From the earliest times we hear of doubts and difficulties in the Book of Ezekiel which have beset alike the pious and the inquiring student. In patient love, like that of the talmudic sage of old, generations have poured jars of oil into their lamps hoping to illumine in that prophecy what seems but an impenetrable gloom. Jerome often confesses his inability to grapple with the ‘obscuritates’ of a book known to be difficult in the tradition of the Hebrews. Especially he gives voice to utter consternation when on the threshold of the restored sanctuary envisioned by the prophet in his last chapters; there he is like one knocking at a closed portal. The chapters, tenebrous and trackless, are not unlike the catacombs he used to visit when studying in Rome: a glint from above would cast a swift light and then vanish, leaving him even more hopeless in the dusky cave. In like manner he often thinks he has found the way through a dark and difficult chapter only to discover that he has sunk into even denser darkness. Not in temerity, therefore, but in faith and the fear of God will he venture his guesses about Ezekiel's temple, shrouded in the mystery and silence of the centuries (“quod saecula cuncta tacuerunt”): others may contribute more and, he hopes, will not despise his little portion.

One of the achievements of recent scholarship forever to be identified with Ludwig Traube's name is the combination of history, palaeography, and textual criticism as an indispensable guide to the understanding of early mediaeval culture. The investigator of the course of politics and of letters works at second hand if he knows not the characteristics of those manuscripts in which contemporary events are recorded, or of those in which the treasures of the past were handed down to the Middle Ages. The palaeographer must consider his books not only as specimens of script but as witnesses for the text of the works they contain and as monuments of the culture of the times. The textual critic ploughs an arid field if the codices of an author are to him but A and B and C, to be hung from a stemma according to the value of their readings and their interrelations. These separate studies, which indeed call for diverse methods and diverse trainings, are but parts of a single science—a harmonious and comprehensive view of the life of an epoch. Traube of course had precursors in this complicated art, but his brilliant pursuit of it entitles him to what he himself would disclaim—the rank of a founder.