Richard Carrier

Unfortunately it's not that simple. Recent EU law has something like a 99 year extension available, and also which exact definition and law this particular case would fall under is unclear. But as I said, given its age and our use of it, I doubt anyone will file an action against me. And if they do, and they convince me they have standing and cause, I'll just remove it.

Richard Carrier

Zhugin: You are looking at the wrong feature. The lean is not indicative, as this scribe is not that consistent (hence the /i/ from principis looks nearly the same as in Christianos--look at all the i's in that word; also the /i/ in poenis above Christianos, and best of all, the second /i/ in supplicio as The Cave notes). The more consistently distinctive elements are the curvature, the direction of the strokes (i.e. where the pen hits the paper and then leaves it, i.e. which marks are made in sequence), the position of elements, and the ligature. In the latter case, in Christianos the s is ligatured from the bottom of the i, but an e-s ligatures across the middle (yet no such ligature exists here).

In other words, I see exactly the opposite of what Spin claims. So I don't know what he is looking at. There is no ligature from /i/ to /s/ in any of the comparison words he lists; the comparative evidence is from the e-s ligatures on the page, of which there are several, and those ligatures are clearly higher than the one in Christianos.

Hence even if an erasure exists here (and I agree Lodi should be trusted on this until further examination is possible), my argument goes:

And in any case, there is no conclusive case to be made that there was an /e/ in the exemplar the scribe copied. One could only conjecture such a thing, not prove it from present evidence.

More importantly, I must reiterate so we don't get off track: the claim that this ms. contains an /e/ is mistaken, as even Fuchs attests. The only claim that could be true is that there used to be an /e/ in it (which was erased and replaced with an /i/), and if that is convincingly established, then there are two theories to explain it: (1) that some later scribe did this, in which case the original Mediceus did say /e/ and it was later corrected, or (2) that the same scribe did this, probably even before finishing the word, which seems more likely on the evidence available to me, and which entails the completed Mediceus never contained an /e/, since it was erased before the ms. was even completed, most likely because the scribe screwed up, and knew it, and fixed it before going on.

zhugin

I will get a photo from an ultraviolet microfilm of the manuscript during the week. I hope this will show if there was a scraped of "e". If I'm lucky there will be a new research at the library, which I will get the results of.

Regarding the copyright, I asked a professor (Wikipedia: "in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand it [professor] is a legal title conferred by a university denoting the highest academic rank, whereas in the United States, Canada and Hong Kong, the term professor is used as a form of address for any lecturer or researcher employed by a college or university, regardless of rank"; in Sweden it's used in the first sense) of European law, who has also written books about copyright law, and he said that "photographic copies are probably not considered 'works'" and are thus protected in accordance with special statutes about photographs - as said above 50 years in Sweden and 20 years in Italy.

Richard Carrier

In response to Roger Pearse:

1. A few euro for a large photo print seems remarkably cheap (compared to the same sort of service from the British Museum). One must also add overseas shipping, of course, unless they provide FTP service. Since my Italian is nowhere near good enough to negotiate any of this, I'm not sure how to proceed. But if the expense is really so little, anyone who has the ability should go for it. Meanwhile, with the info you provided it occurred to me to check my library for a printed photo edition, and there is a large photobook of the manuscript at Berkeley (the 1902 publication others have referred to here). It won't be in color, but it will be larger and thus presumably higher resolution. I'll check that on my next trip (which won't be until late October).

2. Scraping wasn't always accomplished by knife. A common eraser was pumice stone, which leaves even less visible evidence. But this reminds me: if anyone does speak with the Italian holder, if they can persuade them to take a photo with offset light (light set at an extreme angle instead of directly above), that would make detecting these things easier. In fact, if they have staff who know what we are interested in and how to capture it and are willing to put in the effort, they can take other steps to ensure we get an image that shows what we need. But again, someone facile with Italian and the issues would need to discuss it (and absorb the cost of an overseas call at a reasonable Italian hour).

3. Typically there are many kinds of marginalia (including interlinear notes, of which there are several here as well) in the same ms. with no indication of what's what. It occurs to me (and I see others here) the proper names are probably bookmarks (e.g. they simply help the reader find a passage that mentions important people, the cross probably serves that purpose as well, indicating the whole passage). In which case, the Christiani could also be a bookmark, and not a variant. It would take more thought and analysis to nail that down, but now that I think about it, I agree that's probably what this is.

4. "The argument is that he would use the ligatured /ri/ rather than a /i/, if he was erasing an /e/ rather than an /i/. Why?" Because that is how he was taught to write an i after an r (as every other example on the page shows). For example, look at Christus just below: if in Christianos he wrote Chre, stopped, erased the /e/, and continued with an /i/ instead, he would simply write the rapid, long downstroke that otherwise follows an /r/ (as in Christ), then continue. There is no reason he would have to also erase the /r/ to do this. It is an easy fix. Hence the question should be, why wouldn't he do that? It's a mistake either way, whereas a mistake after an erasure posits more than just a mistake from the start, leaving Occam's Razor to favor the latter. But Lodi's eye-witness testimony overrides that, favoring the former.

(BTW, the gap between the /r/ and /s/ in Christianos is the same as in Christus, yet the latter has not only the expected /i/ but the correct one, and ligatured to the /s/ as expected for the usual /ri/ form, thus there is nothing unusual about the gap in Christianos apart from the fact that the wrong /i/ is there--one thing perhaps unclear about Lodi's testimony is whether the erased mistake was actually an /e/ or whether that is merely assumed or inferred from scant indications, since the mistake could have been anything, including a blob of ink or a slip or a badly formed /i/).

5. "Why do we suppose that a ligature is 'right' and non-ligature 'wrong'?" I don't know what this question refers to. It isn't the ligature from r-to-i that is the issue (there is one there now, and there is one also in all proper /ri/ combinations, so there is no issue of a "non-ligature" here), but the form of the /i/ that follows an /r/. See my previous post on this.

6. Other gaps: /T-y/ in Tyberio in line 7, the /s-u/ in supplicio line 8, /x-i-t/ in exitiabilis line 9, the strange /e-b/ gap in erumpe-bat line 9, the /c[on]-f/ in confluunt line 11, the /l-e/ in cel-ebran- line 11, the /e-i/ in deinde line 12, the /s-u/ in sunt in line 14, the /n-t/ in interirent line 16, the /a-u/ in aut line 16, the /d-e/ in defecisset line 17, the /u-r/ in nocturni line 18. None are exact parallels, but combined with as many instances of unusually tight positioning, it is clear consistent kerning is not attempted by this scribe.

zhugin

As I have said, I will get a copy from the Italian library this week.

spin

Yes, an attempt at a ligature has been inserted. It is clearly not original. Look at this:



It is plain that a normal /i/ plus /s/ has no ligature of the type seen in "christianos". With all other examples of normal /i/ plus /s/, the /s/ has a "blob" above and to the right of the lower point of the normal /i/. Instead our example has a defective "blob" and an attempted ligature.

The claim of a completely rewritten /i/ is totally unnecessary, for as can be seen my modified "chrestianos" simply has the upper loop and strong ligature superimposed with no change to the form of the /i/, so removing the loop and the ligature yields the current /i/. This would explain the defective "blob" on the /s/ after the /e/ ligature was removed.

The ligature seems to be a sloppy addition. It is unprecedented at least on the page.

Except that there is no continuation. There is a gap between the lower point of the /i/ and the start of the ligature. Without the continuation you have a touch-up, ie, after the loop and ligature of the /e/ was erased the gap left was a little too great occasioning an attempted ligature to make it look more acceptable.

Not necessary, with a touch-up.

I'd guess the claim was that the manuscript contained an /e/.

If it were an /i/, the required abnormalities would be these

1. for some reason the scribe didn't use his normal /ri/ combination;
2. for some reason the scribe left an abnormal gap between /i/ and /s/;
3. for some reason the scribe didn't use a large "blob" on the /s/;
4. for some reason the scribe used a ligature between the /i/ and /s/; and
5. for some reason the ligature isn't connected.

Hopefully it's clear that an original /i/ doesn't have much going for it.

Given that the /e/ is a lectio difficilior, the most likely source is the text copied from, suggesting that an original /e/ would not have been considered a mistake by a copyist. The erasure would seem more likely the work of a supervising scribe, ie it wasn't done on the spot as Richard Carrier seems to prefer.


spin

spin

The above pic contradicts the claims here.

It's a capital T. Not relevant.

There is no gap. The loop of the /s/ comes down over the first stroke of the following letter as expected.

Half the width of that in "christianos".

Clearly this is another correction. Isn't it?

The contraction tends to be handled that way. Besides it still isn't a comparable gap.

Hopeful.

I missed this gap...

This was tried with "supplicio". Same situation. There's no gap.

Yes, "none are exact parallels". In fact, none of them are parallels at all. One needs to consider the normal disposition of the letters as they are formed after each predecessor. Richard Carrier is right that "clear consistent kerning is not attempted by this scribe", but the letter spacing is not haphazard as he tries to make out.


spin

Roger Pearse

I think so too. A correspondant wrote and apparently got a reply that the price was for a digital scan from microfilm! I suggested he write more specifically and ask what for a proper colour image, but I heard no more. I'm drowning with work so haven't tried asking them myself. Italian libraries can be dreadful to deal with, but he did get an email reply from them quite quickly.

That would be interesting to see.

The staff there don't do English (even the staff selling items to tourists!). Short of speaking Italian, I was told by a fellow mss buff that I might have more luck with French.

It's certainly a possibility, isn't it? This will become more probable still if we find that sort of marginalium -- nominative names in the margins -- on other pages as well.

Thanks for the other comments; I simply haven't the time to look into them, tho.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

Excellent. This will do us all a service.

Roger Pearse

I agree. Indeed it would be interesting to know just how many cases libraries like this have filed in the last 10 years. It might be zero.

All the best,

Roger Pearse