EUTHYMIUS ZIGABENUS: COMMENTARY ON THE FOUR GOSPELS
THE GREEK TEXT, NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED, CAREFULLY EDITED FROM THE FIDELITY OF TWO MANUSCRIPTS FROM THE LIBRARIES OF THE HOLIEST SYNOD OF MOSCOW, SCRIBED IN THE AGE OF THE AUTHOR; REPUBLISHED WITH THE LATIN VERSION OF JOANNES HENTENIUS AND WITH HIS OWN ADDED OBSERVATIONS; EDITED BY CHRISTIAN FRIDERICH MATTHAEI, ASSESSOR TO THE RUSSIAN IMPERIAL COLLEGES AND PROFESSOR OF GREEK LITERATURE AT THE ACADEMY OF WITTENBERG. (Leipzig, 1792, in-8°.)
TO THE MOST SERENE PRINCE AND LORD ERNEST II LUDWIG, DUKE OF SAXONY, GULICH, CLEVES, AND BERG, ALSO COUNT OF WESTPHALIA, PROVINCIAL OF THURINGIA, MARGRAVE OF MEISSEN, PRINCELY COUNT WITH THE DIGNITY OF HENNEBERG, COUNT OF THE MARK AND RAVENSBERG, LORD OF RAVENSTEIN AND TONNA, ETC., ETC., MY MOST INDULGENT LORD.
Most Serene Duke, most indulgent Lord,
Among your many and great virtues, most Serene Duke, I have also recently had the chance to experience your singular grace, kindness, and prompt spirit for the advancement of letters, when you spontaneously and most liberally granted me the use of your most well-stocked library. This benefit I consider to be all the greater because the utility flowing from it did not accrue to me alone, but to many. I thought it proper, therefore, as a grateful man, to profess this publicly here and to show my mind as not unmindful of that benefit. I believed, moreover, that I would do this rightly if I were to commend to your grace, most Serene Prince, a writer most noble in his own age and once most favored by the Emperor Alexius Comnenus—now, after many centuries, brought back to light from the Moscow libraries—as an interpreter of my grateful mind toward you, and to present him to you.
Be pleased, therefore, to receive kindly—I ask, most indulgent and humane Prince—a man most worthy of light and fame, who once also, by the favor of his own prince and by his own virtues, moved in the greatest light and fame. At the same time, I also pray in the most humane manner that you preserve your favor toward me; I, who for you, most Serene Duke, and for your entire most Serene family, pray to God for all good things, equal to and most worthy of your virtues and those of your house.
Most Serene Duke, most devoted to your Serenity with all respect and veneration,
CHRISTIAN FRIDERICH MATTHAEI. Wittenberg, May 1, 1792.