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 r1 and r2. The former is a largish hand with some slight traces of Insular habits.[7] r2 is very similar, and indeed may be merely a smaller variety of r1. In the specimen that I have reproduced, as is true of both r1 and r2 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. 285v) shows us an enlargement that begins in the hand (= r3) 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 r4, the writer of the text on fol. 231v (Plate II), who uses up a legitimate amount of his margin and then has r5 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 ουσια 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 ουσιαν. 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 ουσιαε igitur communis est for non et ουσιαν. 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 i1, is exhibited in all the plates thus far presented. It is loose, pointed, flowing, with few abbreviations or ligatures specially characteristic of Irish script. With only one or two exceptions, it uses a d with a curved shaft. The other variety (i2), as Plate X (fol. 106) shows, is at once more compact and regular, and more cursive, with more of the specifically Irish traits; it has a straight-shafted d. Furthermore, the two hands appear in different portions of the manuscript. i1 is confined to foll. 1-80v (= quires I-X) and foll. 113-318v (= quires XV-XLI), while i2 appears only in foll. 81-112v (= quires XI-XIV) and foll. 319-358 (= quires XLII-XLVI). In the sections corrected by i2, we note the same features as in the other parts. i2 inserts many long enlargements and makes many minor corrections. He is supplemented in one of his own enlargements by r2.[11] On another page, he is corrected by r2, or possibly the text-hand.[12]
Our last resort, if we are still to look for the autograph of John the Scot in the various hands of Reims, is to suppose that, if not i1, it is i2. This is indeed the hand that Traube believed was the author's; it happened that almost all of the photographs taken for Traube contain enlargements by i2 and not by i1. Yet if i2 is Johannes, why does that hand never correct the sections assigned to i1? Of the two, i1 seems more free, more individual, more like an author's, unless that author be also a calligraphist. But if we imagine that i1 is Johannes, why does he never appear in the sections assigned to i2?