Hymns and Sermons of Saint Ephrem the Syrian, Volume 1

in Syriac, Greek, and Latin in six folio volumes. How much favor this labor, ennobled by such august patronage, received everywhere, can hardly, or barely, be said.

But the treasures of the Holy Doctor were not yet exhausted. When, therefore, the codices that remained in the Scetian monastery of the Syrians, covered in filth and dust, were purchased by the English a few years ago and brought many hitherto unpublished writings of the deacon of Edessa with them to the British Museum, and two learned men had already brought forth certain excellent things from them, it seemed to me that I would be doing a thing neither ungrateful nor useless if I were to bring to light whatever unpublished writings of Ephraem I could collect from there and elsewhere, equip them with a Latin version and other critical aids, and dedicate them to Your name, following the example of my predecessors.

Other incentives impelled me to invoke this patronage: namely, Your greatest solicitude and providence for the Eastern Churches, which You declared in that celebrated Encyclical Epistle on Saints Cyril and Methodius, which filled the Slavic peoples with joy and honor; which You confirmed more recently when You added to the Sacred College of Cardinals the most strenuous patriarch of the Armenians, who is most deserving of the Holy See; and which You signified again very recently when, in the year just past, You erected in the city of Beirut, for the nations of the East, a Catholic University of letters. Would that those nations, moved by all these benefits—which for so long have languished, torn from the center of unity—might finally understand that they must return to union with the supreme Roman See in order to be able to revive and reflourish. Would that they might meditate upon this doctrine of their principal Doctor, which he himself asserts in his sermon on the Institution of the Sacrament of the Eucharist, placing these words in the mouth of Christ: "Simon, my disciple, I have constituted you the foundation of the holy Church; I called you Rock beforehand because you will support the entire building; you are the inspector..."