Corpus of Latin Ecclesiastical Writers, Vol. LXV: Hilary's Treatise on the Mysteries, Fragments, and Hymns

But so that the view of the entire collection might be clearer and its use and the indication of individual monuments more convenient, we have prefixed a brief title to the fragments in the margin. As for the title of the entire collection, we already proposed in Studien I 5—since no title has been handed down in the memory of our manuscripts—that this inscription is fitting, clear, and convenient: Collectanea Antiariana Parisina Parisian Anti-Arian Collection, which are commonly called the Historical Fragments of Saint Hilary of Poitiers (abbreviated for convenience Coll. Antiar. Par.). A specific passage can therefore be indicated briefly, for example, like this: Coll. Antiar. Par. Ser. A IV 1, 5. The reasons that moved us to choose this new, and by us constructed, inscription are these: the titles used until now are not confirmed by any tradition of the manuscripts and contradict many opinions about the origin of the collection. A new title, however, ought to be such that it briefly expresses the nature of the collection, which consists of various documents of various authors pertaining to the history of the struggle against the Arian heresy, with narrative texts of one or more editors inserted, and that it be convenient for all who wish to indicate that work or recognize it when indicated. The term Collectanea Collection/Gathered papers seems more consistent than the term Collectio Collection because that accumulation of fragments has been handed down to us in a less orderly fashion. Finally, the term Parisina signifies the place where that single and most ancient manuscript, on which the others depend, is preserved.

Our order of the Collectanea now follows, which relies on the authority of the Parisian codex, compared with the order of Coustantius. We have devised the titles of the individual fragments ourselves, taking into account both the titles handed down in the text of that codex (cf. the edited text itself) and the subject matter of each of the fragments themselves.