St. Hippolytus, Bishop of Portus, Martyr and Doctor of the Church

S. HIPPOLYTUS PORTUENSIS EPISCOPUS MARTYR ET ECCLESIAE DOCTOR PROLEGOMENA PRAEFATIONES EDITIONIS FABRICIANAE

TO THE MOST CELEBRATED AND MOST REVEREND THEOLOGIAN, THE PRELATE ^A D. HEINRICH PIPPING, ECCLESIASTICAL COUNSELOR AND CHIEF SACRED PREACHER IN THE ROYAL AND ELECTORAL COURT OF DRESDEN, JOHANN ALBERT FABRICIUS SENDS GREETINGS.

Although you have now been absent for five years from our common fatherland, Leipzig, having been called from it by the example of the great Geier to that high position from which, as if from a watchtower, you now keep vigil under the divine Christ, the Founder of the Church, over the salvation of so many churches; I do not doubt, however, that you still remember from time to time our native soil and your sweet fatherland, which sent you away with regret, and that with it there also return to your memory our old friendships, and among these, our former companionship in the Muses, in which for many years, almost from our earliest childhood, we lived together in both schools and academy and employed the same teachers, and—let this be said without vanity—labored industriously together to reach the lofty and serene heights of virtue and learning. The vast distances of land that have long since separated us do not permit us now to converse face-to-face as often as we formerly did through frequent letters; but from this, nothing at all has been detracted from my love and respect for you, and I trust that the same is true of your benevolence toward me, which you have preserved intact for me, as a kind of inheritance received from your excellent aged father, now among the blessed, by whom I was held at the sacred font of baptism forty-seven years ago, and which, I am most certain, you will continue to preserve. Since, however, I wished to present to you a public testimonial worthy of your faith, and of yourself, of the regard I have long and constantly held for you, and to which I am most devoted, and to establish some monument, not a trite one, and one that might perhaps perpetuate the memory of our friendship to posterity: I have chosen for this purpose the most holy prelate Hippolytus, whom you, as a bishop, will by no means spurn as a bishop, a man grave not more in years than in learning and merits, and venerable besides to the whole Church of Christ for the martyrdom which he cheerfully underwent for his Savior. I prostrate myself with prayers to God, thrice-great and good, that He may look after the Church, protect the fatherland, and preserve and prosper you in the joyful concerns of the Church, of the fatherland, and of your own affairs and those of your family. Written at Hamburg, February 27, 1716.

TO THE READER.

When, four years ago, in the fifth volume of my *Bibliotheca Graeca*, among the venerable doctors of the Church of the first age, I had reached S. Hippolytus, and, about to deliver notice of his writings, had examined them more attentively, it came to mind to wonder why no one had yet gathered together the lacerated members of his works, and why the same effort, which with much praise has been expended on so many other writers far inferior in both time and merit, had not been granted to this disciple of S. Irenaeus, a doctor of such great antiquity and such great authority. From that time I descended into the thought that I might be able to attempt this task, neglected by others, ^B specially...

after I understood with no small sorrow that the venerable and most illustrious man, John Mill, who had taken upon himself the burden of preparing this, and who could have adorned it excellently, had breathed his last and departed from this life shortly after the edition of the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament had been brought to light—a work of admirable industry and judgment. Therefore, thinking that all hope of seeing the works of Hippolytus recognized and illustrated by Mill had perished with his death, and being ignorant of how far that excellent man had proceeded, or whether his plan had stalled merely within his own intent and endeavor whenever death supervened, I encouraged our bookseller to print the Works of St. Hippolytus at his own expense, and I promised him that my effort in revising them and overseeing their edition would not be lacking. When he had agreed, and we had applied our hands to the work, and the matter was already proceeding beautifully, behold, it was announced to me from England that the most illustrious doctor of the academy of Wittenberg, John William Janus, had acquired the Millian drafts, written out in a thick volume, while he was residing at Oxford the previous year, and was laboring intently to collect, polish, and publish the writings of Hippolytus. What was I to do? Since it was no longer intact for me to desist from the undertaking, as I would have abandoned the whole thing at once and gladly yielded to the hands of Mill, and—rejoicing—would have handed the torch to the genius and industry of the most distinguished Janus, had I been informed of his intent in time. For I am not lacking other things to do, and I most eagerly favor his reputation, and that of those like him, and there is nothing I have long studied to avoid more than to stand in the way of or hinder anyone with my own labor and studies, if that person can bring forth better things into the public sphere. Therefore, what I necessarily had to do, the web that I had begun to weave, I brought to a conclusion with as much study as I could within the time before the deadline, and I have gathered into this volume whatever I was able to find of the blessed bishop and martyr ^A.

The first place I have given to the book *Against Antichrist*, the Combefisian edition of which I have revised according to the first Parisian Gudiana of the year 1661, from which whoever compares them will find that I have corrected not a few things. For many things had been botched in the work, sometimes by omitting a whole clause. I have sprinkled into the notes of Combefis some unpublished ones of the same Gudius (whom the famous Mich. le Quien, in his *Damascene* vol. II, p. 781, calls Gutbierius, by an error of memory or slips of the quill), and those of Tanaquil Faber which exist in his own epistles, together with a few short notes of my own. To the testimonies of the ancients concerning that book—those of St. Jerome, Photius, the author of the Catena on the prophet Jeremiah (which I exhibited at page 1 seq.), and of Andrew of Caesarea, Arethas, Nicephorus, Honorius, Freculphus, etc. (which I exhibited at page 34)—add this from St. Germanus, Archbishop of Constantinople, in his *Mystical Theory*, in volume II of the *Auctarium Ducaeanum*, page 148: “This also Hippolytus of Rome and St. Cyril say in their discourses on Antichrist, that in the six-thousand-five-hundredth year the future coming will be.” St. Hippolytus of Rome and St. Cyril affirm the same in their books on Antichrist, that the coming (of Christ) will be in the year six thousand five hundred. Included also is this from John of Damascus in the *Sacra Parallela*, p. 781: “Of Hippolytus, Bishop of Rome, on Christ and Antichrist,” but these, etc.

Next in place follows that most celebrated marble monument, dug up in the vicinity of the Roman port in the year 1551, which deserves to be numbered for a long time now among the chief ornaments of the Vatican library, from which it was removed under the auspices of Cardinal Marcellus Cervinus, later known among the supreme pontiffs by the name of Marcellus II. You have this monument of St. Hippolytus sitting in a chair, with the paschal Canon and the list of his writings, described primarily and accurately in a triple bronze plate, which you owe to the most illustrious men and the eyes of learned Italy, Francis Blanchinus and Jo. Vignolius. Then that paschal Canon and the list of Hippolitean writings, expressed more explicitly and copied most diligently from the prototype, appears in Greek with the Latin version of the aforementioned Blanchinus. ^B There follow on p. 59 seq. the integral commentaries of learned men, especially Joseph Scaliger, who, before all others, brought significant light to this ancient marble, and first published it separately at Leiden in the year 1595, then in the repeated edition of his immortal work *De Emendatione Temporum*; in this latter edition, since the great man handed down not a few things differently than in the former, I have decided that both of his commentaries should be appended where they differ from one another. Besides the commentaries of Scaliger, you have interspersed in their proper places, with the name of each prefixed, all those things which the most learned men—Dionysius Petavius, Aegidius Bucherius, Jo. Dominicus Cassinus—wrote on the paschal Canon of Hippolytus, and those things which were commented upon to illustrate the list of his writings, primarily by Stephanus le Moyne, then Thomas Galeus, Eduardus Bernhardus, Guil. Caveus, as well as certain observations by Henrici Valesii and Henrici Norisii, a most eminent cardinal.

Since, however, besides the paschal Canon, St. Hippolytus also composed a *Demonstration of the Times of Easter* and a *Chronicle*, I have given the testimonies of the ancients in which mention is made of one of these three together on p. 42 seq., to which from page 66 is to be added Gennadius and Cyril of Scythopolis in the *Lives of the Saints* Euthymius and Sabas; nor should what I produced from the *Homily on the Sunday of Pascha* of Hippolytus on page 279 be omitted, preserved in the consultation of the Vth Lateran Council of the year 642. In those testimonies of the ancients on p. 43, there also exists a fragment from the first book of Hippolytus *On Pascha* which the author of the *Chronicon Paschale*, which is commonly called the Alexandrian, praises. I ought not, however, where I review the Hippolitean works, to pass over the ancient Latin version of the *Chronicle*, which most learned men have attributed to Hippolytus from many indications; therefore, I gave that on page 49 from the more emended editions of Labbe and Cange, although even thus there remain many things in it quite enough to be emended, which, however, by the very act of emending, someone might perhaps easily corrupt, and cause the way those names were written or corrupted at that time—when that Latin interpreter lived—to remain unknown.

I could not have brought more beautiful glory to this volume than if I had joined to these the integral dissertation of the most acute man, Franc[esco] Blanchinus, on the paschal Canon of Hippolytus, which, although it saw the light at Rome as early as 1703, is yet so rarely seen in these parts that it might seem unpublished to many. I would say the same of the learned discussions in which the princes of the intellects of Italy today—Virginius Valsechius, Phil. a Turre, and Jo. Vignolius—amicably contended and still contend regarding the first year of the reign of Severus Alexander Augustus mentioned on the marble chair of Hippolytus; of whose lucubrations, I trust, you will gladly read those of Blanchinus appended. For though they might seem to deal with a sterile and minute subject, however, with no less pleasure and profit, you will see in them an abundance of elegant, accurate, and exquisite erudition contending with perspicuity and acuteness, and what pleases me even more than all these things, and so beautifully becomes learned men, is that this whole controversy is seasoned throughout not with reproaches and abusive barkings, as dogs from the crossroads usually treat one another, but with the charm of polite and honest humanity.

The other writings or fragments of St. Hippolytus which I offer for you to read are the *Demonstration Against the Jews*, from the version of Francis Turrianus, which, although I suspect it to be a fragment from the *Commentaries of Hippolytus on the Psalms*, I have nevertheless preferred to exhibit it under that title by which it is already known to learned men, and was long ago published by Antonio Possevino and Imbonatus, rather than to hide it as if under a new inscription. That Hippolytus wrote *Against the Jews* is confirmed by no clear testimony of any of the ancients, so far as I know: but on the contrary, it is explicitly handed down in the marble list that he composed a work *Against the Greeks and Plato Concerning the Cause of the Universe*. I think

this interpretation of the passage is the one to be adopted, not as it is currently edited "senators of the city of Rome," for Hippolytus was not a Roman senator who wrote against the Gentiles. However, the same Jerome mentions the Apologetic works of Apollonius addressed to the Roman senate in chapter 42 of *De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis*, citing Eusebius, *Hist.* V, 21. Concerning this same Apollonius, where it pleases the reader, see Godfried Henschen, at April 18, Vol. II, p. 559 seq. Therefore, I do not doubt that what I present on page 220, with the translation of that most eminent man, Stephanus le Moyne, as a fragment, is drawn from that volume of Hippolytus *Against the Greeks and Plato*.

Next follow the fragments I have collected from the saintly martyr's work *Against Heresies*, which I have illustrated, as I have the earlier pieces, with brief notes scattered throughout. Among these, the more lengthy are those directed against Beron and his *πλάναι* (for so I think it should be read instead of *Helice*; no one of that age, not even Hippolytus, ever mentions such a person, whereas he frequently mentions Beron), preserved by Nicephorus of Constantinople and Anastasius the Librarian, and published by Combefis after the version of Turrianus, before the works of St. Maximus the Confessor. These are rightly attributed to Hippolytus, if I am not mistaken, by G. Bull, Tillemont, and other learned men, even though Theodoret did not use them—and it is not necessary that he should have read and remembered everything so as to insert it into his own writings. Although it may seem that some things are explained more clearly than the circumstances of that age allowed, it will seem otherwise to one who considers the rest of the works written in that century more accurately, and even the single work of Tertullian *Against Praxeas*. Photius, in *Codex* 121, testifies that the final chapter of Hippolytus’ work *Against Heresies* was that directed against Noetus. I have provided this outstanding labor in Latin only, taken from the version of the most celebrated Franciscus Turrianus—who perused so many monuments of the ancients and brought so many to light—along with his notes and my own. I trust that, God willing, I shall soon obtain the Greek text transcribed from the Vatican manuscript, which, together with other things I presently lack, and which I have hopes of obtaining, I designate to present as I have promised in the *Spicilegium Patrum* of the third century from Christ, which I have resolved in my mind to offer to the Church after the present volume.

Among the arguments by which this disputation *Against Noetus* is attributed to Hippolytus, it is not absurdly suggested by Tillemont that the author freely uses testimonies repeated from the Apocalypse, but none from the Epistle to the Hebrews, even where there is the greatest occasion for it; likewise, none are adduced in the passages concerning the incarnation against Beron. It also seemed likely to the same Tillemont that the portions Epiphanius has *Against Marcion* in *Heresy* 42 are for the most part drawn from our Hippolytus and his book against Marcion; just as Epiphanius, writing against Noetus in *Heresy* 67, uses not only the sentiments of Hippolytus but almost his very words. Because, however, he does not mention Hippolytus by name while disputing against Marcion, I could not join his words to the Hippolytean fragments. The disputation *Against Noetus* was not translated into Latin by Gerhard Vossius, Bishop of Tongeren, as is incorrectly held by Labbe through a slip of memory, but he merely published it in Latin at the end of the works of Gregory Thaumaturgus.

Not only by the authority of the marble monument, but also by the testimony of manuscript codices, the *Apostolic Tradition Concerning Spiritual Gifts* is attributed to our Hippolytus, along with many others, which were indeed previously published in the eighth book of the *Constitutions*. Because these were stitched together from various monuments of the second and especially the third century, we are accustomed to calling them "Clementine" or even "Apostolic," but they were published without Hippolytus's name. However, since in the manuscript Caesarean (Viennese) codex and another Oxonian one, in which the name of Hippolytus is explicitly mentioned, some things are read differently than in the common books of the *Constitutions*, I have not hesitated to give them a place among the Hippolytean works, having secured those same texts, collated against the aforementioned manuscripts, by the most learned man, very deserving concerning ecclesiastical antiquity, and my friend while he lived, John Ernest Grabe, who also gifted them with a Latin version. I obtained them through the kindness of the most reverend and illustrious Bishop D. George Smalridge, and also of George Hickes, a man venerable for his unusual learning and the probity of his character, who passed away alas! not long after in the month of December of last year, prepared with the Reverend Balthasar Mentzer, a most eloquent pastor of the Lutheran church in London, and the most clear-headed Jo. Christian Wolff, worthy brother of Jo. Christoph, of whose excellent genius, industry, and learning, notable for his age, it is right to expect beautiful and famous things for the Church and for good letters. I here publicly offer the most sincere thanks for their humanity, benevolence, and promptness to serve my studies, and I shall gladly express them whenever the occasion or opportunity does not fail me. To the same Wolff I owe the *Homily on the Theophany or the Baptism of Christ our Savior*, promised long ago by Lucas Holstenius, which he transcribed in Greek from a codex of that most celebrated and universally missed man of learning, Thomas Gale, and sent to me from England, with the permission of his illustrious son Roger Gale. I myself have appended the Latin version. These, which are commended to Christians as apostolic traditions by Hippolytus, and such as are the *Canon of Abulides* or Hippolytus which the Ethiopians possess, the chapters of which I have given before this homily, appear to be that very writing which Ebed Jesu in the *Catalogue of Chaldean Books* (number 6) reported as Hippolytus's *On the Regime (of the Church, one assumes)*.

The present collection of the remains of Hippolytus is concluded by fragments of commentaries and discourses and homilies upon the books and passages of Holy Scripture, which I would surely have exhibited in the first place, had I not delayed them as long as I could in the expectation of several inedited works, for which I have hope from the Caesarean, Gallic, English, and Italian libraries. In these, in their own place, those more ample *excerpts* concerning Daniel and Susanna, which Combefis gave many years ago, also appear. But I do not know how I overlooked this, which was taken from the Commentaries of Hippolytus on the *Hexaemeron* and preserved by John of Damascus in the *Sacred Parallels*, Vol. II of his works, in the excellent Lequien edition, page 787. Of the Epistles of Hippolytus, which Eusebius (VI, 20) hints he read in the library of Bishop Alexander, he mentions a single one *to the Queen*, which Theodoret cites as a *marble monument to Severina or Severa Augusta*. I have provided some fragments of this on page 92, just as the *Books on the Resurrection* on page 244. Of the remaining writings and homilies of Hippolytus, such as that famous one on the praises of Christ, which Jerome also mentions,

Of Saint Hippolytus of Rome.

I could find nothing anywhere in Vincent of Beauvais, *Speculum Historiale* XII, 30—the passage that calls it an encomium and in which it is said he made mention of Origen.

In the Appendix you have, in the first place, the book *On the Consummation of the World*, attributed to the martyr Hippolytus, which, according to the conjectures of certain very learned men—it pleases Dodwell, but only after the year of Christ 647, yet still before the year 700, and before the controversies stirred up by the Iconoclasts. To this book I have sprinkled some notes and corrections, having used mostly the readings of the Barocci Codex, which, when I was in England, our friend and colleague, the very learned Jo. Christoph Wolf, collated. Following those, I appended what Combefis published *On the Twelve Apostles*, taken from that same Barocci Codex, and previously unpublished, as well as the work *On the Seventy Disciples of Christ* (or, as it is inscribed in the ms., *On the Seventy Apostles*, by which name they also appear in the *Life of St. Saba* written by Cyril of Scythopolis, *Monumenta* of Cotelier, vol. III, p. 240). In most places, these traditions concerning the seventy disciples agree with the pseudo-Dorotheus. Hence, I could not bring myself to attribute these, or the same author’s earlier work on the twelve apostles, to St. Hippolytus, a writer of the third century, only to cite them. Finally, in the last place, there follow the *relics* (λειψανα) which were at hand by Hippolytus of Thebes, who wrote in the tenth century and was a contemporary of Simeon Metaphrastes. I have provided them as they were published by those most illustrious men: Canisius, Lambecius, and Schelstraten. Nor do I think the *Chronology of the Gospels* of Hippolytus, which the man beyond all praise, Bernard de Montfaucon, testifies in *Palæographia Graeca*, p. 261, to be prefixed to an ancient manuscript of the Gospels in the library of the most Christian King, contains anything different from the published texts. From the same most illustrious man, I received a copy of those things which a paper manuscript—which once belonged to the Duke of Altaemps, but today is the property of the most eminent Cardinal Ottoboni—has from the *Chronicle* of Hippolytus of Thebes. These harmonize beautifully with the things which Schelstraten published from the Vatican manuscripts, except that after the words: "From his [John's] baptism until the stoning of Zechariah, one year," the following follows, which Canisius also has: "While he was performing the priestly office according to custom, they stoned him and struck his temples and killed him, and dragging him away, they hung him in the valley of Jehoshaphat." Farewell.

TO THE MOST REVEREND AND MOST LEARNED SIR J. CHRISTOPH WOLF, PASTOR AT THE CHURCH OF ST. CATHARINE IN HAMBURG, AND SCHOLARCH, JOANNES ALBERTUS FABRICIUS SENDS GREETINGS. (Opp. S. Hipp. vol. II.)

Although I am persuaded that you do not doubt my love for you, nor my regard; just as, in ambiguous matters, your benevolence—which has continued for so many years and been demonstrated by so many proofs—is not in doubt for me; yet I have long pondered when it might be given to me to publicly testify to the same before all through some worthy monument, and in place of your Origen, to be able to return some favor to you. Well, therefore, St. Hippolytus has now offered himself to me—that bishop and martyr of the primitive Church, in whose emulation Origen, once kindled, later surpassed and outstripped him in many ways. His *relics*, therefore—the first volume having passed, and now for the first time brought to light by me, together with other monuments of the Fathers of the third century from the birth of Christ, which I have appended to them, and the studies of learned men to illustrate those things—I offer as a gift to you and consecrate to your most cherished name. This will be to me like the roses and violets and most fragrant flowers, with which it is right for me to crown and adorn the memory and remnants of those pious doctors. For, not to speak of the breathing goods of your intellect, and your varied and recondite erudition, your indefatigable study, and your notable merits in literature, from which the most delightful odor of fame has long since been wafted far and wide, and has even emanated beyond the shores of Germany; what fragrance can be imagined sweeter than that which is daily inhaled by all who hear you, from your doctrine, piety, candor, zeal, prudence, and dexterity? May God, the gardener of His Church, who with a provident hand planted and grafted you into the place of your blessed and most deserving predecessors, the Lords David Klugius, Abraham Hinckelmann, and Jo. Volemar, cause you, as a most choice flower in the garden of God, to bear fruit to the greatest benefit of those you refresh with your saving scent. May you flourish for as long as possible, and be late in withering, only to be transplanted, more beautiful, into the heavenly fields. Written at Hamburg, on the Nones of April, in the year 1718.

TO THE READER.

I have now fulfilled, as far as my strength allowed, the promise I made in the previous volume regarding the bringing to light of certain unpublished works of the martyr St. Hippolytus. Not only did I myself seek, through repeated letters, but I also asked through friends that the most illustrious man in whose hands the Millian papers are might share them with me; but I could not obtain this from him, a fact which I testify not in order to hold it against him as a fault—since I do not doubt that he has his own reasons for his plan, nor do I envy him the praise and glory he will attain whether they are suppressed or published—but I declare this only so that they may stop imputing as a fault to me [the failure] of those who are in a hurry.

1711, 8, in which he attempts to prove that the use of incense and [vessels] in the Church is not of apostolic tradition. The title is: *A discourse concerning the use of incense in divine offices*. Page 100, seq.

^A of my precipitate publication, have argued against my Hippolytus, on the grounds that I did not wait long enough, that is, until what Mill had could be shared with me. However, it is now sufficiently clear to me, almost to the point of certainty, that the things he possesses, left out by me from the writings of St. Hippolytus, are by no means of such magnitude that they would fill even a single page. I therefore ask that he bring them into the light if he has more, and refute me for the public good.

In the contents offered to you by me in this volume, the *Demonstration against the Jews* and the renowned *Commentary against Noetus* of St. Hippolytus take the lead. (2) Both of these writings now see the light in Greek for the first time from the Vatican codex, an apograph of which was sent to me by the illustrious man, highly distinguished for his learning and his great merits in the field of letters, Dom Bernard de Montfaucon. To him you also owe the fragment on Hezekiah, which is read on page 31 and was transcribed from the codex of the Séguier library, which today is the Coislinian. The fragments from the *Commentaries on Genesis* are repeated from a Catena which is preserved in manuscript at Vienna in the truly August and most august imperial library. Excerpts from it, transcribed, came to me through the kindness of the most generous and learned Jo. Benedict Gentiloti von Engelsbrun, the most worthy prefect of that library, through the most noble and learned jurist Jo. Christoph Bartenstein, to both of whose benevolence and kindness I owe and here express my deepest thanks. The same applies to the most illustrious Joannes Gagnier, who today represents Pococke at Oxford, and who kindly shared with me those excerpts from the Arabic Catena, written in Syriac letters, which are presented to you by me with the Latin translation of the aforementioned Gagnier. In the passages which on page 32 I described in Latin from the *History of the Alexandrian Patriarchs* by the very famous Eusebius Renaudot, it seems that for "Hippolytus Romanus" one should read "Julius Romanus." For indeed, as was beautifully observed by that man of exquisite and recondite learning, M. V. La Croze, in the letters with which he honored me, the same words which are cited there from the epistle to Dionysius, bishop of Cyprus, exist in Greek in the ^B epistle attributed to Julius Romanus to Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, edited by the most celebrated Muratori in his *Anecdota Graeca*, p. 343: "For it is necessary for them, while professing two natures, to worship the one and not to worship the other, and to be baptized into the divine, but not to be baptized into the human. But if we are baptized into the death of the Lord, we acknowledge one nature of the impassible deity and of the passible flesh, so that in this way our baptism is into God, and is perfected into the death of the Lord."

Regarding the *Spicilegium of the Fathers of the third century*, which I have appended to the Hippolytean works, I advise this first of all: that nothing has come to me from the papers of the famous J. E. Grabe, who himself also planned such a Spicilegium, but that whatever it is, whether begun or completed, it still lies hidden in England. However, the things I present here are of a different sort, as you yourself will easily judge once you have inspected them. While I am making mention of Grabe, I cannot but detest in every way—and I know that all who knew Grabe will detest with me—the calumnies by which, shortly before his death, having rashly placed his trust in certain travelers, Casimir Oudin did not hesitate to tear to pieces the reputation of the now-deceased Grabe, in a writing in which he himself testifies that he is now seventy-eight years old. Truly, he lived one day longer than he ought to have, on which day he did not hesitate to publish against a deceased brother, by whom he had never been harmed in life, such atrocious calumnies—which I hope all who knew Grabe will confess with me are devoid of all likelihood—and to transmit them to posterity as much as lay in his power.

In the *Commentary* of Salmasius on Arnobius, which is still unpublished, is contained an erudite dispute on the names of the ancient Romans, which, when I had obtained it from the Gudian apograph, I wished to bring to light, even though it sheds no light at all on the writings of Arnobius himself. I deemed it worth the effort to publish again Allatius's *Diatribe on the Methodii and the writings of the Methodii*, since it is rarely found, and like the similar commentaries of that man, it is willingly perused by those who are fond of this branch of literature.

This volume is closed by Chalcidius, an erudite writer, and one most worthy of being read, and as I believe I have demonstrated in my notes, undoubtedly a Christian, and not far removed from the third century. You have him corrected by me in very many places with the help of the old Paris edition by Ascensius in 1520, folio, and the Bodleian codex, whose readings the most famous Jo. Hudson, whose, after so many excellent merits in letters, scholars will soon owe a clear and most emended edition of Flavius Josephus, shared with me out of his singular goodwill toward me. I also acknowledge myself to have been not a little assisted by the most noble Dieterich de Dobler of Hamburg, a man most skilled in languages and all mathematical matters, who, being my friend for more than twenty years with singular candor and integrity, passed away this year, 1718, on the day before the Nones of March, while Chalcidius was being printed, to my great grief, and I think also to no small loss to mathematics. Finally, the aforementioned most erudite man, M. V. La Croze, who is never to be mentioned without praise, shared with me what Nik. Rigaltius, a man of acute judgment and exquisite learning, had annotated in the margins of his copy of the Meursian edition, which as I have willingly professed in my notes, often proved of signal use to me. Farewell.

(2) G. Sirletus the cardinal also mentions these commentaries in his preface to the *Liturgy of St. Mark the Evangelist*, edited in Greek and Latin at Paris, 1583, 8vo, where, after saying that that Liturgy had been found in the abbey of the Blessed Mary, *Hodegetria*, which is commonly called *de la Palle*, a most ancient monastery of the monks of St. Basil, he adds: "Where also the Catecheses of D. Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, the works of Dionysius of Alexandria against the Noetians, and of the martyr Hippolytus against the heresy of Noetus, and against Paul of Samosata, which we shall take care will all be accurately described, so that they may be brought to common use." By the booklets against Samosatenus, I understand not those of Hippolytus, but those of the bishops of the synod of Antioch in the year 264, written long after the death of Hippolytus, which Turrianus edited in Latin at Rome, 1608, 8vo, and in Greek and Latin by Fronto Ducaeus, vol. I of the *Auctarium*, and Labbe, vol. I of the *Concilia*, p. 849, seq.