Complete Works

Of the seventh. Eusebius Cassiodorus[...though au]thors affirm that grammarians, rhetoricians, orators, and all the ancient philosophers drank the streams of their eloquence and doctrine from the fountains of the divine scriptures, he nonetheless pursued that duty for other reasons, a part of which it is worth the effort to see in the prefaces of the most celebrated Heptaplus and in the prologue of the second exposition itself. Among so many constant turnings over of the divine law, in the second year after the edition of the Heptaplus, he also completed a small work On Being and the One, distinguished into ten chapters—brief indeed in body, but ample in power. It is sprinkled throughout with the deepest dogmas of philosophers and theological meanings, in which he shows that "one" is not superior to "being," but that they correspond to each other and are of equal scope. He reviewed the controversy held on this matter by the followers of Plato and Aristotle, asserting that those Academics who contended for the contrary had not grasped the true dogma of Plato, and he was going to demonstrate that a complete commonality of sense was not lacking between Aristotle and Plato concerning the "one" and "being," just as in all other things in general, even if the words differed. In the final chapter of the work, he turned the entire disputation toward the instruction of life and the emendation of morals, no less ingeniously than religiously. Against this work, Antonio Faentino, an otherwise distinguished philosopher, brought forth several objections in four letters, to three of which he himself responded; to the fourth, however—either because it was not faithfully delivered, or because he thought it could be answered from what he had already written, or for some other cause which must nonetheless be believed just—he made no mention of it as far as I know. After he departed this life, I myself took up the task of responding, lest an occasion for barking be provided to the malevolent or for believing something sinister to the unskilled; and I took particular care to show that it had been for the most part answered from his own preceding opinions.

The little book On Being and the One

Note

Antonio Faentino

Several Platonic mattersWe have also seen several Platonic matters arranged by him in the vernacular tongue, in which many things serving to unravel the theology of the ancients and many hidden meanings of the wise in enigmas and riddles are discovered; these we shall perhaps attempt to render into Latin, having obtained greater leisure, lest the surpassing doctrine of so great a man on these matters be carried before the eyes of the common people, for whom they are most accessible. Thus far concerning the completed labors which he had published before his death, as if they were messengers and precursors of the illustrious works which he had conceived and was forging. For he had already illuminated the Old Testament with the torches of interpretation, and was girding himself to perform the same service for the New. Nor had he brought forth only those meanings which the sequence of the letter could carry, but he was building upon them in those places where they were to bear three other senses proper to the divine utterances. He compared the differing readings of our codices with the Greek and Hebrew copies. But this was most firmly fixed in his mind, and sat more deeply than all the projects he had conceived in the genre of commentary: that he should not adduce the dogmas of others, as they were already held, read, and known, but should discourse upon truths discovered and meditated upon by himself, so that he might, according to his strength, satisfy souls hungry for truth with his own resources, not those of others. After these things, being powerful in the Hebrew idiom, he published a small book on the truth of Jerome's translation against the slanders of the Hebrews, as well as a defense for the sixty translators regarding the Psalms against the same; likewise, he wrote a small book on the true computation of times. Finally, he had applied his mind to the destruction of the seven enemies of the Church. For he who obeys neither Christ nor His Church is consequently His enemy, either being impious and receiving no dogma to be believed, or being enslaved to false ones.

The Old Testament interpreted

A little book on the truth of Jerome's translation.

A little book on the true computation of times.