FOOTNOTES
[1] See Introduction, Section I. Note 2, of this History.
[2] The Koran, in addition to the repeated assurances of Paradise to the martyr who falls in battle, contains the regulations of a precise military code. Military service in some shape or other is exacted from all. The terms to be prescribed to the enemy and the vanquished, the division of the spoil, the seasons of lawful truce, the conditions on which the comparatively small number of exempts are permitted to remain at home, are accurately defined. (Sale's Koran, chap. 2, 8, 9, et alibi.) When the algihed, or Mahometan crusade, which, in its general design and immunities, bore a close resemblance to the Christian, was preached in the mosque, every true believer was bound to repair to the standard of his chief. "The holy war," says one of the early Saracen generals, "is the ladder of Paradise. The Apostle of God styled himself the son of the sword. He loved to repose in the shadow of banners and on the field of battle."
[3] The successors, caliphs or vicars, as they were styled, of Mahomet, represented both his spiritual and temporal authority. Their office involved almost equally ecclesiastical and military functions. It was their duty to lead the army in battle, and on the pilgrimage to Mecca. They were to preach a sermon, and offer up public prayers in the mosques every Friday. Many of their prerogatives resemble those assumed anciently by the popes. They conferred investitures on the Moslem princes by the symbol of a ring, a sword, or a standard. They complimented them with the titles of "defender of the faith," "column of religion," and the like. The proudest potentate held the bridle of their mules, and paid his homage by touching their threshold with his forehead. The authority of the caliphs was in this manner founded on opinion no less than on power; and their ordinances, however frivolous or iniquitous in themselves, being enforced, as it were, by a divine sanction, became laws which it was sacrilege to disobey. See D'Herbelot, Bibliothèque Orientale, (La Haye, 1777-9,) voce Khalifah.
[4] The character of the Arabs before the introduction of Islam, like that of most rude nations, is to be gathered from their national songs and romances. The poems suspended at Mecca, familiar to us in the elegant version of Sir William Jones, and still more, the recent translation of "Antar," a composition indeed of the age of Al Raschid, but wholly devoted to the primitive Bedouins, present us with a lively picture of their peculiar habits, which, notwithstanding the influence of a temporary civilization, may be thought to bear great resemblance to those of their descendants at the present day.
[5] Startling as it may be, there is scarcely a vestige of any of the particulars, circumstantially narrated by the national historians (Mariana, Zurita, Abarca, Moret, etc.) as the immediate causes of the subversion of Spain, to be found in the chronicles of the period. No intimation of the persecution, or of the treason, of the two sons of Witiza is to be met with in any Spanish writer, as far as I know, until nearly two centuries after the conquest; none earlier than this, of the defection of Archbishop Oppas, during the fatal conflict near Xerez; and none of the tragical amours of Roderic and the revenge of count Julian, before the writers of the thirteenth century. Nothing indeed can be more jejune than the original narratives of the invasion. The continuation of the Chronicon del Biclarense, and the Chronicon de Isidoro Pacense or de Beja, which are contained in the voluminous collection of Florez, (España Sagrada, tom. vi. and viii.) afford the only histories contemporary with the event. Conde is mistaken in his assertion (Dominacion de los Arabes, Pról. p. vii.), that the work of Isidoro de Beja was the only narrative written during that period. Spain had not the pen of a Bede or an Eginhart to describe the memorable catastrophe. But the few and meagre touches of the contemporary chroniclers have left ample scope for conjectural history, which has been most industriously improved.
The reports, according to Conde, (Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. p. 36,) greedily circulated among the Saracens, of the magnificence and general prosperity of the Gothic monarchy, may sufficiently account for its invasion by an enemy flushed with uninterrupted conquests, and whose fanatical ambition was well illustrated by one of their own generals, who, on reaching the western extremity of Africa, plunged his horse into the Atlantic, and sighed for other shores on which to plant the banners of Islam. See Cardonne, Histoire de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne sous la Domination des Arabes, (Paris, 1765,) tom. i. p. 37.
[6] The laborious diligence of Masdeu may be thought to have settled the epoch, about which so much learned dust has been raised. The fourteenth volume of his Historia Crítica de España y de la Cultura Española (Madrid, 1783-1805) contains an accurate table, by which the minutest dates of the Mahometan lunar year are adjusted by those of the Christian era. The fall of Roderic on the field of battle is attested by both the domestic chroniclers of that period, as well as by the Saracens. (Incerti Auctoris Additio ad Joannem Biclarensem, apud Florez, España Sagrada, tom. vi. p. 430.—Isidori Pacensis Episcopi Chronicon, apud Florez, España Sagrada, tom. viii. p. 290.) The tales of the ivory and marble chariot, of the gallant steed Orelia and magnificent vestments of Roderic, discovered after the fight on the banks of the Guadalete, of his probable escape and subsequent seclusion among the mountains of Portugal, which have been thought worthy of Spanish history, have found a much more appropriate place in their romantic national ballads, as well as in the more elaborate productions of Scott and Southey.
[7] "Whatever curses," says an eye-witness, whose meagre diction is quickened on this occasion into something like sublimity, "whatever curses were denounced by the prophets of old against Jerusalem, whatever fell upon ancient Babylon, whatever miseries Rome inflicted upon the glorious company of the martyrs, all these were visited upon the once happy and prosperous, but now desolated Spain." Pacensis Chronicon, apud Florez, España Sagrada, tom. viii. p. 292.
[8] The frequency of this alliance may be inferred from an extraordinary, though, doubtless, extravagant statement cited by Zurita. The ambassadors of James II., of Aragon, in 1311, represented to the sovereign pontiff, Clement V., that, of the 200,000 souls, which then composed the population of Granada, there were not more than 500 of pure Moorish descent. Anales, tom. iv. fol. 314.
[9] The famous persecutions of Cordova under the reigns of Abderrahman II. and his son, which, to judge from the tone of Castilian writers, might vie with those of Nero and Diocletian, are admitted by Morales (Obras, tom. x. p. 74) to have occasioned the destruction of only forty individuals. Most of these unhappy fanatics solicited the crown of martyrdom by an open violation of the Mahometan laws and usages. The details are given by Florez, in the tenth volume of his collection.
[10] Bleda, Corónica de los Moros de España, (Valencia, 1618,) lib. 2, cap. 16, 17.—Cardonne, Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. i. pp. 83 et seq. 179.—Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, Pról., p. vii. and tom. i. pp. 29-54, 75, 87.—Morales, Obras, tom. vi. pp. 407-417; tom. vii. pp. 262- 264.—Florez, España Sagrada, tom. x. pp. 237-270.—Fuero Juzgo, Int. p. 40.
[11] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, part. 2, cap. 1-46.
[12] Ibid., ubi supra.—Masdeu, Historia Crítica, tom. xiii. pp. 178, 187.
[13] The same taste is noticed at the present day, by a traveller, whose pictures glow with the warm colors of the east. "Aussi dès que vous approchez, en Europe ou en Asie, d'une terre possédée par les Musulmans, vous la reconnaissez de loin au riche et sombre voile de verdure qui flotte gracieusement sur elle:—des arbres pour s'asseoir à leur ombre, des fontaines jaillissantes pour rêver à leur bruit, du silence et des mosquées aux légers minarets, s'élevant à chaque pas du sein d'une terre pieuse." Lamartine, Voyage en Orient, tome i. p. 172.
[14] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. pp. 199, 265, 284, 285, 417, 446, 447, et alibi.—Cardonne, Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. i. pp. 227-230 et seq.
[15] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. pp. 211, 212, 226.— Swinburne, Travels through Spain, (London, 1787,) let. 35.—Xerif Aledris, conocido por El Nubiense, Descripcion de España, con Traduccion y Notas de Conde, (Madrid, 1799,) pp. 161, 162.—Morales, Obras, tom. x. p. 61.— Chénier, Recherches Historiques sur les Maures, et Histoire de l'Empire de Maroc, (Paris, 1787,) tom. ii. p. 312.—Laborde, Itinéraire, tome iii. p. 226.
[16] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. pp 214, 228, 270, 611.— Masdeu, Historia Crítica, tom. xiii. p. 118.—Cardonne, Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. i. pp. 338-343.—Casiri quotes from an Arabic historian the conditions on which Abderrahman I. proffered his alliance to the Christian princes of Spain, viz. the annual tribute of 10,000 ounces of gold, 10,000 pounds of silver, 10,000 horses, etc., etc. The absurdity of this story, inconsiderately repeated by historians, if any argument were necessary to prove it, becomes sufficiently manifest from the fact, that the instrument is dated in the 142d year of the Hegira, being a little more than fifty years after the conquest. See Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana Escurialensis, (Matriti, 1760,) tom. ii. p. 104.
[17] Hist. Naturalis, lib. 33, cap. 4.
[18] Introduction à l'Histoire Naturelle de l'Espagne, traduite par Flavigny, (Paris, 1776,) p. 411.
[19] See a sensible essay by the Abbé Correa da Serra on the husbandry of the Spanish Arabs, contained in tom. i. of Archives Littéraires de l'Europe, (Paris, 1804.)—Masdeu, Historia Crítica, tom. xiii. pp. 115, 117, 127, 131.—Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. cap. 44.—Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. i. p. 338.
An absurd story has been transcribed from Cardonne, with little hesitation, by almost every succeeding writer upon this subject. According to him, (Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. i. p. 338,) "the banks of the Guadalquivir were lined with no less than twelve thousand villages and hamlets." The length of the river, not exceeding three hundred miles, would scarcely afford room for the same number of farm-houses. Conde's version of the Arabic passage represents twelve thousand hamlets, farms, and castles, to have "been scattered over the regions watered by the Gaudalquivir;" indicating by this indefinite statement nothing more than the extreme populousness of the province of Andalusia.
[20] Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. pp. 38, 202.—Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, part. 2, cap. 88.
[21] Storia della Letteratura Italiana, (Roma, 1782-97,) tom. iii. p. 231.—Turner, History of the Anglo-Saxons, (London, 1820,) vol. iii. p. 137.—Andres, Dell' Origine, de' Progressi e dello Stato Attuale d'Ogni Letteratura, (Venezia, 1783,) part. 1, cap. 8, 9.—Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 149.—Masdeu, Historia Critica, tom. xiii. pp. 165, 171.—Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, part. 2, cap. 93.—Among the accomplished women of this period, Valadata, the daughter of the caliph Mahomet, is celebrated as having frequently carried away the palm of eloquence in her discussions with the most learned academicians. Others again, with an intrepidity that might shame the degeneracy of a modern blue, plunged boldly into the studies of philosophy, history, and jurisprudence.
[22] Garibay, Compendio, lib. 39, cap. 3.
[23] Zurita, Anales, lib. 20, cap. 42.
[24] L. Marineo, Cosas Memorables, fol. 169.
[25] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. ii. p. 147.—Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. pp. 248 et seq.—Pedraza, Antiguedad y Excelencias de Granada, (Madrid, 1608,) lib. 1.—Pedraza has collected the various etymologies of the term Granada, which some writers have traced to the fact of the city having been the spot where the pomegranate was first introduced from Africa; others to the large quantity of grain in which its vega abounded; others again to the resemblance which the city, divided into two hills thickly sprinkled with houses, bore to a half-opened pomegranate. (Lib. 2, cap. 17.) The arms of the city, which were in part composed of a pomegranate, would seem to favor the derivation of its name from that of the fruit.
[26] Pedraza, Antiguedad de Granada, fol. 101.—Denina, Delle Rivoluzioni d'Italia, (Venezia, 1816,) Capmany y Montpalau, Memorias Históricas sobre la Marina, Comercio, y Artes de Barcelona, (Madrid, 1779-92,) tom. iii. p. 218; tom. iv. pp. 67 et seq.—Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. cap. 26.—The ambassador of the emperor Frederic III., on his passage to the court of Lisbon in the middle of the fifteenth century, contrasts the superior cultivation, as well as general civilization, of Granada at this period with that of the other countries of Europe through which he had travelled. Sismondi, Histoire des Républiques Italiennes du Moyen-Age, (Paris, 1818,) tom. ix. p. 405.
[27] Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. pp. 250-258.—The fifth volume of the royal Spanish Academy of History contains an erudite essay by Conde on Arabic money, principally with reference to that coined in Spain, pp. 225-315.
[28] A specification of a royal donative in that day may serve to show the martial spirit of the age. In one of these, made by the king of Granada to the Castilian sovereign, we find twenty noble steeds of the royal stud, reared on the banks of the Xenil, with superb caparisons, and the same number of scimitars richly garnished with gold and jewels; and, in another, mixed up with perfumes and cloth of gold, we meet with a litter of tame lions. (Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. pp. 163, 183.) This latter symbol of royalty appears to have been deemed peculiarly appropriate to the kings of Leon. Ferreras informs us that the ambassadors from France at the Castilian court, in 1434, were received by John II. with a full-grown domesticated lion crouching at his feet. (Hist. d'Espagne, tom. vi. p. 401.) The same taste appears still to exist in Turkey. Dr. Clarke, in his visit to Constantinople, met with one of these terrific pets, who used to follow his master, Hassan Pacha, about like a dog.
[29] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. cap. 28.—Henriquez del Castillo (Crónica, cap. 138,) gives an account of an intended duel between two Castilian nobles, in the presence of the king of Granada, as late as 1470. One of the parties, Don Alfonso de Aguilar, failing to keep his engagement, the other rode round the lists in triumph, with his adversary's portrait contemptuously fastened to the tail of his horse.
[30] It must be admitted, that these ballads, as far as facts are concerned, are too inexact to furnish other than a very slippery foundation for history. The most beautiful portion perhaps of the Moorish ballads, for example, is taken up with the feuds of the Abencerrages in the latter days of Granada. Yet this family, whose romantic story is still repeated to the traveller amid the ruins of the Alhambra, is scarcely noticed, as far as I am aware, by contemporary writers, foreign or domestic, and would seem to owe its chief celebrity to the apocryphal version of Cinés Perez de Hyta, whose "Milesian tales," according to the severe sentence of Nic. Antonio, "are fit only to amuse the lazy and the listless." (Bibliotheca Nova, tom. i. p. 536.)
But, although the Spanish ballads are not entitled to the credit of strict historical documents, they may yet perhaps be received in evidence of the prevailing character of the social relations of the age; a remark indeed predicable of most works of fiction, written by authors contemporary with the events they describe, and more especially so of that popular minstrelsy, which, emanating from a simple, uncorrupted class, is less likely to swerve from truth, than more ostentatious works of art. The long cohabitation of the Saracens with the Christians, (full evidence of which is afforded by Capmany, (Mem. de Barcelona, tom. iv. Apend. no. 11,) who quotes a document from the public archives of Catalonia, showing the great number of Saracens residing in Aragon even in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the most flourishing period of the Granadian empire,) had enabled many of them confessedly to speak and write the Spanish language with purity and elegance. Some of the graceful little songs, which are still chanted by the peasantry of Spain in their dances, to the accompaniment of the castanet, are referred by a competent critic (Conde, De la Poesía Oriental, MS.) to an Arabian origin. There can be little hazard, therefore, in imputing much of this peculiar minstrelsy to the Arabians themselves, the contemporaries, and perhaps the eye- witnesses, of the events they celebrate.
[31] Casiri (Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 259) has transcribed a passage from an Arabian author of the fourteenth century, inveighing bitterly against the luxury of the Moorish ladies, their gorgeous apparel and habits of expense, "amounting almost to insanity," in a tone which may remind one of the similar philippic by his contemporary Dante, against his fair countrywomen of Florence.—Two ordinances of a king of Granada, cited by Conde in his History, prescribed the separation of the women from the men in the mosques; and prohibit their attendance on certain festivals, without the protection of their husbands or some near relative.—Their femmes savantes, as we have seen, were in the habit of conferring freely with men of letters, and of assisting in person at the academical séances.—And lastly, the frescoes alluded to in the text represent the presence of females at the tournaments, and the fortunate knight receiving the palm of victory from their hands.
[32] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. p. 340; tom. iii. p. 119.
[33] Casiri, on Arabian authority, computes it at 200,000 men. Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. i. p. 338.
[34] Pulgar, Reyes Católicos, p. 250.
[35] Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. p. 169.—These ruined fortifications still thickly stud the border territories of Granada; and many an Andalusian mill, along the banks of the Guadayra and Guadalquivir, retains its battlemented tower, which served for the defence of its inmates against the forays of the enemy.
[36] D'Herbelot, (Bib. Orientale, tom. i. p. 630,) among other authentic traditions of Mahomet, quotes one as indicating his encouragement of letters, viz. "That the ink of the doctors and the blood of the martyrs are of equal price." M. OElsner (Des Effets de la Religion de Mohammed, Paris, 1810) has cited several others of the same liberal import. But such traditions cannot be received in evidence of the original doctrine of the prophet. They are rejected as apocryphal by the Persians and the whole sect of the Shiites, and are entitled to little weight with a European.
[37] When the caliph Al Mamon encouraged, by his example as well as patronage, a more enlightened policy, he was accused by the more orthodox Mussulmans of attempting to subvert the principles of their religion. See Pococke, Spec. Hist. Arabum, (Oxon. 1650,) p. 166.
[38] Andres, Letteratura, part. 1, cap. 8, 10.—Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. pp. 71, 251, et passim.
[39] Casiri mentions one of these universal geniuses, who published no less than a thousand and fifty treatises on the various topics of Ethics, History, Law, Medicine, etc.! Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 107. —See also tom. i. p. 370; tom. ii. p. 71 et alibi.—Zuñiga, Annales de Sevilla, p. 22.—D'Herbelot, Bib. Orientale, voce Tarikh.—Masdeu, Historia Crítica, tom. xiii. pp. 203, 205.—Andres, Letteratura, part. 1, cap. 8.
[40] Consult the sensible, though perhaps severe, remarks of Degerando on Arabian science. (Hist. de la Philosophie, tom. iv. cap. 24.)—The reader may also peruse with advantage a disquisition on Arabian metaphysics in Turner's History of England, (vol. iv. pp. 405-449.—Brucker, Hist. Philosophiae, tom. in. p. 105.)—Ludovicus Vives seems to have been the author of the imputation in the text. (Nic. Antonio, Bibliotheca Vetus, tom. ii. p. 394.) Averroes translated some of the philosophical works of Aristotle from the Greek into Arabic; a Latin version of which translation was afterwards made. Though D'Herbelot is mistaken (Bib. Orientale, art. Roschd) in saying that Averroes was the first who translated Aristotle into Arabic; as this had been done two centuries before, at least, by Honain and others in the ninth century, (see Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. i. p. 304,) and Bayle has shown that a Latin version of the Stagirite was used by the Europeans before the alleged period. See art. Averroes.
[41] Sprengel, Histoire de la Médecine, traduite par Jourdan, (Paris, 1815,) tom. ii. pp. 263 et seq.
[42] Degerando, Hist. de la Philosophie, tom. iv. ubi supra.
[43] Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 9.—Andres, Letteratura, part. 1, cap. 10.
[44] Letteratura Italiana, tom. v. p. 87.
[45] The battle of Crécy furnishes the earliest instance on record of the use of artillery by the European Christians; although Du Cange, among several examples which he enumerates, has traced a distinct notice of its existence as far back as 1338. (Glossarium ad Scriptores Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, (Paris, 1739,) and Supplément, (Paris, 1766,) voce Bombarda.) The history of the Spanish Arabs carries it to a much earlier period. It was employed by the Moorish king of Granada at the siege of Baza, in 1312 and 1325. (Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. cap. 18.—Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 7.) It is distinctly noticed in an Arabian treatise as ancient as 1249; and, finally, Casiri quotes a passage from a Spanish author at the close of the eleventh Century, (whose MS., according to Nic. Antonio, though familiar to scholars, lies still entombed in the dust of libraries,) which describes the use of artillery in a naval engagement of that period between the Moors of Tunis and of Seville. Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 8.—Nic, Antonio, Bibliotheca Vetus, tom. ii. p. 12.
[46] Petrarch complains, in one of his letters from the country, that "jurisconsults and divines, nay his own valet, had taken to rhyming; and he was afraid the very cattle might begin to low in verse;" apud De Sade, Mémoires pour la Vie de Pétrarque, tom. iii. p. 243.
[47] Andres, Letteratura, part. 1, cap. 11.—Yet this popular assertion is contradicted by Reinesius, who states, that both Homer and Pindar were translated into Arabic by the middle of the eighth century. See Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, (Hamb. 1712-38,) tom. xii. p. 753.
[48] Sir William Jones, Traité sur la Poésie Orientale, sec. 2.—Sismondi says that Sir W. Jones is mistaken in citing the history of Timour by Ebn. Arabschah, as an Arabic epic. (Littérature du Midi, tom. i. p. 57.) It is Sismondi who is mistaken, since the English critic states that the Arabs have no heroic poem, and that this poetical prose history is not accounted such even by the Arabs themselves.
[49] It would require much more learning than I am fortified with, to enter into the merits of the question, which has been raised respecting the probable influence of the Arabian on the literature of Europe. A. V. Schlegel, in a work of little bulk, but much value, in refuting with his usual vivacity the extravagant theory of Andres, has been led to conclusions of an opposite nature, which may be thought perhaps scarcely less extravagant. (Observations sur la Langue et la Littérature Provençales, p. 64.) It must indeed seem highly improbable that the Saracens, who, during the Middle Ages, were so far superior in science and literary culture to the Europeans, could have resided so long in immediate contact with them, and in those very countries indeed which gave birth to the most cultivated poetry of that period, without exerting some perceptible influence upon it. Be this as it may, its influence on the Castilian cannot reasonably be disputed. This has been briefly traced by Conde in an "Essay on Oriental Poetry," Poesia Oriental, whose publication he anticipates in the Preface to his "History of the Spanish Arabs," but which still remains in manuscript. (The copy I have used is in the library of Mr. George Ticknor.) He professes in this work to discern in the earlier Castilian poetry, in the Cid, the Alexander, in Berceo's, the arch-priest of Hita's, and others of similar antiquity, most of the peculiarities and varieties of Arabian verse; the same cadences and number of syllables, the same intermixture of assonances and consonances, the double hemistich and prolonged repetition of the final rhyme. From the same source he derives much of the earlier rural minstrelsy of Spain, as well as the measures of its romances and seguidillas; and in the Preface to his History, he has ventured on the bold assertion, that the Castilian owes so much of its vocabulary to the Arabic, that it may be almost accounted a dialect of the latter. Conde's criticisms, however, must be quoted with reserve. His habitual studies had given him such a keen relish for Oriental literature, that he was, in a manner, denaturalized from his own.
[50] Byron's beautiful line may seem almost a version of Conde's Spanish text, "sucesos de armas y de amores con muy estraños lances y en elegante estilo."—Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. p. 457.
[51] Sismondi, in his Littérature du Midi, (tom. i. pp. 267 et seq.), and more fully in his Républiques Italiennes, (tom. xvi. pp. 448 et seq.), derives the jealousy of the sex, the ideas of honor, and the deadly spirit of revenge, which distinguished the southern nations of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, from the Arabians. Whatever be thought of the jealousy of the sex, it might have been supposed that the principles of honor and the spirit of revenge might, without seeking further, find abundant precedent in the feudal habits and institutions of our European ancestors.
[52] "Quas perversivnes potius, quam versiones meritó dixeris." Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. i. p. 266.