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 / anomalous printed readings in Migne, PL 196, cols 0255A–0266C. Rendered literally in the translation; logged here rather than silently emended.
- col 0255/0256 (chunk 0, head 2) — Migne prints the running head as "Qui dicatur anima, et quid purgari a veteri fermento." "anima" (soul) makes no sense against the chapter's content, which concerns who are called azymi (unleavened) yet told to purge the old leaven. Almost certainly a misprint for azymus/azymi. Head translated literally as printed ("Who is said to be a soul…").
- col 0256B (chunk 0) — Migne prints "quomodo ab Apostolo axymi dicantur" — "axymi" for azymi (metathesis/typo). The technical term is kept in italic Latin throughout this work (the quaestio turns on the untranslatable azyma/azymi/azymus pun); this one instance printed with the corrupt spelling. Rendered as azymi in the flow, anomaly logged here.
Translation-convention note (not a crux)
The Greek-loan technical term azyma / azymi / azymus (unleavened bread / the unleavened / unleavened one) is kept in italic Latin throughout, because the entire question is a lexical argument built on its triple reference (the bread, the persons, the feast) that no single English word carries. pascha is likewise kept where Richard etymologizes it (pascha = transitus, "a passing-over"). fermentum → "leaven," conspersio → "lump," massa → "mass." Note contents (e.g. [n: (II Cor. XV)] for what is 1 Cor 15:53) are reproduced verbatim per the sacred-marker rule, uncorrected.
PL 196 polarity sweep (2026-07-28)
Sites found by the volume-wide sweep for sense-reversing defects (dropped or intrusive negations, and single letters that invert a claim). All are Migne's; all are rendered literally per Pattern 7. Entries already discussed above are repeated here so the class can be read in one place.
### 0256B — added-negative (high confidence) Printed: Nam quod azyma apud Graecos, hoc idem sonat fermentum apud nos, azyma vero idem quod absque fermento.
Conjecture: Nam quod ZYMA apud Graecos, hoc idem sonat fermentum apud nos, azyma vero idem quod absque fermento. The first word has acquired an intrusive alpha-privative; Greek zyma = leaven, azyma = unleavened.
The second half of the same sentence denies the first: 'azyma vero idem quod absque fermento.' As printed, azyma is glossed both as fermentum and as absque fermento in a single breath. The whole treatise then rests on the second gloss ('Si ergo absque fermento non sunt, quomodo azyma dici possunt? Vel si omni fermento carent, quomodo purgare valent quod omnino non habent?'), which is unintelligible unless the Greek pair zyma/azyma has just been correctly distinguished. The clause exists only to supply that distinction and, as printed, destroys it.
### 0260C — added-negative (medium confidence) Printed: Utrobique nolebat eos azyma habere, utrobique sine corruptione esse.
Conjecture: Utrobique VOLEBAT eos azyma habere, utrobique sine corruptione esse. (noluit/voluit class; the alternative repair, nolebat eos FERMENTUM habere, mends only the first limb and leaves the second stranded.)
One verb governs both infinitives, so as printed the Apostle also 'did not wish them to be without corruption' (utrobique sine corruptione esse) — the exact opposite of the argument. The immediately preceding sentence supplies the true verb and the true object: 'sic juxta aliquid eos fieri VOLEBAT conspersionem absque fermento.' Note also that the English twin silently repairs the object (azyma rendered as 'leaven') while leaving the second limb dangling, i.e. the translator felt the reversal and patched around it.