Interpolation (manuscripts)

Ancient texts come down to us mostly in late handwritten copies, themselves copied from early copies. There may be only two or three stages of copying between the author and our earliest extant copy: or there may be dozens. When the manuscripts are examined, there are sometimes passages found in the text which were not written by the author. These are known as interpolations.

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It is not always the case that these are forged passages, although sometimes they may be. The Forged Decretals are an example of an early text into which additions were made for fraudulent purposes. Likewise the letters of Ignatius were interpolated by Apollinarian heretics, three centuries later. Charters and legal texts are also subject to such forms of forgery.

Related Topics:
Forged Decretals - Ignatius

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But most interpolations are made quite innocently. When a copyist made an error copying a text and forgot a line or two, he tended to place the additional material in the margin. However marginal notes exist in practically all manuscripts anyway, made by readers. When a scribe came to write a copy from this manuscript, it would be very difficult for him to know if a marginal note was an omission made by the previous scribe (which should be placed in the text), or a note made by a reader (which should be ignored or left in the margin). Conscientious scribes tended to copy everything on the page before them. So a judgement had to be made; and the education or otherwise of the scribe would determine what appeared. In this way explanatory notes could easily find their way into the text.

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Modern scholars have developed tools to recognise these additions, which indeed are often obvious to modern eyes, although less so to the medieval copyist.

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