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 →
Garbled or doubtful type in Migne's plate, logged here. Governed by translation-style.md Pattern 7: the English renders what the plate PRINTS, not what it ought to have printed; where the plate prints type that is not a word at all, the non-word is carried into the English untranslated, in italics. Conjecture lives in this file and never in the running text.
Precedent withdrawn (2026-07-28). An earlier version of this preamble read "rendered literally per the intended reading," and this work's entries claimed to have applied the conjectures below to the English. That precedent — set here and followed by several later works — is superseded by Pattern 7. The English has been brought back to the printed readings; the entries now record the conjectures instead of asserting them.
- col. 0589B (chunk 0000), head —
DE PICTURIS PRINCIPUM APOSTLORUM.The head as printed reads APOSTLORUM for APOSTOLORUM (dropped O), a compositor's slip in display capitals with no competing construal. The Latin head is preserved verbatim inheads:; the English head renders the title, "ON THE PAINTINGS OF THE CHIEF APOSTLES," and the printed defect is recorded here rather than carried into an English head.
- col. 0589B (chunk 0000) —
sanctae conversionis [conversationis] abbati. Migne prints the variant in square brackets in the text. conversatio (monastic way of life, the Benedictine term) is almost certainly right; conversio is the printed lemma. Rendered from the printed lemma ("holy conversion") with the bracketed variant passed through verbatim, as with[ al., …]variants.
- col. 0589C–0590B (chunk 0000) — the column sequence jumps 0589D → 0590B; there is no 0590A anchor in the TEI. Reproduced as printed; not an error on our side. (Migne's 0590A is occupied by the facing-page note block.)
- col. 0592A (chunk 0001), note —
[n: (II Cor. XXII)]for the quotation Ecce tertio hoc paratus sum venire ad vos = 2 Cor. 12:14 (or 13:1). Migne's numeral XXII is impossible — 2 Corinthians has 13 chapters; the intended reading is XII. Note contents pass through verbatim untranslated per the marker rule; flagged here only so the citation index does not treat it as a real locus.
- col. 0593C (chunk 0001) —
remotis clientium clastibus. clastibus is not a Latin word, so there is nothing to render; per Pattern 7's non-word ruling it is carried through untranslated in italics — "the clastibus of dependents being removed." The reading intended is almost certainly classibus ("the throngs/companies of dependents"), the ablative of an ablative absolute with remotis; catervis is a distant second. Evidence: cl- is preserved, the sense demands a plural body of retainers, and classis in the sense "company, division" is at home in this register. (Earlier the English read "the crowds of dependents being removed," i.e. the conjecture applied silently.)
- col. 0595B (chunk 0002), Scholia —
illum tantum bonorem. bonorem is not a Latin word; carried through untranslated in italics — "that great bonorem." The intended reading is honorem (dropped h), near-certain: the Leo quotation two lines later has in similitudine honoris on the same point. (Earlier the English read "that great honor.")
- col. 0595B (chunk 0002), Scholia — punctuation is broken around the 2 Cor. XI quotation: Migne opens
« verum est quod idem affirmat: (Instantia mea quotidiana…— an unmatched(and a guillemet pair that does not close where the sense requires. Reproduced as printed (guillemets kept per the marker rule); a human read-through may want to note the intended punctuation in an apparatus rather than silently repair the plate.
- col. 0594B–C (chunk 0002) — the Romans quotation opens
« Habeo, inquit, gloriam in Christo Jesu…and never closes: Migne prints no»before Haec est igitur causa. The English reproduces the plate exactly (opening guillemet kept, no closing mark supplied), consistent with the marker rule and with the Scholia punctuation crux below. The quotation plainly ends at intelligent [n: (Rom. XV; Isa. LII)].