2. Historical methods in open traditions
2.1. The genealogy, if known, would make evaluation easy even in
a
contaminated tradition. Suppose that the manuscripts disagree. If we can
find a common ancestor for the group that attest one reading, and at the
same time a path bypassing that ancestor can be traced from each member
of
the (or a) rival group back to the original, the former reading is attributable
to error in that ancestor. Every group can be tested thus against every
other,
and unless every reading is found attributable to error, the original (or
rather
the oldest recoverable) reading will be identified.
Now the only way to know that a group of manuscripts share an
ancestor on which the remaining manuscripts are not wholly dependent is
to
have caught that group in an exclusive error elsewhere. Open traditions,
however, exhibit a multitude of two-way splits (to go no farther), mostly
rare or even unique. Over Cyprian's De Unitate, for
example, there
are 346 passages where the eighteen manuscripts collated by M.
Bévenot
survive and divide into two groups; these show no less than 198 different
agreement patterns, of which 164 occur just once.[15] Many agreement patterns among
the
indeterminate passages occur in no determinate passage; none of their
constituent groups, therefore, will have been observed in exclusive error.
Such patterns cannot be illuminated by the partial genealogy derivable from
the determinate passages. Among four manuscripts ABCD, for example,
suppose that we detect unique errors in each, as well as some common
errors
in AB and some in CD. The stemma of fig. 4a results. Suppose in addition
an
indeterminate split AD:BC. According to fig. 4a, AD have no common
source but the original, nor do BC; but in fact either AD or BC must have
a
common source, as one of the readings must be wrong.[16] The existing genealogy does not
aid evaluation here. On the contrary, an evaluation would fill out the
genealogy: if we decided after all that AD were correct, we would ascribe
to
BC a common source (which fig. 4b takes simply as B); if we preferred to
follow BC, we would link AD.
It may be noted that the same apparatus criticus admits
more
than one genealogy in an open tradition (§1.2). Suppose four
manuscripts
EFGH, each bearing unique errors, and suppose further some common
errors in EF, some in GH, some in EH, some in FG. We might infer fig.
5a.
However, the links E-H and F-G could be differently orientated (fig. 5b).
Or,
instead of ascribing common error to "intrastemmatic" contamination, we
should perhaps ascribe common freedom from error to an
"extrastemmatic" source (i.e. a lost source not derived from the latest
common ancestor of the extant manuscripts);[17] in fig. 5c, μ accounts for the
shared errors
both of GH and of EF (which had no access to μ to correct λ's
errors).
In an open tradition it is not always obvious which of the alternative
pedigrees has the dubious advantage of being the simplest.
2.2. For a genealogical approach to evaluation, then, one determinate
specimen of every attested two-way split is prerequisite. Dom H. Quentin,
however, claimed that a full genealogy could be constructed with far less
information. He argued that if three manuscripts were related in any of the
ways shown in fig. 6, the outer pair (AC) would never agree against
the intermediary (B).
[18] All the
diagrams
comprise the same enchainment, variously orientated. Quentin supposed
conversely that if the number of agreements of two manuscripts (AC)
against
a third (B) were zero, the three were related according to one or other of
the
diagrams in fig. 6 and stood in the enchainment A-B-C. On comparing by
threes all the manuscripts of a tradition, Quentin expected to discover
enough zeros to form the complete enchainment, which would merely
require orientation. Conflation would be revealed through the last case in
fig.
6, though in fact zero agreement in AC against B will occur only in the
atypical case where B simply amalgamates AC and never errs.
Now in all six cases in fig. 6, at least one of the three manuscripts
derives directly from another. It follows that if, after standard practice,[19] every manuscript which derives
from another
extant manuscript is eliminated, the remaining manuscripts will exhibit no
zeros at all. Yet Quentin did obtain zeros, by restricting the field of
variants.
Suppose three independent descendants of one ancestor. Before the count
begins, the number of agreements of any pair against the remaining
manuscript is of course zero. If the text is long enough, all three
manuscripts
will eventually err and all three zeros will be breached. However, if the
text
is so short that one of the manuscripts did not err, a spurious zero will
remain. Quentin used short texts, and further increased the likelihood of the
survival of a zero by eliminating readings which "attirent l'attention des
copistes".[20] He also regarded a low
figure
as a
quasi-zero, equivalent to zero; but in fact a quasi-zero may result not only
from intermediacy (e.g. if the two outer manuscripts occasionally agree by
coincidence) but also from wholly different relationships.[21]
Quentin also eliminated unique readings. Any manuscript standing at
the
end of a branch was thereby replaced by the nearest extant manuscript
or branch-point; in fig. 7b, for example,
a should show A's
text apart
from A's unique readings. Once an enchainment was established between
these surrogates, the manuscripts themselves could be shown branching off
it. For example, the enchainment Hub-Bern-Anic-Theo, reached after the
removal of unique readings, was modified to fig. 7a
(
Mémoire, p. 257). With this adaptation, Quentin's
method
detects zeros in a wider range of enchainments but by no means in all. In
fig.
7b, A without its unique readings becomes
a, as does B; C
becomes
β, and so on; but no zero reveals the relations between
αβγδ.
The variants therefore had to be kept few. One of Quentin's
genealogies
rested on a passage of under 250 words—hardly long enough for
every
copyist to have committed an error meeting Quentin's conditions. All his
analyses involve fewer than 100 variants and he considered twenty
sometime
sufficient (Essais, pp. 124, 65). Those who took larger
samples of the
same works found no zeros. For example, whereas Quentin used 91
variants
from the Vulgate Octateuch (Mémoire, p. 328), Dom
J. Chapman
found, on the basis of some two thousand from Genesis and Exodus alone,
that "comparison by threes will no longer produce zeros".[22] Again, the zeros which Quentin
found on the
basis of a sample from the Lai de l'Ombre were breached
elsewhere,
as Bédier noted (Romania, LIV [1928], 328).
Similarly a test on
hundreds of variants in Mark yielded "but one zero line among eighty-four
groups of three
manuscripts".[23]
Quentin's approach has been continued by G. P. Zarri, who uses even
fewer variants. In a section of some one hundred lines of the
Chanson de
Roland he reduced the field to just thirteen, by eliminating on the
suspicion of polygenesis the variants that prevented the appearance of the
requisite zeros.[24] Another study
concerned
a text so tiny that Zarri found
too many zeros: the Copa in the Appendix Vergiliana, comprising
thirty-eight lines, yielded sixteen admissible variants among six
manuscripts,
and no less than fourteen zero lines among the twenty groups of three
manuscripts.
[25] His rules for
combining the
lines of intermediacy are questionable. For example, in fig. 8a he expects
a
zero in C against BE,
among many others. In fact, however, two manuscripts will not show zero
agreement against a third if a path exists between the two
manuscripts—other than a path leading downwards from
both—which
bypasses the third. Some agreements of BE against C are therefore
expected,
where C innovates and E follows D. Again he wrongly supposes that the
pattern of zeros allows a convergent enchainment to be re-orientated. Fig.
8b
will exhibit one zero, namely in BD against A; if B is instead placed
uppermost, the only zero now stands in AC against B.
[26]
2.3. Instead of a contaminated genealogy, some are content to
reconstruct an outline stemma on which every manuscript is derived from
its
main source alone. One method is to list the two-way splits in decreasing
order of frequency until we meet one that is inconsistent (§1.1) with
some predecessor.[27] If contamination
is
slight, this selection will include most passages, and a stemma accounting
for
them follows through the methods of Maas and Froger. Where
contamination is more extensive, different procedures are proposed by P.
Buneman,[28] V.A. Dearing,[29]
D. Najock[30]
and E. Poole[31] for selecting variants
on
which to base a tree that traces
main sources. In this situation, however, the cumulative neglect of
subsidiary
sources, which in some cases might be almost as important as the main
sources, compromises both the historical and evaluative functions of the
tree.
In open traditions, it may be impossible to identify any genealogy of
main sources as the correct one. A single apparatus
criticus
admits many equally plausible histories, which may differ even if secondary
sources are overlooked. For illustration, suppose three manuscripts ABC
which err together five times; let each manuscript also bear ten unique
errors; in five more places, A alone is correct, and, in seven more places,
C
alone. One possible genealogy is fig. 9a:ω committed five errors, and
so
on, while B adopted seven of a's errors and five of β's
and added
ten of its own. B thus departed from α in 15-7+5+10=23 places, and
from
β in 8-5+7+10=20 places. Hence its main source is β, and the
genealogy of main sources is fig. 9b. However, the genealogy of fig. 9c
equally fits the
facts. Here A used λ to avoid five of γ's errors and one of δ's,
but
accepted two of λ's errors and added eight of its own. As A departs
from
λ twenty-five times and from δ only sixteen times, its main source
is
δ, whence the tree of fig. 9d. Now any procedure to recover a divergent
tree from the apparatus criticus will yield either (b), which
is false if
(c) is the true history, or (d), which is false if (a) is the true history. The
tree
yielded by any particular procedure can therefore be no more than one out
of
many possible genealogies of main sources.
Evaluation can be falsified by disregard of subsidiary sources. Fig.
9b
implies that AB's agreements are correct, but they may in fact be errors
inherited from the neglected a; similarly fig. 9d gives
unwarranted
priority to BC's shared readings. Again, as shown in §2.1,
contradictions
result if the stemma is applied to evaluate variants discarded in its
construction as inconsistent. If fig. 4b were the true genealogy, with C
following β more often than B, and the stemma of fig. 4a were
recovered, then in the splits AD:BC, resulting from C's secondary use of
B,
the stemma could not decide priority. Such discarded variants would
abound, in open traditions. The first chapter (about 160 words) of Cyprian's
De Unitate yields, for the eighteen manuscripts
abBDeGhHJkmOp-PRTWY, the following five splits, among others:
[32]
- 1. DHJkP: rell. (induimur)
- 2. bhHmpRT: rell. (subruendis)
- 3. GhHJmpRT: rell. (grassatur)
- 4. DhJmT:GY: rell. (crudelitate)
- 5. aJHT: rell. (conatus)
Of these five, no stemma could accommodate more than one. Generally, no
stemma can provide an evaluative policy in a seriously contaminated
tradition. V.A. Dearing's application of stemmata to evaluation require the
discarded variants to be "treated as something different from what they
really
are" (see n. 29, pp. 87 ff.). The present writer has elsewhere criticised in
detail the logic of Dearing's approach to history and evaluation. A model
tradition, representing in miniature two parallel families that influence each
other (fig. 10a), supplied a test: Dearing's procedures yielded a quite
different tree (fig. 10b) and led to the wrong choice of reading in 44% of
passages.
[33] Dearing replies that a test
problem which
contradicts his method involves different assumptions on textual
transmission, and that a tradition which violates his own assumptions is not
"likely to occur in real life";
[34] but
real life
seems more varied than Dearing allows. He further objects that, in any
case,
"hypothetical cases are always hypothetical"—rather as if the
manufacturer
of a drug which in experiments on rats proved fatal protested that rats were
merely rats.
