Sermons & Letters 203

1. Among the many heresies laying Africa waste in the fourth century of the Church, the Manichaean indeed held the chief place, whether because, having arisen before the Arian, Priscillianist, Pelagian, and Donatist sects, it had, coming from Persia or Armenia, planted its foot in that kingdom in the year 290, and long lying hidden from the Catholic prelates, had struck roots now here, now there; or because, divided into two classes, namely the hearers and the elect, it could easily draw to itself two kinds of men: the one, of those who laboured under ignorance of the divine mysteries; the other, of those who seethed with the greatest ardour of the foulest lusts. But each of these two kinds of men, after their conversion, Saint Augustine

strenuously assailed and pursued, as we have seen. But he applied still greater force in refuting and rooting out the Manichaeans, when, namely, some of them having been detected at Carthage, action was taken against them by public and ecclesiastical authority. For it is established from the Chronicle of Prosper that Ursus, prefect of the royal household of the emperor Constantius, who likewise shone with the dignity of a tribune and presided over civil affairs in Africa, since he professed the Catholic religion and defended it with all his strength, intercepted some of those Manichaeans, whom they called the elect (men and women). That these, then, might be brought before the tribunal of the Church, the tribune Rufus himself, the vindicator of our rights, had given command;

decreeing that, before the bishops, in whose presence they were to present themselves as the accused, with the people also present, an inquiry should be instituted; that first they should be questioned about their crimes and dogmas; then, after the confession of all the charges had been heard, they should—as the laws prescribed—be punished. But to hear their confession there were present not only the notaries, who were drawing up the Acts, but also the bishops, who sat there as it were as judges, so that the form and order of the whole inquiry might be observed according to the human and ecclesiastical laws. The names of the bishops, however, if we except the one Aurelius, who then presided over the Church of Carthage with the highest praise, we are wholly ignorant of. But it is probable that bishops were gathered from that whole province.

Augustine also was present, to whom perhaps beyond the rest the dogmas and crimes of this execrable sect were known. 2. But what became known from the episcopal Acts of Carthage, and moreover how many were those whom the tribune Rufus had ordered to be intercepted and set before the ecclesiastical judges, is very difficult to determine. For, through the injury of the times, the Acts of this kind taken down by the notaries have perished; and Augustine on the one hand, and Prosper on the other, having made mention only of certain women who had been violated, omitted to describe the remaining series of the proceedings. Among the number of these women Augustine especially recorded two: one named Margarita, who betrayed that shameful deed;

namely, one who, being not yet twelve years of age, said that on account of this wicked mystery she had been violated. And when a certain other Manichaean woman named Eusebia, held as a kind of nun, had likewise suffered this vice of shameful outrage, she scarcely forced her to confess. For at first this woman wrongly testified that she still retained the flower of her virginity intact, and demanded to be examined by a midwife. And having been examined, and found to be what she was, she likewise disclosed that whole most foul crime, wherein flour is spread beneath to receive and mingle the seed of those who lie together (which Margarita, being absent, had not heard as she gave her information).

This confession of Margarita, then, exposed in the Church at Carthage the most shameful lusts of the Manichaeans, which they practised among themselves, of which the least grievous was the defilement of virgins. But Eusebia too, being at first compelled to confess her own disgrace and outrage, also revealed other abominable crimes of her sect, among which this one was chief: that in the abuse of women, and even of their wives, they sought only the pleasures of the flesh, while they always avoided conception and the generation of offspring; lest the divine substance (as they said), which enters into them through nourishment, should be bound by fleshly bonds in the offspring.

These things only in a general way can be recounted in this our discourse concerning that inquiry at Carthage against the elect (men and women) of the Manichaeans, since it is altogether impossible to describe the individual details that pertain to the confession of the accused and to the sum of the episcopal proceedings, unless we should wish to divine them. It will also be less easy to speak of that grave horror of the people of Carthage, which all the witnesses of this ecclesiastical inquiry must have conceived beforehand into a hatred of so pestilent a sect.

From this we conjecture not only that all the Catholics cried out for the destruction of the Manichaeans, but that everyone, moreover, willingly wished to be bound by that oath, that as often as anyone should become known to him as of the Manichaean sect, he should at once, without any wavering of mind or postponement of time, betray him to the ecclesiastical judges. Of which matter, although the Acts of the Carthaginian notaries have perished, we draw the proofs from one or another Augustinian letter. 3. For the earlier one was written to Quodvultdeus, then deacon of the Church of Carthage. For he had asked Augustine to compose a single volume concerning heresies.

To whom Augustine, replying, sets forth that the difficulty of the work had already been attempted, and accomplished, first by Philaster, bishop of Brescia, and by Epiphanius of Cyprus. Then, passing his judgement upon the volumes of each writer, he asserts that this one—namely that of Epiphanius—is to be preferred to the book of Philaster. But before he closes the letter, he asks that it may not be a burden to write back to him how a certain Theodosius, through whom several Manichaeans were betrayed, persevered in the Catholic faith. 'And those very ones whom we suppose to have been betrayed by him have been corrected.' Augustine, therefore, clearly asserts that the Manichaeans were betrayed by this Theodosius.

But whether he had ever been stained with the Manichaean taint—even if it be reckoned rather probable, and Augustine's words might obscurely hint at it—yet I would not dare to determine. Augustine's letter, moreover, is to be assigned to the year 428, namely when he dedicated the book on heresies to this Carthaginian deacon. In whose recent time again some of them had been found in that same Church, as the episcopal proceedings show, which the same Quodvultdeus had sent to Augustine; which Manichaeans likewise confessed under diligent questioning this not-sacrament but anti-sacrament—of whom one was Viator by name. But on the occasion of these episcopal Acts, it became known to the Catholic bishops that some schism had arisen among the Manichaeans.

For, split into various factions, some were called Catharistae, that is, purifiers; others, moreover, were called Mattarii, who slept on mats; others, finally, were called simply Manichaeans. This schism of the Manichaeans, then, was confirmed also from the Carthaginian Acts just reviewed. But that it had long before become known to Augustine is established from those things which he has against Faustus, book 5, chapter 5; and that this is to be assigned to another time, we shall presently explain. 4. Proudly, therefore, and equally vainly, did the Manichaeans boast of the perfection of the Christian commandments, as though they alone practised the things that are prescribed in the Gospel.

But so great a dissimilarity of morals and manner of living was there among them, that in fulfilling the Manichaean laws they by no means agreed. Wherefore, since among other things some especially vaunted themselves upon Christian poverty, which others utterly despised; for that reason Augustine, who refuted their falsehoods and pretences, chiefly attacks, assails, and harasses Faustus for teaching that money is not to be carried in one's belt—because the Manichaeans professed one thing and lived otherwise, since, namely, while not carrying money in their belts, they were more greedily eager to keep gold in their little coffers and in their money-bags.

For this cause he appeals to a certain Constantius, a Roman citizen, once infected with the Manichaean taint, who afterwards, having abjured the error, was converted to the Christian Catholic religion. This man, then, he calls upon as a most abundant witness, who, with the greatest zeal wherewith he seethed for this sect, when he had summoned and gathered together at Rome many Manichaeans into his own house for the fulfilling of the precepts of Mani—precepts indeed quite vain and foolish, yet such as were greatly esteemed by his disciples—when their weakness yielded to the severity and austerity of those laws, they were dispersed, so that each went off on his own way.

When, therefore, each contended and reckoned that he would be free in loosening the Manichaean laws, there arose among them that schism of which we spoke above; because 'some sleep on mats,' says the same Augustine, 'and are called Mattarii'—from whose beds far different were the feathers of Faustus and his goat-hair coverlets; by which affluence of delights he not only disdained the Mattarii, but even the house of his own father, a poor man of Milevis. Wittily indeed does he here mock and taunt Faustus, describing this schism of the Manichaeans; which was chiefly one of the causes that had already bred in Augustine himself a loathing of that heresy. He himself indeed narrates this in the book

On the Morals of the Manichaeans, in which book he relates more eloquently the remarkable history of Constantius, a hearer of the Manichaeans—a history which indeed had so far become widely known, that by the spreading of rumour it reached even those who were absent and set far off. But Augustine himself, who had at first known the whole affair excellently from a witness who was his friend, coming afterwards to Rome about the year of Christ 383, testifies that it was made altogether known and ascertained to him. Narrating, namely, how Constantius, bearing most grievously such and so great a dissimilarity of morals among the Manichaeans, was striving to compel all who were gathered into his house to live according to the same rule set forth in the letter of Mani. 'To many (says Augustine) it seemed intolerable; they departed;'

'yet not a few remained out of shame. It began to be lived as had been resolved, and as so great an authority prescribed, while meanwhile that hearer (namely Constantius) vehemently urged all to all things, yet nothing that he did not first undertake himself. Meanwhile most frequent quarrels arose among the elect; crimes were cast at one another in turn: all of which he, groaning, heard, and took pains that they should, in their wrangling, most incautiously betray their own selves. They betrayed things unspeakable and monstrous.' And, after a few words interposed, Augustine adds: 'What more? Being at length constrained, they murmured that those commandments could not be endured, thence going off into sedition.' 5. Meanwhile let this our discourse seem to no one more lengthy than it ought to have been.

Let no one, moreover, blame our manner of writing, because we have wished to intermingle the things done in Africa against the Manichaeans with those which had happened long before at Rome. For, that we might digress a little from the episcopal proceedings of Carthage, two things chiefly impelled us. One is that schism which was more and more laid open in the confessions of the Manichaeans taken down by the notaries. Since to this there aptly corresponds another, Roman one that had preceded, we judged it not incongruous to indicate this also for the benefit of our reader.

The other, however, is the opinion of certain men once of great name, who, turning all the monuments of ecclesiastical history upside down, contend that the coming of the Manichaeans into the city of Rome is to be traced back only from the year 427. Assuredly, if the opinion of these men stood, not only would the credit of the Augustinian writings totter, but the decrees and constitutions of many Roman pontiffs—from which the prelates of the African Church drew those rules of discipline, that action should be taken against the Manichaeans—would go to ruin. But the chief author of this opinion was Quesnel, as we reserve to show in the following chapters.

But now, returning to that law of ecclesiastical discipline from which we have somewhat digressed, that it was more rigidly observed without any indulgence at all on the part of the bishops, another letter of the same holy Augustine most evidently makes plain. For he had discovered that a certain Victorinus of Malliana, established in the clerical order of the subdiaconate, was polluted with the Manichaean taint. Therefore, moved by zeal for the Catholic religion, he at once sent a letter to Deuterius, bishop of the same province, that he should be on his guard against this cleric; lest, namely, through slackness or through his negligence, the hostile man, who had begun to lie in wait for the Lord's fold, should destroy the souls of Christians purchased at so great a price.

This Victorinus, then, Augustine had summoned into judgement; and before he could be convicted by the witnesses who had accused him, when questioned, he could not deny his injured faith. And therefore he confessed himself to be a hearer of the Manichaeans, not one of the elect. Of which confession he subjoins as it were a summary to bishop Deuterius, so that, by running through the monstrous and sacrilegious crimes, he might understand, at least in general, the most corrupt morals and impious dogmas of this sect. But after these things he wished either to suggest to him, or to recall into his mind, the rules of ecclesiastical discipline to be observed in receiving penitent Manichaeans.

When afterwards he had pondered these with himself, and diligently observed them, having excellently perceived the preceding manner of life of Victorinus, he gravely suspected that this man would not observe them. Wherefore, lest he should seem to be moved by a light suspicion, having brought into the midst the past morals of Victorinus, he appeals to that feigning whereby, under a pretended profession of the Catholic faith and the colour of the sacred ecclesiastical order of the subdiaconate, he had striven to conceal the Manichaean religion, which he professed in his heart. This man, therefore, moved by so grave a scruple, Augustine judged was not to be received into the Church even as a penitent after his errors had been abjured; but, with all the

rigour of discipline preserved, he took care that he should be coerced and driven out of the city and diocese of Hippo. Yet he charges his bishop Deuterius that he should be punished by another still severer ecclesiastical penalty; enjoining him by his letters that, with fitting ecclesiastical severity, he should cast Victorinus down from the rank of the clergy, so that, deprived of every honour and communion, he might become known to all. Finally, to him seeking it, he utterly forbids that a place of penitence be granted, unless he shall have made manifest others also whom he knows to be there—not only in Malliana, but in the whole province entirely. 6. The sum, moreover, of these matters we ourselves have excerpted from Augustine's letter 256, formerly 74, for the purpose of laying open the ecclesiastical discipline employed with the Manichaeans. But in what year the holy

doctor wrote it, the latest editors of Augustine's Works have established, who have relegated it to the fourth class of the letters—namely, of those whose time is less ascertained. But in the preface to the two books On the Proceedings with Felix the Manichaean, the editors of Augustine's Works themselves bring forward, both from Baronius and from a Gervasian codex, a certain ancient fragment of the Felician profession, by which we understand that those coming from this heresy to the Church were never received unless they first betrayed other men of the same sect, and delivered them up to the bishops or pastors of their Churches;

nor did the Manichaeans, who were received as penitents, make manifest only the names of the other men of this sect who dwelt in that very diocese to whose communion they had, after the sacrament of reconciliation, been admitted; but they were bound to betray also others scattered far and wide throughout the whole province, or elsewhere in more neighbouring places. This is clearly made known from the confession of Felix, once a Manichaean, of whom we have spoken in what precedes:

Namely, Felix, converted from the Manichaeans, said under the testification of God: 'I confess all things truly, concerning whom I know to be Manichaeans, whether men or women, in the regions of Caesarea: Maria and Lampadia the wife of Mercurius the silversmith, together with whom we likewise entreated Eucharistus the elect; Caesaria and Lucitta her daughter; Candida, who abides at Tipasa; Victorina the Spaniard; Simplicianus the father of Antonius; Pantus and his sister, who are at Hippo, whom likewise, through Maria and Lampadia, I have learned to be Manichaean women.'

From this confession, then, of Felix the Manichaean returning to the Catholic faith, that ancient discipline of the Church becomes known, whereby it was provided that they should never be admitted to the sacrament of reconciliation, unless, under the testification of Almighty God, they betrayed as many as they knew to be defiled with that heresy. Of whom, finally, if a penitent had failed guilefully to denounce to the ecclesiastical judges anyone known to him, he was thereby rendered unworthy of the aforesaid reconciliation. Therefore the same Felix closed this his confession with these words: 'This only do I know; but if it be found that I know anything more than I have said, I myself confess myself guilty.' 7.

But from this preceding confession of Felix the reason and order of that ancient discipline does not yet become more fully and perfectly known. For, since very many of the Manichaeans had never been regenerated by the sacred laver of baptism, and had always lived after the manner of the gentiles, while others, fleeing from the Catholic society, had given their name to Manes; therefore the bishops' manner of acting could not be the same in receiving both sorts. And indeed each of those who repented was bound to make at once a document of confession and of penitence, in which, an anathema having first been pronounced upon Manes, he ought earnestly to petition to obtain the place either of a catechumen or of a penitent;

documents of this kind, moreover, the bishops received, and tested them whether they were conformable to the ecclesiastical rules; nor was the letter of reconciliation given to them otherwise than with the day and the consul: so that (namely) they might suffer no trouble concerning the earlier time, either from the public laws or from ecclesiastical discipline. But if anyone, after receiving the ecclesiastical testimony and written bond, still by certain signs appeared to be a Manichaean, then he was compelled to experience the severity of justice according to the form of the civil and ecclesiastical laws; whom afterwards Catholic men were bidden altogether to beware of, according to the apostolic command of divine Paul.

Those were recommended who had received letters from the bishops to their Catholic neighbours or fellow-residents, whether clergy or laity, by whose care for them they might regularly attend the hearing of the word of God, and by whose testimony they could become known. So we read in that admonition of the Catholic Church which is commonly ascribed to Augustine, and which the most recent editors of Augustine's Works have consigned to the appendix of the eighth volume.

From this admonition we likewise understand that these converted Manichaeans were not at once admitted to baptism or to the sacrament of reconciliation, but had to persevere either in the rank of catechumens or in the place of penitents until the danger of death, or at least were compelled to remain in one or the other state for as long as the bishops—once the firmness of their faith had been examined and confirmed by the testimony of those to whom they had been recommended—judged it fair that these penalties should be relaxed for them by indulgence. 8. Finally, the testimonial of the letter, or the certificate, under which the penitent Manichaeans were dismissed, was not expressed in exactly the same form.

For just as the Elect were more wicked than the Hearers, so too they were visited with heavier penalties. Hence the Hearers, in the first place, after making their confession and after pronouncing anathema upon the blasphemies and upon their most impious and most unclean heresy, easily obtained the commendatory letters of the bishops against those who tried to charge them with the past error of Manes; but to the Elect such a testimonial was not so easily given. Rather, they were first shut up with the servants of God, whether clergy or laity, in monasteries or hospices, until, the suspicion of their former heresy being wholly purged away, they might at length deserve to receive either baptism or reconciliation. 9.

But now we must halt our steps a little, in order to snatch away the weapons from the enemies of the Apostolic See, and especially those which they might contend they could derive from our preceding discourse. For since it is their aim to try to overthrow the rights and authority of the Roman Pontiffs in crushing heresies and in strengthening ecclesiastical discipline, they might now flatter themselves that the laws of the Church described thus far issued either from Augustine or from other bishops of Africa, and that for this reason they gained such force that the Roman Church, becoming a mere follower of their deeds, afterwards adopted these same laws for herself, and chose to observe them scrupulously in judging the Manichaeans.

Thus indeed those may be convicted of prating who not only published that volume as though it were the genuine codex of the canons of the Roman Church—a volume compiled from the statutes of other Churches and from the letters of bishops—but who also, in discussing the affairs of the Eutychians, assert that Saint Leo undertook no other role than that which of old Athanasius took up against the Arians, Augustine against the Pelagians, Cyril against the Nestorians. Nay more, treating again of the cause of the Pelagians, they have fabricated that the decrees of Innocent, Zosimus, Boniface, and Celestine derived their force only from the African councils themselves.

It is all these trifles and lies, and others of the same kind, that we have wished to counter by these our historical labours, in order to dispel these slanders against the Apostolic See, and at once to wrest away even that objection which he may raise. For that law of ecclesiastical discipline cannot be attributed to Augustine, or to any other bishop of Africa, which had been confirmed and defined by the apostolic See of the divine Peter before Augustine gave his name to the Catholics and before the bishops of Africa dealt with the Manichaeans. Pope Siricius set down that law in writing, from the apostolic tradition of the Roman See, at the very outset of his pontificate—at a time, that is, when Augustine was still involved in the errors of the Manichaeans.

Indeed, not even then had the prelates of Africa begun to visit the Manichaeans with ecclesiastical penalties; for we understand from what has been said above that this was first done at Carthage when Augustine already held the bishopric of Hippo. Therefore that discipline could not have proceeded from any rule or principle of Augustine or of any other bishop of Africa, if Augustine and the rest of the African bishops, for the destruction of that sect, kept those decrees which long before had been pronounced by the apostolic See of Saint Peter. It would now be to our purpose to append the decrees of this same Pope Siricius, which afterwards, with the greatest reverence, not only the African Fathers

observed in receiving the Manichaeans, but which all the Churches of the whole world also kept most religiously. But this cannot be a work for our present leisure, since in the following chapters, where we shall have various encounters with Paschasius Quesnel, we have reserved the task of describing and pointing out the deeds of several Roman Pontiffs against the hatred and destruction of the Manichaean brood. 10. Meanwhile, lest we defraud the most illustrious lights of doctrine and sanctity of their due praise and merit, we affirm that the zeal of Augustine above all, and of the bishops of Africa, is to be highly esteemed, since with all the strength of their souls they so set themselves against the Manichaeans that they overthrew and abolished that wicked sect. To Augustine above all, every honour and praise must be given.

From the day of his conversion he thought of nothing else than to expose the abominable and more hidden mysteries of the Manichaeans, to tear down the false dogmas of this sect, to set forth in writing their obscenities, to deride and execrate the hypocrisy of the Elect, to assail with curses the profane rites and sacraments they employed; and moreover to challenge to public disputations the more learned men whom the rest of the Manichaeans held as their masters. From these disputations afterwards, once the falsity of the Manichaean doctrine had been discovered, he laboured that the holiness of the Catholic faith alone might become known to all. These indeed are the things which the holy Doctor Augustine performed with the greatest zeal for the good, honour, and profit of the Catholic Church.

His glorious labours are celebrated not only by so many and so great learned works, especially those written against these same men (whose catalogue we do not here review, lest we depart from our intended aim), but also by all the other works composed by him against the Donatists, or the Pelagians and Arians, in which here and there he attempted to refute now one, now another error of the Manichaeans. With so great a store of Augustine's books, then, was Africa in particular, and the Catholic Church, enriched—at that time, namely, when heresies swarmed in that land like the serpents of the Egyptian magicians.

Now the remaining prelates of Africa, instructed by the rules of the apostolic Roman Church and aided by the support of the civil laws, were able fully to crush and consume the Manichaeans. This we judge the holy Doctor meant to indicate in a sermon delivered in a barbarous time to the catechumens, addressing them thus: 'The poison of the Manichaeans had crept in; it has been crushed, it has been consumed.' But it was not consumed in such a way that the Manichaeans, either afflicted with exile and departing from the kingdom of Africa, migrated elsewhere in Augustine's age, or that, being brought to penance, that kingdom had been purged of every Manichaean stain. Not so, I say.

For that viperous brood, terrified by civil and ecclesiastical penalties and accustomed to seek hiding-places for itself, never wholly departed from Africa, although later the Vandals laid waste that kingdom. Augustine's aim in speaking, therefore, was this: to hint that the poison of the Manichaeans had been crushed and consumed there by anathemas and proscriptions, and that all their diabolical enticements had been crushed and broken by the labours and writings of the Catholics, so that neither the unlearned nor the more learned could any longer be caught in such snares. These things which we have described belong to Augustine's age.

But if anything should occur to us that must be said about this same heresy ranging through Africa, we shall point it out at fitting places as this historical study proceeds, preserving as far as we can the order of the times. 1. Here we take up several questions to be examined which, once cleared up, not only shed very much light on our preceding remarks, but also utterly wrest away those arguments which Beausobre, all too injuriously, brought against Saints Leo the Great and Augustine, those vigorous opponents of the Manichaeans. First, then, he remarks how that wretched sect of the Manichaeans, after the Vandals occupied proconsular Africa, in which it had spread more widely, was forced to go into exile.

Of its followers, some came to Rome, while others took care to betake themselves to various places or cities. But those who came to Rome hoped to obtain comfort and support from their brethren, so as to live more safely. Yet soon this hope deceived them. For Saint Leo the Great, the Supreme Pontiff, being informed of their arrival and their stay, spared no zeal or labour to purge his Church of this plague. Nevertheless (says Beausobre) he employed such a mode and manner of dealing with them that he drove them rather to wrath and despair than roused them to repentance and the renouncing of their crimes. He maintains that Saint

Leo (the same Beausobre adds) convicted them of abominable ceremonies, of which he afterwards admonished the bishops of Italy in encyclical letters. This mode of acting, then, produced two pernicious effects. The first was to arouse in the people and the common folk a horror of the Manichaeans, and to move the magistrates to inflict upon them the penalties already established by the laws. But the other and more pernicious effect was that by which, little by little, a very great horror of the Catholic Church was inspired in these same Manichaeans, seeing the bishops become so grievously hostile to them, since they were pressed by these men rather with calumnies and most grievous persecutions.

For, he says, they were not guilty of those crimes with which they were charged. With these curses and reproaches, then, Beausobre harassed Saint Leo the Pontiff, in order the more to favour the Manichaeans and to clear them of their abominable crimes. Shall we, then, patiently endure so great an impudence of writing and audacity of reasoning—especially when the author boasts throughout his whole work that he is led by no prejudices, and has inquired into the sole truth of things in setting forth the history of the Manichaeans? But the following considerations will make plain that our writer has splendidly lied in all these matters. First, from where does he gather that the Manichaeans came to Rome after proconsular Africa had been laid waste by the Vandals?

For the men of this wicked sect had long before sought other hiding-places for themselves in the city of Rome, namely in the time of Saint Pope Siricius. Those who stubbornly and too obstinately clung to and defended their errors he ordered to be banished into exile; but those who were corrected and penitent he admitted to the sacrament of reconciliation, provided they should pass the remaining course of their life confined in monasteries. Therefore the manner of the Roman Pontiffs in dealing with the Manichaeans did not originate from Leo the Great; nor were they detected at Rome after the Vandal disaster inflicted on proconsular Africa, as Beausobre (carelessly, I believe) asserted; nor was the way to penance thereafter closed to them, so that they should be driven to wrath and despair;

but, with the rigour of the sacred laws set before them on the one hand, and on the other the peace and gentleness of the Church, they were able to bend themselves toward that to which their mind was more inclined. Saint Leo the Great's manner of dealing with the Manichaeans, therefore, is not to be judged so savage that, neglecting the statutes of his predecessors the Pontiffs Siricius and Anastasius, he did not first seek the conversion of the Manichaeans, and refused to receive the penitent to reconciliation. And if afterwards popular hatred against these men was aroused on account of the horrible outrages that had been discovered, so that even the magistrates were moved to torment them with the rigour of penalties, that ought by no means to be laid to Leo's fault.

Nay rather, with the highest praise must that zeal be crowned, by which he strove to purge the Roman Church, entrusted to him, from the defilements of such great wickednesses. And what if, moreover, the Manichaeans conceived the greatest horror toward the bishops and the fellowship of Catholics? For this is wont to be the ordinary condition of all the accused, that they fear their judges and shrink from the penalties with which they justly deserve to be visited. But the bishops did not on that account become their calumniators and persecutors, since they published, by word or in writing, nothing but the Manichaean crimes proved in the courts by solemn inquiry and laid open by the very confessions of those men.

For that our Leo kept this economy, whether in the public sermons delivered to the people or when he directed his letters to all the bishops of Italy, that they might guard themselves and their flocks against the dogmas of the Manichaeans (men who had recently been expelled from the city of Rome), we ourselves show more clearly when treating of Leo's Roman inquisition against the Manichaeans. From that discussion, indeed, the reader will more abundantly find whereby to refute Beausobre's reproaches and curses against Saint Leo the Great. 2. Nor did Beausobre think it enough to censure and to tear apart with reproaches Saint Leo the Great's manner of dealing with the Manichaeans, as we have seen thus far; but proceeding to the same Saint's

Pontiff's Letters and Sermons, he affirms that these contain no description whatever of Manichaean doctrine, but says that all this man's writings are taken up with invectives against the Priscillianists and Manichaeans, while he continually tries to confound these two distinct sects and subjects both to the same penalties. He grants that Leo's zeal deserves some praise, but says that a greater moderation of mind ought to have been sought in him, since he was above all one of those chief bishops who approved the punishments of heretics as valid and just. Finally Beausobre closes his discourse by saying that he has sought the cause of so great a commotion in Leo, and pondered with himself the character of this holy Pontiff.

'His character (he says) was that of a man carried away by ambition, less thinking to win a soul by teachableness and persuasion, but rather to crush it by violence.' Yet Beausobre did not think it enough to have written thus; but, in order to vent his fury the more against the holy Pontiff and the Apostolic See, he appeals in his notes to certain words of this same Saint Leo, spoken on the occasion of the execution of Priscillian and others of that sect, carried out at Trier by the emperor Maximus through his public officers—words by which the same Pontiff seems to approve that prince's bloody design; and then he adds: 'Quesnel's note upon this passage is worthy to be transcribed here:'

'But neither this man (Sulpicius Severus), nor that one (Jerome), nor any of the holy Fathers who lived in that age of Priscillian, approved such bloody counsels'—as Leo, that is, did. 3. But to wrest away all these things and to turn back upon the unjust calumniators each of the reproaches by which the fame and sanctity of Saint Leo are torn to pieces will be neither burdensome nor difficult enough for us. For some of the objections he raised are so weak and insipid that, to refute them, it suffices to cast one's eyes upon the Works of Saint Leo the Great, and the assailant's lies will be caught out.

Wherefore I press him: whence did he draw that Leo, in his Letters and Sermons, did not describe the chief errors of the Manichaeans, but was engaged only in declamations, after the manner of rhetoricians? This assuredly he did not draw from the notes and writings of Quesnel, whom—as we saw from the preceding narrative—he took as a master to be followed. For Quesnel at least recounted various errors of the Manichaeans out of the holy Pontiff, as is clear from chapter 10 of this book. And besides, he mentions here and there yet others, which the same Quesnel, only through excessive carelessness, omitted to note.

Moreover, what need had Leo, in the sermons delivered to the people, to enumerate and set forth one by one the whole doctrine of Manichaean philosophy and theology, all the superstitious and profane rites, all the diabolical mysteries in which that sect was engaged? For he had not taken upon himself the task of composing treatises on the dogmas of faith to combat those heretics; but he only desired to admonish the Roman people to guard themselves against their practice and institutions. This he was accustomed to do especially on the more solemn days of the year, while the more sacred mysteries of our faith were being celebrated in church. Therefore it was enough to indicate summarily to the people the chief errors of these men, that they might abhor them;

But that in the letters written against these same Manichaeans he followed a different method, both the text of those letters and the order of the matters written make plain. 4. And in the first place, as regards the letter given to the bishops of Italy, it must be judged that Beausobre scarcely surveyed it with his own eyes. For if he had even touched its text only cursorily, he would have understood that Leo proposed to himself no other aim than to forewarn the bishops concerning what had been done at Rome in the solemn trial held against the Manichaeans; lest, that is, in ignorance, the seeds of vices which had been extinguished and had perished at Rome should be secretly sown again by the roots, through new offshoots, in their dioceses.

In a word, there he discoursed only in a general way about the Manichaean heresy, and he calls the other bishops into a partnership of his solicitude, informing them: that by his investigation he had found in the City very many followers and teachers of Manichaean impiety, had exposed them by his vigilance, and had restrained them by his authority and censure. But since in restraining these same men he kept the solemn form and rules of the courts, the crimes having been recorded in the public registers and proved by the confessions of those very defendants, he transmitted, together with this letter, copies of all the proceedings, that they might be more fully instructed. 'As (he says) the series of the proceedings will be able to instruct you.'

'For your instruction we have also sent these very things (namely the proceedings), on reading which you can know all that has been detected by us.' It is indeed to be lamented that a series of such Acts has been lost through the injury of the times. But it is more to be lamented that Beausobre neglected to survey this letter, so that he might inveigh with mere calumnies and reproaches against the holy Pontiff. 5. But as regards the other letter, which is the fifteenth, I cannot at all deny that it is wholly taken up with the questions proposed to the same holy Pontiff by Turribius, bishop of Astorga, when he consulted him, that is, in the cause of the Priscillianists.

But neither on this occasion was it becoming or necessary for Leo to describe at length the spectacle of this or of the Manichaean heresy, for he would have wandered ineptly beyond the limits of the questions set before him. Nor does it matter that in the letter cited he discoursed indiscriminately both of the practices of the Priscillianists and of the Manichaeans; for those two heresies were too closely akin, since the Priscillianist borrowed many false dogmas from the Manichaean, and both imbibed the poison of the ancient Gnostics. Nor yet on that account is Leo, the holy Pontiff, to be charged with error, if he sometimes called the Priscillianists Manichaeans.

Indeed Idatius too relates that Manichaeans lurking in the city of Astorga, detected by episcopal proceedings, dragged to judgment and condemned, were publicly exposed throughout Spain. Yet it is well established that in that very passage he was speaking of the Priscillianists. From which manner of writing not even Jerome shrank, as Quesnel too has noted. 6. But that he wished to persecute Saint Leo yet more vehemently, the last objection he raised plainly shows, namely when he describes the holy Pontiff as, led by ambition and fury, having approved the bloody design of the tyrant Maximus executed against the Priscillianists at Trier. Whoever wishes to convict Beausobre as a liar and impostor, let him send him to the text of Leo's letter.

From which he will have enough to see that he could not have devised a more unjust reproach nor a more audacious insult. For Saint Leo relates, in the first chapter of that letter, how the bishops under whose times that abominable heresy broke out acted urgently throughout the whole world, that the impious madness might be driven from the universal Church. What evil counsel is there in this? Those Fathers did nothing at all to the disgrace of episcopal dignity or to the detriment of ecclesiastical gentleness, who, having pronounced anathema upon Priscillian and his associates, ordered that these men, expelled either from their episcopal sees or from ecclesiastical communion, be held as heathens and publicans. Nor does that other, bloody kind of judgment, of which Saint Leo makes mention immediately after, avail Beausobre.

Leo makes mention of it, writing: 'When even the princes of the world so detested this sacrilegious madness that they laid low its author, along with most of his disciples, by the sword of the public laws.' For he adjudges the cause of this bloody judgment not to the bishops, but to the character and gravity of the crimes. For he adds: 'For they (the princes) saw that all care for decency was being taken away, every bond of marriage dissolved, and at once both divine and human law overturned, if it had been permitted for men of this kind anywhere to live with such a profession.' For if the Priscillianists had opposed only the dogmas of the faith, if they had not likewise overturned all the laws of decency and both divine and human right, the princes of the age would have passed no bloody sentence against them.

But because they broke out into such crimes as brought the whole of civil life to ruin, therefore the princes deemed it necessary to lay low the authors of such madness by the sword of the public laws. For this reason the same holy Pontiff, lest anyone should dare to twist his preceding words into a malicious interpretation, at once distinguishes those two kinds of judgment, explaining how ecclesiastical gentleness, content with priestly judgment, shrinks from bloody vengeances. If it shrinks from them, it does not approve them. But he adds: 'Yet it is aided by the severe constitutions of Christian princes, since those who fear bodily punishment sometimes have recourse to a spiritual remedy.' Whence, then, does Beausobre get that Leo approved bloody counsels?

Perhaps because he said that ecclesiastical gentleness, content with priestly judgment, is aided by the constitutions of Christian princes? But in what sense did Leo affirm this? Namely, because those ensnared in such graver crimes, seized by fear of bodily punishment, sometimes have recourse to a spiritual remedy, by execrating their former impieties and crimes. How vain and futile, then, are Beausobre's calumnies against Saint Leo the Great, this our foregoing manner and method of discussion shows. From which the reader also has whereby to refute the crafty fourth note of Quesnel, who nevertheless did not fabricate so audaciously as Beausobre did. 7. But now I had determined to lift my hand from the tablet, and, leaving for a little while the vindication of Saint

Leo the Great's vindication, and to proceed to plead the cause of Augustine, that I might clear him too of the unjust accusations of Beausobre. But since, in perusing the writings of this non-Catholic man, I have met with yet other things which seem to wound Leo's piety and sincere faith, I judged it necessary to dwell longer on the examination of these, lest I should be judged altogether negligent by envious and critical adversaries. Again, therefore, he brings the holy Pontiff onto the stage, not only to make sport by discoursing on the dogmas of the Manichaeans, but to harass him with new curses and reproaches. He first feigns that Saint Leo followed the opinion of Cyril of Jerusalem, by which he says that Manes blasphemed by repeatedly calling himself the Holy Spirit; he says:

'At least an accusation of this kind is more plausible; and Leo would have done better to transcribe it rather than to extend it, and to explain more broadly, with inexcusable liberty, the aforesaid words:' 'The Manichaeans (says Leo) adore, under the name of the Holy Spirit, Manichaeus himself, the master of such impieties.' And again: 'They believed that the Holy Spirit had appeared in their master Manichaeus…but that Manichaeus himself was nothing other than the Spirit.' 'Assuredly, if this had been true (Beausobre adds), pride and blasphemy would have dragged our heretic to the utmost degree of malice. But if Leo is no more faithful in his narratives than he is just in his discourses, we shall plainly be excused if we place no trust in his words.'

'Especially since, wishing to refute in a few words the presumed pride of Manichaeus, he burst out into the following words:' 'Since he too came from that part of the world which cannot receive the Spirit of truth.' 'As if he were hinting that the Holy Spirit is confined within narrow bounds, and that the people of the East are more wretched than all others.' 'Never indeed (Beausobre adds) should I have believed that a single bishop who obtained the surname of the Great could have said such an absurdity in a sermon that passes down to posterity. So that he himself forgot that the first among the Gentiles who came to adore the Messiah were the Magi, philosophers of the Persians, and, as it were, the forefathers of Manes.'

'Likewise he forgot that he himself said in another sermon that the Magi did not come to know from the starry sign that Christ was born in Judaea, but by the divine inspiration doubtless working in their hearts.' 8. Behold the whole Beausobrian game, which convicts the author's impudence and lies, if we look into the Leonine context from which the three cited passages were torn away. In the first of these, nothing at all occurs that is foreign to faith and truth, and that the holy Pontiff had not detected the Manichaeans to profess.

For in that fourth sermon on the Epiphany, having recalled to the people's memory the mystery of the Incarnation, and having more fully explained what pertained to the solemnity of the day, to the coming of the Magi to Bethlehem, to the gifts offered, and to that starry sign which had brought them from the far regions of the East, he sets about to harass the Manichaeans whom he had lately detected lurking in the City, reporting summarily to the people the sacrilegious fabrications and fabulous lies by which they were subverting the truth of the Incarnation. And what then? Lest he should detain the people too long, he reduced to a kind of summary the chief points of all their errors:

namely, how they rejected the Mosaic Scriptures, corrupted the Gospels, despised the apostolic truth of the Creed, and, denying that the living and the dead were to be judged by Christ, taught that Christ was to be worshipped in the sun and the moon, and that, under the name of the Holy Spirit, they adored Manichaeus himself, the master of such impieties. But who does not see that those two things differ greatly from each other?—namely, that Manichaeus called himself the Holy Spirit, and that his disciples adored Manichaeus under the name of the Holy Spirit. This latter alone Saint Leo the Great affirmed concerning the Manichaeans. And this in precisely the same way in which the sacrilegious men also maintained that Christ was worshipped in the sun and the moon; and yet they did not blurt out that the sun and the moon were Christ.

Nor did our Leo reason in any other way in another sermon on Pentecost, when he set out to refute the Manichaeans of his own age, who claimed to follow a certain great and lofty founder, and who believed that the Holy Spirit had appeared in Manes, their teacher, and that the Paraclete promised by the Lord had not come before this deceiver of the wretched arose, in whom the Holy Spirit so remained that Manes himself was nothing other than the Spirit of God. If, then, we attend to these words of Leo, put forth according to the opinion of the Manichaeans, we understand nothing whatever by which Beausobre could have called St. Leo unfaithful and unjust. For it was established to St. [pontiff...]

...that such depraved doctrines were professed by the Manichaeans; he proved all this not from any false report of men, nor from the testimony of others, but from the very confession of these Manichaeans and their execration of their crimes. Wherefore all ought to be persuaded that Beausobre, that uncatholic man, always sought a knot in a bulrush, contriving fraudulent interpretations. 9. But at least it will be true that the holy pontiff did injury to the Holy Spirit, when he confined Him within narrow bounds and declared that the Easterners were deprived of His aid and protection. Away with the fabrication! For St. Leo relates how Manes appeared, to be condemned throughout the world, in the consulship of Probus and Paulinus.

From this epoch of time he clearly demonstrates that already, from the death of Christ down to the consulship of Probus and Paulinus, the eighth persecution had raged against the Christians, and that innumerable martyrs had arisen, to whom, according to the divine promises in Matthew 19, the Holy Spirit had been given: 'Take no thought how or what you shall speak,' etc. God therefore could not have restrained the abundance of His own gifts so as to defraud so many generations of the Church of His inspiration, until the prodigious standard-bearer of foul lies should be born. Leo, insisting as it were upon the arguments of Archelaus, affirms this, and at once adds concerning Manes:

'To him not even this can be granted, that he received even a small portion of divine inspiration, since he arose from that part of the world which cannot receive the Spirit of truth.' But these latter words are not to be referred either to Persia or to the whole East, as Beausobre interpreted them, whether through hallucination or through malice, but to the devil, the father of lies, whose role and offices Manes was performing by teaching his doctrine. For the holy pontiff soon explained himself, adding: 'For, filled with the spirit of the devil, he resists the Spirit of Christ; and though he has compared this with the teaching of the Paraclete among the saints of God,' etc.

Since, therefore, it is a manifest matter, proclaimed even in the divine Scriptures, that the world is divided into two parts, over one of which God and truth rule, and over the other the devil and lies, I do not see why Leo's praised sermon, filled with divine instructions, ought not to have been handed down to posterity. That Christ the Lord indeed said the world cannot receive the Spirit of truth, because it does not see Him nor know Him, the evangelist John is witness. But who on that account will affirm that the Holy Spirit is confined within narrow bounds? Once this game of Beausobrian ambiguity is removed, the other objections which the censor had raised fall away entirely; and therefore let us take a step toward overthrowing the other calumnies brought forth against Augustine.

Whoever should suppose that these matters could be set forth by me briefly would be gravely mistaken, since the malicious interpretations scattered here and there throughout the whole work of Beausobre are almost countless, which assail the holy bishop and tear him apart with slanders. Nor is it our purpose here to pursue, to indicate, and to refute each one. For our work would be drawn out to an almost immense length, nor would we take up anything more laborious or troublesome. 148. 10. In a few words, therefore, I shall first sample only some things from those which he has in the preliminary discourse to the second part of his History.

And so, being about to speak of Augustine, he begins his discourse with certain words of Leontius of Byzantium, who writes that no one could describe the Manichaean heresy more felicitously unless he had long before been a Manichaean by profession. This saying would fit Augustine most excellently, who from the nineteenth year of his age until his twenty-eighth had given his name to this sect, and had manfully and successfully championed its errors against the Catholics in many contests. But Beausobre asserts in the same place that this must be attributed to the fervor of Augustine's eloquence and genius. For Secundinus reproaches him for not having understood the Manichaean mysteries:

'For it seemed to me, and it is assuredly so, that you were never a Manichaean, nor could you have known the unknown mysteries of its secret, and that under the name of a Manichaean you were persecuting Hannibal and Mithridates.' Beausobre ironically asserts that this paradox suffers many contradictions. First, it was uttered by a heretic. Second, the preconceived opinion of the world stands against one who thus objects — namely of those who are more powerful in knowledge and authority. What? Augustine, more learned and more penetrating in mind than the rest of the Latin Fathers, the oracle of the Western Church, lived among the Manichaeans for the space of nine years without penetrating the Manichaean system? Could Secundinus have brought forth anything more rash or absurd?

'One of two things, therefore,' he says, 'must be said: either that Augustine did not sufficiently understand their system; or that St. Augustine changed it' — which he thinks cannot be affirmed by anyone without the mark of heresy. 'I' (he adds) 'above all others make much of this Father's excellent qualities; not without admiration do I weigh his genius and wisdom; I honor his memory and esteem his long labors; but the best rules of logic and experience have taught me that one must not rely upon his sayings and testimonies. The ancients never claimed infallibility, which only later ages granted them. They were men, as we are.' And after a few words interposed he has: 'I do not wish to defend St.

...Augustine of having changed or corrupted the Manichaean system in order to gain the victory, for that would be to call him guilty of wounded faith; but it is certain that he used certain sophisms and often expressed their religion badly.' These, I say, and other reproaches of this kind he wrote against Augustine, which it shames us to relate one by one. Wherefore, that he may be able to win credit for what he has said among his readers, he appends various examples and proofs. The first of these is taken from these words of Augustine: 'For the enemy, who hoped that he had crucified the same Savior, the father of the righteous, was himself crucified; at which time one thing was done and another was shown.'

He asserts that Augustine said these things according to the opinion of the Manichaeans, and cites both the Epistle of the Foundation and the book On Faith, chapter 28. To which words he added others also: 'The Manichaean was forced to say that it was not Christ, but the prince of darkness with his allies, who suffered all those things.' And finally, speaking of the souls of vegetables, which the Manichaeans believed to contain within themselves a part of the divinity — whose prerogatives, they said, are still preserved in plants and fruits, and perish and are annihilated only when the fruits and vegetables are taken for food;

...which, when they have come to the flesh of the one eating, lose all intelligence, and therefore the Teacher was sent to men, because in them the part of God has been made foolish, and therefore he was not sent to melons, because they have a wise soul. These three examples, I say, as though spoken by Augustine according to the opinion of the Manichaeans, Beausobre first objected, contending that such offenses had been falsely imputed to the Manichaeans by the orthodox themselves, as though they were the doctrines of that sect. 11. I shall not deny that I encountered these three in the book On Faith against the Manichaeans, which was wrongly once attributed to Augustine. But they are plainly wanting in the other book which Augustine certainly wrote against the Epistle of the Foundation.

Not cursorily indeed, but carefully did I survey this work; nor did I find a word that smacked of such things. But who can be ignorant that the book On Faith is not Augustine's offspring? For Bellarmine, Wadding, and others, noticing that it is not reckoned among his Works, nor in the Retractations, nor in the index of Possidius; observing also that its style is different from Augustine's and weaker in the manner of disputation, but that its author had merely striven to imitate Augustine — not only by expressing his meaning and sometimes borrowing his very words, especially from that book which was written On the Nature of the Good against the Manichaeans — for that reason the most recent editors of St.

...the most recent editors of Augustine's Works adjudged that work to Evodius, and relegated it to the appendix of the eighth volume. I cannot therefore sufficiently wonder at Beausobre's negligence, not to say fraud, who strove to sell uncertain things for certain and false things for true. 12. But let us freely grant that Augustine wrote these things according to the opinion of the Manichaeans, because perhaps he expressed things not unlike them in the book On the Nature of the Good. What then? Did Augustine devise and fabricate similar ravings in order to stir up horror against the Manichaeans, as [Beausobre] a little later added: 'In other examples he calumniates them.' For Augustine, in the passages praised by Beausobre, neither rests upon false principles nor deduces false conclusions from the true principles of the Manichaeans.

For in those passages Augustine treats of the foul things devised and imagined by the Manichaeans against God, which, since it is too grievous to recount them here, I pass over, lest I seem to make trouble for the reader; and I also deem it superfluous, since anyone can have recourse to the reading of Augustine's own text. Yet I cannot dissemble the Beausobrian license, by which he indeed contends that these things are falsely deduced from Manichaean principles. For, he says, 'those wretches read the aforesaid foul things, they say this, they hear this, they believe this; this in the seventh book of their Thesaurus (for so the Manichaeans call a certain writing of theirs, where these blasphemies are recorded) is thus set down: Then that blessed Father,' etc.

Augustine therefore added nothing of his own invention, who appeals to the very words of the Manichaeans, copies them out, and transferred them into his own work, as may be seen in that whole chapter praised by Beausobre. Moreover, if Augustine had done this with evil malice, does Beausobre believe that Faustus, Felix, Fortunatus, Adimantus, Secundinus, and all whom he assailed in his writings from the Manichaean brood, would have been silent, and not accused him as a liar and impostor? But that Secundinus was not silent, his words a little earlier cited prove, by which he harasses the holy bishop for not having understood the Manichaean mysteries, and for persecuting under the name of a Manichaean Hannibal and Mithridates. I confess indeed that Secundinus burst into these words.

But let Beausobre say whether faith ought to be placed in him — if we place faith in Secundinus, who carps at Augustine because his writings shine with too much eloquence: 'This eloquence,' he adds, 'if you had been willing to bring it into agreement with the truth, would surely have been a great ornament to us. Do not, I beg, come against your own nature; do not be the lance of error, by which the side of the Savior is pierced.' What then does Secundinus here pluck at and despise, if not the supreme eloquence of the holy Father — which, if he had been willing to bring into agreement with Manichaean principles (which the heretic contended were holy and true), while he babbled that the doctrines of our faith were subject to falsehood, it would have been a great ornament to them.

But let us grant that Secundinus said Augustine was ignorant of the Manichaean mysteries. Yet I ask: 150. To whom is faith to be given? To a heretical man who, since he had a bad cause, seeks supports on every side in order at least to defend it in appearance; and lest he fall, boldly resorts to lies, to exaggerations, to deceits, tearing apart the reputation and the name of the holy bishop even with reproaches? Or to Augustine himself, who, having scarcely received the letter of this heretic, seized his pen, and refuted all the objections put forward by his adversary? If he had been ignorant of the Manichaean mysteries, he would have dissembled the accusation. But he did not dissemble it; rather, he rejected the sect and dogmas of Manes more abundantly from the very arguments put forth by Secundinus himself;

so that the heretical man, gravely and shamefully confounded, fell silent, and as long as he lived never dared to assail St. Augustine with reproaches or to calumniate him. The whole Beausobrian artifice therefore collapses, and Augustine understood the Manichaean system most excellently; nor did he change or corrupt it in the least matter. 12. But now Beausobre, taking a step to other things, inveighs stupidly, as it were, against Augustine, raising this question: namely, why did the holy doctor, for the space of nine years, give his name to the Manichaean sect, which taught such great abominations? Why did he himself boldly champion these very things against the Catholics? 'Let him not answer, I pray' (he says), 'that he existed in the order of the Hearers, and by no means of the Elect, and therefore was ignorant of such blasphemies.'

For he himself asserts that these are contained in the seventh book of the Thesaurus of the Manichaeans, which book all the followers thumb through with their hands. And he appeals to those words taken from the book On the Nature of the Good, which we cited a little earlier. Augustine therefore was ignorant of these blasphemies when he was a Manichaean. Or, if he was not ignorant of them, it comes to mind to wonder that he remained so long in that sect. These and other similar things Beausobre heaps up, to show that the Manichaean system and dogmas had been horribly changed and corrupted by depraved interpretations. And to persuade this the more, he appeals to those two disputations which Augustine held with the presbyters Felix and Fortunatus. He says that Felix was a wholly ignorant man.