Some Papists number it among the apocryphal writings.
Some Papists number it among the apocryphal writings.
§ 204. [VI] It is numbered in the Apocrypha by some Papists. In De verbo Dei, bk. 1, c. 7, § 1, Bellarmine grants us the support of four Papist writers: “Dionysius the Carthusian, Cardinal Hugh [of St. Cher], Thomas de Vio Cajetan, and Sixtus Senensis.” (To the last of these, Stapleton in Princip. doctrinalium, bk. 9, last chapter, gives this praise: “He wrote most carefully of all about the canonical and apocryphal books.” And Bellarmine claims in De verbo Dei, bk. 2, c. 10, § 4, that “he wishes to imitate his care.”) Bellarmine’s words read as follows:
We do not lack those who claimed that the Book of Esther must indeed be counted among the sacred books. They have denied, however, that those last chapters are genuine parts of this book because they are not in the Hebrew texts. They considered them as alien impurities to be cut from the rest of the corpus. From his preface we conclude that Jerome was of this opinion. Jerome was followed, before the Council of Trent, by Nicolaus of Lyra, Dionysius Carthusianus, and Cardinals Hugh [of St. Cher] and Thomas de Vio in their commentaries on this book; and after that council by Sixtus Senensis, Biblioth., bks. 1 and 8.
We shall here transcribe the actual words of Sixtus Senensis from Biblioth., bk. 1, sect. 3, because they are very emphatic:
It comes to mind (he says) here both to admonish and to encourage the devout and benevolent reader not to accuse me of rashness, that I have torn these last chapters out of the canon and have put them into this last rank of the apocryphal writings, as if I had forgotten the holy Council of Trent, which commands under threat of its anathema that all the books be accepted in their entirety, just as they were accustomed to be read in the Catholic Church and as they are contained in the ancient Vulgate edition. You see, this canon must be understood in regard to the true and genuine parts, which pertain to the integrity of the books, but not in regard to some mutilated appendices and tattered additions rashly attached and haphazardly patched together by some unknown author or other. Such are the last chapters of this book, which Cardinal Hugh [of St. Cher], Nicolaus of Lyra, Dionysius Carthusianus, and other more recent interpreters deny are canonical. (Note: Besides these, then, more Papist writers support our opinion.) Also, Jerome cuts them out of the entire volume of Esther as a faulty part and, to use his own words, as made up of ragged edges of words from those things that could have been said and heard on the spur of the moment, as students in schools have the custom of taking a plot and then thinking up what words could be used to say who suffered injustice and who perpetrated the injustice.
So much for Sixtus. But to those four Papist writers whose support he grants us, Bellarmine ought to have added Benedictus Arias Montanus and Johannes Driedo, who say the same as the writers listed.