484 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
The question may now be asked, what gain, apart from the 
romance of this discovery and identification, accrues to the text of 
Cicero by the emergence of this codex? The answer is that it plays 
an important part in the improvement of the text. The early printed 
editions of the classical authors were taken as a rule from any manu- 
script that happened to be convenient for the purpose. Many of 
these were contemporary manuscripts of the 15th century, full of so- 
called corrections by Italian copyists, and presenting many .features 
of contrast to the purer tradition that is to be found in codices of an 
earlier date. In this fact lies a vindication of modern critical methods. 
It furnishes, in fact, the justification in many cases for the bold 
treatment of a degenerate text, from which the critic rejects what he 
considers obviously to belong to some collator and not to the original 
author. Secondly this manuscript throws a flood of light on the 
interrelationship of many extant codices. In its journeyings it passed 
from Cluni to the Low Countries, was consulted by many editors and 
critics, and has left its mark, without any previous revelation of its 
source or authority, on many printed editions. The Cluni codex 
must be regarded now as the primary basis and foundation of all the 
texts which it contains. The importance of this statement will be 
recognized when it is remembered that the great German editor, Halm, 
used no fewer than 40 manuscripts on which to found his text of 
Cicero’s Speeches against Catiline; and this manuscript of ours takes 
precedence of every one of Halm’s manuscripts in respect both of age 
and of authority. In addition to most of the Catiline Speeches, it 
contains part of the Speeches against Verres. These Speeches were 
originally published in seven books. For the 6th and 7th our best 
authority is a great codex at Paris, pretty nearly contemporary with 
ours. Ours contains books IV and V although in a very mutilated 
condition; and as I have elsewhere shown the direct connection which 
exists between the Paris Codex and another manuscript, also in 
Paris, containing the earlier books, the criticism of all the Verrine 
orations may now be said to have been placed on a sound basis; we 
can now, in fact, like Cuvier with his skeleton, reconstruct the complete 
archetype from which these other manuscripts have been derived. 
Sometime after the 12th century, the Cluni manuscript was 
stolen, in all probability, from its original home, and the mark which 
it bore on its front page was carefully erased. This cannot have 
been later than the year 1562 when the Abbey of Cluni was sacked 
by the Huguenots. In the effort to trace its subsequent history, 
it is well to note that collators, like Cujas, may have had access to it; 
some various readings cited by him occur nowhere else than in this 
Cluni Codex. Cujas (1522-1590) was the greatest French jurist of 
