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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS

IN

CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY

Vol. 5, No. 8, pp. 135-141, plates 1-11 October 13, 1920




THE SUPPOSED AUTOGRAPHA OF JOHN THE SCOT

BY

EDWARD KENNARD RAND

{Transcriber's Note: ^ and {} around a number or letter signifies
a superscript.]


In the fifth part of Ludwig Traube's _Palaeographische Forschungen_,
(which I had the honor of publishing after that great scholar's
death)[1] evidence was presented for Traube's apparently certain
discovery of the very handwriting of John the Scot. In manuscripts of
Reims, of Laon, and of Bamberg, he had observed certain marginal notes
which were neither omitted sections nor glosses, but rather the author's
own amplifications and embellishments of his work. Johannes had made
such additions to his _De Divisione Naturae_ in the Reims manuscript,
and they all appear in that of Bamberg. In the latter manuscript there
are fresh additions--or enlargements as I shall call them in the present
paper--which have similarly been absorbed into the text in two
manuscripts now in Paris. We thus have, in an interesting series, the
author's successive recensions of his work. One of the shorter forms is
the basis of the text published by Thomas Gale in 1681; the most
complete form was edited by H. J. Floss in 1852 from the Paris
manuscripts.[2] Though not venturing to carry out Traube's elaborate
plans for treatment of the subject, I attempted to corroborate his
belief that the notes were in the hand of Johannes. The evidence seemed
conclusive to me at the time, and was not questioned, so far as I know,
in any subsequent publication. In the summers of 1912 and 1913, however,
I examined the manuscripts of John the Scot in Paris, in Reims, in Laon,
and in Bamberg, and became convinced, most reluctantly, that his
autograph is yet to be found. I here present the chain of facts that
make this conclusion inevitable.[3]

Let us start with the hypothesis that the marginal notes discovered by
Traube are in the hand of Johannes himself and let us support this
hypothesis until it becomes too heavy to bear. Our first document is the
Reims Manuscript 875 (= _R_) of the _De Divisione Naturae_. This is the
work of some six or seven writers, whose hands are sometimes hard to
tell apart. Though it is the briefest and hence the earliest form of the
text that I have found, it is not the original draft of the work. The
scribes could not have taken it from the author's dictation, for they
commit errors of various sorts that presuppose the existence of a text
that they were copying.[4] This text, which is as near to the original
as our present information permits us to come, I will call _O_.

Besides making corrections and additions in their copy of _O_, the
scribes also insert marginal notes that have all the characteristics of
the author's own amplifications of his work. This fact does not militate
against our present hypothesis, if we assume that Johannes added these
marginalia, or caused them to be added, in _O_, and that the scribes of
_R_, at first forgetting to include them in the text of their new copy,
later wrote them in the margin.[5] In some cases, as we might expect, a
different ink is used. The insular hand (= _I_), which we are assuming
to be that of Johannes, corrects minor errors in these enlargements now
and then.[6] This fact is entirely in accord with our hypothesis.

A number of enlargements omitted by the writers of the text were
supplied not by them but by special correctors, who were assigned, it
would seem, considerable portions of the manuscript to revise.
Particularly important among these wide-ranging correctors are two hands
that I will call _r^{1}_ and _r^{2}_. The former is a largish hand with
some slight traces of Insular habits.[7] _r^{2}_ is very similar, and
indeed may be merely a smaller variety of _r^{1}_. In the specimen that
I have reproduced, as is true of both _r^{1}_ and _r^{2}_ elsewhere,
correction by _I_ may be observed.[8] In all, I detected, or thought I
detected, five or six correcting hands, which sometimes supplement
stretches of text written by others, sometimes supplement their own
text, and, in all the cases under discussion, add notes of the author
which were evidently in the margin of _O_. It is sometimes hard to be
sure whether _r_ is the text-hand or not. The point is not vitally
important. The main fact is that several different kinds of correcting
hand make, either in their own texts or in those of others, the kind of
additions or enlargements with which we are specially concerned.
However, as we have seen, we can still retain our hypothesis by
supposing that _I_ is the hand of Johannes, while r represents various
correctors who copied from _O_ enlargements added there by Johannes or
at his direction.

But we have now to note an intimate connection between _I_ and _r_. They
collaborate on the same notes. Plate V (fol. 285^{v}) shows us an
enlargement that begins in the hand (= _r^{3}_) that writes the text. It
extends through _substantiam_ (1.3), then is succeeded by _I_ (_ex
his--horum est_), then returns (_Ibi--superans_), and finally gives way
to _I_ once more (_dum--esse_). The interesting possibility and
enlargements taken from _O_. Possibly two or more stages are represented
by _O_, _r_ starting with an earlier, and _I_ supplementing from a more
complete form--but into that _terra incognita_ of fresh hypothesis we
need not enter. _I_'s procedure, at any rate, seems exactly like that of
_r_. Thus his practice of calling in a variety of _r_ to complete a note
too large for the space is paralleled by _r^{4}_, the writer of the text
on fol. 231^{v} (Plate II), who uses up a legitimate amount of his
margin and then has _r^{5}_ finish it, with signs of references, on the
following page. The latter scribe uses a finer hand, and has no
difficulty in completing the note with a decent margin to spare.[9]

Surely in the scribal play illustrated in Plate V, _I_ is acting more
like a fellow-worker than the author of the work. Likewise on another
page, we note corrections and minor enlargements by the text-hand, then
similar changes by _I_, and, finally, corrections of _I_ by the
text-hand.[10] If Johannes wished to change _cogitationes_ to
_operationes_, it is strange that he did not do it himself rather than
beckon to some scribe to insert the word; another correction, _nisi_,
added above the line, is made in the hand of _I_. In short, _r_ and _I_
are two different scribes collaborating on what would appear to be a
rather difficult original or set of originals.

Moreover, if _I_ is Johannes, he does not understand his own text. In
_De Divisione Naturae_ i. 49 (Migne _P.L._ cxxii, 491 A) we read:

     Omnium hominum una eademque [Greek: ousia] est. Omnes enim
     unam participant essentiam, ac per hoc, quia omnibus
     communis est, nullius proprie est. Corpus autem commune
     omnium hominum non est. Nam unusquisque suum proprium
     possidet corpus, non et [Greek: ousian]. Igitur communis
     est, et corpus commune non est.

This passage forms part of one of the enlargements of _I_. In it he
writes _omnis_ for _omnes_, and _Non et [Greek: ousiae] igitur communis
est_ for _non et [Greek: ousian]. Igitur communis est_. These are
understandable errors for any scribe, but not for the author of the
work, to make. Others occur elsewhere in the Insular hand; I have not
recorded many, but I made no systematic search.

We now come to the most startling consideration of all, namely, that
_there are two varieties of insular script in the book_. The first
variety, which I will now call _i^{1}_, is exhibited in all the plates