De locis theologicis

WHICH AUTHORS ARE OF APPROVED CREDIBILITY AND WHICH ARE NOT

We have individually refuted the fourteenth argument in the preceding chapter. Now the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth must be refuted, since these three all seek the same thing. We promised above, in our four-part division, to address this subject, but being distracted by many and varied thoughts, we deliberately forgot the third part of that division. I wrote that I would say, in the third place, which historians are approved; I have not fulfilled my promise. I have nearly forgotten the purpose of the work I undertook. People generally either consign to oblivion or put off for a long time a task they do not willingly and voluntarily undertake, but approach reluctantly and against their will. Still, though not at the appointed time and place, I shall now repay what I owe—and perhaps repay it with interest, as I do not deny the debt. Before I give my view about both kinds of historians, ecclesiastical and secular, it is worth asking whether there are any rules, and certain judges of history, by which the reliability and truthfulness of each historian can be examined. John Annius lays down three such rules and confirms them with the testimony of Metasthenes. We ought, he says, to weigh and examine all the books of chronicles against them as if against a touchstone. The first rule is this: all who have written with public and approved authority should be accepted without objection. The second: the deeds and annals of the four monarchies cannot be denied or rejected by anyone, because they were recorded under public authority alone and kept in libraries and archives. Thus we read in Esdras that disputes about rebuilding the Temple were settled from Persian annals preserved in libraries. The third rule: those who write from hearsay alone or according to opinion should not be accepted as private authorities unless they agree with the public record. From these rules Annius concludes that no one should be accepted in the chronicles unless he agrees with the annals of the four monarchies. For the Assyrian monarchy, since the Chaldean Berosus wrote with public authority, he should accordingly be given first place in dating that monarchy; among the Persians, Metasthenes should be followed, and among the Greeks, Xenophon, in matters where their accounts are uncertain.

Annius rejects from the period of this monarchy the Greeks Herodotus, Hellanicus, and Acusilaus, and the Latins Justinus, Gellius, and Orosius, because they wrote against the public and approved record. In the second monarchy, that of the Persians and Medes, the authorities with public standing were the Persian Metasthenes and Ctesias of Cnidus, as Diodorus notes in book 3. Annius rejects Josephus among the Hebrews, and Clement, Tatian, Africanus, and Eusebius among the Greeks, because they followed private opinions and recorded kings and dates contrary to the public record, which were not found in the libraries and annals. They write, against every public record, that Cyrus gave the Jewish captives in Babylon permission to return before Darius, his uncle, took Babylon and died. For the third monarchy, that of the Greeks, and the fourth, that of the Romans, the same Eusebius is accepted because he follows the public authority of the annals in both. Philo the Jew is also accepted, since he alone had a Chronography of the four monarchies and is therefore the only Hebrew writer accepted for chronology. He wrote the most certain things not from opinion, as Josephus did, but also on the testimony of the seventy elders. This is what Annius confidently asserts in books 11 and 14—that is, in his own Metasthenes and Philo—like such writers, fearing nothing so much as seeming to doubt anything. We must consider whether his criticism contains as much truth as it claims certainty. We do not readily expose the faults of writers, especially those from our own circle, but we must not betray the public cause of scholarship. Since I have seen certain learned men deceived by Annius’s rules and examples, I thought it necessary to show that both his rules are empty and his examples false. Annius seems first to assert that only the four monarchies customarily had reliable scribes, appointed by the state to record events and dates, and that their annals were kept in secure places. We see the same practice in a well-ordered community, which entrusts public legal documents, sealed by notaries, to safe custody. Josephus, in book 1 of Contra Appionem Alexandrinum, testifies that this practice was customary not only among the four monarchies but also in the states of the Phoenicians and Egyptians. Nor did all four monarchies have such recorders of events and public annals by which disputes, if any arose, about events and dates could be settled. It is much more probable that the Greeks had neither such recorders nor annals. Eusebius writes that before the Olympiads Greek chronology was considered false because historians gave differing accounts, each as he saw fit. But after the Olympiads he does not claim that annals of this kind were written by state-appointed officials; he says instead that reliable Greek chronology is accepted from the time when the Olympiads began to be used. Marcus Varro, in Censorinus’s De natali die, chapter 17, reports no more than what Eusebius accepted: before the Olympiads there was a µυθικον period, that is, a fabulous one, because it included many fables. With the Olympiads began the historical period, in which events are set down in true histories. Thus after the Olympiads the Greeks began to write about events that truly happened, and thereafter they had some method of history, agreement in dates, and a certain degree of consensus among historians. Annius may say that from that time the Greek state appointed specific officers for history, but he cannot prove it. On the contrary, Josephus, a particularly good authority, writes that the Greeks handed down nothing with certainty, but each, he says, tried to explain what he himself thought. Hence their books contradict one another, and in many matters—

Hellanicus disagrees with Acusilaus, Acusilaus corrects Hesiod, Ephorus shows Hellanicus to be wrong in many matters, Timaeus does the same to Ephorus, later writers do so to Timaeus, and everyone contradicts Herodotus. Nor do those who wrote about Sicilian affairs agree with one another, nor the writers of Attic history among themselves, nor those who recorded Argolic matters. Thucydides too is accused of error in many matters, although he wrote the most painstaking history of his own time. The chief cause of this disagreement is that the Greeks made no effort to publish public records of events as they occurred. It was not only the other Greeks who neglected public records: nothing of this kind is found even among the Athenians, who cultivated learning. So far Josephus. It is clear from this that Annius falsely uses Josephus’s testimony to prove that public Greek annals were kept in temple libraries. Josephus argued nothing of the sort that Annius attributes to him. Rather, he argues that the Greeks cannot prove their boast that they received letters from Cadmus, since no inscription from that time remains on temple walls or on vessels, statues, or other offerings dedicated in temples. Yet after letters were invented, it was customary to inscribe upon such objects the names either of the gods to whom they were offered or of those making the offerings. Plutarch, himself a most weighty authority, also says that no public Greek annals survived in his day apart from the so-called chronological canons. He thought little of their authority, since even though many people had devoted much effort and study to them, their contradictions on many matters could not be resolved. It is therefore an empty fabrication that in the Greek kingdom and monarchy, after the Olympiads, historians were appointed and commissioned by public authority. Still more empty is Annius’s claim that only Philo and Eusebius should be accepted for that monarchy because they followed approved public annals. If Eusebius could have added such authority to his Chronicles, he would certainly not have kept silent about his reliance on those annals. Philo the Jew neither had annals of the four monarchies—as Annius falsely claims without reason or evidence—nor, if he had had them, would he have brought us any benefit. Philo left no records of events or chronology. The little book called De temporibus, being full of fables, is the work of no serious author, much less Philo. Its author not only pursues falsehoods but is so ignorant of history that he seems to have read only the Hebrews and no secular writers at all. We shall demonstrate this clearly enough before long. Now let us say a few things about the Roman annals. Cicero, in book 2 of De oratore, testifies that the Romans once had public annals: “From the beginning of Roman affairs up to the pontificate of Publius Mucius, the Pontifex Maximus recorded all the events of each year in writing, displayed them on a whitewashed board at his house, and made them available for the people to consult. These are still called the Great Annals.” In book 1 of De legibus he likewise has Atticus say: “After the annals of the chief pontiffs, which could not be more bare, if you turn to Fabius, Cato, or Piso, what could be more meager than all of them?” These annals of the chief pontiffs therefore ceased after the time of Publius Mucius. Cato, Fabius Pictor, Piso, and other serious authors succeeded them in writing history, but without public authority.

Nor should we listen to those who claim that the annals of the chief pontiffs continued after Publius Mucius, because at this point in Cicero Atticus says that he saw them. He could not have seen them unless they had continued, they argue, since Livy says the pontifical annals from earlier times perished when the city was burned by the Gauls. Livy does not say that all of them perished, only most. It does not follow that because these annals did not come into Livy’s hands—since few survived the fire—they did not come into Atticus’s hands either, as he may have taken greater pains to seek them out than Livy did. Yet such manuscripts do not always come to people through diligence, but sometimes by chance. The annals of the chief pontiffs therefore ceased after Publius Mucius. For if the pontiffs had continued their careful practice, those public annals would still exist in libraries and temples of the gods; Livy would not have been left in doubt in so many places or complained of uncertainty in the annals, nor would he so often have made mistakes in recording consuls and even the years of their consulships. Henricus Glareanus has shown very carefully that he made such errors; Quintilian says that he frequently doubted the persons involved. In book 6 of decade 1, Livy himself complains that the first five books, which covered Roman history from the city’s foundation until its capture by the Gauls—that is, up to the ninety-seventh Olympiad—were obscure and uncertain, both because writing was extremely rare in those times and because most records in the pontiffs’ registers and other public and private documents perished when the city was burned. Again, in book 8, after setting out the various and conflicting accounts of Roman historians, he says: “It is not easy to prefer one account to another or one author to another. I think the record was corrupted by funeral praises and false labels on ancestral portraits, as each family draws to itself, through lying, the reputation for deeds and honors. Thus both the individual achievements and the public records of events have become confused, and no contemporary writer of those times survives whose authority we can trust with sufficient certainty.” In books 9 and 10 as well, to omit other passages, he makes it clear enough how few certain and approved annals he had to follow in writing. Dionysius of Halicarnassus likewise makes it quite plain that he did not find such public annals. He wished to establish the credibility of his history and testified that he had consulted the histories of the ancient Roman writers, especially those considered most serious and distinguished. Yet he makes no mention at all of these public annals; he certainly would have done so if he could thereby add such great and certain authority to his work. In short, according to Suetonius, when Julius Caesar entered on the consulship he was the first to decree that the daily proceedings of both Senate and people should be drawn up and published. This is what the satirist means by “They will want it entered in the minutes”; Pliny likewise says, “When Milo was pleading his case, it rained baked bricks, as recorded in the minutes for that year.” Julius Caesar, then, was the first to restore the ancient custom of the chief pontiff, which had long been interrupted. I am not unaware that the Romans once had linen books as well, containing little besides the names of consuls and magistrates. But Livy did not see these either, since they too may have perished in the city’s burning. Nor was he so moved by their authority that he did not sometimes disregard them when others cited them. Indeed, he sometimes refutes Licinius Macer by means of his linen books. He even reports that Tubero and Licinius each produced linen books with conflicting accounts. You can see how little and slight a trust Livy placed in those linen books.

From this it is easy to refute Annius, who near the end of his commentaries on his Philo asserts that Titus Livy followed the public annals of the Roman monarchy and that his Philo followed Livy’s tracks. This greatly lowers the standing of his Philo: if he had the public annals of all the monarchies, as Annius said just above, he followed Livy carelessly and rashly. It is established, first, that Livy had no public annals; second, that he doubted many things; and finally, that he was wrong about many matters—so wrong that others expose some of his errors and he himself admits others. Let no one counter me with Flavius Vopiscus of Syracuse, who in vitam Probi admits using books from the Ulpian Library, the records of the scribes in the Portico of Porphyry, and finally the proceedings of Senate and people. In the Life of Aurelian he writes that Aurelian ordered his daily proceedings to be recorded in the linen books kept in the Ulpian Library. I will be even less willing to accept Diodorus as an objection: in book 1 he says he learned about Roman affairs and leaders from ancient annals. Vopiscus adduces nothing but restored linen books and the diligence of the chief pontiffs—not an ancient diligence, but one first restored by Julius Caesar. Diodorus does not claim that he found public Roman annals, only ancient ones, which could have been among private records. Those who say that the Greek and Roman monarchies had public annals to which all other histories must be referred—approved if they agree, rejected if they disagree—therefore prove nothing. I have shown that no public annals of either the Greeks or Romans survive, and consequently that no authors wrote the events or chronology of the Greeks or Romans according to such annals. Unless, perhaps, some author in one or two places says that he took the matter he is writing about from linen books, ivory records, or public proceedings. But it would be foolish to judge an entire history on the basis of one passage. Besides, if a writer says that his history agrees with the public annals of this or that monarchy, that does not immediately give it the authority of that monarchy’s public record. Otherwise anyone could easily and readily win the readers’ trust for every fable by telling a single lie. This is what the historian Philo achieved among many people: he persuaded most of them, with neither reason nor evidence, that all the dates in his histories agreed with the true annals of the four monarchies. I called him a historian because the real Philo, a most serious philosopher and highly learned theologian, was as far from writing history as he was from shamelessness and lying. Eusebius, Jerome, and Suidas, who carefully list Philo’s works, include no work in which he recorded the events and dates of any kingdom. This book called De temporibus therefore seems to learned men to be falsely attributed to him, as its title itself is plainly fraudulent. This can also be proved by clear arguments. First, its author writes that Solomon’s line ended with Ahaziah, and that Joash, who succeeded him as king, descended not from Solomon but from Nathan. How false this is, Scripture easily shows. In 4 Regum 2 it says: “When Athaliah, Ahaziah’s mother, saw that her son was dead, she destroyed all the royal offspring. But Jehosheba, daughter of King Joram and sister of Ahaziah, took Joash, the son of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king’s sons who were being killed, and hid him from Athaliah so that he would not be killed.” In chapter 12 it says, “King Joash of Judah took all the things that Jehoshaphat, Joram, and Ahaziah his fathers had consecrated,” and so on. In chapter 13: “In the twenty-third year of Joash, son of Ahaziah, king of Judah,” and so on.

Likewise, 2 Paralipomenon 22 says: “There was no one left of the royal line who could reign.” Finally, there is a striking testimony on this point in 1 Paralipomenon 3, against which no evasion is possible: among Solomon’s descendants, in entirely unambiguous words, it lists Joash, son of Ahaziah. Matthew confirms the same explicitly, saying: “Jehoshaphat fathered Joram, Joram fathered Uzziah, Uzziah fathered Jotham, Jotham fathered Ahaz, and Ahaz fathered Hezekiah.” Hezekiah was therefore by generation and birth a son of Jehoshaphat and thus of Solomon, as Matthew says; he was not assigned as a son of David by an edict, as Philo claims. Who could tolerate those who maintain that Solomon’s line ended with Ahaziah in the face of Scripture’s clearest testimony? This ψευδοφιλο Philo does not even stop lying here. He also claims that those whom Scripture calls the sons of Jehoshaphat and brothers of Joram were not truly Jehoshaphat’s sons or Joram’s full brothers, but descendants of Nathan. To make you marvel—or even loathe it—we must quote the words in 2 Paralipomenon 21: “Jehoshaphat slept with his fathers and was buried with them in the City of David. Joram his son reigned in his place. He had brothers, the sons of Jehoshaphat: Azariah, Jehiel, Zechariah, Azariah, Michael, and Shephatiah. All these were sons of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah. Their father gave them many gifts of silver, gold, and revenues, together with fortified cities in Judah; but he gave the kingdom to Joram, because he was the firstborn. Joram then rose to power over his father’s kingdom. When he had strengthened himself, he killed all his brothers with the sword.” What evasion is possible here? What license of interpretation, what urge to invent, indeed what blatant shamelessness could make us deny that those men were truly Jehoshaphat’s sons and Joram’s full brothers, when Scripture not only calls them so but gives the reason why they must be understood as full brothers? “Joram had brothers who were the sons of Jehoshaphat,” it says, so you would not think them brothers from some other source. And lest you doubt it, it repeats: “All these were sons of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah. Their father gave them many gifts, but gave the kingdom to Joram because he was the firstborn.” Why mention all the other claims this false Philo invents without any sacred or secular testimony or rational basis? He makes up a quarrel between the sons of David and Bathsheba; an edict of David about the order in which his descendants would succeed to the throne; that all those after King Joash had two or even three names; that twenty years passed from the desolation to the imprisonment of Jehoiachin; that Mordecai lived eighteen years beyond Isaac’s age; and that the Maccabees seized both the high priesthood and the rule from the house of David, causing enmity to arise. And many other such claims, some fabricated, some even contrary to Scripture. What is more, this Philo often raves even in human history, so that one might readily believe him if he said that he wrote this little book in the final year of his decrepit old age. For he writes that Haggai and Zechariah prophesied in the second year of Cyrus; that work was obstructed by the death of Darius Hystaspes and Cyrus could not be approached because he was engaged in war against Tamyris; that Ahasuerus Priscus Artaxerxes succeeded Cyrus, reigned for more than twelve years, and sent Holofernes to Judea; and that this man had two sons who fought for the empire, but when one of them—that is, Darius Longimanus—won, he began building the Temple in his first year at the urging of those same prophets.

Who does not see that all these claims are false and strongly at odds with every approved historian? I therefore wonder what came into Annius’s mind when he attributed to Philo, a most learned and prudent man, the book called De temporibus, which says many false things, most of them absurd, and some even contrary to Scripture. Who could believe that Philo did not know Xerxes, the most famous of all the Persian kings among the Greeks? That he confused Darius Hystaspes with Darius the Mede, Cyrus’s uncle? That he thought Ahasuerus, who obstructed the Temple’s construction, was the father of Longimanus? Only someone entirely ignorant and unskilled in both sacred and secular literature could fall into such errors. The author of that book was not Philo the Jew, whose talent, learning, and eloquence antiquity celebrated, but some man without any good discipline, eloquence, talent, or learning. This false Philo nowhere writes like Plato; everywhere he speaks not only without learning or elegance but also in a crude and unadorned style. But let us return to where we digressed. Since no public annals of the Greek and Roman monarchies now survive, and no authors whose histories agree with such annals exist at all, Annius’s rules will be of no use whatever for these two monarchies. They also seem to me useless and altogether unfit for any purpose in the two earlier monarchies. Although Scripture records that the Medes and Persians kept public annals, and not only Josephus but other distinguished authors testify that the Babylonians had histories of public authority, we have no such annals today. We also lack any historian who can certainly and clearly be shown to have followed those annals. I admit it is highly probable that Berosus published his history under the public authority of the Chaldeans. But I see no reason to admit that Metasthenes was a public historian of the Persians: I read in Pliny and Josephus that he wrote about India, not about Persia. Since this is not the central point of our dispute, however, let us freely concede it to Annius, as well as the claim that Ctesias of Cnidus should be accepted for the events and chronology of Persia. In book 3, Ctesias himself testifies through Diodorus that he brought the Greeks true and certain annals of the Persians and Medes. Since Ctesias says this about himself, let us believe him. For Lucian says that Ctesias of Cnidus wrote about Indian affairs things he neither saw himself nor heard from anyone else, and that they are therefore fables. Let us grant these points for now; we need not dispute every issue. Let us address this: the books Annius published under the names of Berosus and Metasthenes belong to neither Berosus nor Metasthenes. Raphael Volaterranus noted in book 14 of Anthropologiae that the Berosus of Annius was not the real author but a fabrication. Ludovicus Vives and many other very learned men agree. I think the case can be established by sound arguments. First, this Berosus of Annius writes that Noah fathered several other children after his three eldest sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. This seems contrary to Scripture: “These three were the sons of Noah, and from them the whole human race was dispersed over all the earth.” Noah therefore had no other sons who, at Noah’s command, established the principal colonies of the world. He then reports that when Noah lay drunk, Ham seized his genitals and, while muttering a magic incantation, mocked his father and made him sterile as if castrated. He further writes that Noah came to Italy and left the Italians books on natural and divine matters; that Noah was also Janus, the first ruler of Italy; and that Nimrod cared more for peace and the worship of the gods than for wealth, and was therefore suddenly taken away by the gods and disappeared.

and religion than wealth, and that he was therefore suddenly taken away by the gods and disappeared. I could easily show that all of these things are invented, were the volume not already more than long enough. He also says that this same Assyrian Nimrod sent Medes and Magog to Asia, where they founded the kingdoms of Assyria, Media, and Magog. But since they were sons of Japheth, it is more credible that they founded colonies at the command of their father or grandfather; or, as Genesis 11 says, that God himself, who divided the languages at Babel, dispersed them over the face of all the lands. He further says that Semiramis turned Babylon from a town into a great city, and built it up rather than merely enlarging it. The real Berosus, by contrast, in Josephus’s book 1 of Contra Appionem Alexandrinum, criticizes Greek writers who falsely claimed that Semiramis built Babylon and constructed its marvelous works. Moreover, this Berosus of Annius reports that Cenchres, king of Egypt, perished at sea through the magic of the Hebrews. Josephus would certainly not have omitted this, since, while seeking to demonstrate the antiquity of the Hebrew people against the Greeks, he could have produced no earlier or more ancient testimony than Berosus’s third book of Chaldean history, where he wrote that Nebuchadnezzar devastated the Temple and city of the Jews. This Berosus of Annius makes no mention of Abraham, either openly or obscurely. But the real Berosus, as Josephus testifies, mentions Abraham implicitly in these words: “After the flood, in the tenth generation, there was among the Chaldeans a certain great man who cultivated justice and was skilled in the science of the stars.” Moreover, Berosus recounted the deeds of Sennacherib, king of the Assyrians, as Josephus and Jerome attest. Yet there is no mention of Sennacherib in the Berosus of Annius. Further, this fabricated Berosus ends his history with Ascatades, the eighteenth Assyrian king, though twenty more kings ruled the Babylonians after him up to Sardanapalus. This Berosus did not omit them: he also counted those who succeeded Nebuchadnezzar, son of Nabopolassar, in the Babylonian empire, down to Cyrus, as Josephus says in book 1 of Contra Appionem and St. Jerome in his commentary on Danielis 5. And Annius’s Metasthenes, after counting thirty-eight Assyrian kings from Saturn to Sardanapalus and listing the length of each reign, testifies that he follows this Berosus and even copies his words. Nor can anyone claim this little book On Antiquities is merely a fragment of Berosus rather than his complete work, since Annius himself presented it to us as a complete little book. Annius’s Manetho openly says that he begins his history where Berosus ended his. Thus, in his supplement, Manetho added fourteen kings to Berosus’s eighteen. Had he taken them from Berosus, he would not have denied it. This Berosus of Annius is therefore fabricated, not merely incomplete. What is more, ancient authors say that Berosus wrote history not of the Egyptians, Libyans, Celtiberians, Italians, or Germans, but of the Chaldeans. This Annius presents himself as a historian of all these kingdoms alike. You will find no approved author who cites Berosus as a witness to truth except in Chaldean affairs. If so serious an author had written about other matters, surely some Hebrew, Greek, or Latin author would have cited him there. Perhaps it would have been better not to try to establish the case against this Berosus by argument at all. He reports events so ancient that although you may infer they are false by your own judgment, you cannot prove them so because of their great antiquity.

For in matters of this kind, the more unscrupulous a person is, the greater license he has to invent. As Fabius says, one can safely lie about entire books and their authors, since no one can find what never existed; one can lie even more safely about events themselves, since no witnesses can be produced who would not be mere children when compared with such ancient times. When a certain bishop was caught repeatedly doing this—citing authors who had never existed in any age and writing about events that no one had recorded—he replied that it did not matter whether one thought this or that about history, since everything was uncertain except what was contained in Scripture. This is a judgment unworthy of a bishop and theologian. It is no surprise if a crude and empty man says such things. But let us return to where we left off: I say it is easier to scorn this Berosus of Annius than refute him. For learned people, reading the book itself is persuasive enough; there is no point trying to persuade the unlearned. Let them enjoy their Berosus, then—the one whom Annius says Pliny mentioned for having dated certain inscriptions to 480 years before Ninus and Phoroneus. Pliny, however, says nothing more than that Berosus excelled in astrology to such an extent that the Athenians set up a statue of him in their public gymnasium, with a gilded tongue, because of his divine predictions. So, as I said, let them enjoy their Berosus, but not Pliny’s authority. Indeed, they have no probable testimony or reasonable argument to support it. The claim that Jerome sometimes uses the words of this Berosus is ridiculous. What room could there be for invention unless this fictitious Berosus had compiled some words of the real Berosus? But let us now refute Annius’s Metasthenes as briefly as possible. I will not pursue the minor errors, of which there are many in his little book; let us consider only the larger ones. He records the kings and dates of the Persian monarchy as follows. After Belshazzar was killed, Cyrus and Darius ruled together for two years; Cyrus then ruled alone for twenty-two. Darius’s son, Priscus Artaxerxes Ahasuerus, ruled for twenty years, taking revenge in the meantime on the Tamyrid faction, which had betrayed his uncle Tamyris by treachery. His two sons, Cyrus Artabanes and Darius Longimanus, fought for the empire for seven months, and in the seventh month victory fell to Longimanus, who reigned for thirty-seven years. His son Darius Nothus reigned for nineteen years; Artaxerxes the Great, Darius Memnon, for fifty-five; Artaxerxes Ochus for twenty-six; in our own time, Arses for four years and Darius, the last, for six. Philo of Annius records these kings and dates in the same order and almost the same words, so that you would suspect—or rather recognize—that one and the same person fabricated both fables. Philo adds only this, evidently from the Hebrew workshop: that this Ahasuerus was Nebuchadnezzar, whose deeds are described in the book of Judith. I ask first of all: who is this Priscus Artaxerxes Ahasuerus, whose father was Darius and uncle was Cyrus, who reigned for twenty years and was also Nebuchadnezzar, whose army and general Holofernes were routed by a single woman, and who in the end had two sons, Cyrus Artabanes and Darius Longimanus? They answer that he was Cambyses. For just above, Metasthenes had written that Cyrus and Darius, six years before the capture of Babylon, would wage war against Queen Tamyris and hand over the Persian kingdom to Cambyses, the son of Cyrus. All historians agree that Cambyses immediately held the Persian empire after Cyrus. This Ahasuerus, then—

The same man was Cambyses. But what is said to have been either joined to or placed before and after that ancient Assuerus is so unlike Cambyses that it even seems contrary to him. First, Darius was not Cambyses’ father; Cyrus was. Not only Herodotus, Iosephus, and Hieronymus but all Greek and Latin writers attest this. A clear argument for it is that Cyrus’s father was named Cambyses, as all historians unanimously report. Darius, on the other hand, had no ancestor named Cambyses. It is therefore reasonable that Cambyses was the son of Cyrus, not Darius. Further, if Cambyses had been Darius’s son, he would surely have succeeded to his father’s kingdom when Darius died. But after Darius’s death Cyrus alone ruled the Persians and Medes for twenty-two years, as Methastenes and Philo also agree. Cambyses was therefore not Darius’s son but Cyrus’s, and succeeded him in the empire. Moreover, since Cyrus transferred the monarchy from the Medes to the Persians, how is it plausible that the son of Darius the Mede succeeded to the monarchy while the son of Cyrus the Persian did not? But why do I foolishly try to prove by arguments a matter that depends on the reliability of history and has been handed down in the records with all historians in agreement? There is certainly no need to argue against someone whom the authority of all ecclesiastical and secular writers overcomes. What he adds next is similar: that Cyrus was the uncle of this Assuerus. Cyrus the Persian and Darius the Mede would then have been brothers, which also conflicts with reason. All the authorities write that Darius the Mede and Cyrus the Persian had different parents. What he adds in the third place—that this Assuerus ruled for twenty years—is likewise opposed to all historians. This appears to have been invented so that the history in the book of Iudith might seem to have taken place under him; Eusebius reports this more than he follows it in his Chronicles. It is a tradition of the Hebrews, which is supported neither by reliable testimony nor by probable reasoning. Iosephus plainly opposes it: in libro Iudaeorum antiquitatum II, cap. 2, he says Cambyses died in the seventh year of his reign. Eusebius assigns Cambyses only eight years of rule, and Herodotus seven years and five months. But Nabuchodonosorus, who is mentioned in the book of Iudith, ruled for more than thirteen years, as you find in chapter 2. Cambyses was therefore not that Nabuchodonosorus. Further, all histories report that both Cambyses and Cyrus, whom he succeeded in the kingdom, were kings of the Medes and Persians. But Nabuchodonosorus in the book of Iudith is nowhere said to have been king of the Medes or Persians; he is said to have been king of the Assyrians alone and to have ruled in the great city of Niniue. Moreover, if Cambyses was king of Media, as he truly was, how could he have been the Nabuchodonosorus who defeated Arphaxat, king of the Medes? Even if we may invent whatever we please, as Philo Annius does, and say that Arphaxat, a supporter of the faction of Tamyris, drove the Assyrians, Medes, and Persians to revolt, Scripture would not therefore call him king of the Medes. By the same reasoning, he would also be called king of the Persians and Assyrians. Further, Nabuchodonosor is said to have been king of the Assyrians even when he defeated Arphaxat, king of the Medes. What sort of invention, then, is Philonis’ claim that Arphaxat drove the Assyrians into revolt along with the Persians and Medes? Furthermore, Arphaxat, against whom Nabuchodonosorus fought, founded the flourishing city of Media called Ecbatanis, as we read in cap. 1 Iudith. But this city had been built many years before Cambyses by Diocles, the fifth king of the Medes, as Eusebius attests in Chronicis, and Herodotus also in lib. 1. I remember that I wrote in the third book that Ecbatana was founded before Semiramis, and that

Semiramis also built a royal palace there; Plinius, however, says in cap. 14 of book 6 that it was built by Seleucus. Since I came upon this matter by chance, not deliberately, I will briefly satisfy both accounts in passing. Diodorus often and at length writes nonsense in his history. Like the other Greeks, he certainly had the same desire to lie. What could be more frivolous in lying than the Greek people, vain and moved by every impulse? Perhaps Diodorus is defended by the title of the only book of his that survives, which is called On the Fabled Deeds of the Ancients; since it matches its title, it deceives no one. He fulfilled the promise he made. For when Plinius says in the preface to his whole work that Diodorus was the first among the Greeks to stop writing nonsense, the context of Plinius’ speech readily shows that he meant not the falsehood of histories but the vanity of their titles. Greek authors commonly gave their books empty and inflated titles. But Diodorus, as Plinius reports there, did not make his book conspicuous with some trivial and vain title, like those before him, but called it The Library of History. The authority of Diodorus will not press us, then, if he either reported or followed the Greek fables about Semiramis’ magnificence and the palace she built at Ecbatana; Plinius too is often mistaken when praising those who founded famous cities. But back to the matter. Since it is certain and established that the man who built Ecbatana, Arphaxat, lived before Cambyses, it is impossible to identify Cambyses with the Nabuchodonosorus who was defeated by Arphaxat, founder of Ecbatana. Moreover, Niniue had been destroyed by the Babylonians during the Persian kingdom, as the prophecy of Naum indicates. Nor did this city have its own king while the Persians held the monarchy. But Nabuchodonosorus, mentioned in the book of Iudith, ruled in the great city Niniue. Therefore, the events reported in Iudith’s history took place not under Cambyses but, as Carion rightly thinks, before the Persian empire. Nor do the words of Achior, reported in chapter 5, move me to abandon this view: “Before that great captivity in Babylon, the Lord afflicted the whole seed of Israel several times and handed them over to the plunderers—now the Egyptians, now the Syrians, now the Assyrians, now the Moabites and Ammonites—until at last he cast them away from his presence.” Since they were carried captive into various regions, the Lord brought them back to their land after a short time. For this reason the books of Reges pass over in silence these less famous captivities. In cap. 18 of Iudices there is also a mention of a certain captivity which, as I think rightly, Caietanus says is omitted in the books of Reges. “For not everything,” he says, “has been written.” Achior therefore does not speak of that famous Babylonian captivity but of some other one. In Iudith’s time the temple of Hierusalem had not been destroyed, nor had the city itself been laid waste. Again, it says: “They possess Hierusalem, where the holy of holies is.” But under Cambyses the temple had been destroyed and the city had not yet been rebuilt. It remains, then, that the history narrated in Iudith cannot be referred to Cambyses. Some rightly deny that this ancient Assuerus, Arthaxerxes, ever existed, because in truth no one of that name existed as described by Methastenes and Philo. Even if he had existed, if he ruled immediately after Cyrus, he could certainly not have been the father of Longimanus. For who could doubt that after Cyrus and Cambyses, Darius Histaspis gained rule over the Persians, and that his son Xerxes succeeded him in the empire? Herodotus, Iustinus, Orosius, and the other secular writers certainly report this, as do all the ancient ecclesiastical writers: Iosephus, Clemens, Aphricanus, Hippolytus, Eusebius, and Hieronymus.

Hieronymus certainly reported this matter not as doubtful and uncertain but as clear and established, in caput septimum Danielis, saying: “Some claim that the three ranks in the beast’s mouth were three kings of Persia after Cyrus, but they do not give their names. We know that after Cyrus, who reigned thirty years, Cambyses his son and the Magian brothers ruled among the Persians; then Darius, in whose second year the temple in Hierusalem began to be built; fifth, Xerxes, the son of Darius; sixth, Arthabanus; seventh, Arthaxerxes Longimanus; eighth, Xerxes; ninth, Sogdianus; tenth, Darius the Bastard; eleventh, Arthaxerxes Memnon; twelfth, Arthaxerxes Ochus; thirteenth, Arses, the son of Ochus; fourteenth, Darius, the son of Arsames, who was defeated by Alexander. How, then, can we say that there were three kings of Persia?” Thus far Hieronymus. If Herodotus, Thucydides, or some other historian omitted from the list of Persian kings the Magian brothers, or Arthabanus, or a second Xerxes, there is no reason to be surprised: they either ruled for a very short time or at least contended with others for the empire during that short time. But to pass over Darius Histaspis and his son Xerxes, that most powerful and wealthy king who led an innumerable army against Greece and did the things that the histories of Greeks and Latins, pagans and Christians, recount, would be the height of ignorance, if not impudence. For if anyone denies that these two ruled in Persia, he could also deny that Constantinus and Theodosius ruled in Rome. No more and more authoritative historians affirm the one than the other. Herodotus and Thucydides speak of these kings of their own age as though they were describing things seen, not things merely heard. Even if Herodotus mixes fables into his history, this is no reason to deny him credibility concerning public and manifest affairs of his own time, where there was no room for invention. Otherwise Plutarchus, who pursued and criticized even Herodotus’ smallest errors, would have attacked this greatest one above all. Let us therefore believe Herodotus, Thucydides, Iustinus, Orosius, Africanus, Eusebius, Hieronymus, Iosephus, and the other most reliable authorities rather than this Methastenes, not an ancient and learned man but a recent, crude, tasteless, ignorant, and even impudent one. He promises to write the times of the Persian kings as they are clearly and truthfully set down in public records, and to give their names and the period during which each reigned most gloriously; yet he omits the kings who ruled most magnificently and powerfully in Persia. I am aware that Ioannes Carion also argued at length so that there might seem to be no disagreement between Eusebius, Hieronymus, and the other serious authorities on one side and this Persian Methastenes on the other. In short, amid complete discord and disagreement, he tries to make peace and bring the most conflicting accounts into agreement. First, then, Carion says that this ancient Assuerus must be understood to be Darius Histaspis. From this single point, learn all there is to know about Carion. What could be said more foolish than that Darius Histaspis had Darius the Mede as his father, Cyrus as his uncle, and Longimanus as his son? Methastenes attributed all of these to that ancient Assuerus. What could be more unlike Darius Histaspis than forbidding by public edict the rebuilding of the temple in Hierusalem, as Philo Annius attributes to that ancient Assuerus? The reasons Carion gives for Methastenes’ omission of Xerxes are so ridiculous and inept that I need not report them here. Ioannes Vergara, a canon of Toledo, most skilled in Greek and Latin

language, refuted them all individually and more carefully in a little book of eight questions. We have been greatly helped on this point by his work and diligence. For, as Plinius advised us, we prefer to repay a debt fully rather than be caught in theft. We have always approved of this precept of Basilius: if something is learned from another, it must not be concealed like a wicked woman secretly substituting an illegitimate child for her own. Therefore, the father of a speech or teaching should be openly acknowledged. With these points demonstrated, it is clearer than daylight—just as this discussion set out to show—that Annius’ rules cannot be useful in judging history. For no public records have been left even for these later monarchies of the Chaldaeans and Persians, nor any writings by an author who composed his history according to the true and certain form of those records. It is therefore a great sign of ignorance, indeed of rashness, to reject Iosephus, Eusebius, Hieronymus, and the other trustworthy authors in matters of Persian history or chronology because they do not agree with this Methastenes and the so-called Susian records. Ioannes Driedonis was gravely mistaken on this point: in theological learning he was plainly educated, but in the knowledge of human history he was very crude. When he came upon these volumes of Annius and the names of Berosus the Chaldaean, Methastenes the Persian, Ctesias of Cnidus, Philo the Jew, Diodorus of Sicily, the Susian library, and the revelation of the seventy elders, the empty sound of their words filled his ears; he became quite deaf to the very grave voice of Eusebius, Iosephus, and Hieronymus. The Church acted much more prudently when it refused to accept certain little books produced under the names of Adam, Enoch, and Noe. As Augustinus says, their excessive antiquity meant that they were not authoritative and seemed suspect, lest falsehoods be put forward as truth. For some writings said to be theirs are produced by people who readily believe whatever they want for their own purposes. Thus far Augustinus in lib. 18 De Civitate, cap. 38. A prudent person, then, should be all the more suspicious of any book presented under the name of antiquity. Following this prudence, we would consider these books of Berosus and Methastenes suspect because of their excessive age, even if they contained nothing contrary to the most serious authorities. It follows that Annius’ first reason for rejecting Iosephus and Eusebius in the Persian monarchy is frivolous and empty. His second reason is entirely false. Neither Eusebius nor any other approved authority says that Cyrus first gave permission to the Jewish captives in Babylon and then died before that Babylon was taken by Darius the Mede. Eusebius nowhere mentions Darius the Mede in his Chronicles, either by that name or as Ciaxares, the name Xenophon gives him. Therefore Eusebius did not write that Cyrus died before Darius the Mede took Babylon, since he entirely omits Darius the Mede from his Chronicles. Nor did Herodotus write anything of the kind that Annius falsely attributes to him. Eusebius and Herodotus mention Darius the son of Histaspis: the former briefly, as usual, noting the dates of his reign, and the latter giving a fuller account of his deeds. Among other things, Herodotus reports that Darius Histaspis again besieged and captured Babylon, which had defected from the Persian empire. This is the source of Annius’ disgraceful error. He had heard Herodotus write that Babylon was captured by Darius after the death of Cyrus, and supposed Herodotus meant Darius the Mede, when Herodotus undoubtedly meant Darius Histaspis. For in lib. 1 he had said that Babylon was captured once by Cyrus. Then in book 3 he says it was captured again by Darius Histaspis

who, he says, took possession of it, cut down its walls, and removed all its gates—neither of which Cyrus had done when he first captured that same city. Let Annius now go and say that Herodotus and Eusebius were dreaming. Annius himself is truly the one dreaming, making one man out of two, Darius the Mede and Darius the Persian, and one capture out of two captures of Babylon. That is properly what sleepers and dreamers do. But, you say, Daniel prophesied in cap. 11 that only four Persian kings would come after Darius the Mede up to Alexander. There were not fourteen, then, as we said in following Eusebius and Hieronymus. This argument seems to have moved Tertullianus, in the book he wrote against the Jews, to place only four Persian kings between Darius the Mede and Alexander: Arthaxerxes, Ochus, who was also called Cyrus, then Argus, and finally the last Darius, who was also called Melas. Nicolaus Lyranus fell into this error too, knowingly and with his eyes open, although Hieronymus had warned him. He followed the fantasies of the Hebrews, who are entirely ignorant of human history, since they have no records of foreign kingdoms in their own language and recognize no kings of the Persians or Greeks except those mentioned in Scripture. Those who fail to see this follow the Jews in explaining those Scriptures whose meaning can scarcely, or certainly cannot, be understood if the histories of the gentiles are unknown. Thus the Hebrews often distort historical accounts and try to invent what they cannot prove. Their error must be removed, and every opinion brought back to this principle: in interpreting Sacred Scripture, especially in passages that touch on the external affairs of gentile nations, we must follow the records of those nations. Hieronymus therefore more correctly and truthfully understands that the fourth king mentioned by the Prophet was Xerxes, the son of Darius Histaspis; the histories of the pagans describe him as the Prophet does. Daniel’s omission of the nine Persian kings who ruled after Xerxes, once he had listed four, works not only against our position but also against Methastenes, Annius, and Philo. As Hieronymus says, the prophetic spirit did not care to follow the order of history but to touch on the most notable events. If anyone carefully considers the traditions of the prophets, he will find that many intervening events are very often passed over. Anyone who judges from the prophets’ silence that these events never occurred must be deeply mistaken and ignorant of many things. There was a particular reason here why the prophet’s spirit stopped at Xerxes, king of Persia. The Persian monarchy was then at the height of its power against the Greeks, so that Greece seemed likely to be laid waste and emptied in an instant by the innumerable multitude of the army. Daniel therefore suddenly saw Alexander the Greek, who could not only rescue the Greeks from the Persians but also triumph over the Persians. I think we have discussed sufficiently and carefully Annius’ rules, their examples, and Annius’ entire judgment. What, then, someone may ask, is there no way to distinguish and recognize truthful historians from deceptive ones? There certainly is, and there are several ways. The first rule is drawn from the honesty and integrity of people. It applies when historians either testify that they themselves saw the events they report or learned of them from eyewitnesses. Many such accounts are found in the letters of Ambrosius, Cyprianus, Hieronymus, and Augustinus; in this latter author’s books De civitate Dei; in the dialogues of Gregorius; and, in short, in nearly all the writings of the most trustworthy Doctors of the Church. To suspect a lie in what they wrote to transmit to lasting memory would be sacrilege. ¹

For their great and distinguished virtues earned these most holy and excellent men complete trust in such matters, which they either saw themselves or say they heard from others worthy of trust who saw them. Erasmus Roterodamus and some other recent writers have often and freely erred on this point. What could have been said more freely, licentiously, or immoderately than to claim that Hieronymus, a most serious and holy man, was lying when he asserted that he had been allowed to copy the Hebrew Gospel of Matthaeus? This excessive and unrestrained license of certain recent writers has rightly displeased devout people and rightly been called into question. This first rule also applies to secular authors. Iulius Caesar, Suetonius, Cornelius Tacitus, Plutarchus, and Plinius each report some things that they saw with their own eyes and others that they received from those who witnessed them in person. Although we cannot look to these writers for piety or complete virtue, we can find in them a certain honesty and goodness of nature. Some of them, moved either by love of truth or by a sense of honorable shame, so strongly abhorred lying that we may now be ashamed that some pagan historians were more truthful than our own. I say this in sorrow rather than as an insult: Laertius wrote the lives of philosophers much more rigorously than Christians have written the lives of saints; Suetonius presented the affairs of the Caesars far more honestly and completely than Catholics have presented—not the deeds of emperors but those of martyrs, virgins, and confessors. They conceal neither vices nor suspicions of vice in decent people, whether philosophers or rulers, but even reveal the appearance of virtue in the wicked. Most of our writers, however, either serve their own affections or deliberately invent so many things that I feel not only shame but disgust. I think these writers have contributed nothing useful to the Church of Christ, but have done it great harm. I spare names, because judgment in this passage concerns moral character as well as learning; in matters of learning criticism can be more open. Moral criticism should be more cautious toward the living and more reverent toward the dead. But it is certain that those who write ecclesiastical history falsely and deceptively cannot be good and sincere men, and that their entire account is invented either for profit or to promote error; the first is disgraceful, the second harmful. Ludovicus’ complaint about certain histories fabricated in the Church is entirely just. He prudently and seriously reproves those who think it pious to invent lies in the name of religion. This is both most dangerous and entirely unnecessary. We do not usually believe a liar even when he tells the truth. Therefore, those who wanted to stir the minds of mortals to the worship of saints through false and deceptive writings seem to me to have done nothing except undermine belief in true accounts because of false ones and call into doubt accounts published strictly and truthfully by their authors. Herodotus included many fictional and shadowy matters in his work, but he warned his readers through the title itself that his book’s history was not to be examined to the letter. He entitled it “Muses,” to whom fables are sometimes allowed, so that they may attract their hearers more pleasantly and charmingly than a severe narrative could. Xenophon, who, as Fabius says, should be counted more among philosophers than historians, tries to portray in Cyrus the ideal form of the perfect ruler. We should not expect him to show what Cyrus really was,

but rather what an emperor in a commonwealth would be if he were formed according to the most perfect model—though Cyrus was certainly an outstanding and exceptional king. But in Christian history, which, as we have said, is judged wholly by truth and not by pleasure, what is the point of pretending to write history while including invented fables? It is as if God’s holy men needed our lies, when they performed so many true deeds for Christ that false stories, however skillfully and learnedly fabricated, are harmful not because they are false but because they are useless, like cowardly soldiers who are more of a burden than a help. I think the true deeds of our heroes were not only great and magnificent but even greater than their reputation now suggests. Their virtue should not be measured by how well our writers could praise it in words, but rather as so great that even the finest minds lacked words for their deeds, and the most brilliant words for such brilliant minds. Yet some writers indulge their own feelings too much and write what the writer’s mind, not the truth, dictates; at times they present saints as people whom the saints themselves, if they could, would not have wanted to be. Who could believe, for example, that D. Franciscus used to shake lice off his body and put them back on himself? The writer thought this belonged to the man’s sanctity; I do not, since I know that the most holy man always loved poverty, never filth. How ridiculous is this too: that once, when the devil disturbed our father D. Dominicus, the saint forced him to hold a lamp in his hands until it was consumed, causing him not only annoyance but incredible pain. Such examples cannot be counted, but from these few we can understand many others that have obscured the histories of the most illustrious saints. It was not fitting to stain the true deeds of saints with false and invented fables. This was why Gelasius rejected many histories of this sort at a council of seventy bishops. The words of that Pontiff are most worthy to be read and known, and should therefore be quoted: “Who among Catholics would doubt that the deeds of the holy martyrs, who shine through many torments of torture and the remarkable triumphs of their confessions, are true, or that they endured even greater sufferings in their contests, bearing all things not by their own strength but by God’s grace and help? Nevertheless, following ancient authority or custom, they are not read in the holy Roman Church except with exceptional caution, because the names of those who wrote them are entirely unknown, and it was thought that they were either told excessively by unbelievers or written less suitably than the order of events required. Such are the stories of Quiricus and his mother Iulita, of Georgius, and other passions of this kind, which heretics are known to have composed. For this reason, as was said, they are not read in the holy Roman Church, lest even a slight occasion for ridicule arise. Nevertheless, with the said Church, we venerate with all devotion all martyrs and their glorious contests, which are known to God more than to men. We also receive with all honor the lives of the fathers Antonius, Paulus, Hilarion, and all the hermits, which the most blessed Hieronymus wrote. We have also learned that many Catholics in the city of Rome read the acts of blessed Sylvester, prelate of the Apostolic See, although we do not know the name of the writer; many churches follow this ancient usage. The writings about the discovery of the holy Cross of the Lord and the discovery of the head of blessed Ioannes Baptista are new revelations, and some Catholics read them. But when this comes into the hands of Catholics, let the judgment of the blessed Apostle Paulus come first: ‘Test all things; hold fast what is good.’” Thus far Gelasius. ²

If Paulus teaches that prophecies, which are usually given through divine inspiration, should not be despised but examined, who will now dare accuse us if we examine histories produced by human judgment? Gelasius, a most weighty authority together with the council, shows that what the Apostle said about prophecy also applies suitably to history. The Pontiff therefore first orders us not to accept in any way histories published without a known author’s name. They reek either of the fraud of profit-seeking people or, as Gelasius himself says, of heretical offspring. The same reason makes histories very suspect even when they bear the name of an author but it is obscure and uncertain who he is or what kind of person he was. A few days ago certain fables of this kind appeared, whose authors and settings are so far apart that it is impossible to discover whether they are lying; one may even doubt whether they are true. Fortunately, the whole body of the narrative appears invented, so the Spanish saying easily applies here too: De luengas vias, luengas mentiras. But let us return to Gelasius. He next warns us of another error in which not only common people but Gratianus too once fell: deceived by book titles, they believed that everything inscribed with the names of Hieronymus and Augustinus truly belonged to Hieronymus and Augustinus. Thus the public circulated a book entitled De vitis patrum under the name of Hieronymus, although he wrote only a very few lives of the fathers, which the Pontiff mostly lists in this passage. We will therefore use Gelasius’ testimony to curb the impudence of those who spread the claim that Hieronymus authored these matters, which no one but an unlearned and inarticulate person would publish. The foolish and barbarous story about the Nativity of Saint Mary addressed to the bishops Cromatius and Heliodorus is also of this kind. There are many others, which Erasmus refuted most carefully and rightly. I also observe in these words of Gelasius that we should not admire or revere what he calls “new revelations.” Nowadays they are put forward everywhere, not for the needs of the Church but to serve people’s feelings, so that in the matter of the Conception, if heaven allows it, revelations are presented on both sides, even though they contradict each other. This gives the impious ample cause for mockery and the devout cause for tears. God’s gifts and miracles must surely be scorned if they serve our opinions or feelings. Those who think that the admirable deeds of saints cannot be well presented unless they adorn them with fabricated revelations and miracles are therefore doing great harm to the Church of Christ. In this matter, human impudence spared neither the holy Virgin nor Christ the Lord: the same things it had done in the stories of other saints it also did in writing the history of Christ and his mother, inventing many vain and ridiculous things in keeping with the fickleness of the human mind. In recent years, when I attended the Council of Trent, I heard from some people that Aloisius Lippomanus, bishop of Verona, had tried to remedy this evil by publishing a history of the lives of the saints, composed with a steadfast and serious method. I have not yet been able to see it, nor any other work on these matters that has come into my hands and that I could approve. It would surely be a dense and laborious work, but very useful to all Christians, if someone produced one worthy of the saints, the Church, and Christ. No one will undoubtedly accomplish this unless he is an upright, honest, and incorruptible man, who dares neither to say anything false nor to conceal anything true, and who writes without suspicion of favoritism or hostility. Since these are known duties of honesty and integrity, I am amazed that one Suetonius observed them all, while most of our own writers abandoned them all.

Those who think human affairs are foreign to the saints whose histories they write seem not even to believe that the saints were human beings. The Evangelists act much more wisely: even in the apostles, whose whole lives were to be examples for us, they do not conceal either the weaker natural affections or the more serious mishaps. This was the divine wisdom of the Evangelists, but it also showed their goodness and integrity of nature: they omitted nothing from their histories that even a pagan might require under the rules of history. Someone may ask how we can recognize a writer’s honesty and integrity in people who lived long ago. It may sometimes shine through their writings, but it is known from their reputation and the grave and frequent testimony of people in the past. As I said, among pagan authors there are many whose candor and modesty have been so celebrated in human speech that no one has ever thought them liars or shameless fabricators. Such are Caesar, Valerius Maximus, Terentius Varro, Livius, Cornelius Tacitus, Ammianus Marcellinus, Eutropius, Flavius Vopiscus, Paulus Diaconus, Lucius Florus, Polybius, Dionysius Halicarnasseus, Iulius Capitolinus, Cornelius Nepos, Strabo, and many others, especially Latin authors. For the credibility of the Greeks has mostly been broken and weakened. Thucydides is scrupulous and, as Iosephus says, the most scrupulous of all Greek historians. Although Appianus Alexandrinus was Greek, he did not lie about foreign matters, since he recorded the recent civil wars of Rome; had he followed Greek custom and character, he would have lied about his own affairs. The Greeks’ boastfulness and vanity grew more shameless after they began competing with the Latins in empire, history, and the truth of learning. Latin brilliance and glory obscured the fame of Greece and so dazzled Greek eyes that even Plutarchus, otherwise a truthful writer, sometimes seems blind and even to invent things when illuminating Greek affairs. Ludovicus Vives observed this both in his work on the lives of illustrious Greeks and Romans and in the Parallels. Among our own writers, that is, ecclesiastical writers, it is easier to recognize virtue and good faith. We honor our best men not only by human speech and esteem but also by the Church’s decree, which places them in the company of the saints. As we said above, to accuse these just and holy men of shameless lying is a sign not only of rashness but of impiety. I think Aegesippus, Paulus Orosius, and some other ecclesiastical historians, whom I pass over for brevity, should be counted among these holy and just men. We are not searching libraries here but sampling kinds of evidence, lest anyone accuse us of negligence for passing over some writers in praise or blame. But, you say, Crispus Sallustius was regarded as a truthful historian despite his utterly corrupt morals. That is true. But when you cite Sallustius, you cite a man who, if he lacked the modesty of honesty, at least feared the disgrace that the Romans especially avoided: being regarded as liars in history like the Greeks. Further, I do not think Sallustius was free of partiality and hostility. Certainly, when he writes about Cicero, he omits much that he would gladly have reported to please others. These two faults are common to nearly all historians and virtually peculiar to some. Among them Paulus Iovius is excessive in either direction, in hatred and love, favoritism and hostility. And because he loved money, he was a servant of money in writing history too. Finally, it is one thing to say that all good men are truthful, and another to say that all bad men are liars. We said the first, not the second. Still, somehow the mind never feels secure unless it rests on the testimony of a good man. Yet truth is so closely

joined to duty that it may perhaps exist in a vicious person, but can scarcely be believed to do so. This is why the Chaldaeans and Egyptians approved no other writers of history except those who held priestly office: they thought holy and religious men could not possibly lie. “A certain man from the Jews has come, a priest; he will not deceive us.” Thus far what we have said about the first rule for judging history. Let a second rule be established for judging history: we should prefer to others those historians who have joined some prudent severity of judgment to their intelligence, both in selecting and assessing material. This rule applies to matters the writers themselves did not see and did not hear from trustworthy eyewitnesses. Here it is worth recalling the frivolity of those who, like foolish women, readily believe what they very much want to be true. Our own age saw a priest who was entirely convinced that nothing printed could ever be false. He used to say that the public officials would not commit such a great crime as allowing lies not only to be published but also to circulate more safely under their privilege. Moved by this argument, he decided to believe that the events reported in the fictional books of Amadis and Clariano had really happened. It is not for this place and time to discuss how much force this argument about public officials has. I speak for myself, from my own feeling and grief: it is a great calamity and danger for the Church that, when books are published, care is taken only that they not contain errors opposed to the faith, but not that they be harmful to morals. I am not examining only the fables I just mentioned, although they are unlearned and contribute nothing—not to living well and happily, nor even to thinking rightly about human affairs. For what good comes from empty, vain nonsense invented by idle people and circulated by corrupt minds? The pain is most bitter and scarcely consolable: while some people, I wish as prudently as zealously, try to reject and avoid this harm, they do not publish true and weighty histories in place of fables, which would be most useful to the people; instead, they publish books full of the Church’s mysteries, from which the uninitiated should be kept away. In my judgment, this is most harmful, all the more because ordinary people read these little books with confidence when they see they have been approved not only by the civil authorities but also by the appointed examiners of teaching in the commonwealth of Christ. But that is for another time. Let us now address what is at hand. The ignorance of the man who believed every account as soon as it was written down is pitiable rather than laughable. Yet you will find others who are not equally ignorant but almost as imprudent: they do not seek truth where it usually resides but in things where it is rarely found, namely, scattered rumors spread everywhere. This usually happens to people of an unstable and fickle nature, since serious and sober people do not usually chase empty popular gossip. Still, we cannot deny that sometimes very serious men have collected rumors about wonders attributed especially to saints and passed them down in writing to posterity. In this matter, it seems to me, they were either too indulgent toward themselves or, at least, toward the common people among the faithful. They understood that the people not only readily believed such miracles but eagerly demanded them. So some saints recorded certain signs and wonders, not because they readily believed them but lest they seem to fail the faithful’s expectations. They thought themselves all the more entitled to do so because they understood that the most distinguished authorities approved this as a true rule of history: to write what people generally believed to be true.

I do not excuse the author of the book entitled Speculum exemplorum, or of the history called Legenda aurea. In the former you will read monsters of miracles more often than true miracles. The latter was written by a man of iron mouth and leaden heart, certainly not very sober or prudent in mind. I excuse the ancient writers, holy and learned men, whose books and names I would be ashamed and religiously reluctant to mention, were I not afraid that my silence would lead many either to condemn what they do not understand or to wander in various errors through the histories of all the saints. A theologian should also be warned not to assume immediately that everything written by great authorities is perfect in every respect. For they too sometimes err, as that writer says, give way under a burden, and indulge the pleasure of their own minds; they sometimes indulge the common people too, as I said, and do not always pay close attention. They also sometimes grow so tired that Demosthenes seems to Cicero to fall asleep, and Homer sometimes to Horatius. They are great men, but still human. Perhaps I can rightly and truthfully say the same of Beda and Gregorius. In his history of the Angles and in his Dialogues, respectively, they report certain miracles that were commonly circulated and believed, but which the critics of this age will judge uncertain. I would approve those histories more if their authors, in keeping with the standard of severe judgment laid down, had used greater care in selecting what to include. But we must speak modestly and cautiously about such great men; even in these two works, many things must not be rejected. There are few matters one could criticize, even if one insists that ecclesiastical history be subjected to stricter judgments. If we must err in one direction, I would rather readers approve all their writings than reject many. I judge more freely the works of Vincentius of Beauvais and D. Antoninus. Neither seems to have taken as much care to describe true and certain events as to omit nothing that could be found written on any scrap of paper. To judge each history and weigh it according to its proper importance, they used not the scales of experts but not even the ordinary balance. Although good men and not at all deceitful, because they did not carefully examine the authors from whom they copied their books or report events after weighing them properly, they lack authority among serious and exacting critics. A historian approved by a decree of theology should neither examine every scrap of writing unworthy even to be read, nor devote effort to old wives’ tales, nor write down whatever he has read or heard before weighing and selecting it with prudence and careful judgment. We have said enough to explain the second rule. Let the third rule be this: if the Church has granted authority to a historian, we too should undoubtedly grant him authority; and if the Church has withdrawn its confidence from someone, we too will rightly withdraw ours. Gelasius received with all honor the history of the lives of Antonius, Paulus, Hilarion, and the other hermits, although Hieronymus wrote them. He also received the acts of blessed Sylvester, though with less veneration. He praised Orosius and did not reject the Chronicle of Eusebius, that is, his work on chronology, as far as I can infer. He rejected the eight books of Clement’s Itinerary; the acts falsely published under the names of Andreas, Philippus, Petrus, and Thomas; the book on the Savior’s infancy and another on his birth; the book of the Shepherd; the acts of Thecla and Paulus, which Epiphanius sometimes uses; the Revelation of Paulus; the book entitled The Passing of Mary; little books on the penance of Adam, Origenes, and Cyprianus; the letter of Iesu to Abagarus; the passions of Georgius, Quiricus, and Iulita; and finally the history of Eusebius Pamphili.

In this matter Gelasius used great prudence, in my judgment. Rhenanus’ claim that these final words of Gelasius are not his but were added by some ass is insolent, crude, and ignorant. First, the Pontiff had judged as follows: “We have not said that the Chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea and his books on ecclesiastical history must be rejected altogether because he grew tepid in the first book of his account and wrote one book in praise and defense of Origenes the schismatic; rather, because of his exceptional knowledge of events, we have said that they should not be rejected everywhere.” Later he judges as follows: “The History of Eusebius Pamphili is apocryphal.” These two judgments are not contrary; they are both entirely true and issued with more than enough gravity and severity. There are many strong reasons why Gelasius declared the history of Eusebius apocryphal. First, in the first book Eusebius reports the letter of Iesu to Abagarus, which Gelasius rejects in the same distinction. A second reason for Gelasius was that many passages there are supported by testimonies of Clemens Alexandrinus, whose little works are judged apocryphal in the same distinction. Further, Eusebius devoted book six to praising and defending Origenes. Since Origenes’ disciples had caused great tragedies in the Church, and Origenes himself had been condemned by the Church’s judgment as a schismatic who often strayed from the path of the Catholic faith, his history is rightly rejected: he not only praises Origenes immoderately but exalts him to heaven as if he were a father of the Church. Further, in act. 5 of the seventh Synod, when the Iconoclasts called Eusebius as a witness for themselves and his letter, in which he agreed with Arius, was read, Tharasius asked, “Do we accept this?” The holy Synod replied, “By no means.” He must be treated with even greater hostility than the others. The legates of Pope Adrian said, “The reading itself shows that he shares the Arian opinion. For the book of Eusebius has already been read, along with other blasphemies which the Synod refused to hear.” The most holy patriarch said, “Let us reject his books.” The holy Synod said, “We reject and anathematize them.” In act. 6, when Epiphanius replied to a testimony of Eusebius, he said: “Eusebius is called as a witness by those who do not know that the whole Catholic Church recognizes him as a defender of the Arian heresy, as is clear in his commentaries and all the books he published.” Later he says: “Who among the faithful in the Church doubts that Eusebius Pamphili was handed over to a debased mind and agreed with the opinions of Arius? In all his historical booklets he calls the Son a creature, a servant, and worthy of worship in second place.” After proving this from many books of Eusebius, he finally asserts that Eusebius was double-minded and signed the Synod’s decree inconsistently. For he never removed the errors in his books or offered an apology for himself, even though Arius plainly said that Eusebius supported and favored his opinion. Hieronymus also says to Pammachius and Oceanus: “Eusebius composed a fine ecclesiastical history, but he is an open defender of the impiety of Arius.” And in Adversus Ttesiphontem he says that no one is unaware that Eusebius of Caesarea was an Arian. Certainly, in the first book of his Ecclesiastical History he says that the Son executes the Father’s will and, after the Father, is the cause and origin of all things. Again, after citing the verse of the psalm, “He spoke and they were made; he commanded and they were created,” he adds: “By these words the prophet presents the Father as the maker, as universal ruler, giving commands by his royal will; then he places the Word in second place, not different from the one proclaimed among us, obeying the Father’s commands.” In chapter two he first asserts that the Son assisted the Father in making all things, and then says that he was the Father’s servant in all good things.

Gelasius the Pontiff therefore rightly deprived the history of Eusebius of Caesarea of authority. What? Is it not also absurd for the Church to trust, in ecclesiastical matters, someone who was unfaithful to the Church? We indeed find that heretics adapt not only the doctrines and precepts of their sect but also historical events to suit it. Indeed, they twist them and even fabricate them, so that they may seem to have supported and adorned their sect in every way. Thus, as we said above, Eusebius invented that Constantine had been baptized by Eusebius of Nicomedia, so as to lend greater credibility and authority to the Arian faction. Hence, too, when he mentions the Council of Nicaea, he cunningly concealed the doctrine of faith by which Arius was condemned, suddenly digressing to the question of Easter. He never even mentions Arius in his history, cleverly passing over the memory of a man whom, overwhelmed by the authority of the council, he did not dare to praise, yet whom, bound by the law of friendship, he did not wish to criticize. The same reasons altogether underlie the rejection of Carion’s history by all the faithful of Christ. For its discourse tears and wounds certain supreme pontiffs, though they were excellent men, while it praises and embellishes certain German emperors who were rebels and enemies of the Roman Church. Thus you may recognize the lion by its claws—that is, a Lutheran by his praise and blame. It is hardly necessary to prove by conjecture that Carion adhered to Luther’s errors; in many places he openly betrays himself. It is therefore strange that his history has not been rejected by the judges of the Church along with the other books of heretics, when many read it freely, warned by no censure or admonition whatsoever. But let us return to Eusebius. In his ecclesiastical history Gelasius sufficiently showed that the remaining parts pleased him and the council, since he pointed out that certain things displeased them. Accordingly, if you removed from Eusebius the fable of Abgar and his praises of Origen, his history would deserve complete trust, especially if in the Church’s struggle against Arius he had stood not with Arius but with the Church. So much, then, for the books of ecclesiastical history. In the chronicles, however, the man’s diligence is admirable: his labor was immense, his reading various and almost incredible, and his judgment throughout that variety of reading altogether grave. I do not know whether anyone else among the Church’s Latin or Greek authors, even striving with the greatest force, effort, and labor, could have left us more outstanding records of chronology. Yet the carelessness of copyists has corrupted them in so many places that one cannot say so without pain. But not everything Eusebius reports there is true. Indeed, you will find some things that you may rightly and truly criticize. Such is his claim that Sennacherib, who in the time of Hezekiah besieged Jerusalem, was the same as Shalmaneser, who captured Samaria. Jerome teaches in Isaiae 6 caput that this is contrary to the divine writings. And in Tobiae capite I Shalmaneser is said to have been Sennacherib’s father. But, as he says, nothing is blessed in every respect. In a work, so to speak, of immense scale, it was very easy to err only rarely. Enough of Eusebius. Sozomen follows, about whose faith and authority St. Gregory compels us to speak. He rejected Sozomen’s history chiefly for two reasons: first, because Sozomen often lied in it; second, because he unduly exalted Theodorus, who is known both to have been a heretic and to have been condemned by the Church at the fifth synod. I certainly do not excuse Sozomen’s falsehoods. For he was Greek, and this nation, as we have said, is and always has been rather prone to lying. Yet in the nine books of ecclesiastical history which, a few days ago, we received in Musculus’s translation, Sozomen writes nothing of the kind that Gregory objects to for the second reason. He says only that Theodorus was a pupil of Libanius, to whom

Chrysostom sent a letter after he had fallen into error, and that Theodorus was later appointed bishop of Mopsuestia. At the Council of Florence, where Andreas spoke on behalf of the Latin Church, he certainly not only used this historian’s testimony but also approved it. For when the Emperor Palaeologus asked whether it was appropriate for a synod to rely on historical authority, Andreas answered him that a synod ought to use history to learn about past events. Then the emperor said: “We ought to accept in our religion the history approved by our forebears, and no other.” Andreas replied: “We ought not to use in a synod the history of wars of the Romans, Greeks, or kings. But since this history, namely that of Hermias Sozomen, is ecclesiastical, and the acts of all the synods and the definitions of the holy Fathers are explained in it, why should it not be believed?” Thus far the Council of Florence, session 7. This council therefore does not seem to have withdrawn credibility from Sozomen, but rather to have acknowledged it. The answer to this argument, however, is easy and straightforward. I do not see how one can answer the other argument unless we say either that Gregory read other books of Sozomen that have not come into our hands, or that, having suffered a lapse of memory, he wrote Sozomen where he meant Theodoret. For those words reported by Gregory are Theodoret’s. In book 5 of his history, chapter 27, he writes that this Theodorus was a distinguished teacher. And in chapter 40 he says: “Theodorus, bishop of Mopsuestia, died, a teacher of all the churches and a destroyer of the heretical party.” It was Theodoret, then, who was condemned by that name. And in fact he was condemned for that reason at the fifth general synod, act 5, canons 13 and 14. But Theodorus was condemned in canon 12. Theodoret also deserved condemnation for this reason: he wrote impiously against Cyril and the first Council of Ephesus, and criticized Cyril’s twelve chapters, which contained the right faith. Yet no one should despair of Theodoret. For, as Bessarion says in the speech he delivered before the Fathers at Florence on behalf of union, he later recognized his error and recanted at the Council of Chalcedon. But, whatever the facts may be, such defenses of those who err diminish both the authority and credibility of history. For this reason, to leave the rest aside, I like the history of Socrates Scholasticus less. For he too is a patron of Origen, excuses Nestorius, attacks Cyril, finds fault with Alexander, and, in the rejection of the presbyter-penitentiary of the Homoousians, defames the innocent. So much for the third rule to be observed in judging history. These matters are indeed clear and grounded in ordinary prudence. For those who have greater strength of mind and sharper judgment choose the truths and reject the contrary without these rules, by honing the edge of their intellect. I have sometimes found that truth itself shines through the writer’s sincerity and candor, while falsehood is exposed by a certain anguish and craftiness in the author. Believe me, truth is sincere, and if it finds a purified mind, it flows rightly of itself. Falsehood seeks convolutions and winding paths, and anxiously surrounds and protects itself with an abundance of words. Further, when I consider what is fitting for each person in the composition of history, I easily understand that historians have sometimes recorded certain things not only falsely but imprudently. For who, possessing even moderate prudence, does not see that the things related about the deeds of the Apostle Thomas and John the Evangelist are inconsistent with their character: that one sought vengeance for an injury, or that the other, with his garment torn and beating his own head, took a horse, hurried as fast as he could from the church, and, though an old man, pursued a young man with youthful vigor?

We have therefore not carefully worked out rules of judgment for the prudent and intelligent, but, as they say, for those who are rough and dull-witted. Nor am I so foolish as to think that every judgment about history has been enclosed and comprehended in these formulas. But if certain formulas had to be prescribed, these seem above all to have been appropriate and suitable.