Daniel the Prophet

ON ST. DANIEL THE PROPHET

AT BABYLON

ABOUT THE YEAR OF THE WORLD circa 3479, BEFORE Christ circa 668.

HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.

Daniel the Prophet, at Babylon (S.)

BY THE AUTHOR J. P.

§ I. The name, lineage, and native land of St. Daniel; is he one man or several? His upbringing, his outward endowments.

Daniel, a name befitting the office to which this great Prophet had been chosen by God, in Hebrew signifies the judgment of God, or, according to Jerome, God has judged me, as our Cornelius a Lapide says in his preface to Daniel; or judge of God, as likewise our Jacobus Tirinus says on Daniel chapter 1, verse 7: for besides those things by which the holy Seer foretold the last judgment, and the various and manifold judgments of God concerning divers kings and kingdoms, [Daniel—is the etymon "giver" the name of our prophet, or rather a surname?] which he relates, he also showed himself a marvelous judge in reforming the most iniquitous sentence passed against the innocent Susanna: to which if you add his supreme dexterity in expounding hidden and abstruse matters, and his sagacity likewise in foretelling the most occult and obscure things to come, you might rightly say that the whole man was compacted from a heavenly discernment, whereby he judged soundly and prudently concerning all things and taught men to judge justly, by the gift of Him who had called him to so singular an office. Furthermore, whether that name was given to him from the beginning, or after the dreams had been expounded and the judgments of the Lord made manifest, so that it was not so much a name as a surname, our Sanctius inquires; and he embraces the first opinion, judging the second probable; as you may see in his Commentary on Daniel chapter 1, verse 31.

[2] Furthermore, after he had been led away from Judea into the Babylonian captivity, that Hebrew name was there changed into a Chaldaic one; It was changed during his captivity. which change was a sign of dominion and authority, as is gathered from Genesis chapter 2, verses 19, 20; chapter 41, verse 45; 4 Kings chapter 23, verse 34, and chapter 24, verse 17. That name was Balthasar, Daniel 1 verse 7; 2 verse 26; 4 verse 16, held in great honor by that nation, and royal, not to say divine. For Daniel seems to have been called Balthasar after the son of Nebuchadnezzar, Balthasar, as it were Baal or Bel's hidden treasure, that is, the wisdom of Bel, as a Lapide affirms from Maldonatus on the said chapter 1 of Daniel, verse 7. Yet our Gaspar Sanctius observes on chapter 1, verse 7, that the king did not entirely change Daniel's name, but the language: for the Hebrew τὸ Daniel and the Chaldaic Balthasar mean the same, with some difference nonetheless. As for the various names attributed to Daniel in the meantime, our Scipio Sgambatus may be consulted in his work of the Archives of the Old Testament, printed at Naples in the year 1703, title 55.

[3] The Saint traces his origin from the stock of Judah, and from the royal line; That Daniel was descended from the stock of Judah is clear from Daniel chapter 1, verse 6: There were then among them, of the sons of Judah, Daniel, Ananias, etc.; and that he sprang from royal seed, all agree, as Gaspar Sanctius attests in the first prolegomenon of his preface to Daniel; and this is not obscurely apparent from Daniel himself, chapter 1, verse 3, where the king (Nebuchadnezzar) said to Asphenez, the chief of the eunuchs, that he should bring in of the children of Israel, and of the royal seed and of the princes, youths, etc. Whence a Lapide here rightly deduces that Daniel was descended from David, Solomon, and the other kings of Judah. Josephus, in book 10, chapter 12 of the Antiquities of the Jews, asserts that Daniel was of the family of Zedekiah. Wrongly, therefore, does Dionysius the Carthusian intimate, in his Proem on Daniel, that Daniel was of the tribe of Levi on his father's side and of the tribe of Judah on his mother's; for Scripture is wont to designate the paternal line. Since therefore it here refers Daniel's line to the kings of Judah, it follows that this line of his was paternal, as again a Lapide here rightly holds.

[4] [although his descent from the stock of Judah is more certain than from the royal line,] The same lineage, as Theodoret noted in his first oration on Daniel, is suggested by what is said to Hezekiah in Isaiah chapter 39, verse 7, after he had displayed his royal treasures to the Babylonians: Of thy sons that shall issue from thee, whom thou shalt beget, they (the Babylonians) shall take away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. Whence it comes that Daniel sprang from the tribe of Judah, which alone of all had for many ages already borne kings; as the praised Sanctius notes: who, though he rightly says that Daniel's origin from the tribe of Judah cannot be denied on account of Daniel chapter 1, verse 6, yet thinks that from this passage Daniel's royal lineage is not so necessarily established that one who held the contrary could be judged to have thought anything against Sacred Scripture; and this he seems to prove not badly from the passage cited above: That he should bring in of the children of Israel and of the royal seed and of the princes, that is, of the chief men, as you may see in a Lapide here. These princes, moreover, says Sanctius, or chief men, could be foreign to the royal line, indeed even to the tribe of Judah; so that the king did not command that only those be chosen for the court and the royal presence who traced their lineage from royal births, others being excluded whom the splendor of royal blood did not adorn; but that those be summoned to courtly service who were born of illustrious parents, and commended by some title and name.

[5] To the passage above adduced from Isaiah, whereby it is declared which nevertheless seems most probably to be attributed to him, that certain eunuchs of royal blood would be in the court of the Babylonian king, he answers that the rest are not excluded from the same station and ministry. There is added the fact that, as St. Jerome attests in the preface of his Commentaries on Daniel, the translation of the Septuagint, which he then had, says that he was sprung from a Levitical line; since in the title of the history of Bel it was put: There was a certain man, a priest, named Daniel, the son of Abda; and the Alexandrian Chronicle, among the things it has concerning the Prophets in the 70th Olympiad, says he was of parents who held a chief place in the royal court. Our Pererius seems to favor Sanctius, who in his preface to Daniel says that his lineage was WITHOUT DOUBT royal; but a Lapide in his preface says: Daniel sprang from the stock of Judah, THAT IS, from the stock of the kings of Judah: which particles—this "that is," that "without doubt"—seem in some way to insinuate that Daniel's origin from the royal line is not established with the same certainty as his origin from the tribe of Judah is established.

[6] Whence Augustine Calmet is not to be censured, of the Order of St. Benedict, of the congregation of St. Vitonus from common opinion, Scripture not opposing. and St. Hidulphus, most renowned for his literal Commentaries on all the books of the Old and New Testament, published in French at Paris from the year 1707, when on chapter 1 of Daniel, verse 6, he says that It is believed (ON CROIT) that all four (Daniel and his three companions) were of royal blood. Let us therefore conclude with Sanctius that it is indeed less certain that Daniel sprang from royal blood; but that this is the more likely, as is the common opinion, nor is there wanting some trace of it in Scripture. Concerning his native land, nothing certain is to be had from Scripture, Sanctius continues.

[7] Pererius, from the Synopsis of Dorotheus and from Epiphanius in his book On the Life and Death of the Prophets, assigns Upper Bethoron; Concerning his native land and his father nothing is certain. add the Alexandrian Chronicle cited, together with the great printed Menaea in the eulogy of the Saint, of which below; where it is written βύθαρον; which lies in the lot of Ephraim, and is reckoned among the Levitical families, and is said to be distant from Jerusalem nine miles, near the fortress of Emmaus. This opinion, as the slight—not to say null—authority of those writers whom they cite does not persuade, so neither do contrary documents, which are at hand, overturn it. Whence we prefer to suppose this to have been the genuine native land of St. Daniel, rather than to deny it. Yet this is certainly not much favored, as Sanctius observes, by the fact that Daniel sprang from the tribe of Judah, not from the tribe of Ephraim, where Bethoron is said to be situated; nor from Levi, to whom that city was assigned from the Ephraimite portion. Concerning his father there is a strange silence, save that, as is gathered from what has been said, he was a prince. St. Epiphanius, in heresy 35 or 55 of the edition of our Petavius to be praised hereafter, that How

many there are, he says, whose origins are not openly disclosed: for instance Daniel, Shadrach, etc. Whose parents these men may have been, we nowhere read recorded in the Scriptures. I shall not be reluctant to relate here those things which we have learned from the tradition of some. Therefore we have received that Daniel's father was a certain Sabaas. But let him himself look to this tradition, such as it is.

[8] Nothing compels us to admit The translation of the Seventy interpreters, mentioned above by St. Jerome, which at the beginning of chapter 14 of this book held that Daniel was of the tribe of Levi and of the priests, was the cause, as Pererius attests in his oft-named preface, why some have thought that there existed two Daniels, and that one indeed, of the tribe of Judah, was the author of this book up to chapter 13; but that the history contained in the last chapter was written by a certain Habakkuk—another, namely, than the one placed among the Twelve Prophets—concerning the other Daniel, who was of the tribe of Levi. Which opinion the same author rightly refutes on the ground that neither of old did the synagogue, nor now does the Church of Christ, know of more than one Daniel as authors of this book.

[9] two Daniels. He also cites Dionysius the Carthusian, who strives to settle this dispute in one and the same Daniel from a twofold lineage, namely paternal and maternal (for the coupling of those two tribes by marriage was frequent); but he does not follow him, judging it more credible that the codex of the LXX interpreters which Jerome cited was faulty; since, he says, Jerome testifies more than once that the codices of the LXX interpreters were in his time exceedingly corrupt and corrupted; certainly there is not found in any of the Greek books which now indeed exist that which St. Jerome relates to have been in that codex at that place. Thus he strikes out that second Daniel: which it may suffice to have touched cursorily here, according to our design. The chronological order will treat of the year of his birth.

[10] What his upbringing was Although concerning the particular and individual circumstances of the upbringing of our Saint at the time when, before the captivity, he dwelt as a boy among his own people, we have learned nothing hitherto from suitable documents, yet it is in no way to be doubted, but most certainly to be laid down, that this first part of his early age—which, like twilight, is wont to announce the light of the age that follows—was passed by him most orderly, most uprightly, and most religiously, namely in the fear of the Lord, in the observance of the divine law, and in the other virtues which especially befit that tender age, the forerunner of a more robust one; and that even then, above the common run of men, he possessed the endowments of divine graces, by which he might in some manner seem to have made a prelude to so many and so great marvelous deeds to be performed in the course of his life; as it is well known to be customary for divine providence in the Old Testament as well as the New.

[11] and his outward endowments. Furthermore his outward endowments and graces, and the singular ornaments of his upbringing, are enumerated by the sacred words of Daniel 1 from verse 3, when they indicate that among the sons of Israel whom Nebuchadnezzar had ordered to be brought in to him were Daniel, Ananias, Misael, and Azarias—youths, to be sure, such as the king had designated to be brought, in whom there was no blemish, comely in form, and instructed in all wisdom, cautious in knowledge, and learned in discipline, and who could stand in the king's palace, that he might teach them the letters and the tongue of the Chaldeans. To so careful a choice of the king was added an equal care in nourishing them during the time of captivity, of which in the paragraph next following.

§ II. His captivity, sanctity, and virtues.

After Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it, Daniel 1 verse 1, Of his captivity and led king Joakim captive and bound with chains into Babylon (2 Paralipomenon, last chapter, verse 6), together with Daniel and his companions; Joakim, having become a suppliant to the tyrant and promised him tribute, is soon restored to his kingdom, Daniel and his companions and others being left at Babylon in the place of hostages, as may be seen in Tirinus in his Commentaries on the said passage of Daniel, from the various authors whom he cites. This, then, was the cause both of the beginning and of the temporary continuation of our Daniel's captivity; which, if you weigh it ascetically, referring it to God's providence with Pererius, commenting on the same passage—why, namely, God permitted the innocent Daniel to be led away into captivity—three reasons chiefly present themselves.

[13] 1. That Daniel might instruct the Hebrews who were in the same captivity, the causes; tend them in spirit, and by his authority, doctrine, and example keep them in the worship of the true God, who otherwise would easily fall into the impious superstition and idolatry of the nations among whom they dwelt; that he might console the hardships of the captivity and hasten its end. 2. That in this way the name of Daniel might be more illustrious, having attained greater glory and power among foreign kings and barbarous nations in that captivity than he would ever have attained as a free man among his own. 3. That through Daniel the knowledge of the true God might shine forth among the most proud kings and peoples blinded by the darkness of superstition. And so much for the causes of the captivity, considered both historically and ascetically; after which let us discuss the time of the same.

[14] For fixing that time, those words of chapter 1 verse 1 chiefly serve: and its time, In the third year of the reign of Joakim king of Judah, came Nebuchadnezzar, etc., as above. Concerning the twofold coming of Nebuchadnezzar to the siege of Jerusalem under Joakim—of which one occurred at the beginning of his reign, namely in the third year; but the other again in the eleventh year, that is, the last, in which he ended his life together with his reign—you have it proved from Sacred Scripture in Sanctius here. In what year St. Daniel departed from his native land, the authors whom he cites disagree, but the said writer does not follow them; among whom are some who think it happened in the eighth year of Joakim. Others determine nearly the same, judging that he was carried off together with Jechonias, following St. Jerome on chapter 1 of Ezekiel. But a Lapide, in his preface to Daniel, more rightly determines that the Saint was taken captive together with king Joakim in the third year of his reign, which was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, and by the same was led away to Babylon; and consequently it follows that the deed is to be linked with Nebuchadnezzar's first expedition against the Jews. Pererius and Tirinus may also be seen in their Commentaries on the words of Daniel just cited, and Salianus at the year of the world 3428, number 24, where he also answers Jerome; to whom add Calmet in the chronological table appended to his preface to Daniel.

[15] For to what purpose, as Sanctius rightly observes, is there mention at the outset of the third year of Joakim, and such silence about the other captivities, unless the Prophet wished this to be the beginning of his own affairs? He began the narration of his life from that still boyish age, in which, together with three others, namely at the first coming of Nebuchadnezzar to Jerusalem. he was destined for courtly service under the master of the eunuchs; which he added immediately after he had made mention of the arrival of the third year of Joakim and the first of Nebuchadnezzar. Thus Sanctius; who, the matter being thus established, resolves the argument of Maldonatus, as also the seemingly contrary passage from Jeremiah chapter 25, where the first year of Nebuchadnezzar is said to have fallen in the fourth year of Joakim, by understanding, namely, the third year finished and the fourth begun or moderately advanced. In another way also the same interpreter reconciles Daniel with Jeremiah, if it be said that Nebuchadnezzar came when the second year of the reign had begun; and that that imperfect year was omitted by Daniel, which runs into the fourth year of Joakim, as you will find deduced there at somewhat greater length.

[16] In what year of his age was Daniel led away into captivity? It may more difficultly be asked in what year of his age Daniel was carried off to Babylon. Pererius in his preface judges it as most like the truth that he was then not more than ten years old; but he leans on the feeble authority of pseudo-Epiphanius and pseudo-Isidore. Then he affirms that Daniel freed Susanna in the twelfth year of his age, from the epistle of St. Ignatius to the Magnesians (which is reckoned among the interpolated ones; and concerning which the bibliographers may be seen) and from others which he brings forward. Sanctius gives him twenty years or thereabouts; which opinion we too embrace as the truer, together with Cornelius a Lapide in the cited preface: and he confirms it in his exposition of chapter 13, verse 45, determining that Daniel was easily twenty-four years old when he freed Susanna; which seems to him to have happened in the fourth or fifth year after Daniel had come to Babylon. I here compress the matter into a few words with Tirinus. How, he says, would the whole people have listened to a twelve-year-old boy wishing to act as judge, and summoning the judges themselves to his judgment? Therefore a younger boy (as Daniel is called in the said passage) here signifies a young man, who by comparison with the aged adulterers could rightly be reckoned a boy. And indeed that persons are called boys even at a great age, according to the usage of Sacred Scripture, Sanctius shows in prolegomenon 3, number 13. Add that a greater age than ten or twelve years, at which the Saint was first carried off into captivity, is suggested by those things which we shall presently discuss concerning his wisdom, when we shall have prefaced some things concerning his sanctity and virginity.

[17] His sanctity, The sanctity of Daniel shines forth both from several other arguments and especially from this, that while he was still living among men (namely in the thirty-fourth year of his age, as a Lapide reckons on the passage of Ezekiel presently to be adduced), and consequently not very advanced in age, he is by the testimony of God himself numbered among two most holy men, in Ezekiel chapter 14, verses 14 and following, where these things are found: If these three men be in the midst of it (of the prevaricating and unfaithful land), Noah, Daniel, and Job; they by their justice shall deliver their own souls … but they shall deliver neither sons nor daughters; but they alone shall be delivered, and the land shall be made desolate. Now the eminent sanctity and integrity of Daniel's life was so conspicuous even to the very princes and heathen satraps, that, driven by the goads of envy and most keen-eyed for the craftiest frauds, they judged that the king's hatred against him or his displeasure could be stirred up in no other way than by devising snares against his religious piety: for, as is said in Daniel 6 verse 4, They could find no cause or suspicion, because he (Daniel) was faithful, and no fault or suspicion was found in him.

[18] And so, when they turned themselves to all wiles and counsels, his zeal for prayer proved by hardships, yet not interrupted, they said at length, verse 5: We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, unless perhaps in the law of his God. And a decree having been passed by the king, that everyone who should ask any petition of any god or man for thirty days, save of the king, should be cast into the lions' den; yet not even on account of so cruel and fatal a decree did Daniel abate anything of his accustomed devotion in adoring God, choosing rather to die than to live less piously. For when Daniel had learned this … he entered his house, and, the windows being open in his upper chamber toward Jerusalem, three

times a day he bent his knees, and adored, and made confession before his God, as he had also been wont to do before; ibid. verse 10. And so, accused of having violated the king's edict, and cast into the lions' den, he came forth thence unharmed, triumphing by a double prodigy—both in himself and over his rivals—on account of a piety so rare and so thoroughly proved by hardships.

[19] The abstinence of Daniel was rare beyond measure, and almost incredibly marvelous, his marvelous abstinence, were it not established from the divine words. For who could sufficiently marvel that, in the time of a harsh captivity, amid the delights of the Babylonian court—of which he could be a spectator and witness and daily partaker—and with the king's command besides especially urging it, and the solicitude and entreaties of the chief of the eunuchs, the Prophet could nevertheless never be induced, even at so tender an age, to abate anything of his most severe manner of living. Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not be defiled with the king's table, nor with the wine of his drink; and he obtained leave to live on vegetables and water alone. See the reasons in the interpreters. And indeed that this frugal and religious abstinence of the most holy Youth was wondrously pleasing to God is clear from the signal rewards with which God miraculously followed it, verses 15, 17, and following. But was that abstinence perpetual with him? Sanctius, on chapter 10 of Daniel verse 3, I ate no desirable bread, has these words, by which the question posed is satisfied: Hence it is clear that Daniel at some time used more sumptuous foods, drank wine, and ate desirable bread, that is, delicate bread, such as is wont to be sought by those whose life is remote from squalid and common fare: for he himself teaches this not obscurely, when he says he refused these things during a fast of three weeks. Wherefore that which he did at the outset, chapter 1, that he should take only vegetables and the like to table, was not perpetual with him. Pererius, however, commenting on the cited chapter, explains why Daniel used better foods in old age than in youth.

[20] Nor is his virginity to be passed over, which all agree that he preserved unblemished even to death, his virginity, as a Lapide says in the prolegomena oft alleged. He was, moreover, so remote from those things which either provoke or betray lust, that he was thought by the Jews to be a eunuch: so chaste and composed to seemliness were his movements, his virginal modesty and reserve, his bashful eyes, his chaste words, that you would believe him to have nothing of the flesh. Whence St. John Damascene, book 4 On the Faith chapter 25, says that by the grace of chastity Daniel was as inviolable to the savagery of the lions as the three youths to the Babylonian fire. The objection which some frame against his celibacy from the passage of Ezekiel chapter 14 above: If these three men be, etc., is resolved by a Lapide and Sanctius in the prolegomena. But although it is not established with sufficient certainty whether our Saint was a eunuch or castrated—concerning which matter authors are cited on both sides among the interpreters—yet the opinion of Cornelius a Lapide and Sanctius in the prolegomena (not to mention others cited by them) is preferred, as also that of Tirinus on chapter 1 verse 3; which frees him from this reproachful and, among the Jews, odious blemish.

[21] [his desire for his own and others' salvation. Was he a martyr, and in what sense? He was a type of Christ.] Daniel likewise had this endowment of sanctity, that he was most eager both for his own salvation and perfection and for that of others. Whence, as a Lapide rightly observes, in chapter 9 verse 23 he is called a man of desires. Thence, praying for his people, he obtained for them a return from the Babylonian captivity both from God and from Cyrus: for Daniel remained in his principality and prefecture even to the time of Cyrus, who in the first year of his monarchy released the Jews from captivity. Thence finally he asked and obtained that the time of Christ the Redeemer, and of his nativity and passion, be shortened, in the said chapter verse 24. That he was a martyr a Lapide proves, led by this reasoning, that on account of his piety and his invocation of the God of the Hebrews he was cast into the lions' den, and indeed twice, though by the help of God he came forth thence unharmed. He urges this title from the example of St. John, who is called a martyr by the Fathers because he was cast into a cauldron of boiling oil, although he came out thence unharmed by the grace of God. And in this sense too St. Daniel can be called a martyr, although he did not in fact suffer martyrdom, as will be proved in §4. Daniel, finally, was a type of Christ, the prototype of all the Saints and the author of all sanctity; which the praised a Lapide shows by seventeen reasons in all. And so much, for our purpose, concerning the sanctity and virtues of St. Daniel—more than enough: now let us speak of his wisdom.

§ III. His wisdom; the authority among kings and peoples that arose from it; whether St. Daniel is to be excluded from the number of the prophets.

Daniel's wisdom praised by God himself, Wisdom, equal to his sanctity and the rest of the holy Seer's endowments, adorned him: of which many proofs from his own words and deeds, set forth in his book, are at hand, which, each explained in its own place, you have in the interpreters. But this is especially to be noted, that the Saint had God himself for the herald of his wisdom. For the king of Tyre, reputing himself most wise, yet dared not compare himself to Daniel. And this is what Ezekiel, deriding him, objects to him by sarcasm, chapter 28 verse 3: Behold, thou art wiser than Daniel; no secret is hidden from thee. Now from Daniel 1, where the age of the most wise Youth was still tender—for as with the years gradually increasing his bodily strength daily grew, so likewise there was a fresh accession of learning day by day—it is most clearly established how great, how far-reaching, how subtle and acute a force of intellect, joined with the profoundest wisdom, he already then had, and of what sort he was afterward to have, when a riper age had formed him into a man.

[23] by whom he was excellently adorned above others, But a few things out of the many by which, through the course of the book inscribed with his name, his plainly divine wisdom is commended, and the various things which are read inserted in the lucubrations of the interpreters concerning this same subject with which we are now dealing—a very few, I say, let these suffice us here. Already from the first time of his entry into Babylon he was most renowned for the public fame of his learning and wisdom: as one who on that account, in preference to many others, was chosen and led to the court of the king of the Babylonians together with his companions. For the king had said to his courtly minister that he should bring in of the children of Israel … men instructed in all wisdom, cautious in knowledge, and learned in discipline. And verse 17, But to these youths God gave knowledge and discipline in every book and wisdom; but to Daniel, that he might far more loftily surpass the rest, the understanding of all visions and dreams; a gift, to be sure, and no small part of the prophetic spirit, with which God most abundantly endowed him.

[24] Nor indeed did Daniel and his companions labor moderately which king Nebuchadnezzar too extolled with the highest praises. to pass with profit the space of three years which had been given them for cultivating the sciences before they should enter in to the king: for when they now stood before the king, the term of three years having elapsed, about to give proofs and render account of those things which they both knew before and had learned there, they displayed so eminent a wisdom, gathered from the aggregation of various sciences, that the king affirmed of them, verse 20, that he had found them tenfold above all the soothsayers and magi that were in the whole kingdom. It is pleasing to append to these the things which a Lapide determines somewhat more particularly concerning St. Daniel's wisdom in the prolegomena. He was, he says, the most certain and most celebrated chronologist not only of his own time, but of that age. He was the wisest man of all men of that century, and most versed in every science, even that of the Chaldeans and other gentiles. Tirinus, on chapter 1 verse 4, tacitly indicates or supposes that the Saint and his companions were endowed with skill and sagacity in the investigation of natural things, and with ethical, political, and economic discipline: for he says that those who were sought from among the Hebrews for the court of Nebuchadnezzar, cautious in knowledge and learned in discipline, were adorned with these faculties: accordingly those endowments could not be lacking in Daniel and his companions, who had been chosen for the royal court.

[25] Daniel therefore, no otherwise than as an oracle of science and a prodigy of wisdom, was always held by high and low, And indeed by kings and peoples by kings and peoples, in the highest veneration and admiration. And king Nebuchadnezzar especially, after the dream about the famous statue was expounded to him by Daniel, fell upon his face and adored Daniel, and commanded that victims and incense be offered, that they might sacrifice to him. And a little after: Then the King raised Daniel on high, and gave him many and great gifts: and made him prince over all the provinces of Babylon, and chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon. But Daniel requested of the king, and he set over the works of the province of Babylon Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego: but Daniel himself was in the gates of the king, as you have in chapter 2. But when he was about to read the writing of the fingers appearing on the wall, chapter 5, he is thus commended to king Balthasar by the queen (whether she was the king's mother, or grandmother, or wife; see a Lapide):

[26] There is a man in thy kingdom who has the spirit of the holy gods in himself; on account of it he was ever held in the highest honor. and in the days of thy father knowledge and wisdom were found in him: for king Nebuchadnezzar too, thy father, made him chief of the magi, enchanters, Chaldeans, and soothsayers: thy father, I say, O king, because a fuller spirit, and prudence, and understanding, and interpretation of dreams, and showing of secrets, and loosing of things bound, were found in him. And so Daniel, being summoned, after he had expounded the writing, by the king's command was clothed … with purple, and a golden chain was put about his neck, and it was proclaimed of him that he should have power as the third in his kingdom. But under Darius he is set over the satraps of the kingdom, chapter 6, most amply adorned with honorable authority: Therefore Daniel surpassed all the princes and satraps: because the spirit of God was fuller in him. Moreover the king thought to set him over the whole kingdom. Finally the supreme authority and glory that so unexpected and marvelous a deliverance of the innocent Susanna procured for him, still a young man, chapter 13; after which Daniel … became great in the sight of the people from that day and thenceforward.

[27] to strike him from the roll of the Prophets, It is abundantly established among all that St. Daniel is to be reckoned among the number of the prophets, whatever

some may have wished to remove him from it. The Hebrews, as Jerome attests in his preface to Daniel, arrange the books of Sacred Scripture into three classes, namely the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa, or sacred writings. Now to this third class they reckon Daniel, and separate him from the Prophets, as the same Jerome attests. Why the Hebrews thought this, Theodoret teaches on this book: whose words, for brevity's sake, I do not transcribe. The argument seemingly favoring the Hebrews' opinion, which is drawn from the prayer of Azarias chapter 3, where at the same time when Daniel was at Babylon, he says: There is not at this time a prophet, etc., Sanctius elucidates in prolegomenon 4; and for the further confirmation of the matter, he says: that Daniel was a prophet the whole book manifestly teaches, and cries out so openly and clearly that, except one who has stubbornly stopped his ears, no one can be ignorant of it.

[28] none can, save the obstinate: and that such he also was, How many things about Christ, how various things about Antichrist, and about the change of empires he foretold, how the outcome of events confirmed them, who does not see? He must be blind and out of his mind who does not here recognize the power of the prophetic spirit, and a gift plainly divine, above the natural faculty of man, of foreknowing and foretelling those things which God alone knows, and he to whom God has willed to reveal them. Indeed Christ stops the mouths of the Jews, Matthew 24, when he says: When you shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, etc. Josephus too ought to confute the Jews, plainly signifying what a great esteem he had conceived of this endowment of Daniel, when he reckoned this holy man not only among the prophets, but even among the greatest prophets, in book 10 of the Antiquities chapter 12, where it is thus read: Every eminent felicity befell him as the most excellent prophet, both gracious in his lifetime to kings and to the people, and after his death having obtained an everlasting memory. And indeed he follows up the Prophet there with this eulogy: For his books, which he left written, are even now, he says, read among us: which give us sure faith that God held converse with him.

[29] Josephus acknowledges him; But he not only foretold future things, as the other prophets did; but he also fixed beforehand the time when they were to come to pass: and whereas the other prophets foretold calamities, and therefore came into ill favor with kings and the common multitude; this one was a prophet of good things, so that on account of his auspicious presage he indeed conciliated the goodwill of all to himself, but on account of the certainty of the outcomes he procured credit for himself among the whole race of mortals. For there exists in his writings that from which especially the certainty of his prophecy can be gathered, etc. And from these things it is plainly clear that the ancient Jews were so far from that opinion which judged that Daniel should be struck from the roll of the prophets, that they place him in a most honorable position among the chief of the prophets.

[30] Meanwhile Josephus, to whom Daniel was a prophet of good things, etc., is rightly refuted by Salianus at the year of the world 3497 as having spoken according to the mind of his own countrymen, yet falsely asserting him to be a prophet of good things. not according to the truth of the Prophet himself and of the matter. For if he himself read the book, he found that Daniel, if anyone else, announced most severe and most bitter things to the kings with whom he lived (as he proves from examples, though the matter needs no proof), nor was he therefore dear thence to kings or people. He adds: Josephus, I think, measured Daniel by himself, who hunted after the favor of the Greeks and Romans whom he served … This is the way of false prophets, and not even of all of them, since Balaam too could despise a house full of gold in preference to prophetic truth.

* measured

§ IV. His visions, interpretations of dreams, prophecies, writings; his death and its circumstances; whether the saint suffered martyrdom.

Those three endowments of the great Prophet, just now proposed in the title, cohere together so closely that I seem likely to do not amiss Daniel's power was supreme in visions, etc. if I treat now of one, now of another indiscriminately, using the words of Pererius in his preface elsewhere indicated, by which he learnedly elucidates the present subject: All, he says, Daniel's visions were expressed by wondrous images and similitudes. To these is added, that Daniel's prophecy embraces all times, past, present, and future: past, as in Nebuchadnezzar's first dream: future, as in the exposition of his dreams, and in all his other predictions: present, as in the writing of the hand which appeared on the wall, and in the judgment of Susanna. It contains likewise all the modes by which prophetic visions are wont to occur, that is, either through dreams, or through ecstasy or rapture, or through sensible signs, or through illumination of the mind. And, to say it in few words, if the excellence of a prophecy ought to be esteemed the greater the more, and the greater the things it foretells about Christ, or the more explicitly and openly it prophesies; Daniel truly ought on that account to be reckoned one of the highest and most noble prophets. Thus he.

[32] Daniel … had this, says St. Jerome on Daniel chapter 1 verse 17, his excellence: beyond the three youths, as a distinction, that he discerned with sagacious mind the visions and dreams by which, through certain symbols and enigmas, future things are shown; so that what others saw in a phantasm, he beheld with the eyes of the heart. Whether and how far the knowledge communicated to Daniel and his companions by God was natural or supernatural; of what sort were the dreams whose outcome Daniel interpreted; in what way true dreams are distinguished from false; likewise what a dream is, what a vision; and the rest that can here be inquired, learn from the interpreters; among whom consult especially Sanctius and Pererius on chapter 1 of Daniel, and a Lapide on chapters 40 and 41 of Genesis; let it suffice here to have intimated in a word that those dreams of which Daniel acted as interpreter were sent by God, not fortuitous. Other prophecies of Daniel about the destruction of the world are recounted by pseudo-Epiphanius in the Life of Daniel, pseudo-Dorotheus in the Synopsis, and the Alexandrian Chronicle.

[33] some spurious among them, and falsely imputed to him. The works of St. Epiphanius our Dionysius Petavius reviewed, translated from Greek into Latin, illustrated with notes, and published at Paris in the year 1622, comprising in two volumes both the genuine and the spurious and supposititious writings of that author. Of these the file is led, he says in the preface of volume 2 to the reader, by the Book on the Life of the Prophets, which that it is pseudepigraphic, six hundred trifling lies with which it is stuffed persuade us. And so pseudo-Epiphanius, in the same volume page 143, narrates the deed thus: Besides, he designated another portent in the steep mountains of Babylonia. When, he says, you shall see that mountain which faces the North smoking, the end of Babylon will draw near: but when you shall behold it as though blazing with fire, the fall of the whole world will be imminent. But if that mountain which is to the South shall flow with waters, the people will return to their native land, and Jerusalem, ample and spacious, will at last be restored: which was accomplished by the zeal and labor of Jesus the high priest and of Zorobabel the son of Salathiel. But if the mountain shall flow with gore, the slaughter of Belial will be extended throughout the whole world, and the Lord, having assumed the form of man, will descend to earth. Which things we, with Salianus at the year of the world 3535, number 4, say savor of Rabbinic bran, and are everywhere despised.

[34] Besides the writings vindicated to Daniel by the interpreters, But since not so much Daniel's writings as Daniel's deeds and person pertain especially to our design, very many things which could here be inquired concerning his book we remit elsewhere. This book Pererius vindicates to Daniel in his preface; where he also treats of the excellence of the same book, drawn from its matter and author; of the hysterology, or preposterous order of events and the obscurity arising thence; and finally of its usefulness. This book likewise Sanctius attributes to Daniel in prolegomenon 5, the history of Susanna in prolegomenon 4; the whole third chapter in prolegomenon 7; of the dragon and the priests of Bel, of the den and Habakkuk, in prolegomenon 8; of the canonical authority of the whole book, in prolegomenon 9; in what language it was written, and who was its translator, in prolegomenon 10. Tirinus may likewise be consulted in his preface, as also Calmet in his, page 518.

[35] some things also supposed under his name. That certain things were falsely ascribed to Daniel, and not acknowledged by the Church as such, it is fitting here also to recall: on which matter Huetius, in the Evangelical Demonstration Proposition 4, chapter 14, under the heading On the Prophecy of Daniel number 10, thus speaks: The eminent fame of Daniel, celebrated especially for expounding dreams, brought it about that a certain old author of dream-interpretation falsely prefixed to his work of Dream-books the name of Daniel. Its use the Decrees of Gratian condemn, as supposititious and impious. But it is uncertain whether the synopsis noted this, or something similar, when it placed Daniel among the apocrypha. Certainly it did not have regard to the additions of Daniel, which are reckoned by it among the legitimate offspring of this Prophet. But I think it to be both a Latin writing of a Christian man, since no mention of it appears either in Artemidorus or in Achmet; and not very ancient, since among those who before Artemidorus treated the same subject the name of Daniel nowhere occurs. Thus Huetius, citing in the margin the Decree of Gratian part 2, cause 27, question 1, chapter 16; but it is found in cause 26, question 7, chapter 16.

[36] Pererius at the end of his preface to Daniel determines Various opinions concerning the years of his life are reported, that the holy Seer lived even to 100 years, working out that age through various successive chronological calculations; but how far beyond that he proceeded, he says is unknown. To Pererius a Lapide wrongly imputes in the prolegomena, as if he had determined that Daniel lived 138 years; which if it were true, a Lapide would then certainly with reason reject so great an age, as being an enormous age for man, and unheard of in that century: whence others judge that Daniel did not exceed his hundredth year. Finally the chronological points which he there fixes he reduces to this, that Daniel's death is linked with the 101st or 111th year of his age. Sanctius, prolegomenon 3, number 14, although he confesses it to be uncertain in what year of his age the holy Man departed this life, yet admits it as certain that he advanced to a great age, and, as he chronologically determines, to one more than senile.

[37] The Abulensis, question 91 on chapter 2 of Matthew, circumscribes the time of the said age at one year above eighty; the opinions. but he lived, says Sanctius, much longer, it is agreed. But Tirinus, of all whom I at least have seen the most restrictive in defining that age, determines from the hypothesis that, if Daniel died in the third year of the monarchy of Cyrus (because Scripture makes no mention of him thereafter), he lived in all seventy-one years; and this in conformity with what he discusses in his Sacred Chronicle chapter 35, concerning the beginning and end of the seventy years of the Babylonian servitude, captivity, and desolation; the time during which the holy Prophet lived

in that captivity, extended not to seventy years, that is, to its whole duration, as very many interpreters determine, but restricted to thirty of those seventy years; concerning which, as also concerning the computation by which others measure these and other periods of the Saint's life, more will be seen in the chronological order to be arranged by us a little later.

[38] It is next in order that, besides the things which surround the time of his life and death, we now discuss the place of his death. The place of his death Peter de Natalibus holds that the Saint died in Media, and indeed on the fifth day before the Kalends of September, as may be seen in the Life, book 7, chapter 126; concerning both these assertions let him himself look to it. Sanctius attributes his death to Babylon, as the Fathers, he says, commonly teach, and the Roman Martyrology. And commenting on chapter 1 of Daniel verse 21, he judges that our Prophet returned from Media … to Babylon, and that there at length he was laid in a noble sepulcher; but from the authority of the pseudonymous Epiphanius, Isidore, Dorotheus, etc., whom he cites, this can by no means be established. The same place of death a Lapide assigns; adding the cause: for he was unwilling, he says, to return into Judea with Esdras and the others for whom he had obtained the return from Cyrus, both that he might promote the welfare and affairs of the Jews with Cyrus, and that he might be the director and protector of the Jews, who remained in Babylon in very great numbers. Thus he, from Theodoret on chapter 10. Consult also Pererius in the Prolegomena toward the end. But if the Prophet's place of death was the same as that of his tomb, various things bear on this which we shall give in §5. But the new French legendist rightly notes in the Life of Daniel paragraph 2, of which below, that here cannot be adduced what God may have wrought at his tomb, nor what honors were shown to him: since nothing can be asserted concerning the place of his burial, and the other circumstances which accompanied and followed his death.

[39] And so that opinion pleases me best which affirms that the place of his death, and the deep circumstances of the same, are plainly unknown to us; and the other circumstances of the same are hidden from us. in which matter we gladly subscribe to the opinion of the mentioned legendist; yet let him see whether he is proved sufficiently consistent with himself in that uncertainty, when, a few things intervening, affirming that no place of burial seems ever to have existed at Babylon, he says: Daniel no longer dwelt at Babylon, from the time that Darius the Mede had carried him off to Ecbatana, the chief city of Media. He seems to have died in Persia, or in a certain city situated on the Tigris, where he had his last visions. Thus he; which seems to me to be the same as to divine an uncertain matter from uncertain conjectures: for whether and how long the Saint survived those last visions is not established; no more than whether and how long he then remained there, or rather migrated elsewhere. And so we prefer to adopt no opinion of others concerning the place of his death, rather than, by adopting one of them, unsupported by sufficient foundation, to peddle mere conjectures. Whence it follows that Calmet, in his preface to Daniel page 515, too positively places his death in Persia; nor is he even sufficiently consistent with himself, since a little after he asserts that it is doubted whether he died at Babylon.

[40] The Greeks fabricate that the Saint was beheaded by Attalus. We said in passing at number 21, from Cornelius a Lapide, that our holy Seer was in some certain sense a martyr. The sacred tables of the Greeks want something more, as will appear afterward, relating that the Saint attained the laurel of a true and strictly so-called martyrdom, namely by his blood shed, when they hand down that he was beheaded under some king Attalus, I know not who: whereas none, so far as is known, of the ancient Fathers or historians, as a Lapide rightly observes in the prolegomena, has recorded this to memory. Let the little Greeks therefore rejoice in their own trifles, here too, after a manner otherwise sufficiently and more than sufficiently usual to them, willing either to be deceived or to deceive. Therefore we reckon this fictitious death among the imaginary dreams of fabulists; whether they first devised it, or found it elsewhere among Rabbinic or Talmudic refuse, we have no ground to affirm. And these things indeed regard the Saint's death, and those things which surround it; now let us add the things which followed it.

§ V. His sepulcher, epitaph, statues.

Various things concerning the holy Prophet's sepulcher Concerning the sepulcher of St. Daniel, whatever some writers may have wished to determine to a certain place, nothing sufficiently credible seems able to be established: for the reason that neither the authors nor consequently their testimonies have weight enough to make faith. We shall nevertheless report what they hand down, leaving to the reader full liberty of assenting or dissenting. If we believe pseudo-Epiphanius, he was buried honorably in a narrow (perhaps august) cavern, and his monument exists to this age, most well known to all; but if pseudo-Dorotheus in the Synopsis on the Life and Death of the Prophets, in the Library of the Fathers volume 7 through Margarinus de la Bigne, of the second edition of the year 1589; he wrought, he says, to the other kings of the Persians also many portents, which are not written. But Daniel died in the land of the Chaldeans, and was buried alone with honor in a royal sepulcher. Where he seems to signify that he was buried in the very tower of which we shall presently treat.

[42] are narrated, Josephus, book 10 of the Antiquities, last chapter, celebrates a certain tower built by Daniel, by no means devoid of prodigy, if he narrates true things. Since he was esteemed by all, he says, as dear to God, and on account of this opinion of himself was most illustrious, he built at Ecbatana in Media a tower, a most beautiful work, and worthy of singular admiration, which lasts even to this day, and to beholders seems of the most recent structure, as though it were finished on that very day on which it is beheld: so great an appearance of newness, and so entire a beauty it has, in nothing at all injured by so long a time, contrary to the custom of other buildings, which, equally with men, feel the injury of age, and gradually lose not only their firmness but also their comeliness. And a custom endures even to the present time, that in that tower are buried the kings of the Medes, and of the Persians and Parthians: and its custody is to this day entrusted to a priest of the Jewish race.

[43] To that very sepulcher the words of the Life of St. Daniel in Peter de Natalibus most clearly allude, but nothing sufficiently worthy of belief. of which below; where after it had been said of his death in Media, it is presently added, buried in a royal sepulcher alone with glory. What the Greeks record in their great printed Menaea at the seventeenth day of December in the eulogy of the Saint and his companions, is too unheard-of and singular to be believed at once, on account of such slight authority, no more trustworthy documents being adduced—things which savor either of the old-womanish tales of the Rabbis, or certainly of fabulists of like genius—until they be proved from elsewhere. And so there, to their fabulous death, as we said above, this double fable is subjoined: But it is said that their heads, after the beheading, were glued to their bodies. But an angel of the Lord, taking them up, led them to Mount Gebal; on which, placed under a rock for 400 years, at the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ they too rose again, and again fell asleep. Concerning the situation of the mount Hebal, or Gebal (in Josephus book 4 of the Antiquities, last chapter, toward the end, it is Gibal or Gibalus) near Shechem, a Lapide may be consulted on chapter 8 of Joshua, verse 30.

[44] Benjamin of Tudela, in his Itinerary, which from the Hebrew Benedictus Arias Montanus rendered into Latin, Certain other things and which came forth from the Plantin press at Antwerp in the year 1575, in which are described the memorable things which, 400 years before that time, having measured almost the whole globe of lands, as is noted in the title of the book, by marking out journeys, he either himself saw or received from trustworthy men of his age; the praised Benjamin, I say, on page 78 narrates that in Chuzestan, formerly called Elam, the homeland of the Elamites, before one of the 14 synagogues of the Jews which were gathered there, is the sepulcher of Daniel: concerning which he subjoins the following, which whether they be true, or drawn from the apocryphal—as I suspect—dreams of the Jews, I have no ground certainly to affirm; being about to give what I find in him concerning this matter, marked with these words: The river Tigris flows through the city itself, and also divides the habitation of the Jews; and on the one side of the river all are most wealthy, whoever inhabit it, and have markets most furnished with business and merchandise.

[45] But on the other side all are poorer and meaner, of the same stuff have no markets, no commerce, nor gardens or orchards; so that at one time they conceived envy against the others, and thought that riches and abundance accrued to them from the neighborhood of Daniel the prophet buried there: wherefore they demanded of them that the sepulcher of Daniel be permitted to be transferred to their region. Which when it was constantly refused, they came first to contention, then to strife and battle, with great slaughter on both sides even for many days; until at last, both sides weary, they agreed on conditions and pacts, that in alternate years Daniel's tomb should be transferred to the other side: and this was for some time done and repeated. But it happened meanwhile that Senigar Saa, son of Saa, supreme emperor of all the kings of the Persians, came there; and, a few words being interposed concerning the multitude of kingdoms which obeyed him, the Arabic name by which he was called, and the extent of his dominion, he thus continues:

[46] are brought forward, He therefore, when he had once tarried in this city, and had seen Daniel's tomb transferred from one region of the city to another, and with it many of the Jews and Ishmaelites migrating; the cause being asked and known, judged it unworthy that such irreverence toward Daniel should be tolerated: but having carefully measured the space between the two sides, he suspended Daniel's tomb, placed in a great glass coffer, in the middle of that place from a very great beam by brazen chains, and ordered a building to be constructed dedicated to the use of a synagogue, open to all men of the whole world, and denied to no mortal, whether Jew or Aramaean, wishing to enter there for the sake of prayer. And that coffer hangs from the beam even to this day. Moreover that emperor by edict forbade anyone to take fish from the river within one mile on the lower side, and one on the upper, out of reverence and worship for Daniel. Whether and when that Senigar Saa reigned, we confess is as unknown to us as it is impassable to investigation in so intricate a succession of the kings of the Persians after the seventh century: nor indeed is this deed, or rather fable, of such moment.

[47] and equally suspect. Gregory Abulpharagius, in his history of the Dynasties, translated from Arabic into Latin by Edward Pococke, dynasty 5, page 54, holds that Daniel was buried in the citadel of Shushan, that is, the city of Tustar. But since that author is so recent, as one who flourished in the 13th century after Christ's birth (see the treatise on the Patriarchs of Antioch

the preliminary treatise in volume 4 of July, page 100), what, pray, could you here expect from him that could avail in the least to move the mind of a prudent man to assent? We have here meanwhile opinions going asunder concerning the sepulcher of Daniel, divided after the manner of the seven cities contending about the homeland of Homer. But we judge that nothing here is certain, but rather that all things are uncertain, the divine words being silent about the place in which the holy Prophet was laid. Now wherever this sepulcher may have been, it will not be irksome to honor it with the following epitaph, which from the Saint's deeds Salianus elegantly and vigorously composed at the year of the world 3535:

[48] A brief and vigorous epitaph, This vault, traveler, encloses a great Man, a Man illustrious with the royal blood of David, renowned for the royal familiarity of very many kings and emperors, and for honors: most illustrious as a living type and a breathing figure of the King Messiah. I mean the Man, the prophet Daniel, mighty in work and word: who, having at twelve years begun to receive the rays of prophetic light, came forth beyond his hundredth year renowned for his prophecies. To whom, in expounding divine dreams and heavenly inspirations, the far-off progresses of empires, and the princes to come in a long series—Xerxes, Alexanders, Antiochuses, Ptolemies, Tituses and Vespasians, and the last portent of the world, Antichrist—he saw with a perspicacious eye, and wrote down. Who, bewailing the very seventy years of the people's exile, so long before recognized, shuddered at, and announced the final reprobation and destruction of that same people: of his own people, denying that Christ and their Messiah had been sent to them, and, their eyes blinded by malice, not recognizing the day of their visitation; Christ, whose day he himself had indicated by carefully numbered years and weeks.

[49] I have called him a prophet, I ought to have called him a martyr: composed by Salianus. who, cast to seven lions raging with rabid hunger for food, for seven days curbed and restrained the barking maw of the beasts, their parched throats, their gaping mouths, their claws accustomed to human blood; and, a contest undertaken with a monstrous dragon, burst and tore it apart with medicated food. I have called him a martyr, it is not enough. I add therefore that he was a teacher of a people surrounded by the darkness of idols: I add that he was a confessor in a secular exile: I add that he was a virgin among that people, in which barrenness was a shame: I add that he was an overthrower of idols, a champion and bulwark of true piety: a miracle of wisdom, fortitude, modesty, and integrity. He prolonged his life in exile to the hundred and tenth year, five hundred and eighteen years before the nativity of Christ the Lord. He departed from the living in the year from the founding of the world 3535. Thus Salianus: the marks of time, interspersed here and there through the epitaph drawn from his chronological reckoning, anyone may adapt otherwise, and correct them from our chronological order to be subjoined a little later.

[50] I should like these few things to be added twice from the notes to the Roman Martyrology at this day, July 21, Of his statue where it is thus read: An ancient custom of Christians is found to have been, that on their sepulchers, among other symbols of the resurrection, they carved Daniel standing free in the den among the lions. There exist very many examples of this thing on old stone sepulchers; perhaps for this reason, that concerning the resurrection of the dead he spoke most openly in chapter 12: or because he himself, coming forth free from the den, in a manner expressed the hieroglyph of a man rising again from the tomb. A public monument of his veneration toward our Saint the most pious emperor Constantine the Great also willed to exist at Constantinople, as Eusebius Pamphili attests, On the Life of Constantine book 3, chapter 49: You would have seen therefore, he says, at the fountains which are in the middle of the forum … the effigy of Daniel … expressed in bronze together with the lions, and refulgent with leaves of gold.

[51] You may add to these whatever little effigy of the Saint, engraved in bronze after the preface of the Commentaries on Daniel in a Lapide, with this inscription: and of his effigy. The effigy of Daniel in Babylonian dress, namely in trousers, purple, and tiara: for that he used this in Babylon and the court is clear from Daniel 3, 21, and chapter 2 (nay, chapter 5) 29. I took care, he says, that it be depicted from an old codex of the Vatican library, namely from a Greek Menologium of the Saints written by hand, and painted with gilded images to the life 700 years ago. This codex was of the emperor Basil Porphyrogenitus, which, lately brought to Constantinople to the Cardinal of St. Cecilia, and by him given to our most holy Lord Paul V the Pontiff, by his command was deposited in the Vatican library, as an illustrious monument of antiquity. That the word saraballa, which is Chaldaic, is used indiscriminately for coverings of the head and of the legs, Cangius notes in the Latin Glossary: but here it seems to be applied to breeches or trousers. Sanctius, on chapter 3 of Daniel, breeches, he says, in Chaldaic SARBAL, which word Jerome renders now SARABALLA, now breeches.

* elsewhere Shushtar:

§ VI. The chronological order of the deeds done by the Saint.

There are set forth It is not my mind here, nor moreover is it of the present design, to construct a new chronological order concerning the deeds done by the Saint: for the labor of others has long since sweated over it, to whom it more nearly pertains; I hold it as fixed only to set forth what series of times they arranged for it; whereby it may come to pass that the hagiophile reader may know approximately, so as to form for himself here at least a rough chronological idea. Pererius, toward the end of his preface to Daniel, arranged a chronological order; resting, however, on a feeble foundation, namely on the authors that falsely bore the names of Epiphanius and Isidore. Thus speaks Pererius: When Daniel was led captive to Babylon, he was of the most tender age: for Isidore says he was then a boy; Epiphanius calls him a little child and an infant. Whence it comes that it is most like the truth that Daniel was then not more than ten years old. And let this be laid down as the foundation of the chronology of Daniel to be explained thereafter. The tenth year of Daniel, therefore, in which he was led to Babylon, concurs with the third year of the reign of Joacim … and with the first year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar … Hence it is clear that Daniel was born about the 25th year of king Josiah … six hundred and nearly sixty years before the birth of our Lord …

[53] various, When Daniel freed Susanna, he was in his 12th year … Daniel interpreted the first dream of king Nebuchadnezzar in his 35th year; the visions which are narrated in the 7th and 8th chapters of this book he had at eighty. He explained the writing of the hand writing on the wall at nearly his hundredth year. In the year that next followed this, and which was the first of Darius king of the Medes, the time of the Messiah's coming and death, comprised and defined in those seventy weeks, was divinely disclosed to him. The visions which are recorded in the 10th, 11th, and 12th chapter, that is, up to the third year of Cyrus the king, befell him now a centenarian … But how far beyond that he proceeded is unknown. The parachronism of pseudo-Isidore, who asserts that the Saint lived a hundred and ten years, and until Darius king of the Persians, he there refutes; an opinion, to be sure, which destroys itself, as he there shows at length. But what he there builds up, he would himself destroy, if the things that Cornelius a Lapide imputes to him were true.

[54] and those of others, For the same Cornelius a Lapide, in his preface here, deduces Pererius's system in a series through the kings; Pererius computes, he says, that Daniel died in the 138th year of his age: for he was born, according to him, in the 25th year of Josiah, who then still reigned 6 years, namely up to the 31st year; after Josiah reigned Joachaz three months; after Joachaz, Joakim eleven years; after Joakim, Joachin three months; after Joachin, Zedekiah eleven years: after whom followed the Babylonian captivity of 70 years up to Cyrus: after the captivity Cyrus reigned 30 years; after Cyrus, Cambyses eight years; after Cambyses, the Magi one year; after the Magi, Darius Hystaspis: in whose first year (if we believe Isidore in the book On the Life and Death of the Prophets) Daniel died at Babylon. Now add all these years; you will find 138. So many years, therefore, Daniel lived. Thus Pererius, says our Cornelius. But that Pererius does not give the Saint so many years, nay rather refutes those who give him so many, is clear from what has been said: so that we can scarcely marvel enough that Cornelius a Lapide should so positively impute this to him; who, having proposed a double hypothesis concerning Daniel's death, notes in the margin that it is truer that he lived 100 years. But observe, that in the above system the 27 years of Cyrus's reign are wrongly not distinguished from the 3 years of the Persian monarchy: since they are quite different.

[55] Salianus, in volume 4 of the Ecclesiastical Annals of the Old Testament, concerning the deeds done by Daniel at the year of the world 3426 judges, with Torniellus, that Daniel was then born, namely in the first year of Joakim king of Judah, before Christ 627; and about the third year of his age was led into captivity, from pseudo-Epiphanius and Sulpicius at the beginning of book 2 of the sacred history. Nor indeed does he judge it absurd that this happened to an infant, since there he was to be not so much a captive as a hostage, being of royal blood, so that Joakim could safely be sent back to his kingdom. But also the judgment of Susanna, which, he says, most holy Fathers say happened in his twelfth year, agrees best with this dating according to him, since with the other it cannot agree. Furthermore thereafter the Saint's deeds and times are thus arranged in him in various places (concerning which see the index of the said volume under the word Daniel): the captivity in the year of the world 3428; his boyhood education about the year 3433; the manifestation of his wisdom 3436; the deliverance of Susanna 3438; the third year of his prophecy 3440; his sanctity taken as an example by Ezekiel 3441;

[56] The explanation of the dream about the succession of monarchies, the plotting of his death, the delay obtained from the king, the divine revelation, and their times, the answers given to the king 3453; the dedication of the golden statue, among the things which he narrates, 3455 and 56: the explanation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream 3463; the manifestation of the fraud of the sacrificers of Bel, the killing of the dragon, the casting of Daniel into the lions' den 3473; the dream about the 4 beasts, or 4 winds 3495; the withdrawal from the court of Nebuchadnezzar 3496; the vision about the overthrow of the kingdom of the Persians and the cruelty of Antiochus toward the Jews 3497; the interpretation of the writing traced on the wall 3516; the journey to the Medes with Darius, the prefecture over the satraps, etc., the envy of these as also of the princes, the Saint's threefold prayer in the day, his entry into the lions' den, etc., his life thereafter gracious among the kings, his prayer for the release of the seventy-year captivity, etc., in the same year 3516, before Christ 537; all which years, if the first be extended to the last, will make in all the sum of 90 years.

[57] But in volume 5 the remaining deeds of the Saint are thus linked to their times. chronological orders. The banquet and familiarity with Cyrus, in the year of the world 3517; the fasts, afflictions of the body, the last vision, mourning, etc., 3519; finally his death 3535, before Christ 518. Since, he says, Isidore writes that Daniel reached the hundred and tenth year of his age, whom we, with Torniellus, judged to have been born in the first year of king Joacim, he must have made an end of living in this year. But,

that I may again inculcate this, that must be said: what is drawn from such authority can make no faith. Meanwhile Cornelius a Lapide on the same Prophet is wrongly adduced by the praised author to the aforesaid year, as if not without reason subscribing to that chronology; whereas he greatly recoils from it.

[58] To which this seems preferable, Tirinus, in the Sacred Chronicle which is prefixed to his first volume, chapter 35, inquires when the 70 years of the Babylonian servitude, captivity, and desolation began and ended; and, five opinions being reported, he ingenuously professes that on account of the authority of so great men, whom he had alleged for them, all those opinions are probable; yet in a few conclusions he sets forth which of them seems to him to be embraced in preference to the rest, not so much, he says, from a zeal for asserting as for disputing. He determines therefore: 1. It seems certain that the 70 years both of the desolation and of the captivity and servitude of the Jews took their end in the 1st year of the monarchy of Cyrus, who, together with Darius the Mede, having stormed Babylon, and Balthasar, the last monarch of the Chaldeans, being slain, transferred the monarchy from the Chaldeans to the Persians, and immediately at the first beginning of his monarchy relaxed the captivity of the Jews, sending back as many as wished to return into Judea. 2. He determines that the 70 years of the desolation of the temple or city of Jerusalem are not to be distinguished from the 70 years of the captivity or servitude of the Jews, and consequently that neither two beginnings nor two terms are to be laid down, as of a double seventy-year Jewish captivity, foretold by the Prophets.

[59] which Tirinus lays down. He determines 3. as more probable, that from the 11th year of Zedekiah, in which the temple and city of Jerusalem were destroyed, up to the 1st year of the monarch Cyrus, only 30 years elapsed. Of the various proofs which he brings forward, I taste one, as bearing especially on this. Daniel, he says, together with king Joakim, in the 4th year of his reign, was led away from Jerusalem to Babylon (Daniel 1, verse 1), being certainly at least 10 years old (nay, according to our statements in §2, of somewhat more) years. Therefore if from that point 70, 80, or 88 years elapsed, as the authors of the first 4 opinions lay down, Daniel would already, under Cyrus and Darius reigning, have been nearly a centenarian. But, he says, so great an old man would not have been set by Darius over 120 satrapies (Daniel 6, verse 1), so that he, a centenarian, should raise up a sexagenarian king Darius (chapter 5, last verse). And this he confirms by the example of others, whom he brings forward; who must have been centenarians or older than centenarians: whereas it is nevertheless established that scarcely any at that age of the world reached so great an old age. This reasoning, I confess, seems urgent enough that we incline to that system. Nor indeed is it satisfactorily and aptly met, as to the inconveniences drawn from that great and, at that time, unusual age of our Saint and of the others above, if you answer thus:

[60] What forbids that Daniel, even in so great an old age, should have been employed in this office, An objection is met which could be framed against it, and that in the said circumstances? Marvelous indeed, but not therefore straightway incredible. Marvelous, I say. But what then? Why should it be irksome to admit something marvelous concerning the age of him upon whom, throughout the whole course of his life, He heaped so great an accumulation of marvelous prerogatives, who alone does great marvels, and in this Prophet appeared marvelous above others? But thus you nearly only show 1. that it could have happened, not that it truly happened. 2. In miracles and paradoxes anything whatever can thus be resolved, by recurring to the first cause. 3. That great age of the Seer is neither necessary according to this system, nor persuaded by irrefragable authority.

[61] And so the praised Tirinus arranges this chronological order of the deeds done by the Saint in his preface to the book of Daniel: and according to that system the Saint's deeds are linked to their times. he fixes his birth about the 15th year of Josiah; which, according to the Sacred Chronicle, praised a little before, corresponds to about the year 3408, before the Word incarnate about 597. Still a boy or a youth of 20 years, he is led captive by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon together with the king and his kinsman Joakim, in the 3rd year of the same's reign: where in the fourth year after he freed Susanna from death, and began to act as a prophet. He is compared for his sanctity with Noah and Job (Ezekiel 14, verse 14), not yet having passed the 34th year of his life; but he was objected to the king of Tyre by sarcasm on account of his wisdom, being then not more than 38 years old. In the 57th year of his age, the 2nd of the monarchy of Nebuchadnezzar, he interpreted for him the dream, both that which is described in chapter 2 and that in chapter 4. In his 66th year he had the vision which is in chapter 7; in his 68th, that which is in chapter 8; in which he also foretold the slaughter of Balthasar, chapter 5. In the following year the time of the coming and death of the Messiah, comprised in the 70 weeks (chapter 9), was divinely made known. Two years after, namely in the 3rd year of the monarchy of Cyrus, there were revealed to him the things which in chapters 10 and 11 he foretold about the destruction of the city of Jerusalem, and of the whole world, about Antichrist, about the last judgment. In which same year if Daniel died (because Scripture makes no mention of him thereafter), he lived in all 71 years, and prophesied 47 years. Thus he, remitting the reader to the cited Chronicle, chapters 30 and 34.

[62] Torniellus, in the Sacred Annals at the year of the world 3426, The opinions of some fixes his birth in that year, the first of Joakim; but his captivity in the 3rd of his reign, as he says at the year 3428; and in various places thereafter distributes the Acts of the holy Prophet among their times, up to the 94th year of his age, the year of the world 3522; but how long beyond that he survived, he adds, is not found in the sacred word, and that at such an age he was still robust in body. But neither does so great an age, on account of what has been said, seem to be given to him, nor does it appear that Daniel was led away while still such a little child (which he infers from the words of pseudo-Epiphanius), as can be gathered both from what has been said and especially from our §2. Tostatus, on chapter 2 of Matthew question 91, extends the Saint's life, and that at Babylon, to 81 years, partly compounding them from the 70 years of the captivity and eleven others preceding it; which are refuted from what has been said.

[63] The new French legendist assigns his birth to the year 3388, his captivity to 3398, the deliverance of Susanna to 3400; are less approved by us. linking various deeds of the Saint thereafter by chronological calculations up to his 88th year, in which he is believed to have died about that time. But hither return nearly the same inconveniences; as also in the chronological table of Calmet from page 250: in which he is marked as led away to Babylon in the year of the world 3398; and as having freed Susanna in 3401. But since he affirms that he is believed to have had then no more than 12 years, in his Commentaries page 754; in marking the year of his birth he must nearly agree with the legendist. Some deeds of the Saint after these he distributes by years up to the history of Bel and the dragon in the year 3468.

§ VII. His sacred cult from the fasti of various nations; his relics, sacred edifices, apparition.

The Latin martyrologists mark the annual memory of the Saint on this day, July 21. Bede, augmented from Florus, has thus: Of St. Daniel the Prophet. The small Roman: Of Daniel the Prophet: which Ado follows, and Usuard and others follow him, nearly all in the same terms. The Latin martyrologists commonly mark the Saint on this day, The Roman of today adds the place: At Babylon, St. Daniel the Prophet; not amiss: for although concerning the place of death of the holy Prophet we are not sufficiently certain, as we have said; nay, though it be perhaps more probable that he paid the debt of death elsewhere, yet he is aptly enough announced at Babylon, as one in which he lived very long, and which he had as witness and spectator of so many marvelous things done by him. That the memory of Daniel the Prophet is noted in the fragment of the Lucca Calendar, published by Florentinius after the Hieronymian Martyrology, we noted long ago in the Praetermissi at April 10; but for what cause it was drawn back thither, is hidden from us. We also hold it unknown why Ado, after the small Roman, repeats his memory on December 11.

[65] but the Greeks on December 17, The Greeks treat of St. Daniel and his three companions, namely Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, on December 17; which three we remit hence to December 16, on which they are inscribed in the Roman Martyrology. Our Saint, therefore, is announced on the said day by the Calendar of the Greeks edited by Genebrardus, the Anthologium, the Menologium published from Sirletus's version by Canisius; the Typicum under the name of St. Sabas, the Horologium printed at Venice in the year 1607, as I think, the Menologium from the library of Fridericus Lindebrogius, which, as it is ascribed to it, seems to have been of the Church of Constantinople, likewise the Menologium published by command of the emperor Basil, which Arcudius rendered into Latin, and Ughellus printed in volume 6 of the Italia Sacra, namely from September to March: finally the great printed Menaea, following, as is its wont, Maximus of Cythera, honor the Saint with solemn rite, adding these little verses to him:

Ὕπαρ Θεοῦ βλέπει σε ἐπὶ θρόνου, Τμηθεὶς Δανιὴλ, οὐκ ὄναρ καθὼς πάλαι.

That is: O Daniel, slain, a clear vision of God, not a dream as of old, beholds thee set upon a throne.

[66] with little verses and a canon. Here allusion is made to the fabulous death of Daniel under Atticus. The other allusion, to the clear vision of God and to the dream, needs no long explanation: for clearly enough it seems to allude to the Ancient of Days and his throne, Daniel chapter 7; namely to God the Father and his majesty; see a Lapide here. The praised Menaea have also a canon, without the name of the author appended, consisting of the praises of the Saint; whose acrostic is:

Σοφὸν Δανιὴλ ἄσμασιν περιστέφω.

That is: For thee, wise Daniel, I weave a garland in verse.

Furthermore that canon contains nothing worthy enough of note, so that it is not worth the trouble to dwell upon it at length; of which more briefly below among the eulogies it will be spoken.

[67] The Saint's memory is memorable among others also. But among other nations too the most holy Prophet made for himself a great name, and one venerable to men, as is gathered from various other sacred tables, which mark Daniel and his three companions on the same day as the Greeks, December 17; namely the Calendar of the Ruthenians in Possevinus (in which nothing about the companions), in volume 2 of the Sacred Apparatus from page 364; the Synaxarium of the Ruthenians proper to the diocese of Kiev, through our interpreter George David, oft praised among us; likewise the Slavo-Russian Menologium of Sparwenfeld; add the Arabic-Egyptian Martyrology, translated from the Arabic by Gratia Simonius the Maronite, and finally the illustrated Ephemerides of the Muscovites, published before the first volume of May, where however the companions are not joined to Daniel. And from these it is clear that the annual memory of the most holy Prophet was celebrated among the Latin hagiologists as well as the Greek, and others, all recounted hitherto in great number.

[68] Now I deliver, from the credit of others, what I have been able to gather concerning his relics. His relics are said to be at Venice, Vercelli, Constantinople; Baronius, in his notes

on the Roman Martyrology, says: That their relics (of Daniel and the three Youths, of whom he had just treated) were translated from Babylon to Alexandria, and placed in the church of SS. John and Cyrus, their Acts signify; and we have received that the same were translated to Venice; moreover we have learned that at Vercelli the leg of St. Daniel is preserved, a treasure plainly incomparable. In the Life of SS. Cyrus and John, Martyrs, at least as we published it on January 31, page 1085, there is treated only of the relics of the holy Three Youths, no mention being made of St. Daniel. From George Codinus, in the Excerpts from the book and chronicle on the antiquities of Constantinople edited by Lambecius, and printed at the royal press of Paris in the year 1655, we learn that Blessed Helena, near the church of St. Romanus, deposited a casket with the relics of the prophet Daniel … as also the relics of other prophets, which she is there said to have brought safe from Jerusalem. The same thing Cangius narrates in book 4, page 135.

[69] Saussay, in his Gallican Martyrology, among other things likewise at Troyes and at Arezzo. which he added in the eulogy of Pope Urban IV at October 4, has thus of him bearing on our matter: But mindful of his homeland, this most good and great Pontiff raised at Troyes, on his native soil, a church under the title of St. Urban, Pope and martyr … in which he placed twelve canons performing sacred rites, to whom … he committed to be preserved the skull of Daniel the Prophet and the relics of the martyr. Peter Rodulphius of Tossignano, a Conventual Franciscan, in book 1 of the histories of the Seraphic religion, page 84, holds that the sacred remains of Daniel were carried into Italy, in the Life of blessed Benedict of Arezzo; who, he says, when he was minister of the province of Antioch, brought to Arezzo the finger of Daniel the prophet from Babylonia: by whose virtue God wrought many things in that city. The praised Benedict is written to have died there on the 11th day before the Kalends of September, in the year 1224. To examine the title of blessed, by which he is here called, is not of this place.

[70] The great printed Menaea, in the eulogy of Daniel and the Three Youths, A church sacred to Daniel at Constantinople, suggest to us a sacred edifice: Their synaxis is celebrated in the great church (I understand the Constantinopolitan church of St. Sophia), whose memory we have received to be kept by the fathers seven days before the Lord's Epiphany, and the divine presence of the Lord and God and our Savior Jesus Christ through the flesh: wherefore I too think that they were of the tribe of Judah (nay, that they were of the sons of Judah is established from Daniel chapter 1, verse 6), from which the lineage of Christ the Savior of all is deduced. That in the same city there existed a shrine called by the name of St. Daniel, we learn from the preliminary Commentary to the Life of St. Marcian in volume 1 of January, page 610. But who this Daniel was, says Cangius rightly in Christian Constantinople book 4, page 100, and whether different from the Stylite, is uncertain. For he confesses that he does not know whether this place had its name from the statue of Daniel the Prophet, mentioned above by us; with greater caution than the new French legendist, who elsewhere strangely critical, but here more than fair in affirming, in the Life of St. Daniel the Prophet, which is found among the Lives of the Saints of the Old Testament published by him, understands without suitable foundation of the modern St. Daniel the translation of the body of St. Daniel from the East to Constantinople (which he not badly says is supposititious, until at least it be sufficiently proved), and his sepulcher in the church of St. John, founded by the praised Marcian, and that sacred edifice at once called by the name of Daniel.

[71] and at Venice The church of St. Daniel the Prophet built at Venice, and under Peter Polani the doge converted into a Benedictine monastery, is noted in Ughellus, Italia Sacra volume 5. But Peter Polani, doge of Venice, flourished toward the end of the 11th century, as is gathered from the praised author, who there places John, his son, promoted to the Venetian mitre in the year 1133, where he also makes mention of the aforesaid church. That from the Cistercian monks, who first inhabited the monastery, it passed to the Benedictine nuns, the same Ughellus hands down. See also concerning this place the year 1318. That the body of St. John the martyr was translated thither from Constantinople, you have at May 19 page 305; where also of his miracles.

[72] in which an apparition of the Saint occurred. Thence too, from page 307, is drawn a certain fact which pertains to the apparition of the Saint, of which we had proposed to speak: for a paralytic woman, now about to die, is there said to have been saved by the appearing of SS. John the martyr and Daniel; this exclamation being subjoined to the fact set forth, to the praise of the eternal God … and of the patron and defender St. Daniel the Prophet.

§ VIII. The ancient writers who mentioned the Saint; likewise the spurious ones; his Lives and eulogies.

[Besides Josephus, who on the occasion of Daniel spoke not quite rightly of divine providence,] Concerning the deeds done by St. Daniel, besides Daniel himself, inspired by the same Spirit by whose inspiration the holy men of God spoke, there treats, as is established from what has been said, Flavius Josephus in book 10 of the Jewish Antiquities, chapters 11 and 12; but in this last neither did he speak strongly enough against the Epicureans, who take away divine providence—whom he refutes from Daniel's prophecies—nor honorably enough of the prophecies themselves; when he thus concludes the said chapter: But these things I have set down in writing as I found them; and if anyone prefers to follow a different opinion, that will indeed for my part be free to him. But why do we cite these things? Since that same author is beaten in six hundred places in Salianus; which are assigned in the index after volume 4 of the Ecclesiastical Annals of the Old Testament.

[74] SS. Asterius and Chrysostom, etc., treat of the Saint himself. St. Asterius, bishop of Amasea in Pontus, renowned about the year 400, wrote a sermon on St. Daniel and Susanna, which Combefis published in Greek and Latin in volume 1 of the Auctarium of the Greek Fathers, column 95. The new French bibliographer, apostate from the orthodox faith and from his Order, in his Commentaries on Ecclesiastical Writers volume 1, column 894, says that the same exists in manuscript in Greek among the manuscript codices of the Bodleian library, codex 192, Barocci, at December 31. Contemporary with St. Asterius, Severus Sulpicius, in book 2 of the sacred history, sets forth the deeds of St. Daniel in a style clean enough, as is his wont. St. John Chrysostom, in sermon 1 On Prayer, teaches, he says: That it is fitting to esteem it more bitter than any death to be deprived of prayer, Daniel, the great Prophet, teaches us well, choosing rather to die than to be deprived of prayer for three days alone. For the king of the Persians (nay, of the Chaldeans) did not command him that it should be impious, but wished only to find him for three days. It is known from chapter 6 of Daniel that by the edict of that king, who was Darius the Mede, prayer was forbidden for thirty days. Among the works of that holy Father, published in Greek and Latin at Paris in the year 1724, in volume 6 from page 200 is recounted an Interpretation on Daniel, before, as is premised, published by Cotelerius; in which the Saint is praised in various places. In Eusebius, in Constantine's Oration to the Assembly of the Saints, chapter 17, our Seer is praised for his greatness of soul, his sanctity of manners and ornaments of virtues, and his miracles.

[75] Nor indeed let anyone marvel that no greater account is here taken of certain other authors, Some authors of dubious credit are noted. namely of St. Epiphanius On the Life of the Twenty-five Prophets, of St. Dorotheus in the Synopsis, and of St. Isidore On the Life or Death of the Saints; let us rather be permitted to marvel that they are so liberally alleged by excellent interpreters of Scripture, both beyond the merit of the name which they bear, and beyond the authority and credit which they lack. For besides the names which they falsely assume, they peddle not a few trifles and falsehoods, marked with a black mark and eliminated from the number of genuine and trustworthy authors by the bibliographers, whose part it is to treat subjects of this kind; but for us it suffices to remit the reader thither, lest we be longer than is fitting. The bibliographer designated a little before, the most recent of all, may therefore be consulted, who from the testimony of various others brands those pseudo-writers with the mark of dubious credit in volume 1, columns 532, 1378, 1591. See besides those things which were said long ago at April 10 page 857 concerning those works supposed under the names of Isidore and Epiphanius; likewise the historical commentary on St. Elias at the 20th of this month, where of pseudo-Epiphanius and pseudo-Dorotheus. But let us proceed to other things.

[76] Surius likewise, on this day, presents a Commentary on St. Daniel and the three Youths under the name of Metaphrastes: and of the same subject we have a Greek copy; The deeds of the Saint in Surius, which is nothing else than a historical compilation drawn from the sacred Letters, and here and there augmented also from Flavius Josephus. Since therefore it can be seen there, let it suffice us here even to have mentioned it, without even noting the few things which please less. Peter de Natalibus, book 7, chapter 126, collected the Life of St. Daniel from various sources. But it does not please throughout, because it is sprinkled in more than one place with certain trifles; which therefore we relegate to the dreams of the Rabbis, or certainly of fabulists of like genius. Concerning the castration—as he holds from Josephus—of St. Daniel and his companions, you have our opinion above. Of Nebuchadnezzar, without any semblance of proof, he says: It seemed to him that he was an ox in front, and a lion behind, which pseudo-Epiphanius also fables.

[77] Of the famous dragon the same Peter de Natalibus thus records: Its priests … had vessels full of water, Peter de Natalibus, made of calves' hides, and struck them with rods, that they might make a terrible sound like thunder: at which the dragon, being roused, sometimes emitted fire, sometimes smoke, sometimes appeared visibly. A dramatic and episodic description, certainly, which whether you refer to the scenes of the little Greeks, or to the fabrications of the Talmudists, I shall in no way gainsay. Nor certainly of a better stamp seem the things which he narrates of Balthasar: For he had understood, he says, as the Hebrews say, that the 70 years of the Hebrews' captivity, which Jeremiah had foretold, had elapsed: and yet the Jews were not freed: whence he insulted the God of the Jews. Of the signs given by Daniel, as he reports, and above adduced from Josephus; of the royal cave likewise, in which the holy Seer was buried alone with glory, we have already spoken, as also of the place of burial, which he places in Media, and the day of his death.

[78] and the modern French legendist. The modern French legendist, in volume 4 On the Lives of the Saints, among those which he has of the Saints of the Old Testament, arranges the Acts of St. Daniel from column 184, distributing them into two paragraphs, in the first comprising the history of the Life, but in the second the documents of the cult, on both sides sufficiently with praise, the Saint's deeds—as generally in the preface to the praised Lives, §1, he had set before himself—being drawn from Scripture, and, that with the greater reverence for the sacred text, and brevity of the things to be narrated

might be done, not a few passages of the same being as it were contracted into an epitome; to which he added here and there from Josephus those things which were to his purpose, so far restraining himself from touching upon digressions extraneous to his subject, that he confesses he excluded from his subject even the very observations of the Fathers, whether those regarded the elucidation of the sense or the confirmation of morals. Would that, as here from things foreign, so in the Lives of the Saints of the New Testament he had abstained a little more from his own observations, where, a freer field of ranging over the Lives of the Saints being opened to him, he very often strayed beyond the bounds of modest criticism; and in several places likewise he is convicted, not so much as a corrector of errors, but as one to be corrected, from our volumes of this month of July.

[79] Eulogies from the Basilian Menologium, The Basilian Menologium proclaims the praises of the Saint with the following eulogy: On the same day (December 17) the contest of St. Daniel the Prophet. Holy Daniel, having suffered the same fortune of captivity as the Three Youths, prophesied at Babylon for ninety years, and preceded the nativity of Christ by four hundred and sixty years, a man of the greatest abstinence in all things, admitting nothing but vegetables for food, and so conciliated to himself the love of God that, taught hidden mysteries through an angel, he interpreted dreams to the king: and concerning the kingdoms of the several nations, the Medes, Assyrians, Persians, Macedonians, Romans, and the destruction of them all, he foretold, except the empire of the Romans and Christians, which indeed, Christ being emperor, was to be perpetual. But cast into the pit of lions, and saved by a miracle, he was held by king Balthasar in the place of a son; but afterward, condemned to death with the three youths by king Atticus, he perished. This fabulous death we have already reproved. But whether, and what, is to be corrected in the chronological notes intermixed in the said eulogy, you will be able to learn from the chronological order above.

[80] in the printed Menaea, Another eulogy, of the Saint together with the Three Youths, the great printed Menaea weave; which to transcribe here is not worth the trouble. Certain little fables occurring in it we have noted above in the course of this commentary. The Anthologium likewise has a eulogy, of no better stamp as regards the said fables. The Canon, of which above, is composed of a heap of praises or attributes befitting the Saint from his history; and it is indeed twofold, at least so far as the title goes; for that which is inscribed to Daniel alone is dispatched in a few words; but presently another is subjoined to it, common both to him and to the Three Youths, with this acrostic:

Τρεῖς παῖδας ὑμνῶ Δανιήλ τε τὸν μέγαν.

That is: I sing the three Youths, and thee, great Daniel.

But since its subject conduces not so much to furnishing new learning about the Saint as to exciting in those who recite or chant it a pious and religious affection toward him, we shall forbear the further transcription of that praised canon.

[81] and from 1 Maccabees. But let one other eulogy, uttered by a divine oracle, crown all these eulogies of the Saint, in 1 Maccabees chapter 2, verse 60, where Mathathias, now about to die, exhorts his sons that, by the example of their fathers, they always keep the law of the Lord; and among the various men whom, by enumerating them, he sets before their eyes, in the last place he recounts Daniel in these words: Daniel in his simplicity was delivered from the mouth of the lions.