Marenbon on Textual Editions

The following is from a flyer for the Auctores Britannici series from the British academy, via  Brunellus (but I can't remember where). It was written by John Marenbon

Scholarly editing

Bringing a work like Anselm’s or Wylton’s into the form of an

accessible, edited, printed text is an extraordinarily time-consuming

and skilled job. First, the manuscripts must be transcribed. Whilst

scribes in the earlier Middle Ages used an easily-readable form of

handwriting that was revived in the Renaissance and provided the

model for print, most medieval philosophical manuscripts are

written in difficult to decipher Gothic and late medieval scripts.

Since parchment and then paper was precious, the hands are often

tiny; and a complex system of abbreviations was used to save more

space. Only someone specially trained in the reading of medieval

handwriting, with an excellent command of Latin, and who also

fully understands the often highly technical discussions in the text

can set about the task. Usually, there will be more than one

manuscript, and often dozens. They are rarely authorial autographs,

and so the editor needs to collate and classify the manuscripts, so as

to reconstruct as well as possible the text the author intended. And

then, if the text is to be accessible and useful, the sources it uses and

references it makes must be sought out, a translation provided, and

an introduction written on the work’s context and contents.

Unfortunately, universities and funding bodies in Britain today seem

blind both to the fundamental value of such editions for scholarship

and to the extraordinary skills needed in those who make them. Any

genuine scholar of the Middle Ages, even one not personally

inclined to text-editing, recognises that, without new editions,

scholarship in the area is condemned to try to build without

foundations, and that editing a text is one of the supreme tests of a

medievalist’s training and ability. Yet officially far less credit is given

for the years of patient work required to produce a good edition than

to a few articles or a monograph that catch a fashionable theme and

will probably no longer be read in a few years – whereas a good

edition can still be useful a century later. It is a tribute to a certain

self-sacrificing integrity that so many scholars continue to come

forward to make available, through their painstaking work, more of

the philosophical heritage of medieval Britain – but sad that so few

of them have been trained or work in this country.