Saint Jerome, Complete Works, Vol. I

He endured it rather than consented to it, excusing the act so that he might serve some of his friends. The edition emerged from the house of the Maximi, whose work is certainly to be praised highly. Other editions followed it immediately, indeed, in the same year, 1470, at Mainz by Peter (others read Father) Schöffer of Gernsheim. Then six years later at Venice, through the study of Antonius Bartholomaeus. Three years later, another very elegant edition followed at Rome, which was reviewed again by the venerable man Georgius Laurentius of Herford. Then, in the following year, at Parma, which is the most splendid edition of all, augmented by several treatises and letters, and five years later at Nuremberg. Finally, there are countless others, which it is not in our interest to collect with care. We add just one from January 7, 1496, without the name of the place or the editor, which is in our possession, and we use it often because, although it abounds with infinite errors, it appears to have been struck entirely from the faith of the manuscripts.

7. Ancient editions of the Commentaries and other works. — And these editions do not list anything but the Letters and Treatises; for the Commentaries on the Sacra Biblia Sacred Bible (for that is how they are inscribed) were first presented as redeemed from neglect and squalor by the Nuremberg edition of 1477, and two years later by another from Cologne, then the Venetian one of 1498, which Joannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis printed. Moreover, they are also mentioned under this title: Expositiones in Vetus et Novum Testamentum Expositions on the Old and New Testament, but without the notation of the printer, or the place, or finally the year in which they were printed, in two folio volumes. To these, other parts of Jerome’s works can be added, which were published separately and in other places. Of this kind are some Homilies from Origen, and those on the Song of Songs in 1475 at Basel, as I believe, and in the following year at Nuremberg. Also, the Lives of the Egyptian Holy Fathers, and of those who dwelt in Scythia, the Thebaid, and Mesopotamia, from which, however, only those three very well-known ones—of Paul, Malchus, and Hilarion—proceeded from the pen of our author. This edition appears again five years later, and there is another, as it seems, much older, without the inscription of the printer, year, or place. The rule of St. Pachomius was first published at Rome by Achilles Statius in 1575. But not a few other things of this kind are found, either separately or mixed with the writings of other authors, as the fifteenth century passed. Nor have we touched upon the editions of the Chronicon Chronicle, which we shall review individually in the preface of that book, from that of Boninus Mombritius to the final one.

8. The imperfect universals. — Furthermore, it is neither permitted by leisure nor worth the effort to weigh those editions and call them to account. I would not want praise to be begrudged to the learned men and the printers themselves who undertook this task for themselves; but I say it was to be desired that, just as they did not spare expenses so that they might deserve well of the students of sacred letters, so too they should have expressed the readings from various archetypes, and not have thought that their only duty was to take into their hands one old copy they could find, to render it accurately, or—if anything seemed to be less than correct—to change it by their own private judgment, and, what is worse, without the knowledge of the reader. For this is what happened in the Latin context; however, regarding Hebrew words, where space is left to be filled, there is less error than in others which, however, rarely occur, and which are represented by Latin letters with good intention but a faulty reading. Greek words also are distorted and corrupted throughout.

9. The edition of Desiderius Erasmus. — But perhaps better things were not to be expected from the talent of that age, which Erasmus of Rotterdam fulfilled not long after, namely in 1516. He was the first to set his hand to adorn a collection of all the works, not just of one or another book. Learned long since by the practice of polishing the writings of the ancients, and having sought out manuscript copies from everywhere, he reviewed each one, weighed them with sharp judgment, prefixed arguments to provide light for the treatises and letters, and finally illustrated them with sufficiently learned notes and scholia. Furthermore, he was the first to remove the countless writings of others—falsely attributed to Jerome—which had been mixed with the genuine works to the incredible detriment of literary affairs. Not without sharp examination and censures, he briefly and learnedly touched upon almost every little work, indicated the masked writers by name, or at least forbade them from proceeding into the public light under the same auspices as Jerome, and from being used to the same extent as him. He arranged the entire work into nine folio volumes, giving the genuine letters and minor works to the first three, and the spurious ones to the fourth. To the two others, he added commentaries on all the prophets. The seventh and eighth, if you except the commentaries on Ecclesiastes and the Psalter from the Hebrew truth, grew into a collection of forgeries. Finally, in the last volume, he mixed things pertaining to the exposition of the New Testament, the false together with the true. The pair of Amerbach brothers, Bruno and Basilius, with their father Joannes joined to them, contributed a donation to such a great work, and they again confess from the heart that they accomplished this business, as they say, not without God. But they were assisted by the work of the most learned men, whom Joannes had summoned from all of Germany: especially Johannes Reuchlin, who restored some things in Hebrew; and Cono of Nuremberg, who corrected most things in Greek and Latin; and Gregorius Reisch; and finally Conrad Pellican of Ruffach, under whose guidance the matter was chiefly accomplished. This edition first appeared at Basel under the Froben presses, and it was received with the applause of the learned—especially those who had defected from the Roman Church—so that ten years later it was reviewed by the same Erasmus in the same place, and at Lyons, and at Paris, and for the third time at Basel, and elsewhere very frequently up to the year 1565. Indeed, even about fifty years ago, it was reprinted at Leipzig, although it is inscribed as being from Frankfurt am Main. And no one would begrudge Erasmus the praise owed to him for that labor, if he had abstained from that unrestrained and rash cacoethes a bad habit/itch of disparaging the most holy Fathers in order to fish for glory for himself, whom, even where he praises them intensely, he does so deliberately, so that he may later bite them with less envy and more praise for himself.