The 11th century “Life” of St Botolph by Folcard of St Bertin, which is BHL 1428, has reached us in the following medieval manuscripts: (The sigla or abbreviations are by me).
- J = Cambridge, St Johns College, H.6 (olim M. R. James 209), ff.171r-182v. 12th century. Includes prologue and translatio.
- H = London, British Library Harley 3097. ff.61v-64v. 1075-1125 AD. Includes prologue, translatio, and extra vita in between.
- T = BL Cotton Tiberius D. iii, ff.223v-225v. 13th century. Badly damaged so only selected readings available. Includes prologue.
- P = Paris BNF lat. 13092, ff.110r-113v. s. XII. (nearly unreadable microfilm.) P omits “ut…monastica”. Is followed by C and L. Also has liturgical prayers.
- G = London, Grays Inn 3, ff.136r-137. Note use of thorn, ae ligature in Anglosaxon names, probably “corrections”. Gloss present. CPL omission present. No prologus or translatio.
- C = Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Parker 161, ff.61v-63v. ca. 1200. [Prefixed with 8 capitula, unlike the other mss]. Often slightly different, and has three omissions.
There are three editions:
- Ach. = Luc d’Achery, & Jean Mabillon, Acta sanctorum Ordinis S. Benedicti, vol. 3: Saeculum III: quod est ab anno Christi DCC ad DCCC, Paris (1672), pp. 3-7. – This is based on P plus emendations. No prologue or translatio.
- AASS = Acta Sanctorum, Jun. vol. 3, 402 (1701), pp.398-406. – A copy of Ach. plus emended from R and K. No prologue, and only part of the translatio from the NLA.
- Har. = T. D. Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue of Materials Relating to the History of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 1, Part 1, London (1862) pp.373-4. This is just the prologus.
These other witnesses are a somewhat different version of the text:
- L = Lincoln Cathedral Library 7. ff.82r-83r. 1151-1200 AD. (different recension)
- R = Vienna OSB SN12814 (olim Rooklooster), ff.960r-961r. 1451-1487 AD. (different recension)
- K = an unidentified Koln/Cologne manuscript used for the AASS, but clearly very like R.
- NLA = Nova Legenda Anglie, Horstmann edition. This is an abbreviated version, also found in other MSS.
- SB = Schleswig Breviarium. This refers to Scotland, so must descend from a manuscript of the family of R.
I have compared all of these, and, just for fun, I have worked out the following stemma. The earliest manuscripts are at the top.
So how did I get this? From 5 simple features of the text that jump out at you when you compare the text.
- Is the prologue present?
- Is the translatio present?
- There is an obvious gloss in chapter 11, and this is only found in later manuscripts.
- There is a common omission, found in manuscripts C, P and L.
- Chapters 1-3 are omitted in some manuscripts.
Another feature of the text, not shown above, is whether there is a reference to “Scotis”, “the scots”, i.e. Scotland. This appears in the AASS, and also in R, but nowhere else. But it does appear in the abbreviated and rewritten version of the story that appears in the Sleswig Breviary, which must therefore derive from a manuscript in this late part of the stemma.
The NLA is an epitome, so not very related to the full text. But the presence of an abbreviated translatio tells us where it fits in the tree of transmission.
I also compared how often various witnesses disagreed.
- How often do J and H differ? Only in 5 places, 4 of which are obvious scribal errors.
- How often do JH and G differ? Only in 3 places, 2 of which are anglosaxon names.
- How often do J and P differ? 16 times.
- How often does T disagree with H and H? One obvious scribal error in T, and the gloss is present in T. It does not have the unique readings of H. So… it is derived from J.
and so on.
The introduction of the gloss into otherwise unrelated branches of the tradition must indicate some kind of cross-contamination.
Folcard wrote a biography, with prologue and translatio. This was fed into the liturgical sausage-making machine, ending up as a set of lectiones (readings) for the sanctoral office, the church service read to celebrate the saint on his feast day. So the loss of literary elements, and the presence of liturgical elements will always suggest modification of the text.
J is the prince among these manuscripts because it alone contains the prologue and the translatio. The liturgically useless translatio is still found in the NLA which must therefore derive from J via an abbreviator. H and T are also relatively pure as containing the liturgically useless prologue. Next to go is chapter 1, also liturgically useless. Then the material about Botolph’s brother Adolph, chapters 1-3, is omitted for the same reason, leaving ch 4 as the start. It all makes perfect sense, as the text is transformed into something that can appear in a Sanctilogium, a medieval service book.
This is the second time that I have worked on a Latin text to create a critical text. I have found in both cases that the process of manual comparison gives you something that machine comparison does not. It gives you a feel for the text, and it gives you a feel for the witnesses and the kind of text that they bear. The text starts to become real and alive under your hand. You get a feel for certain witnesses. “Oh yes, it’s gone off on its own again.” After a while certain things just jump out at you. The longer you work on it, the more this happens. The extended period of time that it takes to produce a modern edition is not a vice; it is what the editor needs to do in order to become truly familiar with his text. I really do not see how this process will ever be possible to avoid, or can ever arise purely from machine comparison. Which is food for thought.