The Politics of Text Editing in Carolingian France Daniel L. Selden University of California, Santa Cruz Writing on the fringes of the Byzantine world about 562 CE, Cassiodorus, a retired Ostrogothic senator of Syrian extraction, undertook to summarize the protocols of textual criticism for the monastic community—the Vivarium—that he had founded near Scylacium, which passed them on in turn to the clerics of the Christian Middle Ages: 1 Among those pursuits which require bodily labor, the studies of the scribes who curate old manuscripts (studia antiquariorum), if they write correctly (veraciter), appeal to me the most, and not perhaps without reason: for by reading the divine scriptures they instruct their own minds in a most salutary manner and by writing out the precepts of the Lord they disseminate them far and wide. Happy the project, praiseworthy the zeal, to preach to men with the hand, to open tongues with the fingers, to give salvation silently to mortals, and to fight against the illicit pilferings of the devil with pen and ink: Satan receives a wound for every word of the Lord that the antiquary transcribes.... I have left you [unedited] manuscripts that need to be read over and corrected (codices relegendos atque emendandos) with scrupulous care by attentive scribes . . . Those of you, therefore, who are proficient in the knowledge of sacred and secular letters, who have the expertise to determine what is inconsistent with ordinary usage, comb through the readings (lectiones) of the consecrated texts in the following manner—for that which is to be prepared for a simple and less accomplished society should be undertaken by a few learned men; on which account, enter upon [your task] with diligence and correct the errors of the copyists in such a way that you are not open to blame for trying to emend others rashly. An editorial