INTRODUCTION.

In this case, however, the best printed edition—the Benedictine edition (1778—1842)—proved so unsatisfactory, not only in minor matters like accents and punctuation, but also regarding the adopted readings and critical notes, that I was compelled to create what is essentially a new text. For this purpose, during a brief visit to Paris last year, I made a fresh collation of parts of the two most important manuscripts used by the Benedictines, denoted in this edition by the letters "a" and "b." Due to limited time, I could not complete the collation; in some sections, I only noted the evidence of these manuscripts where the Benedictine editors indicated variations in the text. I collated the manuscript in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, in the same way—denoted here by "g"—which had not been collated before. Furthermore, through the kind assistance of Herr S. Riezler, I obtained a complete collation of the Munich manuscript "c" by Dr. C. Gleye. This manuscript had not been used for any previous edition of Gregory. From the Rev. H. N. Bate, Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and the Rev. K. Lake, Fellow of Lincoln College, I obtained complete collations of the various valuable manuscripts preserved at Oxford. The readings of these manuscripts had been recorded to some extent by Montagu in the 17th century, but his method makes his work useless for accurate criticism.

The manuscripts upon which this text is based are therefore as follows:

a. The Medicean MS. 510 in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris (Omont i p. 66). This fine codex (an ancient manuscript book) is described in the Benedictine edition, Vol. I, p. xi. It is written in uncial characters (capital, rounded letters) on parchment, with a