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 →
Governed by Pattern 7 and E1–E12. Stint C, 2026-09-16. Plate read in full: archive n550 (corners 1023/1024; ⚠ the (col+73)/2 map fails here, the leaf is (col+77)/2), Princeton PA1023 as second witness.
Standing decisions
- theoria italic (E4): Eriugena's term for the spiritual reading. Alia in idipsum theoria → "Another theoria on the same." (the rubric is already italic, so the term takes no second italic).
- ludus → "play", ludibrium → "plaything", kept apart. consequentia → "sequence" both times (1023A), so the echo Neque extra consequentiam stays visible.
- Greek carried: πρωτοτύπων, glossed by his own id est, principalium exemplorum.
- ⚑ Context, not translation: the fragment is Eriugena's Latin of Maximus the Confessor (Ambigua) on Gregory Nazianzen's "play of God" (Carm. I.2.2 / Or. 7 on Caesarius). magister / deifer magister = Gregory; Ipse … in epitaphio in Caesarium = Gregory's funeral oration on his brother. Not written into the English.
- No
[var:],[sic:],[cj:]. No scripture quoted.
1023A — the opening Possident fluere et non stare.
Subject lost in the lacuna (Floss's 16 points, carried dot for dot). "They possess flowing and not standing." The non is carried.
1023A — Si vero et nos ipsi … ludus dicti sumus Dei: a conditional with no apodosis
As printed, Si opens a clause that ends at magistro. with no main clause. Rendered as printed ("But if we ourselves too … have been called the play of God by this God-bearing teacher."); not repaired.
1023A — floris oximori instar "like the flower of the oximori"
Floss prints oximori as his correction; his note ¹ gives the codex ocimori with the gloss i. amigdali ("that is, of the almond") and the Old High German mundalnuz. The word is carried in italics as printed (it is Floss's form, not a plate defect, so no [sic:]), with no nominative invented. Probably Maximus's ἀμυγδαλῆ / a flower that blooms early and falls; the English does not commit.
1023A–B — et omne, si quid aliud de hoc efficacius constitutum est
"and so is all, if anything else concerning this has been established more efficaciously": "so is" supplies the elided ludus est; logged because it is the only supplied predicate in the work.
1023B — in Caesarium sui fratrem "Caesarius his brother"
Floss's note ³ Sic. cod.; f. suum? conjectures suum. English "his" is neutral between them; no marker.
1024A — the Gregory quotation ends adhuc eo longius with NO stop on the plate (E11)
Both copies print longius Ad ipsam; the twin longius. The twin construes, so the English closes the sentence; no patch toward the plate (recorded in the pending-patches file as withdrawn). adhuc eo longius "yet further than that" (Gregory: the flight of a bird passing, and still more fleeting). fratres plural → "brethren"; viventium ad tempus "of us who live for a time".
1023A — first rubric: plate theoria. with a stop, twin without
English follows the plate; patch filed.
1024A — neque omnino esse aestimabitur … sicut neque ludibrium … esse universaliter judicatur
Both negations carried: "will not be reckoned to be at all … just as neither is a plaything … judged universally to be."
1024B — Fortassis autem et transmutabile … Ponderatam quippe suae naturae definitionem. . . . .
Barely construable as printed (a Latin calque of Maximus's Greek, broken off by the lacuna): transmutabile neuter with no verb of its own; ferunt / perfugiunt / patiuntur have the materiales res as subject; magis vero nos ipsos … non valentium has no governing word. Rendered word by word ("the changeable character" supplies only "character" for the substantival neuter), the dangling genitive left dangling ("but rather of those unable both to hold and to be held, us ourselves, as being repulsed"), non and nullum carried. The last sentence stops at the lacuna as printed. Needs a human eye if the fragment is ever set against the Greek (PG 91, 1416).
Floss's Variae lectiones — 4 rows, 4 placed
¹ oximori, ² epitaphio (cod. ephitaphio), ³ sui (f. suum?), ⁴ definitionem (cod. diffinitionem). ⚑ For a human: note ¹ is a SENTENCE (a gloss history with a Graff citation), numbered, on the VL layer. By the ruling's own content test it would want an English [nt:]; the machinery gives twins only to lettered [fn:]. Recorded as vl, Latin-only. No NOTAE on n550 (checked zero).
Blind read (R6, 2026-09-16), a parse recorded, not applied
1024A magis vero nos ipsos utpote repulsos et tenere et teneri non valentium: R6 proposes (low confidence) that valentium agrees with the material things and that nos ipsos is governed by tenere alone, giving "of things unable both to hold us ourselves, as being repulsed, and to be held". The clause is already carried word for word as ungoverned (above), and a low-confidence reparse of Eriugena's Latin of Maximus is not applied. Worth settling against PG 91 (Ambigua) if that text is ever collated.