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. The English renders what the plate prints, per translation-style.md Pattern 7: a printed reading that is construable is rendered literally even where it is odd or says the opposite of what the argument requires, and type that is not a word at all is carried into the English untranslated, in italics. The conjectured reading is recorded here and only here; it is never applied to the running text. (Parts of this work were first translated under the withdrawn "intended reading" convention of src/english/10103/cruces.md; those places were re-rendered from the plate on 2026-07-28.)
Prologue and chap. I (chunk 0000)
- col. 0345C —
brevitate competenti studuimus consulere deficatis. deficatis is not a Latin word. Carried through untranslated per Pattern 7: "with fitting brevity for the deficatis." The sense of the sentence (brevity for one class of reader, veritas plena for the studiosi) requires a dative plural naming the impatient reader: delicatis ("the fastidious") is the likeliest intended reading, supported by the parallel at 0346A (taediosis tollat fastidium); fatigatis / defessis ("the weary") are possible.
- cols. 0345A, 0346A–B — this text is a quadrilogus whose editor prints only the incipit and explicit of passages he takes over verbatim from Edward Grim (
Professores artium, etc.;Electus igitur ante mundi, etc., usque ad veritati). These stubs are translated as stubs; the bracketed cross-reference that follows is Migne's apparatus, and its locator (apud Edwardum Grim., supra, col. 3) is kept in locator form with the embedded[0346B]anchor in place. A human read-through should confirm that this hybrid treatment (comment translated, locator kept) is what the project wants for this bracket-form apparatus, which is neither[n: …]nor[ al., …].
Chap. II (chunk 0001)
- col. 0346C —
in captivitate Sclavorum. The captors throughout the chapter are Saracens (gentiles, pagani, an Amiraldus = emir, in the Holy Land); Sclavorum ("of the Slavs") is almost certainly a corruption of Saracenorum. Rendered literally as printed ("in the captivity of the Slavs") per the corrupt-Latin rule; flagged here rather than emended.
- col. 0347A —
consequenter et ipsa ab eo scistitavit. scistitavit is not a word (a dropped syllable in sciscitavit; the deponent sciscitata est is the classical form). Carried through untranslated per Pattern 7: "she thereupon scistitavit of him, saying."
- col. 0347B —
quasi verbi ex virtute tota mutata. Not an emendation, and on review not a corruption either: the genitive verbi standing before the preposition that governs its head noun is ordinary Latin hyperbaton, not disturbed type, and it construes exactly as quasi ex virtute verbi. The English ("as it were wholly changed by the power of the word") is already the literal rendering of what is printed; left as it stands. Logged only because an earlier draft of this file wrongly listed it as an emendation.
- col. 0349A —
Cumque interrogaretur … si vellet baptizari, respondit:The sentence has a stray comma-for-period after baptizari, in the printed line (in quo debuerat baptizari, Cumque interrogaretur) with a capital following. Rendered as printed per Pattern 8: the comma stands, followed by the capitalized continuation. The intended reading is a full stop; the comma is a plate defect.
Chaps. III–IV (chunk 0002)
- col. 0350D —
didicit a matre timorem Dimini. Dimini is not a word; the intended reading is Domini ("of the Lord"), a single-letter compositorial slip in a formula the work prints correctly elsewhere. Carried through untranslated per Pattern 7: "he learned from his mother the fear of Dimini."
- col. 0351A —
motam de flumine anam accipiter insequeretur. anam is an unclassical accusative of anas (for anatem); the sense ("duck") is not in doubt and it is so rendered.
- col. 0351B —
ne exstingueretur lucerna futurus in Israel. The participle is masculine (futurus, agreeing with the boy) while the noun it stands with is feminine (lucerna); read either as lucerna futura or as an anacoluthon in which futurus still looks back to Thomas. Rendered as "lest the lamp that was to be in Israel should be put out," which keeps the printed sense of both.
- cols. 0351B → 0352A — the column sequence skips 0351C–D; the sentence runs across the jump without a break in sense. Reproduced as printed.
Attribution
Migne's authors: ["Auctor incertus"] is right as far as it goes, but the prologue names its own method and sources explicitly (cols. 0345A–B): this is the first Quadrilogus, a harmony woven from four eyewitness biographers — Herbert of Bosham, John of Salisbury (here "John of Chartres," from his later see), William of Canterbury, and Alan, abbot of Tewkesbury. The compiler is conventionally identified as Elias of Evesham (working c. 1198–1200); Migne does not name him, and the text itself does not, so the frontmatter is left as Migne has it. Migne's own closing note (0352B) distinguishes this "quadrilogus prior" from a "secundus quadrilogus" in five books.