AD LECTOREM

11BThere are some, too much inflamed with a zeal for novelty, who utterly reject and abominate all this labour which learned men spend on preserving the monuments of learned antiquity, as a superstitious thing, and as one which calls away and frightens off outstanding talents from devising excellent new inventions: since, doubtless, they observe it to come about that upright men esteem nothing greatly, especially in letters and the good arts, except what has won authority for itself by its very age. Such men will without doubt laugh at us, who are busy reprinting with such long vigils, and thrusting into the hands of the studious, this ordinary Gloss and the Postill of Nicholas of Lyra (names which by their very sound and the inflection of the voice rub something horrid and barbarous upon their delicate ears). For they would have preferred some new work, unheard of before, or at least the commentaries of new men adapted to this matter: of which, in this age of many writers 12Band of wide learning, the yield is so great that they are almost innumerable. But we have not been eager to please readers of this kind, while not in the least doubting meanwhile that this undertaking of ours will be approved by modest and Catholic readers, who know and acknowledge that in the other arts, indeed, any inventions, even the most recent, can find their favour and dignity ahead of many old ones: but that in opening up the hidden senses of the divine word, both those are best which are oldest; and those are next to the best which are nearer to the oldest, inasmuch as they are more closely joined to the purest fountain of truth, and hence further removed from the pools and mire of perverse spirits, by which the wholesome and unmuddied waters of the Scriptures are often wont to be infected and troubled. « For wisdom is in the ancients » pronounces the Wise Man, and in the old treaters of the Church the footsteps of our diligence are set securely, without danger of falsity, at least of damaging 13Aand pernicious falsity: whereas among these more recent ones, who little venerate those ancients, our study cannot be occupied except with the greatest danger to souls, and the most certain loss of precious time. For those men, distinguished by the praises of piety and modesty, judged that nothing should be either written or thought by them which would not be approved by the vote of the pontiff of the Catholic Church, and of the other masters persevering in his communion: acknowledging that, as of souls, so of intellects there is an ordered hierarchy in the Church, and that « the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets; » and always setting before their eyes that oracle of Solomon: « The words of the wise are as goads » (which prick with the edge of truth, and do not flatter with the little flowers of adulation) « and as nails fixed 13Bdeep » (the solid foundation of the Catholic faith being laid beneath, not in the drifting sand of human wisdom) « which are given by the counsel of masters » (since it is not permitted to each one to run riot concerning divine things as he pleases, but they are compelled to speak according to a fixed rule: nor does anyone dare to prefer his own view, though he be great, or very great, to the consensus of other pious men and therefore they submit themselves to the vicar of Christ, through whom the Holy Spirit rules the tongue and pen of those who teach, that they may merit to receive the deifying light of truth) « from one Shepherd, » who is our Redeemer. But these admirers of novelty, « the sound doctrine » of the ancients « not enduring, » but sifting and stifling the doctrine of truth according to their own desires, « heap up to themselves masters, » not attending 13Cto the gain of souls, but « having itching ears, » so that accordingly it is not right to marvel if, « from the truth » that is simple and solid « turning away their hearing unto fables » and to the painted enticements of deadly opinions, they with all their affection « are turned. »

To thee therefore, Catholic reader, cultivator and admirer of the ancient and ancestral faith, this labour of ours has sweated: that, while other excellent doctors of the Church now flourishing bring forth for thee the riches and the arms of their talents, furnished with which thou declarest a mighty and unwearied war upon the enemies of the Catholic faith and the plunderers of souls, we too might give thee in aid the best leaders of the middle age, who in their own time were a wall and outwork of the Church, among whom the authors of these commentaries fight in no last place, 13Dwhom we bring forth again into the battle line, having wiped away some of the rust which their arms had contracted. For hence it will be made most manifest by what spirit our forefathers were led when they approached the treatment of the sacred letters: namely by the divine (not human) counsel, which we heard above from Solomon, of masters deferring to one another with humility, governed under one and by one shepherd, to open the saving recesses of the heavenly oracles: whose harmony and consonance in the exposition of the divine word, as a council and « counsel of masters, » the author of the ordinary Gloss first attempted to set before our view as on an abacus or in a mathematical diagram, the Gloss being so called because all later men were wont to consult it as 14Aa workshop of ecclesiastical senses, as often as there was need to have recourse to the meaning of Scripture; nor did they think that they ought to savour anything other than what they had found handed down by that « counsel of masters, » so that thus they might acquiesce in the admonition of the wise man which he added after those words: « Further than these, my son, require not, » where he also adds an evident reason: « Of making many books there is no end, » as if to say that those who do not acquiesce in the words of the wise examined through the counsel of masters, and in the judgment of one shepherd, would never make an end of wandering through all the windings of errors and lies, but would be vexed by interminable questions. Now this work of the Gloss was, in that scarcity and penury of books under which that age (if it be compared with ours, 14Bvery poor in this respect) laboured; a work not only of great vigils, but also of expenses, which had to be poured out in seeking out from everywhere and copying the holy doctors, since this printing had not yet been invented, that wonder-working multiplier of books, which (as that man said of the Nile, the waterer of Egypt) rolls down with it infinite ἔσθλα καὶ ὕργα, useful things and harmful, upright writers and noxious. By the benefit of which art that most praised labour of the collector could be made more illustrious and more perfect, other expositions of the holy Fathers which would serve for the elucidation of the sacred pages being added above and fitly woven in: which the divine genius of Thomas Aquinas accomplished in the Gospel history, and in many books of Scripture the more recent Greeks, and most copiously 14Cin Genesis and Exodus the most learned bishop of Verona, Lypomannus; and we too perhaps, if only God grant us life and strength, shall some day attempt it. But meanwhile, nevertheless, it was not because something more perfect can be made (as it is very easy to add to things invented, very difficult to invent first) that the work of this Gloss was therefore to be neglected or cast aside, which first of all brought in the holy Fathers as though gathered in a council, and expounding Scripture by contributions brought together: rather it was altogether to be restored by us to its own lustre, so that it might always be turned over by posterity with praise and blessing of its authors, since it has now for eight centuries been held by our forefathers always in the highest honour. At the same time we judged it expedient that there should stand 14Dso splendid a testimony, not only of the Catholic method which our fathers always followed in expounding the Scriptures, but also of their most diligent industry in the sacred letters; and that the mouth might be stopped of the most impudent heretics who have dared to boast that among our people the word of God lay buried and neglected, until the torch of the Gospel (the fifth, to be sure) had been lit by them. And while the very numerous theories, meditations and writings of our men on the sacred Scriptures, published before those heretics arose, testify that this is most false: so above all do these commentaries of the Gloss and of Lyra, from which those foreigners compiled whatever is rightly discussed by them in the Scriptures, nor have they added anything of their own, save a certain splendour 15Aof speech, and excursions laden with curses and blasphemies, in which they either strive to establish their own ravings, or assail the foundations of our faith.

Moreover, what gave occasion to this edition, among other things, was what was noted by the Reverend Father Antonio Possevino in the Bibliotheca sacra. For when the printers desired, to the glory of God and the common profit of the faithful, to reprint the Gloss in that form in which it had been published by the Parisians in the year 1588 from the recension of three doctors, Francis Feuardent, James de Cuelly and John Dadré, there was shown them this judgment of Possevino, which that most diligent surveyor of the ecclesiastical Library had framed in these words: « Truly indeed » (he says, under the entry Glossa ordinaria ), 15B« those distinguished theologians could not render entire that accurate labour which they put into it, the printers pressing on the edition, and the tumults of France disturbing the republic of letters. » Since these words seemed to have been written by such a man not without just reasons, the printers asked that we should gradually collate the copies; and when the collation was made there were found so many gaps in words, in sentences, in testimonies, so many things even set down twice at length on the same little pages, some sayings of authors also rather dangerous; very many, however, little to the purpose, and suited rather to filling the spaces of the pages (which were quite ample) than to illustrating the sense: so that Possevino seems to have indicated most modestly what he found wanting in that edition, and to have assigned for such great 15Cdefects no cause but the very greatest, namely the bitter calamity of the civil wars.

Therefore we were compelled, dividing the vigils among ourselves, to examine the whole work against manuscript copies and those of older printing, and to consult the originals of the Fathers themselves: and to restore to each his own, from whom the things had been taken, as they had been written by them, that is, emended; having indicated at each testimony the books and places of the authors (which are extant), in place of those things which had been either repeated to fill the empty spaces of the pages, or superfluously set down, or chosen by a judge not safe enough, we have ascribed other sentences of the classic Fathers. Moreover the testimonies of the Rabbis (excepting one or another) which had not been cited by the ancient glossator, 15Dand likewise those of profane writers, such as Pliny, Justin the historian, Josephus the Jew, Philo, which in the Parisian edition had been added under little stars, we have struck out; and in their place we have substituted sayings of the holy Fathers: for the glossator himself willed that there be a place in that chain or harmony of authorities for these alone, and not for authors alien from the faith and from Christ. That these things have not been said by us in this place idly or boastfully anyone can see for himself, who will but compare this edition of ours with the other, Parisian one, or with others made from it. And, had we placed at the end of each tome the places restored, corrected, struck out for just causes, or supplied: truly not a few quires would have had to be added. Nor, however, ought this animadversion of ours to harm the esteem of the most wise 16Amen (whom we named above, and who prescribed the form for the Parisian edition): not only because the warlike and civil tumults could at that time strike pens and books out of the hands of all pious men; but also because we cannot persuade ourselves that the order prescribed by those great men had been observed by the workmen, but, the press hurrying for the causes hinted at by Possevino, for the most part neglected. For how great the industry of those men otherwise was, joined with the highest erudition, and how great their fervour in defending the cause of God and of the Church, their other labours, brought to light and expended in most learned sermons delivered against the heretics, furnish an abundantly great proof.

16BBut neither do we assume so much to ourselves as to think that we have committed no error at all in revising this work: since we too fell into difficulties equally troublesome; since one of our colleagues was kept from the work for almost a whole year by a long and very grave illness, and two others, taken up by the authority of superiors to the governance of souls and drawn away from the shades of the Academy to the heat of pastoral care, themselves also caused no small delay to the edition, and made the expectation of our bringing forth this offspring (as the Parisians said of their edition) a three-year one. Nevertheless we dare to say that the reader will not find errata of great moment, nor even frequent ones of a lighter mark: of which we observed there was an almost infinite number in other editions.

16CBut know thou, most courteous reader, that nothing at all has been changed by us in the old gloss, not the order, not the very words, except when we found them to be false or corrupt, from manuscript and ancient copies, and from the very originals of the saints; as neither did we change anything in Lyra's literal and moral Postill; hence some rather trifling etymologies, and certain grammatical slips (because they seemed to have been so written by the author himself, for postillators are not rarely wont to play the fool in these derivations) we left altogether untouched. But those things which were added to the old Gloss by the Parisians are marked with an asterisk or single little star; those which we added have a double asterisk shining before them, and by those marks they are distinguished from the authorities 16Dof the old Gloss; and the same judgment holds of certain annotations which we have here and there inserted in Lyra's Postill, namely with little stars prefixed, so that they may thus be recognized to be not Lyra's words, but ours.

In the Replies of Mathias Tornigus, however, we assumed a little more authority to ourselves; namely, not rarely we struck out certain abuses which he heaped up against the venerable Burgensis too intemperately and too often. For that unseemly petulance, unworthy of a learned man, did not befit the edition of so necessary a work, and one which was to be in the hands of all, even of the enemies of the Church. For that author so defends his Lyra as to show openly that he does not 17Ago down into the contest with Burgensis for the sake of finding the truth, but only lest Lyra should seem justly reproved; and although Lyra is most justly taxed by Burgensis in many things, and Lyra himself assumes to himself by the right of a doctor the licence of attacking others: Tornigus nevertheless takes it ill that Lyra is censured in those places where he deservedly comes to be censured, and there he pulls a contentious rope; and whereas it matters little to the Postillator's glory whether he is censured rightly or otherwise in indifferent matters which pertain neither to faith nor to morals; there Tornigus loads the venerable bishop, a holy man and one who deserved excellently of the Church of Spain, with abuses, and most frivolously 17Bcasts upon a faithful confessor the reproach of Judaism (as if salvation had not proceeded from the Jews, and as if his Lyra had not also once been a Jew). Those abuses, therefore, we deleted almost all of them, because they occurred too frequently: but beyond this, nothing; nor did we wish to change anything even in him.

And this, indeed, concerning our design, and concerning what we have accomplished in this edition (God leading). But perhaps it will not be unwelcome if we weave in some things about the very authors of the Glosses and Postills, collected chiefly from Sixtus of Siena and other learned men.

Therefore the principal author of the ordinary Gloss (namely that which is set around the sacred text) is celebrated by all as WALAFRID STRABUS, a Benedictine monk of the monastery of Fulda in Germany (another than Strabo, the English monk, brother of the Venerable Bede), who acquired that surname of Strabus from a defect of the eyes, a hearer, and scribe and amanuensis, of Rabanus Maurus, Benedictine abbot of the same monastery, 17Cand afterwards archbishop of Mainz: a man abundantly polished in secular literature, most skilled in divine Scripture, and delighted by varied and assiduous reading of the ancient authors, a poet, too, not unsuccessful for that age. His, then, is this collection of expositions on Scripture, which posterity valued so highly that they called it as it were the ordinary gloss, or the very tongue of Scripture, by which namely we might understand Scripture speaking to us, since, reading the sacred words without it, we should think we were hearing a tongue which we had not known. The Master of the Sentences calls this Gloss κατ' ἕξοχὴν the authority, Book IV, d. 4; for, adducing the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter VI, he speaks thus: « Hence the authority says that the Apostle spoke in the plural, the foundation of baptisms, because there is 17Dbaptism in water, in blood, in penance, » etc.; all of which thou wilt find in the ordinary gloss on that chapter. Other writers, however, seem to have enriched it afterwards, as Trithemius judges in his Catalogue, and as appears from the name of Remigius often set beside it, who is later in age than Strabus himself; unless perhaps we say that the name of Remigius was noted in place of Augustine, from whom Remigius, after his custom, took most things. For neither in the manuscript copies of the Gloss are the names of the authors noted everywhere, but this was the work of the diligence of later men. Now Strabus flourished under Louis Augustus, in the year of the Lord 840.

But the author of the interlinear Gloss is Anselm of Laon, also a Benedictine monk, surnamed 18Athe Scholastic, a Gaul by nation, learned by continual study in the divine Scriptures and the volumes of the sacred doctors, and instructed not moderately in all disciplines, sharp in intellect, concise in eloquence, and a lover of a certain Laconic brevity. Whence also by a new and unaccustomed manner of explanation he expounded the books of both Testaments by certain very brief summaries of annotations taken from the Fathers: which, written in the tiniest characters, he fitted, with an industry no less curious than useful, between the very lines of the Scriptures inscribed in larger letters: and he called that labour the interlinear gloss, to distinguish it from the gloss of Strabus, which is written in the margins of the sacred text. He was renowned under the emperor Henry IV, in the year of the Lord 1110. He once had a 18Bcontest, when already an old man, with Peter Abelard, a monk of the same institute, who then, swelling with the pride of philosophy, spoke not soberly enough about matters of faith: though afterwards, corrected, and living holily in the monastery of Cluny under Peter the Venerable, he came to rest in a praiseworthy end. Each true gloss, as well the ordinary as the interlinear, was always of the greatest authority among all theologians, as can be manifest to anyone from Alexander of Hales, St Thomas, and the other principal masters of the school who everywhere make use of their authority.

Concerning Nicholas of Lyra Sixtus of Siena has this: « Nicholas of Lyra, English by nation or, as some write, from Lyra, a town of Brabant, a Jew by race, and imbued with Hebrew letters from earliest boyhood, but after 18Chis conversion devoted to the Franciscan religion, a professor of scholastic theology, and a not ignoble expositor of its Sentences; endowed also with so true, pure and genuine an understanding of the divine Scriptures that in expounding them he had no equal among the most learned theologians of his time. He published on each of the volumes of both the Old and the New Testament eighty-five books of scholastic Postill, not only useful to students of the holy Scriptures, and especially to beginners hastening on to greater things, but even very necessary. In the first fifty of these books he expounded the whole body of Holy Scripture without the allurement of oratory and the wrappings of words, in plain and open speech: with the utmost diligence in each opening up and elucidating 18Dthe sense of the letter, which is as much more excellent than the other senses of divine Scripture as it is more difficult; bringing to this not only the expositions of the ancient Fathers of the Church, but also the opinions of the Rabbis, whose authority is chief among the Jews. This work completed, taking up the labour again, in the thirty-five later books he illustrated both Instruments with a moral exposition. He flourished under Pope John XXII, and the emperor Louis the Bavarian. » Thus Sixtus. Lyra published besides a third work on the whole Scripture of the Old Testament, which work he entitled "Of Differences," in which he most diligently noted all the expressions in which the Vulgate interpreter seemed to differ from the Hebrew source; this is extant separately, printed, 19Athough it is very rarely found. But as to Sixtus's saying that Nicholas is thought by some to be English, I do not know on what foundation they rely. Those who think him a Brabanter have in their favour his epitaph which stood in the town of Lyra between Antwerp and Mechelen, in which this distich is found among other things: To whom Brabant most kindly gave the surname of ancient Lyra, For he was sprung from the city of Lyra. And the epitaph is closed with this distich Hence the hierophant sits with God, shining with a diadem, And a glory worthy of the Brabantine soil. Likewise in the edition of the Gloss made at Basel in the year 1520 there is found at the end of the sixth part: The holy Bible with the ordinary gloss, etc.; and, Here ends the Postill of Nicholas of Lyra the Brabanter. Now Nicholas of Lyra died in the great 19BParisian college of the Minors in the year 1349, on the 14th day of October, where also an epitaph is found, from which others deduce that this same Nicholas was a Norman, from the little town of Lyre in Normandy; and a probable conjecture will also favour this, that he often uses examples from the French tongue, but nowhere from the Brabantine, or English. Let the reader choose what he pleases.

There follows Paul Burgensis, a Spaniard by nation, surnamed de Sancta Maria, a Hebrew by race, once a most eminent Rabbi among his fellow Hebrews; and after his conversion to the Christian faith, bishop first of New Carthage and then of Burgos in Spain, arch-chancellor of Castile and León: for the sake of his son Alphonsus, dean of the church of Compostela (whom he had begotten as a layman of 19Ca wife), he discussed very many places from the several books of Holy Scripture, in which he tried to correct and supplement the explanations of Lyra, and he entitled the work Additions. He flourished under the emperor Sigismund, in the year of the Lord 1430. He wrote besides a notable work against Jewish perfidy, which he called The Scrutiny of the Scriptures. He was a man of the greatest authority in Spain, given as tutor to the boy king for his faith and prudence, and of known piety. With special affection he followed the doctrine of St Thomas and the order of the Dominicans, for whom he also built and endowed a splendid monastery in his city. And that city and the region of Burgos he so strengthened in the faith of Christ the Lord by the force of the divine word and by his zeal, that none thereafter 20Aof them or of their descendants is known to have fallen away from that same faith, as Navarrus testifies in his counsels. And therefore his family is still celebrated and of approved nobility; called de Sancta Maria, which alone in Spain holds citizenship, and is admitted to all the honours of the commonwealth, all other families of Hebrew blood being excluded.

Against this Paul Burgensis there writes in these commentaries Matthew Dornick, or Tornigus, a Saxon by nation, a Minorite, once minister of the province of Saxony, an excellent professor of scholastic theology, and having entered the fight in defence of his doctor Nicholas of Lyra, he strove to overturn the additions of Burgensis, publishing new disputations, which he set beneath the commentaries of Lyra immediately after the additions of Burgensis, and 20Bentitled Replies, or the correctory of the Burgensian corruptory. In these, though he noted many things learnedly enough, he nevertheless could not abstain from abuses, as we said, with which he assailed Burgensis quite undeservedly. He flourished under the emperor Frederick III, in the year of the Lord 1440.

Thou must moreover be advised, kind reader, that we have left the sacred text itself entirely in that form in which we found it in the ancient editions of the gloss and of Lyra: because thus it seemed to agree better with the expositions of Lyra himself: who did not everywhere read in the same way as our Vulgate now emended by the pontiffs. But at the end of each tome we have added the Roman corrections collected by D. Francis Lucas Burgensis, and to them we have joined our own conjectures, by which we wished to indicate what the Roman Fathers could have followed 20Cin those corrections, and why from the various readings they approved these rather than those.

We have also given to each tome an index, and a brief one, of the principal matters only, and of those which are explained at greater length: for to bring into the index all things which are expounded in any way would have been to copy out the commentaries themselves again; and besides, the smaller and briefer matters mostly serve the verbal explanation of the text, and will accordingly be found more easily, once the sacred text to which they are spoken has been found, than through the index; but those which are noted more diligently and at greater length, whether in the gloss or by Lyra, those alone we have gathered into the index.