Synthesizing the Errors: What Can We Learn?

When examined together, the errors in Western MS 097 reveal consistent patterns. What stands out most is the sheer number of mistakes throughout the manuscript--at least one, and often many, can be found at least every couple of folios. While a comparison with the frequency of errors in other graduals would be necessary in order to know how this rate compares to the typical amount of mistakes other scribes were making, we might postulate that the scribe, or scribes, responsible for this manuscript were not particularly experienced. Other explanations might be that the manuscript was completed in a hurry, or that some of the errors occurred in the source text--particularly those that were not noticed by the corrector(s).

For the most part, while the mistakes that were not immediately corrected by the main scribe, either by altering the letter forms or by scraping the ink off of the page, may be orthographically or gramatically wrong in context, they consist of word forms found within the Latin lexicon. Even when they aren't, these erroneous forms often bear close resemblence to the pronunciation of the correct word or phrase. At times, the errors result in a nonsensical, or otherwise very different, meaning that the original phrase would have had, even when the word does exist in Latin. All of these qualities point to a scribe who was not rigorously trained in Latin but nonetheless had some level of knowledge of how the language looked and sounded. One possibility might be that the manuscript was the product of one or several cloister monks or nuns who chanted the liturgy regularly and created the manuscript for their own monastic community. However, a secular scribe in the thirteenth century could also have fit the description of someone who was exposed to Latin without having learned the language fully.

Additionally, the corrections in multiple different inks affirm the fact that this manuscript was produced in phases, as do the instances of missing colored initial letters. The main text, the corrections, the more elaborately decorated intials, and the solid-colored initials were all carried out in separate stages, and probably in that order. It is hard to know how many hands were involved in subdividing the labor of each of these stages just by examining errors and corrections alone. Regardless, what emerges is the fact that, in spite of the frequency of the manuscript's errors, accuracy was something that its producers and users did care about and did their best to maintain with the knowledge and tools they had at their disposal.

Of course, mistakes aren't always indicative of some underlying historical cause or circumstance. Sometimes, people become distracted or lost in thought and stop paying close attention to what they are doing. This is something that would have been as true for a thirteenth-century manuscript scribe as it is for a present-day student or worker going about his or her menial tasks. The errors of Western MS 097 show us, above all, the humanity of the scribe or scribes behind its production. Whether male or female, monk or layperson, we come to understand that they were not so different from us as popular conceptions of the "Dark Ages" might lead us to believe.