Sermons & Letters 199 part 2/2

When indeed I had resolved to remove, or at least to reconcile, all these things, there first met me the silence of Eusebius of Caesarea and of other writers of that age — upon which above all Beausobre relies — from which negative argument he contends that the Acts of Archelaus, and the two disputations appended to them, contain fiction and fables. But I judge that this silence of Eusebius and of other writers of that age can and ought to move the mind of no learned man. For what of it? The affair of the Manichaeans, the disputation, and the exile occurred in the waning of the third century of the Church; the Acts of Archelaus and the two appended disputations were written in the Persian and Syriac tongue.

It is therefore no wonder if such monuments did not reach the hands of Eusebius, who wrote his Ecclesiastical History after the first celebrated Council of Nicaea, and to whom only the Manichaean heresy became known, which in his Chronicle he described under the year 277. If this silence of the writers of that age could serve Beausobre's aim, he ought to have brought forward into the midst Syrian and Persian writers who, in describing the state of the Church of that nation and the affairs of the Manichaeans, denied this History and the disputations of Archelaus, or concealed them altogether by their silence. But where are they? Few writers flourished in that age who could have accomplished this.

For if we consult the Greeks, from whom the affairs of the Syrians and Persians were hidden, there occur only Anatolius of Laodicea, who flourished under Probus; or Pierius, presbyter of Alexandria, under Carus and Diocletian; or Methodius, who under the same Diocletian was slain in martyrdom — inasmuch as he wrote against Porphyry and Origen — Arnobius the rhetorician, and his disciple Lactantius. But who does not understand that all these, on account of the great distance of places and the absence of any commerce between them and the Persians and Syrians, must have been ignorant of Manichaean affairs? It ought therefore to be no wonder if we miss writers of that age who might have recounted the Acts and disputations of Archelaus.

But that not long after the first Council of Nicaea the affairs of the Manichaeans came to the knowledge of the Greeks is most thoroughly established. For in the course of the fourth century — that is, in the year 348 — Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, in his sixth catechesis, seized the occasion not only of attacking the heresy of Scythianus, Terebinthus, and Manes, their errors being laid bare, but also made mention of Archelaus, bishop of Mesopotamia, who met Manes as he was fleeing from prison, and, constituting an audience of Greeks, refuted him even before pagan judges, lest, if Christians were the judges, they should seem to have judged anything out of partiality. Now who will deny that by these words the disputations and Acts of Archelaus with Manes are indicated?

But let Beausobre tell us, I pray, from what sources Cyril could have drawn these things, unless from the sufficiently widespread tradition perhaps of Macarius and Maximus, bishops of that Church, a tradition which had already obtained credit and authority; or from some Persian or Syriac writing which he had at hand. But that Cyril dreamed, or wished purposely to invent, in the instruction of those who were to be enlightened by the sacred laver, is by no means to be supposed. Otherwise all the other Fathers who flourished in his age and after him would have noted him for error and assailed him in their writings, writing that the disputation of Archelaus with Manes was altogether fictitious.

Meanwhile one thing must not be passed over, which can have very great force in refuting other and further arguments of Beausobre. Cyril, namely, called Archelaus bishop of Mesopotamia. But nowhere did he indicate of what city he was bishop. This economy or caution, however, Epiphanius by no means followed, who in heresy 66 called Archelaus bishop of Caschara, and in the rest subscribed to Cyril himself, though weaving together a fuller account of these Manichaean matters. Beausobre then contends that the autograph of this work was never composed in the Syriac tongue, and that it first came to light through the fraud of the Greeks. Therefore he gathers that it reeks of nothing else than pure fiction.

He likewise carps at Lorenzo Zaccagni for having written that Epiphanius consulted Greek copies. But he indeed wrongs that distinguished man. For Zaccagni proves this not only by the testimony of Jerome, but also brings forward the weightiest conjectures — among them namely this, that Archelaus, treating of the extent of the sun's course, says in chapter 32 that it is called a 'sphere' by the Greeks. And so that autograph could not first have come forth in the Greek language, but through some translator who elaborated a version of those Acts from the Syriac into Greek speech, that, transferred into a better-known tongue, all the faithful throughout the world might have the fullest knowledge of them.

But it is established that this very Greek version, of which we treat, is older than Epiphanius, who reports remarkable excerpts of it in Greek in his treatise on the heresy of the Manichaeans. Nor can it be said (the same Lorenzo Alessandro Zaccagni subjoins) that Epiphanius himself made these things into Greek from a Syriac copy, since all the things which are brought forward by him from the Acts of the disputation of Archelaus with Manes are found word for word in the Latin version which we edit. Nor does it prove anything that among the Latin writers the first who recounted such Acts was St. Jerome, who flourished about the year of Christ 392.

For rather Philaster, bishop of Brescia, ought to have made mention of these Acts — he who long before, namely in the year 370, as Beausobre notes (but more accurately Cave, in the year 380), composed a catalogue of heresies. But what judgment the learned have formed concerning Philaster's diligence and writings, one may gather from Beausobre himself and from William Cave. For that nearly all the monuments of the Greek writers escaped Philaster, the work compiled by him manifestly betrays a judgment less than accurate. 2. Beausobre himself more than once charges Philaster with ignorance and negligence, as those know full well who have surveyed his History of the Manichaeans.

If therefore he himself judged that no credit was to be given to Philaster, and for this cause assails him, why then does he suppose that this man's silence can favor his own case? Away with such a vain conjecture and reasoning! Concerning the translator, next, both Beausobre and Zaccagni discourse, but they by no means accommodate their minds to the same opinion. For Zaccagni, in order to reconcile the testimonies of St. Jerome, Epiphanius, and Heraclianus of Chalcedon, appeals to the authority of Photius, who, in codex 87 reporting certain excerpts of the same Heraclianus, subjoins these words which we read in chapter 39 of these Acts, and which seem to confirm that the same Acts were written and set down by Hegemonius.

Therefore Zaccagni judges it probable that Archelaus himself afterward added some things to his earlier disputation, and he willingly comes into this opinion, that he believed Epiphanius and Jerome could be reconciled with Heraclianus, if we should say that Archelaus first divulged in the Syriac tongue all that he had brought forward against Manes before the chosen judges; but that Hegemonius arranged in a better order the things which had already been published by Archelaus, and moreover enriched them with a preface, an epilogue, and certain other passages, so that the Acts of this most celebrated disputation, complete in all its parts, might be transmitted to posterity. 3.

These reasons and conjectures of Zaccagni Beausobre will judge to be plausible enough, yet he contends they cannot be proved, since the formulas employed by Archelaus for explaining the person of Christ and the mystery of the Incarnation suggest that they had their origin from a man who flourished and wrote after the Council of Nicaea — namely about the year 330. But it is already established that Beausobre is inconsistent with himself in the composition of his work, as is clear from those things which he objected against Archelaus above in chapter 9. For there he contended that the disputation of which we treat was utterly crammed with phrases of speech which most openly favor the heresies of the Arians, Nestorians, and Eutychians. Whence, lest he should make trouble for us, in chapter

9 of this work we endeavored to clear Archelaus himself of such malicious marks. At length this unskilled critic wrongly concludes that, since no one of the ancient Syrian authors has come his way who made mention either of Archelaus or of his disputation, he was compelled to profess and to conclude either that such a History was supposititious, or that it was contrived by the same Hegemonius, or that he received it from some man sprung from Mesopotamia — and perhaps from Turbo, who had seen the Manichaean and had given in his name to that sect — and which he then rendered adorned with very many other circumstances devised by himself.

He concludes that he drew this judgment from a certain more recent learned man, who believed that the aforesaid work was by no means to be adjudged to Archelaus, but that Hegemonius added or took away those things which he judged more opportune. From which opinion he professes that he cannot depart, until clearer arguments have been exhibited or furnished to him. But whether Beausobre has truly failed the more common persuasion — when, besides the testimonies of the aforesaid writers, others of the succeeding centuries are added; when Photius, Peter of Sicily, and the rest of the men of more refined criticism approved the aforesaid Acts and disputations of Archelaus — there will be no need to set forth in many words;

since we have discoursed enough concerning such negative arguments in the preceding pages, and since Beausobre himself, merely inventing according to his own fancy, proposes and resolves questions. Of which kind indeed is that other question he raises, whether the disputation of Caschara truly existed, or is to be called fictitious. He confesses that he has called it the disputation of Caschara, though he can neither affirm with certainty nor deny that Manes at some time disputed with some orthodox bishop concerning his errors, or held encounters.

There remain to the readers, in this matter, various examples of writers — namely of those who devised certain supposititious disputations, not only between heretics and orthodox bishops, but even feigned that they were held between apostles and heretics. He brings forward the example of the books of the Recognitions, which are circulated under the name of Clement, in which he says the history of St. Peter disputing against Simon Magus is rashly set down. William Cave, he says, believes this fabulous narration to have been brought from Syria or Mesopotamia by Bardesanes, most skilled in Greek eloquence. But who among the learned has not surveyed with his own eyes the Literary History of William Cave?

He assuredly did not affirm that such a history contained a fabulous narration. He sincerely confessed the work to be most ancient and praised even by Origen. He did not adjudge it to Clement: he reckoned it among his supposititious Works; but not in this sense, that the things contained in them reeked of fables, but because what was perhaps to be adjudged to other authors bore beforehand the name of Clement. Wrongly, therefore, did Beausobre appeal to such examples and to the testimonies of Cave, in order to show that the Acts and disputations of Archelaus were utterly fabricated.

Nor did Beausobre think it better gradually to undermine the credit of these Acts by such trifles. But he intended that he could borrow for himself weightier and more evident arguments of falsity from the very place in which the disputation is described as having been held. First, it is said that in one city of Mesopotamia there was publicly disputing by Manes and Archelaus. Secondly, that that city had been reduced into the power of the Romans. Thirdly, that that city was called Caschara or Carchara. Therefore the aforesaid Acts betray that these three characteristics fit the comedy of the disputation of Archelaus.

If therefore we find no city to which such things apply, it must necessarily be confessed that the disputation is utterly fabulous, since the author feigned the scene to have been held in a place which is nowhere to be found. He notes that Zaccagni inquired more diligently after this city of Mesopotamia. Who at length persuaded himself that the aforesaid three notes or characteristics could fit the most celebrated city of Carrhae, which afterward became more famous on account of the defeat of Crassus, as Ammianus Marcellinus noted. That this city was a Roman colony, various coins make plain, as may be seen in Spanheim, Cellarius, and others. But to Zaccagni, reasoning thus, the Latin version of certain writers, which has the name Charra, furnished the foundations.

Next, in the histories of the ancients he found no city of Mesopotamia subject to the Romans called Caschara or Carcar. But that similar names were rather attributed to a city situated in Arabia Felix, as may be seen in the Anonymous of Ravenna, the geographical writer, or in Ammianus Marcellinus, who mentions another Carcha. But, Zaccagni subjoins, Archelaus was bishop of neither of these cities. For his disputation with Manes was held in a city of Mesopotamia, placed under the dominion of the Romans, whose bishopric Archelaus held, as is expressly stated in Epiphanius and in the Acts of the disputation. But the Charcha mentioned by Marcellinus was situated outside Mesopotamia, across the Tigris, in the dominion of the Persians.

Of the Charcha of Arabia too, an Arabian city of which there is mention in the Anonymous of Ravenna, Archelaus could in no way have been bishop, since all the ancient writers hand down that he was bishop not of Arabia but of Mesopotamia. 4. This opinion of Zaccagni, Beausobre says, was long ago rejected and refuted by Assemani, a most learned man, chief prefect of the Vatican Library — subjoining these words of Assemani: 'It must rather be said that by an error of the copyists, in that single passage of the Acts, Carrha was written, than Cashar or Carrar at the beginning of the Acts and in the most distinguished writers Epiphanius, Socrates, and Photius, who certainly would never have called Carrhae, or Haran, the most celebrated city of Mesopotamia, Carcara or Cascara.'

This opinion of Assemani, however — otherwise a most weighty man — we find disapproved by the most learned Le Quien in his work entitled Oriens Christianus. For he, in the second volume, treating of the Churches of the Chaldaeans, describes Caschara as a city situated on the confines of Mesopotamia, very different from another which had been built near Cosdresna. The former city, he says, previously occupied by the worship of idols, gave its name to Christ by the preaching of St.

the preaching of St. Thaddaeus gave its name to Christ, and that bishop Archelaus presided over it under Probus — the same author who was in no way willing to swerve from Epiphanius, nor from Jerome, nor from Photius, the whole company of the ancient writers thereafter supporting him. If therefore Zaccagni's conjecture, which Beausobre intends to attack, should still totter and fall by reason of the copyists' fault, it would not thence follow that the History of which we treat is fabulous, and reeks of fiction, or that the names of Archelaus or of the bishopric, of which mention is there made, are fabrications.

Yet other conjectures which Beausobre himself subjoins do totter and utterly fall — he contending that this bishop wished to weigh the cause of the Catholic faith even before pagan judges, in the presence, namely, of a populace which wanted to overwhelm the blaspheming Manes with stones, if only Archelaus had assented. But it is a futile conjecture. Beausobre ought in the first place to have attended to the words of Cyril of Jerusalem: namely, that even some pagan judges were summoned, lest, if Christians were the judges, they should seem to have judged anything out of partiality. Those philosophers therefore, who had been summoned as advocates, lacked power and authority, chiefly because they were then subject to the Roman empire.

That pagan philosophers were admitted at the Council of Nicaea to listen and even to dispute, no one has hitherto denied. Whence then is it any wonder if bishop Archelaus, about to hold an encounter with a heretical man who clung to the false principles of the philosophy of Zoroaster and of the Magi, admitted also pagan philosophers, whom he persuaded himself would recoil from the fabulous and sophistical arguments of Manes? Beausobre then adds that in those Acts one reads that Archelaus, moved with indignation against Manes, objected to him that he was none other than a priest of Mithras — namely of the Sun — and had been accustomed to render worship to false gods. This reproach, he subjoins, the pagan populace and the city filled with idols could not approve.

But it would indeed have won applause from a Christian people, over whom a Christian emperor ruled. If it had so happened, the whole city, moved with indignation against the bishop, would have afflicted him even with injuries and with danger to his life. To show at length that all these things lack probability, he appeals to the deed or example of Julian the Apostate, who, in his fatal expedition against the Persians, refused to set out for the city of Edessa, because a very great number of Christians was found there, and turned his journey to Carrhae, that he might immolate a sacrifice to the gods. Wherefore, since the populace of this city was most greatly given to the worship of false gods, they overwhelmed with stones that unhappy man who had announced to them that Julian was already dead. 5.

This Beausobrian manner of arguing, and its artifice, could easily persuade those unlearned in ecclesiastical history. And they will not give credit to it who have learned from Eusebius of Caesarea and other sincere writers that the Christian affairs of the Churches of Mesopotamia, of the Persians, of Egypt, of Phoenicia, of Phrygia, from the year 277 to the year 293, were greatly changed — so that those which were at first most flourishing were reduced to utter ruin when the persecution of Diocletian raged. But who is ignorant that, before so dire and grievous a persecution was stirred up against the Christians, our people were already held in the highest honor among the pagan princes — so that the office of governing the provinces was entrusted even to them?

The right of pronouncing judgment too was afforded to our people; and the pagan princes permitted them, together with their wives, their servants, and their whole household, not only to believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, but even to act in the faith with all confidence and liberty — so that they held those to be faithful and familiar to themselves of whom they were certain that for the faith of Christ they harbored nothing perfidious. That Christians were endowed with such and so great happy tranquillity and with offices under Marcus Aurelius Probus — raised to the empire by military consent in the year of Christ 276 or 277 — Petavius too relates, from Vopiscus, Victor, Eutropius, Idatius in his Fasti, and Zosimus.

It is no wonder therefore if the things which Archelaus set forth in the aforesaid Acts could be verified, especially because, as we have already seen, Marcellus — or Marcellinus — who by imperial authority presided over the affairs of the province of Mesopotamia, being a Catholic, was in his desire for the truth of the faith and its propagation, and who could have afflicted with punishments and losses, by a military force, the seditious rising up against bishop Archelaus. But that Christians were then taken up by the emperors as administrators of provinces, accountants, chamberlains, and to discharge other offices of honor and authority, is also gathered from the decree of Diocletian in the year

303, promulgated at Nicomedia, by which it was provided that henceforth Christians should be deprived of all honor and dignity. Which surely would have been absurd, unless Christians had previously been accustomed to enjoy honors and dignities. Beausobre ought therefore not, in order to try to cast a false coloring over a truth clearer than light, by turning the reckonings of the times upside down, to persuade himself that his readers could be deluded into giving credence to his sayings. It is therefore fabulous that the Churches of the East were always harassed under the pagan emperors, and that the Christians endured under Marcus Aurelius Probus the same condition which they afterward underwent under Diocletian, under Sapor, under Julian the Apostate.

We would refute this fiction with many most weighty arguments, had it not been certainly known that even what he objected from Julian the Apostate accomplishes nothing — Julian, who, having abjured the Catholic faith, threw open the temples of the idols. But how could he have thrown them open, unless they had long since been closed for the propagation and safeguarding of the Catholic religion? 6. After these things Beausobre more diligently turns his pen to inquire whether Carchar, or Caschar, was a city situated in Mesopotamia, or in Assyria, or in Chaldaea, or within the borders of the Persians, placed not far from Seleucia; and whether it could have been subject to the empire of the Romans while Probus was reigning.

From here and there, out of one writer and another, he has, after his customary manner of arguing, gathered various conjectures and reasonings, appealing now to Assemani, now to geographers ancient and recent; and he brings forward so great a store of material that he seems to himself to have shown the whole stage of this dispute, and that it could have been neither Gascara nor Carchara, and that no city, fortress, or town of this name was ever reduced under the power of the Romans. Since, therefore, he appeals to the illustrious Assemani, it will not be out of place to set before him what that esteemed author has set down in his Oriental Library: 'Archelaus, in the year of Christ 277, restrained by a learned disputation the heresiarch Manes, who was breaking out from the borders of the Persians.'

If, then, according to the ancient records brought forward by Assemani, Manes, when he came to dispute with Archelaus, had broken out from the borders of the Persians, then the episcopal Church was not in Persia, but in another province far distant. Assemani adds: 'St. Jerome, in his Catalogue, chapter 72, calls him BISHOP OF MESOPOTAMIA; St. Epiphanius, heresy 66, indicates the place of the bishopric; likewise Socrates, book 1 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 22, and Photius in his book Against the Manichaeans, namely: Cascar, or Carchar, indeclinably, or in the plural or singular number Caschara and Carchara, a city situated on the borders of Mesopotamia. The older Syrians prefer Cascar; the more recent, Gargar, or Cascar, or Carcha.'

I cannot, however, conceal that this most learned man discussed this city elsewhere, and, having drawn up a catalogue of the bishops of that city after our Mar Archelaus, he affirmed that the city was built within the borders of the Persians and belonged to the province of the Chaldeans.

Yet what if the same division of provinces was not always preserved by the ancient writers and geographers, on account of the vicissitudes of wars and the changes of the Roman Empire? For those of the Roman Empire who then held dominion over the affairs of Mesopotamia could indeed have handed over Carchara, or Cascara, to be governed by the prefect or proconsul of that province, and subjected it to his jurisdiction, so that writers afterward discussing it, attending more to the rights of the monarchy than to the situation of the places, asserted that it was situated within the borders of Mesopotamia.

For the history of Roman affairs itself supplies us with most weighty foundations for this matter, from which we gather that from the year 235 of Christ to 276 the Persians and other neighboring peoples were harassed by the gravest disasters of war. For of Gordian we read that in the fifth year of his reign he marched with great forces chiefly against the Persians, and recovered from them Carrhae, Nisibis, and other towns, and drove them back into their own region. Nor is it hidden that the successor of Gordian made peace with Sapor the First of that name, king of the Persians, and returned to Rome; but the same Persians, invading the frontiers of the East with arms, plundering Antioch, laid waste various regions of the Romans.

They laid waste the peoples subject to Roman dominion, whom at last Odenathus, the decurion of the Palmyrenes, to whom Zenobia had been married, forcibly crushed, and championed the Roman cause, when he assumed for himself the royal title. He therefore, having taken Nisibis and Carrhae, having vindicated Mesopotamia, the king of the Persians put to flight and very many slain, sent the captive satraps bound, and, as though he himself had conquered, did not blush to triumph. This victory Trebellius recorded, under the consuls Gallienus and Saturninus, which is the year of Christ 264. From this year, therefore, up to the reign of Marcus Aurelius Probus, which occurred, as we have seen, in the year 276, the writers do not record that the affairs of the East, of the Persians, and of Mesopotamia were changed.

Wherefore, since we can reasonably conclude that entirely the same principle and jurisdiction was preserved by the Romans, it is no wonder if Archelaus, the author of the disputation—as Assemani will have it—or Hegemonius, who wrote out that whole series of the Acts, keeping the order of events and of the empire, attributed that city to Mesopotamia and said it was situated within its borders, though later, in the subsequent divisions of provinces, it was assigned to Chaldea. That the ancients were accustomed to designate by the name 'province' those regions conquered and subdued in war outside Italy—some of them consular, to be governed by proconsuls, others praetorian, to be governed by praetors—is sufficiently established from the old writers.

When this was done, they were said to be reduced into the form of a province. Nor let it be objected to me that this would be true of Carrhae and Nisibis, because it is objected that an express reduction of those cities was made under the Roman Empire. For the writers also make mention of other towns subdued and conquered for the Roman Empire by the right of war from the defeats of the Persians, whose names were by no means recorded. It is therefore likely that under that general expression—'that Gordian recovered other towns as well from the Persians'—Cascara or Carchara too was included, which was nearer to the borders of the Persians. Yet I judge it superfluous to linger longer in weighing these matters, especially since the arguments which Beausobre adduces in the last place are wholly negative;

drawn, namely, from the silence of the Syrian writers, whose aim in writing was not to make mention of Archelaus and his disputation, which were most well known to all. For those things can be most abundantly refuted by the certain and positive testimonies of all the Greek Fathers of every age who flourished after Manes and Archelaus.