Vellum Original of the Third Concordance

The Vellum Original of the Third Concordance is the inscribed master copy of the Third Concordance, executed in Verity Ink upon a single leaf of Verity's Span vellum and held, after several removals, in the Vault of Original Instruments on Sub-level Sigma-44. It is the parent document from which all working recensions of the Third Concordance descend, and the only copy whose readings may be cited in proceedings before the Concordance Bench. It is distinct from the class of vellum originals generally, and is frequently confused in correspondence with the Vellum Original of Clause VII, which was appended to it in the winter of the forty-first revision and has since acquired an independent archival life of its own.

Physical description

The leaf measures 41 by 29 centimetres and is ruled at nineteen lines to the leaf, though only seventeen are used. The hand is the late Formalist minuscule prescribed by Concordance 12, Annex 3 for instruments of the first rank; the marginal corrections are in a second, narrower hand, unidentified, and are the subject of the dispute recorded under the Guild of Scribes and Formalists. Two seal-slits pierce the lower margin. The leaf has never been trimmed, which is unusual: most first-rank originals in the Central Vellum Repository were trimmed at rebinding in the ninth revision, and the survival of the deckle edge here is treated by the Office of Measure as a control specimen for Verity's Span stock generally.

The vellum exhibits the characteristic magneto-reactive flush of Verity Ink under inspection lamps — a faint bronze cast along the ruling lines, absent from later additions. A note filed by the Sub-Warden of Stacks in the eleventh revision records that the flush "may be taken as diagnostic of the original stroke and of nothing else whatever," a caution occasioned by an inspector who had mistaken a candle-smut for a reading.

Provenance

The leaf was inscribed in the scriptorium at Verity's Span and transferred to the Vellum Stacks in the same year, under seal of the then Keeper of Original Instruments. It remained in the Stacks for one hundred and six years before removal to the Seventh Iron Strongroom, where the humidity was thought preferable. It was returned to the Stacks during the Requisition of the Ninth Winter, taken out again in the twenty-third revision, and finally deposited in the Vault of Original Instruments, where it has lain undisturbed except for the annual inspection and one occasion in the thirty-eighth revision when it was moved to permit repairs to the vault's west wall.

Each movement is recorded in the Register of Movements, a bound ledger kept in duplicate. The duplicate was lost in the ninth revision and has never been reconstructed; the Office of the Register maintains that the primary is sufficient, and the Auditors of the Vault have entered a standing objection which they renew each revision without expectation of success.

The reading of the forty-seventh line

The principal scholarly difficulty of the leaf lies in the preamble, where the text states that the First Archon ascended "preceded by forty-seven who bore blades of office." The numeral is written in the Formalist fashion and the final stroke is partly obscured by a marginal correction of the second hand. The College of Recensions reads the numeral as forty-seven. The Guild of Scribes and Formalists reads it as forty-one, holding that the obscured stroke is a correction mark and not a numeral at all.

"That a stroke may be both correction and numeral is not disputed. That it may be both in the same position, on the same leaf, to the advantage of one party, is disputed annually and at length."

— Guild of Scribes and Formalists, Annual Submission to the Bench, 29th revision

The College's position rests on the Transcription of the Third Scribe, which gives forty-seven without comment; the Guild observes that the Third Scribe transcribed from the leaf itself and cannot be treated as independent witness. No third source exists. The dispute has been carried to the Bench four times and remitted twice on procedural grounds, once because the Concordance Bench could not agree whether the leaf should be examined in the vault or in the chamber, and once because the examiner appointed had died and no successor had been sealed.

Access and handling

The leaf may be consulted by holders of a Reader's Warrant of the First Rank, granted by the Keeper of Original Instruments and countersigned by two Librarians. Consultations are held on the second and fourth days of the week, between the hours of ten and two, in the presence of an attendant. Ink is not permitted in the vault, nor is any instrument with a point; a reader who requires a note must dictate it to the attendant, who will transcribe it in the antechamber. Readers are asked to declare any recent illness before entry, as the vault has no window and the attendant has no authority to remove anyone from it without a written order.

The rule against pointed instruments was introduced in the nineteenth revision after a reader of the College marked a folio of a neighbouring original in the margin with a silver pen. The reader was fined and the folio withdrawn; the incident is cited in the Sub-Warden's standing instructions on the handling of first-rank instruments and is taught, in abbreviated form, to all candidates for the Warrant.

Reproductions

No facsimile of the leaf has been authorised. Two photographic plates were taken in the thirty-first revision by the Office of Measure; both are held in the Vault, and both are said to be unsatisfactory, though the office has declined to say in what respect. The College of Recensions has petitioned for a new plate in each of the last six revisions. The petitions are granted, funded, and never executed, a circumstance the Office of the Register attributes to the difficulty of obtaining a lamp of sufficient steadiness and the College attributes to nothing in particular.

A hand-copy of the first four lines, made in the twelfth revision and now held in the Vellum Galleries, is the only reproduction in general circulation. It is marked at the foot in red: Not collated. Not for citation.