Prefatory
Note.
————————————
Except
for such valuable
help—chiefly however in the way of comment and
explanation—as Canon Bright’s volume (S. Leo on the
Incarnation) has supplied, both the selection and the translation of
the Letters and Sermons of Leo Magnus are practically original.
It is even more difficult to feel satisfied oneself, than to satisfy
others either with a selection from a great man’s works or with a
translation of them. The powers of Leo as a preacher both of
doctrine and of practice are very remarkable, and in my anxiety to keep
within the limits imposed by the publishers, I have erred in presenting
too few rather than too many of the Sermons to the English
reader. Only those that are generally held genuine are
represented, though several of the doubtful ones are fine sermons, and
those translated are in most cases no better than those omitted.
Even when the same thought is repeated again and again (as is often the
case), it is almost always clothed in such different language, and
surrounded with so many other thoughts of value, that every sermon has
an almost equal claim to be selected.
With regard to the Letters, the series connected with
the Eutychian controversy—the chief occupation of Leo’s
episcopate—is given nearly complete, whereas only specimens of
his mode of dealing with other matters have been selected for
presentation. With one or two exceptions, however, I feel more
confident about the Letters than about the Sermons that the omitted are
less important than the included. I wish I could make even a
similar boast about the merits of the translation.
The text rendered is for the most part that of the
Ballerinii as given by Migne (Patrologie, Vol. LIV.), though a more
critical edition is much to be desired.
Charles
Lett
Feltoe
.
Fornham
All
Saints’
,
Eastertide
, 1894.