PREFACE.

Although the admonitions prefixed to each of the books of this second volume relieve me of the burden of writing a preface for the most part, I nevertheless see certain things about which it would not be unwelcome for the reader to be forewarned at the very threshold. First, the rationale of my undertaking must be rendered: I have gathered the minor works Opuscula small works/treatises of Jerome—which were previously scattered here and there, and were either inhabiting foreign homes in the series of letters, or were mixed in with the writings of other authors, and had not yet been added to the body of Jerome’s work to which they belong—into one volume in such a way that this almost entirely new and appropriately sized tome has arisen. Indeed, in order to lend value and dignity to my edition, I proposed above all else that each piece should be arranged in the most accurate order possible. I have considered this to be of primary importance for those who seek support for their studies from the reading of the Holy Fathers. Therefore, if I have restored those works—whose length is not such that they could be reviewed separately, nor is the nature of their writing and their mode of discourse such that they might allow themselves to be mixed with other books of different subject and character—to their native seats, as it were, by right of return, I have deemed that by this new addition of material and order, the greatest praise and clarity will be provided for them. Clearly, the confusion of the editions that have been prepared until now, which continuously mix these little books with the letters, was hardly to be tolerated. Erasmus, followed by Victorius, who cared about the order of subjects, placed some of them in a second class, or tome, often seizing an opportunity from the letters because they contained ἐλεγκτικὰ καὶ ἀπολογητικὰ refutatory and apologetic [material], or things pertaining to various heresies and the calumnies of slanderers; they review others at the end of the first tome, sometimes even against the intent and while the dissimilarity of the subject matter resists it.

However, the recent Benedictine Editor, who had proposed a chronological order of letters for himself, interrupted them in places with huge gaps to receive these writings; yet in arranging them, he had no regard for the times to which they were referred, but perhaps for the subjects. Hence it happened that, while he insisted on both paths at once, he more often strayed from both, and with the order of both subjects and time disturbed, he dragged the reader off course. To avoid dwelling too long on this criticism, let the two books that occupy positions in that review serve as evidence: one of them (the Life of St. Paul the Hermit) exceeds all the other works of the Holy Doctor in age; the other (the Dialogue against the Pelagians) is later than almost all the rest. The former is placed ten years after the letters written to Marcella and Paula, with the sequence of arguments differing immensely. The latter, which belongs to the year four hundred and fifteen, is placed before other letters written from the year three hundred and eighty-six. It is so provided by nature that there is no fellowship among dissimilar things; if you force them against their will to be referred to one single series, you cannot avoid such confusion. If you adjust the treatises to the order of time according to which you have adjusted the letters, you must err through a misshapen displacement, and the records of one subject must be torn hither and thither; if you stick to the poor tracks of the subjects, you must necessarily pervert the rules of chronology, which is almost the very soul of the letters. I do not deny that there are three or four little works to which as many letters would bring light through the proximity of the argument; but I say it is better to advise the reader about them than to tear them by force from their own seats, transfer them to foreign soil, and, under the pretext of borrowing light, be a delay and hindrance to those reading.

Certainly, the more accurate editions of other ancient Fathers have been adorned in this way, in which their own place is assigned to each type of writing, so that neither is the epistolary style mixed with plain dissertations and books, nor are they mixed with Commentaries and Homilies, and whatever else is born under different auspices.

Two further causes impelled me to perform this with even better justification in adorning the works of Jerome. The first is that some of his minor works, which were wandering in other volumes—such as the book of Didymus on the Holy Spirit, rendered into Latin from the Greek—or had not yet been added to the Hieronymian corpus; such as the Rule of St. Pachomius, also translated into Latin from the Greek, to pass over others now, were worth adding here, and from that accession of writings, the collection had grown into the bulk of a peculiar tome.