Content area
Full Text
In 1997, Brepols Publishers republished Conrad of Eberbach's Exordium magnum cisterciense, which Bruno Griesser had edited in 1961 for Editiones cistercienses in Rome. No changes were made to the edition apart from superfluous external emendations. This edition, which was valuable at the time of its first publication, today presents two inadequacies, one major and the other minor, both of which require attention.
Brepols1 reproduces to the letter Bruno Griesser's Introduction where, in the list of manuscripts, Griesser reports the disappearance of the codex Eberbacensis (Eberbach Codex) from a library in Wiesbaden, where it was numbered A1965: "zuletz in Wiesbaden, Bibliothek des Vereins, et cetera; Leider ist diese hochwichtige Handschrift heute verschollen" (Griesser 9; Brepols 11). The disappearance of this codex-considered the probable original copy of the work-obliged Griesser to reconstruct the text on the basis of nine manuscripts through rigorous application of the Lachmanian method, which gave him good results. It is worth recalling the criteria used for the edition: Griesser divided the nine codices into four families derived from the Eberbach Codex (e), the first, consisting of a single codex (Oxford MS. Bod. Laud Misc. 238 [O]), derived directly from E, and the other three derived from E by way of intermediaries, seven of which are lost and eight of which have been preserved. The edition is based on agreement of independent manuscripts. The fundamental agreement is between O and B (Brussels, Bibl. Royal II, 1077 from Aulne), of the fourth family. At a secondary stage, agreement between O and manuscripts of the second or third families can be used, and so forth down the line of agreement between independent manuscripts.
The text in Griesser's edition distinguished between the vowel form of u and its consonant form (v), a distinction Brepols rejected by unifying the orthography with u alone. To me the distinction seems justifiable because of the existence since the third century of a fricative consonant written as w, derived from the semi-vowel u. That consonant appears in the form ewangelium in E. The sign v was introduced by the humanist Peter Ramus to distinguish between the two pronunciations and the relative meanings. However, Brepols maintained the diphthong CK, as Bruno Griesser had wanted it, contrary to the manuscript form, e.
Brepols...