>>This is the familiar "Clementine" Vulgate, the usual edition, and based (as
>someone on the list has just pointed out) on 13th century Parisian MSS. So
>it's probably the best one can do by way of approximating to the "medieval
>Vulgate" - given the many and varied versions of that text in circulation.
Dear Bill,
I beg to disagree with this assessment of the situation. For very specific
purposes, it can be indispensable to go back to the manuscripts themselves,
which is of course still the best way of approaching the medieval Vulgate.
For the daily use of a medievalist who needs quick and to some degree
representative though not complete oversight over the entire medieval
period, the second best solution will do, which is to consult the critical
editions of the Vulgate (and here I would begin though not always end with
Robert Weber's Stuttgart edition). They tend to privilege the earlier
witnesses, but include also later variants and editions in their apparatus,
including also the Sixto-Clementine itself (as sigle Gothic "c"). If your
interests are mostly in the high and late medieval period, it might
eventually be good to have *in addition* also the full text of the
Sixto-Clementine at hand, in order to check it for variant readings
eventually omitted by the critical apparatus, but if you really can spot
such omissions you also need further additional (manuscript) sources for
corroborating that the omitted variants belong in fact to the medieval
period. Whereas it is certainly not recommended to rely on the
Sixto-Clementina exclusively. So far I have seen scholars being misled
because they used the Sixto-Clementina exclusively and were not
sufficiently informed about medieval variants which they could have found
(together with the Sixto-Clementine reading) in a critical edition instead.
But I have not yet seen scholars being mislead because they relied on the
critical editions and ignored a medieval variant omitted there which they
would have found in the Sixto-Clementine instead.
If anybody happens to have examples where the Sixto-Clementina beats, for
instance, Weber, by offering a medieval reading omitted by Weber's text and
'brevis apparatus', I would be interested to know such examples. I would
also like to know how well founded (or maybe unfounded) my own suspicion is
that the Sixto-Clementina offers revised readings without medieval antecedent.
Otfried
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