[1734] “Itinerarium nomine Petri apostoli quod appellatur sancti Clementis libri octo apocryphum (or, apocryphi).”
[1735] Speculum naturale, XXXII, 129, concerning the morality of the Seres.
[1736] Compare Recognitions, I, 27 (PG, I, 122) with Rabanus, Comment. in Genesim, I, 2 (PL, 107, 450).
[1737] Speculum naturale, I, 7. Peter is represented as saying, “When anyone has derived from divine Scripture a sound and firm rule of truth, it will not be absurd if to the assertion of true dogma he joins something from the education and liberal studies which he may have pursued from boyhood. Yet so that in all points he teaches what is true and shuns what is false and pretense.” This corresponds to the close of the 42nd chapter of the tenth book of The Recognitions.
[1738] Since writing this I learn that Professor E. C. Richardson has examined most of the known MSS of The Recognitions and has found them all to be the version by Rufinus, except for a few additional chapters which someone has added in the French group of MSS,—chapters which Rufinus seems to have omitted because they were difficult to translate.
[1739] Heintze (1914), 23, however, argues that the conclusion of The Recognitions is dependent upon The Homilies.
[1740] Professor E. C. Richardson, after kindly reading this chapter in manuscript, writes me (Sept. 5, 1921) that he doubts if this Syriac MS is correctly described as three books of The Recognitions and four books of The Homilies, and that he thinks it may represent an earlier form in the evolution than either of them. He writes further, “I have a strong notion that a study of Greek MSS of the Epitomes will reveal still more variant forms in Greek, and there are certainly other oriental compilations not yet brought into comparison with the Greek, Latin, and Syriac forms.”
[1741] In The Homilies it is a trip only from Alexandria to Caesarea that consumes this number of days.
[1742] About 375 A.D. Epiphanius (Dindorf, II, 107-9) describes The Circuits in such a way that he might have either The Homilies or The Recognitions in mind. On the other hand, the Philocalia, composed about 358 by Basil and Gregory, cites a passage on astrology from the fourteenth book of The Circuits which is in the tenth book of The Recognitions and not in The Homilies at all.
[1743] Heintze (1914), p. 113.