Joannes Columbus, Epistola dedicatoria et praefatio in librum de Mortibus persecutorum

Notes of Johannes Columbus

On Lactantius.

To the most illustrious and most eminent Mr Gisbert Cuper, delegate of the Estates of Overijssel to the assembly of the most illustrious and most mighty Estates General of the United Netherlands, consul of the renowned republic of Deventer, Johannes Columbus.

Sends many greetings.

Although I rejoice that in my own homeland too there are great and illustrious souls who love good letters and receive them most kindly, and who in many ways encourage and honour my efforts too, yet this present little work of its own accord was hastening from this soil, across the sea, that is, and into your bosom, most eminent sir, whether I should say to fly away or to return. Certainly, unless I had sent this, whatever it is, to you first, and your name

most illustrious, had I taken care that the very front itself should display it, I seemed scarcely able to escape several serious charges. For either I would be a kidnapper, having laid hands on a body owed to you; or I would be held guilty in some measure of embezzlement, or even be found an accomplice to the crime of an informer, if I had diverted under a private title so many excellent things of yours, destined for public use. Certainly I would by no means have avoided the mark of an ungrateful mind, equally hateful and detestable to all good men, if I did not acknowledge that my progress here was received from you and from your labour and help. My plan of an edition was not yet sufficiently certain and fixed when you, now praising this writing of Lactantius, now approving my emendations in some places and in others correcting them and bringing them back onto the road, and finally communicating your own observations, which even by themselves and alone would win for my edition as much value as one could wish, brought it about that I pressed on with what I had begun. And this you did not find it burdensome to do for my sake amid the greatest cares and business, on which the welfare of peoples depends, and by which the duties of a most ample office generally keep you occupied. Finally, through the beneficence customary with you it was brought about that a copy of the British edition, long but vainly awaited by our booksellers, was brought to me by the public courier. It is no wonder, then, if I resolved to send to no one before you these cares of mine, such as they are, nay rather your own much happier ones, and indeed this whole little work: it was also right and just that readers should learn from the very entrance what they will owe to each. For the rest, if the edition itself does not satisfy your refinement, I beg you to pardon my absence; through which, moreover, I fear it has come about that certain things sent too late have been deferred to another time. Some hope remains that this other time will be very soon, so that those things too may be brought out into the light. That nothing at least of those things in which your supreme goodness has deigned to make me a sharer has perished through my fault, I shall labour, as long as I live, with God's kind help, to make known and attested. Farewell, distinguished man, and take my efforts in good part. Written at Uppsala, the day before the Kalends of July, in the year 1684.

To the kind reader, greeting.

From the time when a certain illustrious man did not find it burdensome to point out to me, among the books then coming out into public light, this little work, which he seemed to inscribe without doubt with Lactantius as its author, I confess that I burned with no slight eagerness to know it more thoroughly. And when at last I had brought it about that it was brought to me together with the other volumes edited by the distinguished Baluze, the thing seemed not to answer my expectation badly, nor did this writing seem out of keeping with that clear and polished thread of Lactantius's style; and many other things, but above all the rarity of the matters, and either a faithful agreement with the narratives of others or even a discrepancy sometimes less than suspect, produced some confidence that no worthless ware was being sold under so great a name. But I also thought I had found this kind of writing in use among the ancients; as in those three books of C. Fannius, in which he narrated the deaths of those killed or banished by Nero, which C. Pliny the Younger, book 5, Epistle 5, calls subtle, careful and good Latin, and midway between conversation and history And Trebellius Pollio also seems to have followed that kind, who says that he wrote several books not in a historical nor an eloquent style but in a pedestrian one, modestly enough indeed. I recognized besides certain things taken from the biblical books, especially from the second of the Maccabees (a book which I judge to have been fabricated after the times of Christ, in the times of the persecutions: its credibility in historical matters has certainly long been in difficulty, as the learned have noted); likewise from blessed Cyprian and others of the Fathers, which I have taken pains to point out here and there as far as my ability allowed. Concerning this same little work, which blessed Jerome designates by the simple title On Persecution, in the way that he also mentions the book of Tertullian which Tertullian himself entitles somewhat more fully On Flight in Persecution, I shall treat more at length some day, if it seems good to God; especially if aids come into my hands which I have hitherto sought in vain, such as the little work of John of Salisbury on the same subject, of which he himself, in the Polycraticus, or On

Nugae Curialium, book 8, ch. 20, p. 648 of my copy: "The little book," he says, "which is entitled On the End of the Tyrants, will be able to disclose more fully what view [is to be held] about tyrants, though in a careful summary," etc. But whether that little book survives, I confess I do not know clearly enough; if it does survive, I hope that some light will come from it to the present one. Moreover, as I compared these things with the works of Lactantius long since published, I confess that a good many things occurred to me which seemed to agree: of these I have placed those which I could extract with less labour in places (if I see anything at all) suitable and very similar; so that a small store of them might be at hand either for those wishing to form a judgement from the comparison, or might profit the young, as they track, together with memorable matters, the traces of a language everywhere purer. Yet I cannot conceal that the old ditty of Epicharmus thrust itself again and again upon my ears: "Be sober and remember to distrust." And above all I wished that C. Baluze had told me more about the manuscript that keeps so great a treasure; especially where it had lain hidden before, and, leaving the cabinet of what man or society, it had passed into the library of the most illustrious Colbert. Other thoughts too, tending almost in this direction, kept coming before my mind: that that image of Lactantius's style was perhaps sketched with the greatest labour; that that striking array of events could seem to have been composed like a kind of stage-set to catch applause; that in the codex itself certain things had been artfully soiled, gnawed, pierced, all to counterfeit the look of antiquity; that long ago the ambition of those who, abounding in leisure, longed either to imitate other men's talents and abilities or under their names to mock the credulity of others, had produced similar fictions. These and other things of this kind, however, I confess were almost overcome by the arguments which favoured the opposite side. I saw that the good faith and candour of the celebrated Baluze, no less than his learning, were praised by men of keen discernment. Then I found that men of rare merit inclined rather to this side, so that they hardly believe such games are played here. The excellence of matters not readily to be found elsewhere (I speak of certain ones) also weighed very much, and other things of no slight moment. Supported and encouraged by these, I pressed on with what I had begun, and so as to give something to have even to those who put the removal of the stains of age and other things of that kind almost on the same footing as the care of hangnails and nail-parings. But these things, rather hastily hurried through, after the letters of the most illustrious Mr Cuper arrived, and at length the Oxford edition too, trusting that at least a few, and those more skilled in these matters, would not reject critical skirmishes, I completed as you see here. Enjoy them, if you please, my reader; but expect greater and more exquisite things from those to whom it has been given to restore and reform with greater success the study of letters now growing old. Among these you have the most celebrated Graevius, whose promised emendations on this little work I await eagerly and almost impatiently. In the said British edition I do not so much grieve that certain things were snatched from Mr Cuper's conjectures and mine, as I rejoice that to these very things, as the studies of great men concur, strength and credibility are added, and authority to the writing itself. I have no leisure now to extract those emendations; this will be done, I hope, very soon, and in another leaflet I shall share them more fully. But lest young people imbibe any error from these things, whenever this author inveighs too much against the pursuit of arms and military service, which was necessary in the case of Diocletian, let them remember that Lactantius elsewhere, by a most grave error, condemns wars among Christians altogether. See book 6, ch. 20, p. 648. Who then would wish to follow him as leader in so absurd a matter? But of these things perhaps I shall treat more fully elsewhere. Meanwhile farewell, my reader, and grant me, wherever I have slipped, the pardon which you yourself expect from others.