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 →
- col 1209 — Printed: in relativis naturaei vocabulis. naturaei is not a Latin form at all, so per Pattern 7 it is carried into the English untranslated and in italics: "in the relative naturaei terms." The intended reading is most likely the genitive naturae ("in the relative terms of nature"), which fits the parallel non naturae, quia una est just above; naturalibus ("in the relative natural terms") is the alternative, but naturae is the lighter conjecture. An earlier draft rendered naturae in the running text; that has been withdrawn.
- col 1210 — printed Abstulisti grandem macheriam. macheria = maceria, "a wall, a dry-stone enclosure" (the -ch- spelling is common in late Latin under the influence of Greek); rendered "you have taken away a great wall." Not to be confused with machaera ("sword"), which would give "you have taken away a great sword" — context (an obstacle removed from the argument) favors the wall.
- col 1210 — printed ac non sputis omnes inlinient. inlinient for illinent (fut. of illino), and the subject shifts from aures to omnes; rendered "and not all of them smear it over with spittle."
- col 1212 — printed sed diversae sunt appellationes et personae, licet incorporalis Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti. The genitive incorporalis hangs without a governing noun (one expects licet incorporalium personarum or licet incorporalis sit natura). Rendered literally as "albeit of an incorporeal Father and Son and Holy Spirit." Worth a human eye.
- col 1208 — Sacrificans diis eradicabitur, nisi Domino soli (Exod. XXII, 20) is quoted with no
[n:]marker in Migne; left unmarked, per the verbatim rule.