Our chain of evidence draws us to the conclusion that neither i1 nor i2 is Johannes, but that both are scribes employed by him, together with others, to correct and enlarge the manuscripts of his works. The two Insular writers were very possibly the most important of his workmen, for he entrusted most of the revision to them. Their task was done in intimate coöperation with the other scribes. They would call them in to finish their notes if considerations of space demanded, or, now and then, merely to indulge in a pastime of alternate writing. Perhaps it was the difficulty of deciphering the original that induced a scribe to appeal more frequently than usual for help from a fellow-craftsman. I have confined my discussion to the manuscript 875 of Reims, but the two Insular hands appear also in the manuscripts of Bamberg and of Laon.[13]
After all is said and done, the great value of Traube's discovery remains. It is positive that the enlargements in the manuscripts were made at the direction of the author himself. They present to the modern editor of the De Divisione Naturae the fascinating task of distinguishing the different revisions, and of following the growth of the subject in Johannes' mind. The best way, I believe, would be to print on the left-hand page the enlarged form of the text, for that is the form in which the author wished his work to be known to posterity. On the right-hand page, the briefest form, the nearest approach to his original draft, might be given, with indication, in the critical apparatus, of the successive stages by which the final text was reached. Possibly further research may reveal O, or even the hand of Johannes himself. For the present, we at least have accessible—if the contents of the libraries of Reims and of Laon are accessible—the material for preparing a highly accurate and well-nigh unique edition of one of the masterpieces of medieval philosophy.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In Abh. d. k. b. Akad. d. Wiss., philos.-philol. u. hist. Classe, München, XXVI (1912).
[2] In Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 122 (1865).
[3] I have confined my illustrations almost entirely to passages exhibited in the plates. I have notes of many other examples quite as pertinent, but do not include them here, believing that those presented amply prove my point.
[4] For an example, see Plate I (fol. 273). In the last regular line of the page, after writing caelestis essentiae particeps est, the scribe first omitted the words de die—caelestis essentiae particeps est (an exceedingly easy haplography) and then added them, with signs of reference, in the margin immediately below. As the error is one of sight and not of hearing, he must have had a text before him.
[5] Plate II (fol. 231v) contains a striking instance. After the citation of St. Basil, the author bethinks him of another possible interpretation of his words (An aliud ex uerbis ipsius—intelligendum) and sets it forth in the enlargement. It is not probable, I believe, that the author dictated this forthwith to the scribe. As the existence of O has been proved, it is more natural to assume that the enlargement had already been inserted there.
[6] E.g., fol. 59 (I have no photograph). The added quodam in l.10 of fol. 231 (Plate II) is not by I. See below, note 10. Ut arbitror in the right margin seems exactly the thing that an author tucks in when revising and qualifying his work. But see below p. 138.
[7] Plate III contains a specimen (fol. 64). At first this hand looks like that of the text, but it is really different. The corrections are, I believe, by r1 himself. They had been made in O, I infer, but at first were not observed by r1. The heading De agere et pati is by a hand of the thirteenth century or later (= h).