internal police, it is obviously incapable of resisting any external attack. The recognition of the neutrality of Roumania would be equally beneficial to the country itself, to its jealous and powerful neighbours, and to the mercantile relations of foreign nations.

On these grounds we trust that the temporary rivalry of the foreign embassies at Constantinople, and the interested opposition of the Divan, will not frustrate a settlement of this question on a broad and permanent basis. The weakness, the discontent, the division of the Principalities is the true cause of the influence Russia has exercised there. As long as these evils remain uncorrected she will have frequent opportunities to regain that influence; and we are satisfied that the Western Powers are as much bound in good policy as in good faith to fulfil their engagements towards the Principalities in the only manner which can secure a lasting claim to their gratitude.

ART. VI. 1. The Festal Letters of Athanasius. Discovered in an ancient Syriac Version, and edited by WILLIAM CURETON, M.A. 8vo. London: 1848.

2. Die Fest-Briefe des Heiligen Athanasius, Bischofs von Alexandria. Aus dem Syrischen übersetz und durch Anmerkungen erläutert von F. LARSOW. 8vo. Leipsig: 1852.

3. Nova Patrum Bibliothecæ Tomus Sextus continens in Parte I. Sancti Athanasii Epistolas Festales Syriace et Latine, cum Chronico et Fragmentis aliis. 4to. Romæ: 1853.

4. The Festal Epistles of S. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria. Translated from the Syriac, with notes and indices. 8vo. Oxford: 1854.

THE

HE discovery and publication of a work so important for the history of the Church during the period to which it relates, and bearing the name of an author so celebrated throughout the whole extent of Christendom as Athanasius, although it does not appear to have excited much curiosity in England (for so far as we know, it was not even mentioned by more than one of our contemporaries*), has created sufficient interest in Protestant Germany to find an able translator in Dr. Larsow at Berlin, and in Catholic Italy to be deemed worthy of republication with a Latin Version, by the late celebrated Cardinal Mai, in his extensive undertaking, Nova Patrum Bibliotheca,' in six

6

* British Quarterly Review, August, 1852.

VOL. CV. NO. CCXIV.

FF

large quarto volumes. The circumstance of the book having been published by Mr. Cureton in the Syriac only, without any translation, may in some measure account for its having been so little noticed at home. He has, however, prefixed an Introduction in English, of more than sixty pages, in which all the chronological information to be derived from these Letters is comprised; and he has collected many facts, never before brought together, relative to the origin of the Festal Letters in the Alexandrian Church. He has also added an interesting account respecting the collection of Syriac manuscripts among which this copy of the letters of the great champion of orthodoxy was found.

Nearly six years elapsed between the publication of Mr. Cureton's book and the reprint of it by the Cardinal Mai. We shall have a few remarks to make upon the manner in which his Eminence has made use of the labours of our countryman. The English translation, which appeared the year after the Cardinal's republication of the text, was made by the Rev. H. Burgess, but very carefully revised, corrected, and edited by the Rev. Henry Williams in the Library of Fathers of the Catholic Church.

The collection of Syriac manuscripts, in which these longlost Epistles of the famous Patriarch of Alexandria were found, is altogether unrivalled by any other in the world, and it now forms one of the most valuable accessions to our national library which the Trustees of the British Museum, aided by the judicious liberality of her Majesty's Government, ever have been able to obtain. Some account of that part of this collection which was acquired through the intervention and exertions of Dr. Tattam, previously to the year 1845, has already appeared in the pages of a contemporary Review.* It excited very general interest hroughout all Europe, and in the course of the same year was reproduced in the leading periodicals in almost every European language. No notice, however, of the acquisition of the remaining portion of this vast library has been brought before the public, except in the preface to Mr. Cureton's edition of these Festal Letters of Athanasius. We think, therefore, that we not be undertaking a task altogether unacceptable to our readers, if we present them with a succinct narrative of the acquisition of this wonderful library now belonging to the British nation, brought down to the present day.

shall

The Syriac, as most of our readers are probably aware, was the vernacular language of the people of Palestine, at the time

* See Quarterly Review, No. cliii. p. 39.

of the coming of Jesus Christ, and that in which his ordinary discourses were delivered to his own disciples and to the crowds which followed him and listened to his teaching and exhortations. This is abundantly established, not only by the concurrent testimony of all historical documents, but also by the writings of the New Testament themselves. Besides retaining in the Greek the original idiom of the vernacular tongue to a great extent, they have also supplied several phrases exactly as they were spoken in the dialect of the country, and added at the same time an explanation of their meaning in Greek. Eusebius asserts that the Syriac was the only tongue which the Apostles understood when they were chosen by our Lord.* Nor can there be any just ground to question the universal consent of the earliest Christian tradition that St. Matthew wrote his Gospel in this language, which was spoken by his brethren and countrymen.

Joseph Simon Assemani, in his description of a manuscript transcribed A.D. 1531†, has extracted from the same a note of the colophon of a volume, from which it appears that at no very remote period there was existing in one of the churches at Bagdad a copy of a Gospel transcribed at Edessa, in the year of our era 78, by the hand of Achæus, the disciple of Addæus, one of the Seventy chosen by our Lord. At any rate it is certain that almost the whole of the New Testament was translated into Syriac at a very early period for the use of the churches in the East. About the year 300, we find Procopiust, who was one of the most distinguished of the Martyrs of Palestine engaged in translating Greek works into Syriac. This task of translation, which probably was begun by others before his time, was certainly continued during the fourth century. There is now existing in the British Museum a volume, of which we shall speak more fully as we proceed, transcribed in the year of our Lord 411, containing a Syriac translation of two works by Eusebius, and also of the treatise against the Manichæans by his contemporary Titus, Bishop of Bostra or Bozra in Arabia, as well as of that ancient book attributed to Clement of Rome, called the Recognitions. Eusebius himself, Bishop of Cesarea in Palestine, where was established a celebrated school of the Syrians, was also well acquainted with the dialect of the country in

* Γαλιλαίους ἄνδρας, εὐτελεῖς, ἀγροίκους, οὐδὲν πλέον τῆς Σύρων φωνῆς EmiσTaμévovs: Theophania; in Cardinal Mai's Nova Patrum Bibliotheca, vol. iv. p. 118.

Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana, vol. ii. p. 486.

Cited by Dr. Lee from Assemani, in the preface to his translation of the Theophania of Eusebius, p. xvi.

which he lived. In his explanations of passages of the Scriptures on several occasions he refers to the Syriac. In his Ecclesiastical History he inserts a long account relative to the conversion of Abgar, Toparch of Edessa, translated from the original Syriac document preserved in the archives of that city, and in his very learned Preparatio Evangelica, he has inserted a considerable extract of the Treatise on Fate by Bardesanes, written also in the same language about the middle of the second century. These are among the most ancient original Syriac works of which we have any information, and long since were supposed to have perished. They have however, we see, been discovered in this collection. The one has already been printed*, and the other is announced for publication by Mr. Cureton.

There were two famous schools in Palestine,-one at Cesarea, where Pamphilus, the friend of Origen and martyr for the cause of Christianity, established his celebrated library; and the other at Bethshan, Baisan, or Scythopolis, where Procopius, who also suffered martyrdom for the faith, carried on his literary labours of enriching the Syriac with translations from the Greek. But the largest and most famous academy of Aramaic learning was at Edessa, the ancient Ur of the Chaldees, and the modern Orfa: here, and at the monasteries in the neighbourhood, it was that several of the most ancient and valuable of the manuscripts now in the British Museum were transcribed. True indeed they were obtained immediately from the monks of the convent of St. Mary, named Deipara, or Mother of God, situated in the valley of the Ascetics, called thence Scete or Scithis, and also Nitria, from the Natron Lakes adjoining; but hither they had been brought originally from Mesopotamia, and had lain for 900 years after their migration, before they were transferred to a more accessible, and we will hope a more useful locality, in the centre of the British Metropolis. It appears from a passage of the famous Arabic historian of Egypt Macrizi, cited by Mr. Cureton in his preface to the Festal Letters of Athanasius †, that in the year 925 the Vezir Ali Ibn Isa Ibn Al-Jarrah arrived in Egypt, abolished several of the immunities which the Christian bishops and monks had previously been allowed to enjoy, and further imposed upon them certain taxes. In consequence of this proceeding, a deputation, of which Moses of Nisibis, at that

* In his Spicilegium Syriacum,' containing remains of Bandesan Melito, Ambrose, and Mara Bar Serapion, now first edited, with English translation and notes, by the Rev. W. Cureton. 8vo. London:

1855.

† P. xxiv.

time superior of the Syrian Convent of St. Mary in the Valley of the Natron Lakes, was a member, was sent to the Court of Bagdad to lay their case before the Khalif, Al-Muctadir-Billah, and to petition that they might be still allowed the same privileges which they had ever enjoyed under the Moslem rule, even from the period of the conquest of Egypt by Omar. This Moses of Nisibis, who seems to have been both a learned man himself and a lover of books, turned his journey to a good account, and procured, during his sojourn in Mesopotamia, a great addition of literary treasures for the library of his own convent. He returned home with no less than 250 precious volumes a very large number indeed of books for that period, many of which were even then of great antiquity. Doubtless he felt proud of having been enabled to confer so great a benefit upon the community over which he presided, as to have enriched their library to such an extent; and in order to preserve the memory of what he had effected, he took the pains of transcribing in many, perhaps in all, the volumes which he had been fortunate enough to obtain, a record of that event. There are at this moment in the British Museum a considerable number of manuscripts which still retain this inscription and, in all probability, in his own handwriting. It may not be uninteresting to insert here a translation of it, as it is supplied by Mr. Cureton.

"To the honour and glory and magnificence of this monastery of Deipara of the Syrians, of the Desert of Scete, Moses, mean and a sinner, the Abbot, who is called of Nisibis, gave diligence and acquired this book together with many others, two hundred and fifty; many of which he bought, and others were given to him as a blessing, when he went to Bagdad on account of this holy Desert, and of the monks who are in it. May God, for whose glory and for the benefit of those who read in them (he obtained the books), pardon him and the dead belonging to him, and every one who has been in communion with

It is not permitted to any one by the living word of God, that he should act dishonestly with respect to any one of them, in any way whatever, nor appropriate them to himself. Neither that he should wipe out this memorial, or make any erasure, or cut or order another to do so, nor give them from this monastery. Whosoever dares to do this let him know that he is accursed. The books arrived with the above mentioned Abbot Moses, in the year of the Greeks 1243" (that is, A.D. 931.') (P. xxvi.)

We have no means of ascertaining what was the extent of the library of this convent of the Syrians, before the great addition made to it by the Abbot Moses. Besides the volumes which he obtained during his travels, he also caused others