Sermons & Letters 204 part 2/3

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.