1. After the Manichaean plague had been introduced into Africa, its error soon began to spread more widely, so that in every gathering of men there were found men, and many women, who were most basely defiled with the same. Since therefore this came to pass not without great disgrace, dishonour, and ruin to the civil and Catholic commonwealth — because the Manichaean morals and institutions first dissolved all the rights of marriage, undermined the purity of virtue with the basest and most promiscuous acts of unchastity, corrupted virgins dedicated to a holier life and rule while still of most tender age, and, just as if the men of this sect were subject to no divine and human laws at all, poured themselves out, with nature itself recoiling, into every kind of most wicked outrage;
therefore, as soon as this long-hidden and secret manner of living of the Manichaeans became known to the princes of the age, punishment was at once meted out against them and their sacrilegious assemblies, and various laws were passed on this account, by which they were bound to undergo many kinds of penalties. Our mind, moreover, would utterly shudder to relate the things which the Elect of the Manichaeans were compelled to do sacrilegiously and superstitiously — in whatever foods, and in receiving even the venerable Sacrament of the Eucharist. But the words of Augustine, which we subjoin, will relieve the shudder and shame of our mind.
"On which occasion (he says), or rather by a certain necessity of an execrable superstition, their Elect are compelled to take, as it were, a eucharist sprinkled with human seed, so that from it also, as from the other foods which they receive, that divine substance may be purged." No less impious and sacrilegious were certain other mysteries, which Augustine elsewhere affirms the Manichaeans observed with a great abuse of our rites. For, to the great disgrace and contempt of our Catholic religion, the very Hearers of this sect bent their knees before the Elect, that hands might be laid upon them as suppliants — not by the presbyters alone, or the bishops, or their deacons, but by any of the Elect whatsoever.
Behold, then, whence that nefarious opinion first arose and prevailed, that laymen can institute and ordain the sacred ministers of the Church — an error long since abolished, yet in later ages, with Calvin alone and the rest of most wicked authors, renewed to the ruin of the whole ecclesiastical hierarchy. Since therefore the most wicked sect of the Manichaean Elect had been accustomed to do these and other things of the sort, the princes of the age spent every effort to root out utterly their most corrupt morals. Nor indeed does this become known to us from one or another testimony of Leo the Great alone.
But from the Theodosian Code itself, in which are described several laws passed by the emperors for the destruction of the Manichaeans, as we shall observe in another more suitable place. Meanwhile, however, it is needful that we take note of that law which, at the instance of Julian, proconsul of Africa, the two emperors Diocletian and Maximian issued, as Tillemont also records. 2. Both emperors, therefore, in the year of Christ the Lord 290, having first heard the complaints of the same Julian, proconsul of Africa, as to how a new sect of men, coming thither from the borders of the Persians, had stirred up great disturbances within the cities of that realm, by which the affairs of the Roman empire were turned upside down;
they themselves, desiring to meet these evils as they there grew rife, in the month of March of that same year issued at Alexandria that law, that the men of this sect, together with their nefarious writings, should be handed over to be burned with fire. But the nobles, if any were found tainted with this stain, they ordered to be deported into exile, besides the loss of all their honours; the rest, finally, men of the lowest condition, they compelled to undergo capital punishment. That a law of this sort still prevailed in Africa in Augustine's day, Tillemont among others judges more probable.
He, having skilfully and diligently consulted the Acts of Augustine against Felix, observed that that heretical man had been terrified (as he said) both by the authority of the episcopate and by the strictness of those laws which the emperors had promulgated for the destruction of this nefarious sect. But Augustine himself strove marvellously to elude both evasions of this man. First, by showing that the authority of the sacred bishops, derived from God, strikes no fear into the accused, when the disputation proceeds tranquilly, and the people who are present at the disputations inflict no force or terror at all.
Secondly, then, he sets forth how the rigour of the imperial laws, arising from the right of the sword, can never be a hindrance to the truth of religion and to the sincere confession of it, but that both have always afforded ornament, protection, and increase to the Catholic Church and to her sacred doctrines. "You said also that the episcopal authority terrifies you: though you see with how great peace we act among ourselves, with what tranquillity we dispute, how the people present offer you no force, strike no terror, but listen most tranquilly, as befits Christians. You said also that you fear the laws of the emperors: he would not fear this for the true Faith, whom the Holy Spirit should fill."
For which very reason he proposes the same example of the apostle Peter, who, moved by the divine Spirit, was crucified for the Lord's faith. But Felix himself, led by too great a zeal for contention, dared to answer Augustine thus: "The apostles too were afraid." This new evasion of Felix the Manichaean the same holy Father, desiring to snatch away, at once explained in these words how the apostles feared tyrants. "They feared" (he says) "in order to take precaution, not so as to hesitate, when apprehended, to declare their faith." And a little below, lightly and without any ambiguity of words or insult, he rebukes him for not having earlier feared the emperor, as he pretended, since he had not earlier kept silent: "For if you had feared the emperor, you would earlier have kept silent."
And when, on the previous day, Felix had been brought under suspicion of Manichaeism, he appealed to the curator of the city of Hippo, to whom, having presented a petition, he had publicly clamoured that he, according to the Diocletian law, was ready to be burned together with his codices, if anything evil should be found in them; therefore, as though mocking him, Augustine thus closes his response: "Whence yesterday you demanded the laws as though brave, today you flee the truth as though timid." 3. From these public Acts, then, of Augustine the bishop with Felix the Manichaean, that rigour of the imperial laws shines forth clearer than light, by which the men of that sect in Africa were afflicted, since, namely, the professors of that heresy of this sort were handed over with their codices to be burned with fire.
It is moreover clear that the authority of the bishops availed not only in pressing hard the men infected with that stain, so that they might abjure their errors, but also in utterly rooting out from their dioceses whatever novelties were repugnant to the Catholic religion; which episcopal, ecclesiastical authority indeed shone forth greatly in this case of Felix. Who, when in the year 404, Honorius Augustus being consul for the sixth time, on the sixth day of December, had rashly and openly said in the city of the people of Hippo that he could defend the writings of Manichaeus, and assert that they held the truth;
and moreover, for the same cause having been rightly arraigned both before the curator of the city, as we have seen, and before Augustine the bishop as one guilty of execrable blasphemy, he was now being compelled to undergo a public inquiry. For Felix did not dwell at Hippo, but had come there to sow the Manichaean errors. Since he was one of the more learned among them, yet uninstructed in liberal letters, but craftier than Fortunatus, he hoped more confidently to propagate the errors more widely. Possidius adds that he was of the number of those whom they call the Elect; who, besides the nefarious doctrines they championed, were addicted to the most impure acts of unchastity and obscenities.
This engagement, therefore, on the following day — that is, the seventh of December — was begun in the church, with the people present. This engagement Augustine calls ecclesiastical proceedings, or an ecclesiastical judgment, set down indeed in writing by notaries; they began, in the course of disputing, from that letter of Manichaeus which they call the Fundamentum: but this engagement, or the episcopal Acts, were not completed on the same day. For Felix, when he was pressed by the truth, and was most hard-pressed by Augustine's arguments, said: "I ask for a postponement, that I may be able to answer."
To whose wish Augustine, benignly and most courteously assenting, as befitted a bishop of the Catholic Church, the remaining Acts of the disputation were extended over the space of five days — that is, to the day before the Ides of December. 4. Although Augustine, wishing to deal more humanely with Felix, had granted such a postponement of the disputation, nevertheless the mind of the holy bishop was not void of, nor free from, fear that Felix had reckoned within himself to take to flight, that he might, namely, escape the penalties threatened against those guilty of these crimes. Wherefore, before he brought this earlier conference to its end, he had need to use much caution — namely, to inquire of him whether he was contemplating flight.
When Felix had denied this once and again, it is proposed to him to pronounce anathema against Manichaeus, and to place himself under the custody of some man. In all which, since Felix kept the faith publicly given, and the proceedings of the first disputation had been signed both by Felix and by Augustine, and also by a certain Bonifacius under whose custody we suppose Felix committed himself, the earlier Acts were now brought to their end with great glory to the Catholic truth. But what was done after the five days had elapsed, the Acts of the second day likewise, with Felix the Manichaean, plainly reveal.
For when they had assembled, together with a large crowd of people and the notaries, in the Church of Peace on the twelfth day of the same month, Augustine began a new disputation from those matters, or doctrines, at which the preceding one had reached its end. "If nothing could harm God (Augustine was saying), why did he wage war with the race which you call that of darkness, in which war he mingled the substance of nature with the demons — which is what you yourself, as you said when questioned, hold?" Thus indeed the holy bishop pressed Felix.
To which fabulous fiction the heretical man met him, using at once craft and evasion, answering that he was still unprepared, that he had had no writing in his hands during that time of leisure, because they had not been returned to him, whence he might instruct himself. "For no one" (he added) "goes out to the contest unless first equipped; and no litigant can litigate without his documents; likewise I too cannot answer without my writing." By this artifice, therefore, Felix strove to escape the new danger. But Augustine knew it; and knew full well the tergiversation of the crafty man.
Therefore, turning to him with a grave discourse full of authority, he sharply rebukes him, because by this excuse he was striving to conceal his sacrilegious errors; and he charges him as guilty of a new offence, in that, while asking a space of five days to make his reply, he had not also sought that the codices be handed over to him, which were kept under a public seal. Felix, then, did not obtain the desired postponement of two further days; but the codices at least were given to him. When he had received them, the holy bishop began so to press him, and to pursue him with such force and weight of argument, that, once all the fabulous fictions, errors, and impieties of Mani had been shaken out, he was at last overcome by the truth of the arguments, amid the greatest applause of the Catholics.
He abjured Mani and his doctrine before so numerous an assembly. Meanwhile, in order that it might be made known to all that he was sincerely and from his heart pronouncing anathema upon Mani and his errors, he demanded from the same bishop Augustine a formula of the anathemas consigned to writing. But this above all he begged, that, so that he, Felix, might be the more confirmed, Augustine should go first, and should be the first to anathematize Mani, and also the spirit that had spoken in him. This at length he obtained. For, having received the paper from Augustine, he cursed him with an anathema; the same Felix did, writing the following words with his own hand: 'I, Felix, who had believed in Mani, now anathematize him and his doctrine;'
and other things of the same kind, which may conveniently be perused by all in Augustine, at the end of the second book. 5. But in reviewing all these matters we think we have laboured in vain, as those will say who have unrolled the Life of Augustine, elegantly and learnedly arranged by the Fathers of the Congregation of Saint Maur. For in the fifth book, chapter 12, they have more fully described in summary all those things that pertain to the present disputations of Augustine with Felix. What then? Was it not permitted to us to treat these same matters again, to relate the law passed by the pagan emperors against the Manichaeans, to explain in what manner Felix had appealed to it, and at the same time to show that he dreaded the rigour and the penalties of both powers? All these things indeed the most learned editors of the Works of Saint
Augustine passed over, perhaps pleading that it was foreign to the aim of writing set before them, namely that they wished merely to narrate the deeds transacted by Augustine with Felix. Since, therefore, our zeal in composing the history of the Manichaeans aimed chiefly at this, that, keeping as far as possible the reckoning of the times, we might collect into one body, as it were, the crimes of that sect, indicated by the gravest and most trustworthy writers; for that reason we have transferred those same things to our own use, everywhere adding those annotations which others, being engaged upon a different business, either omitted, or at any rate ought to have omitted. 6.
Meanwhile, however, lest we should seem to fall short in those things which pertain to our subject, we by no means pass over in silence that there were held between Augustine and Felix not two, but three conferences. Possidius wished to indicate this, at least obscurely, in the Life of Augustine. But again it is made known more clearly from the very words of Augustine, who, in the conference of the first day taken down by the notaries, indicated another preceding meeting, addressing Felix the Manichaean thus: 'He knows that he said yesterday.' And again Felix himself, meeting Augustine's questions, promises that he is ready to prove what he was impiously and sacrilegiously asserting, if the Manichaean scriptures were given to him: 'the five authors (he says) whom I have named to you—whatever you ask me, I prove to you.'
His words are certainly to be referred to those codices which in the last conference he was also demanding, and which were kept under a public seal. But books of this sort had already been handed over to be kept under seal before the public and solemn conferences were taken down in writing by the notaries. Therefore, when I weigh all these things within myself, I am easily led to the opinion that the holy bishop held only two conferences or disputations at the rails of the Church, with the people standing by; but that another had already preceded these before the imperial commissioner, namely when Felix, by his written petition, appealed to the penalties of the imperial laws, and when at length he handed over the apocryphal codices of the Scriptures to be kept under a public seal.
Thus indeed anyone will be permitted to reason, who is willing not carelessly but diligently to survey both the testimony of Possidius and the Acts of those disputations. 7. This earlier question is followed by that other one, which seemed to pertain to the ecclesiastical rank of Felix the Manichaean. To this inquiry occasion was given by Augustine's letter 79, which the holy bishop addressed to a Manichaean presbyter, the successor of Fortunatus. For from it a scruple was cast upon the editors of Augustine's Works, so that they suspected that this same presbyter was that very Felix of whom we have hitherto been speaking. But this suspicion—on what grounds or conjectures does it rest, that we should not deem it altogether empty and false? Whence shall we draw the foundations for suspecting thus?
I, for my part, who am led by no partisan zeal, if I ought sincerely to confess what I turn over in my mind, will judge that this Manichaean presbyter, to whom Augustine sent the letter just mentioned, was another than Felix. But lest I should seem to dissemble the foundations of this probable opinion, I will at once reason thus in a few words. I will, namely, ask the most recent editors of Augustine whether letter 79 came after the aforesaid conferences of Augustine with Felix, or preceded them. But it is by no means permitted to judge that it is later than those conferences.
For Felix, already converted from his heart, before the Acts of the last conference were brought to a close, had already openly confessed the Catholic religion, had abjured Mani and his dogmas; nor can we, without the gravest testimonies, suppose that he relapsed into his former errors. Therefore the editors will by no means doubt that Augustine's letter 79, which we have cited, preceded those two conferences taken down in writing. This indeed we judge they meant to indicate, when at the margin of the printed copies they placed a note of time: 'Written perhaps in the year 404.'
Into which year indeed, even though—following the sure and genuine notes of the consuls—we assign the public meetings of Augustine with Felix the Manichaean, yet since he held these same meetings in the course of this year, namely on the twelfth day of December, therefore no one of sound mind will be able to affirm that letter 79 is later than these. When at length I was pondering these things, I not carelessly compared the argument of this letter with those things which are described in the disputations; and I found that they did not agree with one another. For that Manichaean presbyter, whom the aforesaid editors suspect to have been Felix, had raised a question with certain brethren of Augustine about a visible death that is not to be fled;
contending that it is not merely the separation of the mind from the body, but also the tearing away of good from evil. When that presbyter affirmed this from the Manichaean dogma, Augustine strives to refute him, and at the same time calls him to public disputations, in order that he might resolve the question in which his predecessor Fortunatus had failed. But that there were other arguments contained in those disputations is already made evident from the very series of the Acts. Moreover, Augustine, neither in the books of the Retractations, nor in the Acts of the conferences, asserts that he sent this letter to Felix; and it is perfectly manifest that Possidius preserved this same silence in the Life of Augustine.
I confess, therefore, that it wholly escapes me on what conjectures I ought to rely, in order not to suspect rashly that the letter of which we are treating could have been addressed by Augustine to Felix the Manichaean presbyter. This, however, others will judge better and more easily; since, now that we have provided against these reefs, upon which the latest editors of Augustine's Works seem to have run aground, deciding nothing further thereupon, we prefer rather to make a step toward describing other more certain matters.