SYNCELLUS
SYNCRETISM
teristics. He is exceedingly curt, harsh, dry, jojune, and often confused. His tem])erament, his vocation, and his times inclined him to credulity and superstition. He introduces his multitudinous extracts in a crude and imdigested form, and accepts without hesitation what- ever he finds in his texts. Yet his work has a very high value, and largely from this total absence of crit- ical discrimination. It is the most extensive of the (ireek chronicles that have come down to us, with the exception of the Sicilian. Alexandrine, or Paschal chron- icle. Tiie latter and the chronicle of Eusebius are the only two important chronological treatises that preceded it which have been preserved. iMisebius was sadly mu- tilated and fragmentary, and was in part restored by the aid of Syncellus. Scaliger, the restorer of Eusebius, con- templated the abandonment of his undertaking when he despaired of obtaining the assistance of Syncellus, which he deemed indispensable. The restoration was, indeed, impracticable without such aid, till the discov- ery of the complete work, in recent years, in an Arme- nian JIS., which was pulilished at JMilan, in 1818, by Mai and Zohrab. The Chronography of Syncellus has thus rendered important service. It has other sources of interest. It is throughout a compilation, but a com- pilation which usually retains the ijisissima verba of the authors from whom it borrows, and which records its obligations. Thus have been preserved remnants, more or less extensive, of many writers who would otherwise have perished utterly. The citations from Eusebius have already been referred to. We owe, besides, to Syncellus nearly all that survives of Julius Africanus, most of the fragments of Manetho, and much of the lit- tle that is left of Berosus, who strangely illustrates the Book of Genesis, and corroborates tlie remarkable dis- coveries of the late George Smith. Among the shat- tered remnants imbedded in the chronicle of Syncellus — like broken columns, ruined architraves, dismembered friezes, and mutilated statues in mediaeval walls and for- talices — may be found passages from books of various kinds, including many from partially or wholly lost Apocrypha. There are extracts from the Life of Adam, the Book of Enoch, the History of .kulith, Hermes, Zos- imus the philosopher, etc. Some of these excerpts are very curious, and perpetuate the memory of remarkable superstitions and of quaint legends of the antique world. It would be misi^laced labor to investigate here the chronological accuracy of Syncellus, or to comment upon his chronological statements. The service has been ren- dered laboriously, if not altogether satisfactorily, by the Dominican Goar, who added a Canon Chronoi/raphicus to the edilio princeps of the work. The history of the 3IS. used by Goar is curious. It was preserved in the library of the patriarch at Constantinople. It reap- peared in the Royal Library of France. A notice, in (ireek, appended to the IMS. states that it was pur- chased at Corinth, for four pieces of gold {\pv(TivovQ),hy John Abrami (or Abrams), in the month of November, 1507, or mundane year 7016 (of the xra of Constantino- ple). It was probalily one of the many waifs from the Ottoman capture of Constantinople. For some time it was believed to have been lost from the lioyal Library. It reached Scaliger's hands. It was. in time, restored to the royal repository, where it still remains, if it did not perish in the fires of the Commune. The supposed date of this MS. is 1021. It is somewhat mutilated, and one leaf is lost; but it is the most complete jNIS. of tliis author. Dindorf regards as of much higher mark an- other Parisian MS., which he also employed in his re- cension of the text for the Bonn series of the Byzanline HiMorians, This has lost many leaves in the middle, and, like Coleridge's Christabel, has neither beginning nor end.
IV. Literature. — Georg. Syncelli Chronographia, Ed. J. Goar (Par. 165"2). This edition is accompanied with copious emendations and annotations, with an instructive preface, and with a full chronographical canon. Georg. Syncellus et Xicephorus C. P. ex recensione Guilelmi
Dindorfii (Bonnaj, 1829, 2 vols. 8vo). Dindorf repub- lislies the (ijipanilns literariits of Goar, and adds a re- print of Bcdovii JUss-ertatio dc Georgii Syncelli Chro- nograjiliiii. (<;. F. II.)
Syncretism {avyKpi]Ti(jn>)Q,vmon). This term is employed in Church history to designate the movement to promote union among the various evangelical parties of Germany in the 17th century. The word occurs in Plutarch (ii, 4'JO B; ed. Reiske, vii, 910)— perhaps the only instance among the writers of antiquitv — and is there illustrated by the idea that the Cretans, though frequently at war among themselves, were accustomed to unite their powers against the attacks of any foreign foe (K«t roi'TO ijv 6 KaXovpevog vir aiirwv avjKpr]- Tinpui^). Erasmus adopted the word into the Adagia (chil. i, cent. 1, No. 11, p. 24), and defined it to signify the union of parties who have need of each otiier or who desire to make head against a common foe, though they may not be influenced to form such union because they are one at heart. Both the word and the idea came into common use soon afterwards. Zwingli, for example, in a letter to QCcolampadius of the year 1525, recommends such a syncretism {0pp. ed. Schuler et Schulthess, vii, 390) ; Bucer employs the term frequent- ly in connection with his efforts towards union after the publication of the Augsburg Confession {Opji. viii, 577), as does also Melancthon with reference to the same business (Corp. Rpf. ii, 485 sq. ; i, 917: 0pp. Mel. ed. Vitemb. iv, 813). The apostate Staphylus (q. v.) charges the Reformers with being simply Babel-build- ers, and in setting forth his proofs represents the Lu- therans as being Syncretizantes (Calov. Syncret. Hist, i, 2). Zach. LIrsiiuis (q. v.) also employs the term in an unfavorable sense {0pp. Ursini [Neustadt, 1589], ii, 305, on Isa. ix,6). Syncretism is thus shown to have been a current term with all persons of humanistic culture in the 16t,h century, and to have been employed, ac- cording to circumstances, with a favorable or unfavora- ble meaning to designate an alliance of dissenting par- ties in despite of all dissent. The twofold use of syn- cretism as a term of commendation or censure contin- ued throughout the 17th century, but with a gradual predominance of the latter idea, arising from the in- creased importance which came to be attached to every variation of doctrinal beliefs. In 1603 the Romish the- ologian Windeck wrote against the Protestants a Prog- nosticon Fiituri Status Ecclesice, in which he advised the Rtmianists to cultivate greater harmony, in the words " Si saperent Catholici, et ipsis cara esset reipublicae Christiana* salus, syncretismum colerent." The Hei- delberg theologian David Parens (q. v.) responded in his Irenicum, sire de Unione Erangel. Concilianda, with an appeal to both wings of the Protestant Church for an alliance against their common foe; but Leonhard Hut- ter rejected the idea of such an alliance as preposterous ('£^£rrt(Ttc'EXfyKrtR-/;,etc. [Wittenb. 1614]),andaJesuit, Adam Contzen, followed in a polemic of eight hundred and sixty-one pages, entitled J)e Pace Germanice Lihri II (iVIayence, 1616, 8vo), whose principal purpose was a demonstration of the impossibility of any union be- tween the Lutheran and Reformed parties of the Prot- estant Church. Tiie tendency, scarcely interrupted by the raging of the Thirty Years' War, of Lutheran and Romanist zealots to magnify existing differences of opinion and intensify their influence drew forth the protest of Calixtus (q. v.). He stigmatized it as shame- fid, and urged the making of distinctions between doc- trines of greater and inferior importance; and, while he wished the further deveh)pment of doctrinal matters to be relegated to the schools, he also urged that a practi- cal sympathy and fellowship be cultivated between the churches. This brought on him a storm of obloquy. The Wittenberg faculty issued two opinions, warning against such " syncretismus diversarum religionum," and deprecating the Sandomir Consensus (q.v.); and in the same year (1645) a Jesuit, Veit Erbermann, wrote a work entitled Elptji'iKui' Cutholicum, etc., that de-