Where, physically, does the quote occur? I've seen it jotted in margins
and on flyleaves, as a pentrial. Or does it get placed at the ends of
documents? In that case, I'd think of the habits of, for example, the
Bolognese notaries who systematically filled in empty spaces in their
registers so that no one could later alter the registered document by
adding to its text.
Neither of these cases gives any particular value or meaning to the phrase
itself. But it could have meaning if it were placed at the head of a new
text, or possibly in the uppermost margin of a leaf where a new text
begins: one often sees such notes, as if small prayers, at beginnings,
e.g. "Adsit Maria principio meo" and one could imagine "Domine non sum
dignus" written in similar vein. In an English ms I puzzled over a "nisi
et cetera" written by the scribe after a long elaborate colophon detailing
the use of the book; Ian Doyle interpreted it for me as the beginning of
the psalm, "Nisi Dominus aedificaverit ...." -- "Unless the Lord build
the house, the laborers labor in vain" (hope that's about right; I'm not
quoting from the printed text). It wouldn't be odd, it seems, to also
here see a biblical/liturgical phrase employed by the scribe for his own
immediate concerns.
Consuelo Dutschke
Butler Library
Columbia University
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On Tue, 3 Dec 1996, Tiina Kala wrote:
> Would anybody be so kind to give an explanation to the frequent use
> of the quotation Domine non sum dignus in totally irrelevent places?
> (it has often occured to me in the accounts and other letters of the
> procurator of the Tallinn Dominican monastery at the beginning of the
> sixteenth c.)
> I would be very much obliged.
>
> Tiina Kala
>
>
>
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