(Offler's "M" is our Mz,
"F" is Fr,
"F2" is Frm,
"Lh" is Lm,
the 1476 edition is Pz,
the 1494 edition is Ly,
X, y, b, c and d are not extant.)
The witnesses for 3.1 Dial. 1 are the same as those for the Compendium
Errorum, which has been edited by Professor Offler. The
relationship among the witnesses may not be the same from one work to
the other, but it may be. In studying the tradition of 3.1 Dial. it
is therefore appropriate to make a critical examination of Offler's
view of the text tradition of the Compendium. On p. 10 he
sets out "roughly the possible relationships" in the
diagram shown below:
|
|
(Offler's "M" is our Mz, |
This diagram seems open to criticism at several points:
y need not be postulated; if it did exist, it might have descended
from M;
Offler's reason for postulating y is as follows: "Though F stands much closer textually to M than to the other witnesses, it does not descend directly from M, against which it agrees with ed. and Lh on a score of occasions". p. 9. But these agreements are in readings that Offler rejects as errors, and they cannot rule out the possibility that the errors were introduced by a descendant of M that was an ancestor of the others. On the other hand, since they are all easily corrected by conjecture or by reference to an accessible and familiar source, it may be that they were in an ancestor common to F, M, ed. and Lh, but were corrected by the maker of M (or one of its ancestors) and not in the others.
The instances of agreement between F and the 1476 edition against M are the following:
Prol.9 (p. 14), quidam for quidem
Comment: Offler rejects all the variants listed above as errors, and many of them are plainly such (e.g. 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14 and 16.) Shared errors suggest a common ancestor, but that may be a descendant of M (the common errors may have been introduced by an intermediate descendant of M) or it may be an ancestor of them all (M or its ancestor may have corrected these errors by conjecture).
As far as this pattern of agreements goes, it is also possible that F is a direct copy of M and the ancestor of ed. and Lh. Although compatible with the above list of agreements, this hypothesis seems unlikely, since F and ed. are too close together in time. Also, F contains many other errors not found in ed. This is not shown in the apparatus, but it is implied by Offler's remark that "F is the work of a careless scribe..; many of his blunders are too crass to warrant printing" (p. 9). The more crass they are the easier it would have been for the 1476 editor to correct them conjecturally, but if they were numerous correction of them all would have required a high degree of activity on this editor's part.
To rule out the possibility that y descends from M, there would have to be errors in M where the others are right (different errors in the others might result from attempts to correct M's error), and they would have to be errors not easily corrected by conjecture (as are grammatical errors, errors in quoting the bible, etc.). The cases in which M has a reading rejected by Offler as an error not found in F or b (b standing for ed. and Lh together) or ed. or Lh are as follows:
Prol 18 (p. 14)
In almost all of these cases either the other witnesses of this group are also wrong (cases 2, 5, 6, 12, 14, 17, 19, 24, 27, 28), or the error is a simple matter of grammar or spelling easily corrected by conjecture or even inadvertently (3, 8, 10, 16, 18, 20, 25, 29, 30, 31), or it is an error in referring to or quoting the bible or a well-known papal document (4, 13, 15, 22, 23), or it is an error in some other way obvious and easily corrected (7, 9, 11, 21). In short, Offler's apparatus records very few instances of errors in M not easily correctable by conjecture where the others have the correct reading, too few to amount to a strong argument for this feature of Offler's diagram. As far as these agreements go, it therefore seems possible that F, ed. and Lh all descend from M.
However, there is no strong reason to believe that they did descend from M or from any common ancestor not also an ancestor of M.
Offler's reasons for postulating b (i.e. a separate source of marginal corrections in F) are as follows: "Besides relying on the exemplar of F [i.e. y], F2 [the marginal corrector of F] possibly had access to a manuscript [viz. b] related to the exemplar of ed. and Lh, but superior to it. Either with some such help or just by the light of good sense F2 amends the text acceptably some 20 times." The places at which Offler accepts amendments from F2 are the following:
Prol.7 (p. 14) adds inquit
Comment: Any of these amendments, with a few exceptions, could have resulted from intelligent conjecture: the corrector might have read the MS and corrected what he regarded as obvious slips, without reference to any other witness. The exceptions are instances 5, 14, 23 and 24, which would have required reference either to the exemplar or (variously) to a copy of Pope John's writings and the bible and knowledge of a place name. But in any case, whatever the corrector might be supposed to have found in b he can just as well be supposed to have found in the exemplar of F -- the corrections may be the work of a proof-reader checking against the same exemplar..
Offler's reasons for postulating c are as follows: "But in some half-a-dozen instances Lh gives what clearly seem superior readings to all the other witnesses; just possibly Lh and ed. [the 1476 edition] were copied independently from the same exemplar." In Offler's apparatus to CE Lh is recorded as differing from ed. in the following places:
1.79 (p. 19), si omitted
Comment: Each of these could easily result from miscopying the 1476 edition without reference to any other witness. The accumulation of differences does not seem great enough to suggest another exemplar. Despite his statement that "in some half-a-dozen instances Lh gives what clearly seem superior readings to all the other witnesses", Offler rejects the reading of Lh in all of the above cases except two, viz. 4.3 (p. 36) and 7.118 (p. 69). The second of these could easily be a conjecture or lucky mis-copying (praeterea for proptera). The first (destitucionibus for detestacionibus) is a correction the scribe could have guessed at, since the pun constitucio/destitucio occurs throughout the work from 1.35 (p. 17) onwards. There is thus nothing in these variants to suggest that Lh derives from any better or other witness than the 1476 edition.
Offler's reasons for postulating d are as follows: "Though for the most part relying on the Paris editio princeps [1476], the Lyons edition corrects a number of its errors. Some of Trechsel's amendments [1494 ] are doubtless only conjectural; others may be the result of consulting a better manuscript, now lost." This postulated manuscript is shown as derived from b presumably on the assumption that it cannot have differed very greatly from the 1476 edition since if it had the amendments would have been more numerous. The instances in which the 1494 edition disagrees with the 1476 edition are as follows:
Prol.26-7 (p. 15) spem auxilii vel premii positi for peccati
positi
Comment: None of these amendments lies beyond the possibility of intelligent conjecture; there is no need to postulate another witness.
Offler's other observations: Offler regards "X" as being "already defective". He follows M wherever possible, but remarks that "any attempt to make sense of CE's text must at times resort to eclecticism". He accepts some marginal corrections from F and some readings from the 1494 edition. He remarks that "the textual tradition of CE is weak" and that "the weakness of CE's textual tradition is not auspicious for the future editor of IusIIIae Dial." All of this seems very true.
Conclusion: It seems that the variants for CE are not evidence of contamination or of the existence of any particular pattern among the ancestors of the extant witnesses. There is nothing to rule out the hypothesis that the 1476 edition was the source of both Lh and the 1494 edition. The corrections of F2 do not demonstrate contamination, since we have no way of knowing whether the corrector referred to any MS other than the exemplar of F. These are also the conclusions of analysis of the variants for 3.1 Dial., 1. The relationship among the witnesses seems to be the same for both works.
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