Corpus of Latin Ecclesiastical Writers, Vol. LXII: Ambrose's Exposition of Psalm 118

P 6. Paris codex N. A. L. 1437 of the 10th century, formerly Cluniacensis 40, corrected here and there by a second hand; it is prefaced as G.

R 7. Vatican Reginensis codex 32 of the 10th century, carelessly written and corrected here and there, flowed from the same source as A. It is prefaced as GP. In the subscription on leaf 177b, among other things, it reads: Book of the holy abbot Benedict of the monastery of Fleury. If anyone steals this, may they be cursed. Just as a sailor desires to come to the shore, so the scribe Maganarius desires to come to the kingdom of God.

T 8. Trier codex 120 of the 11th century; it was accurately described by Maximilian Ihm in Studiis Ambrosianis pages 95 sqq., who also communicated many of its variant readings there on pages 97—119. The first leaf, containing the title and chapters 1–2 of the prooemium, has perished.

Except for O, collations of these books were available to me when, upon the death of M. Ihm, I undertook the task of editing which had been enjoined upon him. By scrutinizing these, I understood that no single codex is worthy to serve as the guide that leads the examination, and that not even families of manuscripts can be clearly distinguished. For although it appears that the French manuscripts APR and the German ones GMNT are of different origins, their readings are nevertheless often variously mixed and confused among themselves. Furthermore, these all share certain common lacunae and are so corrupt in some places that the true reading cannot be extracted from them, even when it seems to appear in published editions. For these reasons, Henr. Lebègue, at my request, inspected thirteen other codices of the 11th—15th centuries that are preserved in Paris. From among these, O, which fills by far the most lacunae, was collated entirely by Lebègue; although it does not reach the value of the more ancient ones, it nevertheless provided help in quite a few places.

Besides the books enumerated above, which I used as a foundation for establishing the text, a part—whether small or larger—of all the 11th-century codices, except for the Venetian St. Mark 58 and two of the 12th century, has been collated, in case by chance one or another might be found to be better than NT; this did not happen. These are, however:

Partially collated codices 9. Cassinese 154 of the 11th century, collated by A. Goldbacher up to treatise 3, 3; it is useful here and there The reading indeed on page 14, 21, which my codices do not know, exists also in the Paris codices 343 and 15638 of the 11th century.; however, it generally either incorrectly transposes words or offers peculiar readings of no value; I have cited it a few times.