Niceta of Remesiana. By A. E. Burn, D.D. (Cambridge University
Press. 9s. net.)—It is not every scholar, however great his learning or indefatigable his industry, who finds the opportunity in this twentieth century of publishing an editio princeps of a writer of repute. The fact is that Niceta of Remesiana has been confounded with Nicetas of Aquileia and Nicetius of Treves, and even with Anicetus of Rome. Most of the contents of this volume are included in Migne's " Patrologia" under the first or second of these names. Dr. Burn's work has been to restore them to their proper owner, to revise the text by collation with new MSS., and to complete with some genuine and some doubtful pieces the opera mania of the real man. In doing this he has been following the lead of Dom Morin, 0.S.B., of whose priority in the work he makes full acknowledg- ment, and whose help he gratefully recognises. The treatises here collected have all an interest of their own ; Niceta, too, was a man of note in his time, and of a. sterling character, one, also, to whom it happened laudari a laudato vire, for he was the friend of Paullinus of Nola, who speaks of him to a correspondent as venerabilis atque dodissimus, and addressed to him what is probably the longest Sapphic ode in existence,—it numbers no less than eighty-five stanzas. Here is one of them :— ..euge Niceta, bone serve Christi, qui tibi donat lapides in sates,
vertere, et VMS sacra temple sang aedificare."
It should be said that Remesiana was in Dacia, and Niceta's ecclesiastical relations with Rome and Constantinople are very interesting. Dacia was handed over to the Eastern Empire, and the change brought about a very significant action on the part of the Pope of the time. But Niceta's chief claim on our considers,