MIGNE.APP

Cruces

In Cantica canticorum

Alcuin of York — read the work →

These are the edition's working notes, published as they were written. They record, work by work, where Migne's plate is defective or the reading uncertain: the printed form, what the English does with it, and why. They are not a groomed apparatus. Where a note argues with itself, withdraws an earlier decision, or leaves a question open, that is the record of how the reading was actually reached, and it is left standing — a conjecture that is visible can be checked, and one that has been tidied away cannot.

The English never silently repairs the page. A construable but wrong reading is rendered literally and the conjecture is recorded here, never applied to the text. How the English is produced and checked →

Uncertain/garbled printed readings rendered literally in the English, logged here per translation protocol. Column anchors and [n:] notes were reproduced verbatim and are NOT cruces; only genuine printing anomalies are recorded.

Chunk 0000 (Monitum praevium)

Chunk 0001 (Caput I)

Chunk 0003 (Caput III)

Chunk 0004 (Caput IV)

Garbled / uncertain printed readings encountered while translating chunks 0005–0009. Rendered by the evident intended word; printed form recorded here.

Chunk 0005

Chunk 0007

Chunk 0009

<!-- corpus-polarity-sweep 2026-07-28 --> ## Corpus polarity sweep — 2026-07-28

Blind Opus read of the Latin/English pair for sense-reversing defects (one word or one letter asserting the opposite of what the context requires). 2 site(s). Migne's defects are recorded here and rendered literally in the English; our own errors were fixed in place. Full context: data/sweeps/corpus-polarity/REPORT.md.

0666B — sense-reversing-letter (migne, medium confidence)

Printed: Hi sua in perfectione [ F., imperfectione] octogenario numero comparantur: illi perfecta beatitudine sexagenario designantur

Conjecture: sua imperfectione (word-division defect: imperfectione set as in perfectione)

The immediately preceding paragraph has just proved eighty deficient: 'Poteris et per te ipsum, juxta eamdem regulam, octogenarii explorare diminutionem... quae simul ducta septuaginta faciunt non octoginta' — 'explore the deficiency of eighty... make seventy, not eighty.' And the men so numbered are the ones who 'terrena sequentes commoda... terreni lucri gratia desudant in docendo.' The eighty is the imperfect number and these are the defective teachers; 'in their perfection' asserts the reverse, and also destroys the antithesis with 'illi perfecta beatitudine sexagenario' in the same clause. Migne's own F. apparatus reads imperfectione; the printed lemma and our English both carry the reversed sense.

0666C — sense-reversing-letter (migne, medium confidence)

Printed: illi perfecta beatitudine sexagenario designantur, ut reginarum nomine digni efficiantur, quia spiritualem sobolem propter amorem solummodo Sponsi... generare non desistunt. Illi vero concubinarum nomine denotantur, quia saeculi ambitione, vel temporalis honoris gratia, praedicando seu baptizando nobiles quidem generant saepe filios

Conjecture: Hi vero concubinarum nomine denotantur

The contradicting neighbour is the immediately preceding clause about the very same 'illi': 'ut reginarum nomine digni efficiantur' — 'so that they are made worthy of the name of queens.' The printed text then makes those same 'illi' the ones 'denoted by the name of concubines.' The pronoun must switch back to the 'Hi' of the octogenary group ('Hi sua in[im]perfectione octogenario numero comparantur'), who teach 'saeculi ambitione, vel temporalis honoris gratia.' Note that our English silently repairs the defect by rendering the second Illi as 'The former' (i.e. the eighty), which yields the right sense but does not match the printed Illi.