[3] Tome i., p. 885. Edit. Paris, 1719.
[4] This will account for some few slight and unimportant verbal variations from the original Latin edition in the present English translation, which, though it has been compared with the Latin, has been made from the Italian version.
[5] Many other editions were afterwards printed in Italy and elsewhere, which are not mentioned by Echard.
[6] Page 339. Edit. Paris, 1879.
[7] An imperfect edition in English appeared in 1661. A copy is to be found in the Cambridge University Library. It was “printed by John Field, printer to the University, Cambridge,” under the title, “The Truth of the Christian Faith; or, The Triumph of the Cross, by Hieronymus Savonarola, done into English out of the author’s own Italian copy”; and it was dedicated “To the much honoured Francis S. John, Esq.”.
[8] The alphabetical Index at the end of this translation is not found in either the Latin or the Italian edition. It is added for the convenience of the English reader.
[9] Page 235.
[10] Heb. xiii. 8.
[11] Isa. lix. 21.
[12] In addition to the instances which I shall give later on, the reader will look in vain in Mr. Travers Hill’s translation for the reference to “the blessed Mother of God, the Virgin Mary,” the “Host,” “Chalice,” “Mary,” and “Relics,” which will be found in chapter ii. of the First Book in this translation (and in the original, which Mr. Hill professes to reproduce in English). In the following chapter he will also fail to find Savonarola’s words about “Virgins,” “the Eucharist,” “the Veneration of the Cross,” and “the reverence due to Mary and the Saints”. In the eleventh chapter of the Second Book the subjects of cloistral-life, fasting and watching, and the three vows of religious, which are found in the original, are suppressed in the “translation”. In the thirteenth chapter of the same Book, after the words “born of the Virgin Mary,” the author adds, “Whom He wishes to be reverenced (quam vult adorari) as the true Mother of God”; the translator omits the words. Later on, in the same chapter, Savonarola, writing of the Blessed Sacrament—“My Body and Blood under the appearance of bread and wine”—says: “They shall most devoutly venerate It”. (In the Italian edition Savonarola expresses it “they shall adore It as God”), not so the “translator”; nor does he insert Savonarola’s words: “My Virgin Mother shall be honoured,” which immediately follow the reference to the Blessed Sacrament. The profession of faith in the Roman Catholic Church, which the reader of this volume will find at the end of the tenth chapter of the Third Book, and which begins: “Therefore, the Catholic faith most fittingly,” etc. ([see page 127]), is ignored completely by Mr. Hill, but is found word for word in Savonarola’s original work. In one place ([Book ii., chap. xiii.]) the words, relating to the Eucharist: “In Ipsius Corpus et Sanguinem transmutari” are rendered “represent His body and blood”!