Letters of Athanasius,
with Two Ancient Chronicles of
His Life.
————————————
The
Letters cannot be
arranged in strict sequence of time without breaking into the
homogeneity of the
corpus
of Easter Letters. Accordingly we
divide them into two parts: (1) all that remain of the Easter or Festal
Epistles: (2) Personal Letters. From the latter class we exclude
synodical or encyclical documents, or treatises merely inscribed to a
friend, such as those printed above pp. 91, 149, 173, 222, &c.,
&c., the
ad Serapionem, ad Marcellinum,
&c. There remain
a number of highly interesting letters, the survivals of what must have
been a large correspondence, all of which, excepting six (Nos. 52, 54,
56, 59, 60, 61), now appear in English for the first time. They are
arranged as nearly as possible in strict chronological order, though
this is in some cases open to doubt (e.g. 60, 64, &c.). They mostly
belong to the later half of the episcopate of Athanasius, and are
therefore placed after the Festal Collection, which however itself
extends to the end of the Bishop’s life. The immemorial numbering
of the latter collection is of course retained, although many of the
forty-five are no longer to be found.
Prefixed to the Letters are two almost
contemporary chronicles, the one preserved in the same
ms.
as Letters 46, 47, the other prefixed to the Syriac
ms.
, which is our sole channel for the bulk of
the Easter Letters. A memorandum appended to Letter 64 specifies
certain fragments not included in this volume. The striking fragment
Filiis suis
has been conjecturally placed among the remains of
Letter
29.
For the arrangement of the Letters, the reader is
referred to the general Table of Contents to this volume. We now
give
a. The
Historia Acephala
or Maffeian
fragment, with short introduction.
b. The Chronicon Prævium or
Festal
Index
, with introduction to it and to the Festal Letters.