OF THE GRADUAL PERFECTING OF BOOKS
While assiduously seeking out the wisdom of the men of old, according
to the counsel of the Wise Man (Eccles. xxxix.): The wise man, he
says, will seek out the wisdom of all the ancients, we have not thought
fit to be misled into the opinion that the first founders of the arts
have purged away all crudeness, knowing that the discoveries of each of
the faithful, when weighed in a faithful balance, makes a tiny portion
of science, but that by the anxious investigations of a multitude of
scholars, each as it were contributing his share, the mighty bodies of
the sciences have grown by successive augmentations to the immense bulk
that we now behold. For the disciples, continually melting down the
doctrines of their masters, and passing them again through the furnace,
drove off the dross that had been previously overlooked, until there
came out refined gold tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times
to perfection, and stained by no admixture of error or doubt.
For not even Aristotle, although a man of gigantic intellect, in whom
it pleased Nature to try how much of reason she could bestow upon
mortality, and whom the Most High made only a little lower than the
angels, sucked from his own fingers those wonderful volumes which the
whole world can hardly contain. But, on the contrary, with lynx-eyed
penetration he had seen through the sacred books of the Hebrews, the
Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Chaldaeans, the Persians and the Medes,
all of which learned Greece had transferred into her treasuries. Whose
true sayings he received, but smoothed away their crudities, pruned
their superfluities, supplied their deficiencies, and removed their
errors. And he held that we should give thanks not only to those who
teach rightly, but even to those who err, as affording the way of more
easily investigating truth, as he plainly declares in the second book
of his Metaphysics. Thus many learned lawyers contributed to the
Pandects, many physicians to the Tegni, and it was by this means that
Avicenna edited his Canon, and Pliny his great work on Natural History,
and Ptolemy the Almagest.
For as in the writers of annals it is not difficult to see that the
later writer always presupposes the earlier, without whom he could by
no means relate the former times, so too we are to think of the authors
of the sciences. For no man by himself has brought forth any science,
since between the earliest students and those of the latter time we
find intermediaries, ancient if they be compared with our own age, but
modern if we think of the foundations of learning, and these men we
consider the most learned. What would Virgil, the chief poet among the
Latins, have achieved, if he had not despoiled Theocritus, Lucretius,
and Homer, and had not ploughed with their heifer? What, unless again
and again he had read somewhat of Parthenius and Pindar, whose
eloquence he could by no means imitate? What could Sallust, Tully,
Boethius, Macrobius, Lactantius, Martianus, and in short the whole
troop of Latin writers have done, if they had not seen the productions
of Athens or the volumes of the Greeks? Certes, little would Jerome,
master of three languages, Ambrosius, Augustine, though he confesses
that he hated Greek, or even Gregory, who is said to have been wholly
ignorant of it, have contributed to the doctrine of the Church, if more
learned Greece had not furnished them from its stores. As Rome,
watered by the streams of Greece, had earlier brought forth
philosophers in the image of the Greeks, in like fashion afterwards it
produced doctors of the orthodox faith. The creeds we chant are the
sweat of Grecian brows, promulgated by their Councils, and established
by the martyrdom of many.
Yet their natural slowness, as it happens, turns to the glory of the
Latins, since as they were less learned in their studies, so they were
less perverse in their errors. In truth, the Arian heresy had all but
eclipsed the whole Church; the Nestorian wickedness presumed to rave
with blasphemous rage against the Virgin, for it would have robbed the
Queen of Heaven, not in open fight but in disputation, of her name and
character as Mother of God, unless the invincible champion Cyril, ready
to do single battle, with the help of the Council of Ephesus, had in
vehemence of spirit utterly extinguished it. Innumerable are the forms
as well as the authors of Greek heresies; for as they were the original
cultivators of our holy faith, so too they were the first sowers of
tares, as is shown by veracious history. And thus they went on from
bad to worse, because in endeavouring to part the seamless vesture of
the Lord, they totally destroyed primitive simplicity of doctrine, and
blinded by the darkness of novelty would fall into the bottomless pit,
unless He provide for them in His inscrutable prerogative, whose wisdom
is past reckoning.
Let this suffice; for here we reach the limit of our power of judgment.
One thing, however, we conclude from the premises, that the ignorance
of the Greek tongue is now a great hindrance to the study of the Latin
writers, since without it the doctrines of the ancient authors, whether
Christian or Gentile, cannot be understood. And we must come to a like
judgment as to Arabic in numerous astronomical treatises, and as to
Hebrew as regards the text of the Holy Bible, which deficiencies,
indeed, Clement V. provides for, if only the bishops would faithfully
observe what they so lightly decree. Wherefore we have taken care to
provide a Greek as well as a Hebrew grammar for our scholars, with
certain other aids, by the help of which studious readers may greatly
inform themselves in the writing, reading, and understanding of the
said tongues, although only the hearing of them can teach correctness
of idiom.