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 corrupt printed readings, logged here. Governed by translation-style.md Pattern 7: the English renders what the plate PRINTS, never the conjectured reading; type that is not a word at all is carried into the English untranslated, in italics. Three entries below previously applied their conjecture to the running text (the withdrawn 10103 precedent) and have been restored to the printed readings. Also records the one standing editorial decision taken for this work.
Editorial decision (applies to both chunks)
Each sentence in this florilegium is followed by an italic source citation in abbreviated Latin (Serm. 36 in Cant., n. 3; Tract. de cont. mun. ad cler., c. 1; Epist. 82). These are Migne's citation apparatus, not authorial prose, so they are kept verbatim in Latin, unanglicized, on the same footing as [n: …] markers — even though they are not [n: …]-wrapped. Expanding the abbreviations into English work-titles would require inventing expansions Migne does not print.
Where the italic tail contains editorial comment rather than a locator (Nam vitia identidem repullulant; Nempe amorem comparis; Proverb. vulgare), that comment is translated, with the italic structure kept. Every line has been kept discrete — no two sentences run together into continuous prose.
This decision is cheap to reverse if Wilson prefers pattern 2 of translation-style.md applied to the locators as well.
Chunk 0
- 1198C — Parum est semel putasse … Nam. vitia idemtidem repullulant. Two typographic slips in the gloss: Nam. with a stray point, and idemtidem for identidem. idemtidem is not a Latin word, so it is carried through untranslated in italics — "For the vices idemtidem sprout." Intended reading identidem ("again and again"), certain. (Earlier: "sprout again and again.") The stray point after Nam. is a printing artifact with no counterpart in English word order and is not reproduced. Note also that putare here is "to prune," not "to think" — the surrounding sentences about pruning cupidity fix the sense.
- 1199B — Utinam relinquant nobis moderni Noe, unde a nobis possint operiri. Compressed to the point of obscurity; the allusion is to Genesis 9:23 (the sons covering Noah's nakedness), and the sense wanted is that today's "Noahs" should leave us some covering for their shame. Rendered literally.
- 1201B — Non est laus calami laudabilis pictura, sive scriptura. Word order makes the subject ambiguous; rendered "A praiseworthy painting, or writing, is not the praise of the pen."
- 1201D — mors in ollis earnium. earnium is not a Latin word, so it is carried through untranslated in italics — "death is in the pots earnium." Intended reading carnium, near-certain (cf. the fleshpots of Egypt, Exodus 16:3, and Nam peccata populi comedis in the gloss). (Earlier: "the pots of flesh.")
- 1197B–1202A — The inline section numbers 1569, 1570, 1571, 1572 are Migne's running numeration and are kept italic per the marker rule, never bare.
Chunk 1
- 1202D — Ambitio ambientium crux, omnes torquens omnibus placet. Elliptical; crux stands in apposition without a verb. Rendered "Ambition, the cross of the ambitious, tormenting all, pleases all."
- 1203B — Ille convenientior babitus. babitus is not a Latin word (b for h), so it is carried through untranslated in italics — "That babitus is more fitting." Intended reading habitus ("bearing"), certain from the following si actu … severus sis. (Earlier: "That bearing is more fitting.")
- 1203A — Hippocrates docet animas salvas facere in hoc mundo, Christus perdere. animas is being used in the double sense "lives/souls" that the antithesis with Matthew 16:25 depends on. Rendered "souls" to keep the antithesis; a human may prefer "lives."
- 1203C → 1204A — Anchor sequence gap: column 1203D is not marked, the text running from [1203C] straight to [1204A]. Reproduced as printed; worth a check against the plate for dropped sentences, since this is a list where a dropped item would leave no syntactic trace.
- 1204B — In circuitu impii ambulant echoes Psalm 11:9 (Vulg.); translated from the Latin as printed, not from a conventional English version.
- 1203C — nunc tomo V ("now in volume V") is Migne's own editorial cross-reference, printed outside the italics; translated as such.
Inline citation tails — [f: …] tagging pass (2026-07-18)
The standing editorial decision above was superseded in its mechanics (not its principle) by translation-style.md pattern 4: the locators are now wrapped in [f: …] markers so the indexer harvests them as fontes. 167 locators tagged (114 in chunk 0, 53 in chunk 1); 26 bare Ibid., 48 members of the Ibid. family resolved by the indexer. Four paragraphs carry no locator at all and are correctly untagged: the three Sunt qui scire volunt clauses at 1199D–1200A (they share the citation printed after the fourth) and Sapiens est, cui quaeque res sapiunt at 1201B.
Swallowed-sentence fix (segmentation guard, rule 3)
- 1197B — Nil tam durum, quod duriori non cedat. IV, De consid., c. 3. Hinc consuetudo consuetudine vincitur. Migne's italic run runs past the locator and swallows an independent Bernardine adage. Split: the tag takes only
IV, De consid., c. 3., and Hinc consuetudo consuetudine vincitur is now ordinary translated body text ("Hence habit is conquered by habit."), roman, outside the marker. This is the only swallowed-content fix made; the full sweep of both chunks turned up one further candidate, logged immediately below.
Comment-vs-content judgment calls
Migne's glosses in this work almost all carry an explicit gloss marker — Nam, Nempe, Adeo, id est, Sicut, Proverb. — which is the test used throughout. Marker-bearing runs were read as editorial comment: translated, kept italic, left outside the tag (1198C Nam. vitia idemtidem repullulant; 1198C Nempe amorem comparis; 1198D Nam ad violenta media convertitur; 1199A Sicut Graece loquentem non intelligit…; 1199A Nam optimum cibi condimentum fames; 1199B Nempe erga Deum; 1199B Adeo jam palam et sine pudore peccatur; 1200D id est, Non prius effundes…; 1201A Nempe ne majoris ingratitudinis rei fiant; 1201D Nam peccata populi comedis; 1202D Proverb. vulgare; 1204B Nam si impliceris infimis, non pervenies). Migne's cross-references --Vid. notas, ibid. (1200B) and nunc tomo V (1203C) are likewise comment, not locator, and are untagged.
- 1200B — FLAG FOR HUMAN REVIEW. Melius est, ut pereat unus quam unitas. Epist. 102. Ejiciendus qui turbat concordiam. The trailing clause carries no gloss marker, so by the marker test it looks like a second swallowed adage on the 1197B model. It has been kept as editorial comment (italic, outside the tag) on the ground that it is applicative — it prescribes what follows from the preceding maxim rather than standing free of it, unlike Hinc consuetudo consuetudine vincitur, which is an independent sentence. Either reading splits it out of the locator, so the index is unaffected; only the italics differ. Reverse if a human prefers the content reading.
Column anchors trapped inside a locator — partial tags
scripts/index-work.mjs matches [f: ([^\]]*)], so a [f: …] tag cannot contain a column anchor, and the tag content must survive as a verbatim substring of the Latin twin — which still prints the anchor mid-locator. Four locators are split by an anchor in the plate. In each, the tag takes the longest anchor-free stretch that still identifies the source; the remainder stays as printed italics outside the marker. The anchors themselves are untouched and in order. These four index as partial raws:
- 1199B/C — Epist. 27 ad [1199C] Ardut. → tagged
Epist. 27 ad(drops the addressee Ardut.). - 1200B — Epist. [1200B] 102. → tagged
Epist.only (drops the number). The weakest of the four; a bare number would have been no better as a source name. - 1201C — Tract. de cont. mun. ad [1201C] cler., n. 21. → tagged
Tract. de cont. mun. ad(drops cler., n. 21). - 1203C — Serm. [1203C] de S. Magdal., n. 1 → tagged
de S. Magdal., n. 1,(drops the leading Serm., which alone would identify nothing).
If the indexer is ever taught to skip anchors inside [f: …], these four should be re-tagged whole.
<!-- 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). 1 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.
1199B — dropped-word (ours, medium confidence)
Printed: Utinam relinquant nobis moderni Noe, unde a nobis possint operiri. Ibid., n. 19, cap. 8. Adeo jam palam et sine pudore peccatur.**
Conjecture: "Would that the Noahs of our day would leave us something whereby THEY might be covered BY US" — a nobis possint operiri has moderni Noe as subject of the passive operiri and a nobis as the agent; the English inverts both, making us the covered and them the coverers.
The inline gloss printed with the sentence is the contradicting neighbour: Adeo jam palam et sine pudore peccatur — "So openly and shamelessly is sin now committed." The allusion is Gen. 9:23, Shem and Japheth covering the drunken Noah's nakedness: the complaint is that modern prelates sin so nakedly that they leave their subordinates nothing with which to cover THEM. If, as the English has it, we were to be covered by them, the gloss about shameless, open sinning would have nothing to attach to; and the two sentences that bracket it (Multi non tanta alacritate currerent ad honores / In alto positum, non altum sapere, difficile) are both indictments of prelates, not of us.