Untitled - Monoskop

RELIGION
Origen. Thus set up, his edition obtained a privilege in a group of publi-
cations, of which some were sponsored by Guillaume Petit, published by his
kinsman Jean Petit (CH 1512, i). For a work this nature it proved to be
something of a best-seller. Petit and Radius, the original publishers, issued it
again in 1519, 1522 and 1530, and there was a Lyon reprint in 1536. A good
deal of curiosity was felt about Origen, as well as some suspicion. He, or at
least some of his opinions, had been condemned by an early Council of the
Church, and Merlin's edition was the object of a bitter and prolonged quarrel
within the Paris Faculty of Theology between Merlin himself and Noel Beda,
who wished it to be prohibited. This battle of giants was no doubt good
publicity for the book. Otherwise patristic studies were scantily represented at
this period in France. Nicolas Berauld or Beraldus, a layman, was responsible
for an edition of the works of St Athanasius which earned a privilege
(CH 1518, 4 (i)). What he did was to bring together and edit the best
available Latin translations, by various hands, which had already been
printed in various places and at various times. One of the translators,
Cristoforo de Persona, had in 1477 attributed to St Athanasius some
commentaries on St Paul's Epistles which were really by Theophylact, an
eleventh-century Byzantine theologian; Berauld was misled by this into
including these commentaries in his edition, though he corrected the mistake
in the 1534 reprint. The enterprise was none the less to some extent original,
and Berauld threw in for good measure the Paraclesis to the Reader which
Erasmus had written two years before, in 1516, for the first edition of his
Greek Testament. Josse Badius similarly edited and himself published Latin
translations of works by St Basil which had been collected and brought home
from Italy by Lefevre^Etaples (PR 1520, 1 1). It has been said of this edition,
'The letters on reading the pagan classics and on the solitary life were well
known, but Badius' is the first printing of so important a collection of Basil's
works.' 1
The Latin Fathers of the Church had already been widely printed by the
early years of the sixteenth century. It would have been hard to make out a
case for a privilege for an edition of their works unless it had some novel
feature, or could be shown to contain hitherto unpublished material, or
displayed such learning that it renewed the study of the author in question as
the editions prepared by Erasmus of St Ambrose (1527) and St Augustine
were destined to
(1529), printed by Froben at Basle with imperial privilege,
do. An edited selection of St Gregory's works on the New Testament by
Alulphus Tornacensis, dedicated to Geofroy Boussard, Dean of the Paris
Faculty of Theology, obtained a privilege (CP 1516, i): a reputable but
unoriginal edition of St Gregory's complete works published by Jean Petit in
1518 did not. A truly pioneer enterprise, on the other hand, was Jacques
1
E. F. Rice, The prefatory epistles ofJacques Lefevre d'Etaples and related texts (New York and London,
pp. 4'9-2i.
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