Abstract

It may be of interest to supplement the latter part of Professor Conway's article by a note applying the same standards to estimating the value of the other sources on which we have to rely for our knowledge of the Spirensian tradition. Apart from ‘L’ and Harl. 2684 Luchs used for this purpose three partially Spirensian sources: the one fourteenth-century and four fifteenth-century MSS whose archetype he called ‘R’ V, the fifteenth-century Vat. Pal. 876, and the fifteenth-century Flor. Laur. lxxxix. inf. 1. The last mentioned may be dismissed as practically valueless and as supplying little more than new corruptions from an unusually contaminated intermediary. In addition to these deteriores Luchs used the Agennensis , but only for the Spirensian supplement in Book xxvi' and for the last part of Book xxx . He did not deal at all with the Spirensian textual correctors in A