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132 EPISTLES OF S. IGNATIUS.
Cum traianus suscepisset...a fidelibus solemniter celebratur'; (2) p. 368
(the last page in the book), The Correspondence of Ignatius with the
Virgin and S. John. This last is written in a much smaller and later
hand, as if to fill up a blank page at the end of the volume. Of
the 'veneranda antiquitate nobilis [codex] qui asservatur in amplissima
bibliotheca invictissimi regis Pannoniarum Matthiae Corvini,' of which
Baronius (s.
ann. 57, § 64) speaks, I know nothing. Ussher regards
this as a pleasant dream ('
suaviter somniavit '),
inasmuch as the Buda
library had been plundered several years before by the Turks {Proleg.
p. cxxv). The few volumes of this once famous library which still
remained at Constantinople were sent back by the Sultan to Buda a
few years ago; but in the catalogue of 45 mss thus returned there is
no mention of Ignatius (see Academy 1877, June 2, p. 487; June 23,
p. 557; August 18, p. 167).
While this sheet was passing through the press for my first edition,
the second volume of Funk's Patres Apostolici was published ;
and his
speculations respecting the sources of the earliest printed editions call
for some remark. He attempts to show that the editio princeps of
J.
Faber Stapulensis (a. d. 1498), which contains only eleven epistles
(omitting the Epistle to Mary of Cassobola), was taken chiefly from
Regin. 81, but that some other MS, probably Balliol. 229, was also used
by him. He had propounded this view shortly before in the Theologische
Quartalschrift LXiii. p. 142 sq. But if so, it is difficult to see
why Faber Stapulensis should have omitted the letter to Mary of
Cassobola, which is found in both these mss ;
nor does it seem at all
probable that Balliol. 229 would have been accessible to him, as it was
already in the Hbrary of Balliol College with Bp Gray's other books.
Funk's inference is based on the tacit assumption that he could not
have used any other ms except those which are not only known to us
but have been collated— surely a most precarious assumption. Of the
fourteen mss which I have described above, only five are enumerated
by Funk, and apparently he was not aware of any others. Yet I
should be over sanguine, if I supposed that my
list of fourteen had
altogether or almost exhausted the extant mss and in the
;
early days of
printing it was by no means uncommon to place a ms in the printer's
hands for copy, so that it was then and there destroyed. The epistle
to Mary of Cassobola was first printed by Symphorianus Champerius
(a. D. 1536) in an edition of the works of Dionysius the Areopagite and
of Ignatius.
Funk seems to have shown (p. xx) that for this epistle he
used Palat. 150, for he reproduces the special blunders which appear in
this MS and are not likely to have been found in another.