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PREFACE

SOME twenty years ago, the late Canon White, when reciting the sequence in the Mass for the Dead, the Dies Ira, conceived the idea that a book on the Sibyls would prove an interesting work. He spoke to me about the scheme, desiring me to collect the materials for this work when I frequented the Reading-room of the British Museum. As, fortunately, I am conversant with several languages, and, moreover, accustomed to work of research, I gladly seconded his wishes to gather from many sources the necessary information. The Canon had in mind to draw with his accustomed skill twelve sketches of the Sibyls, each with the attributes in accordance with their prophecies.

When engaged in this research, I found that some authors had formed the idea that these Sibyls were no more than a class of mythical

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beings which had had no existence, and not real prophets sent by God. This idea is quite erroneous; and, similarly to many other errors, has been ignorantly circulated. Not only has Plato, Virgil, and other pagan writers who existed before the coming of Christ, and of undoubted veracity, spoken and described them as real women endowed with the gift of prophecy by God Himself, but some twenty-two of the holy Fathers of the Church and the earliest writers of authority during the first ages of Christianity, mention and speak of the Sibyls as women prophets, whom, on account of their virginity, God had endowed with the gift of prophecy, and sent them to the Gentiles lest they should ever allege as an excuse that God had only favoured the Jews, His chosen people, by sending them prophets to announce the redemption of the human race through the Passion, Cross, and Death of His only Son, the Second Person of the adorable Trinity. Hence God in His tender mercy sent these Sibyls to the Gentiles to announce to them also the glorious tidings of Salvation.

In the days when I was collecting and writing out this work, Canon White used to come to the Reading-room occasionally to superintend and

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