- A brication(7); such as those of Saint Marcian of Constantinople, of Saint Polyeucte the martyr, of Saint John the Almoner, of Saint Theodosius the Cenobiarch, of Saint John and Saint Cyrus, martyrs in Egypt, and several others that Surius attributes to this legend-writer, *Auctore Symeone Metaphraste*? Why not warn us of those which he has reviewed or retouched, and which are in very great number: such as the Lives of Saint Simeon Stylite, of Saint Auxentius the Abbot, of Saint Sabas, of Saint John the Hesychast, of Saint Tarasius, of Saint Nicephorus the Patriarch of Constantinople, of Saint Nicetas, and almost all others that have passed through his hands? For one cannot deny that he has paraphrased them, and that he has added several things to them. Why, finally, not say that it is he who has preserved for us the Lives and Acts B of the saints whom he has not touched, and which he has given us in their original purity? The Acts of the martyrdom of Saint Justin are of this number, as well as those of Saint Agape, Saint Chionia, and Saint Irene, sisters and martyrs; of Saint Bademus, abbot in Persia and martyr; of Saint Sabas, a Goth by nation and martyr; of Saint Didymus and Saint Theodora the virgin, martyrs; of Saint Pherbute the virgin and martyr; and of some others that we possess in all their purity, and which Dom Thierry Ruynart has recognized as being sufficiently authentic to merit finding a place in his collection of chosen Acts.
Now, it is surprising that M. Baillet, to say nothing of M. Arnauld d'Andilly, M. de Tillemont, and Dom Thierry, having burdened his work with all C these pieces and several others which belong to these three classes, did not think himself obliged to render some justice to Metaphrastes: for even when one would grant these critics that they have not drawn very considerable extracts, nor even reported Lives of saints that this writer composed from his own resources, it seems that if he had rendered no other services to the Church than to preserve a great number of ancient monuments, of which she would be deprived without his care, that alone merited that one should not entirely strip him of the glory which is justly due for so great a labor.
We cite every day Eusebius of Caesarea for the history of the martyrdom of Saint James, first bishop of Jerusalem, of Saint Simeon, of Saint Ptolemy, of Saint Lucian; of the saints Leonidas, Plutarch, and their companions; of Saint Potamiana, a virgin of Alexandria, of whom speaks Saint Dionysius, D bishop of the same city, in his letter to Fabius; of Saint Marinus the soldier, and of several others: although this historian is not the author of these Acts, but only because he reports some extracts from them, and because he has preserved them for the Church: and one would think it not rendering him enough justice, when speaking of these holy martyrs, to cite only Rufinus, Musculus, Christophorson, or M. de Valois, who have made translations of the works of this historian, or those who have inserted some fragments of them into their writings. It seems for the same reason that when one reports the history of some saint, particularly when it belongs to the number of those which can pass for authentic, and which Metaphrastes has preserved for us, there is an injustice in citing only Lipoman, Surius, Baronius, and Bollandus, who have rendered them into Latin without making mention of Metaphrastes, from whom these legend-writers have drawn them.
Finally, the more these critics try to discover the infidelities of Metaphrastes and to make him pass for an impostor and a forger, born to produce monsters, for an author extreme beyond what pagan Greece imagined of fables in favor of its gods; so much the more should the public be surprised that people so enlightened, and who had made it hope to advance nothing that did not come from the purest sources of antiquity, have borrowed from an author so decried so many Acts and Lives of saints, and so many very considerable extracts; that they have relied upon a testimony so little worthy of belief for so great a number of facts. For whatever effort they make to hide the source of some and the channel of some others under the name of those who have made collections from Metaphrastes, it will nonetheless always be true to say that it is he who has preserved for us a quantity of Acts of martyrs and several Lives of saints, of which one finds nothing elsewhere, and which one would not know how to produce from any manuscript, nor from the work of any author who has spoken of them before him: thus, all those who have followed him have only received these Acts through his channel.
§ IV. — My critics claim that the falsifications and paraphrases of Metaphrastes have rendered him contemptible.
What way, these skillful critics will still say, is there to make the name of Metaphrastes appear in a work, after all these learned men have recognized his excesses? Is it not known that Baronius disapproved of his falsifications and marked a great disgust for his fables (*Baill. Disc. p. 60*); that Aubert-le-Mire made his infidelities known; that Dom Jacques Loppin blamed his additions to the ancient Lives of the saints and his license to invent new ones; that Dom Thierry Ruynart testified that he would have done much better to leave the ancient ones as they were in the original; that M. de Tillemont did not believe that one ought to esteem for anything that which one is accustomed to praise in him? Finally, M. Baillet reports in these terms what Cardinal Bellarmine (*De script. Eccles. an. 850*) says on the subject of Metaphrastes: “He added much of his own to the histories that he wrote of the lives of the saints, and reported things, not as they happened, but as they might have happened.” Those which he retouched, those which he preserved.