Origen has written fourteen Homilies on Ezekiel, which we have in Latin only, in Genebrard’s Edition. Besides these, M. Huet, in the first Tome of his Edition, has published Fragments of his great Comment in Greek and Latin.
St. Jerom has made Comments upon all Ezekiel in fourteen Homilies.
Pope Gregory the Great has written two Books of Morality, and Rabanus Maurus twenty Books of Comments upon the same Prophet. Gregory’s Homilies are in the first Tome of the new Edition. Tho they are all moral, he notwithstanding consults sometimes St. Jerom, and even confutes him without naming him.
Theodoret, Richard de S. Victor, and some old Greek Fathers, of whose Works there are Fragments in the Vatican Manuscript of the Catena Græca, which F. Prado and Villalpandus made use of, and Cornelius à Lapide has quoted, have likewise written upon Ezekiel.
Of old Authors there are, Apollinarius the younger, Bishop of Laodicea, Polychronus Bishop of Apamea, Severus, and some others mentioned in F. le Long’s Bibliotheca Sacra; and Lipenius’s Bibliotheca Theologica, tom. 1.
Among the Moderns, Jerom Prado, and John Baptist Villalpandus above-mentioned, both Jesuits, were employed for sixteen Years, by the Order and at the Expence of Philip II. King of Spain, in explaining the six and twenty first, and the three last Chapters of Ezekiel, which concern the Temple. Their Work was printed at Rome, 1596, in three Volumes in fol.
M. Du Pin, speaking of this Comment, says that it is one of the best which has been made upon the Prophets; and he calls the Description in it of the Temple and City of Jerusalem, an excellent Work. But others do not speak thus of it; particularly of his Description of the Temple, which is beautiful, magnificent, and conformable to the Rules of Architecture in use among the Greeks and Romans, and not answerable to what is said of it by Scripture in the Books of Kings, and in Ezekiel.
Prado was a Spaniard of Baeza, in the Diocess of Jaen; turned Jesuit in 1572. and died in 1595. of his Age 48. He had a great Mind included within a small Body, which was weak, and very unhealthy. Villalpandus likewise was a Spaniard of Cordoua; turned Jesuit in 1575. and died in 1608. of his Age 56. having too much fatigu’d himself with Study.
Hector Pintus, and Peter Serranus of Cordoua, Forerius, Gaspar Sanctius, Maldonat, and Cornelius à Lapide, have commented this Prophet. Lipenius, in his Bibliotheca Theologica, mentions several Editions of Pintus’s Comment; the last at Lyons, of 1584, in fol. and 1615, in 4to. at Antwerp. That of Serranus is with his Comment on Leviticus. As for Forerius, we must be content with what Andrew Schottus says of it: Per fidem Schotti, says the same Lipenius. Sanctius’s Comment is with Coins of the Hebrews, which he compares with ours: printed at Tubinge, in 1613, in fol. He was a German Lutheran of Wittemberg, born in 1560. was Professor at Tubinge, and died in 1619. He understood Hebrew. We shall speak again of him lower.