On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, Vol. I

...they left intact words contracted by the scribes which should have been separated, or separated which should have been contracted, having published δηλονότι instead of δῆλον ὅτι, ἐπιπολύ instead of ἐπὶ πολύ, τινι καῦτα (763 K) instead of τηνικαῦτα, μὴ δέ instead of μηδέ, κατὰ θνητῶν instead of καταθνητῶν (596 K), διοικεῖ τὸ instead of διοικεῖτο, i.e., διοικοῖτο. Furthermore, where the scribe of the manuscript had left an empty space, either because he had not recognized the strokes of the letters in the archetype as they were obscure, or because the letters had faded, there they themselves also generally placed a gap and did not dare to fill it, which occurred in nearly twenty places. From which it follows that, since they rarely departed from the custom of the manuscripts in these types of writing, they do not appear to have departed much in others either, so that the Aldine edition printed an example of the manuscript with great fidelity and therefore should be considered in the likeness of a manuscript itself. However, the matter would be more clear if the manuscript, by whose example the editors expressed the text of the books On the Doctrines, had survived to our age. Now it must be vehemently lamented that it is lost33. Nevertheless, it can be affirmed with certainty that it derived its origin from the same family as the one which is today preserved in the Marciana Library in Venice, signed no. 284 (M). For the Aldine and the Marcianus both begin from the second book; furthermore, the gaps which we just said are in the Aldine are the same in the Marcianus, with the exception of one, which is found on folio 163a of the Aldine, where it is written...

33) Perhaps it was the same manuscript which we read in the last century existed in Venice in the library of the monastery of S. Michael near Murano in the Catalogue of Benedict Mittarelli, which is titled 'Library of the Manuscripts of the Monastery of S. Michael of Venice near Murano. Posthumous work of Joh. Bened. Mittarelli, Venetian Abbot Ex-General of the Benedictine-Camaldolese. Venice 1779.' There on p. 424: 'Galen, On the Dogmas of Hippocrates and Plato, 7 books. Greek manuscript in folio n. 132, but mutilated at the beginning and end, and the first and the beginning of the second book are missing.' After that college was dissolved, Valentinelli, a most learned man, writes that the greater part of the library was taken to Rome—having been communicated to me most kindly through letters given to Mr. Thomas, the Munich librarian—and placed there by Gregory XIII in the monastery of S. Gregory. At my request, my colleague A. Schoene, when he was in Rome this year, inquired about the manuscript and found absolutely nothing, with the people of that monastery not even providing access to their library, if indeed it exists now.