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 →
<!-- 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.
0490A — dropped-non (migne, medium confidence)
Printed: Item in Legibus cap. 404: « Si quis mala fide res alienas possidens vendiderit eas, vel donaverit, vel alio modo alienaverit, is autem qui se dominum earum putat, sciens hoc, testatione denuntiaverit ei qui res cepit intra decennium inter praesentes, vel inter absentes intra vicennium; res firmiter apud emptorem, vel qui donationem excepit, vel alio modo alienationes nactus est, permaneant. »
Conjecture: read sciens hoc, NON denuntiaverit ei qui res cepit intra decennium… — the ten/twenty-year prescription runs against the owner precisely because, knowing of the alienation, he failed to protest.
The very next clause of the same chapter states the opposite case and requires the negative: « Quod si, ignorante domino, mala fide possessor alienaverit, non aliter hoc praejudicet domino nisi triginta annorum spatium transactum sit » — 'But if, the owner being unaware, the possessor in bad faith shall have alienated them, this shall not otherwise prejudice the owner unless the space of thirty years has passed.' The contrast is knowing-and-silent (10/20 years) versus unaware (30 years). As printed, the owner who DOES give formal notice within the term still loses the goods to the buyer, which makes the notice pointless and makes ignorance a better position than vigilance.
0494B — dropped-non (migne, medium confidence)
Printed: Ex concilio Africano, cap. 100: « Quandiu excommunicato communicaverit suus episcopus, eidem episcopo ab aliis non communicetur episcopis, ut magis caveat episcopus ne dicat in quemquam quod aliis documentis convincere non potest. »
Conjecture: read Quandiu excommunicato NON communicaverit suus episcopus — so long as his own bishop withholds communion from the (unjustly) excommunicated man, the other bishops are to withhold communion from that bishop.
The purpose clause printed in the same sentence — « ut magis caveat episcopus ne dicat in quemquam quod aliis documentis convincere non potest » ('that the bishop may take the more care not to say against anyone what he cannot prove by other evidences') — is a deterrent aimed at the bishop who pronounces sentence rashly. As printed, the penalty falls on a bishop for STAYING in communion with the man, which deters nothing about rash sentencing; and the chapter's own rubric is « De injuste excommunicatis » / 'On those unjustly excommunicated', i.e. the offender in view is the excommunicating bishop, not the one who keeps communion with his victim.