Commentary converts the quote

Claim (verbatim)

Commentary converts the quote: writing a line-by-line commentary on an authority permanently converts a scholastic's citation channel to that authority from mediated to direct across his whole subsequent output. The commentary forces desk-level engagement with a complete exemplar; afterwards the master quotes from his own annotated copy rather than from the Lombard, the Gloss, or florilegia. Exposure events should therefore appear in the citation record as step-changes datable to the commentary's composition window — a way to watch a medieval library being internalized.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

For each authority on which Aquinas wrote a dedicated commentary with a known composition window (Pseudo-Dionysius' Divine Names, Boethius' De Trinitate and De hebdomadibus, the Aristotelian commentaries), split that authority's citation contacts outside the commentary itself into pre-window and post-window. Primary clause: for Pseudo-Dionysius, the direct-quotation share of contacts rises by at least 20 percentage points from pre- to post-commentary windows; the verdict follows this clause. Secondary clause: the shift has the same sign for at least three of the other commented authorities and reverses by 10 points or more for none.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

Kill: the in-house Aquinas citation corpus (1,424 judged contacts with direct-vs-mediated flags and composition-date windows).

Novelty / leakage triage

provisional — model-triaged, shepherd review pending

A provisional first pass authored by the model (Opus), not yet confirmed by the shepherd. It carries the same dated-search requirements as an authoritative verdict but is excluded from every headline figure and cannot underwrite a prediction until a shepherd confirms it. Provisional reading: Adjacent (closely related prior work exists).

The direction is textbook Aquinas scholarship and the near-twin of W01's 'Moerbeke's dividend' (adjacent): Thomas moved from mediated access (the Lombard, the Gloss, florilegia) to direct consultation of complete exemplars as translations and library access accumulated, and he wrote a dedicated commentary on Dionysius' Divine Names (Torrell). Not located: any measurement of the commentary-as-conversion-event the item stakes -- the direct-quotation share of an authority's contacts rising >=20 points across the composition window of a dedicated commentary on that authority, with concordant signs across the other commented authors -- on the in-house corpus.

• Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1: The Person and His Work (rev. ed., CUA Press, 2005) — Chronology of Aquinas's commentaries and his shift to direct consultation
• In-house Aquinas citation corpus (1,424 judged contacts with direct-vs-mediated flags and composition windows) — The kill dataset for the pre/post-commentary split

Predictions

No prediction registered yet.