On the Soul and Body and the Passion of the Lord. ¹

Many writings of the ancients, as Cardinal Mai has remarked, may be disinterred from the Oriental manuscripts in the Vatican library, some of which have been brought to light by that eminent scholar. In an Arabic ms. he discovered a large portion of the following discourse by St. Alexander, the patriarch of Alexandria, which he afterwards met with entire in the Syrian Vatican manuscript 368. The Greek version being lost, Mai, with the assistance of the erudite Maronites, Matthaeus Sciahuanus, and Franciscus Mehasebus, translated the discourse into Latin, and his version has been chiefly followed in the following translation. Of its genuineness there is no doubt, and it is quite worthy of a place among his other writings. ↩