Introduction to the Edition

The text to accompany the illustrations in the Velislav Bible was edited in accordance with Bohumil Ryba's unpublished set of rules for the transcription of literary texts in Latin. In the manuscript itself there are various kinds of notes related to the main text. Explanatory notes written by the scribe of the tituli(e.g., the names of the depicted figures, descriptions of objects, etc.) have been left in the same type of script as the main text. The Czech and Latin notes accompanying the illuminations on ff. 10r, 40r-52r, 78v, 79r, 89v-92r, 97v and dating to the end of the fourteenth or the beginning of the fifteenth century are written in majuscule letters (e.g., NOE or FARAO), despite the fact that they are minuscule in the original, in order that they may be clearly differentiated from the considerably more copious notes written in German provided for the illustrations to the Book of Genesis on ff. 1r-22v and 41r, which date back to the seventeenth century. Principally, these either constitute a translation of the original Latin notes (e.g., the German word Finsternüss explains the Latin ʻtenebre’) or provide information regarding the Biblical book and chapter reference corresponding with the main tituli (e.g., Gen 1). They are printed in italics in the edition.

There are two critical apparatus system footnote types used in the edition. The first type is a system of text-critical notes apparatus referring to the codicological context. The second constitutes a type represented by factual comments. The first system of critical comments device/apparatus relates to the scribe's errors, which are corrected in the edition (e.g., fenestram: em.; bis in textu or cucurrit: em.; cocurrit in textu), or else supplements the edition with words that were omitted by the scribe or blurred in the original manuscript. In these cases I worked in accordance with a version of the Vulgate, which is the reason for the introduction of book, chapter and verse numbers in such places (e.g., <civitatem>: add. sec. Gn 4, 17; or [Deus fiat] : del. in textu; add. sec. Gn 1, 3; or lugens : em. sec. Gn 37, 34; ingens in textu).