Corpus of Latin Ecclesiastical Writers, Vol. LXV: Hilary's Treatise on the Mysteries, Fragments, and Hymns

1. The Treatises on the Mysteries, or rather their remains, have been handed down to us in only one manuscript book: the Arezzo original: "Aretino" manuscript lat. VI 3 (= A). It is a parchment manuscript, written in the middle of the 11th century in the script called Beneventan-Cassinese¹. The entire Arezzo volume consists of the remains of two manuscripts written in almost the same period. One (now fifteen leaves) contained Hilary’s Treatises on the Mysteries and the Book of Hymns; the other (now twenty-two leaves) contained Egeria’s Pilgrimage to the Holy Places original: "Peregrinatio ad loca sancta". The writing space of each page of the first part of the manuscript is 207 x 138 mm, while the leaves are 262 mm long and 171 mm wide. There are thirty-three lines on each page of the first part of the manuscript, and thirty-five lines on the pages of the other part. The leaves are not numbered in the manuscript itself; therefore, we provide the leaf numbers starting from the first preserved leaf. The leaves are arranged in quires original: "quaterniones". The first of these consists of five leaves, since its first, seventh, and eighth leaves have been lost. What is today the second quire exists intact; of the third quire, it seems only the second and seventh leaves have been preserved. Regarding the entirely lost quires, one should consult what we explained on page XVII and following.

Even in the existing leaves, certain damages to the writing are found, arising from moisture or the injury of time. For not only are many words so faded that they can scarcely or not at all be read (such as p. 3, 7. 8. 5, 17. 7, 3. 25, 5. 28, 19. 29, 27. 37, 26), but also not a few words or parts of words have perished because they were corroded or cut away along with the parchment itself (such as p. 4, 5. 6. 7. 5, 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 25. 7, 2. 3). Where we have noted nothing in the apparatus about this matter, the first editor, Giovanni Francesco Gamurrini, has already repaired those damages himself. There are two lacunae original: "lacunae" (gaps/missing text) in the manuscript, namely at p. 9, 27 and p. 14, 27. The former, covering a space of about 14 letters, perhaps originated because the passage of Holy Scripture in the archetype ended with the letters "etc." The latter, covering a space of 5 letters, originated because the scribe could not understand what was missing in the archetype. The punctuation, which the scribe of manuscript A used, is in not a few places either wrong or less than correct; things that belong together are often punctuated, or things are not separated which [are distinct].

¹ Cf. also I. F. Gamurrini, Preface to the edition (Biblioteca dell’ Academia storico-giuridica IV [1887]; P. Geyer, Itinera Hierosolymit. (CSEL XXXIX p. VIII sqq.); H. Lindemann, Des hl. Hilarius von P. Liber mysteriorum 94—98; Studies III 16 sqq.