STEPHANUS EVODIUS

ASSEMANI

ARCHBISHOP OF APAMEA

To the Most Eminent and Most Reverend Lord

D. ANGELUS MARIA

QUIRINUS

CARDINAL LIBRARIAN OF THE HOLY ROMAN CHURCH

BISHOP OF BRESCIA

On the new edition

of the Works of Saint Ephrem the Syrian

E P I S T L E .

An ornate woodcut drop cap 'M' contains floral motifs and architectural scrolls within a square frame.

For many and great reasons, MOST EMINENT PRINCE, was I led, after the passing of Petrus Benedictus of the Society of Jesus—a most illustrious man, and a loss surely as bitter to the interests of letters as it was to him—to provide these Syriac Works of St. Ephrem with Latin translations, with all the diligence, zeal, and study of which I am capable. I saw first of all that this labor of mine would be by no means vain or superfluous. For from this, my spirit surmised that perhaps no less praise could be brought to the Eastern Church, which begot and nourished such a man, than utility to the Western, seeing as it must be not insignificantly enlightened by the doctrine and wisdom of such a most celebrated and holy man. That, too, stood as a great incentive for me in this work and in my studies: that since the Syriac copies of St. Ephrem, from which this Latin edition is faithfully derived, as well as almost all other Oriental codices that increase the splendor and renown of the Vatican Library not a little, arrived here in Italy happily from Egypt and other Oriental regions through the diligence of my uncles, Elias, Archpriest of the Antiochene See, and Joseph Assemani, a Roman prelate. Moreover, I recalled repeatedly that Petrus Benedictus used my own work very often in the editing of the first and second volumes, just as he himself did not hesitate to attest in his Preface to the Reader in the second volume.