§ 8. MSS., ETC.

The earliest MS. of the Demonstratio is the Codex known as the Medicean or "Parisinus 469," of the twelfth century, - xx -xiii registered in the Catalogue of the Library of Paris, vol. ii. p. 65. It is deficient at the beginning and end, beginning with the words η παιδισκη σοι, p. 17, and ending at της σωτηρος ημων παρακελευσεως, p. 688. These deficiencies were supplied by J. A. Fabricius in his Delectus argumentorum et syllabus scriptorum, qui veritatem religionis Christianae adversos atheos . . . asseruerunt, who used a copy that had been made by Stephen Bergler, at Hamburg, in 1725, from a MS. in the possession of Nicholas Mavrocordato, Prince of Wallachia, who collected many Greek MSS. from Mount Athos and other monasteries. The MS. was unfortunately lost at the death of the Prince. Bergler gave no information about its age or condition. It was almost certain that it was either derived from Parisinus 469 before its mutilation, or from a MS. of the same family.

There are four other MSS. of the Demonstratio at Paris, parchments of the sixteenth century numbered 470, 471, 472 and 473 in the Catalogue, vol. ii. pp. 65, 66. And there is at St. John's College, Oxford, a parchment MS. of the fifteenth century (No. 41 in the Catalogue of O. Coxius, p. 12). As all these have the same deficiencies, there is little doubt that they come from the common source, Parisinus 469.

There is a sixth MS. in the Ambrosian Library, at Milan, of the fifteenth century, of the same family (Montfaucon in Bibliothcca Bibliothecarum, vol. i. p. 527). And a seventh was possessed by T. F. Mirandola, and was used by Donatus of Verona for his Latin version, first published at Rome in 1498.

Of the four later Paris MSS., 473 bears the date 1543, and was written at Venice (or 1533 according to Montfaucon, Diario Italico, p. 408) by Valeriano of Forli. One of the four was no doubt the foundation of Stephen's Paris edition of 1548.

The Oxford MS. was collated by Gaisford with this edition of Robert Stephen in 1548 with the minutest care. But in the opinion of Dindorf his work added little to the elucidation of the text, beyond the correction of a few slight mistakes of copying, the divergencies in the quotations from the LXX being probably changes made by later scribes in order to bring the quotations into agreement with the accepted text. - xx -xiv 

Dindorf's conclusion is that a satisfactory text is secured by the use of the Parisinus 469, on which his own edition (Teubner series) is based. It is, he says, comparatively free from the errors of transcribers, with the exception of some lacunae; (pp. 195 d, 210 a, 217 b), and from the frequent interpolations of the Praeparatio and the History, because the Demonstratio, having fewer readers, was seldom copied. There is, therefore, little room in the study of the text for conjectural emendation.

The first Edition of the Greek was that of Robert Stephen, 1548.

Viguier's Praeparatio was published at Paris in 1628, with the Demonstratio and other works of Eusebius, and the Latin translation of Donatus.

Gaisford's edition (2 vols., Oxford) appeared in 1852 with critical apparatus and the same Latin translation.

The Demonstratio forms vol. xxii. of the Greek Patrology of Migne (1857), who uses the Paris edition of 1628 with the same translation.

The most recent text is W. Dindorf's in the Teubner Series (Leipzig, 1867), from whose Preface the data of the above are drawn.

The Latin version of Donatus (Rome, 1498) was reprinted at Basle in 1542, 1549, 1559 and 1570, and with the Scholia of J. J. Grynaeus at Paris in 1587. It is remarkable for its omissions and alterations of passages doctrinally suspected.

The present translation is made from the text of Gaisford (Oxford, 1852), with reference to Migne.