See the Preliminary comment to Part 1, Book 6, chapters 1-15.
The following sources have been universally collated for the reconstruction of 1 Dial. 6.51-67:
Tradition A: Bb An Fi
Tradition B: Vg
Tradition C: Ba To
Tradition D: Vc We
Incunabulum: Ly
The reliability of the witnesses in this segment confirms the patterns noted in other portions of Book 6. The best sources for our critical text are Fi (85.4% variant convergence accuracy level) and Vc (84.6%), closely followed by We (84.2%), An (83.1%), and Bb (81.6%). Vg is at 77.4% and Ly [the Trechsel edition] trails, as usual, at 69.5%. The significant divergence of the C tradition manuscripts from ABD is evidenced once again. To, representing the earlier C version, has a critical text variant convergence accuracy level of only 27.1%, and while Ba is at 64.5%, this is largely due to comprehensively sustained corrections by reference to tradition D.
There may just possibly be a clue as to the origin of tradition C at 1 Dial. 6.56.64-79. All extant C manuscripts share a series of misidentified comments here (where the Master's words are attributed to the Student and vice versa). A similar sequence is discernible in the same context in some later tradition A manuscripts (e.g. Vd Ca Lc La Un, but, interestingly enough, not in Na, nor in Sm, nor in early A, nor in any B or D manuscripts). Full collation of a recently obtained copy of Ax (a late tradition A manuscript) in chapters 51-67 demonstrates no less than 535 textual convergences with To (early C), and as many as 335 with Ba (late C). The convergence does not seem as clearcut in the opening segments of the Dialogus, but is noticeable nevertheless (e.g. we find some 18 specific identities between late A (esp. Ax and Vd) and C in 1 Dial. 3.6-11; and while in these chapters C is frequently closer to D (against A and B) in minor contexts (36 times), there is a marginally larger set of agreements between C and A+B+AB against D (45 such). The hypothesis may thus be advanced, though obviously not yet affirmed as an established fact, that tradition C derives from a fairly defective late A manuscript (very similar to Ax), already containing a few of the variants in Books 1-5 analyzed as "significant" by John Scott, and further "repaired" by the original addition of many more "significant" variants most of which were subsequently adopted by tradition D, and "repaired" as well as by some consultation of tradition B. The substantial and very numerous differences between C and D would not, it seems, permit one to maintain as more economical the view that C systematically copied from D, even if the evidence is not absolutely incompatible with the alternative theory.
The passages in 1 Dial. 6.51-67 which critically analyze the claim that all papal actions possess an automatically positive moral connotation, as well as a number of deductions linked to this analysis (1 Dial. 6.52.36-88) were certainly written after the analogous treatment of the issue in 1 Dial. 7.70.94-147 (see also the fuller [by comparison to 1 Dial. 6.52] reference to Bede's dictum in the Regule Iuris of V.41.2 [Estote] at 1 Dial. 7.24), and represent yet another instance of Ockham's pendulum-like compositional technique in the Dialogus (see the Introduction to 1 Dial. 7.65-73).
For some comments on the context of 1 Dial. 6.51-67, see Fragments of Ockham hermeneutics, pp. 92-103. See also Political Ockhamism, pp. 237-240, 263.
George Knysh
May 2004