Epistola II B. Joannis

Translated 2026-08-18, one agent, one chunk (333 Latin words). Conventions are those settled on Liber Ruth (8968) §1 and restated in GLOSSA-NT-AGENT-BRIEF.md; nothing new is ruled here.

Apparatus taken: 0 [var:] · 0 [sic:] · 0 [cj:] · 0 [d:] · 0 [ed:] · 0 [nt:]. Marker parity with the Latin twin: 6 column anchors · 10 italic spans · 0 [n:] notes · 0 guillemets · 0 question marks, all 1:1 and in place.

§1 · THE LEMMA DIVERGENCE LIST (7a″) — all ten lemmata checked against the Vulgate

Every italic lemma in the work is below, including the ones that agree exactly. Checked word by word against the Clementine Vulgate of 2 John before the gloss under each was rendered, and each rendering was then held fixed against every re-quotation of it in the gloss below it.

⚑ Note the fourth row: the launch brief named seven lemmata, but the work carries ten italic spans — Sed ut mercedem plenam accipiatis (VERS. 8) is a second lemma picked up mid-paragraph and was checked on the same terms as the named seven. It agrees with the Vulgate verbatim.

Nine of ten agree with the Vulgate exactly. One diverges and took no marker; the reason is in §2.1.

§2 · CRUCES AND DECLINED CANDIDATES

2.1 · 0705A · Videte vos, etc. — divergence real, [var:] DECLINED

Migne prints Videte vos, where the Vulgate has Videte vosmetipsos. The divergence is real and is recorded here rather than silently absorbed. No [var:] marker, for two reasons, both from Pattern 14: (a) the lemma is expressly truncated — Migne sets a comma and etc., so the fragment is an abbreviation of the verse rather than a quotation of a variant text; (b) vos and vosmetipsos yield the same English ("look to yourselves") and the same sense, and Pattern 14 fires only where the divergence changes the sense. The gloss below it (Istis talibus ne consentiatis, sed potius attendite…) turns on nothing in the reflexive intensive.

A blind reader will look here. This is the one lemma in the work where our English and the Vulgate part company, and it parts company by an intensive pronoun only.

2.2 · 0705A · Ave stays Latin, and the gloss is the reason

Nec Ave ei dixeritis. was rendered "Neither say ye Ave to him," with the salutation left exactly as Migne prints it, and Ave likewise left standing in the closing gloss (Sicut adversariis veritatis prohibet dicere: Ave). The AV's "God speed" and any other English equivalent were rejected: the whole gloss turns on Ave being the word we say to friends (hoc enim dicimus amicis quorum opera nobis placent), i.e. on it being a specific greeting-formula, not on its lexical content. Englishing it would leave the argument resting on a word that is not on the page — the exact 7a″ mechanism.

Ave is roman, not italic, at VERS. 13, because Migne sets it roman there; inside the VERS. 10 lemma it carries only the lemma's own italics. No italics were added anywhere.

2.3 · 0706A · Per actualem et contemplativam vitam fit alicujus Deus ei manifestando qui est Creator omnium. — TWO CONSTRUALS, ambiguity preserved

Our English: "Through the active and the contemplative life he becomes the God of someone, by manifesting to him who is the Creator of all."

The sentence construes two ways and the printed words do not decide between them:

1. qui est Creator omnium is the postponed SUBJECT of fit — "he who is the Creator of all becomes the God of someone… by manifesting [himself] to him." This leaves manifestando without an expressed object, which English would have to supply.
2. qui est Creator omnium is an indirect question governed by manifestando — "by manifesting to him who it is that is the Creator of all." This leaves fit without an expressed subject, which is God, carried over from the preceding clause (separat se a Deo ne habeat Deum).

Rendered as above deliberately, because the English word order carries the same ambiguity the Latin does and supplies nothing that would settle it. Nothing was smoothed: no "himself" was inserted (reading 1) and no "who it is that" was inserted (reading 2). The one thing supplied is the subject "he" for fit — see 2.4.

2.4 · Unexpressed subjects and objects supplied — every one named

Per the brief, each pronoun our English prints that the Latin does not, with what fixes it:

• 0705A, ut similitudine catholicorum ab haereticorum deterreat societate → "that he may deter them from the fellowship of heretics." Subject he = John (the Scripturus of the same sentence). The object them is the addressees — the elect lady and her sons of v. 1, who are the vos of every imperative in the work (tenete, recipite, videte). No other candidate is available in the paragraph.
• 0706A, fit alicujus Deus → "he becomes the God of someone." Subject = God, from the immediately preceding separat se a Deo ne habeat Deum, unless reading 1 of 2.3 is right, in which case the subject is the clause's own qui est Creator omnium — which refers to the same person either way, so the English is safe under both.
• 0706A, Quia signum videtur consensus erroris → "Because it seems a sign of consent to error." Subject = the saying of Ave, i.e. the act forbidden by the lemma directly above. Confirmed by the next clause, hoc enim dicimus amicis — Migne's own hoc names the same referent.
• 0706A, Manet in evangelica doctrina, qui secundum eam sapit et agit — the subject is the printed qui; nothing supplied.

2.5 · 0705A · Positus est Adam in paradiso, ut operaretur et custodiret illud — Gen 2:15 allusion, [var:] DECLINED

Migne's clause differs from Gen 2:15 (posuit eum in paradiso voluptatis ut operaretur et custodiret illum) in two places: the passive recast (Positus est Adam for posuit eum) and neuter illud for masculine illum, paradisus being masculine.

[var:] declined. It is not a lemma and not a quotation: Migne sets it in roman, with no note and no citation, as the gloss's own paraphrase of the Genesis narrative, and Pattern 14 governs citations. And the gender itself is Pattern 9 — Latin grammatical gender has no English exponent, so "it" is the rendering under either reading and there is no emendation to make or to undo. Recorded here so a later reader can see it was weighed.

2.6 · Pattern 17 · the number of the addressee shifts, and the English shows it

The work addresses a plural through most of its length and a singular at the end, and this is Migne's Latin, not our choice:

• Plural — tenetis · tenete · recipite · habetis · vobis · vestro · faciatis · vos · accipiatis · consentiatis · essetis · Intelligite → you / your throughout.
• Singular — VERS. 13 Salutant te → "They salute thee."

That is the whole distribution; there is no mixed case and no indefinite singular. The ARGUMENTUM's sanctam feminam is third person and takes neither.

2.7 · Negation audit — every particle accounted for

Gloss prose here is dense with negation, per the brief's warning. Each one Migne prints is in the English, and the English prints none he does not:

⚑ The si forte decepti non essetis … tamen pair at 0706A was the one place a smoothing was available and was refused: "even if you were not deceived" would import a concession the Latin puts in tamen, not in si. Rendered "and if perchance you were not deceived, others nevertheless might be deceived," which carries both words where Migne puts them.

2.8 · Fragment lemmata completed — Ruth §1.2, and the two places it was applied

• Non ego. → "Not I only." The stump ("Not I") is not English and is not the phrase; the verse reads non ego solus. Ruth's Non te. → "Let no man see thee" is the governing precedent.
• Plura habens. → "Having more things to write to you." Plura habens alone hangs in English; the verse reads Plura habens vobis scribere. "More things", not "many things" — plura is the comparative, and the familiar English of this verse ("having many things to write unto you") is exactly the cadence 7a″ warns about.
• The other eight lemmata are complete phrases and were rendered word for word with nothing supplied.

2.9 · Candidates examined and rejected as defects

• 0705A, Operatio, effectus provectionem: custodia … designat. Zeugma — one designat serves both members, and effectus is a genitive singular depending on provectionem. Awkward but sound Latin; rendered literally ("Working designates the advancement of the effect; keeping designates the state and the constancy of that perfection itself"). No marker, no conjecture.
• 0704D, a veritate exciderunt. excido + ablative of separation, ordinary. Not a defect.
• 0706B, ad confirmationem illius. illius = the admonition (hanc admonitionem), the paragraph's own antecedent. No ambiguity.
• No split or fused type, no dittography, no ( sic ) of Migne's own, no garbled run anywhere in the chunk. Nothing qualified for [sic:], [d:] or [cj:].

2.10 · Read clean

Read word by word against the Latin twin and found sound: the ARGUMENTUM (0703D) in full, and every gloss paragraph — VERS. 1 (0704D–0705A), VERS. 4 both lemmata (0705A), VERS. 8 both lemmata (0705A–0705B), VERS. 9 both lemmata (0706A), VERS. 10 (0706A), VERS. 12 (0706B), VERS. 13 (0706B). Verse addresses run in sequence (1, 4, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13) with no out-of-order printing of the Jude kind.

2.11 · Plate notes — NOT checked this run

No plate read was performed for PL 114 cols 0703–0706, so Migne's foot-of-page conjecture apparatus for this opening is unknown, not a checked zero. Recorded explicitly so a later reader can tell this book from Ruth, whose five pages were read at 300 dpi and whose zero is a measured zero. Nothing in this chunk needed a conjecture to construe, so no finding is pending on it.

§4 · BLIND POLARITY READ — 2026-08-18, and the adjudication

A fenced reader (Latin twin + English only, never this file) read the whole chunk. 4 sites raised · 1 confirmed and repaired · 1 recorded as a live ambiguity · 2 declined. Zero polarity defects: all thirteen negations Migne prints are carried, none is added.

✅ 0706A · VERS. 9 — CONFIRMED, REPAIRED. Our defect, and the serious kind.

Printed: Per actualem et contemplativam vitam fit alicujus Deus ei manifestando qui est Creator omnium.

Was: "…he becomes the God of someone, by manifesting to him who is the Creator of all." Now: "…he who is the Creator of all becomes the God of someone, by manifesting himself to him."

qui est Creator omnium is nominative — the subject of fit, standing at the end of its own clause — and had been bound instead to the dative ei. Two consequences, both invisible to every automated check: the English made the man who has just separated himself from God the one who "becomes the God of someone" (a flat contradiction of the sentence immediately before it, separat se a Deo ne habeat Deum), and it made the human recipient of the manifestation the Creator of all. It parses smoothly either way, which is why it survived; only the sense of the neighbouring sentence decides. manifestando is reflexive under the correct reading, and is now rendered so.

⭐ The translating agent SAW this passage, set out both readings, and deliberately declined to resolve it — "ambiguity preserved, not resolved," §2.3. It then chose the wrong one anyway by supplying "he" for fit. A flagged passage is not a checked passage, for the third time in this corpus. The two readings were not equally good: one answers the preceding clause and one contradicts it.

⬜ 0705A · VERS. 1 — recorded, not repaired

…ut similitudine catholicorum ab haereticorum deterreat societate. Deterreat prints no object; our "he may deter them" leaves a reader free to reach for "the saints" or "the catholics," where the referent is the letter's recipients. The Latin is equally unspecified, so naming them would supply what Migne does not print. Left as it stands and named here instead. Reader's own confidence: low–medium.

⛔ Two findings DECLINED — they are the settled Glossa fragment convention, not repairs

The reader flagged VERS. 1.-- Non I only (Migne prints only Non ego) and VERS. 12.-- Having more things to write to you (Migne prints only Plura habens) as silent repairs: words set inside the italics as though printed, imported from the verse.

Declined. This is Glossa convention 1.2, settled on Ruth and binding the whole block: a fragmentary lemma is rendered as the phrase it stands for, not as a word-for-word stump. Ruth's own precedent is the same shape and the same magnitude — VERS. 3.-- Non te. → "Let no man see thee" (2 words to 5). The Latin fragment is never lost to a reader: it stands opposite in the parallel column. Re-adjudicating it here would break Ruth and the sixty-one books to come.

⚑ But the reader's instinct is worth keeping, because the boundary is fine and this is where the class actually lives. The distinction to hold:

• Expanding a fragment to the phrase it opens, from the Latin verse — the convention.
• Substituting a printed English Bible's WORDING where Migne's Latin differs from it — the defect. That is what beat Ruth four times (manum → "to eat", Phoenicium → "as scarlet"): not expansion, but conformation.

Here the expansions track non ego solus and Plura habens vobis scribere — Migne's own Latin verse, not Douay's English. And at Non ego the gloss goes straight on to expound omnium qui veritatem noverunt, which is the sense "only" carries: the expansion is what makes the gloss's own argument legible.

⭐ The reader independently confirmed the case that matters most: at 0705A Positus est Adam in paradiso resisted Douay's "he put him into the paradise of pleasure" and renders Migne. The pull was there and the translation did not follow it.

Read clean, and named

Every lemma word by word (ten, including the mid-paragraph Sed ut mercedem plenam accipiatis, which is exact); all thirteen negations in both directions; every unexpressed subject in the ARGUMENTUM and at VERS. 1, 4, 9, 10 and 13 — all correct but fit; question-mark parity 0 : 0; six column anchors identical in set and position with no text broken across any of them. Rejected with reasons: the illud/illum gender at 0705A (Pattern 9), effectus as a supposed nominative plural (it is genitive, parallel to perfectionis ipsius), the flattened concessive et vos si forte, and the drifted etiam at VERS. 12.

⚑ Correction to §2.11 — the plate WAS checked

§2.11 recorded Migne's foot-of-page apparatus as unknown for cols 0703–0706. It has since been read: the full-width foot bands of leaves n356 and n357 of archive.org patrologiaecurs06saingoog (PL 114; leaf n = (column + 9) / 2, calibrated against the running head at n330 = cols 651–652), including n356, where the 2 John division falls mid-page — the case that lost three notes on PL 202. Migne prints no foot-of-page apparatus there: no foot rule, no numbered notes, the columns simply end. This is the first sampling of PL 114; the earlier "no apparatus" finding was PL 113 only and did not transfer. Recorded in data/plate-notes/coverage.json as tier 3, coverage full, notes_recovered: 0 — a checked zero, not a skip.