The Greek Apologists form a convenient class, and we may survey their destinies next. The only one who was introduced to the West in the fifteenth century was one of the obscurest, Athenagoras. Large portions of his book On the Resurrection were rendered into Latin by Ficino and also by ,G. Valla, and printed in 1488. The Greek appeared in 1541. The Apology was edited by Gesner at Zurich and by Robert Estienne at Paris in 1557.
The first portion of Justin Martyr’s works that saw the light was the Address to the Greeks, printed in the Latin version of Pico della Mirandola in 1507. In 1551 Robert Estienne brought out a corpus of this writer’s works, genuine and spurious, which for most of them- notably the two Apologies and the Dialogue with Trypho-was the editio princeps.
Tatian and Theophilus first appeared at Zurich in 1546: the unimportant tract of Hermias in 1553 at Basel. The editor of the first two was Gesner, of the third Raphael Seiler.
All the extant works of Clement of Alexandria, with a few unimportant exceptions, were placed in the hands of scholars together, in the Florentine edition of 1550, superintended by Pietro Victorio. But the best work done on the text of this Father was that of Friedrich Sylburg, who brought out his writings at Heidelberg in 1592. The printer was Commelin.
The first nine editions of Irenaeus, ranging in date from 1526 to 1567, all give a text constructed by Erasmus, and improved to a certain extent by him in those which were published during his lifetime. The Erasmian text, however, never attained a very high pitch of excellence. A step forward was taken by Gallasius, who brought out an Irenaeus at Geneva in 1570, and more decided progress by Feuardent of Paris, whose best edition was printed at Cologne in 1596. Nothing of any great importance was done for the elucidation of this writer before the publication of Grabe’s great work at Oxford in 1702.
The works of Origen, largely preserved in old Latin versions, were never wholly unrepresented in Western libraries. It is a curious fact that, in spite of the deep interest which this great thinker excited in the minds of men like Erasmus, no portion of his writings appeared in the original Greek during the sixteenth century. As early as 1475 some Homilies were printed in Latin, and the books Against Celsus, also in Latin, in 1481. A collective edition in the same language was brought out by Merlin at Paris in 1512. Erasmus was engaged on another when he died in 1536, and Beatus Rhenanus completed it in that year. Genebrard, Archbishop of Aix, produced a third in 1574. The first attempt at a complete edition in Greek and Latin was that of Peter Daniel Huet (afterwards Bishop of Avranches), which appeared at Rouen in 1668. It included only the exegetical works, and was never completed. Herbert Thorndike, of Trinity College, Cambridge, had made large preparations about the same period as Huet for a collective edition, no part of which was printed. His manuscripts, among which is the unique copy of the important treatise On Prayer, are preserved in the Library of his College. The first editor of one of the longer treatises in Greek was David Hoeschel, who published the books Against Celsus in 1605.
We have no right to inflict a complete patristic bibliography on our readers. One more Greek father only shall be mentioned, namely, Eusebius of Caesarea. His Praeparatio Evangelica has been mentioned more than once in the body of this chapter. George of Trebizond’s Latin version of it-faulty as it was-was printed again and again before 1500. The Greek text appeared at Paris in 1544 from the press of Robert Estienne. The same indefatigable worker brought out in the same year the History of Eusebius in Greek for the first time, along with the later Greek ecclesiastical historians. In Latin the history had long been current, and the sixteenth century had seen at least two fresh Latin versions, made by Wolfgang Musculus and by Christopherson. It was reserved for Valesius (Valois), in 1659, to produce the first really great illustrative edition of this priceless record of Christian origins.
The Latin Fathers demand a briefer treatment than those of the Greek Church. A good deal has been said already as to the reappearance of those authors who had been forgotten, and as to the labours of scholars upon the text of some who had always been studied. We may, therefore, in this place confine ourselves to a select few of the earlier Latin writers. The Apology of Tertullian was printed in 1483; but the first edition of any considerable part of his works was supervised by Beatus Rhenanus in 1521. Gagnaeus of Paris added some eleven tracts to those previously known, in 1545; and Sigismund Gelenius improved the text. By 1625 the whole of the writings we possess had appeared in print, and the editions were numerous. Those of Rigault, of which the first appeared in 1633, did most for the text of this earliest of the great Christian Latinists. Rigault had access to all the principal manuscripts, whether preserved in France, as those of Pithou and Dupuy, with the famous “Agobardian” Codex, in Germany, as that of Fulda, or in Italy, as that of Fulvio Orsini.
Cyprian, in a gravely interpolated text, was read throughout the medieval period, and five editions of his works appeared between 1471 and 1500. He was one of the host of writers who profited by the scholarship of Erasmus; the first Basel edition came out in 1520, and was often reprinted. Latino Latini undertook to edit the works, but was prevented from completing them; the results of his labours, taken up by others, saw the light in 1563 at Rome. The same decade witnessed the appearance of Morel’s Paris edition (1564), and of that of J. de Pamele (Antwerp, 1568); the former is said to have improved the text, the latter to have corrupted it by the use of interpolated manuscripts. An “epoch-making” edition was that of Nicholas Rigault in 1648.
The Latin Apologists alone remain to be discussed. Lactantius, first printed in 1465, was one of those writers who appealed most strongly to the humanists; and the number of reprints of his works, belonging to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, is correspondingly great. The first critical edition worth mentioning is probably that of Basel (1563) with the commentary of Xystus Betuleius.
Arnobius and Minucius Felix go together. The only two manuscripts of their writings which we possess have handed down the Octavius of the latter as if it were part of the Disputationes of the former; and two editions appeared before the mistake was detected. The first was that of Faustus Sabaeus of Brescia (Rome, 1543), librarian of the Vatican, to whom our oldest manuscript (now at Paris) belonged. The second was by Sigismund Gelenius, three years later, at Basel.
Of the great post-Nicene Fathers, Eastern or Western, we have decided not to speak in this place. It has already been said that they had attracted attention from the first moment of revival; and, though much notable work was done in collecting and publishing their writings during the sixteenth century, a review of that work would swell the present chapter to an undue size.
We prefer to notice the rise of those great collections of the minor Christian writings which are generically known as the Bibliothecae Patrum. It was the chief merit of these that they brought together, and put into the hands of a large circle, a number of brief tracts of the most diverse ages, which ran the risk either of passing unnoticed or dropping out of existence altogether. That the texts of the works thus published were uniformly good we neither expect nor find; but of their extreme value to the men of their time there can be no doubt. Even now they are the best available authorities for a good many writings.
The series is headed by a publication of Sichard of Basel (1528), called Antidotum contra diversas...haereses. It contains treatises by twenty authors, the earliest of whom is Justin Martyr.
The Microprestyticon of 1550, also a Basel book, numbers thirty-two writers. Aristeas, the fabulous Chronicle of “Philo,” and the Letters of Ignatius and Polycarp, are among its contents. Five years later appeared the Orthodoxographa, edited by Herold, with seventy-six headings. The collection of Grynaeus, issued with the same title in 1569, includes eighty-five. The printer of these four was Henricus Petri. Basel, then, began the work with credit. Zurich produced somewhat similar publications, between 1546 and 1572, under the auspices of Conrad Gesner and Simler. But the productions of the two Swiss cities were surpassed, if not superseded, by the issue in 1575 of the first edition of the Paris Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum. Its editor was Marguerin de la Bigne, and the collection appeared in eight sections or classes arranged according to the character of the writings in each. In the first, for example, were Epistles, in the sixth Commentaries, and so forth. A supplementary volume was issued in 1579. Something over 220 writers of all ages,