The community of the realm in Scotland, 1249–1424
History, law and charters in a recreated kingdom
Why a dynamic edition for Regiam?
How does the project's model of a dynamic edition reveal so much more of that work's complex manuscript history?
The aim of a dynamic edition is to reveal not only how a work is instantiated differently in all its manuscript texts but also to show where and to what extent different manuscripts have different text in the same location. As a result, it is particularly fruitful editorial approach to works which have a high degree of textual mouvance.
A telling example
Regiam has a very high degree of such movement, and we are developing ways of measuring that mouvance. For now, an example will suffice.
For example, in Regiam manuscript-textF (Version1), we learn that (following Glanvill), if an ecclesiastical judge determined whether claimant was born before or after his parent's marriage, the case was then returned to the royal court, where the claimant would either lose his case or obtain his or her inheritance.
Et secundum iudicium episcopi in curia domini regis supplebitur de adiudicanda uel abiudicanda hereditate ipsi super qua fit contencio, ita quod per iudicium curie, hereditatem ipsam obtinebit uel clameum perdet.
In Regiam manuscript-textI (Version 2), however, a problem is clearly introduced at the heart of the text. Following a sentence which broadly agrees with MS-textF, MS-textI records this:
Glossa super hoc, et cetera, ecce Decretales quid dicit libro quarto capitulo, Qui filii sunt legitimi, Tanta est uis matrimonii ut qui antea sunt geniti post contractum matrimonium legitimum habeantur. Si autem uir uiuente uxore aliam cognouerit et ex ea prolem susceperit licet post mortem uxoris eam duxerit nihilominus spurius erit filius et ab hereditate repellendus. Exinde, iste textus est nobilium responsio de Anglia unde patet in promisionibus de Mertona ultimo paragrapho, per quod uidetur iste liber Regie Maiestatis esse de legibus Anglie et Scocie.
The conflict between Regiam and canon law had been noted (as auxiliary text) and developed in MS-textC where Roman law scenarios (mainly relating to female slaves and concubines) are put forward. But the basic conflict had not before been resolved, as it was in MS I.
This is only one occasion where textual movement in Regiam resulted in the resolution (at least in this text) of a point of law. But the manuscript tradition is dotted through with such changes, and indeed many more of lesser legal significance. If we fail to represent those changes, we cannot understand how Regiam—and its authority, and its content—changed over the 15th and 16th century, and thus how Scottish law changed alongside with it. Because Regiam as it originally circulated in the fourteenth century, is a different text to that which was circulating far more frequently from the 15th century onwards.