This volume is St. Alphonsus’s Opera dogmatica contro gli eretici pretesi riformati, his defense of the Council of Trent, taken session by session against the Reformers. It is translated here afresh from the Italian of the Marietti Opere. An English version appeared at Dublin in 1846, under the title An Exposition and Defence of all the Points of Faith Discussed and Defined by the Sacred Council of Trent; it has long been out of print, and is met with now only as a facsimile. This is the first new translation since. The work should not be confused with his History of Heresies, which is a different book and has been in English since 1847.
The translation
Scripture is given in English with the reference in the text. Alphonsus argues from documents, and quotes them constantly in Latin: the canons and decrees of Trent, the Fathers, the Scriptures. Throughout this volume the English rendering comes first and the Latin follows it, so that the reader has the sense before the evidence and the evidence stands where it can be checked. His own paragraph numbers are kept throughout. Eretici is rendered “heretics” and novatori “innovators”, as he meant them.
His authorities
Alphonsus cites from a wide reading and from memory, and he is not always exact. He assigns a decree to the wrong session, gives a pope the wrong century, calls the Archbishop of Goa by the adjective rather than the see. We have let these stand as he wrote them, preferring to present him as he wrote rather than as he might be corrected.
Where the printed source is faulty
The Italian text we worked from carries a number of evident printers’ errors: a word dropped from a Latin quotation, a phrase set twice, a word that reverses the sense of the sentence it stands in. Where the fault is plain and the author’s meaning is not in doubt, we have followed the meaning rather than the misprint, and we record every such place here, so that nothing may be taken for the author’s that is not his.
- The systems of grace, §106. The source reads that this renders it intelligible how the will remains free; the argument requires the opposite, and we translate “unintelligible.”
- The system of the Augustinians, §137. The source reads colla efficace; the sentence requires colla sufficiente, and we translate “with sufficient grace.”
- Baptism, §57. The Latin of St. Augustine as printed lacks the negative that both Augustine’s own text and Alphonsus’s gloss carry; we restore it.
- Penance, §9. The decree is printed pro animi dolore; Trent reads pio animi dolore, “with devout sorrow of soul.”
- Matrimony, canon 1. The source reads verum et proprie; Trent reads vere et proprie.
- Holy Orders, canon 7, and Matrimony, canon 3, and two passages in the sacraments in general and the veneration of relics, each set a phrase twice in the source; we print it once.
- The Tametsi decree in Matrimony. Alphonsus gives this decree in Latin only. Where the printed Latin departs from the received conciliar text we follow the council.
On footnotes
We have added no scholarly apparatus. Alphonsus names his authorities in his own text, and the references to Scripture are given as they occur. A critical edition would want more; a book meant, as this one is, for reading would be the worse for it.