Complete Works XVIII: Against Celsus I-IV (Lommatzsch)

but also the notes and conjectures of both the learned Jesuit Franciscus Guiet, which the Reverend Father Ludovicus de Tournemine has in his possession in manuscript, and others far greater in number, which Elias Boherellus offered to the learned world at the end of his excellent French translation of the books against Celsus, published in Amsterdam in the year 1700.

Once the Greek archetype was recalled to a better state with so many and such aids, it was long deliberated whether the Latin translation of Sigismund Gelenius should be preserved or a new one produced. The praises with which that industrious translator is adorned by most learned men suggested that the Gelenian version should be kept. "Thus," says Caelius Secundus Curio in his preface to Appian of Alexandria, "he left us seven—and those most noble—writers converted from Greek, and so converted that you will find either none, or very few, who have performed with greater praise in this arena." That is indeed a great encomium, but one against which Henricus Valesius, in his preface to Ammianus Marcellinus, does not judge him unworthy, where he speaks thus of Mariangelus Accursius and Sigismund Gelenius: "There was great learning in both of these men, as the writings of both testify. But in Gelenius there was a certain greater force of genius and a sharper judgment. This is testified to by the many excellent labors of that man, and especially by the Latin translations of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Appian, and likewise Philo and Josephus, Origen, and others. From which it appears that he was endowed with excellent genius and singular learning." The most illustrious Huetius approaches the matter more closely in his book on famous translators, page 225: "In these also," he says, "is numbered Sigismund Gelenius the Bohemian, by whom