenth century paleography was still in itsinfancy, and many manuscripts were wildly misdated.36

Whenever possible editors will also seek to establish where theirmanuscripts were copied (their origin) and their successive owners (theirprovenance). Together with dates, determinations of origin and provenancecan help to show a textual tradition geographically, over time. Variantscarried by manuscripts closely connected to the author in time and spacewill warrant special consideration. Many of the major public manuscriptlibraries in Europe gathered a good portion of their manuscripts directlyfrom monastic and/or cathedral libraries; in these cases medieval prove-nance is not much of a mystery, and is recorded in early publications andcatalogs. Yet determining the origin and provenance of a manuscriptpurchased from an early bookseller or gathered from a private collectioncan be much more difficult. Often, and especially in the case of latercodices, medieval ownership and shelf marks provide the key information.For earlier manuscripts, editors must often rely on the speculation ofpaleographers and art historians. When reading accounts of manuscriptprovenance, we must remember that manuscripts were often copied faraway from the medieval libraries that came to conserve them. They wereoften sold, lent, stolen, and donated by many different parties. Theyfrequently outlived the institutions that copied them and were sent to newlibraries.

Beyond the codicological description, provenance, and date, an editorshould provide some idea of a manuscript’s contents in addition to theedited work. Texts often travel in groups, and it is worth asking in whatcontext the edited work was read. Does it consistently appear alongsideother works of a specific genre? Is it often copied with the same severaltexts, in the same sequence? One often finds that context varies signifi-cantly through time and space, as the text came to fulfill different functionsfor different communities. Often, though, the task of identifying all thetexts in every manuscript consulted can prove overwhelming. If editorscannot identify a text, they may at least include its incipit (the openingwords) and explicit (the closing words); together these provide a more stablereference than the title, which can vary from copy to copy.37

A look at our model edition of Alcuin’s Credimus will illustrate howmuch information a manuscript tradition can provide about a text. Themost obvious feature of the Credimus tradition is its abundance. The Defide, to which the Credimus is attached, is known in well over a hundredmanuscripts, twenty of which may be dated firmly within the ninthcentury.38 We include nine of these manuscripts in our edition; amongthis sample are some of the earliest and most important Credimus wit-nesses. Sankt-Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek Ms. 272 (hereafter G2), was atSankt-Gallen before 806, and may have been copied there.39 Verdun,Bibliothèque municipale Ms. 67 (hereafter Ve) is also important; its scriptwas probably set down before 820, and it shows signs of having been

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copied by a Tours scribe.40 This is significant because Alcuin was abbot atSaint Martin’s at Tours from 796 until 804. Paris, Bibliothèque nationalede France Ms. lat. 2849 (hereafter P3) is just as early, though its medievalprovenance is indeterminate. The catalog description by André Wilmartdates Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Reg. lat. 231 (hereafter V ) to the820s or 830s, and hypothesizes that it was copied in northern France.41

This abundance of early manuscripts means that we probably have goodaccess to the text of the Credimus as Alcuin wrote it. It also tells us thatthe Credimus circulated widely within the Carolingian empire.42 Alongwith the De fide it had a clear political function, and this doubtlessaccounts for the extent of its early distribution.43

The manuscript tradition also shows that the Credimus and the De fideoriginally constituted only part of a larger package of theological texts.All the earliest codices, including seven of the nine used for the modeledition,44 carry not only the De fide with its appendices, but two otherAlcuinian treatises: a question-and-answer text on the Trinity, and a treatiseon the soul.45 This combination of three texts remains the rule until theend of the Carolingian period, at which point it begins to break down.Two manuscripts used for our edition of the Credimus lack the treatise onthe soul, and both date from the late ninth or early tenth centuries.46

Other pieces of the collection were also routinely omitted in this period.As the political and intellectual environment in which they were copiedchanged, the Credimus and the De fide came to be read in different, morevaried contexts.

Reconstructing Textual Traditions

In addition to an account of the manuscripts, recensionist editions includea description of the textual tradition. Here the editor describes the rela-tionship of the manuscripts to each other and reconstructs how eachmanuscript accumulated its variants. We should always read these discus-sions carefully; they are crucial for understanding how the editor arrivedat the edited text, and how reliable this text is.

All medieval manuscripts were copied from other manuscripts. Overtime, errors made in the course of this copying changed the text. Scribes,faced with exemplars copied far away or long ago in unfamiliar scripts,often misread the text in their exemplar.47 Even when copying from anunambiguous manuscript, the limitations and eccentricities of humanattention drove scribes to produce a number of stereotypical copyingerrors. While looking back and forth from exemplar to copy, copyistsfrequently copied some portion of the text twice (‘dittography’ or‘duplication’), or omitted some portion when their eyes jumped fromone occurrence of words or letters to an identical occurrence later on(‘homoeoteleuton’). They sometimes incorporated glosses or other mar-ginalia into the text of their copy, resulting in nonsense. Exemplars were

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also occasionally misbound or mutilated, driving scribes to omit largepieces of text or copy whole passages in a confused order.48

Variants of this sort are objective errors: they can be ascribed withcertainty to copyists and not the author, and they can be very difficult forsubsequent copyists to reverse without recourse to an untainted text.49 Asa result, they are considered fundamental to recension. Ideally, subsequentcopies of a manuscript will reproduce all the errors in that manuscript andintroduce a few new errors. Further copies will carry the old errors withthe new, and contribute still further corruption. When this is the caseeditors can reconstruct the descent of the manuscripts by keeping trackof common corruptions. They generally express this reconstruction bymeans of a stemma codicum. A secure reconstruction gives the editor ameans of weighing the manuscripts and determining which readingsderive from the archetype, and which were introduced at later stages ofthe tradition.

How this works is best illustrated first through an ideal example.50 Thestemma below depicts the relationship of the seven manuscripts A, B, C,D, E, F and G. Lowercase Greek letters represent reconstructed, but lost,exemplars. Ω is the archetype.

The manuscripts E and F share common errors, found in no othermanuscripts; the editor accounts for these by postulating the lost exemplarγ. A subset of these errors recurs in a third manuscript, A. To account forthis, smaller set of shared readings, the editor postulates another lostmanuscript α. This text, one step removed from the archetype itself, isknown as a hyparchetype. A second hyparchetype is β, which the editorpostulates to explain errors common to the manuscripts B, C, and G. Gis a copy of C, a so-called codex descriptus (literally, ‘copied’ or ‘transcribedbook’); it has all the textual variation of C and some more of its own.Finally, the manuscript D has errors of its own, but no errors in commonwith any of the other manuscripts. It is an independent strand of thetradition.

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The manuscripts A, E, and F constitute a family descended from α.When all three manuscripts agree on a variant, the editor may be certainthat this variant originated with α. The editor may also be sure thatvariants shared by A and E alone, or by A and F alone, derive from α.Similarly, the reading of β is certain when B and C agree. G, a copy ofan extant manuscript, is irrelevant for determining the reading of β. Thereadings of the independent manuscript D have an authority theoreticallyequivalent to that of the hyparchetypes α and β.

After defining the hyparchetypes, the editor can proceed to reconstructΩ, the archetype. Obviously, readings shared by α, β, and D derive fromthe archetype and may be printed. So do readings shared by only two ofthe three. When all three branches disagree, the reading of the hyparche-type is uncertain. In these instances the editor must resort to internalcriteria to determine the contents of Ω: one of the archetypes may con-tain the correct reading, or none may.

Stemmata and the reconstructions they illustrate are simplifications. Theeditor posits the smallest number of lost witnesses necessary to accountfor the distribution of manuscript variants. Accordingly, these reconstruc-tions almost always underestimate the number of lost manuscripts, andmay appear to overstate the authority of some surviving witnesses. Itwould be a mistake, for example, to conclude from the above stemma thatD is a closer witness of Ω than E or F. A long succession of copies – lost,unknown, or overlooked – could have interceded between Ω and D,while E might really be only two or three generations removed from thearchetype. This stemma tells us only that D is the sole collated manuscriptto represent its particular strand of the tradition, while F is one of severalrepresentatives. D is important for its independence, not necessarily for itscloseness to Ω.

An important point to take away from any stemma is how many mainbranches it has. The stemma above is tripartite, with three main branchesdescending from Ω. This means that the editor has firm guidance for thecontents of Ω most of the time; only when each of the three branchesprovides a different version of the same passage will the reading of thearchetype be unclear. Actual stemmata, of course, may have any numberof branches, depending upon how many times the archetype was copiedand how many of these copies are represented among the extant manu-scripts. Those that give the editor the freest hand in choosing variants arebipartite stemmata. In such traditions, any disagreement between the twohyparchetypes results in uncertainty regarding the archetype. Bipartitestemmata are common, and potentially problematic. The editor of a textwith an apparently bipartite tradition must resort to internal criteriawhenever the two hyparchetypes diverge.51

Our hypothetical tradition is an ideal case for recension, and wouldpose few problems for its editor. Some manuscripts traditions really dolend themselves to easy classification and reconstruction of this sort. In

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the manuscript tradition of Lucretius, for example, a lucky series of com-mon errors permitted Karl Lachmann to reconstruct the transmission sosecurely that his name was ever afterwards associated with recension.52 Butthese clear cases are the exception rather than the rule. Normally twodifficulties conspire to make the editor’s task harder.

The first is the rarity of truly conclusive and unambiguous ‘commonerrors’.53 Hyparchetypes (and indeed all hypothetical archetypes) need tobe defined by variants that the author of the edited text is unlikely or lesslikely to have written. If the editor defines hyparchetypes with nothingmore than benign variants that the author could well have produced, thereconstruction of the manuscript tradition is open to doubt. Because thesevariants provide no information about which versions of the text are laterand which are earlier, they allow editors to distinguish only manuscriptgroups – not to determine the stemmatic relationship of these groups toeach other. Yet traditions that yield many obviously inauthentic variantsare uncommon. Instead of disordered passages, scrambled wording orserious omissions, editors often have little more to work with than slightfluctuations in word order or the addition or omission of nonessentialparticles or short phrases. To reconstruct the descent of their manuscripts,they are forced to make many judgments about what the author ismore likely to have written and what is more likely to be the product ofscribal activity. There are several guiding principles available to editorsfaced with multiple readings of equal authority, though it can be difficultto apply them reasonably. One of these, known as the lectio difficilior(‘more difficult reading’), posits that ‘the more obscure and difficultreading is to be preferred to another, in which everything is so obviousand disentangled that the scribe in question would have been able tounderstand it easily’.54 Another point of guidance is the usus scribendi(‘style of writing’), which holds that, all else being equal, editors shouldchoose the reading which accords best with the style of the author apparentin his other works.55 We must always pay careful attention to the variantsthat editors use to reconstruct their traditions, and note how often theyare forced to apply these principles, and whether they can apply themconvincingly.

The second problem is the pervasiveness of contamination. Textualcontamination occurs when variants travel laterally from one branch ofthe tradition to another, as opposed to vertically by descent. Contamina-tion thus has the effect of obscuring manuscript relationships. It arisesout of the tendency of medieval scribes and readers to alter and improvetheir texts by comparing them to other copies. This tendency in turnexplains why obviously ‘unsatisfactory’ variants are so rare: wheneverthey encountered obvious textual problems, medieval readers did theirbest to fix them. Contaminated traditions are generally referred to as‘open’; uncontaminated traditions are considered ‘closed’. Contaminationtends to be most prevalent when there are many copies of a work in

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circulation; the denser the distribution, the easier the task of findinganother copy for comparison. It is generally less prevalent in the traditionsof rare works.

The Credimus had an open tradition throughout the Middle Ages. Itwas so widely and densely distributed that scribes found it relatively easyto correct one copy against another whenever they noticed a fault. Eventhe earliest manuscripts, including those used for our model edition,show signs of correction against other copies. This means that serioustextual errors did not persist for long. Nevertheless, it is possible toreconstruct the descent of our Credimus manuscripts with some confidence.The nine manuscripts used in our edition appear to have descended asfollows:

Our manuscripts derive from three independent witnesses of Ω, thearchetype. In other words, the tradition is tripartite. I assign the threehyparchetypes at the head of the tradition the sigla α, β, and ζ. The threebranches mean that most of the time the readings of the archetype shouldbe clear. Only when all three hyparchetypes disagree should there be anyuncertainty about the reading of Ω. For the space of the Credimus, thisnever happens.

A closer look at the textual tradition of the Credimus will provide agood illustration of the reasoning process that editors use to reconstructarchetypes and build their texts. We will concentrate on the three hypar-chetypes and the variants that define them. The variation common to Veand P3 that requires the hyparchetype α occurs in the De fide; bothmanuscripts follow the archetype closely for the text of the Credimus.Variants that distinguish the hyparchetypes β and ζ are confined princi-pally to three passages. This chart arranges the reconstructed passagesof all three hyparchetypes, in parallel columns. Italics highlight textualvariation:

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When β was copied the scribe wrote ‘uero’ for ‘uerum’ and omitted aclause through homoeoteleuton. These are obvious corruptions; in bothcases the archetypal reading is preserved in α and ζ.

Variants peculiar to ζ are of a different nature. Here we find the wordsuidebunt iudicantem transposed, another word added (maiestatis), the tenseof a verb changed (est for erit), and the closing doxology (a short verse inpraise of God, here the ‘Gratia et pax . . .’ passage) removed to a placeelsewhere in the De fide. None of these are obviously copying mistakesor are otherwise problematic. Yet without some demonstration that thesemanuscripts have some unsatisfactory variants in common, my recon-struction of the tradition is in doubt.

We have to look for variants that are not obviously erroneous, but thatare nevertheless unlikely to have come from Alcuin. Such a variant in ζmight be the removal of the doxology from the end of the Credimus tothe end of the last chapter of the De fide. Alcuin modelled the Credimuson a similar passage from Marius Victorinus’s Aduersus Arium (‘AgainstArius’); both the Credimus and the passage from Victorinus conclude withthe Gratia et pax doxology. Marius Victorinus was almost entirelyunknown in the Middle Ages, and Alcuin is the only medieval writer to

αααα (VeP3): ββββ (G2M4): ζζζζ (VT2SmAuP4):l. 4 l. 4 l. 4Deum uerum de Deo uero . . . Deum uero de Deo uero . . . Deum uerum de Deo uero . . .ll. 21–3 ll. 21–3 ll. 21–3Nec aliud est Pater in natura quam Filius uel Spiritus Sanctus; nec aliud Filius et Spiritus Sanctus quam Pater in natura, quibus est una natura. Sed alius est Pater in persona, alius Filius in persona, alius Spiritus Sanctus in persona.

Nec aliud est Pater in natura quam Filius uel Spiritus Sanctus, quam Pater in natura, quibus est una natura. Sed alius Pater in persona, alius Filius in persona, alius Spiritus Sanctus in persona.

Nec aliud est Pater in natura quam Filius uel Spiritus Sanctus; nec aliud Filius et Spiritus Sanctus quam Pater in natura, quibus est una natura. Sed alius est Pater in persona, alius Filius in persona, alius Spiritus Sanctus in persona.

ll. 44–50 ll. 44–50 ll. 44–50Inde iam uenturus iudicare uiuos et mortuos, quem impii uidebunt iudicantem in ea forma qua crucifixus est; non in ea humilitate qua iniuste iudicatus est, sed in ea claritate qua iuste iudicaturus est mundum. Cuius uisio aeterna erit omnium sanctorum beatitudo et gloria.

Inde iam uenturus iudicare uiuos et mortuos, quem impii uidebunt iudicantem in ea forma qua crucifixus est; non in ea humilitate qua iniuste iudicatus est, sed in ea claritate qua iuste iudicatus est mundum. Cuius uisio aeterna erit omnium sanctorum beatitudo et gloria.

Inde iam uenturus iudicare uiuos et mortuos, quem impii iudicantem uidebunt in ea forma qua crucifixus est; non in ea humilitate qua iniuste iudicatus est, sed in ea claritate qua iuste iudicaturus est mundum. Cuius uisio maiestatis aeterna est omnium sanctorum beatitudo et gloria.

Gratia et pax a Deo Patre et Filio eius Iesu Christo Domino nostro, sic ista confitenti in omnia saecula saeculorum.

Gratia et pax a Deo Patre et Filio eius Iesu Christo Domino nostro, sic ista confitenti in omnia saecula saeculorum.

[‘Gratia – saeculorum’ removed to end of De fide III.22]

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use the Aduersus Arium at all. In other words, he alone would likely haveknown enough to attach the doxology to the end of the Credimus. So theshift of the ‘Gratia et pax’ does appear to be less ‘Alcuinian’, and thereforeunsatisfactory. There are similar anomalies in the ζ-text of the De fide aswell; it appears to be a slightly later and somewhat hasty revision of theAlcuin’s work. Fortunately, for each variant found only in ζ, α and βagree on the archetypal reading. Our tripartite stemma gives clear guidancein every case.

Reasoning along these lines informs the text of every recensionistedition. No reader should let this reasoning escape critical examination,because it determines the form of the edited text. We should alwaysmonitor textual variation at the hyparchetype level, and ask how theeditor has chosen among rival readings whenever the hyparchetypes aretoo divided to provide guidance. It is also a good idea to work out howthe editor has established the hyparchetypes in the first place. Each shouldbe distinguished by one or more variants that are unlikely to have beenproduced by the author, and that are unlikely to recur multiple timesindependently.

Reading the Edited Text

After collating the manuscripts, tracing their descent, and emending thereconstructed archetype, the editor is in a position to provide his readerswith a text. This text is supplied with a variety of annotations. Rejectedmanuscript readings are listed in the apparatus criticus, while the author’ssources are enumerated in the apparatus fontium; a separate apparatus biblicusis often used to track scriptural citations. The editor must also supply thetext with a system of punctuation. The editor and the publisher will alsoformat the text, provide line and sometimes paragraph numbers, indicesof words and citations, and other useful tools.

Our own edition of the Credimus (Appendix) opens with a conspectussiglorum, which resolves all sigla and other abbreviations used in theapparatus criticus. By convention, most editions include such a conspectusafter the introduction and just before the text begins.56 Our conspectuslists the manuscripts, first by city of conservation, then by library, then byfond within the library if applicable, and finally by shelfmark. This is thecustomary means of citing manuscripts. It also provides manuscriptdates for handy reference. In the interests of greater precision, ouredition employs only a single siglum for every manuscript. Many editions,though, include additional sigla that mark variants traced to reconstructedarchetypes. These are typically lowercase Greek letters, and represent aconsensus of two or more individual manuscripts. In our case, for example,we could have designated a siglum to indicate the hyparchetype shared byG2 and M4, rather than simply including the sigla for both manuscriptswhenever they agree.57 Our edition also includes variants from the

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eighteenth-century edition by Frobenius Forster, which has been the standardedition of the Credimus up to the present day. These variants are marked,as is typical, with a lowercase Latin letter ( f ).58

Our conspectus also resolves the Latin abbreviations used alongside themanuscript sigla. These are praem. = praemisit, to indicate when a manu-script has placed a given word before another; add. = addidit, to indicatewhen a manuscript has added a word; in marg. = in margine and sup.l. =super lineam, to indicate how a word or a variant is added; a.m. = aliamanu, to indicate manuscript corrections by a hand other than the mainscribe; a.c. = ante correctionem and p.c. = post correctionem, to indicate read-ings before and after correction; in ras. = in rasura, to indicate that textappears on top of an erasure; and eras. = erasit, to indicate erased text.59

The text of the Credimus is printed with a modern system of punctu-ation and capitalization for the convenience of readers. Because medievalconventions of punctuation can differ substantially from modern practices,editors commonly supply punctuation independent of that available in themanuscripts. Inevitably, their usage is determined not only by individualpreference and interpretation, but by the written conventions of theirnative language.60 As a result, punctuation can vary greatly from editionto edition.

I have added word spacing and capitalization consistent with modernstandards. All manuscript abbreviations are silently expanded, both in thetext and in the apparatus. The lines are numbered; the various apparatuscite the text by means of these numbers. Many editions of medieval textsderive their orthography from a single manuscript, often whichever isjudged to be closest to the author. Our edition follows no single manu-script absolutely, but rather follows the most common spellings amongthe ninth-century codices collated for the edition, falling back uponearly manuscripts associated with Tours (like Ve) in cases of widespreaddisagreement.

The archetype of the Credimus, as we have reconstructed it, appears torequire no emendation. If it did, our edition would indicate the emen-dations both in the main text and in the apparatus. Words that an editorwishes to add to the text of the archetype are enclosed in caret brackets( < > ); words in the archetype that the editor wishes to suppress areenclosed in square brackets ( [ ] ). The apparatus criticus, meanwhile, pro-vides the rejected manuscript readings. Editors may emend from theirown conjecture, or they may borrow an emendation from the manuscripttradition. At line 47, for example, our edition might have included thereading ‘maiestatis’, following the five manuscripts V, T2, Sm, Au, and P4.Though the archetype appears to have omitted this word, an editor couldreason that the author really had written it and that it was restored atsome point by a clever scribe.61 If I had adopted such an emendation, Iwould have marked it with brackets (‘<maiestatis>’), just as if I hadcontributed the word without manuscript support.62

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As is standard for many editions of Medieval Latin texts, our editionhas three apparatus: an apparatus biblicus, to note scriptural references; anapparatus fontium, to note the author’s use of other sources; and an appa-ratus criticus, to give manuscript variants.63 For every entry, each apparatuscites the text by line number and separates the lemma (the exact text cited)from the following note by means of a closed square bracket. If a wordin the lemma occurs more than once on the line cited, a superscriptednumber indicates which of the words on that line is intended.

1 Credimus . . . 6 Filio2] cfr Mar. Vict., Adv. Ar. I.47 (p. 139, 1–5) 19una1 . . . 20 bonitas] cfr Aug., De Trin. VII.2 (p. 249, 1–2) 23 In . . . 24conexio] Aug., De Doct. Chr. I.5 (p. 9, 15–16) sed conexio] concordia 27Quamuis . . . 31 baptizatum] cfr Fulg. Rus., De Fide 52 (pp. 745–46, 1026–41)

Both the biblical and source apparatus invite the reader to compare (cfr =confer) indirect citations and allusions to their sources. When the ‘cfr’abbreviation is absent, the reader may assume that the author has borroweda passage more or less verbatim from the cited source. Our apparatusfontium cites Alcuin’s sources by author, title, book, and chapter number,and lists page and line numbers of the standard edition in parentheses.64

Direct citations often include interesting variants, and the editor may notethese in the source apparatus. I give one such variant at line 24: in apassage borrowed from Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana, Alcuin writes‘conexio’ where our De Doctrina Christiana edition reads ‘concordia’. HereI think we can attribute the difference to Alcuin. In other cases, suchvariants may derive from peculiarities of the text used by the author.Occasionally, an editor can identify the exact manuscript from which anauthor borrowed passages. At the very least, if good editions of the sourcetext exist, the editor is in a position to establish which branch of thesource’s textual tradition the author knew.

Along with the edited text, the apparatus criticus is the most importantfeature of any critical edition. The edited text is an attempt to reconstruct,as closely as possible, what the author actually wrote, while the apparatuscriticus records what readers actually read. This apparatus is generally thelast on the page. Here the editor records important textual variants, readingsfound in other editions, and any textual emendations others may haveproposed. One should always remember that apparatus critici are selectiveand do not record all the manuscript variation. Some editions give onlyvariants that can be traced back to a hyparchetype, or that constituteplausible alternatives to the editor’s choices. Like many editions of MedievalLatin texts, the Credimus apparatus is far less selective: it excludes all ortho-graphical variation and obvious solecisms, but includes most other variation.

1 Credimus] ITEM DE SANCTA TRINITATE praem. Au | sanctam] sanctis-simam f 2 unius1] unus M4 (a.c.) 3 Patrem] Credimus praem. f 4 uerum]uero G2M4 (a.c.) 5 lumine] lumen G2 6 procedentem] procedente T2 |Patri . . . Filio2] patrem et filium AuP4 9 qui] quo M4 (a.c.) | ubique] ubi

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AuP4 10 partes] parte Au 11 potentialiter] praesentialiter VT2Sm | com-mutatione] communicatione f | et creata] add. M4 (in marg.) | semper manens]sed permanens Au 12 nil] nihil Au 15 tria] et add. M4 (sup.l.) | et2] om. M4

| in . . . 16 in] om. T2 16 quia] qua M4 (a.c.) 17 nil] nihil T2Sm AuP4 | in]om. G2M4 21 Nec] non Sm

The apparatus describes each variant with a standard syntax: First comesthe lemma, then the variant itself, then any special description of thevariant, and finally a list of the manuscripts that have the variant. Anyspecial description of those manuscripts with respect to the variant isgiven afterwards, in parentheses. The sigla of manuscripts descended fromthe same hyparchetype are printed in an unspaced sequence. All manu-script text is printed in normal Roman type; everything else is in italics.Successive variants for the same lemma are separated by commas; successivelemmata from the same line are divided by a vertical line ( | ).

To better illustrate how to read an apparatus criticus, it will help to walkthrough some of the entries above. From the first entry in line 1, wesee that Au includes the rubric ‘ITEM DE SANCTA TRINITATE’before the word ‘Credimus’, the first word of the treatise. The archetypeappears to have had no rubric heading the Credimus, and so a number ofcopyists supplied their own. Also in line 1 we see that f reads ‘Credimussanctissimam Trinitatem . . .’ rather than ‘Credimus sanctam Trinitatem’, asthe manuscripts do. In line 15, the apparatus tells us that M4 added (‘add.’)the word ‘et’ after ‘tria’; this extra ‘et’ was added after the book was firstcopied, above the written line (‘sup.l.’). The designation ‘add.’ can also beused without a variant, to indicate when a manuscript has added thelemmatized text. So, for example, this important variant in line 21:

21 nec . . . 22 Sanctus] om. G2, add. M4(a.m., in marg.)

Here the manuscript M4 originally omitted the clause ‘nec . . . Sanctus’ inlines 21–2; a second scribe then added these words in the margin. G2

omits the same clause, leading us to ascribe the omission to a commonhyparchetype, β (as we saw above). The correction of M4 is unlikely tohave been accomplished through conjecture, and so this variant showsthat M4 received readings from another manuscript. This is one ‘commonerror’ that the scribes corrected. A later copy of M4, made in the eleventhcentury, includes the phrase.65

Apparatus can be either negative or positive. Negative apparatus giveonly differences between the witnesses and the edited text, while positiveapparatus give the reading of every source, whether or not it differs fromthe edited text. Our apparatus is positive to the extent that it includeslemmata behind a closed bracket for every variant given. Some apparatusomit even these lemmata when possible. This practice can simplify thelayout of the apparatus and save space, but it can also be imprecise andconfusing. Aside from the lemmata, our apparatus is negative, which meansthat it records only deviations from the edited text. The apparatus tells us,

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for example, that f has ‘sanctissimam’ for ‘sanctam’ in line 1, but saysnothing else. The reader can therefore assume that the manuscripts them-selves are unanimous in reading ‘sanctam’. In the case of ‘qui’ in line 9,the apparatus says that M4 reads ‘quo’ before correction (‘a.c.’). The readercan assume that all other manuscripts have ‘qui’ here, including M4 aftercorrection. A positive apparatus, on the other hand, leaves nothing toassumption. This can be helpful in complicated traditions, but for theCredimus it would result mostly in redundancy.

The limitation of an apparatus criticus extends beyond the variants listed.The editor must reduce all of the codicological variation of the manuscriptsto fit within a single, relatively simple system of notation. The unique featuresof the edited text and its manuscript tradition naturally affect this choiceof notation, but it would require an unbelievably complicated system tocommunicate every significant manuscript feature. Our apparatus, forexample, records readings in every manuscript before and after correction,but often says nothing about how these corrections were accomplished.Many editions, including ours, also do not note (or note very sparingly)the variant readings that scribes themselves have added between the linesand in the margins of their manuscripts, and no apparatus I have seennotes changes of hand or ink color, though these can provide valuableevidence for how a text was copied and for the nature of its exemplar.

***

Modern editions are textual restorations. Their editors seek to reverse thecorrupting effects of manuscript transmission and present medieval textsin their earliest available form. The process is fraught with difficulties.Recension assumes a model of textual transmission that applies perfectlyto only a few traditions. Problems like contamination and scribal innova-tion obscure manuscript relationships and can make traditions difficult orimpossible to reconstruct. Even if the archetype can be reliably restored,the editor has only the reassurance that it is an earlier text than that inthe manuscripts, not that it has anything to do with the author. All ofthese considerations are anterior to the problems inherent in printing thetexts in a format useful to modern readers. Editions must necessarilysimplify the information they provide: their punctuation and format oftenreflect compromises between accessibility and fidelity to the early form ofthe text. Together, all of these uncertainties warn us against reading oureditions passively. We must know how editions work, understand the choicestheir editors make, and form independent judgments about their reliability.

Acknowledgment

I am grateful to Anders Winroth, who suggested that I write this paper,and who commented on a draft. Erica Miao and John Wei also read draftsand gave helpful comments. E. Ann Matter has kindly allowed me to use

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our joint work on Alcuin. A stipend from the Landesstiftung Baden-Württemberg has supported me at the Ruprecht-Karls-UniversitätHeidelberg throughout my work on this paper.

Blackwell Publishing would like to thank Luc Jocqué at BrepolsPublishers for providing permission to publish parts of the forthcomingDe fide edition in this article.

Short Biography

Eric Knibbs is a graduate student enrolled in the Medieval Studies pro-gram at Yale University, where he has worked as a curatorial assistant inthe Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. He is interested inMedieval Latin, particularly in works by Bede and Alcuin, and in paleo-graphy and diplomatics. His article, ‘Exegetical Hagiography: Bede’s ProseVita Sancti Cuthberti’, recently appeared in the Revue Bénédictine, 114(Dec. 2004). He is co-editing, with E. Ann Matter from the Universityof Pennsylvania, the ‘De Fide Sanctae et Indiuiduae Trinitatis’, a dogmatictreatise written by Alcuin of York in 802, and is also working to edit acollection of medieval Spanish charters with Carlos Laliena Corbera ofthe University of Zaragoza.

Notes

* Correspondence address: Yale University – Medieval Studies, 53 Wall Street, Room 310, NewHaven, Connecticut, CT 06511, USA. Email: [email protected] E. Ann Matter and I are editing Alcuin’s De fide for the Corpus Christianorum: ContinuatioMedievalis. The standard edition of the De fide, and of Alcuin’s entire opera, remains that byF. Forster, Beati Flacci Albini seu Alcuini Abbatis, Caroli Magni Regis ac Imperatoris Magistri Opera(Regensburg, 1777). Forster’s edition of the De fide is reprinted in PL vol. 101, cols. 9–64 (theCredimus is at cols. 56–8). The model edition of the Credimus is based upon nine manuscripts,selected from the total of forty that will make up the complete edition. I selected the manu-scripts on the basis of the illustrative opportunities they provide, rather than for their worth inestablishing the text.2 This is how recenionists typically describe their editorial process. For a slightly different andmore expanded description see L. Boyle, ‘Optimist and Recensionist: “Common Errors” or“Common Variants” ’, in Integral Palaeography (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 33–44.3 For the history of philology and textual criticism through the time of Lachmann, see Sebas-tiano Timpanaro’s classic study, La genesi del metodo del Lachmann, which the author constantlyreworked and revised throughout his life. The new English translation, The Genesis of Lachmann’sMethod, ed. and trans. G. W. Most (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005), is based uponthe author’s last (and heretofore unpublished) revisions. It also provides updated bibliographyand an apparatus that tracks the many changes Timpanaro made to the text since he firstpublished it.4 Timpanaro, Genesis, 58–69. See also G. Pasquali, Storia della Tradizione e Critica del Testo(Florence: Felice le Monnier, 1952), 3–12.5 Timpanaro, Genesis, 70–4, 84–101.6 Ibid., 92ff.7 For a good history of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, see David Knowles, Great HistoricalEnterprises (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1963), 66–97.8 On the vulgate editions of classical texts, see Timpanaro, Genesis, 45.

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9 The source of the vulgate tended to be late manuscripts from Humanist period, ‘since thesewere easier to get hold of and more comfortable for the typesetters to read’. Ibid.10 Migne compiled the the Patrologiae Latinae Cursus Completus between 1844 and 1855, andthe Patrologiae Graecae Cursus Completus between 1856 and 1866. Migne’s intent in producingboth series was to gather disparate and often rare printings together in one convenient andrelatively cheap collection. As a result, Patrologia Latina and Patrologia Graeca editions are simplyreprints of much earlier editions. For more on Migne’s project and his other work, see R.Howard Bloch, God’s Plagiarist: Being an Account of the Fabulous Industry and Irregular Commerceof the Abbé Migne (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994).11 He might still note variants in other manuscripts, of course, because ‘if the work had anyinfluence at all, then its influence was almost certainly exerted, not by the autograph itself, butby copies’. R. B. C. Huygens, Ars Edendi: A Practical Introduction to Editing Medieval Latin Texts(Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 29–30.12 On this point see M. Lapidge, ‘The Edition of Medieval Latin Texts in the English-SpeakingWorld’, Sacris Erudiri, 38 (1998–99): 208–9.13 For an example, see H. Foerster’s edition of the Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontificum (Bern:Franke, 1958). The Liber Diurnus is a papal formulary that survives in three manuscripts.Foerster prints the text of each manuscript in succession.14 The term ‘optimist’ is from Boyle, ‘Optimist and Recensionist’.15 J. Bédier, ‘La tradition manuscrite du Lai de l’ombre: Reflexions sur l’art d’éditer les ancienstextes’, Romania (1928): 161–96, 321–56. Bédier had also expressed his criticisms of recensionearlier, in the preface to J. Renart, ed., Le lai de l’ombre (Paris: Firmin-Didot et Cie, 1913). Ofthe article in Romania, only a portion (161–88) relates to the ‘Lachmannian’ method; the restis an examination of the modifications and refinements to recensionism proposed by a contem-porary of Bédier, the Vulgata editor H. Quentin.16 Ibid., 354–6.17 Lapidge, ‘Edition’, 211.18 G. Kane (ed.), Piers Plowman: The A Version, 2nd edn. (London: Athlone Press, 1988), 115.19 Ibid., 115–16.20 For an example, we need go no further than Alcuin and a short treatise on the Psalms, knownas the De laude Psalmorum, ascribed to him. See Jonathan Black, ‘Psalm Uses in CarolingianPrayerbooks: Alcuin and the Preface to De psalmorum usu’, Mediaeval Studies, 64 (2002): 1–60.21 L. Bieler, ‘The Grammarian’s Craft: An Introduction to Textual Criticism’, Classical Folia(1960): 25, applied the adjective ‘wild’ to texts that ‘were not considered fixed in every detail’,and that ‘scribes would feel at liberty to deal with . . . after their own fashion’. For criticismof optimist editions of Medieval Latin texts, see, in medievalist quarters, J. B. Hall, ‘The Editingand Emendation of Medieval Latin Texts: Two Case Histories’, Studi Medievali, 19 (1978): 456,who describes the practice as ‘utterly at variance with that of the best editors since theRenaissance’. Lapidge, ‘Edition’, also criticizes the practice. A. E. Housman famously said thatthe ‘optimist’ method ‘saves lazy editors form working and stupid editors from thinking’. SelectedProse, ed. J. Carter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 36.22 J. J. John, ‘Latin Paleography’, in J. M. Powell (ed.), Medieval Studies: An Introduction, 2nd edn.(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1992), 1–68.23 M. P. Brown, A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600 (London: BritishLibrary, 1990). B. A. Shailor, The Medieval Book (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991).For a more advanced manual, see B. Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages,trans. D. Ó Cróinín and D. Ganz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). The originalGerman is Paläographie des römischen Altertums und des abendländischen Mittelalters, 2nd edn. (Ber-lin: E. Schmidt, 1986).24 On early scripts in general see J. Mallon, Paléographie romaine (Madrid: Inst. Antonio deNebrija de Filología, 1952).25 See P. H. Saenger, Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford, CA: StanfordUniversity Press, 1997).26 On the development of Carolingian minuscule, see B. Bischoff, ‘Die karolingische Minuskel’,in Mittelalterliche Studien (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1966–81), 3:1–5; Bischoff, ‘Panorama derHandschriftenüberlieferung aus der Zeit Karls des Grossen’, op cit., 3:5–39. On punctuation

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in medieval manuscripts, the standard work is M. B. Parkes, Pause and Effect: An Introduction tothe History of Punctuation in the West (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992).27 On early medieval abbreviations, see W. M. Linday, Notae Latinae: An Account of Abbreviationin Latin Manuscripts of the Early Miniscule Period (c.700–850), 2nd edn. (Hildesheim: G. Olms,1963); the supplement by D. Bains in the same volume provides some coverage of latermedieval abbreviations, through 1050. Resolving abbreviations can be challenging; a goodpractical manual is A. Cappelli, Dizionario di abbreviature latine ed italiane, 5th edn. (Milan:Hoepli, 1954); any edition will do. A German edition – Lexicon Abbreviaturarum (Leipzig: J. J.Weber, 1928) – is online at http://inkunabeln.ub.uni-koeln.de/vdibProduction/handapparat/nachs_w/cappelli/cappelli.html. Cappelli’s introduction is translated by D. Heimann and R. Kay,The Elements of Abbreviation in Medieval Latin Paleography (Lawrence, KS: University of KansasLibraries, 1982).28 The best study of Gothic manuscripts and handwriting is A. Derolez, The Palaeography ofGothic Manuscript Books (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).29 For manuscripts in Humanist minuscule, see B. L. Ullman, The Origin and Development ofHumanistic Script (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1960).30 For female scribes, see R. McKitterick, ‘Nuns’ Scriptoria in England and Francia in theEighth Century’, Francia, 19 (1989): 1–35; A. I. Beach, Women as Scribes: Book Production andMonastic Reform in Twelfth-Century Bavaria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Forprofessional scribes, see R. H. Rouse and M. A. Rouse, Manuscripts and their Makers: CommercialBook Producers in Medieval Paris, 1200–1500 (Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2000). For book distri-bution at universities by means of the peciae system, the classic study is J. Destrez, La pecia dansles manuscrits universitaires du XIIIe et du XIVe siècle (Paris: Éditions Jacques Vautrain, 1935).31 The Stiftsbibliothek at Sankt-Gallen has recently placed full, high-quality reproductions ofthe most important codices preserved there online as part of the ‘Codices Electronici’ project,at http://www.cesg.unifr.ch. The Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek at Colognehas done the same, at http://www.ceec.uni-koeln.de.32 The best guide to manuscript catalogs is P. O. Kristeller, Latin Manuscript Books Before 1600,4th edn. (Munich: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1993). One should only use the fourthedition, which has been significantly revised and enlarged by S. Krämer.33 Most printed books and all manuscripts are built from a number of bifolios (double-pages),which are stacked together and folded in half, forming what are called gatherings. Everymanuscript consists of multiple gatherings, sewn and bound together.34 E. A. Lowe (ed.), Codices Latini Antiquiores, 11 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934–71),with supplement.35 See B. Bischoff, Katalog der Festländischen Handschriften des neunten Jahrhunderts, 2 vols. (Wies-baden: Harrassowitz, 1998), incomplete. For an index of all manuscripts ever cited by Bischoff,with references to the publications in which he cites them, see S. Krämer, Bibliographie BernhardBischoff und Verzeichnis aller von ihm herangezogenen Handschriften (Frankfurt am Main: JosefKnecht, 1998).36 For some very good examples, see C. M. Radding and A. Ciaralli, The ‘Corpus Iuris Civilis’in the Middle Ages: Manuscripts and Transmission from the Sixth Century to the Juristic Revival (NewYork: Brill, 2006). The authors point out that many important manuscripts of Justinian’s Corpus,last submitted to paleographical investigation in the nineteenth century, were dated far too early(in some cases by centuries). This, they argue, has contributed to a false understanding of thereception of the Corpus in the Middle Ages.37 Of course, alterations or abbreviations of a text can obscure the incipit and explicit as well.38 A list of all known De fide manuscripts is given in M.-H. Jullien and F. Perelman, ClavisScriptorum Latinorum Medii Aevi: Auctores Galliae 735–987 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 2:135–8.39 An addition on the last folio, in the Alamannic minuscule characteristic of Sankt-Gallen,provides the date.40 All surviving manuscripts from the medieval library at Saint-Vito now reside at the Bibli-othèque municipale of Verdun; cf. the Catalogue Général des Manuscripts des bibliothèques publiquesdes départements, Quarto Series (Paris, 1879), 419–20.41 A. Wilmart (ed.), Codices Reginenses Latini (Vatican: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1937), 1:552.42 Most of the early manuscripts appear to have been copied within Carolingian territory.

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43 Alcuin underscores this function in his prefatory letter to De fide, where he writes of theneed to provide Charlemagne with a text to support royal praedicatio of the catholic faith. Theletter is in E. Dümmler (ed.), MGH Epistolae t. 4/2, 414–6 (ep. 257).44 These are Ve, P3, G2, and V, along with Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm. 28140(M4), Troyes, Bibltiothèque municipale Ms. 1165 (T2), and Autun, Bibliothèque municipale Ms.36 (Au).45 Ed. PL vol. 101, cols. 57–64 (‘De Trinitate ad Fredegisum Quaestiones XXVIII’ – a titlewithout manuscript support), and cols. 639–50 (‘De animae ratione’).46 These are Saint-Mihiel, Bibliothèque municipale Ms. 29 (Sm) and Paris, Bibliothèque nation-ale de France, Ms. lat. 2849a (P4).47 See H. Atsma and J. Vezin, ‘Originaux et copies: La reproduction des éléments graphiquesdes actes des Xe et XIe siècle dans le cartulaire de Cluny’, in A. J. Kosto and A. Winroth (eds.),Charters, Cartularies and Archives: The Preservation and Transmission of Documents in the MedievalWest: Proceedings of a Colloquium of the Commission internationale de diplomatique (Princeton and NewYork, 16–18 September 1999) (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2002), 113–26. The authors show that the scribes of the Cluny cartulary sometimes imitated the graphicalforms which they found in the documents they copied: a practice which would have led toerror if subsequent copies had been made of the cartulary.48 For a full taxonomy of textual corruptions, with many examples from classical literature, seeL. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek andLatin Literature, 3rd edn. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 222–33. For an interesting scientificdiscussion of scribal error, see E. Vinaver, ‘Principles of Textual Emendation’, in Studies in FrenchLanguage and Medieval Literature Presented to Mildred K. Pope (Manchester: Manchester UniversityPress, 1939), 351–69. Vinaver’s discussion is summarized, with further insights and criticism, byBieler, Grammarian’s Craft, 28–32. As Bieler (28–9) notes, it is important to distinguish betweenerrors that only copyists produce, and errors that the author may have introduced himself. Inthe latter category are included errors of haplography (when one writes a few letters or asyllable once though they should be repeated), dittography (when one repeats a few letters ora syllable that should be written only one time), and errors of interna dicta (when a scribeexchanges a correct word for an incorrect one with similar pronunciation).49 Bieler, Grammarian’s Craft, defines an ‘error’ in the textual critical sense as ‘any variant inferiorto its alternative’ (13); he also uses the term ‘unsatisfactory reading’. Other authors call these‘secondary readings’. Boyle, ‘Optimist and Recensionist’, advocates referring only to ‘textualvariation’.50 For a much fuller discussion of stemmatic principles, see P. Maas, Textkritik, 3rd edn. (Leipzig:B. G. Teubner, 1957). This classic work also exists in English translation: Textual Criticism, trans.B. Flower (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958). For an expanded and less rigid discussion than thatof Maas, see M. West, Textual Criticism and Editorial Technique (Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner, 1973),29–47. Also see Reynolds and Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, 211–6; Bieler, Grammarian’s Craft, 11–8.51 Bédier’s most interesting criticism of recension grew out of his observation that editors sketchbipartite stemmata most of the time. Because there is no reason that the majority of manuscripttraditions should actually be bipartite, one is driven to ask why there are so many bipartitestemmata out there. Bédier argued that editors unconsciously constructed two-part stemmata toprovide greater leeway in choosing among readings.52 For Lachmann’s edition of Lucretius, see Timpanaro, Genesis, 102–14.53 Bieler, Grammarian’s Craft, 33.54 From J. J. Griesbach, Novum Testamentum Graece (Halle, 1796), 1: lix. Quoted by Pasquali,Tradizione, 10.55 Pasquali, Tradizione, 12.56 To save much flipping back and forth when consulting an edition with many unfamiliar sigla,it can be helpful to photocopy the conspectus and keep it at hand while reading.57 Such a siglum would be identical to that ascribed to the hyparchetype in the stemma. So inthe case of G2 and M4, the siglum would be ‘β’.58 Forster’s edition of Alcuin, while not critical, includes some variants that he found in othereditions and manuscripts. To avoid needless complication, I have not noted any of the variantshe reports.

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59 Abbreviations like these are common to most editions. For more on apparatus abbreviations, seethe useful website of K. Maurer, at http://www.udallas.edu/classics/resources/EditorsSigla.htm.60 The Corpus Christianorum instructs its editors specifically not to borrow punctuation from themanuscripts unless this punctuation coincides with modern usage; see ‘Instructions for thePublication of Texts in the Corpus Christianorum’, online at http://www.corpuschristianorum.org/series/pdf/Corpus-Guidelines.pdf. For a critical view of the tendency to supply modern andnationalistic punctuation to medieval texts, see H. Köhler, ‘Auf dem Weg zum modernenLesetext?’ in G. W. Most (ed.), Editing Texts/Texte edieren (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck undRuprecht, 1998), 181–8. Some editors follow the punctuation offered by their manuscripts,especially when a portion of the manuscript tradition appears close to the author in time andplace. See, for example, R. W. Southern (ed.), The Life of St. Anselm by Eadmer (London:Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd., 1962); W. Berschin (ed.), Hrotsvit: Opera Omnia, BibliothecaScriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2001).61 Without ‘maiestatis’, the sense of the word ‘uisio’ in the same line is less clear. I do not thinkthe problem is great enough to require emendation; it is more probable that Alcuin set downthe line without ‘maiestatis’, and the word was later added in one branch of the tradition toclarify the sense. I have followed the lectio difficilior.62 In such a case the apparatus would cite the manuscripts that served as sources of theemendation and would read ‘47 maiestatis] scripsi cum VT2Sm AuP4, om. VeP3 G2M4’.63 Other editions may include biblical references either in text or in the apparatus fontium.64 Usually the reader must look to the introduction for the full bibliographical information ofthe editions cited. Often the fontes are cited by a separate system of sigla. The apparatus fontiumof the Credimus edition cites six editions: B. Dombart and A. Kalb (eds.), Sancti Aurelii AugustiniDe Civitate Dei Libri XXII, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 47–8 (Turnhout: Brepols,1955); R. Martin (ed.), Sancti Aurelii Augustini de Doctrina Christiana Libri IV, Corpus Christian-orum, Series Latina 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962); W. J. Mountain (ed.), Sancti Aurelii Augustinide Trinitate Libri XV, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 50–50a (Turnhout: Brepols, 1968);D. R. Willems (ed.), Sancti Aurelii Augustini in Iohannis Evangelium Tractatus CXXIV, CorpusChristianorum, Series Latina 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954); J. Fraipont (ed.), Fulgentii Liber deFide ad Petrum, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 91a (Turnhout: Brepols, 1968); P. Henryand P. Hadot (eds.), Marii Victorini Adversus Arium Libri IV, Corpus Scriptorum EcclesiasticorumLatinorum 83 (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1971).65 The copy is Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm. 18372; it comes from the abbey ofTegernsee.

Bibliography

Editions of medieval and classical texts are listed under the names of their editors.Atsma, H., and Vezin, J., ‘Originaux et copies: La reproduction des éléments graphiques des

actes des Xe et XIe siècle dans le cartulaire de Cluny’, in A. J. Kosto and A. Winroth (eds.),Charters, Cartularies and Archives: The Preservation and Transmission of Documents in the MedievalWest: Proceedings of a Colloquium of the Commission internationale de diplomatique (Princeton andNew York, 16–18 September 1999) (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2002),113–26.

Beach, A. I., Women as Scribes: Book Production and Monastic Reform in Twelfth-Century Bavaria(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Bédier, J., ‘La tradition manuscrite du Lai de l’ombre: Reflexions sur l’art d’éditer les ancienstextes’, Romania (1928): 161–96, 321–56.

Berschin, W. (ed.), Hrotsvit: Opera Omnia, Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et RomanorumTeubneriana (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2001).

Bieler, L., ‘The Grammarian’s Craft: An Introduction to Textual Criticism’, Classical Folia(1960).

Bischoff, B., Katalog der Festländischen Handschriften des neunten Jahrhunderts, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden:Harrassowitz, 1998).

Bischoff, B., Mittelalterliche Studien: Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur Schriftkunde und Literaturgeschichte,3 vols. (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1966–81).

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Bischoff, B., Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. D. Ó Cróinín and D. Ganz(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

Bischoff, B., Die Südostdeutschen Schreibschulen und Bibliotheken in der Karolingerzeit, 2 vols. (Wies-baden: O. Harrassowitz, 1960–80).

Black, J., ‘Psalm Uses in Carolingian Prayerbooks: Alcuin and the Preface to De psalmorum usu’,Mediaeval Studies, 64 (2002): 1–60.

Bloch, R. H., God’s Plagiarist: Being an Account of the Fabulous Industry and Irregular Commerce ofthe Abbé Migne (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

Boyle, L., ‘Optimist and Recensionist: “Common Errors” or “Common Variants” ’, in IntegralPalaeography (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 33–44.

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Cappelli, A., Dizionario di abbreviature latine ed italiane, 5th edn. (Milan: Hoepli, 1954).Carter, J. (ed.), A.E. Housman: Selected Prose (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961).Codices Electronici Ecclesiae Coloniensis, http://www.ceec.uni-koeln.de, accessed May 11, 2007.Codices Electronici Sangallenses, http://www.cesg.unifr.ch, accessed on May 11, 2007.Dekkers, D. E., and Fraipont, J. (eds.), Enarrationes in Psalmos, Corpus Christianorum Series

Latina 38–40 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1956).Derolez, A., The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2003).Destrez, J., La pecia dans les manuscrits universitaires du XIIIe et du XIVe siècle (Paris: Éditions

Jacques Vautrain, 1935).Dombart, B., and Kalb, A. (eds.), Sancti Aurelii Augustini De Civitate Dei Libri XXII, Corpus

Christianorum Series Latina 47–8 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955).Dümmler, E. (ed.), MGH Epistolae t. 4/2 (Hannover: Weidmann, 1895).Foerster, H. (ed.), Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontoficum (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1958).Fraipont, J. (ed.), Fulgentii Liber de Fide ad Petrum, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 91a

(Turnhout: Brepols, 1968).Forster, F. (ed.), Beati Flacci Albini seu Alcuini Abbatis, Caroli Magni Regis ac Imperatoris Magistri

Opera (Regensburg, 1777).Griesbach, J. J., Novum Testamentum Graece (Halle, 1796).Hall, J. B., ‘The Editing and Emendation of Medieval Latin Texts: Two Case Histories’, Studi

Medievali, 19 (1978): 443–66.Heimann, D., and Kay, R., The Elements of Abbreviation in Medieval Latin Paleography (Lawrence,

KS: University of Kansas Libraries, 1982).Henry, P., and Hadot, P. (eds.), Marii Victorini Adversus Arium Libri IV, Corpus Scriptorum

Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 83 (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften,1971).

Huygens, R. B. C., Ars Edendi: A Practical Introduction to Editing Medieval Latin Texts (Turnhout:Brepols, 2000).

John, J. J., ‘Latin Paleography’, in J. M. Powell (ed.), Medieval Studies: An Introduction, 2nd edn.(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1992), 1–68.

Jullien, M.-H., and Perelman, F., Clavis Scriptorum Latinorum Medii Aevi: Auctores Galliae 735–987 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999).

Kane, G. (ed.), Piers Plowman: The A Version, 2nd edn. (London: Athlone Press, 1988).Knowles, D., Great Historical Enterprises (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd., 1963).Köhler, H., ‘Auf dem Weg zum modernen Lesetext?’, in G. W. Most (ed.), Editing Texts/Texte

edieren (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1998), 165–89.Krämer, S., Bibliographie Bernhard Bischoff und Verzeichnis aller von ihm herangezogenen Handschriften

(Frankfurt am Main: Josef Knecht, 1998).Kristeller, P. O., Latin Manuscript Books Before 1600, 4th edn. (Munich: Monumenta Germaniae

Historica, 1993).Lachmann, K. (ed.), Lucretii de Rerum Natura Libri VI (Berlin: G. Reimeri, 1850).Lachmann, K. (ed.), In Lucretii de Rerum Natura Libros Commentarius (Berlin: G. Reimeri,

1850).Lapidge, M., ‘The Edition of Medieval Latin Texts in the English-Speaking World’, Sacris

Erudiri, 38 (1998–99): 199–220.

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Lindsay, W. M., Notae Latinae: An Account of Abbreviation in Latin Manuscripts of the Early MinisculePeriod (c.700–850), 2nd edn. (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1963).

Lowe, E. A. (ed.), Codices Latini Antiquiores, 11 vols. with supplement (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1934–71).

Maas, P., Textkritik, 3rd edn. (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1958).Maas, P., Textual Criticism, trans. B. Flower (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958).Mallon, J., Paléographie romaine (Madrid: Inst. Antonio de Nebrija de Folología, 1952).Martin, R. (ed.), Sancti Aurelii Augustini de Doctrina Christiana Libri IV, Corpus Christianorum,

Series Latina 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962).Maurer, K., ‘Commonest Abbreviations, Signs, etc., Used in the Apparatus to a Classical Text’,

http://www.udallas.edu/classics/resources/EditorsSigla.htm, accessed May 11, 2007.McKitterick, R., ‘Nuns’ Scriptoria in England and Francia in the Eighth Century’, Francia, 19

(1989): 1–35.Mountain, W. J. (ed.), Sancti Aurelii Augustini de Trinitate Libri XV, Corpus Christianorum, Series

Latina 50–50a (Turnhout: Brepols, 1968).Parkes, M. B., Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West (Berkeley,

CA: University of California Press, 1992).Pasquali, G., Storia della tradizione e critica del testo, 2nd edn. (Florence: F. Le Monnier, 1952).Quentin, H., Essais de critique textuelle (Paris: A. Picard, 1926).Radding, C. M., and Ciaralli, A., The ‘Corpus Iuris Civilis’ in the Middle Ages: Manuscripts and

Transmission from the Sixth Century to the Juristic Revival (New York: Brill, 2006).Renart, J. (ed.), Le lai de l’ombre (Paris: Firmin-Didot et Cie, 1913).Reynolds, L. D., and Wilson, N. G., Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek

and Latin Literature, 3rd edn. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).Reynolds, L. D. (ed.), Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics, 3rd edn. (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1990).Rouse, R. H., and Rouse, M. A., Manuscripts and their Makers: Commercial Book Producers in

Medieval Paris, 1200–1500 (Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2000).Saenger, P. H., Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford, CA: Stanford

University Press, 1997).Shailor, B. A., The Medieval Book (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991).Southern, R. W. (ed.), The Life of St. Anselm by Eadmer (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons

Ltd., 1962).Timpanaro, S., The Genesis of Lachmann’s Method, ed. and trans. Glenn W. Most (Chicago, IL:

University of Chicago Press, 2005).Ullman, B. L. The Origin and Development of Humanistic Script (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e

Letteratura, 1960).Vinaver, E., ‘Principles of Textual Emendation’, in Studies in French Language and Mediaeval

Literature Presented to Mildred K. Pope (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1939), 351–69.

West, M., Textual Criticism and Editorial Technique (Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner, 1973).Willems, D. R. (ed.), Sancti Aurelii Augustini in Iohannis Evangelium Tractatus CXXIV, Corpus

Christianorum, Series Latina 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954).Wilmart, A. (ed.), Codices Reginenses Latini (Vatican: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1937).

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Appendix

Conspectus Siglorum

Ve Verdun, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 67 [s. IX in.]P3 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. lat. 2849 [s. IX 1/4]G2 Sankt-Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Ms. 272 [s. IX in.]M4 München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 28140 [s. IX 2/4]V Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica, Reg. lat. 231 [s. IX 1/4]T2 Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 1165 [s. IX ex.]Sm Saint-Mihiel, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 29 [s. IX/X]Au Autun, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 36 (S. 40) [s. IX med.]P4 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. lat. 2849a [s. X]

f F. Forster, Beati Flacci Albini seu Alcuini Abbatis, Caroli Magni Regisac Imperatoris Magistri Opera (Regensburg, 1777)

praem.: praemisitadd.: addiditin marg.: in marginesup.l.: super lineama.m.: alia manua.c.: ante correctionemp.c.: post correctionemin ras.: in rasuraeras.: erasit

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Credimus sanctam Trinitatem – id est Patrem et Filium et Spiritum Sanctum –unum Deum omnipotentem, unius substantiae, unius essentiae, unius potestatis,creatorem omnium creaturarum, a quo omnia, per quem omnia, in quo omnia: Patrema se ipso, non ab alio; Filium a Patre genitum, Deum uerum de Deo uero, lumenuerum de lumine uero, non tamen duo lumina sed unum lumen; Spiritum Sanctum aPatre et Filio aequaliter procedentem, consubstantialem, coaeternum Patri et Filio.Pater plenus Deus in se; Filius plenus Deus a Patre genitus; Spiritus Sanctus plenusDeus a Patre et Filio procedens. Non tamen tres deos dicimus sed unum Deumomnipotentem, aeternum, inuisibilem, incommutabilem, qui totus ubique est, totusubique praesens, non per partes diuisus sed totus in omnibus, non localiter sedpotentialiter. Qui sine commutatione sui mutabilia creauit et creata gubernat, sempermanens quod est. Cui nihil accidens esse poterit, quia simplici diuinitatis naturae niladdi uel minui potest, quia semper est quod est. Cui proprium est, cui sempiternumest, cui idem est esse, uiuere et intellegere. Et haec tria unus Deus, et unus Deus haectria. Idem Deus et Dominus, uera et sempiterna Trinitas in personis, uera etsempiterna unitas in substantia, quia una est substantia Pater et Filius et SpiritusSanctus. Haec uero sancta Trinitas nil maius est in tribus personis simul nominatisquam in unaqualibet persona semel dicta, quia unaquaeque persona plena estsubstantia in se. Non tamen tres substantiae sed unus Deus, una substantia, unapotentia, una essentia, una aeternitas, una magnitudo, una bonitas: Pater et Filius etSpiritus Sanctus. Nec aliud est Pater in natura quam Filius uel Spiritus Sanctus; necaliud Filius et Spiritus Sanctus quam Pater in natura, quibus est una natura. Sed aliusest Pater in persona, alius Filius in persona, alius Spiritus Sanctus in persona. In Patreaeternitas, in Filio aequalitas, in Spiritu Sancto aeternitatis aequalitatisque conexio.Vnum omnes in substantia et essentia, omnipotentia et deitate. Sicut enim eademsancta Trinitas inseparabilis est in substantia, ita inseparabilis est in operibus.Quamuis quaedam opera Dei quibusdam personis specialiter conueniant – sicut Patriuox illa quae de caelo sonuit super Christum baptizatum, et ad Filii personamhumanitatis tantummodo pertinet susceptio, et Spiritus Sancti personae propriecongruit illa columba, in cuius specie idem Spiritus Sanctus descendit super eundemFilium Dei secundum hominem baptizatum – tamen absque omni dubitatione illam

1 Credimus . . . 6 Filio2] cfr Mar. Vict., Adv. Ar. I.47 (p. 139, 1–5) 19 una1 . . . 20bonitas] cfr Aug., De Trin. VII.2 (p. 249, 1–2) 23 In . . . 24 conexio] Aug., De Doct.Chr. I.5 (p. 9, 15–16) sed conexio] concordia 27 Quamuis . . . 31 baptizatum] cfr Fulg.Rus., De Fide 52 (pp. 745–46, 1026–41)

1 Credimus] ITEM DE SANCTA TRINITATE praem. Au | sanctam] sanctissimam f 2unius1] unus M4(a.c.) 3 Patrem] Credimus praem. f 4 uerum] uero G2M4(a.c.) 5lumine] lumen G2 6 procedentem] procedente T2 | Patri . . . Filio2] patrem et filiumAuP4 9 qui] quo M4 (a.c.) | ubique] ubi AuP4 10 partes] parte Au 11 potentialiter]praesentialiter VT2Sm | commutatione] communicatione f | et creata] add. M4 (in marg.)| semper manens] sed permanens Au 12 nil] nihil Au 15 tria] et add. M4 (sup.l.) | et2]om. M4 | in . . . 16 in] om. T2 16 quia] qua M4 (a.c.) 17 nil] nihil T2SmAuP4 | in] om.G2M4 21 Nec] non Sm | nec] non V | nec . . . 22 Sanctus] om. G2, add. M4(a.m., inmarg.) 22 et] uel M4(p.c.) | una] in T2 23 est] om. VT2SmAuP4 24 aeternitatis] aeternitasG2M4(a.c.) 26 inseparabilis est in substantia ita] om. T2 27 Quamuis . . . Dei] om. M4 |specialiter] spiritaliter T2 29 humanitatis] humanitas M4(a.c.) | Sancti] sanctus T2 30eundem] eandem G2

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How to Use Modern Critical Editions of Medieval Latin Texts 1549

uocem et illam columbam et Christi humanitatem tota sancta Trinitas operata est,cuius opera inseparabilia sunt. Credimus eundem Filium Dei uerbum Dei aeternaliternatum de Patre, consubstantialem Patri per omnia, temporaliter natum de SpirituSancto et Maria semper uirgine, duas habentem natiuitates, unam ex Patre aeternam,alteram ex matre temporalem, qui etiam Filius Dei suae carnis conceptione conceptusest, et suae carnis natiuitate natus est. Deum uerum confitemur conceptum, et Deumuerum natum, eundem uerum Deum et uerum hominem, unum Christum, unumFilium Dei unigenitum, proprium et perfectum in duabus naturis, in unius personaesingularitate, inpassibilem et passibilem, mortalem atque inmortalem, crucifixum ininfirmitate nostra, eundemque semper uiuentem in uirtute sua. Qui mortuus est carnissuae morte et sepultus, atque ab inferis damnato et spoliato principe totius iniquitatisrediens tertia die resurrexit, atque cum triumpho gloriae uidentibus discipulis caelumascendit, sedens in dextera Patris, id est maiestate diuinitatis. Inde iam uenturusiudicare uiuos et mortuos, quem impii uidebunt iudicantem in ea forma quacrucifixus est: non in ea humilitate qua iniuste iudicatus est, sed in ea claritate quaiuste iudicaturus est mundum. Cuius uisio aeterna erit omnium sanctorum beatitudoet gloria.

Gratia et pax a Deo Patre et Filio eius Iesu Christo Domino nostro, sic istaconfitenti in omnia saecula saeculorum.

49 Gratia . . . 50 saeculorum] cfr Gal. 1, 3

33 cuius...sunt] Aug., Tract. In Ioh. XX.3 (p. 204, 29) 45 in . . . 46 est1] cfr Aug., Enarr.CXXIX.10 (p. 1896, 16–17) 49 Gratia . . . 50 saeculorum] Mar. Vict., Adv. Ar. I.47(p. 141, 47–48)

34 per] quem add. M4(sup.l.) 36 qui] quia G2M4 | Dei] add. V(sup.l.) | conceptione]conceptionis Ve(a.c.), conceptiones Ve(p.c.)P3(a.c.) 37 uerum] uero f 40 singularitate]singularitatem AuP4 | inpassibilem . . . mortalem] in ras. Ve | et . . . inmortalem] om. T2 41carnis] carnes M4(a.c.) 44 iam] add. Sm(sup.l.) 45 uidebunt iudicantem] iudicantemuidebunt VT2SmAuP4 46 humilitate] humanitate M4 | sed . . . 47 est] add. M4(a.m.,in marg.) 47 iudicaturus] iudicatus G2M4(a.m.) | Cuius] maiestatis add. VT2SmAuP4 f |erit] est VT2SmAuP4, et add. M4 48 et] om. Au 49 Gratia . . . 50 saeculorum] om.VT2SmAuP4

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