4. Beginning (p. 222): ‘Salve Radulphe, ac cum salute puto te rediisse quod tibi opto ...’ breaking off at the end of the quire (p. 226): ‘... id licere facere docet Macrobius in Comen[tario edito]....’
⁂ These letters follow Colet’s Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, in the volume marked 355, in Corpus Christi College Library.
The Exposition is written in the handwriting of Colet’s scribe, Peter Meghen, the ‘monoculus Brabantinus,’ and there are corrections and alterations throughout, evidently by Colet himself.
The letters to Radulphus are merely bound with the other. Only two quires are now remaining: the handwriting is not the same, but similar.
[126] The following appears to be the passage Colet was about to quote: ‘Aut sacrarum rerum notio, sub figmentorum velamine, honestis et tecta rebus et vestita nominibus enuntiatur; et hoc est solum figmenti genus, quod cautio de divinis rebus admittit.’—In Somnium Scipionis, lib. i. c. 2. The ‘aut’ with which the sentence begins refers to its being an alternative of two kinds of mythical writing, about which Macrobius has been speaking. I am indebted to Mr. Lupton for this reference.
[127] The following passage from Mr. Lupton’s translation of Colet’s abstract of Dionysius’s De celesti Hierarchiâ (pp. 12, 13) will show that he may have derived some of his thoughts from that source. ‘Thus led he forth those uninstructed Hebrews, like boys, to school; in order that like children, playing with dolls and toys, they might represent in shadow what they were one day to do in reality as men: herein imitating little girls, who in early age play with dolls, the images of sons, being destined afterwards in riper years to bring forth real sons: ... “When I was a child,” says St. Paul, “I understood as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” From childishness and images and imitations Christ has drawn us, who has shone upon our darkness, and has taught us the truth, and has made us that believe to be men, in order that we, “with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, may be changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the spirit of the Lord.”’...
‘In these foreshadowings and signs, metaphors are borrowed from all quarters by Moses—a theologian and observer of nature of the deepest insight—inasmuch as there are not words proper to express the Divine attributes. For nothing is fitted to denote God Himself, who is not only unutterable but even inconceivable. Wherefore he is most truly expressed by negations; since you may state what He is not, but not what He is; for whatever positive statement you make concerning Him, you err, seeing that He is none of those things which you can say. Still because a hidden principle of the Deity resides in all things, on account of that faint resemblance, the sacred writers have endeavoured to indicate Him by the names of all objects, not only of the better but of the worse kind, lest the duller sort of people, attracted by the beauty of the fairer objects, should think God to be that very thing which He is called.’
The above is Colet’s amplification of the passage in Dionysius (chap. ii.). The latter part of it is a pretty close rendering of the original.
[128] ‘Heptaplus Johannis Pici Mirandulæ de Septiformi sex dierum Geneseos Enarratione.’
[129] The first edition is without date, but the publisher’s letter at the commencement, to Lorenzo de’ Medici, shows that it was published during the lifetime of the latter, i.e. before 1492—probably in 1490.