Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/351

325 UNIVERSITY OF ALCALl. 325 This is not the place, if I were competent, to chapter discuss the merits of this great work, the reputa- tion of which is familiar to every scholar. Critics, indeed, have disputed the antiquity of the manu- scripts used in the compilation, as well as the cor- rectness and value of the emendations.^^ Unfortu- nately, the destruction of the original manuscripts, in a manner which forms one of the most whimsical anecdotes in literary history, makes it impossible to settle the question satisfactorily.^^ Undoubtedly, many blemishes may be charged on it, necessarily incident to an age when the science of criticism was imperfectly understood, ^^ and the stock of ma- XXI. 44 The principal controversy on this subject, was carried on in Ger- many between Wetstein and Goe- ze ; the former impugning, the lat- ter defending the Complutensian Bible. The cautious and candid Michaelis, whose prepossessions appear to have been on the side of Goeze, decides ultimately, after his own examination, in favor of Wet- stein, as regards the value of the MSS. employed; not however as relates to the grave charge of wil- fully accommodating the Greek text to the Vulgate. See the grounds and merits of the contro- versy, apud Michaelis, Introduction to the New Testament, translated by Marsh, vol. ii. part 1, chap. 12, sec. 1 ; part 2, notes. 45 Professor Moldenhauer, of Germany, visited Alcala in 1784, for the interesting purpose of ex- amining the MSS. used in the Complutensian Polyglot. He there learned that they had all been dis- posed of, as so much waste paper, {membranas inutiles) by the libra- rian of that time to a rocket-maker of the town, who soon worked them up in the regular way of his vocation ! He assigns no reason for doubting the truth of the story. The name of the librarian, unfor- tunately, is not recorded. It would have been as imperishable as thai of Omar. Marsh's Michaelis, vol. ii. part 1, chap. 12, sec. 1, note. 46 The celebrated text of " the three witnesses," formerly cited in the Trinitarian controversy, and which Person so completely over- turned, rests in part on what Gibbon calls " the honest bigotry of the Complutensian editors. " One of the three Greek manu- scripts, in which that text is found, is a forgery from the Polyglot of Alcala, according to Mr. Norton, in his recent work, " The Eviden- ces of the Genuineness of the Gos- pels," (Boston, 1837, vol. i. Addi- tional Notes, p. xxxix.), — a work which few can be fully compe- tent to criticize, but which no per- son can peruse without confessing the acuteness and strength of its reasoning, the nice discrimination of its criticism, and the precision and purity of its diction. What- ever difference of opinion may be formed as to some of its conclu-