These are the quotations which a cursory examination of Jerome's works reveals. We see in them that he quoted with great frequency the deuterocanonical books as divine Scripture. Three causes are usually assigned for the doubts that prevailed among some Fathers concerning the deuterocanonical books. Ist.-Disputations between Jew and Christian were frequent in those days. The chief intellectual adversaries of the Church during the fourth and fifth centuries, were Jews, and the works of the Fathers of this period are filled with refutations of their attacks. As the Jews rejected the deuterocanonical books, the Fathers were obliged to draw Scriptural materials from the protocanonical writings. Hence, gradually these were preferred in authority to the deuterocanonical books; and, as they furnished all that was needed from a source accepted by both sides, the deuterocanonical works were often given a secondary place, and sometimes left out altogether. 2.-A second cause is found in Origen's critical edition of the Hexapla. In this work, which we shall describe more fully in the progress of this work, Origen compared the Septuagint text with the Hebrew and other Greek texts, then existing, marking the passages which were in the Septuagint, and not found in the Hebrew by an oßeλòs. Copies made from this text, reproducing the diacritic points, soon filled the East. Now the Alexandrian grammarians were wont to use the ỏßeλòs, to denote a spurious passage. Origen's intention was evidently not to brand these books and fragments as spurious, but the error arose in the East especially to distrust what was denoted by this sign. 3. Finally, the fourth and fifth centuries were an age fertile in heresies, apocryphal productions, absurd fables, and fictitious revelations, and in their caution against what was spurious, the Fathers sometimes erred in slowness to receive those books which have in their favor all the evidence that is necessary, and that we have a right to expect. It was by them judged safer to refuse the quality of Canonicity to an inspired book, than, by excessive credulity, to approve an Apocryphal work. These causes operated principally in the East, and thence the most of the opposition came. The growth of the status of the deuterocanonical books might be compared to that of a healthy tree. It lost now and then a branch, in whose stead, it acquired new ones, and kept on growing till it filled the whole world, and now enjoys a firm unshaken hold on all those who hold to the Church of Christ. It did this because there was in it a divine vigor, which came not from the branches, nor was impaired by their occasional dropping off. There never was any conflict between the Fathers on this point, for in practice, they were a unit. The lists they drew up were mere disciplinary opinions, which never entered to change their practical use of the Scripture. We find at first the most doubt in the East. This line of thought was brought into the West by Jerome; and while the doubt gradually passed away in the East, we find the influence of Jerome, in the subsequent centuries, engendering some doubts in the minds of Fathers and theologians of the Western Catholic world. We shall pass in brief review the centuries from the fifth down to the Council of Trent. CHAPTER X. THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT FROM THE END OF THE FIFTH CENTURY TO THE END OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY. The Hexaplar version of Syriac Scriptures made by Paul of Tella, in 616, contains all the deuterocanonical works. DIONYSIUS, surnamed the little, approved the catalogue of Scriptures promulgated by the Council of Carthage in 419, which embraced all the deuterocanonical works.* CASSIODORUS, writing for his monks a sort of introduction to the Holy Scriptures, sets forth three catalogues of Holy Books.t *Dionysius, surnamed the little, on account of his low stature, was a native of Scythia. He came to Rome, and was abbot of a monastery in that city. He was the inventor of the mode of reckoning the years of the Christian era since the birth of Christ, which method is erroneous by several years. He is the author of a "Codex Canonum" and other minor works. His death is placed about the year 540, in the reign of Justinian. +Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator belonged to a family most probably of Syrian origin, who were established at Scylaceum in Bruttium in the fifth century. His father was administrator of Sicily in 489, when Theodoric took Italy, and he filled high positions under Theodoric. Cassiodorus was born about 490 or perhaps a little later. He filled important public offices under the Gothic sovereigns, Theodoric Athalaric, Theodahat and Witiges. About the year 537, Cassiodorus renounced his public charges and retired to the Monasterium Vivariense, founded by himself at Scylaceum, where he devoted his life to study and prayer. His death is placed about the year 583. He was a prolific writer. He devoted much time to Scriptural studies, and gave thought that the monks of Vivarium should have good texts of Scripture. The monastery possessed an excellent library and many choice manuscripts. Many excellent manuscript texts of the Vulgate of Jerome were copied by the monks of Cassiodorus and spread through the world. The first list is that of Prologus Galeatus, the helmeted prologue of Jerome. The second list is the Canon of St. Augustine from his Doctrine Christiana, which we have already reproduced in full. This third list of Cassiodorus is identical with the catalogue of the Vulgate, except a slight variation in the order of the books. Cassiodorus was more reverential than critical. He plainly received all the deuterocanonical books, and failed to see any repudiation of them in the celebrated Prologue of Jerome. He certainly can be claimed as a witness of a tradition in the sixth century, which accorded to the deuterocanonical books the quality of divinity. It is evident that, in the East, in the sixth and seventh centuries, the deuterocanonical books were held to be canoniical, since the schismatic churches of the Chaldean Nestorians, the Jacobite Monophysites, Syrians, Ethiopians, Armenians and Copts, all have the deuterocanonical Scriptures in equal place with the other divine books.* It is needless to attend to the absurd catalogue of Junilius Africanus, an obscure bishop of Africa in the the sixth century. This list places Chronicles, Job, and Ezra with Tobias, Judith, Esther, and Maccabees among the non-canonical books.t His opinion represents the tradition of no church or sect, nor is it found in any writer of note, and is rejected by everybody. An unfavorable testimony is found in the work "De Sectis of Leontius of Byzantium, a priest of Constantinople in the sixth century. He drew up a Canon of only the protocanonical books excepting Esther, and declared that, "these are the books which are held Canonical in the Church." Leontius lived many years in the monastery of St. Saba, near Jerusalem, and the ideas of the Church of Jerusalem are reflected in his works. It can be said of him, as of Cyrill that exclusion from canonicity was not with him exclusion from divinity. With them the divine books of the Old Testament were arranged in two classes canonical and non-canonical. They used the latter as divine Scripture without according it the preeminence of canonicity. Leontius used in several places quotations from deuterocanonical works as divine Scripture. *Assemann, Bibliotheca Orientalis, III. +Junil. Afric. De part. div. Legis I. 3-7. Migne 68, 16 et seqq. The opponents of our Thesis cite at this juncture St. Gregory the Great.* In the Moral Treatises XIX. 21, citing a passage from Maccabees, he prefaces the citation by saying: "We shall not act rashly, if we accept a testimony of books, which, although not canonical, have been published for the edification of the Church." In the phraseology of St. Gregory, canonical signified something over and above divine. It signified those books concerning which the whole world, with one accord, united in proclaiming the word of God. The other books were divine, were used as sources of divine teaching by the Church, but there was lacking the authoritative decree of the Church making them equal to the former in rank. The Jews of old made such distinction regarding the Law and the Hagiographa. All came from God, but the Law was preeminent. The influence of St. Jerome was strong upon St. Gregory. The tradition of the Church drew him with it to use freely, as divine Scripture, the deuterocanonical books; while the doubts of Jerome moved him to hesitate in his critical opinion to accord to these books a prerogative of which Jerome doubted. Had the Church not settled the issue in the Council of Trent, there would, doubtless, be many Catholics yet who would refuse to make equal the books of the first and second Canons. Christ established a Church to step in and regulate Catholic thought at opportune times, and her aid was needed in settling, once for all, the discussion of the Canon of Scripture. This isolated doubt from St. Gregory reflects merely a critical opinion, biased by Gregory's esteem for St. Jerome. To show what was St. Gregory's *St. Gregory, surnamed the Great, was born of an illustrious Roman family, and was pretor of Rome in 573. Despising the inanity of worldly grandeur, he retired into a monastery which he had built under the patronage of St. Andrew. Pope Pelagius II. drew him from his retreat and made him one of the seven deacons of Rome. He then sent him as Nuncio to Constantinople, to implore the succour of Tiberius II. against the Lombards. At his return, he was made secretary to Pelagius, after Pelagius' death, by unanimous consent of people and clergy, he was created Pope. He strove to avoid the papal dignity, but in vain; he was created Pope in 590. His reign was characterized by great ability and holiness. He by divine aid, checked a pestilence that ravaged Rome, extinguished the schism of the Three Chapters; evangelized England through means of St. Austin, reformed the divine office, reformed the clergy, checked the ambition of the Patriarchs of Constantinople, 5 "Mew with of and upheld the rights of the Holy See. Gregory died in 604. His principal writings are his Moral Treatises, his Dialogues, and exegetical Treatises on Holy Scripture. He had more piety than learning, and his exegesis is excessively mystic. |