Theological Dissertation on the Theologoumena of Macarius Magnes

they are not, however, all of those which were left by Cardinal BessarionThe OCR reads "Benevone", but the context of the Marciana library and historical scholarship points to Cardinal Bessarion. to the Most Serene Republic, because many of the best are found transported to Spain and deposited in the Royal Library at the Escorial, stolen by a wicked and infamous Spanish Ambassador named Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. Having obtained courteous permission from the lords to whom the care of the library was entrusted to enter and leave at his pleasure to read and study, and not being watched by ministers—for such baseness was not suspected in a man of his condition—he removed the manuscripts from the chained tables on several different occasions and replaced them with scrap paper. He carried off the good and the best ones, without anyone noticing it for that time, and for some time afterward; nor would the theft committed by him have been believed by chance, if the act itself had not revealed it, and it does not reveal it still, and for now and for always, with his eternal infamy, while one sees the manuscripts with the name and sign of Bessarion in the library of the Escorial. 1)

Since, therefore, I saw that no hope was left for me to bring the complete work of the Apokritikos out of the darkness, I have armed myself again with those many fragments of it which I had collected from the three manuscript codices of NICEPHORUS, Patriarch of Constantinople, and from another Italian manuscript codex of Cardinal Ottoboni. I have sought to weave together in two sections the theological and polemical treatment of these fragments, whose historical and critical notice I had provided in the prior Dissertation. The first section will deal with the dogmas proposed or defended by Macarius Magnes, and the second section will distinguish the errors and blemishes imputed to him, whether truly or falsely. However, since the circumscribed limits of a disputation have not been sufficient to set forth each dogmatic argument, and since the most serious doctrines regarding Faith and Justification still remain, as well as regarding the Eucharist—which is to be defended from the words of Macarius Magnes no less against the Papists than the Reformed—and likewise regarding the Resurrection and eternal life, these shall first occupy a place in the forthcoming Dissertation III. This will simultaneously conclude Section II, regarding the errors and blemishes of Manichaeism, Arianism, Origenism, and Nestorianism, of which Macarius Magnes was accused.

1. Let there be compared also the Bibliotheca Hispaniae of ANDR. SCHOTTUS, p. 543 et seq.