Preface TO THE FIFTH VOLUME
The fifth and sixth volumes of the works of Chrysostom have long been awaited: if, however, they appear in public later than was hoped, it truly does not occur through any fault of ours: for we have always had the sheets ready at hand, and our storage containers have never run dry. But the booksellers, not having found a favorable condition of the times, and also sometimes suffering from a shortage of workmen who could skillfully handle Greek type, have been hindered from using the greater speed that was hoped for. However, they intend to break all delays in the following volumes, and to compensate for the slow progress by the diligence applied in editing them. This is as much as concerns the typographical matter, which we cannot moderate as we wish. A Now let us come to our business, and to the method of treating these things, to the notes and other matters, in which we acknowledge the keen reader as judge and as one demanding reasons by his own right. Some have complained that our notes, usually placed at the bottom of the page, are both rare and shorter than they are wont to be in certain editions. For some are so delighted by those notes that, having applied their fingers, I think, and having taken a measurement, they determine from this how each edition is to be valued; and they think little of the condition of the work. Here we are treating an author to be preferred to almost all others for the clarity of his language, whose style is fashioned according to the more elegant, and likewise the more common, usage; whom you need no aid of notes to understand. But why seek theological notes at the bottom of the page, when there is a place assigned for them where all things that will look to individual arguments will be treated together and in congruent order, with evidence brought forth from whatever book, from whatever homily, [or from] all those things that will be able to contribute something to the illustration of the matter? For what could I say in a note occupying the bottom of the page, where the subject is some theological matter, and a serious one at that, which it behooves one to explore from various places of the holy Doctor? Furthermore, since there are many places where the same subject is treated, why attach a note to this place rather than another? Is it not better to bring all these theological places together and, once a comparison of these individuals has been made, to examine them? This is what we intend to carry out in the final volume; where there will also be treatment of discipline, whether of morals or of rites, and of the digressions of our author, which digressions offer a great repository of material. In a word, all things were to be treated in their own place. B To these things, moreover, as I already said in the Preface to the third volume, we must take the greatest care not to accumulate notes at the bottoms of pages. The subject concerns a writer whose works form almost an entire library, and new things are continually being discovered which increase the bulk; such that the eleven folio volumes we had planned to publish now turn out to at least fill thirteen volumes; indeed, we do not even know whether we shall be able to encompass all the small works in this number of volumes; yet we will strive with all our might that this be done, and be done without expense. Now let us come to the subject matter of this volume.
§ I.—I. The expositions of John Chrysostom on the Psalms, if they survived in their entirety, would be his greatest work in bulk; a work that should be preferred to no other in value. II. Whether he composed them at Antioch or at Constantinople.
I. Expositiones or Commentaries of John Chrysostom on the Psalms—of what bulk they would have been had they reached our age entire and sound, one may conjecture from what survives. For the fifty-eight that survive fill the greatest part of a volume; so that if we enjoyed the full Commentaries on the 150 Psalms, we could hardly contain them in two very large volumes; since the longest of all the Psalms are missing, and along with them the one hundred and eighteenth Psalm, which alone contains the magnitude of twenty-two Psalms; so that if we make a good calculation, scarcely a third part of the work has reached us. There survive, however, the psalms from the third through the twelfth, nine in number: the forty-first with its Exposition does not belong to this series, as is stated there; [those] from the forty-third through the forty-ninth; from the one hundred and eighth through the one hundred and seventeenth; from the one hundred and nineteenth through the end. There are, furthermore, sixty Psalms with their Expositions; but if you take away the third and the forty-first, which although they are found with the others, do not belong to this series, fifty-eight Psalms remain with their Commentaries. No work of such great bulk, therefore, did John Chrysostom publish, if indeed he interpreted all the Psalms in the same way, as we believe and shall prove below. Among his most outstanding works, however, it is considered [as such], as is asserted by the testimonies of many, and is discovered by constant use and reading. C II. It is asked whether he issued this substantial and long work at Antioch or at Constantinople. Certainly, if one must stand by the judgment of Photius, who prefers to consider his more elegant works, which were elaborated with greater accuracy, as having been produced at Antioch rather than at Constantinople, where the prelate, occupied with sacred business,