. There is some fluidity of
spelling, with the letters x and ss or sc used interchangeably: thus we
have exentiam for essentiam, conplessionatum for complexionatum, produssit for produxit, and dixipuli for discipuli.| Back to witness | You are looking at a transcription note or witness description. Click on Back to witness to return to the witness transcript.? |
VIII. Transcription Notes
Manuscript S is striking for the contrast between the chaotic state of the text in terms of textual substance and the relatively few transcription problems it poses. The text sometimes deteriorates into complete unintelligibility – for example, the opening lines of II, v, 14 – and when this happens there seems no point in even trying to make sense of it. The chaotic quality invests every aspect of the text: forms of words (storiagrofi may just be a slip for storiografi, but what of polastra for palestra?), lack of agreements, indifference to correct case endings, indiscriminate use of capital letters and rubrication (there is a red line through many capital letters almost randomly, and the capital letters themselves are scattered like sultanas in a pudding), and even letter forms.
Capital letter shapes, with or without a red stroke through them, are often
close in size to lower-case forms – this is especially true of the letters
a and r. These have been treated simply as variant letter forms and transcribed as lower-case. Because the black and white image does not distinguish between black ink and red, some letters look odd in shape on the image because there is a red line through them (but they are perfectly clear in the original); there are some idle strokes in red, eg. the mark over the m of Imperium at II, x, 4 (56r b), which are not transcribed. Occasionally the letters i and e are indistinguishable and the same is true
at times of c and r. Sometimes we have -cç- or -çc-, but where it seems
likely that a single cedilla is meant to apply to both letters it has been
so transcribed, as in Athletiççantibus at II, viii, 15. The scribe sometimes uses a strange form of u with a flourish which makes it look like a b, for example ultimis at III, xii, 7 . There is some fluidity of
spelling, with the letters x and ss or sc used interchangeably: thus we
have exentiam for essentiam, conplessionatum for complexionatum, produssit for produxit, and dixipuli for discipuli.
Typically, abbreviated forms are wrong by one crucial letter so that it becomes impossible to resolve them satisfactorily: thus marum, where the superscript a instead of o rules out the required modorum as the reading; ne where the n instead of m means the word cannot be read as materie. These forms have been left unresolved in the transcription and represented exactly as they appear in the manuscript. The abbreviated form for sed is resolved sed even though the scribe usually writes set in full.
The scribe uses very long macrons, which can cover as many as 6 or 7
letters to represent a single missing letter, for example antecedens at
III, xii, 3 
. Conversely, sometimes the macron is too short to suggest a number of separate contracted letters, but in these cases the transcription gives the benefit of the doubt, and transcribes the word in full: thus propositio at III, xiii, 5 and superpositionis at III, xii, 10 and 11.
The marginal notes on f. 53r b naming figures listed in the text have been partly trimmed away and have not been transcribed. Corrections are all by the original hand and executed at the time of transcribing; there are no later additions and corrections.