Relying on these forces, I went forth into battle. Shaded by this cloud of witnesses, I do not fear the thunderbolts of Salmoneus or the Claudian thunderings. I have produced witnesses who, through many centuries and throughout the whole Christian world, were most prudent, most holy, and most wise: many speaking in ecumenical Councils while the Holy Spirit inspired them; many enrolled in the number of the Blessed, illustrious by martyrdoms and miracles.
Plainly the adversary saw among the Cimmerians what none of these men could see in clear sunlight. He alone knows letters; he alone is strong in talent and judgment. Those Monothelites, men most crafty and sharp, and the Greeks of today, Jeremiah with his adherents - but I pass over heretics. All more recent Catholics - I pass over the more recent. The most clear-sighted Doctors of the middle age - I pass over the Scholastics. The ancient orthodox Greek and Latin Fathers, almost forty - I pass over those Fathers. Five Roman Pontiffs and four ecumenical Councils and, lest I pass over the great names of the age, two Emperors of East and West, and other kings of the Franks, by Scaliger’s censorship, had no sense at all of ancient Christianity or of letters. By Scaliger’s censorship, every one of them was a stump, a dullard, unskilled, and destitute of all judgment. For such are all those, in his eyes, who dare to dissent from this literary tyrant.
This one thing he asserts; this alone he affirms that he knows. If he knows only that, he knows nothing, because he thinks that he knows only that which, because it is not, cannot be known.
But I, for my part, think that I know this: if Scaliger knew that this was the unanimous opinion, through so many centuries, of so many and such men, and yet is not moved by it, his shamelessness is singular, his insensibility singular, and his irrationality no less. But if he did not know, as he wishes it to seem, that others also had earlier doubted about this work, then he is of very little reading in theological and ecclesiastical questions; and this investigator of every corner has not even saluted these inner sanctuaries from the threshold.
But if, now warned, he still wishes to seem the author of so novel a drama and so tasteless a conjecture, he childishly commits what whips would punish severely, and “the gloomy ferules, the scepters of schoolmasters.” Finally, if he does not wish to be warned or to come to his senses, but continues to hurl reproaches against the holy Martyr and against the sacred tribunal of the Inquisitors of the faith, he brands a stain upon his own name and conscience.
I confess that I hate these newfangled inventions worse than a dog and a snake, and with Tertullian I judge them to be “a depth from which those cast off cannot swim, a shipwreck from which those dashed upon it cannot escape, and an underwater gulf in which those swallowed cannot breathe,” especially when pride has joined itself to obstinacy. It pleases me to be wise soberly, and, walking on the royal road, to stand within the boundaries which our ancestors, the orthodox Fathers, set.
I listen to the jurists: “In establishing new things there ought to be evident utility”; and “those things are least to be changed which have always had a certain interpretation.” Digest, law In rebus, On Constitutions; law Minime, On Laws. See to it, Scaliger, that you are not one of those of whom Cassiodorus says: “There are some who think it praiseworthy if they think against the ancients and discover something new by which they may seem skilled.” On Divine Readings, chapter 11.
This is proper to ambition and arrogance; Celestine I, Pope, pointed out to us the source of this disease in these words: “It is certain, moreover, that such novelties of opinions descend from love of empty glory, while some wish to seem acute and keen-sighted to themselves.” Letter 4, to the Constantinopolitans. Abbot Hilduin confirms this same thing against the calumniators of our Dionysius, writing thus: that he asks those contentious in this case “to wipe their eyes of the white film contracted from arrogance, from the usurped wisdom by which little knowers wish to seem wise, so that they may read clear-sighted things clear-sightedly, and faithful things faithfully.” In the Letter to Emperor Louis the Pious.
I would ask this same thing of you, Joseph, if you wish to answer anything: that from now on you abstain from such prostituted curses. The modest and sober are poor in these; but rich in them are those who have been brought up amid dice, taverns, and brothels, feasting and dissolving in every wantonness, truly “dregs dancing obscenely as the cup goes round.” But perhaps I would sooner obtain water from pumice. For because I had asked something similar from him, and was defending Dionysius the Martyr against him, behold, I am called by him a dog, a beast, an ass, a beetle, the lowest of animals, and other jests of a most abandoned tongue which shame does not permit me to insert here.
Therefore my prayers must rather be directed elsewhere. I choose all the Franks to judge which of us has deserved better of France: Joseph the Vasco-Insubrian, who, after tearing Blessed Dionysius to pieces with insults, prosecuted him on a charge of fraud and cast him off as childless and dishonored; or I, the Belgo-Iberian, who have tried to assert for the Gallican Church its Apostle, for the Parisians their first Bishop, for Belgium its Martyr, for the Academy its Doctor, for the King and Kingdom their Patron and tutelary Saint - and finally, for him who is protector of King, Kingdom, Academy, and Church, the hierarchic Doctor, the gem of bishops, the flower of martyrs, the joy and crown of the Apostle, the divine offspring of his heavenly genius, children worthy of their father.
Certainly, if success was lacking, at least a ready will was not lacking; and I think I may rightly hope that it was not unpleasing to God, who is honored in his Saints. Would that he whom I have striven to defend here on earth may not scorn my service in heaven; and that he may obtain grace for me, so that I may imitate Synesius and hereafter thank Scaliger, when he reviles me, with an excellent spirit, and conduct myself, on account of the divine Martyr, as one “receiving dishonor as martyrdom.” Amen.
I submit these Areopagitic Vindications to the censure of the Holy and Apostolic Roman Church. Valladolid, on the Kalends of August, in the year 1606.
Martinus Delrio, priest of the Society of Jesus and Doctor of Sacred Theology.