For many centuries, the Enchiridion maintained its authority both with Pagans and Christians.[26] Simplicius of Cilicia wrote a commentary upon it in the 6th century, and in the Byzantine era Christian writers wrote paraphrases of it.[26] Over one hundred manuscripts of the Enchiridion survive.[a] The oldest extant manuscripts of the authentic Enchiridion date from the 14th century, but the oldest Christianised ones date from the 10th and 11th centuries, perhaps indicating the Byzantine world's preference for the Christian versions.[27] The Enchiridion was first translated into Latin by Niccolò Perotti in 1450, and then by Angelo Poliziano in 1479.[27]
The first printed edition (editio princeps) was Poliziano's Latin translation published in 1497.[27] The original Greek was first published (somewhat abbreviated) with Simplicius's Commentary in 1528.[27] The edition published by Johann Schweighäuser in 1798 was the major edition for the next two-hundred years.[27][28] A critical edition was produced by Gerard Boter in 1999.[29]
The separate editions and translations of the Enchiridion are very many.[30] The Enchiridion reached its height of popularity in the period 1550–1750.[31] It was translated into most European languages, and there were multiple translations in English, French, and German.[31] The first English translation was by James Sandford in 1567 (a translation of a French version) and this was followed by a translation (from the Greek) by John Healey in 1610.[32] The Enchiridion was even partly translated into Chinese by the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci.[31] The popularity of the work was assisted by the Neostoicism movement initiated by Justus Lipsius in the 16th century.[33] Another Neostoic, Guillaume du Vair, translated the book into French in 1586 and popularised it in his La Philosophie morale des Stoiques.[34]
In the English-speaking world it was particularly well-known in the 17th century: at that time it was the Enchiridion rather than the Discourses which was usually read.[35] It was among the books John Harvard bequeathed to the newly-founded Harvard College in 1638.[36] The work, being written in a clear distinct style, made it accessible to readers with no formal training in philosophy, and there was a wide readership among women in England.[37] The writer Mary Wortley Montagu made her own translation of the Enchiridion in 1710 at the age of twenty-one.[38] The Enchiridion was a common school text in Scotland during the Scottish Enlightenment—Adam Smith had a 1670 edition in his library, acquired as a schoolboy.[39] At the end of the 18th century the Enchiridion is attested in the personal libraries of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.[40][41]
In the 19th century, Walt Whitman discovered the Enchiridion when he was about the age of sixteen. It was a book he would repeatedly return to, and late in life he called the book "sacred, precious to me: I have had it about me so long—lived with it in terms of such familiarity."[42]
The Enchiridion gave its name to a fictional book from the cartoon Adventure Time.[43]
