Sermons & Letters 207

Pope Hormisdas compels the Manichaeans still inhabiting the city of Rome, after they had been examined by the trial of stripes, to depart into exile. The trifles and cavils of Beausobre are refuted. The Constantinopolitan synod of the patriarch Mennas condemns Severus, Anthimus, and the other chiefs of the Acephali as champions of the Manichaean dogma. Finally, certain things are noted concerning the Manichaeans from the historical books of Peter of Sicily and Photius. 1. Before we undertake to say anything about the deeds of the Eastern bishops in the cause of the Manichaeans, we deem it necessary to describe in a few words the manner of Hormisdas's action and his judgment against those same heretics.

For when he had found this viperous offspring lurking at Rome, he applied all the sinews of his mind to abolishing it utterly. Therefore in the year of Christ five hundred and fourteen, when Anastasius held the reins of empire, Pope Symmachus departed from this light. The ecclesiastical records make plain that Hormisdas was substituted for him at Rome in the same year. But whether at the beginnings of this pontificate he found certain remnants of the Manichaean sect, surviving from the preceding inquisition of Pope Symmachus and there hiding; or whether, Symmachus alone having ended his life, in the third or fourth year they flocked from other regions of Africa, the East, or Italy to inhabit the City—this is made known by no monument of the Christian record.

But if we are willing to follow the order of the Pontifical Book, in which the deeds of the Roman bishops are described, it must be believed that Hormisdas found the Manichaeans at Rome after many years of his pontificate had passed. For that same supreme pontiff expended the first four whole years of his rule in trying to reduce to good conduct the Emperor Anastasius—the champion and defender, as we have seen, of many heresies. And when he had striven in vain to obtain this once and again, both through his legates sent to Constantinople for that cause and through letters, and the pious will of the Roman Pontiff had ever remained frustrated, at last the emperor, struck by a thunderbolt at the nod of the Divinity, most wretchedly perished.

When the most religious prince Justin had been substituted for him in the empire, Hormisdas wonderfully attained that which he had so greatly striven for, in the year 519, with legates sent to Constantinople, among whom was that most holy man Germanus, bishop of Capua. 2. Peace therefore having been restored between the Easterns and the Roman See, and at the same time the memory of Acacius, Euphemius, and Macedonius having been condemned along with the heretics, as also that of the emperors Zeno and Anastasius, at last he compelled the offspring of the Manichaeans, banished, to depart from the City. Wherefore, if we shall judge that the author of the Pontifical Book followed the order of events and times in describing the deeds of Pope Hormisdas, we shall affirm that this pontiff's judgment against the Manichaeans occurred after the year 519;

but, passing over this little-useful and uncertain question, let us attend to Hormisdas's manner of proceeding against the Manichaeans. 'He' (says the praised writer) 'found the Manichaeans, whom, after they had been examined with the trial of stripes, he also deported into exile.' Plainly this is a new form of ecclesiastical judgment, which the author describes as employed by Hormisdas against the Manichaeans. For we do not read that before the time of this pontiff heretics were examined by ecclesiastical authority with the trial of stripes.

And although the emperors and the judges of the age had long since decreed various kinds of penalties in order to destroy that offspring utterly—either by proscribing their goods, or by compelling them, stripped of every human right, to go into exile—yet we do not understand that it had hitherto been ordained by anyone that they should be afflicted with stripes and scourges. But we suppose that it was carried out by the public authority of the age, lest, forsooth, the laws of leniency, to which the pastors of the Church most sacredly clung, should be violated.

Moreover, having sought out all the books or codices of the Manichaeans, the supreme pontiff, following the same examples of his predecessors, burned them before the doors of the Constantinian basilica; and, so great a fear and terror having been stirred up in the minds of these most wicked men, they no longer thought of returning to the City from exile. Yet this manner of Hormisdas, Symmachus, Gelasius, Leo, and the other Roman pontiffs in burning the books of the Manichaeans has not been altogether approved by non-Catholic men.

For Isaac Beausobre chiefly endeavors to show it to be little useful and safe—he who, in his books on the Manichaean History, reviewed the various laws of both emperors and magistrates concerning the destroying and utterly blotting out of the codices of heretics or of Christians. But he vindicates these as reasonable, for this cause, namely, that codices of that kind contained certain things which corrupted the piety of religion and human society—a matter about which we ourselves treated most lucidly in chapter 4 of this book. 3.

But come now: Beausobre's trifles and fabrications being rejected, we undertake to weigh other Manichaean customs, worship, and ecclesiastical governance from the Constantinopolitan synods; of which one is to be referred to the times of Hormisdas, but the other to pertain to the age of Agapetus, as we shall make plain from most certain monuments. Now that those synods condemned Severus, Anthimus, Zoaras, Philoxenus, and others who bore the name of the Acephali, as champions of Manichaean dogmas, by the common consent of the Fathers, is well ascertained by those who have surveyed their Acts. Wherefore, in running through these same Acts, we have judged without any doubtfulness of mind that professors of Manichaean rites strove to hide themselves under the name of the Acephali.

But that I may not seem to relate falsehoods, I will first recall to memory those things which the impious Emperor Anastasius employed to enlarge his heresy—namely, when he both brought Xenaias to Constantinople, and honorably received the abominable man Severus, coming to the same place with two hundred monks. This (says Petavius) was the beginning of that impure Severus, who in the year 513 by force occupied the see of Antioch, from which Flavian had the year before been driven out on account of his constancy in the Catholic profession; and he attempted to bring all the Easterns to the condemnation of the Synod of Chalcedon, and cast out from their sees the Catholic bishops who resisted.

Who Severus was, from what people he drew his origin, in what religion he was first instructed—we deem it necessary to explain in a few words. All which things surely ought by no means to seem foreign to our scope of writing to those who shall read these present Exercises of ours. Severus, then, was born at Sozopolis, one of the cities of the province of Pisidia. When he had grown up, as Evagrius, Nicephorus, and the deacon Liberatus relate, he frequented the forum at Berytus, a city of Phoenicia, yet assiduously devoting himself to the manners and rites of the heathen.

But afterwards, having abandoned the study of jurisprudence, when he had received holy baptism in the church of the admirable martyr Leontius—who is worshipped with the highest honor in Tripoli, a city of Phoenicia—he straightway embraced the monastic life, which is situated midway on the journey between the city of Gaza and the town of Majuma. But that this man was, from his early age, caught in sorceries, and that in the city of the Berytians, before he was baptized, he had rendered religious worship to demons, is disclosed by the little book of the monks recited in the Constantinopolitan synod of Mennas.

Wherefore it is at least permitted us to suspect that he was led to receive baptism only feignedly, in order, namely, that he might escape those penalties which the laws of the emperors commanded to be inflicted upon sacrilegious men and sorcerers. Severus's flight increases the suspicion—the flight he snatched from Berytus, so that he might betake himself to Tripoli. And at last this same conjecture of ours is all the more strengthened by this: that Severus, before the time was yet completed during which those newly illuminated by baptism sojourned in monasteries, being no longer able to restrain the wickedness of his mind under the color of the Catholic religion, nor again able openly to return to the old vomit of his heathen opinion, arrived by another way at that which he was pursuing. 4.

Driven therefore by the fear of penalties, he shrank from openly returning to the old rites of the heathen. Therefore, having devised new frauds, he strove to hide his Manichaean profession under the dogmas of the Acephali, so that he might more zealously devote himself to the rites and mysteries of Manes. It is no wonder, therefore, if, having denied the Church by Severus and him by whom he had been baptized, he at once hastened to Constantinople to the Emperor Anastasius, the patron and vindicator of all the most wicked men, by whom, together with two hundred monks, he was received with much joy and honorably.

Supported therefore by the protection of so great a power, and raised to the see of Antioch or Theopolis, he not only ordered many bloody slaughters to be carried out by military force upon the Catholic priests and archimandrites who strenuously opposed his unlawful ordination, made in violation of the canons, but also defiled with the blood of the slain the houses of God and the churches, consecrated with the greatest and most solemn rites and mysteries, calling them lodging-places of heresy and impiety, and reprobating the baptism which he had received. But that Severus did not sincerely adhere to the Acephali, but rather simulated the very religion of the Acephali, was manifest from all that followed (say the religious monks in the aforesaid little book).

For they relate that, in the first place, he admitted no union of the two natures in Christ, nor a 'unitive' (as they say), but only a 'novative,' calling it 'divisive,' and anathematizing it in his own proper writings. Which manner of speaking, although it savors of an obscure sense, nevertheless signifies that the divine Word did not assume a true humanity, nor couple it to itself. Then he was unwilling to communicate with Peter Mongus—who had been intruded into the see of Alexandria on account of the primacy of the Acephali—nor with those who had been seduced and taught by that same Peter Mongus, because Peter ought to be snatched away from the Church of Alexandria.

For this cause, indeed, he wished the names of Peter Mongus and of the others communicating with him to be erased from the diptychs of the Theopolitan Church. Therefore, by stirring up daily new tumults against all men whatsoever, he endeavored to overthrow and destroy not only the Catholic religion, but even the religion of the Acephali themselves and its followers.

Then, having taken to himself as an associate in crime a certain Peter (whom they call the Iberian), inasmuch as he had usurped for himself the episcopal throne of Apamea, they resolved upon the final overthrow of the city of Alexandria, applying divisions to the Alexandrians and inciting the people there one against another, so that civil wars might arise, many houses be set on fire, and the blood of many men be shed; and they themselves indeed scarcely at any time escaped by flight the penalties due for these deeds. 5. From this series of deeds, moreover, the monks in their little book skillfully reasoned that Severus and Peter the Iberian, or of Apamea, were nowhere worshippers of the Christian religion, seeing that they appeared with even-handed disposition hostile to Catholics and heretics alike.

For since they had dared to anathematize the whole Church iniquitously, they were deservedly anathematized by the whole Church. And indeed, that they should be proscribed by all with a certain universal anathema, and that all should shudder at their manner of life, the inhuman and savage manner of acting by which they sought out the worshippers of Jesus Christ for death and destruction so persuaded. By which manner, forsooth, all sacred and divine laws being broken and abolished, they delivered over to violent death the priests and other ministers of the Church who dwelt in the temples and served and attended the altars, and strangled them with their own hands; or, when for the plundering of all the goods of the monasteries they harried devout monks with chains and prisons, they butchered them with swords and darts;

or when, making their journeys, penetrating the venerable cloisters of St. Simeon, having gathered a multitude of robbers of the Jews, they rushed upon those honorable monks; and not reverencing their gray hair, they did the work of the sword upon them, being about 350 in number, and scattered their limbs along the way, not delivering their venerable relics to sculptured burial, nor sparing their huts. All these things, I say, although they are an evidence of a soul monstrous, savage, truculent, and far from all piety and religion, would nevertheless not display their Manichaean institutions, unless the aim of the deeds to be done were attended to. For what else did Severus and Peter the Iberian ponder within themselves in the perpetrating of these monstrous slaughters?

Nothing but to render bloody sacrifices to the demons whom they served—a rite which it is most fully ascertained the Manichaeans employed. Moreover, Severus and Peter used other superstitious and magical rites: for instance, when their profane and false priests (like the soothsayers of the heathen) laid on their strangling hands, and over those to be ordained uttered the words of invocation on behalf of the dead man living, speaking not from divine grace, but saying various things out of the belly, and speaking from the earth;

or when they strove to overthrow and lay waste the churches of God, the mystical sacraments and mysteries of our faith, establishing new conventicles and contrary baptisms, boldly and shamelessly snatching away the souls of Christians unto money, unto glory, unto carnal delights. For entering houses, they led captive the souls of men and of women not confirmed, and corrupted them not only according to the soul with depraved dogmas, but even bodily.

That a report of these things and the like had already been transmitted to Hormisdas, prelate of the Roman and apostolic see, and that the same supreme and greatest pontiff had pronounced the sentence of deposition and anathema against those same heretics, is evinced from many monuments—so the aforesaid assembly of archimandrites and monks from the monasteries of St. Dalmatius, of Jerusalem, of Second Syria, of Mount Sinai, and of the three Palestines professes; that venerable company of ascetics most constantly demanding nothing else than that these abominable men be held and punished as Manichaeans. 6.

And indeed, that the holy pontiff Hormisdas took action against them as followers of the Manichaean dogma, his letter to the presbyters, deacons, and archimandrites of Second Syria, and to the remaining orthodox dwelling in whatever Eastern clime and persisting in the communion of the apostolic see, makes plain clearly enough.

For Hormisdas, from the apostolic throne of Peter, pronounces that the heresies then swelling throughout the whole East had issued either from the impure sources of Photinus or of Manes, and that their insane dogmas had been widely propagated by the zeal of Severus of Antioch, Xenaias of Hierapolis, Cyrus of Edessa, and Peter of Apamea, who, unceasingly wrapped in abominable and superstitious filth, defiled the episcopal thrones with innumerable crimes. Lest, therefore, the presbyters, deacons, and archimandrites of Second Syria, and the remaining orthodox Easterns, be deceived by profane rites, the supreme pontiff there generally commands them to cast away whatever, contrary to the rules of the Fathers, had been brought forth from certain false commentaries.

'Let no one' (he says) 'move you with incongruous precepts or with new institutions. For if they are worldly, they cannot even hold the churches, since it befits them rather to learn than to teach.' And at last, perhaps alluding to the Manichaean oblations, he adds: 'For it is unlawful to bring foreign libations to pious altars: because God has prescribed fixed bounds for religious disciplines even amid the very beginnings of His own worship.' 7. But besides monuments of this kind, of no uncertain faith, which show that Severus,

Peter of Apamea, Zoaras, and their other associates were professors of Manichaean rites and dogmas—there survives another supplication of the clergy and monks of Antioch of that age to John, bishop of Constantinople, in which are reviewed not only the preceding crimes described above, but also many other things which can befit none but the worshippers of Manes. For such are those things which Severus had borrowed for himself from the society of the Jews: namely, when, the slaughters of Christians having been everywhere perpetrated, he cast forth the flesh of the holy Syrian martyr-monks to be mangled by dogs and birds;

when he presumed to act around the fountains at Daphne, and using sorceries there, worshipped demons with wicked sacrifices; when, sparing neither the sacred altars nor the sacred vessels, he broke some and melted down others, the money, bronze, and silver being disbursed for altogether abominable and profane uses. For he appropriated to himself, along with other things, the silver chalices and golden doves hung in the form of the Holy Spirit over the divine fonts and altars, saying that the Holy Spirit ought not to be named under the appearance of a dove. For who will deny that in this kind of curse there lay one of the chief dogmas of Manes? For they obstinately denied that God could assume any form in a body.

And therefore he taught that neither the Word had appeared under true human flesh, nor the Holy Spirit under a visible and corporeal figure. Wherefore, to do away with these two heads of the Christian religion, they cast down the figures of Christ, of the Holy Spirit, and of the angels, and endeavored to blot them out on every side. That these were the principles of Manichaean philosophy and theology, not even the non-Catholic man Beausobre was able to deny—who, although in describing the history of the Manichaeans, indulging his own party too much, applies all his zeal to make trouble for the Catholics, despises the opinions of the most holy and most ancient Fathers and writers of the Church, makes jest and mockery, and assails Catholics with brawls and curses;

and finally, in order to refute the more principal dogmas of our faith, or to pervert them more perniciously than by the depraved fabrications of the Lutherans, Calvinists, and Socinians—nevertheless, in his eighth book, those things which we have described concerning Severus, Zoaras, and the others, he ascribed to Manes and his followers.

Concerning Severus, however, Zoaras, and the others, who in the sixth century of the Church strove to hide their Manichaean impiety under the mask of the Acephali, Beausobre made not even one word, since his manner and scope of writing extend only to Manes and his first associates, and their profane and equally abominable institutions—those places and those authors, by which that heresy raged, being afterwards neglected by him, and by whose aid and industry, in the course of time, it was far and wide propagated.

Wherefore, if anyone will more attentively consider within himself the scope of that author, he will without doubt understand that he proposed to himself by no means to compose a sincere historical and critical work concerning the Manichaeans, but only to harass the Catholics, and to carp at those most holy and most ancient Fathers who strenuously opposed themselves to this abominable sect, and to arraign them on the charge of ignorance and errors—as we have already indicated in the foregoing. 8. But that we may not, in reviewing Beausobre's evil arts, pervert the thread and order of our history, let us subjoin the new demands of the Eastern orthodox bishops against Severus, Anthimus, and the other Acephali.

From all which it will above all become known that we have feigned nothing in the cause of which we are now treating by our own invention, nor clung to conjectures alone; but that we have wished both to inquire into and to draw the truth of the matter from the most certain monuments. Accordingly, forty-seven orthodox bishops of the East, either in person or through their legates, when Agapetus the Roman pontiff had been summoned to Constantinople, offered a petition, in which they not only attested the criminal deeds of Severus hitherto described, but demanded that this man be condemned as an assertor of the Manichaean dogma and its abominable champion. 'We supplicate' (they say), 'most holy one…, we cry out:

Help us and the holy souls slain by Severus, whom picture to yourselves prudently as standing by, and showing you that for Christ's sake they were delivered over to death by the many-headed beast, lest again out of his mongering, manifest to all, and out of his Manichaean error, wherein trusting this wicked man dared to enter the pure royal halls.' Into which opinion, or judgment, the aforesaid bishops descended, led by no other reason than that, having examined Severus's morals and his doctrine, they diligently inquired of what sect it behooved them to name him the assertor and champion.

For inasmuch as it had become known to them that he held the same views as the heathen, that he was of the same feignedly-held opinion as Eutyches, and sometimes followed the manners of Nestorius—along with these very people—they deservedly and with truth called him both an instrument of the devil and a Manichaean. Let no one, therefore, imagine that the aforesaid bishops of the East judged preposterously concerning Severus's dogmas or errors. Especially since they issued a judgment of this kind not from the uncertain rumor of the crowd, but from facts and things thoroughly examined and known. 9.

Moreover, from the principles of Manichaean philosophy and theology, they denied the true nativity of Christ the Lord from the Virgin, and His true flesh and death; while Severus himself, Peter of Apamea, Zoaras, and Isaac the Persian diligently devoted themselves to magical studies and practices—in which Beausobre also explained in various places that the Manichaeans were wont superstitiously to be engaged. For concerning Zoaras we read in the aforesaid little book, that this man was ignorant of divine Scripture and of all the sacred orders and of the Mass. Nay rather, with the utmost audacity of soul, he ruined all the true and sacred ecclesiastical rites, through the conventicles and counterfeit-baptisms which were daily performed by him.

'Whose synagogue' (say the aforesaid bishops of the East to Agapetus) 'wanton women, given over to carousings and drunkenness, luxuries and adulteries, filled.' Which evils, indeed, that the rest of the most holy bishops of the East might repel far from the bosom of the Church, they applied all their efforts, even intrepidly presenting themselves before the emperor, and earnestly entreating him not to permit blood-devouring beasts to be gathered together with the lambs; otherwise, little by little, the religion of Christ being wholly polluted and undermined throughout the East, now modesty, justice, holiness, and the true worship of God would be brought to destruction. 10.

It has moreover been established that Isaac the Persian, who had come into the East and had joined himself as a confederate to those other wicked men, perpetrated crimes yet more grievous. For those orthodox bishops, when about to address words to Agapetus concerning this man, could neither restrain their tears and wailing, nor were they able to set forth in speech the things which he did not shrink from doing with his own unholy hands. They relate but a single deed concerning him, which they testify they abhor above all: namely, that betaking himself into a certain lodging in which was set an image of the most pious orthodox emperor Justinian, this aforesaid wicked and arrogant man blasphemed God, as though contending to do so after some newer manner of speaking.

The preceding words already clearly indicate that this Persian devised against God some peculiar species of blasphemy and uttered it. But of what sort it was, we have been unable to learn either from this or from any other record; especially since those Fathers, continuing the narrative they had begun, at once add: Stretching forth the staff on which he pretends to steady his dishonoured old age, and filling up his feigned imposture in the sight of those who had been seduced by him, he struck without shame the likeness of the emperor most beloved of Christ, calling him a heretic though thus united to God, kept by Him, and keeping the truth of his preaching.

They affirmed that Isaac persisted in this fury until he tore apart the tunic bearing the noble effigy, and kept a part of it for himself, which he also delivered to the fire; yet he could not destroy the whole. But we judge that, together with the emperor's image, a figure representing Christ the Lord had also been depicted upon it. For in a subsequent part of the discourse they add: For it was preserved by the better providence of the Deity, as a manifest and marked refutation of his murderous rashness. And these things which up to now we have either transcribed or expounded concerning Isaac the Persian and the rest, we judge to be placed beyond any hazard of doubt as betraying Manichaean manners, institutions, and impious religion.

And we are especially drawn to this persuasion, because the sect of the Manichaeans cast down, overturned, and shrank from temple, altars, sacrifice, images, and the other mysteries pertaining to and representing the true human nature of Christ; so that afterwards, in certain synagogues or lodgings, they would gather with their depraved women only at the nocturnal hours, to offer to God certain profane oblations. Yet Beausobre has discoursed more fully concerning their institutions;

but with such a mind that he dared to contend that certain of these institutions were altogether consonant with the primitive religion, rites, discipline, and dogmas of Christians—as though indeed the Manichaeans had striven to conform themselves in all things to the apostolic men. What? He contends that the Fathers of the first three centuries held the same views as the Manichaeans: namely, that they taught that only a pure oblation of prayers ought to be offered to God by Christians; and he does not scruple to appeal to Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria, adding that the first worshippers of Christ admitted neither temples, nor altars, nor images, from which they shrank, lest they should seem to follow the religion of the Gentiles.

But that Beausobre trifles and plainly fabricates in these matters has already been proved from the very Fathers to whom he intends to appeal. For Tertullian above all, although in the book To Scapula—which Beausobre praises—when treating of oblations made to God he calls the pure prayers of the heart, in a broad sense, sacrifices, yet in very many places has enumerated the sacrifice of the Mass, the priesthood of the Church, and the altars and temples of Christians, as especially in the book On the Exhortation to Chastity, or in the books On Monogamy, On the Resurrection of the Flesh, and elsewhere throughout; in which places he praises and describes not only the dignity of the priests, but the rites by which the ministers of the altar are consecrated.

Beausobre likewise contrives an equal deceit and displays a crafty ingenuity in appealing to Clement of Alexandria, Book I of the Stromata, chapter 7. For although Clement praises the oblation of pure prayers, nowhere did he deny either the unbloody sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ, or the temples or altars of Christians; as we could explain by many passages excerpted from his works, did not the aim of our writing forbid it. Having therefore noted these and other similar deceits of Beausobre, we shall now recount in a few words what remains to be said specifically concerning Anthimus.

He therefore, first together with the rest of his associates, bursting into the city of Constantinople, set up profane altars and alien baptisteries in opposition to the true altar and the holy font, in many notable places of the city itself, and in the suburbs, and in his own house, ceasing not to commit iniquities therein.

Marianus the monk, together with the archimandrites of the monastery of Saint Dalmatius and the other monks and archimandrites of the monasteries of the royal city of Constantinople, of Jerusalem, of Mount Sinai, and of Second Syria, in his supplicatory petition given to Justinian Augustus, testified that Anthimus did these things at Constantinople by the common endeavour of Severus, Peter the Iberian, Zoaras, and Isaac the Persian; adding this specifically concerning Anthimus, namely, that he had long since deserted his own Church of Trebizond, in which he had been ordained bishop, contrary to the divine and ecclesiastical laws, and under a feigned mask of continence had held conventicles with the heretics, so that, by their support, he might snatch the see of Constantinople contrary to all ecclesiastical canons and laws.

All orthodox men shuddered at this violent and iniquitous promotion of Anthimus to the throne of Constantinople, both because the lawful sacraments of the Catholic Church were being brought to ruin, and because they were being compelled to suffer the greatest troubles. But let us attend to what the emperor decreed in so great a crisis of ecclesiastical affairs. For, having heard all the crimes of Anthimus, he did not wish to pass sentence upon him himself; but the most wise prince, taking excellent counsel for ecclesiastical rights and the immunity of the priesthood, entreated that a canonical judgment be made by the Roman Pontiff both upon Anthimus and upon his associates; being led by these convictions, that it is not fitting for one to meddle in ecclesiastical matters.

Being persuaded and instructed by the precepts of both Testaments that the sentence was to be awaited from the universal pastor of the Church—by that precept, namely, Ask thy father, and he will declare to thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee; and by that other, Obey your leaders and be subject to them, for they watch as those who must render an account for your souls—he also willed it to be sanctioned by sacred imperial law that the crimes perpetrated by Anthimus and his associates (just as the authors of the aforesaid petitions had long since demanded, together with the Palestinian bishops and the spokesmen of the other Eastern prelates) should be reviewed and judged by Pope Agapetus.

Nor indeed was Anthimus condemned and deprived of all priestly honour by any other than the Roman Pontiff Agapetus himself. For when the holy Pontiff, having set out for Constantinople and having discerned and proved on every side the impiety of the crimes, cast Anthimus down from that see and declared that he must be held as a heretic, he stripped him of all dignity and sacred office, the name of orthodox and of bishop—in which Anthimus most gloried—being utterly deleted from the Roll of the sacred ministers.

And in order that this sentence of the Apostolic See might be brought to a happy issue, with every gainsayer and stumbling-block removed, Agapetus himself committed its execution to Justinian Augustus, as vindicator of the sacred canons, just as the authors of this praised petition earnestly besought, saying: We therefore adjure your Empire not to despise the just judgment of the aforesaid holy man, but to execute it, and to free the Church of God and the whole world from the pestilence of Anthimus and the aforesaid heretics. For, the holy man Agapetus having been called from the present life, we have looked, after God, to your piety, and have awaited that these matters receive their end from you.

But what parts the praised and most pious prince of the age ought to have assumed for the destruction of the heretics they at once explain in these words: Fulfilling therefore what was justly and canonically judged by him, and confirming those very things by your general sanction, and forbidding that such things be presumed henceforth, you will honour his blessed soul. 14. That the leaders of the Acephali were engaged in this kind of Manichaean manners and rites, the monuments already praised, drawn from sincere sources, clearly reveal. But since, in perusing the Acts of the Council of Menna at Constantinople, other things occur to us which not only settle the present question but also more fully refute the trifles of Beausobre noted in the preceding pages;

therefore the aim of our writing counsels us to append them, lest we should seem to have fallen short. And these things pertain especially to Peter the Iberian, bishop of Apamea, concerning whom we noted various things above, and who—as is made known by the common testimony of the clergy of the holy Church of the metropolis of Apamea—was a worshipper and champion of all Manichaean dogmas and rites, and turned upside down the whole sacred and divine discipline and administration of the Churches of Syria. Nor indeed does our manner of proceeding permit us to recount one by one the things which the praised clergy of Apamea described concerning so wicked a man in their letter to the most holy Fathers and bishops of Second Syria;

nor to indicate the manner in which, by what art, zeal, or supports Peter obtained the throne of Apamea; nor to speak of the cunning machinations he employed to remove utterly the memorials of the orthodox bishops of the East from the sacred diptychs, or of the plunderings by which he transferred the sacred vessels, the moneys of the Churches, and their furnishings to profane use; or of the violent ordinations he more frequently employed to remove humble clerics hostile to himself—the guardians of the aforesaid goods—though wholly resisting, from their lawful grades, by promoting them to higher ministries, contending with sacrilegious mouth all the more boldly that not even Jesus Christ crucified could come down to rescue them from his hands.

These things, I say, and others of the kind, we have thought fit to pass over in silence, since they can easily be surveyed by anyone in the Acts of the councils. But we shall append only those things which point to open Manichaean manners. Of such a sort indeed appear those things by which he undermined holy baptism, when, namely, he introduced feminine unchastity unworthy of the holy font, and made it stand beside the sacred font. And when the divine mysteries (says the praised clergy) are completed in the oratory of the house of the Mother of God, what manner of speech she unworthily makes, which Christian ears could endure such impiety spoken and done. But that all these things proceeded from the school of the Manichaeans, Photius is the authority.

He, speaking of their assemblies and gatherings, says that they were accustomed to call the places in which they met proseuchae, that is, oratories; adding: Nay more, though they reject saving baptism, they nevertheless pretend to admit it themselves, hinting at the words of the Gospel by the mention of baptism. For, they say, the Lord said: I am living water. And a little within, wishing to explain how sometimes some of them, labouring under bodily infirmities, would seek and beg to be washed by baptism, foolishly (he says) thinking that the cross and baptism profit the body—men truly unworthy of every advantage and aid—they judge that their force and operation pertain neither to the cleansing of the soul, nor to any other usefulness whatsoever.

Since therefore we hold with certainty from the Acts of that synod that Severus, Anthimus, Zoaras, and the rest lurking under the name of the Acephali gave themselves to manners and institutions of this depraved sort; that they undermined all the sacred mysteries with profane rites and sacrileges; that they declared war on the sacred images and the sign of the cross, shattered them and trampled them underfoot with their feet—who will be able to deny that they were Manichaeans? And indeed that they were condemned as Manichaeans, both by Pope Hormisdas and by another synod of Constantinople under Menna, is established by his letters and Acts, which can easily be surveyed by studious men. 15.

Having thus completed this first part of our Exercises pertaining to the history of the Manichaeans, it would be needful for us to relate something concerning the sects of the Paulicians, Bogomils, Waldenses, and other heretics, who drank in the doctrine of Manes and followed his institutions and manners. Nevertheless, since concerning these sects—which issued from the school of so great a wickedness—both Peter of Sicily, and Photius, and Christopher Wolf had already discoursed by a certain ordered method, we have rather resolved to describe the heresies of the Priscillianists, Pelagians, and Eutychians which were assailed and rejected by Pope Leo;

especially since it now wearies us to have composed the two preceding books with a rather copious pen, perceiving clearly that by our foregoing manner of discoursing we have run off into, and as it were wandered among, certain questions which will seem to those accustomed to judge us less kindly and favourably to pertain scarcely at all to the intent and title of the work.

But who is ignorant that the greatest men, sometimes practised in literary matters, could scarcely restrain their pen, when it unexpectedly befell them to have to deal with certain men ever devising new systems, who attempted to turn upside down either the sacred religion, or the form of ecclesiastical government and apostolic discipline, in order to overthrow or abolish these? For it was difficult to extricate themselves in few words from the objections, cavils, and fallacies of arguments of these men. Especially when they sometimes fell upon certain questions stirred up by heretics and schismatics, for the dissolving of which the testimonies of one or another holy Father could not suffice. It is no wonder, therefore, if sometimes,

wishing to explain the manner of a holy Pontiff's acting, we have deemed it necessary to appeal to the origin and institution of things, or to bring forward the preceding practice and custom of the Church, in order that we might clearly show that Saint Leo the Great neither overstepped the due limits set by rights in administering ecclesiastical matters; nor laboured with a zeal for amplifying his own dignity, by making light of or abolishing the prerogatives of the bishops of other Churches; nor, finally, was led either by ambition or by excessive severity to coerce the enemies of the Apostolic See and of the Christian religion. From marks of this kind we have hitherto striven to clear him, against Beausobre, Quesnel, and others.

Moreover, we have it in our wishes to accomplish this same thing in the following Exercises. Because, finally, those three theological points are judged to pertain to Manichaean history which, in past years, were given to be discussed in the public papal Academy of councils of our most holy lord Benedict XIV, we have therefore resolved to insert into this work an Exercise of this kind held by us, as an appendix to the preceding ones, with the counsel of most illustrious men and especially of the most illustrious and reverend lord Nicholas Antonelli, secretary of the sacred Consistory and of the aforesaid Academy.

Hence hoping that this labour of ours too, such as it is, will be by no means unwelcome to readers, since it sets forth the ecclesiastical rules of the Council of Gangra published against Manichaean dogmas—the sum, scope, and reasoning of which rules or canons the most excellent and most learned men have already explained in the year of the Lord 1743 in the papal hall, and adorned (as we have said) with most erudite observations. I am bidden to undertake a truly arduous question, hitherto (so far as I know) agitated on every side by none of the theologians: namely, whether from those words of the Apostle in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter XI, 15:

But if a woman nourish her hair, it is a glory to her, for her hair is given her for a covering—it is forbidden to women to cut their hair, according to the Gangran canons 13 and 17; then, whether it be not lawful for the same ever to take up male dress, because in Deuteronomy, chapter XXII, 5, it is read: A woman shall not be clothed with man's garment, neither shall a man use woman's apparel, for he who does these things is abominable before God; thirdly and finally, whether at least for piety's sake it be lawful for women to cut their hair, to take up male dress, especially monastic dress, and to feign themselves men. These three questions, I say, are handed to me to be pursued in this present light, not by scholastic method, but after the academic manner; in expounding which I have proposed to myself to imitate the custom of Socrates.

He therefore taught that in disputes of this kind not yet sufficiently defined, no judgment whatever ought to be interposed by the speakers, but that they ought only to propose and prove those things which seem most probable, to compare the causes, and to bring forth whatever can be said on either side, and, with no authority employed, to leave the judgment of the hearers whole and free. Treading therefore in footsteps of this kind, I shall easily avoid the ill-will of those who always think the contrary. And you, most wise men, will be for me witnesses and vindicators of the things which I now begin to say for the explaining of the three points of theology.

There can be no doubt whatever that by the name of woman the Apostle understood the whole female sex and all its ranks. Which indeed both the whole context of the entire Pauline canon above all proves, and Tertullian demonstrates by various arguments drawn from the texts of the Scriptures; inveighing besides with grave censure against those who less prudently wished to persuade themselves that Paul spoke only of married women, and who by a certain rash daring contended that it was lawful for unmarried women, whether with shorn head or with curled hair, with no covering at all assumed, to come forth both in sacred and in civil assemblies, under the pretext sometimes of a false virginity to be grandly boasted and paraded.

Their opinion therefore, as erroneous and repugnant to the sacred writings, the same Tertullian refutes in his book On the Veiling of Virgins, showing on that account that the Holy Spirit willed by the single name of woman to signify both the married and the unmarried, virgins and all ranks of the female sex, inasmuch as it is a general term, as is also 'female.' This first error being therefore rejected, yet another not unlike it must be plucked away, into which Louis Cappel fell, as his treatise On Prayer not obscurely declares. This heretical man, following the commentaries of Maimonides on the Mishnah, asserts in various places that the Apostle's canon of which we treat is to be accommodated to the custom of the place in which we are.

He says on that account that one ought to pray in the churches in that dress in which men are wont to testify their reverence and homage toward the magnates and princes of this age. And after some things, speaking of various and diverse rites both of the Gentiles and the Muhammadans, and of the Jews and Christians, he adds that the Apostle in this canon had regard to the civil custom which at that time commonly prevailed among the Greeks and Romans, to whom he was writing, whereby all freeborn men commonly came into public with bare and uncovered head.

Since therefore (he concludes) civil custom is not always one and the same everywhere and at every time, but varies very much according to the diversity of times, places, and peoples, those things also which pertain to the ecclesiastical realm cannot be the same everywhere. By a not dissimilar persuasion, reasoning about the female veil and head of hair, he contends that the apostle Paul had regard only to civil custom and usage, and therefore ordered (I use his words) that women should not be present at the sacred discourses in church except with face and the rest of the head veiled. But against Louis Cappel, Rhenanus, Munster, and the other champions of the pseudo-reformed doctrine, the Apostle himself makes resistance.

For when in the said chapter of the Epistle to the Corinthians he seemed to have said enough through the Scriptures and the reasoning of nature to persuade women of the necessity of a veil, yet perceiving that there would be among them certain persons who would resist testimonies and reasonings of that sort, he proposed no other argument rather to prove his case than the sacred custom of the Church. On that account he said: But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the Church of God. Not therefore did the Apostle, in order to confute his adversaries, wish to appeal to the customs of places or to civil usage, but to the sacred tradition both of the Old and the New Testament; as though he wished to hint (says the most learned Melchior Cano):

If anyone is so hard and obstinate that he is not led by the arguments set forth, but still contends that a woman ought to pray with uncovered head, this man I refute in no other way than that the Churches of God have no such custom. So great is the force in tradition, that those whom neither the Scriptures nor the reasoning of nature had moved, Paul deemed must be refuted by the custom and institution of the Churches. And indeed, as regards the Church of the Jews, it is impious to doubt that it followed any other rite than this. There exists a most brilliant testimony of Tertullian on this matter, in the book On the Soldier's Crown, whereby we are taught that it was nowhere lawful for the women of the Jews to cast off the covering of the head, that is, the sign of subjection.

Among the Jews (he says) the veiling of the head is so solemn for their women, that they are known thereby. He confirms this institution by the example of Rebecca, who, at the distant sight of her betrothed, assumed a veil. He inquires the cause and adds: Private modesty could not make a law. And at last he concludes: that precept of assuming the veil derived among the Jews from sacred tradition, was to have at length the authority of the Apostle by the interpretation of reason. Not fittingly therefore does Louis Cappel reason when, in the praised passage, he says that in the time of the apostle Paul this one thing was received and established in custom, that chaste and modest women, especially the marriageable, scarcely ever came into public except with veiled face;

then, turning his discourse to the Jewish nation, he adds: I know not whether perhaps the Jewish must be excepted. But this, on Tertullian's authority, could not be excepted, since the Church of the Jews, by no means resting on civil custom (as the barbarous nations did), but taught by the tradition of the Holy Spirit, always pursued whatever would give patronage to the modesty and bashfulness of the female sex. These foundations therefore being laid, and the opinions of the heretics being rejected, it will not be difficult to resolve the first question, if we say that by that canon of the Apostle it was never forbidden to women to cut their hair, but only to cast off the covering of the head. Nor do we frame this by any recent opinion, or assert it without the authority of the Scriptures.

For excellent above all is that from which the Apostle began this canon: he willed both men and women to be taught by what garb or by what rite there was to be praying in the churches. For I would have you know (says he, addressing the Corinthians) that the head of every man is Christ, but the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God. But what that name of 'head' signifies mystically, the same Apostle, in agreement with himself, explains in chapter v of the Epistle to the Ephesians, writing thus concerning women: Let women be subject to their husbands as to the Lord, because the man is the head of the woman, as Christ is the head of the Church. Not therefore must we labour over the signification of that word.

It intimates indeed the rule, power, and dominion which superiors have to exercise over those subject to them. The Apostle moreover proceeds to prescribe to men and women outward signs of subjection, lest their heads be brought to reproach during prayer. Yet he did not will one and the same thing to be common to both, but different things, and those especially which were most consonant with the sex of each, and would better answer to their honour. On that account, in the following verses he at once added: Every man praying or prophesying with covered head dishonoureth his head. But every woman praying or prophesying with head not veiled dishonoureth her head.

Paul therefore willed by that sacred canon to take counsel for the rite of those praying, lest Christian men and women in prayer, sometimes overstepping the laws of reverence, modesty, and bashfulness, should commit anything of reproach or disgrace. But this aim of the Apostle's writing being now perceived, it is by no means to be inferred that in what follows he wished to forbid women to cut their hair. For neither in the aforesaid chapter, nor in other places, do his words seem to have the force of a precept, since he only adorns women with praises if they nourish their hair, because the flowing locks become the female sex. Nor indeed are women praised on this account incongruously.

For the hair is the work of nature, which nature herself is wont to give more abundantly to women, for a covering of the head against nakedness, or for an ornament against the rude and unpolished array of outward conduct, or finally for a protection against whatever rigours of winter or other adverse weather. Moved perhaps by these reasons, the Apostle rightly wrote in verse 15: But if a woman nourish her hair, it is a glory to her, for her hair is given her for a covering. As though he hinted (notes Erasmus) that longer hair was given to women because they need a covering.

This truth, moreover, the ancient writers in Stobaeus, when they observed it, called the female head of hair a covering supplied by nature herself. And Clement of Alexandria, writing on the fashioning of woman, said: God made the woman glorying in her native hair, as the horse in its mane. But the Apostle's manner of speaking, and the very words which he uses, wonderfully add strength to our assertion. For Paul, first of all, calls the hair a covering not properly but only improperly, writing: For her hair is given her for a covering. For indeed if the hair were called a covering with true propriety.

Women who until quite recently, only a few years ago, had been letting their hair grow long would have needed no other veil in churches and public assemblies, and it would have been altogether permitted them to appear in public with head uncovered. From such a custom not only the piety and religion of Christians has hitherto shrunk in horror, but also the seemly modesty of every barbarous and non-Catholic people.

Again, if hair were properly to be called a veil, then neither men who grow their hair long, nor those who go bald, would ever stand in public or in churches with head uncovered. Therefore, in order to observe the Apostle's command (as is supposed), all men of every condition and rank would have to walk about with their locks shorn after the manner of monks — which how absurd it would be, and how false, I think no one is unaware. Since therefore that saying of the Apostle — 「Every man praying or prophesying with his head veiled dishonoreth his head」 — ought not to be understood of the natural covering of the hair, but of coverings put upon the head, namely caps, hats, mitres, and other things of that kind;

then, by the same token, one must infer from the opposite side that the Apostle commanded women to wear artificial veils in churches, so that they might the more easily provide always for their sense of shame, their modesty, and their decency. On the contrary, finally, if the hair were properly a veil, women would already be permitted to go out in public with hair loose and unshorn, like maenads, with no veil cast over them — a manner of conduct which the Catholic Church has always condemned as base and insane, derived from the impious way of living of the gentiles. But the Apostle's own words, which he uses, make our point even more clearly. For he does not employ the praised expressions in place of the veil, or for it, nor to indicate the origin of the matter;

but he takes them up merely to hint at the purpose, as is gathered from the Greek manuscripts which they present, from which my interpreters — namely Chrysostom, Theophylact, and the rest — have asserted that the Apostle wished to infer from the natural covering the necessity of another covering, a voluntary one, that is, and one that is put on. Namely, that women should learn that those things ought to be covered by diligence and art which nature willed to cover, and that by that assumed veil they should recall to memory the first condition of womankind, on account of which it was said to Eve and to all women, Gen. III, 16: 「And thou shalt be under the man's power, and he shall have dominion over thee.」

That these words indeed are to be referred not to subjection in love alone, but to their very condition, Augustine among the other Fathers taught in Book XI On Genesis according to the Letter — namely, that the man ought to have dominion over the woman even when she is unwilling, so that, unless this dominion be preserved, nature would be further corrupted and guilt increased. Let us not then wonder if the same Apostle, referring the woman's veil to subjection as to its true end, afterwards, in verse 10 of the same chapter, calls it 「power,」 saying: 「Therefore ought the woman to have power over her head.」

Namely, in so far as the woman's veil is a sign of power and a token of subjection, as is perhaps more clearly gathered from the Greek codices, which set it forth in such wise that the Hebrew and Chaldean words rada and radat correspond to it most exactly, and which they are wont to interpret of the veil of obedience. We can therefore scarcely doubt that the veil, prescribed there by the Apostle as an emblem of reverence, of shame, and of chastity, ought to be common to all women. So that on that account wives who use it are the glory of their husbands, and virgins the glory of themselves. But on the contrary, if they should reject the assumed veil, they would belie both their own and the seemliness of the Christian profession.

But if we were to inquire more curiously what form and how great an extent that veil ought to have, let us hear it from Tertullian. 「As much」 (he says) 「as loosened hair can occupy, so great is the region of the veil, so that the neck also may be surrounded. For those very (necks, namely) which it behooves to be subject — on account of which the power ought to be held over the head. The veil is their yoke.」 Since therefore this is the law of the assumed veil, this its end, this its purpose, it must by no means be judged that Christian women shrink from all these things, even if they cut off their hair for themselves — provided, however, that in cutting the hair they do not yield to vanity, luxury, and immodest adornment rather than to Christian moderation and humility;

or provided they do not resolve to attain to themselves anything depraved and repugnant to religion and faith — such as those women concerning whom action was taken in the canons of Gangra. We meanwhile do not here submit to examination those praised canons, which in the earlier dissertation of this year were already called to review by a certain distinguished and most learned theologian of this our Academy; especially since the reckoning of the time and the plan of our purpose do not permit it. But now I shall bring forward two other kinds of arguments, by which it will be established openly, and clearer than the very light, that by no law — whether divine, or ecclesiastical, or human — was it forbidden to women to cut their hair. The first can be drawn from the words of Deuteronomy.

For there God commanded the sons of Israel, who desired to take a captive woman in marriage, not to celebrate betrothal or nuptials unless first the hair of the captive to be betrothed were shorn, and her whole head of hair shaved off. 「If thou go forth… and see among the number of the captives a beautiful woman, and love her, and wish to have her to wife, thou shalt bring her into thy house, and she shall shave her head of hair, and pare her nails.」 Behold, then, the Lord's command concerning the shearing — nay, even the shaving off — of the whole woman's hair. If we diligently attend to the causes of this divine precept, and pursue them one by one, we shall affirm that there were indeed several. This they most fully and completely know who have surveyed the writings of the ancient philosophers.

From them we are taught that the shearing of the hair was sometimes a sign of servile condition and of captivity, as we also gather from various texts of the Scriptures. That the gentiles observed this rite Aristophanes proves, who, seized as it were with wonder, once said to a certain slave who was growing his hair: 「Being a slave, dost thou grow thy hair?」 The shearing of the hair was likewise a penalty for many or grave crimes, as the Apostle too writes, in verse 6 of the praised chapter: 「If a woman be not veiled, let her be shorn」 — as though, in penalty for the violated law concerning the wearing of the veil, the woman herself ought to be shorn and made bald.

But we gather that other crimes also underwent the same penalty of shaving, not only from various passages of the Scriptures, but from the civil laws in Ulpian, Justinian, and Tacitus. To this rite I think Juvenal wished to allude in Satire 5, who wrote: 「…He shall one day offer his head to be beaten with shaven crown, nor shall he fear to suffer the hard lash.」 But a third reason of that divine precept could be the disfigurement of natural beauty. Of this likewise the Apostle spoke in the same verse of the chapter: 「But if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her veil her head.」 But of this womanly shamefulness the holy Fathers especially discoursed more eloquently.

Among whom are Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, on whose testimonies Baronius rests in the Martyrology, on the 20th of September, when describing the martyrdom of the holy virgin Fausta. That shamefulness the profane writers also exaggerate, as may be seen in Apuleius, Statius, Virgil, and others; to whom Ovid, subscribing, thus sang: 「Base is a maimed beast, base is a field without grass, and a bush without leaf, and a head without hair.」 A fourth reason follows these preceding ones, which is drawn from penitence, mourning, and grief. For it ought to be most well known to all that both Jews and gentiles were accustomed to shear their hair for themselves in mourning and at the greatest funerals. For besides that which we read in Jeremiah VII:

「Cut off thy hair, and cast it away, and take up a lamentation on high」 — this is attested to us also from the words of Job and Micah. Concerning the same rite Herodotus, Statius, Virgil, and Seneca likewise discoursed; whose testimonies, since there is no need to bring them into the midst, let it suffice to have cited the writers. The last reason, finally, Clement of Alexandria supplies to us from the ancients, who asserted that the Law, in the passage of Deuteronomy praised above, commanded that the captive woman to be taken in marriage be shorn in order to curb and diminish the lust of the husband-to-be — because, namely, once the wife's head is disfigured, the ardor of carnal concupiscence more easily cools. Wherefore he added:

「For if the resolve still remains in him」 (he speaks of a Jew taking a captive woman) 「that he take her to wife, he will retain her, even though she have become unsightly.」 But that a woman renders herself less apt for kindling the enticements of the flesh by the shearing of her hair is evident from this: that nature has placed the hair, namely, in that part of the body which is more openly displayed, and which is more diligently arranged by women. Therefore, once that natural ornament is cut off — by which they strive to please and to shine more and more — they now grow accustomed to devote effort to humility, penitence, chastity, and the other virtues, provided, however, that they do not cast away the artificial veil. But —!

That for these causes women are pleasing to God, and violate no divine or apostolic precept, we have thus far demonstrated in this our rude discourse. It now remains that there is another kind of argument, by which, doubtless, we shall prove that women were still more pleasing to God when, for the sake of religion and of stricter discipline, they shear their hair for themselves. Especially famous, first of all, is that ancient command of the Lord, in which, addressing Moses in the Book of Numbers, He said: 「Speak to the sons of Israel: A man or a woman, when they shall have made a vow to be sanctified, and shall have wished to consecrate themselves to the Lord… during all the time of their separation, no razor shall pass over their head until the completion of the day on which they are consecrated to the Lord.」

From which words it clearly appears that the completion of the whole sanctification, both for men and for women who professed the Nazariteship only for a time, consisted in the shearing of the hair and the shaving of the whole head. But now that the Gospel had dawned, this law was not abrogated; nay, it was in fullest vigor when the same Paul wrote that Epistle to the Corinthians. For the Apostle himself, a little later, professed the same law of the Nazariteship. For the Epistle of which we now discourse he composed before he traversed Achaia and Macedonia, and it ought to be referred to the fifty-seventh year of the common era, which is the twenty-fourth from the death of Christ.

Namely, when the people of the Corinthians at Ephesus had sent Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus to visit the Apostle, as we are led to conclude from chapters IV, XI, and XVI of the same epistle. And yet the same Apostle, two years later, having completed various labors, shaved himself at Cenchrea on account of the vow of the Nazariteship, as is read in the Acts of the Apostles: where, having taken with him four men who had a vow upon themselves, he first commanded that they shave their heads, and on the following day, being purified with them, entered into the temple, announcing the fulfillment of the days of his purification. But that a law of this kind was common to women, the praised preceding words clearly reveal. There is therefore no reason why we should judge, on the strength of the Apostle Paul's rule, 「But if a woman grow her hair」