1. That a grave schism was then stirred up shortly afterward—on account of the pardon granted to bishops and clerics doing penance, who abhorred the Priscillianist heresy and its writings, or on account of the indulgence denied to the contumacious—the letters of Pope St Innocent to the synod of Toledo make most clearly manifest. The authors of this schism were the bishops of Baetica and Carthage, who, bearing most grievously that the Fathers of Toledo had received Symphosius, Dictinius, and the other bishops of Gallaecia into communion with their honours and grades retained, revolted from those who had received them. Whether spite, envy, and a craving for quarrel drove the minds of the Baeticans and Carthaginians;
or whether they truly resisted the statutes of Toledo lest the rigour of ecclesiastical discipline be too much relaxed, I do not dare to define. This one thing only is certain and proven: that in a short time the parties of the two factions so spread abroad in those provinces that—through the agency of Hilary the bishop and Elpidius the presbyter, who fled to the apostolic see—peace was violated, the order of discipline confounded, and, contrary to the canons, the order of the Fathers being despised and the rules neglected, they committed many things in the usurpation of the Churches, which, as with an obstinate and raving spirit, they dissolved the priestly concord in which the whole stability of our Catholic faith consists.
Meanwhile, while such evils were day by day being propagated more widely, Anastasius the supreme pontiff departed from this light. That Hilary and Elpidius might apply the necessary remedy to these evils, they set out for Rome, when now Pope Innocent held the helm of the apostolic see. But into what year of Christ the coming of these men to the City ought to be assigned, we have been able to conjecture from no monument of Christian or civil affairs—chiefly because in that letter which St Innocent wrote to the synod of Toledo for composing the most disturbed state of the Churches of Spain, the note of time or of the consulship is wanting.
It is nevertheless more probable that various years elapsed between the aforesaid synod of Toledo and the time of this letter of Innocent, in the course of which the schism—first stirred up in the province of Baetica and Carthage—could conveniently and opportunely be propagated far and wide through all the parts of the Spains. This is suggested to us by the death of Patruinus, bishop of Emerita, who had presided over the synod of Toledo, and by the appointment and ordination of his successor Gregory; then by the grave injuries which the same Gregory had suffered after obtaining the see of Emerita, whose honour St Innocent, that he might vindicate it, commanded that 'hereafter the spirit of faction should rise up against none of the good men.'
But that Pope Innocent did not meet this most grievous schism at the very outset of his pontificate, those words plainly betray with which he begins his letter, namely: 'Often, and with too much care, disturbance and schism of the Churches held me anxious—a thing which report declares to be creeping more widely day by day through the Spains and advancing with quickened step.' For often having heard by report the rumours of such great evils, he put off bringing them medicine, until from the more remote confines of Spain, Hilary and Elpidius, who had now come to Rome, with a faithful narration and with grief and groaning set forth what things they had exposed, in the confecting of the acts by consent of the presbytery, by which pestilence the Church was labouring.
Innocent himself confessed that the time had then emerged when correction could no longer be deferred, but that a fitting medicine ought to be provided. Wherefore he resolved to write to the bishops of the synod of Toledo, to chastise with a gentle arm, and to pinch, and to pluck at those who, on account of the communion of the Gallaecians with Symphosius and Dictinius, had revolted from the peace of all. But to which synod of Toledo St Innocent directed his letters is not sufficiently agreed among writers. Baronius and others persuade themselves that the holy pontiff wrote to the aforesaid preceding synod, or at least to the surviving bishops who had assembled at it.
On the contrary, Severinus Binius, with certain other writers, relying on various conjectures, judge that these letters ought to be referred to a new council likewise convened at Toledo—Vivarius too favouring them, who supposes that five assemblies of Toledo were held within a short time. But since the decision of this matter is subject to most grievous knots, for the loosening or at least the forestalling of which the necessary monuments do not survive, we shall determine nothing at all. 2. Our discourse shall therefore rather turn to that source whence St Innocent addressed the bishops of Toledo. That his words are in the first place full of apostolic vigour—words which he used for utterly extinguishing the fire of contention—no one will mutter against.
For he assails the authors of the schism, because, with each one aiming to obtain what he willed, 'they made an eternal round of evil and a certain circle out of such animosity, since assuredly for every good man in such matters it is better to be overcome than by an evil custom to obtain a depraved purpose which has once pleased.' That St Innocent might then more forcibly inveigh against the authors of the dissensions, he likens their irregular and raving movements to the Luciferian schism—namely, when pertinacity 'drew back that bishop from the concord of those' who had condemned the heresy of the Arians by a prudent conversion.
And he affirms that those who refused to communicate with the converted Priscillianists were stirred by that very same zeal, when the Church, by the authority in which she is strong, had already—their confession being first accepted, their penance and conversion approved—received them into her bosom. 'Which deed'—he subjoins—'is discovered to have displeased even the very peace of the Churches to certain persons' (namely to the Baetican and Carthaginian bishops).
But because he knew that the aforesaid bishops were bursting with envy that the Church had received Symphosius, Dictinius, and others with honours and offices, he first praises the purpose of unity and concord in these men, by which, being led, they had condemned the depraved heresy; then he as it were marvels that there were found men to whom a rightly-made correction was displeasing. 'I ask'—he himself subjoins a little after—'why they grieved that Symphosius and Dictinius and others who condemned the detestable heresy were then received into the Catholic faith? Did they lose anything of the honours which they had?'
'But if this pricks and stings any, let them read that the apostle Peter, after his tears, was that which he had been; let them consider that Thomas, after that doubt, lost nothing of his former merits.' 3. These therefore, and other examples of this kind drawn from the sacred writings, he set against the authors of the schism—whether to vindicate the preceding statutes of the Fathers of Toledo, or to remove from Symphosius and Dictinius all suspicion of the taint of heresy, or finally, all dissensions being composed, to bring all men into the bond of unity and concord, and to begin that there should be one unconquerable body in the Churches of the Spains. Thus indeed he addressed all in general, as though each one singly, in writing.
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But then, turning his discourse to particular scandals, he commands that Rufinus the bishop be rebuked, who—received among the penitents in the synod of Toledo—had afterward usurped to himself the rights of his metropolitan, and, contrary to the will of the people and the order of discipline, had dared to ordain a bishop in hidden places and to mix the Churches with scandals. He then bids that the cause of the bishops of Tarraco be treated, who complained that Minicius had in like manner ordained a bishop in the Church of Gerunda.
But because finally both Rufinus and Mucius of Gerunda had here and there in other men's Churches, with the greatest injury to the metropolitans, claimed for themselves the right of ordinations, he says: 'According to the Nicene canons (namely) sentence is to be pronounced concerning such usurpation,' and, a full discussion being held concerning those ordained, he decrees that they are to be deprived of the priesthood, 'that, because they were wrongly made, they may understand that they cannot longer retain that which they have viciously obtained at the beginning.' 4.
In the third chapter he assails the levity of mind of a certain bishop John, who—absent from the council, when through his vicar he had approved the acts of Toledo, and when the correction of Symphosius and Dictinius on their return from the synod had seemed to him so probable that he now communicated with them—nevertheless, in the course of time, withdrawing himself from them, had consented to open schism. Against this man therefore, and against others who were seen to have ceased from the fellowship of communion, he bids that a fuller inquiry be made, and that those apprehended, if they refuse to return to concord, be excommunicated. 5. Of greater moreover, or at least of equal, moment are those things which he enlarges upon concerning the unlawful ordinations of clerics, in regard to which ecclesiastical discipline seemed either to have collapsed or to have been utterly abolished.
Wherefore, that greater disturbances might be forestalled, he does not call into doubt ordinations of this kind—inasmuch as they were already made, and on account of the number of those to be corrected—but leaves them to the judgment of God; yet he objects to them the defect of four kinds of ordained men in these words, saying: 'For how many of these who, after receiving the grace of baptism, have been engaged in forensic practice and have taken up an obstinacy for obtaining, do we find have been admitted to the priesthood—of whose number Rufinus and Gregory are reported? How many from some military service, who, while they obeyed the powers, of necessity carried out severe commands! How many from the curials, who, while they obey the powers, did the things that were commanded them?'
'How many who celebrated pleasures and public shows for the people have attained to the honour of the supreme priesthood—of all whom not one ought to have attained even to the fellowship of the order of clerics?' All these men therefore, impeded by the vices of irregularity, Pope Innocent could have censured, or at least commanded that in a new council a full inquiry, to be referred to the apostolic see, should be held. But the holy pontiff employed leniency, pardon and remission being imparted to the offenders. Whence he preferred rather that only for the future the rigour of sacred discipline should be preserved:
'So that if after this they should attempt, against the forms of the canons, to come either to the ecclesiastical order or to the priesthood itself, they, together with their creators, should be deprived of the very order and honour in which they were found.' 6. But lest for the future the observance of the Nicene canons should rashly be neglected, nor should he leave to anyone the free judgment of interpreting them otherwise, he teaches that those are to be debarred from all sacred ministry who, baptism being received, have served in the army, who have pleaded causes; nor can any of the curials come to the ecclesiastical order who after baptism have either been crowned, or have sustained what is called the priesthood, or have celebrated public shows.
But he commands that those be set over the sacred ministries who either from their earliest age were baptized and associated to the office of the elect; and of those baptized in adulthood he subjoins: 'or, if they be older, when they have obtained the grace of God, they have straightway devoted themselves to the ecclesiastical orders.' Finally, as regards the twice-married, he perpetually excludes them from the sacred orders, and, relying on the words of the Apostle, 1 Timothy chapter 3, 'the husband of one wife,' he refutes the errors of those who objected that a wife taken before baptism ought not to be reckoned, because in baptism all things are remitted. But he declares that this ought to be understood of sins alone: 'Sins alone indeed'—he says—'are remitted in baptism, nor is the number of wives abolished.'
The authors of this depraved opinion he restrains by many arguments, the last of which is of this kind: 'For if a wife taken before baptism is not brought into the reckoning, neither can the children begotten of her be numbered among the children—which how absurd it is,' he says, 'and how alien, your prudence will better estimate.' 7. This manner of acting therefore of Pope Innocent, exceedingly consonant with the statutes and the economy of Siricius and of his other predecessors, plainly betrays what and what kind of rights the apostolic see of St Peter has perpetually exercised over the Churches of the rest of the Catholic world—in condemning or proscribing heretics; or when it was a question of receiving penitents, and of relaxing the canonical penalties through indulgence;
or finally, while necessity demanded that new statutes issued by synods should obtain force. But that the ancient and approved canons should be rightly and faithfully interpreted, and the depraved assertions of certain men—errors containing matters concerning faith, morals, and discipline—should be proscribed. Did not Pope Innocent himself attain all these things by this single letter, without anyone's daring to appeal to another judgment? Did Hilary the bishop and Elpidius the presbyter journey to Rome upon the aforesaid most grievous causes, in order merely to consult Innocent—and not rather that the same pontiff might bring forth a definitive sentence, and that indeed in writing?
Far too ineptly—not to say stupidly—do those reason who feign to themselves that the Roman pontiffs in these and like causes performed the office of counsellors and doctors, not of judges. All Catholics who flourished even in the first ages of the Church never resisted the oracles of the Roman pontiffs, but with the highest veneration of soul both sought out and received their statutes as rules of faith and morals. Meanwhile, however, it is the more grievously to be lamented that those Innocentian statutes could not be easily and perfectly carried into execution. For although the time precisely at which the apostolic see issued them is not known, as we have said;