A Brief Admonition on the False Inscription of Books

A Brief Admonition on the False Inscription of Books

A Brief Admonition on the False Inscription of Books, showing for what causes it has come about that the inscriptions [titles/attributions] of many Ecclesiastical volumes were either fabricated or corrupted, and by what conjectures one may detect the fiction or falsehood of the inscriptions.

Not without reason did the ancient expositors of illustrious writers prescribe that the inscriptions of works, and the names of the authors, be diligently inquired into at the beginning of each volume, and weighed with prudent judgment.¹ For they perceived how much it matters to know of what erudition and authority the author of each work was — especially in the writings of the sacred Fathers and of the noble Doctors of the Church: whence, as if from the oracles of the Academy of Theologians, [the theologians] receive the constancy of their assertions, and the Supreme Pontiffs take [thence] the decrees by which the Christian world is ruled. And I myself, not ignorant of this — since I have often indicated in this volume that many pseudepigrapha, adulterine, and supposititious [works] are found among the monuments of the Catholic expositors, [works] which are not [those] of the men whose titles and inscriptions they bear — it has seemed good to me, for the benefit of those who are more teachable than learned, first to explain from what causes and occasions the error of fabricated inscriptions has arisen, and then to show by what marks the fiction of such titles may be discerned.

That I may therefore begin from the first: the manner of fabricating an inscription is, in general, twofold² — one proceeding from the very authors of the works, the other devised by the readers. Further, the occasions of inscribing [titles] taken up by the authors are some honorable, some base. Among the honorable, in the first place is to be reckoned the omission of the inscription. For it happens that the inscriptions of books are for the most part deliberately omitted by their authors, and then are inscribed by the copyists and title-writers however it seemed good to them; but of the omitted inscriptions there can be various causes.

First

First, the zeal of modesty and humility: for which reason indeed, since the author of the book On the Cardinal Virtues of Christ testifies, to Pope Cornelius, that he had been unwilling to prefix his own name as the title of his work — I know not who ascribed it to Cyprian and inserted it among his writings, perhaps moved by the conjecture that Cyprian [too] wrote to that same pontiff.

Then there are those who, for the sake of testing another’s judgment, publish their lucubrations lacking a title, so that — as if hiding behind the tablet in the manner of Apelles — they may learn the opinions of the readers, and correct the faults of the work freely detected by them. Thus that great Gregory the Theologian [Nazianzen] writes, in the preface of his book On the Faith, that he had begged his friend to read that same book — the author’s name being removed and the person of the composer concealed — to learned and prudent men, so that, if [the friend] had prompted anyone [to object] that something there seemed less rightly stated, it might be emended by the counsel of many.

There have been also those who abstained from titles for the benefit of those by whom they wished their [works] to be read, lest by the title of a despised or little-favored name they should diminish the esteem of the work and keep readers from its usefulness. This Jerome asserts that Paul once did, writing to the Hebrews:³ since he knew himself to be gravely hateful to them on account of the neglected traditions of the Pharisees and the Mosaic ceremonies, he was unwilling to deter them, by the prefixing of a hateful name, from the reading of a most salutary epistle. Whence it came about that certain of the ancient fathers ascribed it either to Barnabas or to Clement. Nor were there lacking those who, to avoid envy, hatred, and the perils of dangers, published their writings marked with no name, lest they should provoke against themselves those who, by the published writings, were either injured or at least thought themselves injured. To these afterwards someone, led by some slight conjecture, appended a title, such as happened then to be at hand. There have likewise been found those who — [having] certain little works of their own of very slight moment, written for the sake of rude and simple friends — were unwilling to prefix their own name, lest the rudeness of the composition and the humility of the subject should detract from the composer’s authority. These then, in the progress of time, obtained a chance inscription from a chance title-giver.

From nearly the same causes flowed the custom of fabricated inscriptions, preserved by several of the ancient authors. Salvian, Bishop of Marseilles, for this reason put out his parenetic [exhortatory] books under the fictitious appellation of Timothy, [addressed] to the Church of God spread throughout the whole world, so that — the vanity of human glory being neglected — he might render the honor of that labor to God alone. Vincent of Lérins, a most eloquent presbyter, upon the disputations which he composed against the profane novelties of the heretics, his own name being hidden (hateful to the heretics), imposed the title of Peregrinus [the Stranger], so that they might the more willingly be read by the heretics, who are greedy of strange things. There is also another reason for the authors’ fabricating a title — namely, the exercise of studies: since in those [works] which are wont to be written for the sake of exercise, titles are not seriously prefixed, as in declamatory themes, which the Greeks call προγυμνάσματα, or μελέται — that is, pre-exercises or meditations — in which those who exercise themselves put not their own names, but [the name] of him whose person they attempt to represent. Of this kind are believed to be, among our own [writers], the epistles of Paul to Seneca and Seneca’s Epistles to Paul, and the dialogue of Augustine and Orosius on Genesis; but among the heathen, the epistles of Phalaris of Agrigentum, and the epistles of Brutus. Thus Porcius Latro treated Cicero’s argument against Catiline — playing, of course, the person of Cicero — and, whenever it fell [to him to speak], he calls himself Tullius, not Porcius. Hence the error of those who think the fictitious matter to be serious, and believe such little works to be [the works] of those under whose names they are fabricated. These, then, and [causes] like these, are the not-blameworthy causes of the varied inscriptions, to which the authors themselves — yet without their fault — seem to have given occasion.

But among the base and shameful occasions of pseudepigraphy arisen through the fault of authors — that I may not enumerate them singly — that which is the worst of all has come forth from a twofold kind of most wicked men. Of these, certain sycophants, or rascals, born to mock and impose, adorn their trifles and ditties (fabricated for jest and mockery) with illustrious inscriptions, so that, while unlearned readers take up such follies as though the offspring of noble writers, and unroll them with admiration, they [the hoaxers] meanwhile enjoy, not without laughter, their gaping credulity. But others, laboring under the heretical plague, wrap their most pestilent writings in the splendid coverings of Catholic titles, so that, under the pretext of an orthodox name, their poisons may be scattered more quickly and more widely among the common people, to the greater harm of men.⁴ Hence once arose those most impudent pseudepigrapha — namely, the Ascension of Moses, the Apocalypse of Elijah, the Gospels of Thomas, Thaddaeus, Philip, Bartholomew, the Acts, [the Gospels] of Peter, Andrew, and John, and other trifles like these — devised by the disciples of Manichaeus the Persian, who had imposed on themselves the names of the twelve apostles.

Thus far concerning the causes of falsified inscriptions, drawn both from the probity and from the improbity of authors: now it must be said of the occasions of corrupted titles, which have emanated from outsiders and strangers.⁵ These are chiefly two — error, and fraud (fraud looks toward error and impudence): [namely,] the equivocation of a Name; the agreement of the Argument or of the style; the similitude of the Persons to whom, or by whom, works are dedicated; also, as I have already said, the defect of a title; and the simulation of a title for the sake of exercise. From Equivocation it frequently happens in practice that an affinity of names, or of surnames, or of titles has given a handle for erring — as once [it did] to Rufinus, presbyter of Aquileia, who, deceived by the similarity of the words, inscribed the Enchiridion of Xystus the Pythagorean to Xystus [Sixtus] the Pontiff, and attributed the Apology for Origen of Pamphilus and Eusebius to Pamphilus the martyr, a devotee of Origen. Erasmus, led by a similar error, [attributed] the Commentaries on the Psalter of Arnobius the presbyter to Arnobius

…[Erasmus attributed the Commentaries on the Psalter of Arnobius the presbyter] to Arnobius the Rhetor, that most flourishing [author]. From this deception it came about that not a few works of Thomas the Englishman were given to Thomas the Angelic Doctor [Aquinas]. From the omission of titles, too, and from the occasional fiction of titles (as we advised above), it happens that less-learned readers, or hasty writers, conjecture that books destitute of a title are to be ascribed to one [author] rather than another, and think that exercises with a simulated title are the compositions of those whose fictitious titles they bear. The similitude of style also, or the community of subject, or the nearness of those to whom (or by whom) the writings are sent, not rarely cause the studious, in distinguishing books lacking a title through various chances, to ascribe the name not of him whose the work is, but of him whose they suspect it to be — either because another has written on a similar matter, or [written] to the same [persons], or in a similar style and method. Thus among the philosophers there are those who affirm that the Categories of Archytas of Tarentum were wrongly prefixed to Aristotle’s Organon, and marked with the Aristotelian name for no other cause than because of the similitude of the matter treated by both. Thus among the Theologians there are those who assert that that celebrated epistle, or little book, which Julian, Bishop of Eclanum — infected with the Pelagian stain — wrote to the virgin Demetrias, was on that account ascribed to Jerome, because he too wrote to the same virgin on a not-dissimilar subject. Again it sometimes happens that either a copyist or some studious person, on account of the not-dissimilar subject of the work, couples the little books of diverse authors in the same volume; then a reader too little attentive — either not finding the ascribed titles, or [finding them] shown obliterated — thinks all [the works] to be of him whose name he has beheld on the frontispiece of the volume.

There are, on the other hand, those who, of set purpose, corrupt and change the inscriptions by fraud and deceit, and that for various but most base ends. Some, for the sake of usefulness, gain, and base lucre — such as the writers, printers, dealers, and sellers of volumes — crown the offspring of common, and sometimes even of obscure, men with the titles of nobler authors, evidently by such a paint hunting the foolish credulity of hasty buyers. In this place the English have thrust upon us the centos of a certain collector on the volumes of Genesis and Kings, [passed off] for the Commentaries of Eucherius, Bishop of Lyons; and the patches of an anonymous and more recent rhapsodist on the annual Gospel-lections, [passed off] for the Homilies of Eusebius of Emesa; likewise they have sold the Collections of Theophylact on Paul, and [the collections] of a Rabbi on the Threni [Lamentations] of Jeremiah, under the more splendid names of St. Athanasius and St. Jerome. Others, contaminated with the plagues of divers heresies, transform the books published by the execrable doctors of their sects and — the authors’ names being removed, as being hateful and condemned by ecclesiastical censure — put in their place the plausible appellations of the Catholic Fathers, by which the deceived simplicity of readers may drink the poisons of the heresies without any suspicion of danger. So once, as Rufinus writes in his Apologeticus, the Pneumatomachian heretics, who blasphemed the Holy Spirit, sold a little book of Tertullian thinking wrongly about the faith of the Trinity — propagated in many codices under the name of Cyprian the martyr — for a small sum of money, so that the buyers, enticed both by the greatness of the man and by the smallness of the price, might the more willingly buy it and embrace the latent errors as sacred dogmas, approved by the authority of so great a martyr. So once, as Evagrius reported in the third [book] of his Ecclesiastical History, the Nestorians and Eutychians published the writings of Apollinaris — from which they had received the seeds of their deceptions — under the title of Athanasius the Great, so that by that splendor of light they might the more easily dazzle the eyes of Catholics. So in our own age we have seen the most pestilent writings of heretics, transformed [only] as far as the title, into the labors of holy Catholic men and of the prelates of the Church — which, since I have touched on them in the preface of the whole work and in the fourth book, I now pass over for the sake of brevity.

There are also certain slothful little thieves who — like the Aesopic little crow selling itself off with others’ feathers, and in the manner of the cuckoo leaping into others’ nests — steal the labors of other writers, and, the true titles being erased, impose their own names. Which it is agreed that a certain John Gast did in recent years, who impudently usurped for himself the Collectanea of Bartholomew, Bishop of Urbino, on both Testaments (excerpted from Augustine nearly two hundred years before), and — what is even baser — cunningly truncated and mutilatedly cut off several passages of that same work, and wrested them to the heresies of the Lutherans. To these are to be added certain most abandoned men, driven by the goads of enmity, who — for the hatred and ignominy of good authors, and to lower the authority and credit of illustrious doctors — fabricate odious volumes under their titles. Which began to happen not only in this wretched age of ours, but is agreed to have been done from the very beginnings of the Church by pseudo-apostles, who, in the person of Paul, sent false epistles back and forth, sprinkled with depraved dogmas, by which they might disturb the churches and stir up their enmities against the Apostle. This he indicates in the latter epistle to the Thessalonians, saying: We beseech you, be not terrified by an epistle as though sent by us; for let no one seduce you in any way.⁶ Origen too complained, in his epistle to his Alexandrian friends, that fabricated disputations against the faith of the Church, prefaced with an Origenic preface, were scattered abroad by his impious detractors, to stir up the envy of pious men against him. Leo, the Roman Pontiff, grieved on the same occasion, writing to the Emperor Marcian, that the heretics had corrupted his epistles, so that from thence they might seize a handle for accusing him of the impiety of the Nestorian heresy.

Finally, there are others who, led by a contrary zeal — that is, seized by an excessive and immoderate love of some writer — claim for him the lucubrations of others, usurped without any judgment or discernment, thinking to procure for their beloved author a greater celebrity of name by the increase and multitude of [his] books. Moved by this affection — excusable perhaps, but by no means to be approved — certain lovers of Thomistic sanctity and wisdom [have ascribed] to the Exegetics [commentaries] of St. Thomas

…[certain lovers of Thomistic sanctity and wisdom have inserted] into the Exegetics [commentaries] of St. Thomas commentaries on Genesis, on Isaiah, on Jeremiah, on Threni [Lamentations], on John, on the Catholic Epistles, on the Apocalypse, and very many others like these — [works] to be compared neither in erudition nor in acumen of judgment with his other writings.

Let these things be said concerning the causes and occasions of corrupted inscriptions; now [it remains] to pursue as briefly as possible by what marks their corruption may be detected and convicted.⁷ Three things above the rest distinguish true inscriptions from false, genuine from fictitious: time, dogmas, style.

First, if the reckoning of times does not agree with the matters described, it becomes evident that the work is not [the work] of him whose title it bears. [Such are] the Commentaries which now circulate — of Ambrose on the Apocalypse, of Jerome on the Parables of Solomon [Proverbs] and the Lamentations of Jeremiah, of Eucherius on the first book of Moses and on the four volumes of Kings, and of Junilius the African on the Hexaemeron. No one will say these to be [the works] of such authors, since he will have read in them centos, fragments, and whole pages excerpted from the Moralia of Gregory. Nor do I think anyone will be so dull or so shameless as to deny that such rhapsodies were drawn from the commentaries of Gregory, and to affirm the contrary — that they were derived by Gregory, from the sources of those doctors, into his own commentaries. For besides that the name of Gregory, frequently cited in the aforesaid volumes, openly demonstrates this, so great too is everywhere in Gregorian writings the evenness of diction, so great always the similitude of style, and the series of discourse so aptly continued, that nothing appears in them either borrowed from elsewhere or able to seem to have proceeded from another author.

Secondly, if the dogmas not only do not agree with the author’s mind, but fight [with it] diametrically, it immediately follows either that the work is not the true and genuine offspring of him whose it is believed to be, or that it is adulterated and most basely corrupted by corrupters. For who would dare affirm that the sixteen tracts of Origen on Leviticus, printed under the name of Cyril by Herwagen, are Cyril’s, since in them there occur everywhere [the notions that] souls were created before the world and thrust down into bodies for their crimes as into chains; that the punishments of the underworld will at some time have an end; that the demons after certain times are to be restored to their lost felicity; and very many other Origenic assertions, which Cyril everywhere, with his whole heart and with all his might, attacks and overthrows.

The third, and perhaps of all the more evident and more certain conjecture, is the diversity of style, which, like the Lydian stone [touchstone], distinguishes false inscriptions from true. For although it is easy for any impostor to lie about the authors’ homeland, family, and times, and to follow [their] dogmas, yet nothing is more difficult than to imitate another’s style.⁸ But by style I call not that outer surface of speech, but the character of the discourse, the context of the diction, the continuity of the texture, the form of elocution, the figures of speech, the artifice of arrangement, the method of treatment, and the rest, which are proper to each eloquent author. For as each man has his own habit of body, so each has his own countenance, his own native color, his own voice, and other singular marks by which he is distinguished from other men: so in each of the writers of the Church there are certain peculiar properties, which either never or rarely suit another — such as are the plausible pomp of Antiochus, the accurate diligence of diction of Basil, the sublime buskin of Gregory the Theologian, the spontaneously-flowing atticism of Chrysostom, the most pure facility of Cyprian, the Gallic grandiloquence of Hilary, the grave and pointed abundance of brief sentences in Ambrose, in Jerome the painted variety of matters and words, in Augustine the clauses ending alike and the commata falling alike, in Gregory the numerous march of periods answering one another by turns, and other things like these — which, however much one may affect [them], he yet could by no means attain.

Nor am I ignorant that there are those who think otherwise, asserting that in detecting the impostures of titles there is no sign more fallacious than style: since the manner of speaking is not always the same even for the same [author], but changes according to the nature of the subject, or the change of age, or the progress of study, or the diversity of the affections; and often the character of two authors is altogether very similar. Which I myself do not entirely deny: for Jerome writes one way in his epistles, speaks another way in his contentions against Rufinus and Vigilantius, and [yet] another way in his commentaries on the prophets; he spoke in one manner when he was quite young and still warm with the exercise of the rhetoricians, and in another manner as an old man, when he pursued weightier things. But yet he so always writes and speaks that everywhere you recognize him to be Jerome — just as you recognize the face of a friend familiar to you (now angry, now gentle, now sad, now cheerful) to be always [the face] of the same man. I confess also that among some (though this is very rare) there can occur so great a similitude of style that it is not easy to distinguish them: yet an industrious craftsman of style will distinguish similitude from similitude no otherwise than sagacious jewelers tell apart diamonds equal in size and not unlike in splendor. But, to grant [that the judgment of distinguishing must proceed] by dissimilitude of style and diversity of character, to notice the deceptions of false ascriptions: since [as to] those rude and unpolished commentaries, teeming with solecisms and barbarisms, which now are sold under the title of Arnobius, even one moderately exercised will perceive from the taste of the speech that they are not [the work] of that most excellent orator Arnobius, who wrote seven most eloquent volumes against the nations. Likewise the commentaries on Job and on Mark, inserted among the Hieronymian tomes, no one will ever suspect to be Jerome’s, unless he thinks that Jerome unlearned the Latin tongue and was utterly ignorant of Greek and Hebrew.

Therefore the conjecture of style, in my judgment at least, is not to be ranked after the others. And let it suffice to have touched briefly on these few marks for distinguishing pseudepigrapha: which, although — to confess it frankly — they cannot openly and certainly demonstrate of what author a work is concerning which there is doubt, yet they do not obscurely indicate that the work is by no means [the work] of him to whom it is ascribed.

THE END OF THE FOURTH BOOK