SIRMOND'S PREFACE
[XXI] Although, perhaps, I could have dispensed with this preface and left what has been accomplished in this edition of our Theodoret to your own eyes, reader, and to your own observation, yet it seemed not unpleasant to briefly indicate a few things regarding which I felt I might be stuck. First of all, regarding the *Questions on the Octateuch*, which are at the beginning of the first volume: although John Picus, the interpreter, recounted that no copy of these existed in his time in the royal library, the best and most ancient copy is now in it, which has provided us not only with Theodoret's preface (hitherto unedited), along with those things which were lacking at the end in Picus's codex, but also, in various places, many things that are either fuller or more amended than the common versions, and has resolved that confusion which was holding the minds of readers in suspense regarding Question 20. [XXII] Where, when Theodoret had brought forth and rejected the opinions of certain ancient writers concerning the image of God—how it should be understood—he seemed subsequently to assert and confirm the very same things he had condemned. This error, as is apparent, arose from the fact that since it is certain that these *Questions* of Theodoret were culled from the ancient *Catenae*, as they are called, the one who transcribed the codex that Picus used appended, through imprudence and omitting the names of the authors, the opinions of Origen as well as Diodorus and Theodore alongside Theodoret's own sentiments. The royal codex, which contains nothing in this place that is not of Theodoret, was completely free of this fault. Having therefore followed this, we have retained what followed in such a way that, by prefixing the names of Origen, Diodorus, and Theodore, we might show them to be not Theodoret's, but others'. Indeed, by this example, we have not only not removed other scraps of this kind of other authors which occurred in other places and retained their own name, but we have sometimes even inserted new ones, which pertained to Theodoret, taken from the same source, hoping it would be to your benefit. Furthermore, in the second volume, which contains the explanations of the prophets, in order that we might in some part compensate for the loss of the *Commentaries* on Isaiah, which are nowhere to be found, we have culled from the same *Catenae* those things which bore the name of Theodoret. These indeed, since they surely embrace the marrow and sap of all that he wrote on Isaiah, will serve as a subsidy in the meantime, while the entire work emerges. Although the hope of obtaining this has long since perished, if I am not mistaken, among the Greeks themselves: for they also set out to produce *Excerpts* of this kind to console the loss, copies of which we remember seeing both in Rome and in Paris, but which did not proceed beyond the fifteenth chapter of Isaiah. In the third volume, 147 of Theodoret's *Epistles* see the light now for the first time—a few, that is to say, if compared with the five hundred which Nicephorus mentions he had read. In these we have presented the Vatican codex, which Cardinal Baronius also used in his *Annals*. Afterward, having procured another from Naples, we selected various readings from it that were more corrected than the Vatican transcript, and we took care to publish them in their proper place. [XXIII] In the fourth volume, there is nothing at all that has not been printed in Greek and Latin before, whereas in the others many things are now brought forth for the first time: in the first, to be sure, the *Questions on the Books of Kings and Chronicles*, and likewise the *Interpretation of the Psalms* and the *Song of Songs*; in the second, the entire explanation of all the prophets, both the major ones except Isaiah and the twelve minor ones; finally, in the third, the *Exposition of the Epistles of the Blessed Paul*, the *Religious History of the Hermits*, and the *Epistles* of Theodoret which we already mentioned. You must also be admonished about the Latin versions, reader, since in a Greek-Latin edition it seemed that this especially had to be looked to: that the Latin should, as far as it was possible, correspond to the Greek with equal spacing, but the verbose style of certain translators did not at all befit the brevity of Theodoret, and it was necessary to act so that we might remedy this inconvenience. While we did this, now more sparingly, now more freely by interpolating certain things, we would have feared censure, had we not been conscious of ourselves, how much we valued the learning and eloquence of all who have been engaged in this arena. Indeed, so that the memory of their benefit should not perish, we have explained whose *Epistles* each person first brought to light, and we have deemed those omitted in other subsequent editions to be restored in our own. Above all, however, we have added the *Life* of Theodoret himself, fashioned primarily from his own *Epistles*. Judge everything fairly, and farewell.
TESTIMONIES OF CERTAIN ANCIENT WRITERS CONCERNING THEODORET.
From the *Epistle* of Saint Pope Leo to Theodoret himself, which exists in its entirety in the Appendix at the end of volume IV of the Sirmond edition.
To his beloved brother Theodoret, bishop, Pope Leo.
As our brothers and fellow-priests return to us, whom the See of blessed Peter sent to the holy council...