Ivo ed Molinaeus

The editio princeps of Ivo's Decretum is Johannes Molinaeus (Louvain, 1561), Decretum beati Ivonis, e praeposito fani Quintini Belovacorum ecclesiae Carnotensis episcopi, printed by Gravius, who had published a second version of the 1499 Panormia edition three years earlier (G. Glorieux, Belgica typographica 1541-1600, i. no. 1580, ii. no. 6048, iii. nos. 8563-6); Molinaeus seems not to have known that work; at least he does not cite it, nor does he show any knowledge of the versions of Burchard of Worms published between 1548 and 1550. This is important, since the text he prints sometimes shows some convergence with Burchard, which might otherwise be explained by contamination from one of those editions

Molinaeus used two copies, both now unidentified. The edition therefore has the status of a manuscript, though a status which is in detail thoroughly problematic.

In the dedicatory letter to Fresneda Molinaeus described the two copies. Of his first copy, supplied by Fresneda from the royal library, ‘Quod vero etiam elegantissimis et maiusculis litteris litterarum formis ut Bartholomeo Gravio excuderetur curaveris. ... ex collatione codicis tui manuscripti cum eo quem nunc emittimus, optime scire poteris. Equidem ut regii codicis tui hiatus, ac lacunas omittam, plerumque integri versus vel inducti erant, vel praeteriti, denique argumenta librorum deerant, quas difficultates fateor, citra alterius exemplaris (dein ad nos quod Colonia transmissum est) opem, nunquam licuisset superare.’ Apart from the statement that Fresneda's copy was not merely apparently damaged but was also characterised by a number of additions and omissions, lacked the argumenta librorum, and may have been an abbreviation, the only express indication of its character is found in Bk VI, in mid. c. 20, where Molinaeus printed from it what he believed, surely rightly, to be an interpolation.

The Cologne copy was clearly far more complete. Here too the only detail which cast direct light on its idiosyncrasy is found, again in Bk VI, where M places cc. 224-41 after c. 268. A note to 6. 223 reports that this perturbation was found in the Cologne copy but not the one from the royal library. The apparent internal logic of the arrangement of the text makes it overwhelmingly likely that the order in the surviving manuscripts is original, and that of Molinaeus an aberration, so the text below is laid out in the sequence of the manuscripts and renumbered, with the numbers in M added in brackets.

More generally, the merit of many of the readings in M by reference to Burchard, and the relationship between M and the other copies, seem to prove that at least one of its sources must have been early and important. Occasionally editorial marginalia make it clear which ms. Molinaeus was using; more often it is uncertain. Variants in the margin to M in large type usually appear to be taken from one of these copies. Other notes in the margin are in much smaller type, and appear to be editorial. In the apparatus here the latter are distinguished as M2, though the generally excellent type-setting of M may not always be trustworthy. Some corrections are noted at fo. 484, though it is not always clear whether these are drawn from the manuscripts or from elsewhere; they are occasionally noted as Me. Otherwise the text of M is often idiosyncratic, but it shares several details of text and arrangement with D or S where these survive. Where PVB and CR divide M is sometimes closer to CR, and R is the only reported ms of the full text to contain M’s 1. 306. However, V is the only manuscript to have the end of 11.102 as in M, and V in several other cases agrees with M against all other copies, particularly in its later books. Elsewhere, when we have the witness of A, M sometimes follows that in preserving the material source more fully, while occasionally R also shares M’s contact with the A tradition. At least these distinctive features of M cannot be attributed to post-medieval editorial intervention. Correspondingly, where the formal source is not Burchard but we do not have A, and so lack an independent criterion for assessing the merits of a reading, the unsupported witness of M may yet deserve serious attention. It certainly cannot be assumed that all M’s peculiarities, or its agreements with the material source, go back no further than the editio princeps. In particular, one striking insertion at 1. 48, unique to M, is most unlikely to be an insertion by Molinaeus, and probably represents an early revision in one of his base mss.

There are three distinctive and substantial insertions in M which are not found in any surviving manuscript, and of these it seems likely that two do not belong to the text proper. At the end of Bk VI are two examples of epistolae formatae, taken apparently directly from Regino of Prum, but omitted by Burchard. Another substantial insertion occurs at the end of 1. 3, the letter of Cyril of Alexandria to Nestor as it was incorporated in the acts of the Council of Ephesus; here M alone continues with the anathemata which follow immediately on the letter in the form of the acts from which the previous text had been taken. Whether these were an early casualty of the transmission elsewhere or, less probably, an addition by M directly from the original source remains uncertain.

The most substantial difference between M and the manuscripts, however, is more pervasive. In describing the problems posed by the defects of the Fresneda copy, Molinaeus lays some stress on its lack of the argumenta librorum. In 1984 Landau interpreted argumenta here as the summary account of the contents of each book at the end of the Prologue, found in all the complete mss. However, it is not obvious why the absence of these short and fairly uninformative lists should have given Molinaeus any serious difficulty in drafting his text. If he meant rather the detailed capitulationes printed at the beginning of each book, for which there are only fragmentary traces in one ms (above under Kb , and there not exactly as in the ed.), the sense is a good deal easier, for these rubrics. and the number scheme Molinaeus finally adopted, are indeed impossible to derive directly from the existing manuscripts. The points at which his canons begin and end are often not clearly indicated there, and his choices seem too arbitrary to be either the work of the original compiler or merely figments of the editor's imagination.

If this is so, the numbered capitula at the head of each book of M, a feature found in no surviving manuscript except the fragments in Kb, and omitted by subsequent editors, were presumably derived from the Cologne copy. Further, there is a close correlation between the rubrics in the main text of the edition and those in the capitulationes. In most cases the surviving manuscripts only give detailed rubrics where their formal source (particularly Burchard) could provide them, and the others are either brief or entirely absent. In M they are far more frequent, and where the surviving mss do have a rubric, those in M are usually fuller. It is possible that the Cologne copy was the source for the text rubrics, and the capitulationes were compiled from them by Molinaeus, or even by the printer, since the text of the capitulationes is much less consistent in spelling, capitalisation, punctuation and the resolution of abbreviations than that of the text proper – the capitulationes below have been reproduced without any standardised spelling or punctuation, allowing the point to be verified. Alternatively the Cologne copy resembled the fragmentary Kb in having a numbered capitulatio at the head of each book, but few or no rubrics in the main text, and it was the rubrics in the text that were inserted by the editor. There are sufficient cases where the rubric in the main text of M differs so substantially from that of the capitulatio as to suggest that neither possibility is particularly likely. Fr, presumably giving weight to the absence of the capitulationes in P, which Fronteau knew intimately, omitted them, and Migne, here as elsewhere, followed Fr. In our version they are restored, partly because they still have a certain convenience to the reader, but mostly because it seems more likely on balance that they were the work of a medieval student of the book than of an early modern editor.

Elsewhere it seems highly probable that Molinaeus did sometimes depart in detail from the readings of one or both of his manuscripts. In general the extent of his citation of sources, and sometimes their form (e. g. M’s addition to the inscription to 1. 125 , ‘tomo 6. operum’, or 'Hieron, excusus sic habet' in the margin of 8. 43, or 'Inuenies in tomis concil. ad calcem Ilerden. conci, after 8. 142), make it clear that he had a substantial library from which to work. His Roman law texts in particular are often closer to the original in minor aspects than those of the manuscripts we have; here it is possible, even likely, that these readings are his editorial corrections, particularly in the inscriptions, such as those to the Novellae in 4. 189, 192, where the surviving mss give the sources according to the Epitome Juliani but the edition cites the numbers of the Authenticum. In some cases not from the Roman law, particularly obviously in Bk XVI, M alone follows the textus receptus of the source, and may equally well reflect editorial intervention. Nevertheless, M's relationship to A, V, S and sometimes R, noted above, proves that a considerable number of distinctive readings in M cannot be dismissed as mere artefacts of the edition. As a minimum position, M has far fewer 'restorations' of missing text than those that occur throughout Fr, which render the later edition so treacherous a guide to the original character of the collection.