Typographus lectori

The Printer to the Reader.

(From the Venetian edition of the year 1755, vol. II.)

With a few words and most briefly do I detain you at the threshold of this second and last volume of the Areopagitic Works, kind Reader, since in the Advertisement prefixed to the former volume I have already informed you of my utmost care and diligence in preparing and adorning this edition. How exactly I have redeemed my pledge in publishing both volumes within the announced time, there is no reason why I should speak, since the work itself speaks for itself. Yet a few things must be said by me concerning those matters which have been added to this volume, and what I have accomplished in it that it might come forth more adorned. I took care that the Greek Scholia on the Areopagitic Works should be most diligently collated with the very neat codex of St. Mark; the select variant readings, or corrections, the briefer ones indeed, I noted in the margin, while the fuller ones, which ought rather to be called certain Additions, which all preceding editions lacked, I placed at the foot of the page together with a Latin version. Of these you will find not a few, especially in the book On the Divine Names. The letters of the Greek alphabet, or numeral signs, by which the scholia of Germanus the patriarch are said to be distinguished from the scholia of Maximus the monk in the said codex, I have accurately subjoined as they are held in the codex itself. Greater labour had to be expended in adapting to this edition the Lansselian version of the scholia of St. Maximus, which seemed little suitable. And indeed I myself cannot sufficiently grasp what the Parisian editor had before his eyes, that, whereas he published all the Areopagitic Works with the Latin version of the illustrious Balthasar Corderius, for the scholia of St. Maximus on the same Works he preferred to append the version of Lansselius, although there was at hand for him the version of the same made by Corderius himself and inserted into the Antwerp edition of the year 1634, and that too is without doubt neater and more accurate than that hasty one, as Lansselius himself calls it, inasmuch as he was compelled by the entreaties of certain persons to make it with the utmost haste, after he had at first resolved to exhibit Maximus in Greek only, as he himself testifies. Wherefore nothing is to be imputed as a fault to a man otherwise most learned, if such a version came forth somewhat more obscure and inelegant, and in certain places also less accurate. But it seems that this cannot so easily be pardoned to the Parisian editor, who preferred it to the Corderian version, and, rejecting the latter, adopted it into his edition, especially since there was added this inconvenience also, that, whereas the words of the text of St. Dionysius about which the scholia turn stand for the most part quite otherwise in this Lansselian version than in the Corderian, nay, and sometimes present an altogether different sense, it can only with the greatest difficulty be perceived by a reader ignorant of the Greek tongue to what part of the same text the individual scholia pertain: and all the more so because the number of the paragraphs into which the chapters are divided in the Corderian version of the text of St. Dionysius is altogether omitted in the Lansselian version of the scholia and in the Parisian edition; wherefore the use of the same scholia cannot but be most impeded. These things had so moved me that I came very near to rejecting the said version of the scholia of St. Maximus by Lansselius and inserting into my edition the Corderian version of the same according to the Antwerp edition. Nor was there wanting a learned man who gave me this advice; and who moreover added that this was demanded by the principle of uniformity (which in every work, when it can be done, ought to be preserved), that both the version of the Areopagitic text and that of the scholia written upon it should be by the same author. Wherefore he also advised rejecting the Tilmannian version of Pachymeres' Paraphrase on the Epistles of St. Dionysius, which had been adopted instead of the Corderian, since the Paraphrases of the same Pachymeres on the books of St. Dionysius, and indeed the scholia of St. Maximus on the same Epistles, are from the version of Corderius. Yet that I did not acquiesce in this advice (whether rightly, the kind Reader will judge) two things chiefly were the cause. First, lest I should seem in any part to fail the pledge given to the public; inasmuch as I had undertaken to reprint the Works of St. Dionysius according to the latest Parisian edition, which it is the common persuasion excels the rest: second, because it seemed to me very credible that the Parisian editor, when he wished to weld his own out of a twofold edition, namely the Lansselian and the Corderian, selected the better and preferable parts, although to someone else it might seem otherwise. Therefore I judged that neither should the notes of Lansselius be omitted, both on the said Paraphrase of Pachymeres and on the Life of Blessed Dionysius written by Syngelus, and on his Martyrdom: although all these might seem to someone by no means necessary, and perhaps not even useful (as such they seemed to Corderius, who, when about twenty years after Lansselius he was superintending his Antwerp edition, omitted them all). Nevertheless I myself deemed it better to abound a little than to be wanting in anything that could be desired by anyone. Yet since the highest desire possessed me of rendering this edition of mine as perfect as could be done, I therefore asked the learned man who had admonished me of all these things that he himself would remedy the defect which he had noticed in the Lansselian version of the scholia of St. Maximus: which after a sort I obtained: for the words of the text of St. Dionysius about which the scholia turn, to the ver-

sion of Corderius he restored; yet in such a way that, where the scholia expounded some Greek word, he himself adjoined the same word in Greek to the Latin Corderian version, prefixing Gr., that is, Graece; so that it might be made known to the reader that in explaining the force and energy of the Greek word that scholium was solely or chiefly expended. Moreover, not infrequently, where greater necessity seemed to require it, he corrected the version itself: he amended the punctuation, which was most faulty, and finally adjoined the number to the individual paragraphs, whereby the reader might more easily ascertain to what part of the text the individual scholia pertained. Which things, unless I am mistaken, add no small ornament, nay, and advantage, to this edition of mine. Yet perhaps someone will value even more highly the Additions which accrue to this volume drawn from another store. It is known to everyone who has touched upon any learning at all how great a controversy, and for how long a time, has been raging concerning the author of the Areopagitic Works: for although at the present day the learned almost agree in denying these Works to that great Dionysius, yet there are not lacking even at this day those who gladly fight to claim them for him; and others to whom at least this cause seems by no means altogether lost or desperate. Since therefore a certain anonymous French author has composed in his native tongue a brief work entitled Problem concerning the Works inscribed with the name of St. Dionysius, in which he most accurately sets forth the reasons and arguments of either side, hence I thought that I should do a thing welcome to all if I adjoined it, translated into Latin, to this edition of mine: for thence everyone will be able, with moderate labour, to have this famous cause more thoroughly surveyed and to judge of it. Some have gone further, namely so as not only to deny the Areopagitic Works to the great Dionysius, but even to contend that the author of the same was infected with the stain of heresy. Among the rest Michel Le Quien, of the Order of Preachers, a man truly most learned and most erudite, left no stone unturned in his second Damascene Dissertation to demonstrate that he was addicted to the errors of the Eutychians, or Monophysites. Truly, as is the illustrious gift of that Order, to defend the truth, when there is need, no less against its own than against others, there came forth from the same Order one who proved that Le Quien, though a most perspicacious man, was deceived in this matter, and who most powerfully championed the orthodoxy of the author of the Areopagitic Works against him. He is the most celebrated Father Bernardo Maria de Rubeis, whose Dissertation on this subject I place in the last place as a noble crown to this edition of mine. From all these things I would have you now persuade yourself of this, best of Readers, that I will always bestow the greatest pains I can, that whatever Works of the Fathers or of other authors I shall undertake to reprint may come forth from my press more adorned and more perfect than they had been before. Farewell.