In the fifth part of Ludwig Traube's Palaeographische Forschungen,(which I had the honor of publishing after that great scholar'sdeath)[1] evidence was presented for Traube's apparently certaindiscovery of the very handwriting of John the Scot. In manuscripts ofReims, of Laon, and of Bamberg, he had observed certain marginal noteswhich were neither omitted sections nor glosses, but rather the author'sown amplifications and embellishments of his work. Johannes had madesuch additions to his De Divisione Naturae in the Reims manuscript,and they all appear in that of Bamberg. In the latter manuscript thereare fresh additions—or enlargements as I shall call them in the presentpaper—which have similarly been absorbed into the text in twomanuscripts now in Paris. We thus have, in an interesting series, theauthor's successive recensions of his work. One of the shorter forms isthe basis of the text published by Thomas Gale in 1681; the mostcomplete form was edited by H. J. Floss in 1852 from the Parismanuscripts.[2] Though not venturing to carry out Traube's elaborateplans for treatment of the subject, I attempted to corroborate hisbelief that the notes were in the hand of Johannes. The evidence seemedconclusive to me at the time, and was not[Pg 136] questioned, so far as I know,in any subsequent publication. In the summers of 1912 and 1913, however,I examined the manuscripts of John the Scot in Paris, in Reims, in Laon,and in Bamberg, and became convinced, most reluctantly, that hisautograph is yet to be found. I here present the chain of facts thatmake this conclusion inevitable.[3]
Let us start with the hypothesis that the marginal notes discovered byTraube are in the hand of Johannes himself and let us support thishypothesis until it becomes too heavy to bear. Our first document is theReims Manuscript 875 (= R) of the De Divisione Naturae. This is thework of some six or seven writers, whose hands are sometimes hard totell apart. Though it is the briefest and hence the earliest form of thetext that I have found, it is not the original draft of the work. Thescribes could not have taken it from the author's dictation, for theycommit errors of various sorts that presuppose the existence of a textthat they were copying.[4] This text, which is as near to the originalas our present information permits us to come, I will call O.
Besides making corrections and additions in their copy of O, thescribes also insert marginal notes that have all the characteristics ofthe author's own amplifications of his work. This fact does not militateagainst our present hypothesis, if we assume that Johannes added thesemarginalia, or caused them to be added, in O, and that the scribes ofR, at first forgetting to include them in the text of their new copy,later wrote them in the margin.[5] In some cases, as we might expect, adifferent ink is used. The insular hand (= I), which we are assumingto be that of Johannes,[Pg 137] corrects minor errors in these enlargements now