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ATHANASIUS DE INCARNATIONE An Edition of the Greek Text - 1939 - PREFACE Tm present edition of the De I. ncarwti0n. e is an almost exact reproduction of the Codex Seguerianus S Coisl. gr. 45, now in the Bibliothsque Nationale. It may seem strange that a text printed to-day should differ so little from that contained in the second 1893 and subsequent editions of A. Robertson l for, as Patristic scholars are well aware, little short of a revolution has taken place within the last few years in our knowledge of the textual history of the Athanasian writings, and it might have been expected that the large body of new evidence brought to light by the researches preliminary to the monumental edition of the Prussian Academy now in progress must needs be reflected in a fresh edition of a particular treatise. But after considerable hesitation it was decided to adhere closely to the MS. which was also for Robertson the standard MS. It seemed certainly rash, and no less certainly unprofitable, to attempt the construction of a new text of a single treatise in isolation. One thing is certain. It is not possible to repeat today the confident language concerning the supremacy 1 In his first edition 1882, A. Robertson merely reprinted the text of Montfauoon 1698. v of S that Robertson used in 1893. Dr. H. G. Opitz has shown in his important Untersuchungen zur berlieferung der Schriften des Athanasizcs 1935 that very high authority attaches to other MSS. which, in common with S, represent what may for brevity be termed the Benedictine text, and that, at any rate in its text of the Ep. ad Epictetum, S is a fusion of the texts of B Basiliensis gr. A iii. 4 and Z the Athanasian corpus contained in theAnti-Chalcedonian Collection in Vat. gr. 1431 while the discoveries and investigations made by Professors J. Lebon, E. Lake and R. P. Casey in the last fifteen years make it more than a possibility that the widely divergent text of the Contra Gentes and the De Inmrnatione best attested in C Cod. Atheniensis, 428 is also-or, less probably, alone-the work of Athanasius. At any rate, as will be shown in the introduction to the annotated edition of this treatise, which should be ready for publication shortly, it was in the form of this Short Recension that these opusczcla were regularly quoted in the East from the middle of the fifth century onwards. The text of the present edition must not, therefore, be regarded as more than provisional. The MS. itself has been described by F. Wallis in the Jownal of Theological Studies, iii. 1901-2, pp. 100 ff., and more recently by Dr. H. G. Opitz in the treatise already cited, pp. 57 ff. In the present edition the folio 1 I. e. Opitzs C. The MS. that Robertson designated C Camb., Trin. Coll., B. 9. 7 is a quite inferior MS., to which Opitz in his list in his Unterswhungen attaches no symbol. The latter was the Anglicanus of the Commelin edition 1601. Preface vii references to the MS. have been added in the inner margin. The Editor desires to express his thanks to the Librarians who have consistently granted him ready access to Athanasian MSS. to the authorities of the BibliothGque Nationale for also making arrangements for a complete set of photographs of the folios of S containing the De Iwrnatione and to the readers of the Edinburgh University Press for their careful and intelligent revision of the proof-sheets. F. L. C. FLORENCE, Feast of theEpiphany, 1939. I...

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