LAPIDE, CORNELIUS A, is the Latin designa tion usually given to CORNEILLE DE LA PIERRE, whiCII iS i tself the translation of his native name, VAN DER. STEEN. This eminent commentator was born in the year 1567, at Boehaff or Bucold, in the diocese of Liege, in Belgium. In 1592 he entered the Society of the Jesuits, and gave him self up to the study of Holy Scripture. For twenty years he was Divinity Professor at Louvain, after which he pursued the same avocation with extreme assiduity at Rome, where he died greatly respected for his unaffected piety and profound learning, March 12, 1637. His conimentaries, which were published at first in separate portions at Antwerp and Paris, 1616-1639, have been since is sued in more than one collective edition ; at Venice, 1740, in eleven folio volumes ; at Lyons, 1838, in the same number of quarto volumes and very recently, 1861, at Paris, in twenty-on! imperial octavos. This last edition is enriched with copious and well-selected notes from Rosenrniiller, Maurer, Michaelis, Munk, Renan, Franck, Patritius, Kuinoel, Allioli, and others, by the help of whom the learned editors (the Abbes Crampon and Peronne) have to a great extent supplemented the defects and corrected the inaccuracies of the origi nal work. The author's devotion to his church has strongly coloured his comment ; this fact, added to the prolixity wherewith he investigates what he considers the various senses of the sacred text (the mystical, anagogical, and alleaorical being no less conspicuous than the literal, 17istori cal, and grammatical) has raised a prejudice against a Lapide's great work in some quarters (see Herzog, Real-Eneykl., 153). lt must, however, in justice be admitted that, after all de ductions on this score, this commentary justifies the popularity which it has always commanded in the Church of Rome. The convenient method and perspicuity with which the author has care fully arranged his abundant materials, and the promptitude with which he has invariably decided what Ile thinks to be the true meaning of the text, go far to obviate the evils of his prolixity and mul tiplicity of senses. Nowhere else can the student
find collected so rich a treasury of patristic and scholastic exegesis, and the general value of this honest and pious commentator is proved by the frequency with which he is quoted by authors beyond his own communion, of unmistakeable im partiality, such as De Wette and Meyer. Corn. a Lapide did not live to complete his annotations on yob and the Psalms. In the older editions Pineda (on yob) and Le Blanc (on the Psalms) used to supplement these wanting portions. In the reissue of the work from the press of M. Louis Vives, the editors have done wisely in substituting the conzpacter commentaries of the learned Jesuit Corder, on Yob, and Cardinal Bellarmine, On the Psalms. These works, in three extra volumes, complete the entire circle of the Canonical and Apocryphal Scriptures —presenting the student with the marrow of ancient exegesis, embellished moreover with the best criticism of modem writers of the greatest merit. Some portions of Cornelius a Lapide (especially on the Pentateuch, the His torical Books, and the Hagiographa) have been included in the Abbe Migne's Scripturx Sacra Cursus Completus. In the 24th and 25th volumes of this Cursus is reprinted the valuable Epitome Comment. Estii et Cornelii a Lapide in omnes D. Pauli Epistolas, which Gorcomius (Johannes a Gorcum) carefully prepared at the beginning of the t7th century. This abridgment of what has often been deemed the best part of a Lapide's work, is a useful work.—P. H.