Corrector

For the fictional characters, see Correctors.

A corrector (English plural Correctors) is a person who or object that practices correction, usually by removing or rectifying errors.

The word is originally a Roman title corrector, derived from the Latin verb corrigēre, meaning "an action to rectify, to make right a wrong."

Apart from the general sense of anyone who corrects mistakes, it has been used as, or part of (some commonly shortened again to Corrector), various specific titles and offices, sometimes quite distant from the original meaning.

Secular offices

Roman Antiquity

A corrector (Latin plural correctores) originally was an extraordinal official, sent by the higher authorities (especially the state, e.g. the Emperor) to check on and take over from lower -especially municipal- officials against whom serious suspicions were pending.

The Corrector Provinciae was a civilian governor (hierarchically under the Vicarius of an administrative diocese) of certain Roman provinces (or eparchies). Among these correctores, according to the Notitia Dignitatum, around 400 AD, there were:

• in Italia, under the diocesan Vicarius of Italia Suburbicaria:
  • the Corrector Apuliae et Calabriae. His officium, specified, is quite small (Princeps officii, Cornicularius, two Tabularii, Commentariensis, Adiutor, Ab actis, Subadiuva; finally unspecified Exceptores and 'other' Cohortalini, i.e menial staff);
  • the Corrector Lucaniae et Bruttiorum;
• the Corrector of Savia, in Pannonia (Balkans);
• the Corrector of the Provincia Augustamnica, in Egypt;
• the Corrector of Paflagonia, in Asia Minor (Anatolia).

Two famous but extraordinary correctores were Odaenathus and his son Vaballathus.

• When Emperor Valerian was defeated and captured by the Parthians, in 260, and his successors lacked the strength to fight them back, governor Odaenathus defended the frontier in the East, creating an almost independent state (known as Palmyrene Empire, after its capital Syrian Palmyra), formally still within the Roman Empire, and gained the title of corrector totius orientis "corrector of the whole East".
• When Odaenathus died, his son requested and obtained, after some years, the same title, but later styled himself Augustus, and Emperor Aurelian went in the East to squash this open rebellion, defeating and capturing Vaballathus and his mother (and behind-the-throne actual ruler) Zenobia.

In various municipia, corrector became the title of a permanent single chief magistrate — traditionally there had been collegial systems, e.g. two Consules or Duumviri), as a Byzantine 7th century source attests for thirteen cities in the Egyptian province Augustamnica Prima.

Feudal times

• Corrector of the Press

Ecclesiastic (Catholic) titles

• In the Roman Curia (papal ecclesiastical administration); there is an office of corrector and reviser of the books of the Vatican Library; of the former Tribunal of Correctors, abolished by Pius VII, only a substitute-corrector among the Abbreviatores was maintained
• In the regular order of the Minims it was the style of Superiors at the convent level, and the higher level, all elected; at the central level, the title is Corrector General, and at the level of the province, Corrector Provincial.
• Correctores Romani was the name of a pontifical canon law commission, installed by Gregory XIII, later increased to thirty-five members by Pius V in 1566, which revised the text of the Corpus Iuris Canonici.

Furthermore, the word Corrector was used as the title of several publications, some of which are quite famous, such as the 19th book, also known as Medicus, of the Ancient canons.

The derived term correctorium has been used for revisions of the text of the Vulgate Bible, begun in 1236 by the Dominicans under the French Cardinal Hugh of St. Cher.

Publishing

• a proofreader

Objects

The term is used for various devices used to correct another, as with a ship's compass or artillery.

See also

• censor
• Correctory text-form of the Latin Vulgate resulting from the critical emendation in the thirteenth century
• critic

Sources and references

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
• Notitia dignitatum (one online edition is http://www.intratext.com/X/LAT0212.htm)
• Pauly-Wissowa
• Catholic Encyclopaedia (various entries; more still to be checked, use its search)