Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Prologue
From the Prophet and Evangelist of the Old Testament, namely Isaiah and the ancient Prophets, I pass to the Prophet and Evangelist of the New Testament: I mean Saint John, who alone stands forth in the new law as a Prophet, not of the shadows of the old, but of the light and truth of the Gospel, and who shall be a Prophet until the end of the world. For he himself, from the lofty watchtower of prophecy, foresaw and foretold from afar the last things and the end of the world. Indeed, that Saint John is to return at the end of the world and to prophesy was the opinion of grave Doctors of old, and even of some in this present age. For Saint Hippolytus, Bishop and Martyr — who, coming from Arabia for the sake of devotion to visit the thresholds of the Apostles, came to Rome under the Emperor Severus, was detained by Pope Callistus on account of his singular learning and sanctity, was made Bishop of Portus, and wrote many distinguished works; among them a Canon of times, which still exists, carved upon his marble statue, an outstanding and enormous one which, by reason of his writings, was erected to him and may still be seen in the Vatican Library; and at last, condemned to capital punishment by the jurist Ulpian, a fierce enemy of the Christians, he attained a glorious martyrdom in the year of the Lord 229 — Hippolytus, I say, in his book On the Consummation of the World, writes that Saint John shall come with Enoch and Elijah and shall fight against Antichrist. Saint Hippolytus has lately been followed by Ambrosius Catharinus in his treatise On the Consummated Glory of Christ, by our Alfonso Salmeron, and Sebastiano Barradio inclines that way in his comment on John 21:23: "Thus I will have him to remain till I come." For these maintain that Saint John, like Enoch and Elijah, has not yet died, and therefore has a mortal body, and shall preach against Antichrist, and shall be afflicted by him with martyrdom; yet meanwhile, by God's dispensation, he already sees God and enjoys Him. They prove this first from Saint John himself, Apocalypse 10:11, where he hears from God: "Thou must prophesy again to the Gentiles." If "again," they say, when, except at the second coming of Christ? Secondly, from his Gospel, ch. 21, v. 23, where Christ says and decides concerning John, addressing Peter: "So I will have him to remain till I come." Therefore, they say, John shall remain in this life until Christ comes to judgment. Thirdly, because the crown of martyrdom is due to John as much as to the rest of the Apostles, and was indeed promised by Christ in Matt. 20:23: "You shall drink," He says, "of My cup." But hitherto he has not been a Martyr. Therefore he shall become one through Antichrist. Finally, it is fitting that, just as John the Baptist preceded the first coming of Christ, so John the Evangelist should precede the second.
But that Saint John is dead is asserted by Saint Jerome, Eusebius, and almost all the ancients, indeed by the whole Church, which celebrates the feast of Saint John as one already dead, and as already reigning gloriously in heaven with Christ after the manner of the other Blessed, and publicly in the Litanies, on equal terms with the other Saints, venerates and invokes him. Add to this that in the Council of Ephesus it was decreed that the relics of the Holy Martyrs should be venerated, and most of all those of John the Theologian (who was Apostle and Bishop of Ephesus), and Pope Celestine made mention of these same relics in his letter to the Council of Ephesus. If his relics exist, therefore he is dead.
Therefore what is said to him in chapter 10 of the Apocalypse — "Thou must prophesy again to the Gentiles" — is to be understood thus: not that he shall prophesy at the end of the world, but that in the following chapters 12, 13, 14, and the rest down to the end of the Apocalypse, He commands him to prophesy to the Gentiles, as in fact he there prophesies to them.
But that passage of his Gospel, chapter 21 — "So I will have him to remain" — is the same as if He had said: "If I will have him to remain," as other codices read. For Christ speaks not by way of assertion, but conditionally, and that to repress Saint Peter's curious questioning: "Lord, but what shall this man do?"
Furthermore, when and how Saint John drank the cup of passion and martyrdom I shall presently tell.
Therefore Saint John is solely a Prophet in the Apocalypse, which I now for the fourth time set out to begin teaching and commenting upon, and, God granting, intend to explain in its entirety. How great is the sublimity and excellence of the Apocalypse beyond the other canonical Scriptures may be reckoned from three principal heads.
The first is the matter. For just as Saint John, in his Gospel, surpasses the other three Evangelists, because he almost alone treats expressly of the divinity of Christ, of the origin of the Word, of the procession and spiration of the Holy Spirit, of the most Holy Trinity, of His unity, of the relations, attributes, and the like — whence from him the Fathers drew nearly all their arguments against the Arians, Sabellians, Servetians, Macedonians, etc., as did the Scholastics the whole matter of the Trinity and of God three and one — so here in the Apocalypse, this same Saint John depicts in living colors the majesty of God seated upon the heavenly throne, of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, of the Holy Spirit many-eyed and manifold; the veneration of the Angels and the Blessed; the sealing of the predestined; the glory of the Martyrs and Virgins; and again the future persecutions of the Church, her successes and her triumphs unto Antichrist and the end of the world; the destruction of Babylon, the preaching and martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah, the perishing of Gog, Magog, and Antichrist, the eternal punishments of hell, the heavenly Jerusalem shining with gems and gold; and he sets these things before the eyes as though embodied and present, so that, as Saint Cyril says in his Preface to the Gospel of Saint John, he seems to measure heaven by a span and to be carried up by human humility into the highest things. Wherefore Saint Jerome, in book IX on Isaiah, near the end, asserts that the Apocalypse weaves together the inmost Sacraments of the Church. And Saint Dionysius, in the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, chapter iii, part III: "That secret," he says, "and altogether mystical vision of the beloved disciple, and the divine and most lofty Theology of the Lord Jesus, he expounds to those who are worthy to be made gods, and through the sacred mysteries he raises and confirms them." The Apocalypse therefore contains within itself both the marrow of Theology and, as it were, the kernel and soul of Christian philosophy and Evangelical doctrine.
The second is the order of time. We know that the Church, like the dawn and the sun, has grown by succession of time to the perfect day of the knowledge of the mysteries of the faith. For this reason the hagiographers of the New Testament write of these things far more clearly, plainly, distinctly, and loftily than Moses and the Prophets of the Old Testament. Last comes Saint John; last likewise of the Books of the Bible is the Apocalypse; therefore Saint John has set the final hand and crown upon the Gospels and upon Sacred Scripture by this Apocalypse. Richard of Saint Victor, in book VII, chapter 12, asserts that "this book is not only a Gospel, but also holds, as the last, so the highest place in Evangelical doctrine, and that in it Sacred Scripture has lifted up its summit after the manner of a tree." Wherefore the golden-mouthed Saint Chrysostom, in his Preface to the Gospel of Saint John: "John," he says, "most holy, full of admiration, overflowing with hidden wisdom, who confers so many and such great goods, that those who diligently and carefully receive and observe him are no longer to be reckoned as men and inhabitants of earth, but, set above all the goods of this world, are placed in the company of the angels, and dwell upon earth no otherwise than in heaven. For he is the son of thunder, most beloved of Christ, the pillar of all the Churches that are in the world (whence for this cause, the longest-lived among the Apostles, he ruled the Church down to the times of Trajan); he who holds the keys of heaven, who drank Christ's cup and was washed in the water of baptism, who reclined upon the Lord's breast with much confidence — he fashions no fables, walks not in disguise, makes no theatrical noise, is adorned with no golden vestment, but goes forth clad in a most pure stole, woven and adorned with the beauty of truth: whose stage is the whole heaven, whose theatre is the orb of the earth, whose spectators and hearers are all the angels and whosoever among men are angels or desire to become so. These alone can hear his harmony. For the very angels, Cherubim and Seraphim, have learned together with us through John's voice what we have come to know. For this is what Paul says: That the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to the Principalities and Powers in heavenly places through the Church. For to this Apostle the heavenly virtues drew near, admiring the beauty of his soul, his wisdom, and the appearance of the virtue through which he drew Christ Himself in. For as though making a kind of lyre adorned with precious stones and gold, plied by a golden plectrum, so by adorning his own soul he brought it about that through it the spirit might sound forth great and lofty things." These things and more Saint Chrysostom says scattered in that place.
The third is the author. For Saint John alone of all the Saints has merited the crowns of all: the laurel of the Doctors, the lily of the Virgins, the rose and purple of the Martyrs. For he is himself a Theologian — indeed the summit of Theologians — himself a Patriarch, himself a Prophet, himself an Apostle, himself an Evangelist, himself a Priest, himself a Pontiff, himself a Hierarch, himself a Virgin, himself a Martyr, himself an Angel — not by nature, but by purity and virtue. Hence in chapter 19, verse 10, when he saw a resplendent angel and wished to adore him, he heard from him: "See thou do it not; I am thy fellow-servant." A Virgin, I say, throughout his whole life, in which virtue he excelled both Isaiah and Saint Peter, who had been married. For Saint John never took a wife, neither at the wedding at Cana of Galilee — concerning which some thought of John 2 — nor anywhere else; but he came to Christ a virgin, and remained a virgin, as Saint Jerome, Augustine, and the ancients everywhere teach. Therefore, called to the Apostolate, he offered to Christ the unspoiled flower of his youth, and preserved it once offered; on which account, both for his other virtues and most especially for the merit of this angelic purity, John is called and was "the disciple whom Jesus loved," who was present at the Transfiguration and at all His more secret mysteries and miracles; who, reclining at the Last Supper upon the breast of Christ, drew thence all wisdom — for indeed a virgin loved a Virgin, and to a virgin a Virgin entrusted His own secrets, and revealed things hidden from the foundation of the world; nay even, while dying, He commended His virgin mother, as a most precious deposit, to a virgin. "Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God" — as much in this life by faith as in the other by sight.
I called him a Martyr, because, granted that the executioner did not cut off John's neck as he did Paul's, yet he himself underwent a long martyrdom for Christ — first, throughout his whole life; then, when, banished by the Emperor Domitian to the island of Patmos, he converted all the islanders to the faith of Christ; and finally, when he was truly and properly a Martyr, when here at Rome, before the Latin Gate, by command of the same Domitian he was cast into a cauldron of boiling oil and underwent the agony of death, but by a miracle came forth from it unharmed, more beautiful and more vigorous, and rose as it were brought back from the dead: namely because, since he was a virgin, he could not, like the three children in the Babylonian furnace, be burned or harmed by fire. The site of his martyrdom still stands here at Rome, marked by a chapel, on whose wall he himself is depicted in the cauldron of boiling oil, with this inscription: "John, Apostle, Evangelist, Prophet, and Martyr of Christ, came forth from the cauldron of boiling oil more vigorous." And on the opposite wall these verses are seen inscribed:
Here John, the athlete, drank the cup of martyrdom, / He who deserved to behold the Word at the Beginning. / The Proconsul beats him with a club, shears him with shears, / Whom boiling oil had no power to harm. / Here are stored the oil, the cauldron, the blood, and the hair, / Which are consecrated, illustrious Rome, to thee.
Whence it is plain that Saint John was also at that time scourged with rods, and shorn for the sake of ignominy, and banished into the exile of Patmos. Rome, then, can — and indeed ought to — glory in the martyrdom of Saint John as much as in that of Saint Peter and Paul. "Happy in its lot," says Tertullian, book On Prescription, chapter 36, "is the Church (of Rome), into which the Apostles poured forth all their doctrine with their blood: where Peter is matched in suffering with the Lord, where Paul is crowned with the same end as John the Baptist, where the Apostle John, after being plunged into fiery oil and suffering nothing, is banished to an island." And this is the cup which Christ proffered to him, saying: "You shall indeed drink of My cup." Wherefore Tertullian and other ancients call John a Martyr. Indeed John himself, Apocalypse 1:9: "I, John," he says, "your brother and partaker in tribulation, and in the kingdom, and patience in Christ Jesus, was in the island, which is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony (in Greek martyrion) of Jesus." I pass over that he was a Martyr when he stood by the cross of Christ with the Virgin Mother — both of Christ and his own — and the sword of sorrow pierced not his body but his soul, so that, by suffering and dying with Him, he might intimately feel the death of His Beloved — nay, by then his Brother: for he saw his own life dying upon the cross; there, then, he died together with his Christ.
Hence Saint Bernard, in his Lament of Blessed Mary, speaking of her and of Saint John when they stood by the cross of Christ, and she was commended by Christ to him as a mother to a son: "While He," he says, "was speaking these few words (Christ), those two beloved ones did not cease to pour forth tears. Both those two martyrs were silent, and from excess of sorrow could not speak. These two virgins heard Christ speaking with a hoarse and half-dead voice; they saw Him gradually dying." And presently: "They loved to weep, and they wept bitterly. Bitterly they wept, because bitterly they grieved. For the sword of Christ's death was passing through both their souls. It passed cruelly; cruelly it slew both."
Furthermore, among those four holy living creatures called Cherubim, and surrounding the chariot of God, which Ezekiel saw in chapter 1 and Saint John in Apocalypse 4, Saint Matthew is compared to a man, Mark to a lion, Luke to an ox, but Saint John to an eagle. For as Isaiah surpasses the other Prophets, so Saint John surpasses all the Evangelists in sublimity, and like an eagle he soars most loftily into heaven. Moses begins the creation of things and the Pentateuch from the beginning of the world and of time, saying: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth." Similarly, but higher — namely from the beginning, not of time, but of eternity — John begins his Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word." And, what is worthy of note as it is wonderful, Saint John, still living, saw the four living creatures and himself represented under the figure of an eagle in the empyrean heaven, standing by the throne of God, and amid the blessed minds incessantly praising God: "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty."
Wherefore this eulogy is rightly bestowed upon Saint John (which some likewise give to Saint Thomas Aquinas): "Most holy of the Doctors, and most learned of the Saints." For, as Saint Jerome says in his Preface to Matthew: "John, the Apostle and Evangelist, whom Jesus most greatly loved, who, reclining upon the Lord's breast, drank the purest streams of doctrines, and who alone from the cross deserved to hear: Behold thy mother."
Saint Augustine says further, tract 36 on John: "Saint John the Apostle, not without reason compared to an eagle, raised his preaching higher and far more sublimely than the other three (Evangelists), and in raising it willed that our hearts also should be raised. For the other three Evangelists, as though walking on earth with the Lord as Man, said little of His divinity: but this one, as though it were tedious for him to walk on earth, just as he thundered at the very beginning of his discourse, lifted himself up not only above the earth and above the whole compass of the air and of the heaven, but even above the whole army of angels and the whole constitution of invisible powers, and reached unto Him through whom all things were made, saying: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. To this so great loftiness of beginning he also preached the rest in keeping, and spoke of the Lord's divinity as no other has spoken: he belched forth what he had drunk. For not without cause is it told of him in this same Gospel that at the supper he reclined upon the Lord's breast. From that breast he had drunk in secret; but what he drank in secret he belched forth in the open, that there might reach all nations not only the incarnation of the Son of God, His passion and resurrection, but also that He was, before the incarnation, the Only-Begotten of the Father, the Word of the Father, coeternal with the One who begot Him, equal to Him by whom He was sent." Rightly therefore Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, writing to Saint John, names him the sun of the Gospel.
Finally, Saint John together with his brother James received from Christ a lofty name, namely Boanerges — that is, sons of thunder. "He sounds forth like a trumpet," says Saint Jerome in epistle 85 to Evagrius, "the son of thunder, whom Jesus loved most greatly, and who from the Savior's breast drank the streams of doctrines."
Wherefore, as the same Jerome says in his preface to Matthew, John, with a fast going before — Baronius adds from Metaphrastes that thunders and lightnings went before — as if a second Moses, thundered forth the new beginning of the new law: "In the beginning was the Word." John, says Saint Epiphanius, heresy 73, truly the son of thunder, by his own grandiloquence, as if out of certain clouds and out of the enigmas of wisdom, persuaded us to a pious understanding concerning the Son.
John, therefore, was "son of thunder," that is, thunder itself — just as the son of man is a man.
Again, he was a son of thunder, that is to say, a thunderbolt; for as from the mother's womb, by great straining and pain of childbirth, the son is brought forth and born, so from the violent collision of clouds and from the thunderclap the lightning bolt is brought forth and, as it were, brought to birth. Therefore there are two thunderbolts of the sacred war — not Scipiadae, but Zebediadae — thundering and flashing throughout the whole world and in every age.
This is what Ezekiel says of these four living creatures, chapter 1, verse 14: "The living creatures went and returned like flashes of lightning." Certainly in his Apocalypse we shall hear his frequent thunders and lightnings: an example of this thunderbolt-like zeal, though as yet immature, he gave, Luke 9:33, when, indignant at Christ being rejected by the Samaritans because He was a Jew, and clothing himself with the zeal of Elijah, he said with his brother James: "Lord, wilt Thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" He gave it more maturely when, as the pious Emperor Theodosius prayed before going to fight against the tyrant Eugenius, and implored aid from heaven, Saint John appeared together with Saint Philip, clad in white and seated upon a white horse, and announced to him battle with Eugenius and promised His own help and victory — which indeed he gave by a remarkable miracle, turning back the enemies' weapons upon themselves, as Theodoret relates, book V, chapter 24, and Nicephorus, book XII, chapter 39.
Of Saint Basil, Saint Nazianzen writes: "His speech was thunder, because his life was lightning." Such indeed ought a Prelate to be, such a Doctor, such a preacher, that his life should flash and his word should thunder; that he should strike and pierce more by example than by precept: let his life be lightning, and his speech will be thunder. Such, above all, was Saint John Boanerges: his speech was thunder, because his life was lightning. Wherefore he himself, like thunder and lightning striking the whole world, illumined it with the divinity and incarnation of the Word, and inflamed it with His love. Witness is that longest and last discourse of Christ from the supper, most full of spirit and ardor, which he received from Christ's bosom and poured out into the ears and minds of all, in chapters 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 of the Gospel. Witnesses are his epistles: "God," he says, "is charity, and he that abideth in charity, abideth in God, and God in him." Witness is his whole life, in which he breathed nothing in word or deed but the love of God and of neighbor; so much so that, when already quite decrepit and unable to compose words for longer speech, at each gathering of the Church he would say nothing else but: "Little children, love one another." And being asked by his disciples why he ceaselessly repeated the same thing, he replied: "Because it is the Lord's commandment, and, if it alone be fulfilled, it suffices," as Saint Jerome relates in chapter 6 on Galatians. Saint John, therefore, was the Cherub of God, the Benjamin of Christ, the adopted son of the Mother of God, the Eagle of the Evangelists, the Methuselah of the Apostles, the abyss of wisdom, the conflagration of charity, the emerald of integrity, a virgin without spot, a martyr without death, the asbestos in the fire, the sun of the Church, the delight of the faithful, the summit of the Theologians, the apex of the Prophets, the lightning of heaven, the thunder of the world, the Alpha and Omega of Sacred Scripture, the secretary of the eternal Word, the treasurer of all His riches and charisms.
Saint Bridget relates, in book VI of the Revelations, chapter 89, that, at the request of Master Matthias the Swede, who was commenting on the Apocalypse, she asked Christ who was the author of the Apocalypse, and that John, by Christ's command, replied: "I am John, to whom on the cross Thou didst commit Thy mother. Thou, Lord, didst inspire me with its mysteries, and I wrote it for the consolation of those to come, lest Thy faithful should be overthrown on account of the future calamities."
"Blessed is he that readeth and heareth the words of this prophecy, and keepeth those things which are written in it: for the time is at hand." In the Apocalypse, then, we shall continually and without ceasing be conversant with Him who sits upon the throne, with the Lamb, with the Angels, with the twenty-four elders, with the four holy living creatures, with the twelve thousand sealed from each tribe of Israel, and with the great multitude of the Gentiles, with the palm-bearing Martyrs, with the Virgins singing the new song, with the woman clothed with twelve stars and treading the moon under her feet, with Enoch and Elijah, with the Saints standing upon the sea of glass who have overcome the beast, holding the harps of God and singing the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb, above the lightnings and thunders in the new heaven and the new earth, in the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven; and there we shall taste the tree of life, and the Lamb shall lead us to the fountains of the waters of life, that we may here forestall and foretaste the blessed life of blessed minds, and by hearing and meditating contemplate it and emulate it, which we shall presently, with God for our guide, in very deed enter upon, that we may enjoy all these things for all eternity. This is what Saint John, from the mouth of Christ, wrote concerning the Apocalypse in chapter 1, verse 3.
Wherefore, given his such great sublimity and spirit, given the such great depth of the Apocalypse, that we may now hear and drink in our Boanerges, let us do what Saint Gregory, Bishop of Neocaesarea, did — surnamed Thaumaturgus on account of the multitude of his miracles, as Gregory of Nyssa relates of him in his Life — who, having been a disciple of the wandering Origen and having been made a Bishop, was wavering about doctrine then so controversial, and about the manner and method of doctrine; whereupon, in a dream, he was led by the Blessed Virgin to this our Saint John, who, having been given to him by her as instructor, handed him a Creed whose beginning is: "God is one"; which the Fifth Ecumenical Synod celebrates, and the whole Eastern Church: by which Creed he limpidly explains and embraces the most divine mysteries of the Gospel and the faith. Wherefore by this Creed he wiped from Gregory every cloud, removed every wavering. Let us likewise repeatedly entreat from him the same; for he himself by tears and prayers obtained from God the unsealing and declaration of the sealed book — that is, of the Apocalypse. For this is what he himself says in chapter 5, verse 3: "And no one was able, either in heaven or in earth, etc., to open the book; and I wept much, etc.; and one of the elders said to me: Weep not; behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, hath prevailed to open the book and to loose the seven seals thereof."
Thus to Saint Chrysostom as he prayed (as his Life records) Saint John appeared together with Saint Peter, clad in white, with an aspect more august than human, and, taking him by the hand, said: "We are sent to thee from Christ; receive the book, a gift sent to thee from God. I am John, Apostle and Evangelist, who reclined my head upon the Lord's breast. By this book thou shalt easily understand Sacred Scripture, and, with my help, shalt experience no difficulty in it"; and giving him the kiss of peace, he returned into heaven. This John did to John, whom as a disciple he illumined, and made into Chrysostom (the Golden-mouthed).
Look upon us from on high, O heavenly eagle, illumine our darkness, sharpen the edge of our mind, that with unaverted eyes we may be able to perceive and contemplate the splendor of the heavenly mysteries hidden in thy Apocalypse, and may set them forth for others to contemplate. Grant that, while reading and pondering these efficacious as well as sublime mysteries, we may be aroused to noble service and love of our God, that with thee, with our whole heart, with our whole soul, with our whole mind and spirit, we may love our Jesus, and in turn may merit to be singularly loved by Him, that we may likewise hear what thou hast heard and dost hear: "This is that disciple whom Jesus loved," loves, and forever shall love.
Obtain for us that, by the love of Jesus, we may die to the vain love of all creatures — vain, exiled, unstable, and falling as they are; for He Himself, for the love of our true love, deigned to die to all things and to His own life. Obtain that, by this strong and eternal love, we may bear nobly all things prosperous and adverse — all infirmities of body and soul, all want, all hardships, humiliations, contempts, persecutions, labors, adversities, mortifications, anguishes, nay even death and martyrdom — and indeed, glad and sportive, may overcome and transcend them, because "love is strong as death, jealousy hard as hell."
And that this may more easily come to pass, obtain for us the patronage of the Virgin mother of Jesus — indeed thy mother — that the Father may say to her: "Woman, behold thy Son"; and in turn to us: "Behold thy mother." For she is the mother of our love; she will bring forth Jesus in our heart. She is the conflagration of charity; she will make us burning with charity — beloved, brothers, indeed sons of her Jesus and ours, who is our life, our joy, our heart, our jubilee, our beatitude, our eternity, our God, our love, and all things.
Prefatory Questions on the Apocalypse
It is asked first, concerning the authority and the author of the Apocalypse: namely, whether it is a canonical book, by whom and when written. Some long ago doubted the authority of this book. The Marcionites and Alogians of old, on the testimony of Epiphanius, book II, heresy 31, and in our age Erasmus, Luther, and Calvin rejected the Apocalypse from the canon of Sacred Scripture. From their own Patriarchs, then, depart Augustine Marloratus and Beza, whom the modern Calvinists follow, who do receive it, in order to prove from it that the Roman Church is Babylon, and consequently that the Roman Pontiff is Antichrist — but wrongly, as I will show in the proper places. Furthermore, in their canonical interpretation they pierce out the eyes, and, blind with envy, that they may dig out one eye of the Pontiff and the other for themselves, in fact pluck out both. For their bondage of the will and faith-alone justification are plainly destroyed by the Apocalypse, and the liberty of the will, as well as the works and merits of charity and the other virtues, are plainly established by it.
Some Catholics also doubted. For "the Greek Churches (some of them, that is; for of many of them, Cardinals Baronius and Bellarmine show the contrary) do not receive the Apocalypse," says Saint Jerome, epistle 129 to Dardanus. Whence also Amphilochius, contemporary of Saint Basil, in his Catalogue of the canonical books, says: "The Apocalypse of John some include, but the greater part reject as spurious."
First I say: The Apocalypse is canonical Scripture. It is of faith, as is evident from the decree of the Roman Council under Damasus, and of the Council of Florence and the Council of Trent. Likewise from the Council of Ancyra, the Third Council of Carthage, and the Fourth Council of Toledo. Again from Innocent I, epistle 3 to Exuperius; Gelasius; St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine; Cassiodorus, Isidore, and others who weave together the canon of canonical books. For all these name and place the Apocalypse in it. Wherefore the ancients cite the Apocalypse as a canonical book. So do St. Dionysius, Justin, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, Athanasius, Chrysostom, Epiphanius, Cyprian, Hilary, Ambrose, Augustine, and others whom Pererius cites. See among others Cardinal Baronius, for the year of Christ ninety-seven, and Bellarmine, book I On the Word of God, chap. XIX.
Secondly I say: Although some — among whom is Dionysius of Alexandria in Eusebius, book VII, chap. XXV — attribute the Apocalypse to a John who is not the Apostle but another presbyter and disciple of Christ, who is called Theologus from this fact, nevertheless it is certain that the author of the Apocalypse is John the Apostle; for the Fathers already cited attribute it to him. Nor does it stand in the way that this book differs in style from the Gospel and epistles of St. John, because the matter here is altogether different, namely prophecy, which must be written in a different style than history or ethics. Secondly, it does not stand in the way that in Greek this book is inscribed: "The Apocalypse of John the Theologian," because the title of Theologus was applied to St. John on account of the sublimity of his doctrine, by which he discoursed most profoundly on the divinity of the Word and the loftiest mysteries. Whence Theophylact, in the preface to the Gospel, calls him "John the most theological." This is clear from the epistle of Blessed Evodius, which is inscribed ΘΕΟΣΩ; and from the tenth epistle of Dionysius the Areopagite, which is inscribed, To John the Theologian, Apostle and Evangelist, exiled on Patmos, in which among other things he says: "No adversity shall deprive us of John's most brilliant ray; we shall indeed attain it by the memory and renewal of your most true Theology." Whence Alcazar not undeservedly thinks that the first author of this nomenclature, namely the one who bestowed the name of Theologus upon St. John, was St. Dionysius. The same title of Theologus is attributed to St. John by St. Cyril, St. Chrysostom, Athanasius, Origen, Damascene — who in his oration On the Transfiguration calls John "the purest organ of Theology" — and others whom Baronius cites for the year of Christ 97, p. 808. Beza therefore errs when he rashly conjectures from a difference of style that this book is by a John who is not the Apostle, but the one surnamed Mark, Acts XII, 25.
Indeed Caius too, an ancient author, in Eusebius, book III, chap. XXVIII, attributed the Apocalypse to the heretic Cerinthus, a Chiliast. For the Chiliasts, or Millenarians, drew their error about the thousand years in which they think the Saints will reign with Christ on earth after the first resurrection from chap. XX of the Apocalypse, v. 6. But Baronius, for the year of Christ 97, shows that the heresies of Cerinthus are refuted in the Apocalypse.
Furthermore, St. John wrote the Apocalypse not in Hebrew nor in Latin but in Greek, because he writes it to the seven Bishops and Churches of Asia, as is clear from chap. I, v. 4; whence in Greek he says in v. 8: "I am Alpha and Omega," not "I am Aleph and Tau," as he would have said had he written in Hebrew.
Thirdly I say: It is certain that the Apocalypse was not composed before the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, as Joannes Annius, P. Salmeron, and Hentenius wish; but long after it. This is proved first, because it was composed after the banishment of St. John to Patmos, as he himself says in chap. I, v. 9; but this banishment was effected by Domitian, who reigned after Titus, the destroyer of Jerusalem. Secondly, because in chap. II, v. 13, he makes mention of Antipas the Martyr; and Antipas suffered under Domitian, as the Roman Martyrology has it on April 11. Wherefore it is likewise certain that St. John wrote the Apocalypse on Patmos while he was exiled there toward the end of Domitian's reign, namely about the year of Christ 97, which was the fourteenth and second-to-last year of Domitian's empire. So Irenaeus, book V, near the end, St. Jerome and Eusebius in his Chronicle, likewise Primasius, Andreas, Aretas, Alcazar, and others writing on Apocalypse chap. I, v. 9, and Baronius for the year of Christ 97.
Hence it is clear, first, that the Apocalypse was written twenty-five years after the destruction of Jerusalem. For Jerusalem was destroyed in the year of Christ 72; but the Apocalypse was written in the year of Christ 97.
It is clear, secondly, that John wrote the Apocalypse before he wrote the Gospel. For he wrote that after returning from his exile on Patmos, as St. Jerome teaches in his Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers; Eusebius, book V of his History, chap. XXIV; St. Augustine and Bede in their Prefaces to the Gospel of St. John: namely, he wrote the Gospel about the year of Christ 99 (two years after the Apocalypse), which was the first year of Nerva reigning after Domitian; in which year there also died that great one — whether philosopher or magician, but certainly a great impostor of the world — Apollonius of Tyana, with whom John joined battle in Asia (just as at Rome Peter and Paul did with Simon Magus), laid him low, and as it were struck him down with the lightning of his Gospel.
Finally, two years afterwards St. John died, namely in the year 101 from the nativity of Christ, 68 from His Passion, which was the second year of the Emperor Trajan, when he was in the 106th year of his life, as St. Hippolytus holds in his book On the Consummation of the World; or, as others say, 99; or rather, as Baronius, 93. Therefore here St. John as it were sends forth a swan-song. Wherefore, concluding the Apocalypse almost with his life and sighing for his love, he sweetly sings that suave word: "Come, Lord Jesus."
It is asked, secondly, what is the subject and matter of the Apocalypse? On this the interpreters vary remarkably.
First, some take the Apocalypse in a general way, and think that in it only the conflicts and wars between the good and the wicked and the end and outcome of both are generally described. So Tichonius, and from him Primasius and Bede, whom Ansbertus, Anselm, Rupertus, Haymo, Richard, Hugo, Thomas, and Dionysius mostly follow. To this Arias Montanus is added, who thinks the struggle of flesh and spirit in every individual man is described in the Apocalypse. But the former view is too general, and the latter is mystical and tropological.
Secondly, others, and far more truly, think that in the Apocalypse the future events of the Church through various ages are described in particular — not all of them, but only some of the more illustrious. In the first place, then, Lyranus, Antoninus, and Aureolus think that the Apocalypse, after the admonitions to the angels, that is to the Bishops of Asia, from chap. IV to the end prophetically foretells future things, and that through six visions in this order: from chap. IV to VIII, the first vision of the seven seals they extend to the times of the Emperor Julian; the second of the seven trumpets, chap. VIII and following, to Maurice; the third of the dragon and double beast, chap. XII and XIII, to Charlemagne; the fourth of the vials, chap. XVI, to the Emperor Henry; the fifth of Babylon, to Antichrist; the sixth and last, with which the book closes, they refer to the Last Judgment, the glory of those to be saved, and the punishments of the damned. But Pererius rightly refutes them, in disputation 8, on the ground that this exposition is not only fabricated but contains a gaping emptiness. For the time which was to come after the age of Aureolus they thought to be described by the fifth and sixth — that is, the last — vision, which concerns Antichrist, whereas Antichrist in these three hundred years which have flowed from Aureolus to the present has not yet come, nor does he seem about to come so quickly; and yet many illustrious things have happened and are happening in this time, just as in those three hundred years.
Thirdly, Abbot Joachim, Ubertinus and Seraphinus think that there are described in the Apocalypse seven states of the Church, namely: first, that of her founding in the Apostles; second, of persecution under the pagan Emperors; third, of prosperity under Constantine; fourth, of division under the heretics; fifth, of tranquility and increase under Charlemagne and afterwards; sixth, of the last persecution under Antichrist; seventh, of the Last Judgment. But this explanation also is partly forced, partly uncertain; and the whole seems to be fabricated by human invention and adapted to the text, just as the preceding.
Fourthly, others think that in the Apocalypse the first times of the Church are described, and in particular the war of the Church with the Synagogue and with the Gentile world, and her triumph over both. For from chap. VI to XII, the abrogation of the Synagogue and Judaism is treated; thence to chap. XX, the destruction of paganism and the reign of the Church. So our Salmeron in his seventh prelude on the Apocalypse, vol. XVI.
To this our Ludovicus Alcazar subscribes, who at length and laboriously contends that the Apocalypse is one continuous enigma, by which the triumph and glory of the Roman Church, especially the primitive, is elegantly described. For thus he himself says at the beginning of the work in the Dedicatory Epistle: "My persuasion is that the mind of the Holy Spirit in the Apocalypse was to set forth a certain remarkable enigma, which would shadow forth the excellence of the primitive Christian Church and her two illustrious victories: one, namely, which she had won over rebellious Jerusalem; the other which by celestial oracle was promised to be obtained over ancient pagan Rome thereafter. The greatest difference between the two foresaid victories was to be that the outcome of the first had been the rejection of Jerusalem and the Jewish people; but the end and fruit of the other was to be the conversion of the City and the world — that is, Rome and the Gentile world — to the faith of Christ: through which it was to come about that, with Christ transferring to Himself the seat of worldly empire, Rome would preside more widely by divine religion than once she did by earthly dominion." He therefore thinks that nothing else is described in the Apocalypse than the ruin of the Synagogue or Judaism, as also of paganism, by the establishment of the Church and the reign of Christianity.
But in this exposition many things present difficulty. First, that it is new and dissents from the common explanation, although Alcazar attempts in note 21 to reconcile it with the common one; and that it is indeed asserted by Alcazar, but not sufficiently effectively proved and demonstrated.
Second, that it appears to be mystical, not literal; but this manner of interpreting was censured in Origen, of whom St. Jerome in commenting on Jeremiah XXVII says: "Always an allegorical interpreter, and fleeing the truth of history."
Third, that he turns prophecy into history. For he thinks that John here describes through an enigma the destruction of Jerusalem accomplished and past 25 years before. But that this Apocalypse is a prophecy of the future is taught by its very beginning, or the title and inscription of the book, which runs thus: "The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to make manifest to His servants, the things which must shortly come to pass," that is, things which are shortly to be: And in v. 3: "Blessed is he that hears the words of the prophecy of this book." Whence St. Jerome, book I Against Jovinian, chap. IV: "John," he says, "just as he is called Evangelist because he composed the book of the Gospel, so also he is called Prophet, because he wrote the Apocalypse containing infinite mysteries of things to come." And Tertullian, book III Against Marcion, chap. XXIV, calls the Apocalypse "the discourse of the new prophecy which is in our faith."
So also St. Augustine, book XX of the City of God, chap. VIII: "The Apocalypse," he says, "embraces the whole time from the first coming of Christ until the second." So also others. Now who would believe that St. John willed to describe, wrap up and conceal in so obscure and perpetual an enigma a past matter, plain, published throughout the world and famous — namely the destruction of the Jews and Jerusalem? Again, who would believe that he speaks so obscurely throughout about the Roman Church, when both his words plainly signify something else, and he treats clearly and expressly of the Roman city under the name of a city embracing seven mountains in chap. XVII, v. 9.
Fourthly, because most passages of the Apocalypse so clearly, by the common explanation of the Doctors of the Church, speak of the last times, that they cannot, it seems, be wrested to apply to the Roman Church as victorious over Jews and Gentiles. Such are: first, the threats of the sixth seal, which plainly are to be understood of the signs preceding the Last Judgment. Secondly, the plagues of the trumpets and vials, which plainly appear to be those which God will send upon the wicked at the end of the world. Thirdly, the two witnesses of chap. XI, namely Enoch and Elias, who will come to fight with Antichrist, will be slain by him, and will publicly rise again. Fourthly, what is signified in the same place — that Antichrist will reign in Jerusalem, and at the same time at which Enoch and Elias are slain by him and rise again, a tenth part of Jerusalem will fall by an earthquake. Fifthly, that the beast of the sea spoken of in chap. XIII will be Antichrist; but the beast of the earth will be his precursor and minister. Sixthly, that Rome will be devastated at the end of the world by ten kings; and of these three are to be slain by Antichrist, while the remaining seven will of their own accord submit to him.
Alcazar replies, in notes 20 and 21, that there are here two literal senses, and one is subordinated to the other: the prior one in the manner of a comparison, the other as principally intended. The prior is the common one which I have already recounted; the latter, he says, is my own concerning the Roman Church.
Thus then he answers each point in order, and expounds and applies each according to both senses. To the first: The explanation, he says, of the sixth seal is this: before the devastation of Jerusalem inflicted by Titus, and before the rejection of the Synagogue, horrible threats from heaven and thunders preceded, which were similar to those that will precede the day of the Last Judgment, and in the same way Christ joins both things together, Matthew XXIV.
To the second: Similarly, he says, it must be said in the case of the plagues of the seven trumpets, namely that God in the time of the Apostles sent seven plagues against the Jews, after the likeness of those which He will send against the wicked at the end of the world.
To the third, in the same way: For just as in the time of Antichrist God will send Enoch and Elias to convert the Jews, so in the time of the Apostolic preaching He sent Enoch and Elias mystically and spiritually, that is, the Apostles and Apostolic men, to the same.
To the fourth, similarly: Just as the tenth part of Jerusalem will fall in the time of Antichrist, so of old by the trumpets of the Apostles a tenth part of Jerusalem mystically fell, when, having abandoned Judaism, it believed in Christ and submitted itself to the Apostles.
To the fifth, likewise: In the beast coming forth from the sea in chap. XIII is designated the Roman Empire persecuting the Church, after the manner of Antichrist who will persecute the same at the end of the world.
To the sixth: That the ten kings who will overturn Rome at the end of the world are similar to those who mystically overturned the paganism of Rome.
But these, although ingenious, nevertheless do not satisfy a solid exposition; for the first ones seem hard, twisted and forced. For in Scripture past things are assumed as types and symbols of the future: but on the contrary, future things are not assumed as types of the past, because future things are more obscure than past things. Yet Alcazar judges that this is being done here, when he holds that Enoch and Elias are taken as a type of the Apostles, that Antichrist is taken as a type of Decius and Diocletian — when on the contrary these were types and forerunners of Antichrist; that the plagues preceding judgment are taken as a type of the plagues by which Jerusalem had already been cut off and overthrown. For who ever spoke of a past matter through such remote and obscure symbols of future things, and described it thus? Excellently P. Salmeron in his Prolegomena, chap. X, quinquagena 2, canon 45: "Just as," he says, "it would be a great abuse and a kind of violence to interpret historical things as prophetic, so it would surely be a huge error and harshness on the text to refer to history what has been spoken prophetically, even if those things are most fully narrated in the past tense on account of the immovable certainty of prophecy. And in this Rupertus seems to have failed in expounding the Apocalypse, who referred matters most prophetic and future to the histories of the Old Testament."
Secondly, because those plagues and things, taken according to the letter as they sound, will occur at the end of the world: but Alcazar expounds them, not as they sound, but mystically of a past matter. For, for example, the seven plagues of chap. VII he says were the ignorance, concupiscence, wrath and persecution of the Jews against Christians; but the plague of hail he says was their obstinacy, etc. Likewise in chap. XVI, the last plagues, he says, are those by which God conquered idolatry, namely: first, the shame and grief of the Gentiles when they are reproved for their sins; secondly, the cruelty of persecution against the preachers of the Gospel; thirdly, the marvelous savagery against Gentiles already converted to the faith of Christ; fourthly, the most grievous offense given by the wisdom of Christians; fifthly, the supreme blinding in persecution; sixthly, after the invasion of Rome, a greater persecution; seventhly, the manifest division of the city of Rome, with the Gospel prevailing and the worship of idols falling. Who, with exact judgment distinguishing the letter from allegory, does not see that these plagues are mystical and spiritual, not literal? Who therefore would believe that by literal plagues of heat, pestilence, slaughter, and others, these mystical ones are signified, not mystically, but primarily and literally? If this is not the mystical sense, what will be? Such are also the rest.
Alcazar persistently presses the acoluthia, or consequence and connection, of the Apocalypse, which he himself thinks he can exhibit as coherent and as if drawn out by a continuous thread, while others cannot. But this is not everywhere to be pressed in the Prophets, as I have shown there and shall show below. For Alcazar cannot deny that there is sometimes hysterologia in the Apocalypse, or a disturbed order of times. For the matter itself speaks, as in chap. XIV, v. 8, it is said: "Babylon is fallen, is fallen," when nevertheless afterwards, in chap. XVIII, the fall and destruction of Babylon is at last described. So in chap. XIV, vv. 14, 16, 19, it is said that the judgment is done and accomplished, the earth reaped, the reprobate cast into the great lake of God's wrath, when nevertheless presently in chap. XVI he subjoins the seven plagues preceding the judgment of the world; and in chaps. XVII and XVIII, the destruction of Babylon; and in chap. XIX, the slaughter of Antichrist, Gog and Magog; and in chap. XX, the loosing of Satan, etc., all of which will precede the day of judgment and the consummation of the age, as is plain. Furthermore, this acoluthia in the common sense, which Alcazar admits and as it were presupposes as grammatical to his own, cannot be preserved, as he himself contends; why then should it be preserved in the enigmatic or parabolical sense, which must be founded on the grammatical and correspond on equal terms? Thirdly, what acoluthia is it to join beginning to end, to leap over the middle, and to seek a comparison from the last times of the world for explaining the things that were accomplished in the first ages of the Church? Fourthly, in the Apocalypse there is not such great disturbance of order as Ribera and some others think. For the destruction of Babylon, which is described in chaps. XVII and XVIII, is placed in its own place and order, as I shall show on chap. XVII, v. 16. Finally, I shall show in the chronotaxis which I shall give at the end of the Commentary that there are few hysterologies here.
Now what impelled Alcazar into this opinion was not flattery, but love and reverence for the Roman Church and the Apostolic See, and zeal for celebrating her, as he himself ingenuously professes. I praise the intent and end; the matter and means many do not praise. For love must be subject to truth, and affection to reason — not reason to affection. "For the honor of the king loves judgment." The Roman Church has her ancient and true praises; she does not need our newly devised ones, or fictions. Yet Alcazar did not lack subtle and seemingly probable conjectures for thinking thus. The old saying is true: "A learned man going astray errs with a learned error." Although this is not properly an error, if his explanation is taken not as literal and primarily intended, but as symbolic and mystical, or accommodatory, and ingeniously adapted throughout to so worthy and noble a subject. For St. Augustine, Gregory, Ambrose, and other Fathers also often follow a symbolic manner of interpreting Sacred Scripture, and that variously in various ways — concerning which see Sixtus of Siena in his Bibliotheca. Furthermore, this, although symbolic, is by some nevertheless called literal — but secondary, and so it can be called, when namely the mind of the Holy Spirit was being borne directly, although secondarily, toward signifying it, and was directing it to the primary literal meaning as if by a single intuition and embrace. For in symbols there are various significations and allusions, even literal ones. For the mind of the Holy Spirit is most lofty and most ample, and therefore easily connects last things to first, first to middle, middle to both, and arranges and composes them among themselves as He wills — as Alcazar thinks He has done here in this exposition of his. Let these things be said in excuse of a pious father, equally learned, bound to me by the close bond of the same Society, and a most dear friend.
I say therefore that the subject of the Apocalypse is twofold. For first, up to chap. IV, St. John exhorts his faithful and reproves and corrects the morals of the seven Bishops and Churches of Asia. And accordingly that is true which Rupertus says: "The Apocalypse contains what the state of the Church had been, what it then was, and what it would be." Up to here, then, the Apocalypse is historical and ethical, but afterwards prophetic. Secondly therefore, and by far the greater part, namely from chap. IV to the end of the book, St. John here prophesies of things to come in the Church, especially toward the end of the world in the time of Antichrist. For just as he himself was the announcer and Evangelist of the first coming of Christ, so he willed (God so ordaining) to be the Prophet and forerunner of the second; especially because the things which will happen at the end of the world will be greatest, most weighty, and partly most bitter, partly most joyful.
The aim and end which it has in view is that through all these things, and especially through the glory of the Martyrs, Virgins and all the Blessed, and through the damnation of the impious and the reprobate, which He describes and inculcates here often, and narrates at length in chap. XX and following, He may rouse the faithful — both those of his own time and those to come thereafter — to constancy in faith and piety, and to bravely undergoing martyrdom under Domitian and other persecutors. For already the persecutions of Antoninus, Aurelian, Decius, Valerian, Diocletian, Maximian and others were threatening the faithful, which were ten in number and lasted three hundred years, namely up to the times of Constantine. To strengthen therefore all these St. John wrote the Apocalypse, as also for the other faithful in every age who would suffer persecution from infidels, heretics and other impious people, and especially for those who at the end of the world will be most grievously assailed by Antichrist: that they may from the signs which he sets down here recognize Antichrist, and bravely oppose themselves to him even unto death under the leadership of Enoch and Elias, and triumph over him, soon to receive eternal palms and crowns.
Again, while John was exiled on Patmos, in the Churches of Asia certain heresies and vices were growing up: both of these John cuts away by these means. For Cerinthus, Ebion and other heretics taught that Christ was not God, nor had been before Blessed Mary; but was pure man, who in being born of blessed Mary began to be: against whom John professedly wrote the Gospel, and so begins it saying: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Against these here in chap. I and chap. XXII he introduces Christ saying: "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." Others were saying that the Church would be crushed and would cease under the weight of tribulations before the end of the world, and would not receive a reward for her labors and tribulations after this life: against these John here teaches that the Church does not cease through tribulations, but advances, and will obtain the prize of heavenly glory in return for them; which accordingly he depicts at length and graphically, especially in chaps. XXI and XXII.
This is the order of the subject, though in John himself it is sometimes inverted in the prophetic manner. First, in the first three chapters the rebukes, instructions and admonitions to the seven Bishops of Asia are contained. Then the book is set forth — namely the Apocalypse — sealed with seven seals, and the seals themselves are unsealed continuously up to the eleventh chapter. Now these seals contain those things which are to come in the Church up to the end of the world, and especially the plagues and signs which will go before, and will be preliminaries both to the Last Judgment and to Antichrist.
Thirdly, from chap. XI to the end of the book, with the seals now opened, he narrates the book itself — that is, the things written in the book — namely the visions and predictions which concern the times of Antichrist against the faithful and the saints and the constancy of the elect; the preaching, martyrdom, and resurrection of Enoch and Elias; likewise the seven last plagues, the slaughter of Gog and Magog, as also the destruction of Antichrist with his followers; and finally in chap. XX the universal Judgment, and in the two last chapters he depicts to the life the glory of the Blessed. See the chronotaxis at the end of the Commentary.
Furthermore Bede, and following him Pererius and Viegas, divide the whole subject of the Apocalypse into seven parts or visions. The first is of Christ clothed with a long garment, who writes to the seven Bishops and Churches of Asia, partly that they may be constant in faith, partly that they may amend their vices. The second is that in which from chap. IV to VIII he sees the Lamb among the four living creatures and 24 elders open the book sealed with seven seals. The third, in which in chaps. VIII and IX he sees in the seventh seal seven Angels sounding seven trumpets, bringing great calamities upon the world at the end. The fourth, chap. XII, under the figure of a woman clothed with the sun in travail, and a dragon pursuing her, describes the persecutions of the Church and the victories which she will gain over Antichrist. The fifth, chaps. XV and XVI, in which he sees seven Angels pouring the seven vials and the last plagues into the world. The sixth, chaps. XVII and XVIII, embraces the damnation and burning of the great harlot, namely Babylon, that is Rome, serving idols, as also the destruction of the devil and Antichrist and all his followers in chap. XIX, and the Last Judgment in chap. XX. The seventh, chaps. XXI and XXII, exhibits the marvelous form, beauty and glory of the heavenly Jerusalem.
It is asked thirdly, what and how great is the difficulty and obscurity of the Apocalypse, and by what way and method it must be overcome?
All the interpreters agree that the Apocalypse is the most obscure and difficult book of all the books of Sacred Scripture, both on account of its sublimity, of which I spoke in Question I; and because it is full of symbols and enigmas; and because its prophecies have not yet been fulfilled, as the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah and the other Prophets have been fulfilled, but still remain to be fulfilled. For every prophecy, as long as its execution is pending and is not actually displayed and discerned, is obscure, says St. Epiphanius.
Hence Pannonius in his Preface says, "The Apocalypse is a work of immense difficulty." Salmeron in prelude 4 asserts, "The exposition of the Apocalypse is as it were the squaring of the circle, of which it is wont to be said: It is knowable, but not yet known." Pererius, in disputation 1, says, "many think that without a singular revelation from God the Apocalypse is altogether incomprehensible." Ribera, in his preface, says the Apocalypse "is a great sea full of storms and tempests, in which every human wisdom is swallowed up." The same is asserted by Dionysius of Alexandria, Richard of St. Victor, Joachim the Abbot, Cajetan, Viegas and others, whose words Alcazar cites in note 5.
Finally St. Jerome, epistle 103 to Paulinus, chap. VII: "The Apocalypse of John," he says, "has as many secrets as words. I have said too little for the merit of the volume; all praise is inferior to it: in each single word manifold meanings lie hidden." And St. Ephrem, in the book On Penitence: "All things," he says, "St. John spoke through parable and enigma in the Apocalypse." Wherefore we must here say what Aristotle, in book III of his Rhetoric, reports Socrates to have said when he had read the book of Heraclitus, who was called the dark and obscure: "I praise what I understand, I praise also what I do not understand."
Now in this obscurity certain Canons will offer us a torch, which as it were will be keys to open this sealed book and to reveal its hidden things.
Canons of Interpretation
Let the first canon be this, which St. Augustine gives in book III On Christian Doctrine, chaps. X and XV: The Apocalypse and all Sacred Scripture is to be taken according to the letter, as it sounds, as far as can be — unless namely something be said by it which, taken plainly and simply, is absurd, and is repugnant to sound faith and good morals. For example, when Christ says: "If your eye or your foot scandalizes you, cut it off," if you take it as it sounds (as Origen did, who, tempted by the sting of the flesh, castrated himself in order to preserve chastity — zealously indeed, but imprudently and illicitly), it signifies something absurd, namely that one should mutilate himself. Therefore these things are to be taken figuratively and metaphorically in this sense: if friends, brothers, parents, etc., solicit you to heresy or to another crime, cut off familiarity with them and withdraw yourself from them, although they are dear and necessary to you like an eye or a foot.
Second. The Prophets do not preserve the order of the time and of the action done or to be done, and this so that their writing may seem to be prophecy and not history; and because they received the prophecies or revelations from God at different times and on different occasions, as I showed in canon III on the Prophets, and in the Chronotaxis of Jeremiah. In the Apocalypse therefore, the prophetic visions, revealed (it seems) to St. John at different times, are not described in order of time, but the series and order both of the visions and of time is often interrupted, so that things prior in occurrence — or rather to be done first — are placed afterwards, and things to be done later are placed before. Thus in this book there are sometimes anticipations, recapitulations, transitions, likewise also regressions, and repetitions of the same matters; and even sudden transitions. For from one thing to another, whether similar or dissimilar, and from a figure to the thing figured the Prophet sometimes transitions suddenly, and with those not perfectly declared, returns and leaps back to the earlier ones.
Third. The same matter is prefigured among the Prophets by several and various visions and figures; and this is done, first, for the confirmation and certainty of the prophecy and the future thing which they foretell. Thus in Genesis XLI the same coming sterility in Egypt was presignified to Pharaoh through a double vision, namely of dry ears of grain and of lean cows. Second, because one image and likeness cannot equal the whole truth of the matter: certain conditions and circumstances of the matter are therefore signified by one image and vision, and others by another.
Fourth. The whole Apocalypse is full of allusions to passages, histories and figures of the Old Testament, and especially often alludes to Solomon's temple, the candlesticks, the ark, the priestly vestments, the altar of holocausts and of incense, the victims and other Mosaic sacred things. So Alcazar on chap. I, v. 12. But here John alludes most of all to the visions of Ezekiel and Daniel: for his are very similar to these.
List of Interpreters
The interpreters who wrote on the Apocalypse have been very many: Alcazar lists more than a hundred, in note 26, and they have existed in every century, as Pererius notes. For in the first century, after the Apocalypse was published, St. Justin and Irenaeus wrote on it, as St. Jerome witnesses.
In the second century, there wrote St. Hippolytus, Bishop of Portus; Methodius, Melito, Victorinus, and Dionysius of Alexandria, as the same St. Jerome witnesses.
Third, St. Basil and Nazianzen, as is clear from the Commentaries of Andreas of Caesarea and Aretas. Tichonius the Donatist also wrote, whose 18 homilies on the Apocalypse are extant among the works of St. Augustine, vol. X. For that these are by Tichonius, not St. Augustine, is clear both from the prologue of Primasius on the Apocalypse, and from chap. XX of the Apocalypse, which St. Augustine in book XX of the City of God, chap. VII and following, explains differently from Tichonius here.
In the fourth century, there wrote on the Apocalypse Primasius in the year of Christ 440; Cyril of Alexandria and Gennadius in the year of Christ 490.
In the fifth century, Cassiodorus, who flourished in the year of Christ 577; Andreas, Archbishop of Caesarea, whom our Peltanus marvelously praises, and a commentator who is circulated under the name of St. Ambrose. For that this commentary is not by St. Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan, is clear both from the difference of style, and because writing on chap. XVII he mentions the kingdom of the Lombards, which began long after St. Ambrose, namely after the year of the Lord 550. Add: Ambrosiaster here transcribes many sentences from St. Gregory; therefore he was two hundred years later than St. Ambrose.
In the sixth century, Bede wrote about the year of the Lord 730, and Albinus or Alcuin in the year of the Lord 770, as Trithemius witnesses.
In the seventh, Rabanus Maurus, in the year of the Lord 855; Aretas and Haymo in the year of the Lord 830.
In the eighth, Ansbertus in the year of the Lord 800, who in writing on those words of chap. XVII: "I will show you," etc., says on fol. 330, that he was often instructed by Christ through internal inspiration, so that he might understand the obscurities of the Apocalypse, and that he learned from Him what shall be the sign of Antichrist, by which he himself will mark out his followers.
Ninth, Anselm of Canterbury, in the year of the Lord 1080.
Tenth, Anselm of Laon, the author of the Interlinear Gloss, in the year 1110.
Eleventh, Rupert, in the year 1120, and Richard of Saint Victor, in 1140.
Twelfth, Hugo Cardinalis, in the year 1240; Albertus Magnus, in the year 1260; and Joachim the Abbot, in the year 1200, who, by command of Lucius III, Urban III, and Clement III, Roman Pontiffs, wrote on the Apocalypse, and was held by many of his own time to be a prophet, as Sixtus of Siena attests in book II of his Library, under the word Joachim. But Trithemius denies this, because, he says, Joachim foretold that the Emperor Frederick would be an enemy of the Church, the contrary of which experience has taught us. And Alcazar, in note 22, no. 3, says: Joachim erred concerning the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, and wished to bring in three Gods for one; on which account his error was condemned under the title On the Most High Trinity and the Catholic Faith, in the chapter Damnamus. And although he himself acknowledged and retracted his error, nevertheless, with the same readiness with which, trusting too much in his own judgment, he was once deluded and deceived, he could be deceived a second time. For his prophecies seem rather to be dreams and ravings. Of such a kind is what he asserts about twelve Apostles to be sent at the end of the world, who, he says, will not be inferior to the Apostles of Christ. And this dream he persuades himself to be contained in the literal sense of the Apocalypse, in the number of the twenty-four elders. Wherefore St. Thomas, in IV, dist. XLIV, art. 3, Quest. II, ad 3, says: "The Abbot Joachim, by conjectures concerning future things, foretold some true things, and in some he was deceived." See what I have noted about Joachim in the preface to Isaiah, at the end.
Thirteenth, Peter Aureolus, in the year 1317; Ubertinus of Casale, in 1300. About the same time wrote F. Matthias the Swede, teacher of St. Bernardino of Siena and confessor of St. Bridget; she herself praises his commentary in book VI of her Revelations, chapter LXXXIX. It is wholly mystical and moral. I myself obtained it in manuscript at Rome. Nicholas of Lyra, in the year 1320.
Fourteenth, Thomas the Doctor — not the Angelic, but the English Doctor; Paul of Burgos, in the year 1434; St. Antoninus, who follows Lyra and Aureolus, in the year 1460; Dionysius the Carthusian, in 1470; and Joannes Annius.
Fifteenth, Claudius of Monte Martyrum; Coelius Pannonius (whose proper name was F. Gregory the Hungarian, Prior of St. Stephen on the Caelian Hill at Rome, as my codex has it); Seraphinus of Fermo, a city of Italy; Pietro Galatino (who wrote the book On the Hidden Mysteries of the Faith, against the Jews). The latter wrote ten books on the Apocalypse and dedicated them to Charles V, the Emperor. They survive in manuscript in the Vatican Library, where I have read them. He prophesies, after the manner of the Abbot Joachim, concerning the future times of the Church, its persecutions and successes, and especially concerning an angelic Shepherd (Pontiff), who will be of admirable wisdom and sanctity, and of such great humility and modesty that he will allow no one to kiss his feet, and who, after the manner of Christ, will have twelve Apostles through whom he will reform the whole Church and inflame it with divine love, so that she will seem to return to the early days of her sanctity under the Apostles. After him, however, Antichrist will follow, who will overturn all things; and then will come the end of the world, the judgment, and the resurrection. Again, the seven spirits, of which Apocalypse 1, 4 speaks, he reckons to be seven chief Angels assisting God, who are illumined immediately by God, and whose names are these: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Sealtiel, Jehudiel, Barachiel — all of which he asserts were revealed by Gabriel to Blessed Amadeus, concerning whom I shall say more on chapter 1, verse 4.
Finally, in this present century there have written commentaries on the Apocalypse, from among our own, Francis Ribera, who beyond the rest explains and applies, particularly and aptly, each part and sentence of this prophecy according to the letter; Blasius Viegas, copiously and morally; Benedict Pererius on the first eight chapters, learnedly and floridly; and Luis Alcazar at length, ingeniously, eruditely, and elaborately — would that as genuinely and solidly according to the letter!
Therefore, for the literal sense, the chief authors to be read are Ambrosiaster and Andreas of Caesarea, whom Aretas, Ribera, and Viegas follow; for the mystical sense, Rupert; for the moral sense, Viegas — who, however, sometimes indulges his own conceit too freely and wanders off, and does not sufficiently insist upon the literal sense, which ought to be the apt and solid foundation of every moral and mystical sense alike. In this matter many Interpreters and Preachers offend, who, while they hunt after subtle and airy conceits, lose the solid, divine, and genuine ones of the Holy Spirit.
Among the heretics there have written Beza, Bullinger, Meyer, Lambert, Viret, Pignet, and others, out of whom Marlorat patched together his catena. There have also lately written certain Anglo-Calvinists, who, while they twist all their interpretations against the Roman Pontiff, blinded by spite, seem to be afflicted with mania and brain-disease, and to need hellebore rather than a pen. They think they can mathematically demonstrate that the Pontiff is Antichrist, although all their demonstration rests either on their own bare assertion, or on lies, or on calumnies, or on the depravation or twisting of the text. It is enough for them if, to the unlearned, by fair means or foul, they can persuade them of this their insane phantasm and idol of the heretical mind. They call these dreams of theirs Apocalypses of the Apocalypse, when in truth they are Epicalypses and Veils (Calyptrae), by which they rather wrap up, entangle, and obscure the Apocalypse, while, driven by a spirit of dizziness, they go round in a circle from heel to head and back again — to whom truly applies that saying of the Psalmist: "The wicked walk in a circle."
These Interpreters — especially all the more recent orthodox ones, and by name the whole of Alcazar — I have read through from beginning to end, examined, and reduced to a compendium, which I have inserted here and there into this commentary; so that whoever reads it will have read the whole of Alcazar and all the other Interpreters as well, with great savings of books, of time, and of labor. Wherefore I will review the opinions of each in methodical order, and then will subjoin that which seems more genuine, and will confirm and illustrate it a little more exactly and fully — especially where it will be mine alone, and will scarcely have any other author who duly and fully explains it, so as to exhaust all difficulties and to satisfy the mind and desire of those who read. At the same time I will show in what way most things which are alleged by them less truly and fittingly for the literal sense — and especially by Alcazar — can be employed fittingly and truly for the moral or the accommodated sense; and thus I will at once consult both Alcazar and the other authors, and the readers themselves, and will make his erudite work, elaborated through twenty years, become more convenient and useful.
I conclude: the Syriac version of the New Testament, which is found in the Royal Bibles, is lacking in the Apocalypse alone. That version exists at Rome in the Vatican Library, as does the Arabic version; both I shall cite from time to time, where they bring forward anything new or noteworthy, as I have done in the Commentaries on the Prophets.