Canon Law & Easter Computus 3 part 9/11

Since even among the most blessed apostles, amid the likeness of honor there was a certain distinction of power, and although the election of all was equal, yet to one it was given to be preeminent over the rest. From this pattern there arose also the distinction of bishops. And by great ordination it was provided that not all should claim all things for themselves, but that there should be in each province individual men whose judgment should be held first among the brethren; and again that certain men established in the greater cities should undertake a fuller solicitude, through whom the care of the universal Church should flow together unto the one see of Peter, and nothing anywhere should be at variance with its head.

He therefore who knows himself set over certain men, let him not take it ill that someone is set over him, but let him himself also render the obedience which he exacts; and just as he is unwilling to bear the burden of a heavy load, so let him not dare to impose an unbearable weight upon another. For we are disciples of a humble and gentle Master, who says: Learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls; for my yoke is sweet and my burden is light (Matt. 11). And how shall we experience this, unless that also comes into observance which the same Lord says: He that is the greater among you shall be your minister (Matt. 20; Luke 22); but he that exalts himself shall be humbled, and he that humbles himself shall be exalted (Luke 14)?

Leo to Nicetas, bishop of Aquileia, greeting. My son Adeodatus, deacon of our see, having returned to us, related that your charity had requested that you might receive from the authority of the apostolic see concerning those matters which indeed seem to bring great difficulty of decision; but on account of the consideration of temporal necessities, treatment must be applied, so that the wounds which have been inflicted by the adversity of hostility may be healed chiefly by the rule of religion. That women who, their husbands being taken captive, had married others, ought, when their former husbands return from captivity, to be united again to them, so that each one may receive what is his own. XLII.

Since therefore, through the calamity of war and through the most grievous incursions of hostility, you say that certain marriages have been so divided that, the husbands having been carried off into captivity, their wives remained destitute—wives who thought their own husbands either slain, or believed they would never be freed from bondage, and, compelled by solitude, passed into the marriage of others; and since now, the state of affairs, by the Lord's help, having been changed for the better, some of those who were thought to have perished have returned: with reason does your charity seem to be in doubt as to what ought to be ordained by us concerning the women who have been joined to other husbands.

But since we know it is written that woman is joined to man by God, and again we have recognized the precept that what God has joined together let no man put asunder (Matt. 19), it is necessary that we believe the covenants of lawful marriages must be restored, and, the evils removed which hostility brought in, that to each one there be restored that which he lawfully had; and with all diligence it must be procured that each one receive what is his own. That he be not held to be culpable who is seen to have obtained in marriage the wife of a captive. XLIII. Nor yet let him be judged culpable, nor be held as an invader of another's right, who took up the person of that husband who was already thought to be no more.

For thus many things which pertained to those who were led into captivity could pass into the right of another, and yet it is full of justice that, when these have returned, their own be restored to them. And if this is duly observed in slaves, or in fields, or even in houses and possessions, how much more must it be done in the restoration of marriages, so that what has been disturbed by the necessity of war may be restored by the remedy of peace! That if husbands returned from captivity be not offended by the incontinence of their wives, and wish to receive them into marriage, they may have free liberty to do so. XLIV.

And therefore, if husbands returned after a long captivity so persevere in the love of their wives that they desire them to return into their fellowship, that which necessity brought in must be passed over and judged inculpable, and that which faith demands must be restored. That if the women be unwilling to return to their former husbands, they are to be deprived, as impious, of ecclesiastical communion. XLV.

But if any women are so captivated by love of their later husbands that they prefer to cleave to these rather than to return to their lawful fellowship, they are deservedly to be censured, so that they may even be deprived of ecclesiastical communion, who out of an excusable matter chose the defilement of crime, showing that, in their incontinence, that pleased them which a just remission could have expiated. Let marriages therefore return into their own state by voluntary restoration, nor let that in any way be drawn into the reproach of an evil will, which the condition of necessity wrested out; for just as these women, who have been unwilling to return to their husbands, are to be held impious, so those who return into the affection begun in God are deservedly to be praised.

That penance is to be granted to captives who have been compelled, either by error or by hunger, not by veneration, to eat foods offered to idols. XLVI. But concerning those Christians who, among those by whom they had been taken captive, are said to have been polluted by foods offered to idols, we have believed that this also must be answered to the inquiry of your charity: that they be purged by the satisfaction of penance, which is to be weighed not so much by the length of time as by the compunction of heart. And whether error wrested this from them, or hunger persuaded it, let there be no doubt that it must be done away with, since food of this kind was taken out of fear or want, not out of veneration of religion. That those who, compelled either by force or by fear, have inclined their minds to the repetition of baptism, are to be relieved by the remedy of penance:

so that there be had a careful consideration of advanced age, of little children also, and of sicknesses, and of the other necessities. XLVII. But these, concerning whom your love likewise believed we should be consulted, who, either compelled by fear or led astray by error, have come to the repetition of baptism, and now recognize that they have acted against the sacrament of the catholic faith—toward them that moderation must be kept whereby they may receive the unity of communion into our society only through the remedy of penance and through the imposition of the episcopal hand.

The times of penance, with moderation observed, are to be determined by your judgment, according as you have perceived the minds of the converted to be devout, and likewise also having regard to advanced age, and considering the necessities of any dangers or sicknesses. Among these, if anyone be so gravely pressed that, while he is still doing penance, despair is felt of his recovery, it behooves that he be assisted, through sacerdotal solicitude, with the grace of communion. That those who have been baptized by heretics be confirmed by the invocation of the Holy Spirit alone. XLVIII.

For those who received baptism from heretics, when they had not been baptized before, are to be confirmed by the invocation of the Holy Spirit alone through the imposition of hands, because they took only the form of baptism without the virtue of sanctification. And this rule, as you know, we proclaim must be observed in all the Churches, that the laver once entered upon be violated by no repetition, the Apostle saying: One God, one faith, one baptism (Eph. 4), whose washing must be profaned by no repetition; but, as we have said, the sanctification of the Holy Spirit alone is to be invoked, so that what one received apart from the heretics he may obtain from catholic priests.

This our letter, moreover, which we have sent forth in answer to the consultation of your fraternity, see that you cause to reach all the brethren and your fellow-provincial bishops, so that the authority given may profit for the observance of all. Given the twelfth day before the Kalends of April, in the consulship of Majorian Augustus. In the case of bishop Lupicinus, Leo to all the bishops established throughout Caesarean Mauretania. XLIX. When the more frequent report of those coming to us brought word concerning certain ordinations of priests unlawfully usurped among you...

...the principle of piety demanded that, out of the solicitude (which we owe to the universal Church by divine institution), we should be zealous to ascertain the truth of these matters, delegating the place of our care to our fellow-bishop and fellow-priest Potentius, who was setting out from us, that he might, according to the writings which we directed to you through him, inquire concerning the bishops whose election was reported to be culpable, what the truth held, and might faithfully indicate all things to us.

Wherefore, since the same man has most fully disclosed all things to our notice, and has made clear to us by a sincere report under what rulers, and of what sort, certain peoples of Christ are held in the parts of the province of Caesarea, it was necessary that, by letters now also sent to your love, we should set forth the grief of our heart, with which we are in turmoil over the perils of the Lord's flocks, marveling that among you, through the occasion of an unpacified time, either the presumption of the ambitious or popular tumult should have so prevailed, that to certain unworthy men, established far outside sacerdotal merit, the pastoral summit and the governance of the Church should be given. This is not to take counsel for the peoples, but to harm them; not to furnish governance, but to increase peril.

For the integrity of those who preside is the salvation of those who are subject, and where there is the soundness of obedience, there is the healthy form of doctrine. But a principate which either sedition has conferred or ambition has seized, even if it does not give offense in morals and deeds, is yet pernicious by the example of its very beginning; and it is difficult that those things should be carried through to a good end which have been begun from an evil beginning. But if in any grades whatsoever of the Church it must be providently and knowingly seen to that in the house of the Lord nothing be disordered and nothing preposterous, how much more must it be labored that in the election of him who is set above all the grades there be no error? For the whole status of the Lord's household...

...status and order will totter, if that which is required in the body is not found in the head. Where is that precept of the blessed Apostle Paul, sent forth through the Spirit of God, by which, in the person of Timothy, the whole number of Christ's priests is instructed, and to each one of us it is said: Lay hands hastily on no man, neither be partaker of other men's sins (1 Tim. 5)? What is it to lay hands hastily, if not to bestow sacerdotal honor on the unapproved before the age of maturity, before the time of examination, before the merit of obedience and labor, before the experience of discipline? And what is it to be partaker of other men's sins, if not to make him who ordains also such as is he who did not deserve to be ordained?

For just as he gains for himself the fruit of a good work who holds a right judgment in choosing a priest, so he afflicts himself with grave loss who takes an unworthy man into his college. Therefore that which is contained in the general statutes must not be passed over in any person's case, nor is that honor to be thought lawful which has been conferred against the precepts of the divine law. For since the Apostle says, that among other rules of election that bishop be ordained who is shown to have been or to be the husband of one wife (1 Tim. 3), this precept has always been held so sacred that even concerning the wife of the priest to be chosen the same condition was understood to be observed:

lest perchance she, before she came into the marriage of him who had not had another wife, had experienced the wedlock of another man. Who then would dare to tolerate that an injury be perpetrated upon so great a sacrament, when even to this great and venerable mystery the very statutes of the divine law were not lacking, by which it was evidently defined that a priest should take a virgin to wife (Lev. 21; Ezek. 44) and should know not the bed of another spouse who is to be the wife of a priest? For already then in the priests was prefigured the spiritual marriage of Christ and the Church, so that, since the man is the head of the woman, the bride of the Word might learn to know no other man than Christ (Eph. 5; 2 Cor. 11).

He who with reason chose one, loves one, and joins no other besides her to His fellowship. If therefore even in the Old Testament this form of sacerdotal marriages was preserved, how much more, being established under the grace of the Gospel, ought we to serve the apostolic precepts? So that, however much a man may be endowed with good morals and found adorned with holy works, yet let him by no means ascend either to the grade of deacon, or to the honor of the presbyterate, or to the summit of the episcopate, if either he himself be shown not to have been the husband of one wife, or his wife not to have been the wife of one man. The Apostle indeed admonishing and saying: And let these also first be proved, and so let them minister (1 Tim.

3:10), what else do we think is to be understood, except that in these advancements we should consider not only the chastity of marriages, but also the merits of labors, lest the pastoral office be entrusted either to those newly come from baptism, or to those suddenly converted from secular employment? Since through all the grades of the Christian warfare men ought to be estimated by the increments of their progress, as to whether greater things can be committed to anyone, the venerable sanctions of the blessed Fathers deservedly, when they spoke of the election of priests, deemed those fit for sacred administrations who, advanced over a long time through the individual grades of office, had given commendable proof of themselves, so that to each one the account of his deeds might bear witness to the testimony of his life.

For if it is unworthy to attain to the honors of the world without the suffrage of time, without the merit of labor, and those are wont to be marked for ambition whom proofs of probity do not assist, how diligent and how prudent ought that dispensation of the divine offices and of the heavenly dignities to be held? Lest in anything the apostolic and canonical decrees be violated, and the Church of the Lord be entrusted to be ruled by those who, ignorant of lawful institutions and unacquainted with all humility, wish to take increment not from the lowest things but to have their beginning from the highest, since it is very iniquitous and absurd that the unskilled be preferred to masters, the new to the old, and the raw to veterans.

In a great house indeed, as the Apostle discourses, it is necessary that there be diverse vessels, some of gold and silver, but some of wood and earthenware; but the ministry of these is distinguished according to the quality of the material, nor is the use of the precious and of the worthless the same. For all things will be disordered, if earthenware be preferred to gold, and wooden to silver. But just as in the wooden and earthen vessels there is figured the kind of those men who as yet shine with no virtues, so in the gold and silver are without doubt declared those who, baked through the fire of long instruction and through the furnace of prolonged labor, have deserved to be approved gold and pure silver.

To whom, if the reward be not rendered according to their devotion, all ecclesiastical discipline is dissolved, all order is thrown into confusion, while in the Church those who have undertaken no ministry, by the perverse judgment of those electing, obtain an undue principate. Since therefore among you either the partisanship of the peoples or the ambition of the proud have so prevailed, that we learn that not only laymen, but even husbands of second wives, or husbands of widows, have been advanced to the pastoral office: do not the most evident causes demand that the Churches in which these things have been committed be purged by a severer judgment, and that competent retribution be brought forth not only against such prelates, but even against their ordainers? But there stand round about us on this side the...

...gentleness of clemency, on that side the censure of justice; and because by the piety of the universal apostolic see we are constrained so to temper our sentence that, the weight of the offenses having been weighed in the balance—of which assuredly the measure is not one and the same—we may believe certain things to be somehow tolerated, but certain things to be utterly cut off. For those who have either entered into second marriages, or have associated themselves with the wedlock of widows, neither apostolic nor legal authority permits to lay claim to the priesthood. And much more him, if he be convicted in your judgment, who, as has been reported to us, is at the same time the husband of two wives, or him who, dismissed by his wife, is reported to have married another.

But the rest, whose advancement incurs only this much of reproof, that they have been chosen from laymen to the episcopal office, and cannot be culpable on this account, that they have wives, we permit to hold the priesthood they have undertaken, not prejudicing the statutes of the apostolic see, nor dissolving the rules of the blessed Fathers, by which it has been wholesomely established that no layman, supported by any votes whatsoever, ascend to the first, or second, or third grade in the Church before he attain to this merit through lawful increments.

For that which we now somehow allow to be venial cannot afterward be unpunished, if anyone shall have usurped that which we altogether forbid. Because the remission of a sin does not give license to offend, nor will it be lawful for that to be committed any further with impunity which could for some reason be conceded.

Since therefore concerning almost all the things which the report of our brother Potentius contained, your love has been most fully informed through our brother and fellow-bishop David, who is both approved to us by the merit of his priesthood, and whom you may see instructed in his morals, it remains, brethren, that you concordantly receive both the wholesome exhortations, and, doing nothing through contention, but being unanimous unto every zeal of devotion, that you obey the divine and apostolic constitutions, and in nothing suffer the most provident decrees of the canons to be violated.

For those things which we have remitted in consideration of certain causes are henceforth to be observed by the ancient rules, lest what we have for a time conceded by pious leniency we should by just demand punish, being moved more particularly and more readily against those who, in ordaining bishops, have neglected the statutes of the holy Fathers, and have consecrated those whom they ought to have rejected. Hence if any bishops shall have consecrated such a priest as is not lawful, even if in some manner they have escaped the loss of their own honor, they shall nevertheless have the right of ordination no further, nor shall they ever take part in that sacrament which, the divine judgment having been neglected, they undeservedly bestowed.

That indeed which pertains to sacerdotal dignity, among all the statutes of the canons we will to be observed: that bishops be consecrated not in any places whatsoever, nor in any forts, and where bishops were not before; since where the peoples are smaller and the assemblies fewer, the care of presbyters may suffice, but episcopal governance ought to preside over none but the greater peoples and the more frequented cities, lest that which the divinely inspired decrees of the holy Fathers have forbidden—that sacerdotal eminence be granted to hamlets and to estates, or to obscure and solitary townships—and the honor, to which more excellent things ought to be committed, become cheap by its very numerousness.

This Restitutus the bishop has now complained was done in his own diocese, and has reasonably petitioned that, if the bishops of those places in which they ought not to have been ordained have departed by the human condition, those very places return to the right of that prelate to whom they belonged before in earlier times; and it is unprofitable that sacerdotal dignity be diminished by superfluous multiplication through an inconsiderate facility in ordaining. But concerning those who, established in the sacred resolve of virginity, have endured barbarian violence and have lost the integrity of their chastity not in mind but in body, that moderation seems to us must be observed, that they neither be cast down into the grade of widows, nor be reckoned in the number of consecrated and persevering virgins:

To these women, if they persevere in all virginal purity and guard in their mind the firmness of chastity, the communion of the sacraments is not to be denied, for it is unjust that they should be either reproved or branded in that which their will did not surrender, but which hostile force snatched away. We also order that the case of Bishop Lupicinus be heard there, to whom, demanding communion much and often, we render an account, since, when he had appealed to our judgment, we saw that he had been undeservedly suspended from communion while the matter was still pending.

This too is added: that one is found to have been rashly ordained over him, who ought not to have been ordained before Lupicinus, set in the present proceeding, could—whether refuted or at least having confessed—be subjected to a just sentence, so that the one being consecrated might receive the vacant place, as ecclesiastical discipline requires. But if any other cases arise that pertain to the state of the Churches and to the concord of the priests, we wish them to be examined there by judgment in the fear of the Lord, and concerning all things to be settled and that have been settled let a full report be sent to us, so that those things which shall have been justly and reasonably defined according to ecclesiastical custom may be confirmed also by our sentence. Given on the fourth day before the Ides of August.

THE DECREES OF POPE GELASIUS. On the ecclesiastical constitutions to be moderated according to the character of the time. I. Gelasius to all the brother bishops established throughout Lucania, Bruttium, and Sicily. We are constrained by the necessary dispensation of affairs, and we are charged by the governance of the apostolic see, so to weigh the decrees of the fathers' canons and to measure the precepts of the prelates and our predecessors of old, that those things which the

necessity of the present times demands to be relaxed for the restoring of the Churches, we may—after diligent consideration, as far as can be done—temper, in such a way that we neither seem wholly to exceed the form of the ancient rules, and yet for the repairing of the offices of the clerical service (which the incursion of war and famine has so consumed throughout the various parts of Italy that in many Churches—as we have learned by the frequent report of our brother and fellow-bishop John, priest of the Church of Ravenna—with the service of ministers everywhere failing) unless by relaxing for a little while the intervals anciently fixed for ecclesiastical promotions, the Churches should remain utterly destitute of the sacred orders (without which they cannot be administered), and in very many places, through the lack of fitting help, the saving remedy for redeeming souls should be wanting, and we ourselves be charged with great guilt if, when so great a peril presses, we should not in some measure make provision.

That where no necessity presses, the constitutions of the Fathers be kept inviolate; or, when clerics are lacking, that men be chosen from among the monks. II.

Therefore, while the ancient constitutions abide in their own reverence, which ought regularly to be observed where no straitness of either affairs or times presses, to this extent do we grant that the periods both of instituting and of promoting the clerical office be dispensed to those Churches which are either deprived of all ministers, or so despoiled of sufficient services that they cannot supply the divine offices to the peoples belonging to them: namely, that if anyone, even one instructed in the religious purpose and in the monastic disciplines, approach the clerical office, first of all let his life lived in past times be inquired into—whether he is proven infected by no grave crime, whether he perhaps had no second wife, nor

is shown to have taken a wife left by her husband; whether he has perhaps not performed public penance, nor appears defective in any part of his body; whether he is not subject to a servile or bound condition; whether he is now proven released from the bonds of the curia; whether he has attained letters, without which he could scarcely perhaps fulfill even the ministry of a doorkeeper—so that, if he is supported by all these things which have been said, having at once been made a lector, or notary, or at least a defensor, after three months let him become an acolyte; especially if his age also favors him, in the sixth month let him receive the name of subdeacon; and if he is of modest conduct and honorable will, in the ninth month let him be a deacon, and when the year is complete let him be a presbyter—yet for him let the devotion of the holy purpose, voluntarily undertaken, be shown to have supplied what the intervals of years would have conferred.

That if any of the laity are chosen for the clergy, those things which were said about monks be inquired into in their case much more carefully. III. But if anyone from the laity is to be joined to the ecclesiastical offices, by so much the more carefully ought such a person to be examined in each of the matters set out above, as there is acknowledged to be a difference between the worldly and the religious life; because surely the fitting ministries of the Church are to be repaired by men of fitting merits, not thrust in. And so much the more must that which can be fit for the sacred services be sought in their character, as is plucked away from the time within which these things were to be attained:

so that the probity of morals may be shown to possess that which a longer practice did not confer, lest under the pretext of supplying the clerical scarcity we be judged rather to have brought vices into the divine worship, and be convicted of having procured the gains of an illegitimate household rather than a lawful one—to whose promotions we nonetheless add six months beyond the bounds of the year. For, as has been said, it is fitting that there be a distinction between a person devoted to the divine worship and one coming from the converse of laymen. Yet these things we have believed are to be granted only to this extent, that they may be restored for those Churches in which, by the infestation of wars, either no ministries at all, or scant ones, have remained.

So that, when these Churches have been restored, God being favorable, in supplying the ecclesiastical grades the ancient form of the fathers' canons may be kept, nor does that which is provided as a remedy for the defect of one approaching transgress against them in any way: it is not set forth as a new law against the decrees of our elders, the other Churches refraining from this occasion—those which, not laid waste by a like disaster, ought to hold the former sentence in performing ordinations—whereby, the more admonished by this opportunity, we the more readily commend the observance of the venerable canons, warning the consciences of each grade, lest they strive to break out into unlawful excesses.