Preface of the same, concerning the author of the Paschal Chronicle

DEDICATORY EPISTLE

unless perhaps it is less honorable to feel and speak of these princes, whom they themselves look upon face-to-face and revere, as the Gauls may do without sin, than it is for outsiders and foreigners who have received something about them merely by reputation and hearsay; those for whom, consequently, these very praises were extorted not by adulation, which one is prone to suspect in subjects and domestics, but by the sole force of the truth which holds sway everywhere, even among enemies. For why did that man, certainly not the last among English writers (a), declare the King of the French to be the KING OF KINGS OF THE EARTH? Or why did the same man call France the realm OF REALMS? Why did Pope Gregory, then truly "the Great" both in fact and in title, when writing to Childebert (b), say: "As much as royal dignity excels other men, by so much do the realms of other nations excel in the height of the French kingdom"? Why then did Greece herself—whence this work was brought into your Gauls, which now appears in your name—why, I ask, did she (not through just anyone, or from the promiscuous rabble, or from a herd of scribes, but by the mouth of Anna Comnena herself, though you were at those times lesser than them) still proclaim in the *Alexiad* (c) that you are KING OF KINGS, AND GREATER THAN ALL WHO ARE UNDER HEAVEN? What else could have compelled her, other than the clearly perceived dignity and authority of the French majesty, if not that, being the daughter of the Augustus Alexius Comnenus, noble by imperial blood and even by the title of Caesar, she nevertheless freely deferred the palm of royal prerogative to our princes? Why did the later grandson of Alexius, and the same emperor of Constantinople, Manuel Comnenus, when sending letters to the Supreme Pontiff Alexander (d), bestow upon Louis, King of the Franks, the title of PROTONOBILISSIMUS, if he did not recognize him as far excelling other princes of the world in the nobility and antiquity of his royal lineage, just as much as in the magnitude of his empire? But if these titles were justly and deservedly ascribed to those former kings, how much more fittingly do they belong to you alone, you who represent, collected in your single person, those virtues and gifts scattered among each of them which the monuments of ancient annals commemorate? Therefore, that you are heard and spoken of everywhere as THE GREATEST OF KINGS, although your innate moderation may bear it with difficulty, it is not within your power to prevent us from thinking so; it will not be able to apply this force to our minds and judgments, since hardly any one of us can refrain from or temper the very title of King of Kings. Yet, how much more truly does this title converge in you than in the ancient kings of the Parthians and Persians? If it were in our mind to join this title to you along with other kings—you who have written laws not once but many times, helping and supporting others as they stood, being in this world the sole arbiter of war and peace—surely it would be apt. But although such is the greatness of your soul, that you do not strive for anything in the study of capturing fame and praise among all: yet since virtue herself has drawn you by her own enticements toward true glory, grant at least that we may address you—not so much on account of the dignity of the kingdom over which you preside by a peculiar benefit of the Divine toward us, nor because its borders have finally been pushed by your illustrious and glorious trophies almost as far as ancient Gaul extended, but on account of those exceptional and truly royal gifts of soul with which you are signally adorned—grant, I say, that we may no longer call you "the Great"—by which title, as once happened to Arcadius the son of Theodosius the Great (e), we were overjoyed to address you in the very flower of your age—but THE GREATEST OF KINGS, especially by your Gauls, by whom you are rightly perceived and known, and in whose love and delights you are held. Grant that, after so many noble victories brought back from the enemy, after so many cities stormed and so many provinces recovered, you may be inscribed as TRIUMPHATOR (f). Grant that we may congratulate your proven good fortune (g), which is such a helper of your counsels and industry, that the latter has never surpassed the former, nor is there in you anything other than the prosperity of honorable things. Grant that the name of AUGUSTUS be imposed upon you by us, which flowed long ago from the kings of the Franks and was their own peculiar and proper title, and which, just as it was to your predecessors Philip II and Charles VIII, is owed to you by most excellent right, as is testified by so many things before this day, done by you piously, bravely, and remarkably. But among so many magnificent titles, there shall also be a place, and certainly not the last of all, so that we may proclaim you FATHER OF THE FATHERLAND—which was the designation used for Louis XII among our ancestors—on account of your singular humanity toward subjects and your benevolence toward the calamitous. Finally, just as an earlier age termed King Francis the FATHER AND PATRON OF LETTERS, on account of your exceptional outpourings toward men of letters, and on account of your love for all disciplines and the liberal arts, which we profess, grant...

that the Divine Power may favor our prayers, most Christian King; may He keep safe and sound your years, if they be taken from ours, and your triumphs, if they be taken from the spoils of enemies, and your most serene Dauphin, and those most noble children, your grandsons; may He decree for them perpetual empires, as well as for our descendants, so that in the distant future, after a long interval, our grandchildren may rule for infinite successions of centuries; and may the French nation, through them, having cast off every bitterness of evil, obtain the gifts of quiet happiness. Your most devoted servant, CAROLUS DU FRESNE.

PREFACE, CONCERNING THE AUTHOR OF THE PASCHAL CHRONICLE, AND OTHER COMPILERS OF PASCHAL CHRONICLES AMONG THE GREEKS

^AI. The use of Prefaces. "Individual Fathers, when about to set forth any book, as reason demands, were accustomed to prefix to their treatises matters concerning the author and his subject matter, the intention, the cause, and the title, and whatever else might prepare the hearers and readers for an easier understanding of the work that follows. And this was done with consideration for place and time, and for those to whom the discourse is directed, so that, according to the pattern of evangelical instruction, they might opportunely dispense the measure of salutary food to the Lord's family. For, as Palladius says, a great part of prudence is to measure out one's speech with careful consideration of the person who is writing." Relying on these words from John of Salisbury, and on what has been said concerning Prefaces—which Epiphanius calls [Greek: allas eggraphas], and which, as the same writer says, the ancient writers (*palaiou syngrapheis*) were accustomed to prefix to their books, by which they indicated through an enigma the underlying meaning of the whole work—I do not think there is anyone who, before approaching the reading of this *Paschal* Chronicle (or Paschal Chronicle), which is being produced by the royal press, would not voluntarily admit that it is worth the effort not only to know what its fate has been and what has been achieved in this edition, but also to inquire diligently into the name of the author, or at least his homeland—though both remain unexplored to this day—and what the argument of the work is, or what title should have been affixed to the book: all of which we have undertaken to examine to the best of our ability in this Preface.

^BII. The *Fasti Siculi*, as the Paschal Chronicle was first called, carried from Sicily to Rome. And to begin with its fortune, so to speak, it was varied. For it first became known in the literary republic and among learned men when it was brought to Rome from Sicily, where they say it was discovered by Jerónimo Zurita, through his and Antonio Agustín's efforts. For those who at that time were devoting their work to the compiling and embellishing of the consular *Fasti*—Carolus Sigonius and Onuphrius Panvinius—had the consular *Fasti* transcribed for themselves from that same Paschal Chronicle, and they more than once acknowledge that they were not a little helped by this in composing their own. "We," says Sigonius in his Commentary on the *Fasti* and Roman Triumphs, "have followed Dionysius, whom certain consular *Fasti*, written in Greek and brought from Sicily, as I hear, and others Latin ones as well, which Cuspinianus cites, also follow, in which the consuls are listed in succession, with only their surnames given, in this manner: *Brutus and Collatinus*." And Panvinius, in the Preface to his Commentaries on the *Fasti*: "The most recent of all the ancients who, as far as I know, wrote consular *Fasti* is an anonymous author who, in the universal Chronicle composed by himself, also added the names of the consuls from the time of the expulsion of the kings down to the first (nay, the twentieth) year of the Emperor Heraclius. That book, written in very ancient letters, was discovered in Sicily in an ancient library by Jerónimo Zurita, and through the labor of Antonio Agustín, auditor of the Rota, it was brought about that a part of that book was transmitted to us, containing the consuls, with the help of which I was much assisted in compiling these *Fasti*." The same author, in book 1, in the Preface: "For I have made use of Orosius, Cassiodorus, and those Greek *Fasti* recently brought to Rome from Sicily through the efforts of the very learned Antonio Agustín—indeed, in a very corrupt state—only for the sake of organizing the consuls." Finally, in the Preface to book III: "For down to the time of Heraclius...

^A in which the Vatican codex itself ends, the rest having been omitted alike." Why Scaliger or Casaubon omitted the following pages, "I cannot divine," says Rader, "unless it be because there is much mention there of sacred images, from which, I suppose, the Iconoclasts fled; which I scarcely think, but rather that the writer, exhausted by the transcription, stopped here, and did not deem them of enough importance to apply himself further to the task undertaken." However that edition may be, it was of no small help in emending the Raderian edition, especially since the latter is teeming with many errors, and, just as it was not at all properly transcribed by Rader, neither was it expressed by the printer in sufficiently accurate type. Moreover, Scaliger in his Notes to Eusebius always calls that Chronicle edited by him "the Casaubonian": where Rader again says, "A great and grave cause, he says, that if I were to translate into my own hand, publish, and add observations to the text that I myself had transcribed, it would not be Raderian, much less Casaubonian." But why this should irritate Rader, I do not quite understand, since it is very natural that if you have received a favor from someone, you should openly declare it when publishing his work. ^C

IV. The Raderian Chronicle.

as this variety of narration arises from the fact that it follows now this author, now that one.

V. Whether this Chronicle should rightly be called Alexandrian. Meanwhile, there have not been wanting those among the more learned who have criticized the title affixed to the Chronicle published by Raderus as being less than suitable, not to say entirely inept, because that same Chronicle, the author of which had hitherto been held to be uncertain, was called Alexandrian, pushed by no other basis than that he had read the name of Peter of Alexandria at the beginning of the Augustan codex: as if, even if this Peter of Alexandria had been the author of the Chronicle, which is far from the truth, as we shall presently show, it should therefore be called Alexandrian. For in order for it to be so called, it would be necessary that it either comprise only Alexandrian affairs, just like the work of Callinicus the Sophist, who lived under Gallienus ^A and pursued Alexandrian affairs in ten books, and which is praised by Jerome [b]: or the history of the Alexandrian prelates, like the Chronicle of Eutychius, and that which they call the Oriental, published by the royal presses: or at least that the times in it be reckoned according to the era and epochs of the Alexandrians, as Jacobus Cujacius [c] calls that Chronicle from the Putean library Alexandrian, because in it they count the years not only from the Roman consuls, but also from their own Augustal [era] of the Alexandrians. Which Putean Chronicle, indeed, is the very same one that Scaliger edited after the Chronicle of Eusebius, under this title: *Excerpta from the prior Chronological book of Eusebius and Africanus and others, translated into Latin by a barbaric, inept man, most ignorant of Hellenism and Latinity.*

VI. That name applied to the Chronicle, which bears the name of George, bishop of Ambianensis, is more suitable. For indeed that Chronicle, which Jacobus Gottofredus [d] praises more than once under the title of *Alexandrian Miscellany*, and from which Scaliger drew his own [materials], is preserved today in the Royal Library, in a parchment codex, written in what they call uncial letters, and consequently is of entirely superior antiquity, on whose border, in a slightly more recent character, yet one that smells of the age of Charles the Bald, these things are read written: *The Chronicle of George, Bishop of Ambianensis, or as others say, of Victor, Bishop of Turonensis.* This Chronicle ends in the times of Anastasius Dicorus, under whose reign at last it seems to have been completed: especially since in the series of emperors, which the author described, and in which he appends the years of the empire to each, it ends at Zeno and Anastasius, with the years of their reign omitted. Furthermore, for George, ^B bishop of Ambianensis, who was sent as an ambassador to Rome by Charlemagne around the year DCCLXXIII, as Anastasius [e] testifies, there will perhaps be no one who wishes to assert him as the author from this inscription added to the codex: both because at that age such barbarism in the Latin language did not at all prevail in Gaul; and also because, even though it bears the name of George, bishop of Ambianensis, it is possible that he had produced some similar lucubrations, from which the creator of these could have been considered [to be him], although whether he wrote some [things] remains entirely uncertain. Nor by a better right ought it to be ascribed to Victor, bishop of Turonensis, who did not exist, although it was perhaps wrongly written *Turonensis* for *Tunnunensis*, so that the scribe wished to imply that some [passages] were taken from the Chronicle of Victor Tunnunensis in Africa, which ends at Justin the Younger, which the unpublished Chronicle of Mellitus in the Colbert codex ccxl seems to persuade, where he is called Bishop of the Church of Toronensis, when he treats of his Chronicle. For these [claims] are entirely evanescent, and resting on no foundation regarding the writer of this barbaro-Latin Chronicle, who, as far as one may conjecture, was an Egyptian, who neither knew the Greek, nor certainly the Latin language well, even though many things exist in it which pertain to the kingdoms of the Egyptians, whose era he always [f] follows, and are worthy to be read even despite the solecisms, on account of those things alone which exist in it that are useful and of good fruit: which is the opinion of the same Scaliger [g]. But let these things be said briefly and in passing about this Chronicle, which, with Cujacius in our Notes, we henceforth call Alexandrian.

VII. Peter of Alexandria was not the author of the Paschal Chronicle. And so that the discourse may return to its track, even if some Peter, bishop of Alexandria, could have existed as the author of the Paschal Chronicle, which we are re-editing, it does not therefore follow, as we touched upon above, that it should be called Alexandrian, but the Chronicle of Peter of Alexandria. Furthermore, this Peter, bishop of Alexandria, whose name is read at the beginning of the *Syntagma on the Passover*, which is prefixed to the Vatican codex, as it has certainly been inscribed and published, could not be the author of the Chronicle, since he is called a martyr, and this Peter died as a martyr while Diocletian was emperor, as Epiphanius testifies above others, and the writer of the Paschal Chronicle [i] perhaps [drew] from him; and consequently he could not have brought it down to the times of Heraclius, into which it is drawn out. But that the same Peter is not to be held as the author, [is proven by the fact] that not only do testimonies suggest, but they entirely prove that the things which are offered ^C in the *Syntagma on the Passover* by the writer of the Chronicle from his book on the paschal festival of the Jews and Christians, where the same formula is praised as that of the writings of Hippolytus, bishop of Portus, Apollinaris, bishop of Hierapolis, Clement of Alexandria, and Athanasius, who could similarly be called authors of the Chronicle. But we are taught that a shorter work of Peter of Alexandria exists or existed in the Escorial library with another title, *Concerning the Passover, and the questions of this*, from its unpublished index of Greek codices: but also that it is held in the library of the college of So-

^Aciety of Jesus at Zaragoza in Spain, as Petavius notes (a), to whom it is cited once and again. Furthermore, there is no mention of the Alexandrian epoch or era of years, which was also the Egyptian, but far rather of the Antiochene, as Henry Valesius thinks (b): "This Chronicle," he says, "I know not why Raderus called Alexandrian; I for my part would rather call it Antiochene. For the author of that Chronicle is most diligent in recording the affairs of the Antiochians, and constantly employs their years and months (c), as I long ago noted in my Epistle to James Ussher." And in another place (d): "The Alexandrian Chronicle, which I would more willingly call Antiochene." But although the author of the Chronicle often uses the Antiochene era, nevertheless the method of calculating years from the creation of the world among the Antiochians was different, and distinct from that which he employs, as we observe in this Preface (e).

VIII. Nor perhaps was the author of the Paschal Chronicle anyone else of Alexandria. Nor could it be called the Alexandrian Chronicle with any better right, because it might be thought to have been written by some Alexandrian, for the reason that, since the whole work turns upon the investigation of the Paschal feast and the examination of its difficulties, the Egyptians are said to have had a special knowledge of this calculation—as Pope St. Leo speaks, or as Proterius in his epistle to the same pontiff (f), saying that the Church of the Egyptians was the mother of this work. And this is evident even from the fact that, when the decree was made at the Council of Nicaea that all Churches should celebrate Easter at the same time, this duty was entrusted to the Alexandrians, who possessed a greater knowledge of the stars and the ordering of times than the rest, and whose prelates were to find the legitimate day of celebrating Easter each year and indicate it to the other Churches, which John Philoponus testifies was done long before the birth of Christ (g). Add that the same author ^B of the Paschal Chronicle describes a list of the kings of the Persians down to Alexander the Great, and then of the kings of Egypt from the Ptolemies down to Cleopatra, and accurately counts and sets forth the years of each reign; but he also mixes in certain singular matters regarding Alexandria, for example, where he speaks of the Pharos, and observes that bread from the military ration was provided to the Alexandrians by Diocletian in the eighteenth year of his reign; and he sometimes admits the months of the Egyptians. Yet, by the same reasoning, another might perhaps attribute it to some Roman, or Greek, or even a Jew, because the years are recorded according to consuls, according to Olympiads—which were unknown to the Alexandrians (though George Syncellus testifies that the Egyptians had their own other Olympiads) —and according to the indictions; and the months are presented after the manner of the Macedonians or the Latins, by Calends, Ides, and Nones; the beginning of the years is reckoned from the first of January, or of September, contrary to the usage among the Alexandrians, among whom the beginning of the years is taken from the month of Thoth, the first day of which corresponds to the twenty-ninth day of the month of August. Moved by these reasons, there have not been wanting those who thought these Annals were written at Constantinople, where all the aforestated matters were in common use, having been in large part transferred from old Rome along with the seat of empire, which was not the case in the rest of Greece, which abstained more from Latin names; and that this is most evident, says Henschenius (i), from the final years of the Chronicle, in which the acts of Bonus the Master, buried in the church of the Studites at Constantinople in the seventeenth year of Heraclius, are described so prolixly that it appears highly probable that the author (or rather the continuator, of whom we shall treat below) not only wrote there, but was himself one of the Studites.

IX. As to when its author lived, it is a subject of inquiry. But since this Chronicle, or Paschalion, has been compiled like a cento from various writers, according to Petavius, and, as Scaliger says [VII.], stitched together from good ^C patches, from which a not inconsiderable fruit may be gathered, a fact which Henry Valesius, a man of exact judgment, also observes; and since many hitherto unpublished segments of authors are inserted in it, whose names he very often suppresses, and many things are described word for word from Africanus (whose disciple he is said to be by Goar) [j], Epiphanius, Eusebius, Marcellinus Comes, Philostorgius, John Malala of Antioch, and others, I do not clearly perceive how from this one might be able to detect, I do not just say a name, but the author's fatherland or origin. For the fact that the author occasionally speaks of Alexandrian or Antiochene and other such matters as if they were singular and peculiar should not seem strange, since he principally wove his work from the various Paschal tables of cities or provinces, as he declares once and again, in which they were wont to insert especially those things that concerned their fatherland, so that the Constantinopolitan Paschal would contain Constantinopolitan affairs, the Alexandrian the Alexandrian, and the Antiochene the Antiochene, along with the epochs of each, from which the writer selected some things as he saw fit. Hence such various and diverse chronological characteristics and computations occur in this Chronicle, both in the years from the creation of the world and in their variously assumed beginnings, which indeed he sometimes professes to derive from the vernal equinox and the twenty-first of March, and sometimes begins from September—which matter, says Petavius (k), both confuses the Chronicle itself and confounds the mind of the reader. Nor are the consular Fasti excerpted from anywhere else, since they were wont to be described in the Paschal tables, as we observe below. Furthermore, it is manifest that the Latins composed their own Paschal tables in this way, from the tablets which ^D were accustomed to append their Paschal cycles to each city or diocese.

^A, in which those particular matters that concern them are accustomed to be noted. Indeed, even if ^B the same writer sometimes narrates a thing as if seen by himself, or it seems to be inferred from his writings that he was in some way present at the events—just as when he touches upon the eulogies of Melchizedek and Jeremiah—no one is ignorant of the fact that compilers of chronicles of this kind, while they patch together their own work from the writings of others, insert the words of the authors entire, without any discernment, when they recount what was seen by those authors, or what happened in their age, as if seen by themselves or as if the events narrated took place in their own time. And this is especially to be observed in the Chronicles of George Syncellus, George Hamartolus, Symeon the Logothete, and others; although it must be admitted that they are not accustomed to borrow from other writers the things that happened during the time they themselves lived, but rather to draw those from their own store, so that if indeed the writer of the Paschal Chronicle, or at least its continuator, lived under Heraclius—to whose twentieth year the Chronicle is led—it is very probable that he narrated what happened in his own age, or very recently, or what he saw or knew.

But whether the same writer lived under Heraclius, Goar doubts in his Preface to the Chronology of George Syncellus, whose words I shall set down here: "The Alexandrian Chronicle, neither read by George Syncellus nor mentioned by Photius, is not, as far as I am concerned, of undoubted age." For that it professes to lead the history down to the time of Heraclius can be the testimony of the author as well as of a copyist, who, having perhaps obtained the work not yet finished [at the year VIII] of Heraclius, decided its end there, not testifying that the author lived [at that time], just as in a not dissimilar way of speaking, our copyist left it written in the title that George Syncellus—who was five hundred years later—continued his chronographia "from Adam to Diocletian" down to the reign of the Emperor Diocletian; although it is not my place to pronounce a judgment from the bench or to stir up a dispute concerning this doubt. Thus far the most learned man, joined to me in friendship while he lived, who from this seems to conclude, or at least to conjecture, that the author of the Paschal [Chronicle] is later than Syncellus and Photius, in that they were altogether silent about it. To which conjecture, indeed, one could add that the same Photius reviewed the writings on the Pascha of three authors—of whom the other is Metrodorus, and the two others are anonymous—but did not mention our author of the Chronicle. But these things do not by any means prove the matter, since it cannot be held as certain that Photius read or saw all the volumes that survived in his own time.

X. Its authors are two: one lived under Constantius, the other under Heraclius. As for the age of the author of the Chronicle, since there was not one man by whom it was worked out, it is at least certain that the man by whom it was brought down to Heraclius is not the writer of the whole work, but a continuator and interpolator of another work, which ended at the seventeenth year of Constantius, which is the year of Christ 354. We are taught this especially from the observations of the most learned Holstenius, which he had attached to his copy of the published Alexandrian Chronicle, having written to the aforementioned year of Constantius after these words, ^C *εἰδὼν Αὔγουστον* [seeing Augustus], the following: "Here ends the author of the PASCHAL CHRONICLE; the rest is the continuator's." This was certainly suspected by the very sagacious man Franciscus Pithoeus, who, speaking of this Chronicle (b), said that it appeared to be written in the last year of the Great Constantine, in the consulship of Felicianus and Tatianus. From this, therefore, it is gathered that the first author of the Paschal [Chronicle] lived around the times of Constantius, when the controversies concerning the day of the Paschal feast were still flourishing, which, having broken out afresh under Heraclius, as we observe below, gave the occasion to another to take up this Paschal Chronicle written long ago, and by following the computational method of the [first] writer, to continue it to his own times, and thus to interpolate this former edition, while he intermixes his own and others' material.

Holstenius saw this earlier Chronicle, and as much as can be conjectured from the manuscript codex which, as we learned from the distinguished Emericus Bigotius, the abbot of Farina, a Sicilian, had acquired for the Catholic King from the Oratory in Constantinople, and had communicated to him (c). Holstenius later compared that with the Raderian edition, carefully noting various readings marked in the margins, and sometimes adding his own emendations and conjectures; where things had been inserted by the interpolator, and were missing in the same manuscript copy, he diligently noted it. Moreover, he added emendations from his own ingenuity in the remaining part of the Chronicle. Which things we have all carried over into our Notes, and to him, as is fitting, we have ascribed them, both so that we might not be said to have pilfered from another, and because the estimation and authority of a man everywhere considered most learned in literary matters would perhaps not easily lead the reader to agree with his opinion.

Furthermore, that the continuator of the Chronicle lived under Heraclius can hardly be denied, both because the title of the book in the Vatican codex and in the codices of the Catholic King’s library intimates that it ends in the fourth year of Heraclius, or at least in his times, and [X] because the things that are narrated concerning the same Augustus and his deeds, and finally the lengthier epistles transcribed to the King of the Persians or to local rulers, and the accurate notation of the years of his imperial reign and of his son Constantine described in public acts, and that he himself calls Heraclius ^D *θεῖον βασιλέα* [divine king], convince one entirely. And yet it does not follow from this that George of Pisidia, because he lived while the same Heraclius was reigning, ought to be considered the author of the Chronicle, which Johannes Georgius Herwartus (d) seems to have thought, with no other conjecture than from the words of Suda, poorly understood.

XI. Whether it can be called Constantinopolitan. However that may be, there can be no urgent reason for why it should rather be called the Alexandrian Chronicle, says a recent writer (e), and the same man most learned, since it is anything but Alexandrian, and has nothing in common with the methods of the Alexandrians; so much so that it is a wonder why Raderus gave this title to the Chronicle.

Issued, unwillingly by the Muses and opposed by all scholars, although it has been lauded thus far in this way ever since that Raderian edition came out, so that it might serve a better-known name and received usage. Hence Jacob Gothofredus, in his Notes on Philostorgius, always praises the Chronicle that is today called Alexandrian; and learnedly so, for before the Raderian edition it existed and was praised under other titles, and titles no less suitable, albeit it was curtailed in other, more important parts. Nor have there been wanting in the meantime those who have thought that the work could be called Constantinopolitan; among them is Johannes Leunclavius (a), in the place where he published for the first time the edict of the Emperor Justinian containing his confession of faith, having set before it the same words which this Paschal Chronicle has at the twenty-fifth year of Justinian, described from the ancient Annals, which some, as he adds, call Constantinopolitan, so that it is reasonable to think that he had seen this Chronicle and copied that same edict from it, albeit from a codex other than the Augustan library’s: which is perceived even from this, that in the one Raderus used, there is found in that edict of Justinian (b) a great gap in the place where it is described in its entirety in the Vatican codex and in Leunclavius, from which we have supplied the defect of the Raderian edition in this Royal edition, having attached the Latin version of the ancient interpreter. But even in other places of the same edict, different readings sometimes occur, so that it is rightly permitted to doubt whether the Augustan exemplar was copied from the Vatican one. The most learned man, Daniel Papebrochius (c), is of the same opinion regarding the title of the Chronicle.

XII. It is proved that it should be called the Paschal Chronicle. — But whoever the author of this Chronicle may have been, he wrote not so much a Chronicle as a Paschal computation, as he himself confesses in his Preface (d) or Syntagma on the Pasch, which we have mentioned, or *Paschaliōn*, as the ecclesiastical Greeks call it, that is, a canon concerning the celebration of the Pasch, whose first founders all ancient Greek writers acknowledge to have been the Alexandrians. The name was thus given because they exhibit an index not only of both Paschs—that is, the Judaic or legal, and the typical or Christian—but also of the principal festivals which the Greeks call *despotikai* (of the Lord), and the Latins call "movable" because they depend upon the day of the Pasch, and they note the days on which each is performed: concerning [X] which Paschalia, or Paschal cycles, Scaliger (e) and Petavius (f) have dealt: but we ourselves also have touched upon some things concerning them in our *Glossary of Medieval Greek*. Computeations of this kind, *heortastikoi kyklos*, Paschalia, Paschal cycles, circles, courses, recurrences, are called so everywhere by Victorius, Gennadius, Senator, Ado of Vienne, Bede, Paulus Warnefridus, and others: but more recent writers among the Greeks, among whom are St. Maximus (g) and Nicephorus Gregoras (h), call them *Paschalia*.

XIII. The rationale and method for writing Paschalia is twofold. — The rationale for writing *Paschalia* was twofold: for one is simple, the other is illustrated by a more detailed commentary. The former is engaged entirely in the method of investigating the day of the Paschal festival, with tables sometimes also compiled for the same subject, of which kind is the sixteen-year Paschal canon of Hippolytus, Bishop of Portus, which was found near the City, brought to Rome, and deposited in the Vatican library, and has since been illustrated by learned men, namely by Scaliger in his books *On the Emendation of Time*, and in his Notes on the Chronicle of Eusebius, from which it was transferred to the Gruterian inscriptions, then by Aegidius Bucherius on the Paschal canon of Victorius, and finally lately by the most learned man of the *Variorum sacrorum*: regarding which Paschal canon of Hippolytus, Eusebius writes thus in *Hist. Eccl.*, book VI, ch. 22:

Τότε δῆτα καὶ Ἱππόλυτος συντάττων μετὰ πλείστων ἄλλων ὑπομνημάτων, καὶ περὶ τοῦ Πάσχα πεποίηται σύγγραμμα, ἐν ᾧ τῶν χρόνων ἀναγραφὴν ἐκθέμενος, καί τινα κανόνα ἑκκαιδεκαετηρίδος περὶ τοῦ Πάσχα προθεὶς, ἐπὶ τὸ πρῶτον ἔτος Αὐτοκράτορος Ἀλεξάνδρου τοὺς χρόνους περιγράφει.

XIV. Two species of more detailed *Paschalia*. — The *Paschalia* which are illustrated by a more detailed Commentary are, in their turn, of two species. For one set is arranged in chronological order, or according to the series of the times; the other is written in the form of a method, by which not only Paschal days and other festivals are investigated, but also other things which are accustomed to be inquired into in more recent ecclesiastical computations. And to begin with the more detailed ones, Hippolytus, whom we just mentioned, is said to have used that manner of writing: by which, with the years elapsed from the foundation of the world to his own times being digested, he might establish a method of the sixteen-year cycle discovered by him for finding the Pasch, having subsequently described, as is indeed likely, the Paschal festivals, perhaps legal and Christian. Which work he indeed brought down to the times of the Emperor Alexander Severus, as we are taught from the aforementioned passage of Eusebius, in which he set forth the description of the times from the foundation of the world to that same Alexan-

- ^A der, to which he finally prefixed the canon of the sixteen-year cycle; for the word *apodeixis* seems to indicate this. But Hippolytus’s rationale for Easter and his canons of the times, as they are called by Jerome, are one thing, and the *enneakaidekaeteris* (nineteen-year) canon invented by him is another: this is taught both by the canon of Hippolytus itself, which Scaliger published, and by others in which, among his works, is listed the *Demonstration of the times of Easter according to the table*. Here Scaliger thinks *ka-tai* should be restored, or *kath’*, which I should prefer for the latter. For even if, as Bucherius also prefers the former, because they say *apodeixis* and *table* are far different, I have decided that these words should be understood in such a way that the demonstration of the times of Easter, written down according to the rule described in the table and, according to Eusebius, prefixed to the same work, was: unless one admits the reading of the Medicean codex, *prostheis*, of which Valesius makes mention, as having been added, which means nearly the same thing, although it seems rather to indicate the lemma of the same canon, which is read conceived in these words: *In the first year of the reign of Emperor Alexander, the 14th of the Passover occurred on the Ides of April, on a Saturday, there having been an intercalary month; it shall be for the following years as is set down in the table; it occurred in times past as has been noted.* That is: In the year of Emperor Alexander’s reign, the 14th of the Passover occurred on the Ides of April, on a Saturday, when there had been an intercalary month. In the following years it will happen as is set out in the table, but in the past it occurred as indicated. From which Scaliger concludes that Hippolytus promises in this lemma not only the constancy of the canon for the future, but also in perpetuity. But these words sound very different, if I am not mistaken. For he says that in this little table, which is subjected to the work itself as a specimen of the paschal canon or rule, the same rule is to be observed hereafter as had been observed in the years past. Whence it might be gathered that in the entire course of the whole work he not only described past events according to a rationale of the times, but also subsequently applied the times of the paschal festivals to his own canons: which is exactly what Eusebius seems to intend, writing that a paschal canon had been attached to the work on the Passover, digested by times, or in chronological order. For although we have his canon, says the learned Henry Dodwell, the book he wrote about the canon has perished.

^B XV. Concerning the Paschal [work] of Hippolytus of Portus. — But whether that work of Hippolytus is the same as the one he inscribed *On the Passover*, which Valesius wishes to be the case, is rendered doubtful by the fact that Eusebius and Jerome, after having listed that work *On the Passover*, in which he carried the rationale of the times down to the age of the Emperor Alexander, go on to list another *On the Passover*; which indeed is the one in the paschal syntagma prefixed to this which we are reissuing, and is subsequently praised by other writers. Furthermore, these words which are added to the table, *On the demonstration of the times of the Passover as in the table*, can be understood in such a way that the table itself contained the demonstration of the times of the Passover, and therefore the demonstration itself and the table were one and the same thing, and the table had been attached to the Chronicle, of which the little table makes mention a little before, with these words: *Chronicon to the Greeks, and to Plato*. Yet in such a way that it is uncertain whether *to the Greeks* should be referred to the Chronicle which Hippolytus wrote, following the custom of his age, whereby the holy Fathers refuted the objections of the Gentiles with this genre of writing, who used to traduce the antiquity of the Christian religion, of which the heathens themselves boasted, [XII] as it is in Paul Orosius, as feigned, while they asserted the sacred antiquities from the foundation of the world down to their own times, showing the whole chronology of the Gentiles, meanwhile, to be *mythica*, or uncertain, and almost recent: whereas the Christians traced their own from the Jews, and from Moses himself, and therefore from the creation of the world. To which perhaps the Senator also looked when he said: *They have even after [them] continuators, diverse narrators of the times of Christian studies, who, composed with ecclesiastical gravity, run through the vicissitudes of things and the changes of kingdoms with a milky, yet most cautious, brightness.* Who, since they report ecclesiastical things and describe the vicissitudes occurring through diverse times, it is necessary that the minds of the readers be always instructed in heavenly things, when they contend to apply all things truthfully not to fortuitous accidents, nor to the infirm powers of the gods, as the Gentiles did, but to the will of the Creator. Furthermore, there are praised by Labbeus from the Monchalian Library the Paschal Tables of Hippolytus, Bishop of Portus, in Greek and Latin, with the life of the same Hippolytus from the book of Saint Jerome in Greek, and an Italian commentary in a recent hand on the same tables. But whether these tables are the same as the published one we mentioned, is not entirely clear. There exist other works of the same Hippolytus, in the royal library in manuscript, and published long ago by Canisius, Combefisius, and others: some things are praised besides by Syncellus. But concerning Hippolytus and his writings, besides Eusebius, one should consult the same Combefisius on his book *On the Twelve Apostles* and the book *On Antichrist*.

XVI. By what method it was written. — For indeed this method of writing, which we have touched upon here, was used ^C by Cassianus, author of the *Exegetica*, by Tatianus, as the author of the *Paschal Chronicle* also testifies concerning him, by Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, Theophilus of Antioch, Julius Africanus, Eusebius, Prosper of Aquitaine, Georgius Syncellus, and a few others, who demonstrated that the Christian religion was not something recent and *anarchos* (without antiquity) by the prophetical writings, and proved that Moses preceded the Trojan war by 927 years, which Theophilus did among the first in the book *To Autolycus*, who, so that it might be demonstrated more surely, thought that the series of times ought to be retraced from the very foundation of the world: *That we may make a more accurate...*

proof of seasons and times, God granting it to us, not only recounting the things after the flood, but also those before the flood, so that we may now make, as far as is possible for us, the sum of all things, retracing the path to the origin since the foundation of the world, which Moses, the servant of God, inscribed through the Holy Spirit. And in the same book: For it is not the substance of long discourse that is set before us, but to manifest the quantity of the times from the foundation of the world, and to refute the vain labor and prattling of writers, because there are neither twenty thousand myriads, as Plato said, etc. That the author of the Paschal Chronicle, which we are publishing, pursued the same method and system of writing is evident from this, that he does not merely repeat the origins and history of the Christian religion from the very creation of the world, and diligently pursue Jewish affairs, but also exposes and overturns the vain inventions of the Gentiles concerning their gods ^A, while he solidly proves that those gods whom they worshiped were mortal men, indicating the centuries in which they lived, and consequently that the Jewish religion, from which the Christian religion sprang, existed long before Saturn and Jove. To this [XIII] point belong the things of Cyprian, or of another writer in the book *On the Vanity of Idols*: That the gods are not what the common people worship, is hence known. There were once kings who, on account of their royal memory, began to be worshiped by their own people even in death: hence temples were instituted for them, hence statues were expressed to keep the faces of the deceased in view: for they both sacrificed victims and celebrated feast days by granting honors. Hence, to those who came after, these were made sacred rites, which had been assumed as consolations for the first. "Since, therefore," says Petavius, "two arts flourish from the knowledge of times: the one which is commonly called computistic, and concerns the canons and rules of ordering times for civil use; the other which we call chronology, which assigns the memory of past things to their own times by certain marks and indications; the author of the Paschal Chronicle has embraced both," while he diligently pursues the series of times, to which he adds the events, and inserts the ^B *eortastikous* (festal) and paschal canons one after another.

XVII. Whether the writer of the Paschal Chronicle saw this.

[XIV] XVIII. Whether Hippolytus is the author of the Chronicle edited by Canisius and Labbe.

965. And if anyone wishes to compare what we have brought forward here with those things which we have gathered concerning the Chronicle of Hippolytus, he will perhaps not find it difficult to concede that it is the very same Chronicle, to which he prefixed a column or appended a canon or rule for finding the festival of Easter, about which he treated in the section we have mentioned; according to which he wished the reader to calculate the past and future years. Nor is it an objection that this Canisian, or Labbean, Chronicle is brought down to the final year of the Emperor Alexander, whereas Hippolytus is said by some to have suffered martyrdom under that emperor (a), since it is certainly altogether uncertain, and the time of his martyrdom is asserted by no reliable author, although Gregory of Tours (b) and others hold that it happened under Decius, whereas Eusebius, Jerome, and others (c) report that he lived only during the reign of Alexander. The Anonymus in the manuscript Chronicle from the Royal Codex [M], MLIV, and Nicephorus of Constantinople in his Chronology, and the Catalog of the Emperors of Constantinople published by Leunclavius in Book II of the *Jus Graeco-Romanum*, report—erroneously, if I am not mistaken—that he flourished under the reign of Severus: "Under him also Hippolytus the Roman, the writer, flourished." Although there is no reason why he could not have begun to be known even in the age of Severus, unless they have confused Severus with Alexander Severus. Furthermore, our conjecture that Hippolytus is the writer of this same tract seems confirmed by the fact that certain things from it were inserted into the Raderian Chronicle, as we indicate later in our Notes, so that the Escorial Codex not without reason bears the names of Hippolytus, [XV] and also of Marcellinus, whoever he may have been. For it is not probable that Baruoetius added these to the title of the codex without any foundation.

XIX. And this seems very likely from the reasons alleged. Besides the conjectures already brought forward, which seem to assert that this Canisian or Labbean Chronicle belongs to Hippolytus, perhaps that which concerns the reckoning of the years—both from the creation of the world and from the incarnation and birth of Christ, which Hippolytus is said to have used—ought not to be considered of the least importance, since both writers agree on the years since the world's creation. So that this may be further explored, we must first inquire what method Hippolytus used in recording the years, both of the world and of Christ: which can, in some measure, be gathered from Cyril of Scythopolis, who lived under the Emperor Justinian, both in the Life of Saint Euthymius and in the Life of Saint Sabas, in those places where he commemorates the passing of these holy anchorites. And so that we may begin with Saint Euthymius, it is my pleasure to adduce the very words of Cyril, as they are held in the Colbertine Codex—for the Life of Euthymius edited by Cotelerius is taken from the interpolator Metaphrastes, even though it presents the same set of year-characteristics. They are as follows:

"And his departure took place on the twentieth of the month of January, in the eleventh indiction, from the creation of the world, from which time began to be measured by the sun's course, the year five thousand nine hundred sixty-fifth; and from the incarnation of the Word of God from the Virgin, the year four hundred sixty-fifth, according to the times recorded by the holy fathers, Hippolytus the elder, and the acquaintance of the Apostles, and Epiphanius the Cyprian, and Heron the philosopher, and..."

From which we gather that Saint Euthymius passed away on January 20th, in the 11th indiction, in the year of the world 5,965, of the incarnation of Christ 465, and, as he states below, in the 16th year of Leo the Great. Again, the same Cyril in the *Life of Saint Sabas* (d) writes that the same holy anchorite died on December 5th, in the 10th indiction, in the year from the creation of the world 6,024, of the incarnation or nativity of Christ 524, in the 6th year of Justinian, P.C. Orestes II, where he speaks of the same formula regarding the year-characteristics of Hippolytus, Epiphanius, and Heron.

XX. Concerning Heron the Chronographer. But who this Heron the confessor and philosopher may have been (that I may speak of this in passing), who recorded the times, I see is unknown to the more learned. For who would dare to assert that he is the one who, being a disciple and follower of Origen, and instructed by him in the elements of the faith, and having embraced his philosophy, was beheaded as a martyr together with Heraclitus while he was still a neophyte, as Eusebius writes (e), and from him Nicephorus Callisti (f)? But Eusebius does not report under what raging persecution he suffered martyrdom; it is, however, likely that it happened under Decius, in which, as we have noted, many believe Hippolytus to have perished, and that both of them, while the controversies concerning the time of celebrating the Easter festival were flourishing in that age—about which the same Eusebius treats (g)—had published commentaries in which both observed the year and day of Christ's Nativity. Indeed, since he is said to have finished his martyrdom while still a neophyte, I do not know if he might be that Marcus Aurelius Heron who, while Alexander Severus was still emperor, was then *Neokoros* of the temple of Serapis in Portus, as it is in the ancient inscription on a marble base, and later, having become a neophyte, underwent martyrdom; which [XVI] inscription, with this sequence of words, is read described in Jacob Sornius in *Miscellanea of Erudite Antiquity* (h):

MARCUS AURELIUS SCOUPROS ALEXANDER EUTYCHES EUSEBES AND JULIA MAMAEA AUGUSTA MOTHER OF THE AUGUSTUS TO THE GREAT SUN SARAPIS AND TO THE CON-TEMPULAR GODS M. AURELIUS HERON NEWKOROS OF THE SARAPIS IN PORTUS UNDER LARGINUS THE BATTALION COMMANDER, ARCHHYPERETES AND KAMINUTES, AND AURELIUS PHOEBUS AND SALONIUS THEIDOTUS THE HIEROPHONES AND KAMINUTAI, BY THE GRACE OF TEMPLE SERVICE DEDICATED THIS TO THE GOOD.

^A Regarding this conjecture about Heron the Cyrillian, I define nothing rashly, since there have been others by this name, among whom are Heron, patriarch of Antioch, whom some call Ἔρωτα, and Heron, a Theban by nation, a bishop in rank, under the emperor Julian, whom Philostorgius and the author of this Chronicle mention. Meanwhile, from this inscribed stone brought forward, it may perhaps be possible to conclude that it is very likely that the Portus mentioned in it is the city of which Hippolytus was bishop, even though it remains uncertain in which province it existed; for even Jerome, as he clearly testifies, did not know, though he lived so long in Rome, and the Portus of Rome, of which most maintain Hippolytus was bishop, ought not to have been unknown to him. Thus, this Greek inscription and the cult of Serapis, which points toward Egypt—where it is known that that sanctuary of Alexandria was destroyed by Theodosius the Great—would seem to suggest the place from which it was brought to the Gallic province, where it is preserved. But since among geographers and other writers no city by the name of Portus occurs in Egypt, where the Greek language flourished, but rather in Africa, where Latin prevailed—in which region the anonymous Ravennas (lib. I, cap. 8, 11, and lib. V, cap. 4) enumerates three, namely Portus Divinus, Sigensis, and Magnus—and since Hippolytus is called only "bishop of Portus" with no adjunct, it is surely more likely that the Roman Portus is meant in that inscription. Nor is it an objection that a temple of Serapis is said to have existed in Porto, or Portus, since in that region, and even in the city of Ostia, which is very close to Portus and separated only by the Tiber (as both cities are described by Procopius (a)), the cult of Serapis was practiced, as Minucius Felix testifies at the beginning of his work; and in Rome itself, and in other Latin provinces, Greek inscriptions collected by Gruter testify that the same cult of Serapis existed. Nor should it be alleged against this that the inscription is Greek, since many have been discovered in Latin provinces. But the fact that it is generally thought to suggest that Hippolytus was bishop of the Roman Portus is particularly supported by the fact that he is called "Roman" in the Leunclavius Catalog of Emperors, cited above, and that in the year 1551, in the Ager Veranus, not far from the church of St. Lawrence at the City, there was discovered an ancient marble statue sitting on a throne, on whose two side-panels were inscribed in Greek letters the paschal cycles of sixteen years. From these, as well as from the book-label which the right side of the throne contained, it was easily gathered—though the name of Hippolytus was not explicitly written—that it is the [17th] statue, which it is highly probable was brought here from the Roman Portus, and not from Egypt. Furthermore, he does not seem to be different from the presbyter Hippolytus who, together with Nepotianus (some read Pontianus), was exiled to the harmful island of Sardinia in the consulship of Severus and Quintianus, or the year of Christ 235, in the 11th year of the Emperor Alexander, as is noted in the Catalog of Roman Pontiffs published by Cuspinianus and by me, under Pope Pontianus. Thus, at that time he had not yet attained the bishopric of Portus; as for why Herwart (b) designates him "metropolitan of Arabia," I do not fully grasp.

^B XXI. Of the chronological system which Cyril of Scythopolis followed, and how many are the eras of the Greeks from the creation of the world. But to return to where I digressed: from what is cited from Cyril, it is entirely clear that he followed the system of reckoning years of Panodorus, an Egyptian monk who lived under the emperor Arcadius and under Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, as George Syncellus testifies, and who referred the birth of Christ to the year of the world 5493. To make this clear, it must be observed in the first place that a threefold era of years from the creation of the world has prevailed among the Greeks: the first, which counts 5508 years from the beginning of things to the birth of Christ; the second, in the year 5500, concerning which the Council of Nicaea II, act 6 (c), and Syncellus (d) speak; the third, which is still in use among the modern Greeks, 5509. For we pass over another, which was proper to the Antiochenes, and assigns the birth of Christ to the 6000th year of the created world, as we are taught by the passage from Hesychius, which we have appended to this Chronicle. But there was yet another, which assigns the birth of Christ to the year of the world 5506, concerning which we have likewise subjoined a short treatise to this Chronicle. The inventor of the first Greek era, as we said above, is thought to be Panodorus, whom Cyril follows in the places cited. This latter (for it is of this first one that there is especially discourse here) agrees with the vulgar Dionysian era, which refers the birth of Christ to the consulship of Lentulus and Piso, that is, one year less than in the opinion received today, although more accurate chronologists reconcile this discrepancy. Yet the two eras differ in that Panodorus links the year of Christ to the year of the world 5493 (the reason for which opinion is brought forward by Syncellus (e)), while Dionysius links it to 5501, and thus one is removed from the other by 8 years, although each maintains a common indiction, as well as the weekday or lunar age attributed to specific days. For each counts the first year of the Christian era as 5493; and likewise each reckons the ninth year of the same era as 5501, since, to obtain the current year of the world corresponding to the year of the Incarnation, they deduct 5500 years from the former; the latter, however, 5493, from which a greater calculation of the one than of the other is made. Whence Petavius (f) concludes that of the three eras, two attach the Incarnation of Christ to different years, and the last of the former, which counts 5501, corresponds to the ninth year of Christ; of the other, however, which counts 5493, he thinks it is the first; so that they are not two annual reckonings, but one and the same. For each counts the first year of the Christian or Dionysian era as 5493, and likewise the ninth year

^A of the same era as 5501. For to attain the year of the Incarnation from the current year of the world, they subtract 5500, but add 18, or they subtract 5491, from which a higher calculation for the latter is produced than for the former. Thus, both computations agree on the years of the world, but disagree on the years of the Incarnation. Therefore, the eras or computations of the world ought not to be considered two, but only one, which is bound to the different years of Christ. Wherefore, there are only two principal eras of the Greeks, as was said above: one in which 5491 corresponds to the first year of the Dionysian or common era, and another which counts the same year from the creation of the world as 5509. Thus Petavius, a diligent investigator of these matters, reasons, whose opinion in this affair, however, does not entirely satisfy others(a). Be that as it may, these things must be accommodated to Cyrillian parameters. From the year of the world 5965, in which Saint Euthymius died, on the 20th of January, in the eleventh indiction, having subtracted 5491 years, the year of the common Incarnation will be 474, into which falls the sixteenth year of Leo the Great. Again, if you add 474 to the year of the world 5491, the year of the world 5965 will be 477 of Christ; if 8 be added to this, it will be the 471st common year, in which the eleventh indiction was running. Then to the year of the world 5965 add 8, it will become the year of the world 5973; if 472 be taken from these, 5501 will remain. In like manner, from the year 6024 in which St. Sabas died, on the 5th of December, having subtracted 5493, the year of the Incarnation will be 531. Again, to the year of the world 5493, if 531 be added, it will be the year of the world 6024, noted by Cyril; if 8 be added, it will be the common Dionysian year 539, in which, in the month of December, the tenth indiction was running; then, having subtracted 539 from 6024, 5485 will remain.

^B XXII. Which era of the creation of the world Hippolytus used. — And these things had to be premised, so that it might become clear what characterisms of years Hippolytus used, and that it might be permissible to weigh whether the author of the Canisian or Labbean Chronicle, of which we are currently treating, can be considered to be from them. That this is certainly not far from the truth, anyone who has subjected his computations to a more accurate examination will easily concede. For in many places it is indicated that this Chronicle was written in the thirteenth year of the empire of Alexander Severus. Now, Alexander began his reign in the 220th year of the common Christian era, and this is gathered most of all, as was long ago observed by Scaliger(b), Petavius, Bucher(c), and others, from the paschal canon of Hippolytus, which we mentioned above, in which the first year of the same Augustus, which dates from the 10th day of March, is noted to have had the 14th of the Passover on the Ides of July, a Saturday, when the embolismic month had most recently preceded it, which was the third bissextile year of his sixteen-year cycle: all of which could not have happened except in the 222nd Dionysian year. Therefore, since Alexander is said in the same Chronicle, as well as in Lampridius, to have reigned for thirteen years and nine days, it follows that he died on the 19th of March, in the 225th ^C year of the common Christian era: whether this actually corresponds in every way with the various epochs of years brought forward by the author of the Chronicle must be investigated next.

XXIII. Whether it agrees in these with the Paschal Chronicle. — He, moreover, conjectures the thirteenth year of Alexander in the year of the creation of the world, 5738, and the Nativity of Christ in 5536, in these words: "But from Adam until the Babylonian migration under Jeconiah, 51 generations, 5444 years, 8 months. And [19] after the Babylonian migration until the generation of Christ, 14 generations, 660 years; and from the generation of Christ until the Passion, 30 years; and from the Passion until this year, which is the 13th year of the empire of Alexander, 206 years. The total years from Adam until the 13th year of Emperor Alexander therefore amount to 5738 years." In this place, it is permissible to note meanwhile that the author of the Labbean Chronicle, in the year of the Passion of Christ, followed the opinion of the ancient Fathers(d), of which Clement of Alexandria(e) makes mention, that Christ preached for only one year, and therefore suffered, just as the writer of the Paschal Chronicle thinks the same year in more than one place, for example on page 203, and in the year of Christ 381, 431, 452, although in other places he almost always assigns 30 years to Christ: whence it is evident, as we have more than once warned, that this Chronicle was cobbled together from various excerpts of writers, with almost no selection or prior examination, but also that it is probable that the things inserted in it according to that calculation of the years of Christ were excerpts from Africanus, if indeed, as Jerome testifies(f), he followed this opinion. Then, a little below, the aforementioned writer says after having listed ^D the kings of the Persians: "After whom the times now clearly among the Greeks are from the construction of the olympiads: for until Alexander the Macedonian there were 114 olympiads, which make 456 years, from Iphitus, who established the olympiads. From Alexander until Christ are 80 olympiads, which are 320 years. From Christ, however, until the 13th year of the empire of Alexander, 59 olympiads, which are 236 years. There are, therefore, all the olympiads until the 13th year of Alexander Caesar, 253 olympiads, which are 1012 years." Forasmuch, therefore, as the method of counting by olympiads seems more certain to the writer of the Chronicle, especially since it is agreed among the learned about their beginning, and writers hand down that they were restored by Iphitus in the year 777 before the Christian era, the 3rd of the Julian period, 3738, it seems that the beginning should be sought from them in the first place. Censorinus in his book *On the Natal Day*(g) writes

^A says that he was under the consulship of Ulpius and Pontianus, and that this year was the second of the 254th Olympiad, but from the first Olympiad the 1014th, from the summer days indeed on which the Olympic games were celebrated, but from the founding of Rome 991, and indeed from the Palilia, from which the years of the City are numbered. And yet this consulship falls in the common year of Christ 236, which, says Censorinus, was the second year of the 254th Olympiad, and from the Olympiad, 1014. Which calculation indeed corresponds with the calculation of the author of the Chronicle, of whom we are speaking, who says the 1012th year of all the Olympiads existed two years before, and the 231st year of the 59th Olympiad, to Christ as far as the 13th year of the reign of Alexander, therefore under the consulship of Maximus and Africanus, it was the 5th year of the 1012th Olympiad from Iphitus, and the 4th of the 59th Olympiad from Christ, which is the common year of Christ 236. This year, moreover, the 4th of the 253rd Olympiad falls in the year of the Julian period 3, 1849, which is the common year of Christ 236. The Olympiads [20] were indeed instituted, as we have said, in the year of the same Period 3, 1938, from which to this described year as many years intervene. Again, from the same Julian year 4, 1949, if 236 are subtracted, there will remain the Julian year 4, 1712, which falls in the 13th consulship of Octavius Caesar, in which the author claims Christ's nativity occurred, therefore one year before the Dionysian era, from which the year 236 is reckoned in the Chronicle, it will fall into the common year 235. From which it is gathered that the consulship of Maximus and Africanus fell in this year, and that it was the 4th Iphitean year of the 250th Olympiad, as Scaliger rightly observes on our Paschal Chronicle: in which the 1010 years of all the Olympiads are completed: from which if 236 years are subtracted, the year 737 will remain, in which the Olympiads were instituted from Iphitus, in the year of the Julian Period 3, 1938. Indeed, because the author of the Chronicle casts the 13th year of Alexander into the year of the world 5, 1737, it does not square entirely with the year of the world according to the Greeks 5, 1500, from which he seems to begin the year of the incarnation, since with 236 subtracted, which years he reckons from the Nativity and incarnation, 5, 1501 years remain; those more skilled in these calculations will examine these things.

XXIV. Concerning the era which the author of the Chronicle and Epiphanius use.

XXV. Concerning the Paschal Chronicle of Hippolytus.

diversity of the readings, which we have decided to append. We have also collated the manuscript again with the Labbean edition, from which we have corrected an almost infinite number of errors, [having the text] described in its very own words, as they lie, even with their blemishes, so that it might be added, in this second edition, to this Paschal Chronicle which we are reprinting—on account of the kinship of the material, namely, the Paschal observations. However, the sections or chapters are not described everywhere in the same series as the index presents them. But the final chapter is also missing, which contained the names of the bishops of Rome, and who presided for how many years; not, as a most learned man ^B opines, because it was omitted by the scribe on the grounds that it differed greatly from the Eusebian Chronicle to which it was attached—a thing which surely hardly anyone would persuade himself of—but rather because the exemplar was indeed mutilated at the end, as the editor notes. Certainly, it would be desirable for this series of Roman pontiffs to have survived, since it is doubtful whether any writer more ancient than this one described their catalogue and times. But Henry Dodwell ^C thinks that George Syncellus made up for this loss, as one who, among other authors whom he followed in his entire Chronology, recounts Hippolytus (whom, however, he quotes only once or twice, as we have observed); he counts him, the learned man says, in the order of tradition, it seems, just as Annianus excerpted Hippolytus, Maximus the Confessor excerpted Annianus, and Syncellus himself [excerpted] all of them, whom, because they were in agreement with one another, he nowhere openly refutes. And from this he concludes that if he found a catalogue of Roman pontiffs in Hippolytus, he undoubtedly followed Syncellus; and that therefore no author of the Syncellian Catalogue should be sought other than Hippolytus, since, moreover, it seems less consistent with the truth that it was rashly and arbitrarily concocted by Syncellus, being, as it is clear, far different from the Eusebian one. It remains, however, as he adds elsewhere ^D, that the lemma of the chapter is so similar to the Bucherian lemma [XXII.] that there is hardly any room for doubt that this Bucherian [text] borrowed from it, the lemma of which is conceived thus: "From what time it was arranged by succession, which bishop, and for how many years he presided, or under what Emperor." But truly, the reason why the most learned man did not rather ascribe this Canisian, or Labbean, Chronicle to Hippolytus himself, rather than sensing that its author seemed to have followed in the footsteps of Hippolytus himself, no reason occurs to me at present other than that he believed Hippolytus had ended his life by martyrdom under the Emperor Alexander, according to the opinion of some, whereas the writer of the Chronicle survived that Augustus, as one who reports his death.

XXVI. Paschal [calculations] taken from the very beginning of the world.

and is celebrated. For this reason, they used to refer to the individual years in their Annals, noting on which day Easter was celebrated or was to be celebrated, by that method, of course, which is generally attributed to the author of the Paschal table of one hundred years published by Bucherius, in which the series of consuls is described alongside the days of Easter.

^B XXVII. The Paschal [writings] of Annianus, Panodorus, Maximus, and Bede. — Since, therefore, the compilers of such Paschal [calculations]—or, as Victorius calls them, the Disputators of the principal feast—proceeded with a firm and secure footing in finding the moons and days of the Paschal feast, it was necessary for them to take their beginning from the very creation of the world: *it is necessary regarding these matters to know also the number of years from Adam*, as holy Maximus says in his ecclesiastical computation (a), and that they should diligently inquire into the year of Christ’s Nativity, and consequently deduce and continue the series of years from Adam himself down to their own times: which indeed could not be done otherwise than by describing the ages of each of the first Fathers, then the years of consuls, and of kings and emperors, and other chronological observations. That Annianus and Panodorus, those learned monks, composed their Paschal works in this way, is attested by Georgius Syncellus (b); and that Annianus did so with a short but accurate method of calculating the times and the Lord’s feasts, *with certain inquiries*, and comprised them, as he says elsewhere (c), *by collecting a cycle of 11 Paschal tables of 532 years, together with precise commentaries*. Where it seems we should read “Paschal cycles of 11.” But the same Photius reports that Panodorus entered upon another, namely, a more extensive method of writing, and indeed one *multi-part and varied, having many useful things in it*, since he observed in it not only the continuous series of times but also the motions of the two great luminaries, the sun and the moon. And this type of writing was used not only by the ancient computists, or framers of cycles, but even by those more recent, and among them holy Maximus, who is held in esteem among the Greeks, just as Bede is among the Latins, as the prince of this art. The former of these, having published an ecclesiastical computation, appended to it *a calculation of times and a group from Adam*; then *a declaration of the underlying chapters, when and at what time it was fulfilled*, in which latter part the principal epochs of the times are deduced down to the times of Justinian; although one may doubt whether the prior [part] is by holy Maximus, who lived while Heraclius was emperor, since it is drawn out to the emperors Constantine and Romanus, unless what is found after Heraclius is said to be by another writer. The latter, however, namely Bede, observed a clearly similar method in his books *On the Reckoning of Time* and *On the Nature of Things*, in which, while he explains the method of ecclesiastical computation, he keeps inserting, or appends to his work, the course of time which he distributes into six ages.

^C XXVIII. Whether holy Maximus can be considered the author of the Paschal Chronicle. — But whether the same holy Maximus should be held as the author of our Paschal Chronicle, a matter which came into suspicion for Raderus, as one who lived in the reign of Heraclius and wrote many things, and thus an ecclesiastical computation as well—if it is examined more attentively, it will appear less consistent. For just as holy Maximus has always been held by the Greeks themselves as a very cultured writer, so the author of the Paschal [Chronicle] is branded by Scaliger as an ignoramus: and not without reason, since he wrote most things, and indeed almost everything, in a very vulgar and common style. To this is added the fact that, since there is a triple era among the Greeks from the creation of the world to the birth of Christ and the subsequent times, as Petavius teaches in the place cited after the Chronicle, holy Maximus enters upon one, and the author of the Paschal [Chronicle] enters upon another. Indeed, holy Maximus testifies in more than one place (d) that he wrote his own ecclesiastical computation in the xxxi year of Heraclius (in which he died on the xi of March, indiction xiv), which, he says, is the year from the creation of the world vi. MCXXXI. But if the beginning be taken from the birth of Christ, which he puts in year of the world v. MDI, the same year xxxi of Heraclius falls into the Dionysian year of Christ DCXXXIII: to which if the vi years, which he consequently anti-dates the birth of Christ by, are added, according to Panodorus as also in the Chronology appended to his computation, it will become the Dionysian year DCXLI, in which Heraclius died. But according to the writer of the Paschal [Chronicle], for whom the year of Christ's birth is sometimes v. MDVII, sometimes v. MDIX, the year xxxi of the reign of Heraclius, taking the beginning from the v of October—the day on which Phocas being killed, tyrant, he began his reign, indiction xiv—will be DCXLI: for the first year of Heraclius compares to the year of the world created vi. MCXIX, or rather vi. MCXVII, in which the indiction xiv began in the month of September, which was the Dionysian year of Christ DC, to which if the xxxi years of the reign of the same Augustus are added, it will become the common year of Christ DCLI, in which he died. Now, since holy Maximus, just as the author of the Paschal Chronicle, admits the cycle of DXXX years; that it was sufficiently accepted at that time among the Greeks is evinced from this, as Bucherius also notes. Furthermore, if holy Maximus were the author of the Paschal Chronicle, he would undoubtedly have made mention of that work edited by himself in the ecclesiastical computation, which he testifies was completed in the xxxi year of Heraclius. But at that very same time, that is, while Heraclius reigned, Joannes Philoponus instituted a disputation concerning Easter, who could be called the author of the Chronicle for the same reason—namely, because he proves that the Lord’s mystical Supper [took place] on the thirteenth day of the moon, the day before the legal Passover, and that Christ did not then eat the lamb with his disciples: for there were, he says, some who contended that both happened at the same time, so that indeed Christ first fulfilled the legal Passover (*For*, he says, *I am not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill* [e]), but immediately added to this the true and mystical one, of which the former was a type. Which argument, indeed, long before Philoponus, others had attacked, [such as] Hippolytus of Portus, in the work to which he prefixed the title, “That the Lord in which He suffered, the typical...

Apollinaris, bishop of Hierapolis, Clement of Alexandria, as also Peter, bishop of Alexandria, by whom these are praised, as Petavius testifies, as is clear from the author of the Chronicle in the Preface: which works indeed are shown to exist or to have existed in the library of the Catholic King, according to its index.

[XXV.] XXIX. *Various controversies concerning Easter arising during the reign of Heraclius.* It is at least permissible to conclude from this that during the reign of Heraclius various controversies arose concerning the Paschal festivals—which the very learned Henry Dodwell also observed had been less appropriate during these times—which provided the grounds and occasion for the author of the Paschal Chronicle, for St. Maximus, for John Philoponus, and for others perhaps hitherto unknown to us, to write commentaries on the questions concerning Easter that were then being frequently debated. For although the day for its celebration was considered settled and fixed, it happened occasionally that error or doubt intervened, as Theophanes narrates occurred in the 26th year of Theodosius the Younger, in the 5th year of Marcian, in the 19th of Justinian, and in the 20th of Copronymus; and that similar errors concerning Easter had occurred more than once in Gaul is attested by Gregory of Tours, or indeed in the 16th year of Heraclius among the Scots, by Bede and Marianus Scotus. Furthermore, Heraclius himself wrote a work on the "ecclesiastical computation," as they call it, in the 14th year of his reign, 11th indiction, in the vulgar year of Christ 620, as he himself testifies, divided into three chapters or sections, and recently edited by the above-lauded H. Dodwell. The first of these sections is on the method of finding the day and the weekday of each month, and the Bissextile. The second contains a demonstration of why those seeking the day of the Alexandrian month should begin from three days before September. Finally, the third comprises the method by which Easter is to be investigated according to ecclesiastical tradition. This computation is said to be extracted from the commentary of that same Augustus on the *Procheiroi* canons of Ptolemy.

XXX. *Paschal works praised by Photius.* I do not know whether, in addition to these, the books on Easter by two anonymous authors, whom Photius mentions, ought to be attributed to this period of Heraclius; these men are said to have defended the same opinion which Philoponus and the author of the Paschal Chronicle held, namely, that Christ did not celebrate the legal Pascha on the thirteenth day of the moon, or the holy Thursday, since He neither ate the lamb, nor unleavened bread, nor did anything else of those things which those observing the legal Pascha were accustomed to observe according to the custom and rite of their ancestors: and that, consequently, He ate only a private, yet mystical, supper, and from it gave the bread and the cup to His disciples—which was the opinion of some of the Holy Fathers; although, Photius says, John Chrysostom and the Church teach that He fulfilled the legal Pascha before He instituted the mystical supper. The first anonymous author established his argument mainly against the Jews, and those who held the same view as the heretics and the Quartodecimans, who did not celebrate the holy feast of Easter in the first month of the Hebrews. The other follows almost the same line of argument as the writer of our Paschal Chronicle: for he treats clearly of the bissextile and the intercalary month, of the aspects of the sun and moon, and of the nineteen-year cycles, and of the method and way of investigating these things, examining each one individually. He inquires likewise about the months and the new moon, and the week, and its days, and which years are called circular, and which are embolismic or intercalated years. Furthermore, he treats of the course of the sun of the eighteen-year cycle, and of the nineteen-year cycle of the moon, and of its fourteenth day. Again, he treats of the lunar and solar months, and of the new moon of the month, both lunar and solar, which is equivalent to the lunar, and of the equable lunar month, and of the exact month: finally, he gathers much on the calculation of the years of the world, in which book, written for a certain Theodore, and composed in a simple, most clear style, he often rebukes Metrodorus, as the same Photius testifies.

XXXI. *Of the Paschal work of Metrodorus.* Now Metrodorus had written a computation of the nineteen-year cycles, twenty-eight of which recur into themselves, taking his beginning from Diocletian; in which he collects the feast days of five hundred and thirty-three years, and that, as it seems, according to that accurate computation, which they call the fourteenth day of the moon. From these Photian entries, therefore, one may at least gather that during the time these writers published commentaries on Easter, various questions and controversies arose and were debated regarding this festival, which provided the occasion for their writing, both concerning the Lord’s supper on the 14th of the moon, and also concerning both Easters, typical and Christian, which they treated by varied methods, and among them the latter anonymous author, who followed the same argument as the author of the Paschal Chronicle which we are editing, pursuing it in a similar manner, not omitting the calculation of times from the creation of the world and other related chronological matters. Furthermore, in the age of Metrodorus, whom Photius mentions, it is likewise to be observed from this that the Victorian cycle of 532 years had gained some footing among the Orientals: which the author of the Paschal Chronicle, as we have noted above, followed elsewhere. Moreover, several others occur by the name of Metrodorus, to whom this work might perhaps be ascribed, and primarily Metrodorus, a presbyter of the sect of Marcion, whom Eusebius mentions; or Metrodorus the Persian philosopher, whom, for the reputation of his piety, we read was admitted into the inner sanctuaries of the palace by Constantine the Great, in whose reign, finally, those controversies over Easter were specifically agitated. But one may doubt whether such an institution as his ever existed.

PRÆFATIO.

from those things which Cedrenus and the anonymous writer in the manuscript Chronicle relate concerning him, from Adam to Leo the Wise in the twenty-first year of the same Constantine. Moreover, Metrodorus the bishop occurs in the *Paschal Chronicle* among other bishops by whom Macedonius was condemned. Finally, Ammianus mentions another Metrodorus in the time of Julian and Jovian, and Agathias mentions another, a distinguished mathematician and grammarian under Justinian. But whoever this Metrodorus ^A Photianus may have been, he seems to be an ancient writer, and one who was an Alexandrian or Egyptian, both because he followed exclusively the Diocletian era, which was peculiar to the Alexandrians and long prevailed among them, and because Photius writes that he collected "according to the so-called accurate computation of the fourteenth day, just as it seemed festive," that is, paschal festivities, although, he adds, "neither our Church nor the ancient tradition appears to have used these." Whence it is evident that his ecclesiastical and paschal computation was not entirely accepted by all.

XXXII. Of the cycle of 532 years among the Greeks. — Indeed, after those disputes regarding Easter at the Council of Nicaea, great confusion arose in every church, as well as in the praetorium and the palace; for diverse cycles were scattered and disseminated through the whole world, which even held the minds of the Alexandrians unshakably, as Cyril of Alexandria testifies: as if he were to say that both the Alexandrians and others, and not all, used the same cycle, namely, the cycle of 532 years, which they commonly call the "Great Year." ^B [XXVII] For Anatolius, who was slightly earlier than the Nicene Fathers, is authority that there was one cycle in different churches and another in others—one for the Gauls, another for the Africans, another for his own Syrians, and perhaps for the Alexandrians. The writer of the *Paschal Chronicle* (a) also testifies that paschal cycles of 532 years were described by many, and that, being mixed with truth and falsehood, they provided occasions for scandal and disturbance to the simpler folk. And because he had not found any hitherto that agreed in all respects with the Sacred Scriptures, he adds that he made another of this kind for himself. Moreover, that this cycle existed among the Orientals even before Victorius, whom Scaliger (b) and others hold to have been the first to invent it, is further gathered by Bucherius from the fact that Theophilus, who wrote under Theodosius the Great, is said to have started his cycle of 436 years—if the reading of Paul of Middelburg, he says, is admitted—from the first year of the same emperor, which is the 480th year of the vulgar Christian era: to which, if the 95 years that had already elapsed from the first year of Diocletian to the beginning of the same Theodosius are added, Theophilus had woven a perfectly complete cycle of the sun and moon of 532 years: since, in that age, the beginning of the nineteen-year paschal cycle of the Alexandrians was frequently and commonly repeated from the first year of Diocletian, which Metrodorus also did. And indeed, Scaliger writes elsewhere (c) that the Christian Egyptians were the authors of this great period, among whom the most learned monks Anianus and Panodorus had published books regarding it during the reign of Arcadius and in the twenty-second year of Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria: contrary to what Bucherius (d) thought, writing that the Greeks received this cycle from Victorius. Such, moreover, is this Period, that it consists of 28 solar and lunar cycles, commonly given the nomenclature of the "Great Year": and from whatever year its beginning is taken, having finished those years, in the epacts, in the concurrents, or in the nineteen-year or lunar cycle, and likewise in the paschal limit and the Sunday of Easter, as well as the moon of that same day—just as the first year was, such is the year that completes the beginning of the other period. Whence it is no wonder if the compilers of paschal cycles took various beginnings of this period at will. George Syncellus (e), from whom Symeon Logotheta drew what he relates concerning the year of Christ's Passion, begins the first [period] from the first year of the founding of the world, ^C so that after two completed periods, the third follows in the year 1065; and finally, that Christ suffered in the year 213 of the eleventh. The same Scaliger described this in book vii *De emendatione temporum*, as did Petavius after the ecclesiastical computation of St. Maximus, [in the] enumeration and collection of times, in which, toward the end, are listed 11 periods of 532 years from the founding of the world, the last of which ends in the 24th year of Constantine, [which is] the 5852nd of the world, which according to the calculation of the *Paschal Chronicle* is only [the year of the world] 5837. The author of the Chronicle, which we call the Alexandrian, writes that this same eleventh period was completed in the year in which Julian invaded the empire, namely the 10th of Constantius, and the 1st of Julian Caesar as consul, as he says: "In the same year, ten [read, as below, eleven] secular cycles were completed from the 532nd year: but they total from Adam, until the consulate of this [XXVIII] man, the whole year 5854," where Herwartius in his *Chronology*, chapter cxciv, correctly emends to 5852, on account of the similarity of the notations IV and II, that is, according to the Egyptian calculation, or that of Panodorus, who places the birth of Christ in the 5493rd year of the world. The writer of the *Paschal Chronicle* says his first period was completed in the 35th year of Justinian, indiction 10, in the vulgar year of Christ 562, which he starts from the baptism of Christ, indiction 4: so that the first year of the following period is the 563rd [year] of Christ. A manuscript *Chronicle* is preserved in the Royal Library from Adam to Michael the son of Theophilus, in which, under the seventh year of Justin the Younger, these things are written: "In the seventh year of his reign, one cycle of the holy Easter of 532 [fλβ'] was completed, from the time when our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, Indiction 10," and the same things are held in the *Chronology* of Nicephorus, Patriarch of Constantinople.

XXXIII. Of the same cycle among the Latins. — Just as the Greeks, so neither did the Latin computists agree on the beginnings of such periods, often using diverse principles. For Victorius started his from January, Dionysius from March. And again, the former from the passion or baptism of Christ, the latter from his Nativity. The Victorian [cycle] ends in the year of Christ 559, having taken its beginning from the Kalends of Ja-

- nuary of the year to which he attributed the baptism of Christ, which was, as he himself thought, the 15th of Tiberius, in the consulship of the two Gemini, the 29th or 28th year of Christ. Dionysius Exiguus, however, when he undertook to amend the Victorian period, took its beginning from the 1st year of Christ, as he convinced both himself and posterity, or, as Bede says (a), from the 530th year of the Incarnation, having carried the work up to the 1063rd year of the same most holy Incarnation: whence it is called Dionysian by the interpolator until now. Now he began the ^A second period from the 6th year of Justinian, the 533rd of Christ, as Florentius of Worcester rightly judges that Bede’s words are to be understood (b). Just as, furthermore, Victor, Bishop of Capua, and Dionysius censured those of Victorius, so others censured the errors of this same Dionysius: so that it is no wonder that the author of our Chronicle writes that among all the 532-year cycles that were extant in his age, none occurred to him that was in universal agreement ^B with the nature of things and ecclesiastical rules. For even if some were not mistaken regarding the day of the sacred Pasch, he contends that most erred greatly in other festivals which the Church celebrates, a fact that Scaliger indeed observes in the Dionysian (d). Whence it may, perhaps, be gathered that the censure of the author notes both periods, that of Victorius and that of Dionysius, which that they were seen by him may be an argument, because he adds that these constructors of cycles, whom he attacks, ^C in the 532-year cycle from the creation of the world, added besides the years from the Incarnation of our Lord Christ, and from his Resurrection, by which words he meant Victorius and Dionysius, if indeed the author of the Preface is that continuator of the Paschal Chronicle, since its first author is thought to have lived under Constantine, or under Constantius, or at any rate Anianus and Panodorus in their Paschals: for George Syncellus testifies that he thus inscribed his books (e).

[[XXIX.] XXXIV. Other Paschals, and Paschal tables, among the Greeks.]—There existed besides other Paschals, about which the Paschal Chronicle which we are editing deals more than once: for example, in that place where its author observes that from the 3rd year of the 117th Olympiad, the years of the Syro-Macedonians or Apamians are reckoned, and from the 1st year of Diocletian. Thus, in another place, he writes that from the consulship of Diocletian Augustus and Aristobulus, or the 285th year of Christ, the years of Diocletian were to be reckoned. Finally, he says that in the 6th year of Phocas he attained the calculation of the years in harmony with the Paschal [tables] and the Consular lists. Which Paschals are indeed nothing other, if I conjecture rightly, ^D than those Paschal indicts which are accustomed to be attached to the candles individually each year among the Westerners, which we call "paschales" for that reason, because that table in which is noted on what day the sacred Paschal festival is to be celebrated is attached to the paschal candles themselves. For, as we touched upon above, when it had been decreed in the Council of Nicaea that all churches should celebrate Pasch at the same time (f), and the task had been given to the Alexandrians, as being better skilled than the others in the science of ordering the times, to diligently search out the lawful day of celebrating Pasch, and their prelate to signify it to other churches, from then on supreme pontiffs to patriarchs, patriarchs to archbishops and bishops, and these in turn to the superiors of individual churches declared the same by means of letters written to each, which they called Paschal letters: upon receiving which, on the day of the Epiphany or the Nativity of Christ, the day that Pasch would be was declared in the church, as it is in the fourth Council of Orléans (g). Now these letters were encyclical: for since they were sent from time to time to all the churches diffused throughout the whole world, both by the Alexandrian prelate and by the supreme pontiff, and thence by the patriarchs, they contained not only the day discovered for the Paschal solemnity, but also the year in which that day fell, and other marks of the times. For since in most provinces there was a varied method of reckoning years: for example, some by consuls and indictions, others from the creation of the world, others from the years of Alexander, others from the Diocletian era, others from the incarnation, or nativity, or baptism, or passion of Christ: and finally some cities reckoned their years from the year they attained their autonomy, or liberty, or even their foundation, it was necessary for those encyclical letters to contain all these characterisms of the times, so that every church might recognize its own year. And hence it came about that from then on all these chronological notes were appended to such Paschals, the origins and characterisms of which the makers of cycles afterwards judged should be inserted into their own chronicles by their demonstrations. And hence the custom prevailed that they themselves used this method to investigate a more certain account of the times upon which their rules chiefly rely.

XXXV. Paschal tables among the Latins.—From these encyclical letters sent to individual churches each year, there were described in a table, which was hung in the sacred edifices, besides the day on which the Paschal festival was to be celebrated, the very year in which they were accustomed to use these, and then the other characterisms of the years, accepted among various peoples or cities, so that it might be evident from that very fact that there was a perpetual consensus of the Church in celebrating Pasch, and that there was no diversity in the whole world. Nor from any other source did the writer of this Chronicle draw the beginnings of the years of the various cities and provinces, of the Egyptians, Seleucians, Ascalonites, Philadelphians, Gazensians, [XXX] Antiochians, Syro-Macedonians and Apamians, Commagenians, Samosatenes, Petraeans and Bostrenes, and even the years of Diocletian, than from the Paschals of such peoples and cities, as he himself testifies sufficiently, where he speaks of these same years of Diocletian, in the place cited a little before. Hence we are also taught why the months of the Egyptians are sometimes found noted in the narrations of chronological events, because to wit

the cycles were taken from the Paschal tables of the Alexandrians, which must also be said regarding the affairs of the Antiochenes, whose events and years are quite often described. That this custom had gained ground in the Greek Churches, the author of the Paschal Chronicle ^A himself intimates, when he says that the composers and discoverers of the cycles not only recorded them in commentaries, but also suspended them, transcribed on tables, in the churches. Among the Latins, indeed, that it was observed in like manner is testified primarily by those "Indiculi," or "Breviculi," as they are called in the Council of Braga, which they are accustomed to attach annually to their candles, concerning which, more than others, Bede and others, whom we praise in the *Glossarium mediæ Latinitatis*, bear witness; from which custom, indeed, as observed by the Greeks, flowed that other which now persists, of compiling their paschals, in which are noted the days of both Passovers, the legal and the typical, and of other movable feasts, which of course depend on the day of the Paschal feast, along with the fasts or quadragesimas customarily observed by the Greeks in common. Of such a kind is the paschal table which is brought forward from the year of the world created according to those same Greeks 6044, of Christ 1536, to the year of the world 6072, of Christ 1564; which is appended to the *Horologium* published at Venice in the year 1535, in which, in the first place, is placed the ^B παραμονὴ τῶν Χριστοῦ γεννῶν, or the vigil of the birth of the Lord: secondly, Κρεωφαγία, that is, all the days from the Nativity to the Sunday of Sexagesima, which is called 'Απόκρεω: thirdly, Τριῴδιον, that is, the Sunday immediately preceding the Sunday of Septuagesima: fourthly, the Sunday 'Απόκρεω, or Carnisprivii, or Sexagesima, from which the Greeks begin to abstain from meat: fifthly, the legal Passover: sixthly, the Christian Passover: seventhly, the Sunday of All Saints: finally eighth, the Fast of the holy apostles, with the indictions added every year, the years of the solar and lunar cycles, from which it is possible to gather how, at one time, the formula of such paschals of the ancients was, which they are accustomed today to insert into their *Horologia*, just as the Latins do in their little books of prayers, or as they call them, breviaries: of which, moreover, as a specimen, it is appropriate to describe here the beginning of another which is placed under the evangelistary in the Colbertine codex 4566, from the year of the world created 6940 (Christ 1432), to the year 7000 (Chr. 1492). From these, therefore, the first year, which the others follow as to the formula, comprises these things: *Year 6940. Indiction 10. Solar cycle 24. Lunar cycle 5. Lunar foundation 28. The vigil of the Nativity of Christ 2. Vespertinal meat-eating. Week 8, and day 6. The Triodion begins February 10, that is, of the Publican and Pharisee. Tone 4, Plagal. Morning [gospel]. 5. The Apocreos [Meat-fare] February 24. Of the Annunciation on the Tuesday of the 4th week of the fasts. Legal Passover April 18, on Friday. Christian Passover April 20. Of Saint George on the New Tuesday. Of All Saints on June 15, that is, the Apocreos ^C of the fast of the holy Apostles, day 13, and their commemoration on Sunday.* [XXXI] There exists another shorthand Paschal table of this kind in the King’s codex from the year of the world 6830 (Chr. 1322) to the year 7000 (Chr. 1492).

36. Consular Fasti added to the Paschal tables.

XXXVII. Et Lustra Juliana et Olympiades.

the year of Christ 305 to the year 354, and in the Paschal cycle of one hundred years beginning from the consulship of Constantine II and Licinius II, edited by the same Bucherius, where the individual four-year periods are so distinguished that the first of their years is always leap, and for that reason marked with the letter B, with the addition besides of the Calends of January and the epacts, as in [XXXII] cod. Colbert 240, where decemnovenal cycles are arranged by leap years, beginning from the leap year 530, which Joannes Noviomagus omitted in the table of those same cycles after Bede’s *De natura rerum*. Thus Jerome in the Eusebian Chronicle arranged the consuls by Julian lustra, also gifted with the name of Olympiads, and that this obtained from the times of Africanus, observes Scaliger, who rightly warns students to be careful not to confuse the Julian Olympiad with the Iphitean in the same Africanus, Ausonius, Socrates, and others, among whom is the author of the *Paschal Chronicle*, by whom the consuls are likewise arranged by Julian lustra, which are also gifted by him with the name of Olympiads, and Idatius in the *Chronicle* edited by Sirmondus. For example, the same Idatius says that Theodosius entered Constantinople in his first consulship, which he held with Gratian Augustus, in Olympiad 290, which was the first year of the Olympiad or Julian lustrum, but the fourth of the Iphitean 289. Among the same writer, Theodosius is said to have died of a dropsy ailment at Milan in the 17th year of his reign (that is to say, of Christ 395), from the 16th day before the Calends of February, under the consuls Olybrius and Probinus, which consulship indeed fell into the 4th year of the Olympiad or Julian lustrum 290; which was the 7th of the Iphitean. Then he adds these: And this year itself, which is the 15th of Theodosius, is the first in the beginning of the reign of Arcadius and Honorius. Which is indicated for this reason, that the addition might not disturb the 5-year Olympiad, having been inserted in this place only on account of the beginning of the rulers. It is said, moreover, that Theodosius finished his life in the 17th year of his reign, as he who had been removed from Sirmium on the 14th day before the Calends of February, in the year of Christ 379; but was extinguished on the 16th day before the Calends of February, from which Arcadius and Honorius began to reign. Finally, among the same Idatius, as also the writer of the *Chronicle*, the 3rd consulship of Honorius and Theodosius, son of Arcadius, is referred to the 1st year of Olympiad 297, which was the 1st year of the Iphitean.

XXXVIII. Ausonius explained.

That is, it will perhaps happen that when the years calculated from the founding of the city have passed, in which the 4th year of Olympiad 279, which was the Iphitean, is completed, Proculus may signal the next Olympiad in his consulship; for indeed in the year 5 of the Olympiad Ausonius was consul. Whence in the following epigram he says his consulship is the fourth from the bottom, where although he speaks rather obscurely or improperly, says Scaliger, he sufficiently shows that in the 4th year of the Olympiad he had been designated consul, [XXXIII] as it is in the fasti of the *Chronicle*. For the interpretation of the Ausonian epigram by Scaliger seems far more likely than that of Petavius. For whatever he may wish to the contrary, *lustrum* and *Olympias* in that epigram mean the same thing. But there is a greater difficulty in reconciling the Olympiads with those Julian lustra in Socrates, whose passages both weigh, and about which they struggle with one another: to settle which controversies between those great men, I would neither dare to interpose my own judgment, nor if I wished, does it matter much as regards the present matter. It suffices only to observe that Georgius Syncellus had looked to this, when he says that the method of Olympiads was not the same among all people: "Concerning these," he says, "it has not been agreed upon among ecclesiastical historians, as it is possible to learn for those wishing to examine their writings," which, as he adds elsewhere, "there is not one and the same thesis of them." In this however Scaliger and Petavius agree, that they report that consulships were accustomed to be composed by four-year periods in the annals of most ancient antiquity on account of the Julian tetraeteris, concerning which they treat at greater length, which it is truly likely began then for the first time, when these Paschal cycles were adorned with the nomenclature of the consuls, in which the leap years recurring every four years after the manner of the Olympiads were noted. Symeon Logotheta writes that Olympiads began for the first time to be counted under the beginnings of Theodosius the Great, to which he says indictions succeeded: "An Olympiad signifies a four-year period, such a gathering began when Manasseh of the Jews reigned, and was kept until the beginning of Theodosius, then it began to be counted as an Indiction." But it is manifest that indictions had obtained long before Theodosius. Truly, that Eusebius ceased to count these after the 250th Olympiad, he did it because the History of Africanus ended in it, which he transcribed in its entirety. For that they were counted even afterwards is collected from this, that Dexippus makes mention of the 262nd Olympiad, in which he was writing his history under Claudius; and Julian the emperor in the Olympiad...

^A of Augustus is read as having contributed to the expense of the games. Hence that passage of the same Augustus in Chrysostom, Homily II on Saint Babylas: "The Olympic games are not very far off, and the festive gathering will call together the cities, and they will come bringing oxen for a sacrifice to Apollo," etc. Finally, Basil, Bishop of Seleucia, who lived during the reign of Theodosius the Younger, wrote a homily on the Olympics when he saw Christians no less than Gentiles raging around the spectacles of the Olympics and other circus games: so that it is not true, as Cedrenus (a) relates somewhat differently concerning the same Theodosius, that the festival of the Olympiads—which was performed every four years—ceased, or that they ceased to be numbered, and that indictions succeeded them, which the Logothete maintains; nor is it true what a recent writer (b) hands down, that Constantine the Great, having abolished the Capitoline and Olympic games, because they were celebrated with many impious sacrifices to the gods, instituted the use of indictions.

^A XXXIX. Whence the Fasti of the Paschal Chronicle were copied. — It is reasonable to surmise that the author of the Paschal Chronicle either copied or followed the consular Fasti—whether the Cuspinian or others—arranged by Olympiads or bissextile years; or at least those which were published under the name of Idatius by Labbe, an exemplar of which is preserved in the library of the college of the Jesuit Fathers in Paris, of no small antiquity, as we observed above, although marked with no title of an author, even though they lack the bissextiles or Olympiads which are elsewhere appended to the Idatian Chronicle edited by Sirmond [XXXIV]. So then, Victorius says that he appended the bissextiles so that it might appear more clearly, he says, whether or not the rationale of the bissextiles, or of the days both of the Kalends of January and of the eighth day before the Kalends of April, on which the world is said to have been founded, harmonized in a continuous disputation (c). And in another place: "The necessity of the bissextiles having passed," etc. But although the writer of the Paschal Chronicle arranges his consular Fasti by the Julian lustra from the very beginning of the consuls, and places indictions before them from the first of July of Caesar's year, and describes a perpetual and continuous series of Olympiads and indictions, prefixing the number of the Olympiads to each four-year period, as if to present the appearance of some indubitable chronology, it must still be confessed that there is almost no calculation of theirs that conduces to finding the certain characteristics of the times. For in recounting the consuls, he omits very many and falsely intrudes others—which Panvinius observes regarding the Senator—and almost all the same ones that Idatius does, so that it is certain to me that both writers drew their Fasti from the same source, as we have touched upon more than once. Meanwhile, however, each pursues his own series as if nothing were intervening or omitted: the writer of the Paschal Chronicle, indeed, both in the Julian lustra or Olympiads and in the indictions, in which no certain mark of time can therefore be derived, except in those which take their beginning from the reign of Constantine, where the author can appear to be considered a little more accurate, although in other respects he is not entirely without his own merit, and especially in those things which he reports from approved and less well-known writers. Wherefore, we have deemed it work worth doing that the hiatuses or omissions in the series of consuls should be indicated to the reader, lest while he is skimming through the book, he imagines that there are none and that the continuous series is correct. Further, so that he may notice this more evidently, we have added the Iphitean Olympiads—and their years—to the side of each consulship, from Panvinius, Scaliger, and others, so that anyone may immediately perceive the difference in each Olympiad. The fourth year of these, however, almost always falls into the first year of the Julian lustrum, where the writer of the Chronicle especially begins to be more accurate in the series of consuls, and where he omits none, as from the reign of Constantine the Great. Accordingly, so that the entire series of consuls may be found here, we have inserted those that were omitted, described otherwise in italics, before which we have also prefixed the years of the City founded and those of the Christian era, so that the perpetual series of years may also lend light to the Chronicle. The man of high standing, Henry Dodwell, recently published the consular Fasti from the year of Christ 136, which he supposes to be by Theon of Alexandria, in whose table are described the years from Alexander and from Augustus; furthermore, the epacts or intercalary days and the tetraeteris, or individual four-year periods, marked by the first four letters of the alphabet, the fourth year of which always ends in the first year of the Julian lustrum, as in the Iphitean Olympiads in the Paschal and Idatian Chronicle, so that it is highly probable that those are what are being designated (d): although the most learned man writes that this tetraeteris should not be understood as an interval of four years, but as the sixth epagomenal intercalary day proper to every fourth year. Scaliger teaches in what sense the word "epagomene" is to be understood in his books *De emendatione temporum*.

[XXXV] XL. Whether from the Idatian Fasti. — Sirmond justly considers, I believe, that the Fasti edited by Labbe were written by Idatius himself, not because they are appended to the same Idatius's Chronicle in that same codex, but because the affinity and kinship of things and words in both works, as well as the color and genius of the writing, sufficiently show that they had the same author: although the inscription bears no name of an author; it is conceived there in these words: "Declaration of the consuls, from when they were first ordained." These Fasti furthermore proceed to the second consulship of Anthemius, that is, to those times in which Idatius lived, since he is read to have died during the reign of Leo the Great, into which falls the second consulship of Anthemius, which is the year of Christ in the common era 467, where also, or certainly in the following year, the same Idatius's Chronicle ends. Add that the writer of these Fasti was a Spaniard, which is gathered even from this, that the Spanish eras ^B from its beginning are perpetually inscribed in the margins, which Idatius also sometimes uses in the Chronicle. We have compared the edition of these, finished by Labbe, with the same codex he used, which the most learned man, Joannes Harduinus, communicated to us, and ^C

have corrected many things from it, since they had been transcribed with little fidelity or accuracy of hand. We have also added the various readings of that same consular list which Arnaldus Pontacus published after the Chronicle of Eusebius from the codices of Fux and Fr. Pithou—a list which, indeed, ends only at the year of Christ 50—though these, too, are faulty in most places. That Epiphanius, and, as we have just said, the author of the Paschal Chronicle, had seen or followed these or similar Fasti, from which Idatius drew his own, we learn from the fact that in listing the consuls they almost always agree with them, so much so that Idatius and the same author record certain intercalated consuls, which we note from time to time in the margins, and omit the same consuls. But also because in the nomenclature of Roman consuls, under the year 89 of the 181st Olympiad, the writer of the Chronicle states that in that year ^A *αρχοντας Ρωμαίους* (Roman archons) first began to be so called; which fact itself is explained by the word *proceres* in the Fasti which we call the Idatiani, and in the Pithoeani or those of Arnaldus Pontacus; and this, so far as I know, is not found in any other writers of Roman history. Moreover, where he speaks of the death of Nero, he says: "Under these consuls Nero disappeared," which is recorded in the Paschal Chronicle by a similar form of expression: *ἐπὶ τούτων τῶν ὑπάτων ἀφανὴς ἐγένετο Νέρων*, not to mention several other places, especially where either writer reaches the times of the Christian emperors. But whether Idatius himself, if indeed he is to be considered the author of these, drew his material from certain Greek or Latin writers is not easy to determine; this only is certain, that the Idatiani, as well as the Fasti of the Paschal Chronicle, are sometimes most poorly transcribed. But since Labbe edited the Idatiani in a way that is vastly different from the aforementioned codex, we present them here again as they lie, that is, with the very flaws which it will be open to anyone to verify or correct. For it is not pleasing to everyone that learned men, in the editions of ancient writers which they publish for the first time, take upon themselves the license to alter the text as they please. It often happens that to more learned men another healthier reading is unearthed from that very corrupt, as they think, script of the antiquarians, and that law of Pythagoras ^B is well known, which is found in Synesius: *ὁ νόμος οὐκ ἐᾷ τοῖς βιβλίοις ἐπιποιεῖν, ἀλλὰ βούλεται μένειν αὐτὰ ἐπὶ τῆς πρώτης χειρὸς, ὅπως ποτὲ ἔσχε τύχης ἢ τέχνης*. Whence it seems far better to write conjectures or emendations in the margins than to inject them into the text itself, often rashly, until a more accurate copy comes to light, from which a more corrected edition may finally be produced. For since this Chronicle which we are reprinting should not only be called Paschal, but can also be called consular, because it embraces the entire series of the consular Fasti, we have thought it right to add to it whatever can contribute to their illustration, and first of all those Greek Fasti which the aforementioned Dodwell published.

XLI. Concerning the authors of the Fasti. — That there were certainly other consular Fasti from which the author of the Chronicle could have drawn his own, one cannot doubt. For Theophilus in Book III *ad Autolycum* ^C is authority that Chryseros the nomenclator, a freedman of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus Verus, wrote Fasti, which he brought down from the founding of the city to the death of his patron Verus, with the names of the consuls and the years from the founding of the city described. For so did Casaubon, Scaliger, Meursius, Petavius, etc., long ago emend this passage of Theophilus. But it is also obvious that consular Fasti were compiled by many others. Fragments of the Capitolinian Fasti, the author of which Panvinius thinks from Suetonius in his *Illustrious Grammarians* was Marcus Valerius Flaccus, have been published long ago and are in everyone's hands. Scaliger ^D proves with sufficiently valid arguments that Eusebius described the series of consuls in his Chronicle, from which the author of the Chronicle which we call the Alexandrian may perhaps have poorly copied his own. The same Scaliger inserted this series, as I believe, contextually compiled by himself, into the Greek Chronicle of the same Eusebius up to the consulship of Constantius Caesar V and Basilius. A complete version from an anonymous manuscript digested by four-year periods up to the times of the Goths is cited more than once by Cuspinianus. Ausonius had described the years from the founding of the city and the series of consuls up to his own consulship, and, as it seems, digested by Julian lustra, which Scaliger maintains is the same as the one Eusebius inserted into his Chronicle. Senator or Cassiodorus likewise brought his Fasti down to his own times, which he says he drew partly from Livy and Aufidius Bassus, and partly from Paschal records (whence it is entirely clear that consular Fasti were inserted into Paschal ones, as we have warned); both Prospers, Marius Aventicensis, Victor Tunnunensis, Marcellinus; furthermore Victorius, the anonymous author on the Urban Prefects, the author of the Paschal *laterculi* from Constantine to Theodosius, the author on the Roman Pontiffs published by Bucherius, and finally the *laterculus* of the consular Fasti from the consulship of Ausonius and Olibrius to the 16th consulship of Basilius from the codex of Petrus Pithoeus, which is preserved in the Colbert library, codex 1398, the same as that published by Arnaldus Pontacus, and perhaps others, have handed down only a part of the Fasti. *Consularia*, by which historical matters are sometimes rendered uncertain, are cited by Gregory, bishop of Tours [(d)] *Ὑπατάρια* in the Paschal Chronicle in the 6th year of Phocas.

[XXXVII.] XLII. Concerning the Dodwellian and other Fasti. — The Greek Fasti from the vulgar year of Christ 138 to the year 372, and again others from the year 232 to the year 630, both with the years of Alexander, Augustus, and Diocletian, and the *tetrarterides*, were unearthed from manuscript codices and published by the aforementioned H. Dodwell. We call the former the Savilliani, because they were unearthed from the codex of Savillius, which indeed, as we have said, take their beginning from the first year of Antoninus Pius. Marianus Scottus then composed/transcribed full Fasti; Florence of Worcester did so from Augustus to Justinian. But that the consular Fasti had been most faulty and inconsistent with each other, even in the times of the then-flourishing Republic, is a matter of Roman historical...

evidence ^A confirmed by the monuments. For more often than not, from different chroniclers, different lists of consuls are assigned to the same years; moreover, some are omitted which Dionysius and others commemorate, and the Fasti differ from one another in this regard in many respects, which is evident from those of the Capitoline, of Cassiodorus, of our Paschal chronicler, and from any other lists of consuls, whether ancient or more recent. Such great errors involve the accounts of times, says Livy ^B, with magistrates arranged differently in different writers, so that in such antiquity one can distinguish neither who the consuls were according to certain authorities, nor what was done in any given year, not only regarding the events themselves, but even regarding the authors. This variety of opinions, Marlianus, Cuspinianus, Sigonius, Panvinius, Glareanus, Contius, Kepler, Petavius, Norisius, Pagius, and others have examined most accurately, either by design or as the matter presented itself. But we, omitting discussions of this kind—to resolve which would be a vain and superfluous labor—the work now being completed, have compared the Fasti recorded in this Chronicle with the Idatius lists, particularly before the Caesars; for it seemed most likely to me that the author of this work had seen these or similar lists, as we have touched upon, and therefore followed them. Yet we have done so in such a way that the difficulties and stumbling blocks which are cleared up by the comparison of the consular Fasti from the time of the change in the Republic by those men whom we have mentioned, are pointed out by a brief annotation, so that it may be open to the reader, if he considers it worth the effort, to consult them.

XLIII. What has been achieved in this edition of the Chronicle. Having, therefore, premised these things concerning the country or name of the writer of the Paschal Chronicle—which, indeed, still remain uncertain—and concerning the method or procedure he uses in treating these matters, it remains that the reader be briefly advised as to what has been achieved by us in this Royal edition, for what it is worth. Therefore, before we undertook to illustrate this Chronicle, it seemed to be a saving of labor that the Vatican exemplar (from which perhaps the Augustan was transcribed, and from which both editions have issued) should be consulted as an authentic and singular exemplar. When, however, the most erudite men, the Reverend Fathers Jean Mabillon and Michel Germain, Benedictines, were recently residing in Rome—having been sent by the Most Christian King for the sake of searching for both published and manuscript books with which to enrich the already most opulent Royal library—they, together with Claude Stephanot, a man of the same order and equally learned, who performs the office of Procurator General of his congregation in Rome, by reason of the humanity and benevolence which they bear toward us, and their propensity for all liberal disciplines, voluntarily accepted this labor upon themselves. For having been permitted access to the Vatican library by the man of equally singular erudition, Emmanuel Schelestrate, S.T.D., and prefect of the same library [XXXVIII], they inspected that parchment codex of excellent quality, written about 700 years ago, as far as one could conjecture, under the same title regarding the Chronicle, and with the same lacunae which mar the Raderian edition, such that it is not permitted to doubt that the Augustan exemplar was transcribed, if not from it, at least from a similar codex. At the beginning of the same Vatican codex, which is marked with the number 1941, these words are read: "Bought at Messina by George of Constantinople on the 6th day before the Kalends of October, 1551." Who this George might have been, it appears to be he from whom the codex was subsequently purchased by Hieronymus Surita, which later, through the care of Antonius Augustinus, was brought into the Vatican library. In that codex, indeed, there are prefixed by way of a preface, as we have already warned, certain excerpts concerning Easter from several Holy Fathers, the first of whom cited is Petrus, Bishop of Alexandria and martyr, under whose name the Raderian edition was therefore published, because he who had transcribed the Augustan exemplar, with only the name of the same Petrus of Alexandria inscribed, omitted the rest of the same Preface, except for the final four lines which are prefixed to that same edition.

XLIV. Concerning the Preface of the author of the Chronicle. In that Preface, after the authorities of the Fathers concerning Easter have been brought forward, the author puts forth other material from his own store on the same subject, where he inquires by what method the days of the Paschal feast are to be investigated for individual years, and discusses the nineteen-year and twenty-eight-year cycles, and the cycle of 532 years, to which he strives to limit the Paschal days: then concerning the solar epacts, the cycles of the sun and moon, the lunar epacts, the fourteenth day of the moon, and others of this kind, the method of all of which he pursues. For the argument and elucidation of this, he proposes two tables, which he calls Wheels, the first of which contains the twenty-eight-year solar cycle always recurring into itself, by which the epacts are denoted for any given year: the second comprises the method of finding the legal Easter. Among these, he promises that he will subsequently give methods throughout the whole work, and that he will show, from these same cycles, all the aforesaid matters having been laid open and declared, in which years of the same cycles individual Lord's feasts, or δεσποτικαὶ ἑορταί, have occurred, with the addition of the years which have elapsed since the foundation of the world. Then he adds another treatise concerning the legal Easter and the moons, on which each Easter ought to be celebrated. Once these are finished, he reveals his plan concerning the composition of a brief history of the years from Adam, or from the beginning of the world, which harmonize with Holy Scripture and the Holy Fathers, and those rites celebrated honestly up to this time in the holy, catholic Church of God. From which it clearly appears that this Chronicle is nothing other than a [gr. text omitted], adorned from time to time with a brief narration of history for individual years, both so that it might not emerge entirely bare, and also, as we have hinted, so that the perpetual consensus of writers in the antiquity and continuation of the Christian religion might be confirmed by such a description. But since most of this compilation had been edited by Petavius in the Uranologion from the papers of Andreas Schottus previously described in Rome, those parts which were missing from these, the same men ensured were transcribed for us from the Vatican codex.

And not only these items, but also two other tables, or wheels, which are inserted from the same manuscript codex (page 197 of the Royal edition [XXXIX] and page 288, after the first year of the 281st Olympiad), as well as several variant readings about which they had been consulted by me, when it would have required greater leisure and labor to compare the entire Raderian edition with the Vatican exemplar itself. Content with these, while perhaps another person might propose this task for himself, we have corrected the remaining items that perchance occur in either edition as *sphálmata* [errors], using our own judgment or conjecture, in such a way that we have not done so without first warning the reader, that he might bring our divinations to examination at his own discretion.

[XLV] Concerning the Latin version. Furthermore, since the Latin version of Rader, a man otherwise learned and to whom letters owe much, did not please everyone—as he seemed not to have grasped the author’s meaning in many places, as others before us have pointed out, and because the codex he had used was teeming with errors and was not well written, and also because he had not had the leisure to put the finishing touches on the version and thus revise it—we have prepared another version, such as it is, which perhaps may not please the more refined, but which, unless I am mistaken, comes closer to the spirit of the writing. We translate the words as they sound, since the author wrote most things in a meaner and plebeian style (whence he is called an *idiōta* by Scaliger), or he rendered his own terms into his own words, or foreign terms into foreign words. Although, to tell the truth, it was our intention at the beginning to provide an interpretation not so much new as interpolated, and thus we have used it in some places. But since we have frequently rendered the author’s words differently than the scholarly interpreter, we have decided that we should by no means dwell on asserting our own version or refuting his; for not only does the resulting diversity of meaning at least reveal our opinion, if it does not confirm it, leaving the judgment to the reader, but also because, far be it from our custom to hunt for glory from the errors of others—if any occur—as some very learned men have done, who are almost entirely occupied with noting these in the versions of others. This we have done especially in those parts which are excerpted from the holy Scriptures, following the example of the ancient Fathers of both tongues, where we have followed the received versions as much as possible, not omitting the usage of writing accustomed among the Hebrews in rendering appellative nouns, who, as Josephus says, *en autōn schēma, kai teleutēn mian* [in their own form and one ending] always preserve, contrary to the Greeks and Latins, who accommodate them to their own languages *di’ hou tēs graphēs euprepēs* [by what is seemly for the text]. Add to this that when an interpreter pursues the charms and elegances of the Latin language more than is proper, he often destroys the meaning by translating, as Jerome thinks; besides, *tēs hermēneias monē aretē esti saphēneia* [the only virtue of an interpretation is clarity], as Galen says (a). Clemens Alexandrinus (b) speaks excellently to this sentiment: *hē men lexis hoion esthēs esti sōmatos, ta de pragmata, sarkes eisi kai neura. Ou chrē toinun tēs esthētos pro tēs tou sōmatos sōtērias kēdesthai* [Diction is like the clothing of the body, but the facts are the flesh and sinews. Therefore, one ought not to care more for the clothing than for the salvation of the body]. Diction is indeed like the garment of the body. But the things themselves are the flesh and sinews, and therefore one should not have more care for the garments than for the body's health.

[XLVI] Concerning the notes. As for the notes which we have appended to illustrate our author as best we can, we have dealt with that subject in such a way that those passages which seemed to seek some light were clarified only by a brief annotation: or if the matter being discussed had been treated by others either by design or by any other occasion, the reader was merely indicated (XL), lest we be said to do what is already done, or to stuff our own work with the observations of others, since otherwise their pursuit is that of men who fear not that they write enough things, but that they do not write enough useful things; and finally, it is one thing to write notes, another to write commentaries. Hence we often refer the reader to the Scaligeran notes on the Chronicle of Eusebius, from which our author drew most or certainly many things, since in explaining them that omniscient man omitted nothing; to which the reader will also be able to add those which Arnaldus Pontacus added to the same Eusebius’ Chronicle; as also to Petavius, Salianus, and other such learned and accurate investigators of chronological matters, from whom, if any blemish or doubt should arise, anyone can easily draw the explanation. For writers who cover universal history to some extent, such as chronologers, would play a superfluous and vain, or certainly importunate, part if they were to try to adorn it with more prolix commentaries, as we recently warned in the Preface to the Annals of John Zonaras, since he would have had to explain in far more words what they touched upon with a light hand in such a variety of matters, and would have completely overwhelmed the reader—whose fastidiousness rather than others' slowness we must address—with the bulk of his commentaries. Therefore, we have omitted many things from those which perhaps could have been illustrated, such as those which concern the holy Books, and especially those ecclesiastical annals from the Old Testament, because that subject has long been treated with much erudition by its learned interpreters, and by those who have painstakingly pursued sacred history from the very founding of the world through the series of years, or otherwise, who have left almost nothing untouched or unattempted. From those things, however, which concern the description of the city of Constantinople, or its buildings and regions, and indeed from the Graeco-barbarous words or those of unusual meaning with which this Chronicle is sprinkled throughout, we have deliberately abstained from illustrating or defining, since nothing else occurred to us that had not already been illustrated or explained by us in the *Christian Constantinople* and the *Glossary of Mediaeval and Low Greek* published by us thus far, having merely finished an index of things and words, which the reader will find, I think, fully treated in both works. In our notes, we have occasionally inserted the variant readings and conjectures of the most learned Holstenius, which we mentioned above, so that nothing would be passed over that could illustrate this Chronicle. As for the chronological calculations which occur more frequently in it to be weighed,