Saint Jerome, Complete Works, Vol. I

If, in issuing censures, he had refrained from injury to sacred matters, and had not often mingled the writings of other ancient Fathers and of Jerome with vain conjectures, such that—had the studies of later theologians not countered them—hardly anything certain could be established from his opinion concerning ecclesiastical tradition.

10. The edition of Marianus Victorius. — But furthermore, the Erasmian edition did not seem to learned men to have reached legitimate perfection; indeed, Marianus Victorius of Ameria, a priest and later Bishop of Rieti, judged that it was of no less interest to ecclesiastical doctrine than to literature to set about a new one. Having again sought out manuscript ἀντιγράφοις copies throughout Italy with the greatest diligence—especially in Florence and Brescia, not to speak of those in Rome which were at hand—and by the protection and auspices of a man of immortal memory, Cardinal Morone, to whom he offers the fruits of his labor, he sufficiently adorned the collection he had undertaken. He published the first three volumes in 1565 with the most elegant types of Manutius, and dedicated them to Pius IV. From these (which is the part of the Hieronymian works that Erasmus had properly reviewed), he removed so many mistakes and hallucinations, which had crept in partly through ignorance and partly through carelessness, that he does not hesitate to affirm that he restored more or less one thousand five hundred passages, which had either been stained by his own hand or, corrupted by time, could not be restored due to a lack of knowledge of the subject matter. In the scholia, which he added to the bottom of the page, he discusses sufficiently the reason for the readings he restored and their variety from the manuscripts, and illustrates very many places that seemed to him to be in need of light. Nor did he pursue the remaining volumes with less diligence; he published them in 1567 and the following year with the press of the same Manutius, and dedicated them to the succeeding pontiffs, Pius V and Gregory XIII. He professes to have removed an equal number of errors from them, and to refute equal ignorances, whether because the Amerbach brothers were not of the most exquisite judgment, or because those who lent them their labor, since they were not allowed to depart from the thread and mind of Erasmus, performed the matter perfunctorily, as often happens in things worked on under another’s name. Therefore, this edition, although it is not more copious than the Erasmian recension, and differs almost nothing from that order, is nevertheless much more accurate—a fact that even the patrons of Erasmus who survive today do not deny. As soon as it was completed, it prevailed everywhere and was repeated quite often in various places: primarily at Antwerp in 1578, reviewed by the second efforts of Victorius himself; then at Paris in the following year and in 1602; and at Cologne in 1616; for it is not my intention to collect all of them in an exhaustive catalog.

11. The same enriched by the additions of several learned men. — What deserves to be weighed for a moment is the other Parisian edition of 1623, to which various observations and emendations of other men were added. They are of this kind: The difficult passages of Jerome were illustrated by Franciscus of Messina. The theological caveats of Ferdinand Velosillus, Bishop of Lucca, or rather, scholastic theological animadversions on the works of the Holy Father. The diatribe of observations and emendations by Fridericus Morellus. An outstanding emendation of a Hieronymian passage by Laelius, Bishop of Bagnoregio. Then the learned Notes of Henricus Gravius on 102 letters and the book on ecclesiastical writers, and also the Notes of Fronto Ducaeus, which are said to be especially successful in clearing up philological matters. Finally, the emendations and conjectures of Latinus Latinius from his library are adopted. Other editions, reprinted at Paris and Venice within twenty years, repeat these commentaries of learned men, which seemed to perform a role similar to a supplement for the diligence of Victorius. But the one from Frankfurt or Leipzig, elaborated about fifty years ago, which we mentioned above, added to the Erasmian codex itself and its notes and scholia, which Fridericus Ulricus Calixtus and Adamus Tribbechovius, who lent their labor, divided into twelve volumes.

12. Nevertheless, false in Hebrew matters especially. — If anyone should persuade himself that, with the studies of so many learned men compared, an edition of those works has finally been completed in all numbers, he is very far from the truth. For even if other things were well, of which there are many that are wrong, the primary fruit of the Hieronymian reading, which is easy to read, was being intercepted by the perverse care of men. I speak of the ancient reading of Hebrew words—by which every third word of Jerome’s work is distinguished—expressed in Latin letters, for which editors have continuously substituted the more recent Massoretic one. It is known how much there is between the two, and to what damage to deeper learning and sacred doctrine this change turns, since it was not permitted to understand the judgment of the Holy Doctor concerning various Hebrew words and places of Scripture, nor the consistency of the ancient Greek translations (of which he submits fragments), nor finally the Jewish traditions themselves, and their opinions concerning the meaning of Hebrew words and the sense of the places of Scripture. And this was something that the most learned men, Drusius and Morinus, had long ago lamented. The former, in Quaestiones Hebraicae, book III, chapter 75, says:

"There was an error by recent correctors in Jerome: first, in that they wrote in Hebrew characters what Jerome had written in Latin; second, in that, having changed the ancient reading, they substituted for it a new one unknown to Jerome."

The latter, in Exercitationes Biblicae, page 108, complains that:

"The Hebrew names written in Latin letters were very imprudently removed, and in their place, they were described with Hebrew letters and Rabbinical points."

Isaac Vossius has similar things in his On the Sibylline Oracles, ch. 16, and many others, who have a better opinion on this matter.

13. The edition of the Benedictine Fathers, or of Dom Joannes Martianaeus. — Therefore, in order to counteract this evil especially, the most celebrated Benedictine monks of Paris from the Congregation of Saint-Maur, whose industry in restoring the writings of the holy fathers could never be praised enough, entrusted the province of reviewing and restoring the works of Jerome once again to two most illustrious pupils of their order, Dom Joannes Martianaeus and Dom Dom Antonio Pougetius. In order to give a sample of the new edition he had undertaken to the learned, Martianaeus, in the year 1690, and continuously...