Studies in the Transmission of Latin Texts

Abstract

Abstract In this book all known manuscripts and incunabular editions of four classical texts are discussed: Vitruvius’ De architectura, Cato’s De agri cultura, Varro’s De re rustica, Porphyrio’s Commentary on Horace, and Priscian’s Periegesis. The total number of witnesses involved comes to over two hundred; many of the manuscripts were produced in France or Italy, but English, German, Polish, and Swiss manuscripts also feature. For each text, the genealogical affiliations of its manuscript copies are determined (for very many for the first time), as is the manner in which each was dispersed throughout medieval Europe and transmitted from antiquity through the Middle Ages to the first printed editions. The author shows that clear and decisive results can be achieved by application of the so-called stemmatic method and establishes which manuscripts future editors should use in editing these texts. Manuscripts that are not needed by future editors are discussed as fully as those that are, and many localizations and derivations are established. The result is a large body of material that will help deepen our knowledge of the transmission of classical Latin texts, especially in the Renaissance, of scribal practice, and of techniques that can be deployed in the genealogical study of manuscripts and incunables.