Sermons & Letters 204

1. I already conceive in my mind that the things which I now set out to say will be too unwelcome, or at least little pleasing, to smatterers (to say nothing of men of wounded faith). To these, since they have never perused the volumes of the ancient holy Fathers, nor have drawn or tasted the history of ecclesiastical affairs except from corrupt and depraved sources, we shall seem to be trifling or fabricating. Just as formerly, when I set out to speak, in private conversations on ancient literary matters, about this inquisition of Leo, certain men, who at that time did not yet perfectly [know] St.

...they scrutinized the writings of the pontiff, and passed judgment upon me, contending that never — as is right — ought the rights of the Apostolic See and the ordering of ecclesiastical judgments to be sought from doubtful and uncertain conjectures. Those, therefore, who resisted my assertions were rather reckoning with themselves that it was not from Leo, but from more recent centuries, that this form of judgment and this name of 'inquisition' had drawn its origin in the judgments of the Church. At that time indeed I had proposed to myself to compose on this matter a rather long dissertation, and one deduced from nothing other than the Works of the holy pontiff; and likewise to prove in it the ancient discipline of the Church, and above all St. Leo's manner of proceeding, in investigating and condemning the Manichaean heretics.

Yet the matter having been weighed more maturely, I judged it more fitting to defer the treatment of this cause to this place, and therefore I am compelled also to subjoin it. 2. First, that the word 'inquisition' had already been employed in Leo's age to signify that form of judgment which the Roman Church then pursued in investigating, without distinction, Christians of whatever order and rank who were infected with the heretical stain; Second, that those suspected of heresy and apprehended were bound to present themselves before the judges of the Church, so as to plead their cause and undergo sentence; Third, that from the very accused, brought before the priests, it was customary to extort both the confession of their crimes and the detestation of the same;

Fourth, that Christians of whatever order and condition were then also bound by a certain oath to report — or, as they say, to denounce — those suspected of heresy to the presbyters of their own churches or parishes; Fifth and finally, that those defiled by heresies were not only constrained by the bonds of ecclesiastical censures, but also, if not enough of penalty had been exacted, were handed over — afflicted with one punishment after another — to the secular power which the Church summoned to her aid. These five things we shall endeavour to render so clear and established from Leo alone, that henceforth deceitful lips uttering falsehood may fall silent.

The first point, therefore, which we here undertake to prove, is chiefly gathered from the fifteenth sermon, in which the holy pontiff treats both of the fast of the tenth month and also of almsgiving. For a little before, in the presence of priests and clerics, together with the most august senate of the City and other noble men, he had proceeded against certain persons defiled with the Manichaean taint. Wherefore, to signify that form of judgment which his pastoral vigilance had observed — whether in investigating and detecting these wicked men, or in exposing and coercing them — he used no other word than 'inquisition.' In the fourth chapter, then, about to speak of their obscene and nefarious sacrifices and solemnities, he has these words:

'Concerning their sacred rites, however, which among them are as obscene as they are nefarious, we do not keep silence about what the Lord willed to make manifest to our inquiry.' He then sets forth how those who had been brought to judgment laid bare their impious dogmas and execrable crimes — which indeed could not be heard without the utmost horror of soul by those who were present at such a confession. And the holy Leo at last, endowed with divine power and forewarned by revelation, had foreknown that only one portion of the harmful men lurking in the City had been coerced and brought to light in that solemn and most holy assembly; therefore, before he closed such a homily, he resolved by no means to desist from the endeavour.

Nay rather, he promises that he will persevere in the same inquiry, until the whole City should be thoroughly purged of such contagion — this being especially demanded by the more diligent watchfulness of his supreme apostolate: 'For therefore the merciful God has disclosed to us a certain portion of the harmful men, that, the danger being made manifest, the diligence of watchfulness might be aroused. Let not what has been done suffice, but let the same inquiry persevere:'

'which, by God's help, achieves this: that not only may those who are upright continue unharmed, but also that many who have been deceived by diabolical seduction may be recalled from their error.' Illumined therefore by the Divine Spirit, and with the greatest vigour of soul and firmness of mind — in which our Leo excelled in conducting and governing divine and sacred affairs — he most excellently foreknew that nothing more useful to the Church of God, nothing more holy and blessed for the Christian profession, could be desired than that ordering of action which he employed. By it, moreover, the integrity of faith and morals is defended and preserved, the worship and honour of God are increased, and the Church herself is kept immune from all those great stains of vice by which she might be undermined through diabolical contagion.

On the contrary, if any be found in the Church either imbued with heresies or defiled by the filth of depraved crimes, they can either easily return to the right path of truth, if they begin to become penitent; or, if they persist in their errors with stubborn obstinacy, they are bound fast by ecclesiastical censures and, cut off from the communion of the whole Church, are removed. And since the princes of the age and the magistrates knew this manner of proceeding to be most admirably suited to the administration and governance of civil affairs, they too by now employed that very name to designate the form of judgments by which the guilty of treason are wont to be punished. But let us now take another step. 3.

Moreover, that which we proposed in the second place is evident: namely, that the Manichaeans, coming forth from their hiding-places, were by the order of Leo the pontiff summoned to court, and that these stood before the assembly of bishops, presbyters, and other pious men as men accused of injured faith, that they might undergo the judgment of the Church. From this, and from other similar proceedings also at Carthage and in the other Churches of Africa vexed by the Manichaeans in Augustine's age, we understand most excellently that criminal Christians, of whatever order and rank, condition and sex, ought to be subject also to the public judgments of the sacred pastors — and especially in those causes in which provision is made for the integrity and truth of the faith.

Wherefore the pernicious opinion of those men is easily refuted, who — wishing to confine ecclesiastical jurisdiction within narrow bounds — contend that it can scarcely be extended save to those men alone who through clerical orders are dedicated to the ministry of the altar. These (they say) the sacred pastors, especially when gathered in councils, can depose from their own grades, deprive of the benefices, titles, and prebends of the churches, and finally relegate, cast, and confine within the cloisters of monasteries or in the narrowest prisons. But on the contrary the laity (they say), living outside the sacred hierarchy, ought not to be subject to the judgments of such inquiries and investigations.

These men (they add) have their own magistrates and judges, before whom they can be summoned to court, and to these especially it belongs to inquire into the life, morals, and habits of the citizens. Finally, if the prelates of the Churches could avail anything against the laity, that would occur only in those matters which pertain to the participation of holy communion, to the administration of the sacraments, or to the celebration of the divine mysteries — of which the laity can, for a just and reasonable cause, be deprived, and be barred from the sacred assemblies. Thus in very fact, ignorant men of depraved conscience could attempt to overturn the foundations of Catholic law.

For the light of faith is not in them, whereby they might understand that the Church has acquired a right over all who — having first renounced every impiety of the world — gave themselves to Christ; namely when, by the more solemn rites, they swore in the chief sacrament of the Catholic religion to profess the Catholic religion throughout the whole course of their life, and to obey the Church. What then must be said? If in very fact, faith afterward violated, they could abuse divine and sacred things, and as it were tear apart the body and inward parts of this most holy Mother — so that if she had no jurisdiction over lay men for coercing impiety — who would ever repair the ruptures made through heresies? who would cleanse the threshing-floor?

who finally could confront the graver diseases and heal them, lest — the scab of evil opinions spreading abroad — the whole body of Christendom, undermined by errors, be led to ruin? Will princes perhaps be able to do this, and the magistrates of the age, which they deny that the Church can do? Away with the fiction! These men are occupied with the civil administration of temporal affairs; they keep watch lest — the rights of nature and of governments being broken — the commonwealths be turned upside down, to the greatest detriment of justice, by those who, on account of their crimes, are not too fearful to inflict, with excessive audacity, disturbance, violence, and injury upon themselves, upon public affairs, and upon the common tranquillity.

Nevertheless the princes of the age cannot for that reason, without contempt of the divine law and without sacrilege, meddle in ecclesiastical and spiritual affairs, except when — to vindicate the rights of religion — the priests themselves demand their protection and aid. This everywhere the Scriptures attest, this the monuments of the Fathers, this finally the epistles and laws of the ancient kings and emperors. All which things the plan of our undertaking by no means permits us to bring forward at present; lest, passing over from fact to right, we should seem to wander beyond the writings of the Leonine Works. Yet, if we wished to add strength to this point, we would appeal either to the decrees of Pope Siricius, praised in the preceding chapter, or to the like manner of proceeding observed by the bishops of Africa in the time of Augustine and Possidius;

namely, when — Ursus the Tribune, who then presided over the royal household, [being in office] — the Manichaeans discovered at Carthage were brought to the tribunal of the Church; among whom was a girl named Margarita, who, being not yet twelve years old, said she had been violated on account of a wicked mystery, and another called Eusebia, held as a woman consecrated to religion, who had likewise suffered a similar violation by reason of a most shameful crime. These things, I say, and others of the like kind, would add credit to our assertions. But since we are treating of the Roman inquiry against the Manichaeans, the plan of our purpose demands that we return to St. Leo. 4.

Leo, therefore, in order to vindicate to himself his good faith — and that he had by no means been deceived by any fraud, nor had proceeded rashly in detecting and exposing the impieties of the Manichaeans — openly testified that he had in no way given credence to doubtful rumour and uncertain opinions. Therefore he subjoins: 'And so, with bishops and presbyters seated with me, and Christian men and nobles gathered into the same session, we ordered their elect men and elect women to be presented.' In chains, then, or at least under custody, were detained those whom the holy pontiff commanded to present themselves before so numerous and august an assembly.

For if they had not yet been apprehended and were still entirely in possession of their freedom, who does not see that they, taking flight at once, would have striven to escape the shame of disgrace and the ignominy of infamy? Especially since this has been given by nature itself to absolutely all men, of whatever order and condition: that they dread as greatly as possible the presence of a judge, the rigour of a sentence, and the severity of punishments.

But if Leo himself calls the men and women brought before him 'elect men' and 'elect women,' by these words he meant to indicate that the criminals had not stood in the lower grade of that sect, but had claimed for themselves the chief place; among whom that man was especially preeminent above the rest, whom — that he might preside over the others in profane rites and diabolical superstitions — they had proclaimed, as it were, their bishop. 'For there were present (Leo adds) all the persons through whom the unspeakable crime had been perpetrated: namely a girl at most ten years old, and two women who had nursed her and prepared her for this crime. There was present also the young man who violated the girl, and their bishop, the contriver of the detestable crime.'

Augustine concurs in his book On Heresies, writing to Quodvultdeus, deacon of Carthage: 'In recent time some of them were discovered and brought to the Church, as the episcopal acts which you sent us show.' Let all those, therefore, stand here awhile with me who (I know not why) are so disposed in mind and spirit that they shudder at the name and functions of the sacred inquiry, since they too boldly disparage this manner of judging. Let them consider, I pray, whether the women, or those men, of whom Leo treats, could ever have been dedicated through clerical orders to the ministries of the altar?

let them say why that sacred assembly then proceeded both against the incontinent and the incestuous, and against the pimps and corrupted women who mixed obscenities with the things of religion. If we should suspect that this was done unjustly, why was there no protest by the senate of the Roman people, why by the Roman plebs, why finally by the emperor? By divine right, therefore, the pastors of the Church — the fourth and fifth centuries now running their course — exercised over all the baptized without distinction the power of punishing, that they might restrain the audacity of those who had fallen away from piety toward the true God. 5. But since the matter shines forth with such manifest examples and arguments, there is no reason for us to dwell upon it any longer.

But those two points, hitherto discussed with a great store of documents and weight of reasons, a third takes up — radiant on every side with the light of most sincere truth — from which, first laying open the order of the events, and then coming to know the confession of crimes publicly made by the Manichaeans, no further room for doubting will remain concerning that ecclesiastical discipline of which we are presently treating. Since the inquiry was held, not merely from indications alone brought forward, nor even from the gravest testimonies;

but, a long discussion of the matters having gone before, the accused, presenting themselves before the assembly, were interrogated and made answer, and notaries themselves summoned for this purpose took down the acts, so that with the utmost diligence all the dogmas, all the falsehoods and turpitudes, and finally all the unspeakable rites, mysteries, and solemnities of that sect were in very fact investigated, so that nothing ambiguous might be left to the less credulous, nothing to the detractors. But how much such Acts can avail against the less credulous or the detractors of this our age, I judge is hidden from absolutely no one. Since the crimes of the Manichaeans were not disclosed in some secret and hidden confession, which we call sacramental;

but in the external and solemn forum of judgments that whole assembly received them, and they were engraved upon tablets by ecclesiastical scribes (as had been done before in the Church of Carthage), which at last St. Leo commanded to be deposited and kept for the memory of posterity in the archives of the Roman Church — as he himself testified in his writings not once, and again, but at least a third time. In the sermon several times praised, therefore, it is said: 'The confession of all of these was alike, and one, and that execrable thing was made manifest which our ears could scarcely bear. Concerning which, lest by speaking more openly we should offend chaste ears, the documents of the acts suffice:'

'by which it is most fully taught that no modesty, no honesty, no chastity whatever is to be found in this sect, in which lying is law, the devil is religion, and turpitude is sacrifice.' Summarily here, and as it were in compendium, the holy pontiff announces what was contained in the records of the Acts. But in Sermon 4 On the Epiphany, chapter 5, having first recounted many of the dogmas of the Manichaeans, he again subjoins: 'Let it profit the universal Church that many of them (the Manichaeans, that is), the Lord having mercy, have been detected, and in what sacrileges they were living has been made manifest by their own confession.' And again, in Sermon 4 On the Nativity, chapter 4, he writes:

'Who, having contrived every reproach of the devil besides, in the very chief feast of their observance — as was made manifest by their recent confession — take delight in the pollution both of soul and of body.' And in the second sermon On Pentecost, having explained the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity and the mission of the Holy Spirit, he assails, in chapter 2 (as we have already said), the Manichaeans, who assert that that divine Spirit appeared in Manichaeus their master, and that the Paraclete promised by the Lord did not come before this deceiver of the wretched arose — in whom the Holy Spirit so remained that Manichaeus himself was nothing other than the Spirit, who through the ministry of a bodily voice and tongue would lead his disciples into all truth.

This error of the Manichaeans alone did he then agitate and pluck out. But concerning the rest the holy pontiff forbore to speak, fearing lest in so numerous and solemn an assembly he should offend the ears of the pious faithful, or prepare a stone of scandal for the holier and purer Christians, against which they might stumble. Wherefore he closes that chapter with these words: 'Which things, on account of decency, are not to be brought forth in our discourse, since they have already been most abundantly made manifest by their own confession.' So solemn, then, and so public was the confession of these Manichaeans themselves, and the detestation of their crimes, that the report of the proceedings must have reached the ears of all the Romans.

Wherefore, since all these things had come to pass in the sight of the whole Church — as Prosper writes in his Chronicle — no one of sound mind could fear or doubt concerning that power and jurisdiction of the sacred prelates, which the consuls, which the senators, which finally the emperor himself had approved by common consent. And that no one resisted this manner of proceeding of Leo, or attempted to furnish protection to the Manichaeans punished with the penalty of exile — as is wont to happen when there is doubt about the lawful judge — has already been made sufficiently manifest in the epistle to the bishops of Italy.

For by it we are taught how, the City having been perfectly purged of that heresy, he had transmitted to those same bishops copies of the Acts, in which the confession of the crimes of the Manichaeans and the execration of the same had been faithfully and sincerely set down. For a little afterward, when it had come into suspicion lest the Manichaeans, by that cunning art which they were wont to employ, should seek out new hiding-places for themselves in still other cities and places of Italy, he therefore — discharging the duties of a most vigilant pastor — divinely made provision for the safety of the other Churches and for the integrity of their faith and morals.

Wherefore, lest they should seem wanting to themselves and to their office, in the aforesaid epistle he forewarned all the bishops of the cities of Italy concerning those things which had already been done at Rome, lest — being ignorant, or at least not yet perfectly instructed about these matters — the seeds of vices which here, when extinguished, had perished, should be stealthily sown by the roots in their dioceses through new shoots: 'Into the fellowship (thus he begins the epistle) of our solicitude, most beloved brethren, we call you...' and, a few things interposed, he adds:

'Lest he who, by the mercy of the Lord revealing it, is driven away from our sheep as a disease through our care — while you are not yet forewarned, and are still ignorant of what is being done — should disperse himself through your Churches, and secretly find the burrows of his hiding-places; lest what is being extinguished by us in the City be sown with dark roots among you.' 6. But how great and how many things the Roman people and the whole Church owed to him, the bishops of Italy could easily comprehend from the following words, in which he sets forth quite plainly what he had purposed, what he had done, and what at last he had achieved, when he found the followers and teachers of the Manichaean sect lurking in the City.

'Very many (he says) followers and teachers of Manichaean impiety our investigation discovered in the City, our vigilance divulged, our authority and censure coerced. Those whom we were able to amend, we corrected: that they might condemn Manichaeus with his preachers and disciples, we compelled them by public profession in the Church and by the subscription of their own hand; and thus, having confessed, we relieved them from the abyss of their impiety by granting them penance.' Behold, then, in this one saying which comprises many things, the authority of the Roman See and the divine manner of proceeding of Leo — whereby the teachers of the Manichaean sect with their disciples, at the command now of the Church, were first detained, then led into the assembly, that they might be compelled by public confession to confess their crimes, and by solemn profession to retract the same;

for the confirmation of which, both the subscription of the accused was necessary, and a sincere resolve to perform penance. Such an ordering of action, therefore — the divine mercy revealing it — did our Leo employ, that he might relieve the Manichaeans, once seized and now penitent, from the abyss of their impiety. But what crimes and shameful mysteries had been recorded and attested in the Acts of the inquiry, that series of the proceedings most fully taught. Wherefore the holy pontiff himself...

the pontiff, for the instruction of other bishops, and that these might have a right rule of how they ought to conduct themselves in such causes, ordered various copies of the same Acts to be transcribed, and transmitted these together with the present epistle to those same bishops, so that, casting their eyes upon the written volume, they might behold as it were at a single glance what had been done, and what in future ought to be done in like causes. To strengthen this truth still more, what else can we do than transcribe the words of the holy pontiff?

'And all things (he says) that they hold as profane or base, both in their scriptures and in their secret traditions — so that our people might know what to shun or avoid — we have proved to the eyes of the Christian people by certain manifestation, to such a degree that the very man who was called their bishop, being held by us, disclosed the shameful things in his mysteries which he attempted, as the series of the proceedings can teach you. For for your instruction we have also directed these very things to you: which, being read, you will be able to know all that has been reprehended by us.' 7.

The fourth point which follows has in itself something greater — so that nothing clearer and nothing more illustrious for our purpose could be devised — namely, for asserting that ecclesiastical law by which it was enjoined without distinction upon all the faithful that they should beware the society of heretics, or especially of the most harmful men, and that they should denounce the same to the sacred pastors of the Church. Nor indeed for any other cause (as we saw a little before) did Leo himself, in the sacred assemblies and before crowds of people, speak of their dogmas and hidden traditions, of their profane and base mysteries, save that the people might know what to flee or what to avoid.

For the sacred pastors were wont to point out most clearly to catholic men the marks and tokens of any false dogma; so that indeed those who bore pure hearts within their breast, recoiling in horror from the base sight of superstitions, might guard against them — and lest the weaker and ruder men, under a false colour of piety, deceived by the wicked, coming into the patronage and fellowship of these, should be defiled with a like stain of vices. This indeed was the holy pontiff's manner of proceeding; this his aim in discoursing when reciting the sacred homilies. And therefore, having more than once publicly assailed Manichaeus and his disciples, he willed to cover their crimes and errors by no oath of secrecy:

but he made it plain, that they should deceive no one by their discriminations of foods, by the filth of their garments, and by the pallor of their countenances. Nay, by an express command he cautiously willed that nothing should be common to any Christian with such men: 'Let there be (he says) no society with such, and no fellowship.' Then, the rest of the arts of their deceit being uncovered, he thus subjoins to our purpose: 'Hitherto they have harmed the incautious, hitherto they have deluded the unskilled; after this, the lapse of no one will be excusable; nor now is he to be held simple, but exceedingly wicked and perverse, who henceforth shall be found bound by the nefarious error.' The like passages are to be read in other places also, as in the fourth sermon On the Nativity of the Lord, and likewise in the fourth On Lent.

But also in the fifth sermon On the Fast of the tenth month — praised here by us more than once — in which, all the faithful having first been generally admonished to renounce the Manichaeans from their friendship and society, he then, turning especially to the women themselves, admonishes them with all vigour of soul to abstain from acquaintance and conversation with them, lest — while the incautious hearing is delighted by fabulous tales — you fall into the snares of the devil.

And finally, to strengthen their faith yet more, and to fortify their modesty, he recalls to mind the fall of the first woman, who — deceived by diabolical suggestions — forever cast down the whole human race from the felicity of paradise, in which most wretched and mournful state it still lies, unless the mercy of almighty God, the snares of the demon being broken, had freed it from the bonds of sin: 'Who (namely the devil), knowing that he seduced the first man by the mouth of the woman, and through feminine credulity cast down all men from the felicity of paradise, now also lies in wait for your sex with more assured cunning, that those women whom he may be able to allure to himself through the ministers of his falsehood, he may despoil both of faith and of shame.' 8.

Here indeed, if the equity and justice of this precept be rightly weighed, I can scarcely be brought to persuade myself that it could be reprehended or disapproved by any man of sound mind. For it possesses this: that it is very conformable to all the laws of nature and of men, by which it is forbidden that anyone can, by private authority, depart from ancestral rites and institutions, or make and have new gods for himself, or introduce or establish another religion and sacred rites even by stealth, unless all these should be approved by the sanction of public authority.

And indeed, if it were permitted to each man, out of his own desire, to cling to novelties in those things which pertain to religion and to the ordering of morals, to enter into fellowship with innovators, or to come into partnership with them, what confusion, what disturbance would not arise in sacred and human affairs? What manner of dissension among citizens? How great, finally, a variety in rites, in ceremonies, in sacrifices? Would there not moreover break out among the priests and the other ministers of the altars the gravest quarrels, jealousies, dissensions, and perpetual wars?

Therefore, in order to meet these evils, the senate and the magistrates of the commonwealths and the colleges of priests, for the good and increase of public tranquillity, decreed even among the pagans that it should not at all be permitted to private men to alter anything of the ancestral laws, to fashion new institutions, to decree honours to the gods, to pursue the rites and customs of foreigners, to come under their patronage, or to frequent their assemblies, lest, once a grave crisis had arisen among the citizens, the earlier institutions be endangered. On this matter sacred and profane writers discourse most brilliantly, as may be seen in Titus Livius and Tertullian. And so St. [Leo]

the mandate of our pontiff was founded chiefly upon the precepts of the old and new law, in which it is enjoined to flee the fellowship and companionship of wicked and most criminal men, and to renounce partnership with them, who by execrable cunning are not more harmful to themselves through their depraved morals than they ever strive to injure others. And for this cause above all, always enlisting and seeking out as it were companions of their crimes, those whom they know to be incautious, weaker, and more simple. Wherefore St. [Leo]

Leo, about to provide for the tranquillity and good of the whole Church, first wills that the Manichaeans themselves be cast out from the society of catholics, and then also enjoined upon each of the faithful of Christ to inquire concerning them and to denounce them to the sacred presbyters. Nothing indeed more assured could be found than that apostolic mandate, expressed in these words: 'This also, most beloved, I beseechingly admonish you, that if it become known to any of you where they dwell, where they teach, whom they frequent, and in whose society they take their repose, you faithfully make it known to our solicitude.' Nor does he fail at once to make plain that no one, even of the more upright and holier men, can be exempted from the duty of such denunciation, saying:

'Because it profits each man little that, by the protection of the Holy Spirit, he himself is not caught by these men, if, when he perceives that others are being caught, he is not moved. Against the common foes, for the common salvation, there ought to be one vigilance of all, lest by the wound of some one member the other members also be able to be corrupted.' But if among them there should arise any who, being little solicitous for the Christian faith and ecclesiastical affairs, led by those vain pretexts which the world's honour, fame, and good name are wont to insinuate into the mind, flattering themselves with a show of appearance, persuade themselves that those weakened by heresy need not be brought before lawful judges, or be prosecuted before them;

they certainly could neither look to nor take counsel for their own salvation; nay rather, they would prepare for themselves a wider road to undergoing the final vengeance. For that silence would be too destructive to them, by which they would suffer harmful men to be hidden, lest such men pay the penalties due for their crimes. 'Grave is such a crime of silence (says the holy Pope), upon which the Lord will animadvert on the last day, even though they neither had fellowship with the heretics nor were weakened by the same errors.' Golden indeed are the words of St. Leo: 'And those who think such men are not to be betrayed will be found guilty in the judgment of Christ concerning their silence, even if they were not contaminated by their assent.' 8.

But to open a yet more expeditious way, and to prescribe a most easy manner for making denunciations of this kind, and to shut off the approach for those who thought it grave, most difficult, and full of dangers to present themselves before so great a judge in order to betray those suspected of heresy, he entrusts the business to the prelates of the churches of the city of Rome, that each of the faithful, most swiftly and readily, without blush and shame, having shaken off all fear and ignominy, should report the names, morals, and homes of the heretics. 'To this diligence also we exhort you, that you make public to your presbyters the Manichaeans wheresoever they lurk. For great is the piety of betraying the hiding-places of the impious, and of vanquishing in them the very devil whom they serve.'

But he also commends the greatness and excellence of this piety a little afterward, at the end of that chapter, teaching that it is utterly wicked to leave hidden and unpunished those men who reject, corrupt, or deny the mysteries of the new and ancient law, among whom there is nothing holy, nothing whole, nothing true. Moreover he subjoins: 'They must be guarded against, lest they harm anyone; they must be betrayed, lest they take up their abode in any part of our city. To you, most beloved, before the tribunal of the Lord we shall betray what we enjoin, what we ask.' Here indeed, since many things worthy of note present themselves to us, a most broad field is opened, in which both the discipline of ecclesiastical inquisition is vindicated, and its chief manner of proceeding shines forth most brightly.

For first, what can be considered—is it not that to whose overthrow well-nigh all heretics expend their sinews and their effort? Namely, when they contend that the causes of religion and even of the Church are to be brought before the tribunals of the secular power? Was not that affair of the Manichaeans, of which we treat, looking to divine and human matters at once? And yet it was brought neither to the Roman consuls, nor to the tribunes of the plebs, nor to the senators, nor finally to the emperors themselves; but to the presbyters presiding over the Churches, who throughout the regions of the City had been appointed by the pontiffs, whom now we call parish priests.

The second is that the holy pontiff, in order to intimate a true—not some precarious and shadowy—ecclesiastical jurisdiction over all the citizens and inhabitants of the Roman city, willed to use this grave and full formula of apostolic authority: 'they must be betrayed, lest they take up their abode in any part of our city.' For no one, in a solemn assembly and a throng of the people, would assert that to be his own city in which, deprived of true jurisdiction, he merely passes his life, or from which he had drawn his origin. He would rather have called it his fatherland than his own city.

And finally, to pass over the rest, the third point can by no means be dissembled, by which it is clearly taught that those are rendered guilty in respect of religion who, led by any pretext whatever, not obeying a mandate of this kind, deviate from that law by which it was enjoined that those tainted with the heretical stain, or suspected of it, must be brought before the ecclesiastical tribunal. Whose transgression indeed, since it draws down upon itself the wrath of God, will by no means escape the penalties of vengeance, at least on the last day, since it is base—nay, most base—for the common cause of the faith, in those matters wherein we are able, not to have laboured, and not to have willed to vanquish the devil whom all heretics serve. 9. With these things accomplished, however, the holy pontiff was in no way satisfied.

But by yet another counsel devised, through a new indication he exposed the Manichaeans, whereby both they might more easily be detected, and the catholics might, as it were, be compelled to report their names. For he knew well that this pestilential brood—whether under a feigned show of piety, or by reason of the iniquitous dogma which they professed, I know not—was wont to shudder at all wine made from grapes, whether it were pure or diluted with water, so as not even to taste it. Reckoning perhaps, by that most wicked persuasion, that it was to be equated with the gall of dragons, and had been produced by a certain author of evils, whom in their dogmas they fashioned as a god.

Wherefore, to dispel so false and unworthy a persuasion, Leo, with that supreme prudence in which he excelled in conducting sacred affairs, enjoined this law upon all catholics: that in the communion of the sacraments they should be refreshed not only by the eucharistic bread, but also, bringing the mouth to the chalice, should drink the blood of redemption; namely, that having received the communion of both species, they might openly display the sincere testimonies both of piety and of faith. This sign being thus at last established, it was not difficult, even amid the sacred mysteries themselves, to make it evident if any were devoted to the impieties of the Manichaeans. But Leo himself lays open the matter more clearly than it could be explained by anyone:

'and since, in order to cover their infidelity, they dare to be present at our mysteries, they so restrain themselves in the communion of the sacraments that sometimes, lest they be able to lie utterly hidden, they receive the body of Christ with an unworthy mouth, but altogether decline to drink the blood of our redemption.' But why he made this known to the faithful of Christ he immediately subjoins: 'Which for this reason we make known to your holiness, that men of this kind may be manifested to you both by these indications, and those whose sacrilegious dissimulation has been detected, being marked and betrayed, may be driven out from the society of the saints.' Quesnel expunged from his own edition those two words, 'marked and betrayed,' which are retained in the editions of others and in the manuscript codices.

Meanwhile, let no one flatter himself that this dispensation of Leo can in any way favour the Lutherans and others who harass the Roman Church, on the ground that, according to the diversity of circumstances and times, he interdicted the laity from the communion of the chalice. For the laity are not defrauded of the reception of the blood, even if they communicate under a single species only, as the doctors of theology most clearly demonstrate even in the schools. Wherefore there is no need at all that we shake out their arguments—not to call them putrid fabrications—since already by the mere reading of the scriptures they collapse. Enough, therefore, and more than enough, I judge to be the things which have hitherto been said by us concerning the care and diligence of all the faithful in denouncing heretics without distinction. 10.

Now, therefore, it behoves us to discourse concerning the exalted piety of the catholic princes, whom, in the graver affairs of the Church, the sacred pastors were wont to summon, that they might show themselves vindicators of those holy things which are referred to the causes of the faith, to the discipline of morals, to the governance, rights, tranquillity, and defence of the Churches. The matter is indeed clear and altogether plain, which we have reserved to set forth here in the last place.

To prove which it would indeed suffice merely to recall the mind to the imperial (as they are called) constitutions of the emperors, which were issued only at the demand of the Roman pontiffs, the bishops, and the general synods, and were promulgated through all the shores of the catholic world, so that heretics the more obstinate in mind might be afflicted even with the gravest temporal penalties. For scarcely can it be expressed in words how greatly the religious zeal of the earlier catholic princes blazed forth against those who were striving to overthrow and undermine [the faith].

For as soon as the princes had given their name to Christ, they also stretched forth helping hands to the rulers of the Churches, joining the power of the age to their authority: whether that the impious cult of idols might everywhere be abolished, or that the decrees of the preceding pagan princes—by which it was ordered that Christian men be held as chattel-slaves, and be sought out on every side for slaughter—might be rendered void. But moreover they blazed with such hatred against the heretics that they stripped them of all honour, right, and prerogative; adjudged their goods, whether possessed or derived from the inheritance of others, to the royal treasuries; banished them from all fellowship of men; and sometimes even visited them with capital penalties.

This, I say, was the religion of Constantine the Great, before he was deceived by the Eusebians; and this thereafter all the Valentinians pursued with the whole endeavour of their soul—Gratian, and the Theodosii, Arcadius, Honorius, Leo, and the other catholic emperors—to whom, since it was clear that all the rights of empire are derived from God the best and greatest, not out of some merely liberal munificence, or as a testimony of gracious goodwill toward the affairs of faith, were they always a protection to these; but moreover, understanding that these affairs concerned them more than the administration of civil matters, they reckoned it a grave impiety if they had defrauded the Church of its due and proper offices, and had failed in any part to safeguard its wellbeing.

For what else did holy Leo recall to the mind of the emperors when writing to Theodosius, to Valentinian, to Leo the Augusti, and also to Pulcheria the Augusta, save that of which we are treating? Namely, from them he demanded those supports which, according to the dignity of their office and according to the power of their strength, they ought to impart to the disturbed and afflicted affairs of the Church. Nay, sometimes the holy pontiff demanded aids of this kind with such vigour of soul, as being owed to the religion of Christ, that—saving the honour of the purple and the imperial diadem—he seemed to press upon them too keenly;

namely, when into their minds he stirred up and pressed grave, horrible thoughts full of terror—as of the indignation of almighty God to be incurred, the fortune of the empire to be endangered, and all temporal things to be turned upside down—if the emperors themselves, by the power with which they were endowed, did not restrain the heretics or those suspected of heresy, and did not send them far away from the society of the catholics. Wherefore these emperors, in order the more easily to obtain the help of divine mercy, and lest they should deviate from the ancestral piety and institutions of their forefathers, expended upon the destruction and ruin of heretical men all the strengths of the age in which they were powerful.

Nor indeed will it be necessary that, for a matter so frequent and customary, we here cite the laws of the emperors from the Theodosian code, and especially those which five most pious princes established for the punishment of the Manichaeans. It will suffice merely to cast the eyes upon the novella of Valentinian Augustus, which he himself confessed that he composed lest he should dissemble the new crimes of the Manichaeans, lately detected by Leo's inquisition and proscribed by his judgment—we speak of the Manichaeans, whom the statutes of all the princes back through time have judged execrable and to be driven out from the whole world. Here Valentinian alludes to those statutes which both the Theodosii, Valentinian the elder, Arcadius, and Honorius established, which may be seen in Gothofredus the jurisconsult.

But Valentinian himself immediately after these words subjoins: 'Nor do the crimes lately detected admit of dissimulation. For what things, and how obscene to speak and to hear, were made manifest, by their own confession, in the judgment of the most blessed Pope Leo, before the most august senate? So much so that even he who was called their bishop both betrayed [them] with his own voice, and proscribed all the secrets of his crimes.' 41. These words of Valentinian furnish new testimonies, from which we may hold that St. Leo discharged the office of a true and lawful judge in the inquisition of the Manichaeans, both in demanding from them the confession of their crimes, and their execration, as we ourselves proved in the third place.

Moreover, Valentinian himself proceeds to show that the knowledge thereof could by no means have escaped him—[the things] which had been transacted by Leo in solemn judgment. And therefore, lest he should neglect the office of a vindicator of ecclesiastical judgments, and lest he too should leave the injuries done to the Divinity unavenged, he added the forces of his own power to ecclesiastical authority, promulgating a public law destined to endure perpetually: 'That wherever on earth any of the Manichaeans shall be apprehended, he shall receive, by the authority of public severity, the penalties which the laws have sanctioned against the sacrilegious.'

Here Valentinian looked to the canonical penalties with which the Church was wont to animadvert upon the sacrilegious; and, lest any escape from these should lie open to the sacrilegious in avoiding them, he sets over them the whole authority of public severity. 'And let it be (he says) a public crime, and let there be for everyone who wills the faculty of arraigning such men without the peril of accusation.' But afterward the same most pious prince, discoursing about the supports of temporal penalties by which the Manichaeans were henceforth to be chastised, adds: that it be lawful and safe for no one to conceal such men or to connive with them; moreover, he deprives them both of the dignity of military service and of dwelling in the cities, and banishes them from the society of all men; he forbids that they receive inheritances, or leave any;

but he orders all their goods and possessions to be aggregated to the resources of the imperial treasury; by a perpetual sanction he despoils them of the right of entering into contracts, or of reclaiming property before judges; and finally he strikes all the chiefs of any military service or office with a pecuniary fine of ten pounds of gold, if they shall knowingly permit anyone polluted with this superstition to serve in the army. For nothing too excessive seems capable of being decreed against those whose incestuous perversity commits, in the name of religion, things unknown or shameful even to brothels. With these words that vigorous and great vindicator and asserter of ecclesiastical authority closes his novella, on the thirteenth day before the Kalends of

of June, in the year of Christ 445, namely when Valentinian himself held his sixth consulship together with Flavius Numus, as is sufficiently ascertained from the ancient records of the Roman empire. 1. Even though, deprived of various monuments through the injury of time, not every aid is supplied to us for instituting other and yet other new questions which might illustrate more and more that kind of ancient ecclesiastical discipline whereby the apostolic see of the divine Peter had determined to animadvert upon those tainted with the heretical stain, nevertheless we reckon that we abound in that sacred furniture which is deemed useful—nay, even necessary—for utterly settling the questions already stirred up among the more recent critics.

Of this latter kind indeed is to be reckoned that controversy which Father Antonius Pagius and Paschasius Quesnel long ago stirred up, who, led by too great a lust for disputing or wrangling, thought fit to oppose themselves strenuously to Cardinal Baronius, contending, namely, that at Rome, in the cause of the Manichaeans, no council at all had been convened. But on the contrary, since the praised father of the Ecclesiastical Annals [Baronius] relied especially upon Leo's epistle to the bishops of Italy, and weighed all its points with mature judgment, we can by no means judge that he so basely erred when he publicly pronounced that a council of bishops and presbyters was then held at Rome.

Therefore, setting ourselves at present to treat of this disagreement, we bring into the midst the chief reasons of the adverse party—namely, those by which Pagius and Quesnel contend that the gathering by which the Manichaeans were animadverted upon at Rome was never called a council by St. Pope [Leo], but was merely termed a convention, a session, and a judgment. And that they may afterward add strength to this conjecture, they appeal to Valentinian's novella, which, according to Quesnel's testimony, contains the word 'session'; and finally they press Baronius with the following reasons: 'But there was no need of a council (which indeed St. Prosper does not record), since the matter was not about proscribing a new heresy or asserting the faith, but about sanctioning a penalty according to the canon of the Church;

nor is it a council where, together with the priests, there is part of the senate AND PART OF THE PLEBS.' Therefore by these frigid petty reasonings they persuade themselves that the word 'Council' is utterly to be blotted out. But are Quesnel and Pagius not ashamed of these things? Do they dare, with the utmost licence, to carp at and censure the sayings of others, that they may suppose Baronius can be pressed by conjectures altogether insipid and fallacious? Too anxiously indeed do they seek a knot in a bulrush while indulging their partisan zeal, devising novelties; and when they set up a contention about words alone, they both depart far from the truth, and strive to wrestle against the shadow of the truth.

Although, therefore, in the matter itself a cause of this kind does not seem to pertain to our purpose, nonetheless, lest the opinion of that most illustrious man Baronius should remain unavenged, before we bring to a close the Exercitations on St. Leo's Works concerning the cause of the Manichaeans, we shall endeavour to overthrow the several petty reasonings of both critics. Now, first of all, they contend about mere words when they deny that that can be called a council which the holy pontiff asserted to be now a convention, now again a session and a judgment. Before whom do those two most weighty critics dispute these things? Is it before beginners in the Latin tongue, or at least those who have never surveyed the more ancient monuments of the Church?

The Latin writers indeed, even those of the golden age, very often used 'convention' (conventus) for 'council,' as may be seen in Titus Livius, Cicero, and Caesar. Nor for that reason were the most ancient Christian writers far from that usage, who, to indicate the sacred assemblies of the catholics for defining the rules of faith or morals, employed the word 'convention'; among whom are Tertullian, Eusebius of Caesarea, Rufinus the presbyter of Aquileia, and many others, whose catalogue there is no need to weave at present. What then? So thoroughly was the word 'convention' employed to signify a council, that even today, in the general collection of the synods, we come upon these and similar inscriptions:

'The Convention of Sirmium,' 'the Convention of Alexandria,' 'the Convention of Hippo,' and six hundred others of that kind, which doubtless betray that those two words were used interchangeably by the ancients to signify one and the same thing. All these things, however, lest we be prolix in a most thoroughly examined matter, could without doubt have been passed over—for this reason above all, that St. Leo, made his own interpreter, employed the word 'convention' for 'council.' Let Quesnel be a classic witness against his own self, who, in adorning the works of the holy pontiff, following the trust of the ancient editors and manuscripts, committed to print the seventh chapter of Leo's thirteenth epistle with the following title: 'On provincial councils to be celebrated.'

In the context of whose body, since there are contained those things which are read in distinction 18, on councils, chapter 2, and in the decree of Ivo, it is most firmly established that by those two words—namely, 'convention' and 'council'—the holy pontiff wished to signify one and the same thing. But lest by anyone I be led into a suspicion of fraud, let it not weary me to transcribe Leo's words just as they stand in Quesnel's edition. 'But concerning episcopal councils we enjoin nothing other than what the holy Fathers salubriously ordained: namely, that conventions be held once each year, in which judgment may be passed concerning all the complaints which are wont to arise among the diverse orders of the Church.' And again, in the same edition of Quesnel, these words are to be read, epistle 16, c.

chapter 7, 'On Councils to be celebrated yearly at Rome,' where St. Pope [Leo], treating of the fifth Nicene canon, thus subjoins: 'Wherefore this first of all, for the safeguarding of a most concordant unity, we require: that, since it was most salubriously established by the holy Fathers that there ought to be two conventions of bishops in each year...' The cause of the two critics has therefore already gone to the worse, since Leo himself, adhering also to the footsteps of the Nicene Fathers, willed to use the word 'convention' to signify both provincial and general synods—as, by many other examples likewise drawn from the works of the holy pontiff, could be established more and more.

Nor can the same cause become firmer on account of the other word, 'session' (consessus), which the celebrated oration of the great emperor Constantine makes plain the ancients used to signify a council—the oration by which he addressed the Nicene Fathers gathered into an assembly. 'Since (says he) it has been very much among my wishes, dearest friends, at length to enjoy this session of yours.' And a little after, congratulating the same Fathers that, private studies laid aside, they were proceeding peacefully, without contentions of spirit, to the synodal acts, he subjoins: 'And although I do indeed rejoice vehemently, when now I behold your session, yet then I judge, etc.'

Meanwhile, however, I am ashamed, cast into these trifles, to make a business of it with men who despise the first elements of the sciences. For they do not revolve in their minds that among the ancients one and the same thing is very often named by several words—for this reason above all, that these words, since they depend upon the will of men, can easily be changed, the nature and substance of the things remaining in no way changed. Moreover, Latin speech ought not to be deemed so barren that a single word must be assigned to each thing, beyond which no other could express the things themselves, or the property, function, and virtue of the things themselves. Nay, on the authority of Cicero, the Latin tongue most greatly abounds in words, so that by their abundance it even surpasses the Greek tongue:

'But so I feel, as I have often discoursed, that the Latin tongue is not only not poor, as I would commonly have thought, but even richer than the Greek.' What wonder, therefore, if 'council' (which the Greeks call a synod), since it has to signify an assembly into which several judges are wont to convene for the ordering of Christian affairs, of its own nature takes on several names—and most apt ones indeed—so that it is expressed sometimes by the ancients with the word 'convention,' sometimes with the words 'session' and 'judgment'? Is not every council, with propriety, both a convention, and a session, and in very fact a judgment? Let both critics meanwhile reckon these things with themselves, and finally impute the grave lapse not to Baronius, but rather to themselves.

Moreover, one must reckon that, when he made this note, Quesnel was nodding, or at least had flattered himself that his readers would be so drowsy, or so blind, that they could read 'session' (consessus) for 'judgment' (judicium). For Valentinian in his novella did not use the word 'session,' but 'judgment'; and that it is so to be read, Quesnel himself proved, because, committing Valentinian's novella to print, he published these words: 'Which things, and how obscene to speak and to hear, were made manifest, by their own confession, in the judgment of Pope Leo before the most august senate.' Nor, moreover, does that word 'session' ever occur from the beginning even to the end. 4.

Now at last it is time that, these words being left behind, we make our step toward the matters themselves, weighing one by one the remaining arguments of both critics, which—unless my opinion deceives me—are so devoid of strength that they have neither sinews nor stings by which they could graze or press Baronius. As regards the first, nothing weaker than it can be devised, inasmuch as it is drawn from Prosper's silence. 'He indeed does not mention a council,' says Quesnel. What then? Does he not mention that anything was held by St. Leo in the cause of the Manichaeans? Yet he recounted, just as of this St. [...]

...by the diligence of the pontiff he detected the Manichaeans lurking within the City, exposed them to the eyes of the whole Church, and caused all the abominations of that wicked doctrine both to be condemned and to be disclosed, their books being burned. Quesnel passed over all these things in complete silence. But Prosper wrote thus in the public records of his Chronicle, in his very words: 'In the consulship of Maximus (for the second time) and Paterius (or Paternus), at this time very many Manichaeans within the City were made known through the diligence of Pope Leo, who, dragging them forth from their hiding places and exposing them to the eyes of the whole Church, caused all the abominations of their doctrine both to be condemned and to be disclosed, their books being burned.'

There is therefore no room to doubt concerning the public and solemn condemnation of the Manichaeans; and if both critics contend that this was carried out by holy Leo outside of a council, they at once run upon the very rock which they everywhere and always strive with the utmost care and art to avoid. For they concede to us who maintain that heresies and heretics can be condemned by the sole authority of the Roman pontiffs, and that they have at times been condemned, without any support of councils being employed at all. For a council is needed only then, when the Roman pontiffs judge it expedient; and they were ordinarily accustomed to convoke them then, when by common consent decrees of faith already defined by the Apostolic See were to be solemnly received by the whole assembly of the Church;

when, in order to repress the audacity of heretics, a more numerous gathering of bishops was deemed very useful, so that a more solemn judgment might be rendered; when finally it was fitting to settle more easily and more peacefully ecclesiastical affairs that had been thrown into disorder in the churches, whether by the perversity of schismatics or by the power of princes and other ministers of the age. There is therefore no law that commands councils are to be held as necessary to the Church. On the contrary, it is decreed by the very laws that general councils are not to be held unless the Roman pontiff has judged that they ought to be held. But if, moreover, new heresies and new schisms should arise in the Church, these assuredly, according to the divine and apostolic mandates, must at once and of necessity both be repressed and rooted out;

lest, either by the propagation of the seed of malice, or by its striking roots to the detriment of the catholic faith, the tares of the demons be day by day the more nourished and grow greater. Yet not on that account is there prepared by the Founder of the Church only one remedy for these evils, namely councils, but many. The Roman pontiffs can, by letters filled with the sacred doctrines; they can, by frequent admonitions; or finally they can, by their legates bearing most weighty warnings, meet and cure all those evils, without convoking general synods.

For the solemnity of such judgments is not absolutely necessary, but only when ecclesiastical affairs are altogether thrown into disorder, or when the questions raised are so doubtful and obscure, so wavering and entangled in intricacies, that for the common peace and the salvation of many the Apostolic See has judged a council to be expedient. Wherefore we can by no means endure what both critics have asserted in the case of which we treat, namely that there was no need of a council, since it was not a matter of proscribing a new heresy or of asserting the faith, but of sanctioning a penalty according to the canon of the Church;

as though, when either one of these cases intervenes, councils must of necessity be convened, or, when no other cause occurs, provincial or general synods may be proclaimed and held. Whence, pray, did they draw such a doctrine? Let them bring forward into public view the canons, the monuments of the Fathers, the customs of the churches, so that to us too may be made known the sources from which proceeds this singular and hitherto unheard-of hidden discipline. We indeed, if we consult the Fathers, the councils, and the usage of the Church, are bound to maintain and believe altogether the opposite.

For in the second century, when after the apostles councils began to be more frequently held in the Church, the bishops came together into one, in many places both in Asia and in Palestine, over the question concerning the celebration of Easter. Witness of this is the great Irenaeus, apostle of the churches of Gaul and their most splendid luminary, to whom all doctors, both ancient and more recent, have given their trust—among whom Eusebius of Caesarea, in Book V of his Ecclesiastical History, chapters 24 and 25. But who will affirm that in those same synods anything was done concerning the proscribing of a new heresy or the asserting of the faith?

Likewise in the third century of the Church, both at Rome and in Africa, and also in Phrygia, and at Neocaesarea in Pontus, the Fathers of the Church gathered many assemblies, whether for imposing a salutary penance on those who had lapsed in the time of the persecutions, or for restoring ecclesiastical discipline, or finally for clearing away the crimes of bishops and for punishing the same; and yet nowhere was there any discourse concerning a new heresy or concerning the articles of faith, as the writings of the same Eusebius, of Cyprian, of Dionysius of Alexandria, and of the other Fathers who flourished in that age reveal—of whose writings at least some fragments have come down to us. What need of more?

In the fourth, fifth, and the other following centuries, innumerable councils were held, whether for pronouncing anathema on heresies already condemned elsewhere, or for establishing in the Church the various grades of penitents, or for deposing bishops from their sees, or for restoring to their own those who had already been unjustly deposed, or finally that matters might be dealt with concerning appeals, concerning the dedications of churches, concerning immunities, concerning the indulgences to be granted to the lapsed and penitent, and other things of that kind. Wrongly, therefore, is it fabricated that the holy pontiff did not hold a council in the case of the Manichaeans, on the ground that it was not a matter of condemning a new heresy or of asserting the faith. It suffices that anathema was to be pronounced upon the Manichaeans found in the City;

it suffices that the discipline of the Roman Church required that the Manichaeans be banished far from all the borders of Italy. Wherefore, although in the judgment of the Manichaeans a penalty was indeed dealt with, to be sanctioned according to the canon of the Church, nevertheless, because St. Leo exposed to the eyes of the whole Church all the abominations of the doctrine, and caused them both to be condemned and to be disclosed—on the authority of St. Prosper of Aquitaine, as we have seen—nothing can prevent all these things from having been carried into execution in a council. Especially since the pontiff wished to establish the plan of a certain new arrangement.