Sermons & Letters 220

It was then the four hundred and forty-sixth or forty-seventh year of Christ, when Turribius, bishop of the Church of Astorga in Gallaecia, as a slight tranquillity was beginning to dawn, strove utterly to purge away the Priscillianist plague, and to proscribe, destroy, or consume entirely by fire the books of Dictinius and other apocryphal writings, which were either kept in private houses or openly read in the churches. And when he had all this most earnestly at heart, following the examples of the other Catholic Fathers, he judged forthwith that no other judge and master was to be appealed to than the holy Roman pontiff Leo, to whom he directed his writings.

And so Turribius himself entrusted to Pervincius, deacon of his Church of Astorga, the task of journeying to Rome and delivering to St. Leo writings of this kind. Now what sorts of writings he transmitted to the Apostolic See, Leo himself indicated in the opening of his fifteenth letter, saying that from the discourse of the letter, and the series of the memorandum, and from the text of the little book, he had learned that the most foul dregs of the Priscillianists had grown hot again in those regions. But such writings of Turribius, from which we might more easily have grasped the wretched state of the Churches of Gallaecia and the Spains, have long since perished. The most grievous loss of this misfortune we can in some measure repair, at least, by the letters to the bishops Idatius and Ceponius,

which are circulated under the name of Turribius of Astorga, and by that genuine and celebrated letter which in this cause Leo wrote back to Turribius. Upon both, then, it behooves us for the present to dwell, that we may bring to completion this history of the Priscillianists, which we have undertaken to set forth. And certainly Turribius himself, or he who plays the part of Turribius, described in that letter the deplorable state of those Churches, when, namely, discoursing of the burdensome and unpleasant pilgrimage which he had always undergone between two labors and tearful necessities.

Among these, he asserts, he had some assistance, since by approaching things unknown and by learning things not known before, we are increased with a certain advancement of mind, for the most part perceiving by a better reasoning that those things which among us seemed best have been rendered depraved and most base. But on what matters Turribius, made more instructed by his pilgrimage, so came out that he could easily recognize that things which had sometime seemed best to him had been rendered depraved and most base, he at once makes plain, commending above all that unity which he found in all the Churches of those provinces which he had traversed.

For in these, he says, with the highest agreement of minds and without any schism, all held communion with one another; and, all sects of errors being condemned, he found that one and the same sense of the Catholic faith was held, coming from the purest fountain of truth, which, split into no divisions by many-forked rivulets, does not dissolve the level plains into muddy pits that would hinder the straight path of faith. By which narration he wished to recall nothing else to the mind of those bishops than the zeal for procuring this Catholic unity and communion.

For this the pestiferous poison of the Priscillianist heresy had long since cast out and banished from the Churches of the Spains and of Gallaecia. Therefore, that he might kindle the minds of Idatius and Ceponius to zeal for religion, he sets before them the examples of the Churches which he had visited, whose pastors reform in the bosom of a pious mother those whom the poison of depraved doctrines had infected, if they are corrected; but the obstinate, like abortive births and no lawful offspring, they expel from fellowship with the holy inheritance. After long spans of years, then, Turribius, having returned to Astorga, was direly tormented, when he observed that traditions long since condemned by the Church, which he had supposed to be fully abolished in those regions, still more stubbornly flourished.

Nay, torments of this kind were increased in him, as he came to know that, according to each man's zeal and will, depraved doctrines were sprouting up like so many heads of a hydra. Of these, some were bringing the arguments of their blasphemies to the old error of the heretics; others were professing entirely the doctrine of Priscillian; others, finally, having in part only forsworn the more principal doctrines which plainly warred against Catholic truth, since they retained some still, seemed to adhere to the rest. All these things, I say, had grown up more freely here and there throughout the Spains and Gallaecia, the assemblies and decrees of synods having ceased, Turribius himself asserts.

And at last he lamented one crime, most grievous and most impious, worse than all the rest: namely, that men of diverse senses of faith would gather at one and the same altar. But when Turribius recounted all these things, he was moved by love of his fatherland alone, not by rash presumption, from which he was utterly a stranger. And therefore, earnestly pursuing Catholic truth, he likened the native heretics to thieves and adulterers, who, withdrawn by their untruth from the sacred doctrines, execrated the authority of the divine word; and that they might the more easily corrupt it with adultery, having rejected the canonical and evangelical Scriptures, they applied themselves only to the reading of apocryphal books. But lest to the bishops to whom he was writing

he should become grave and burdensome, or should seem to exercise a mastership over them, serving both prudence and zeal, he professes to employ toward them no exhortation of authority at all, but only the instruction of a suggestion; reckoning it before God a matter of graver crime had he kept silence. Such, I say, was Turribius's moderation of mind toward his fellow bishops, such his zeal in describing the perfidy of the heretical men; whose doctrines and mastership, if any of the Catholics rebuked with a little more constancy, straightway they would elude the disputations of the encounters, going in circles, and would strive to hide perfidy with perfidy;

and lest they should do this any further, he describes and lays bare their crafty and cunning arts, whereby they either prefer the apocryphal Scriptures to the canonical books, or venerate secret and hidden traditions, expressed in no books, not even apocryphal ones, through which they falsely claimed that the apostles themselves had spoken; or finally, they perhaps kept certain other books more secretly among themselves alone, open, as they themselves say, only to the perfect. But with what apocryphal books the Priscillianists especially made use, he indicated a little later, discoursing specially of the Acts which were circulated under the name of St. Thomas. In these he noted one thing before

all others to be marked and execrated, namely, that it says he does not baptize with water, as the Lord's proclamation has it, but with oil, which depraved custom the Manichaeans, together with the same standard-bearer Manes, pursued. This offspring, therefore, execrable to all and condemned in all parts of the earth, received only apocryphal books, or made use of certain other things stuffed with apocryphal fables, as had become known by their own confession. But other books of the same kind were handled by the hands of the Priscillianists, namely those Acts which are called of St. Andrew, or others which were said to be of St.

John, which Lucius had once written with sacrilegious mouth; or finally that volume, the monster of all blasphemies, which was falsely inscribed 'The Memorial of the Apostles.' For in it false apostles and false prophets, to gain great authority for their perversity, falsified the doctrine of the Lord; the whole law of the Old Testament was destroyed, and all things which were divinely revealed to St. Moses concerning the diverse natures of the creature and of the Creator. When Turribius, therefore, had found Gallaecia especially and the Spains undermined by so many and so great miseries and by nefarious and sacrilegious errors, he was rousing the minds of the other bishops to procure and then apply that remedy which should be more consonant with the divine and ecclesiastical laws.

Wherefore, that he might more easily attain this, he composed a certain work, in which he set out those testimonies full of blasphemies which were found in the writings of the Priscillianists, and to these, as he was able, according to the quality of his own understanding, he replied. This work, elaborated by himself, they think he took care first to scatter abroad among the people, so that no one (he himself says) might thereafter, as though ignorant of the matter, claim that he simply had or read books of this kind. Then next he submitted it to the judgment, censure, and estimation of Idatius and Ceponius, that they, namely, might weigh the whole, and that whatever seemed contrary to truth and faith without ambiguity, they might take care, together with other brethren joined to them, to cut away and abolish.

But there occurs to us a learned and erudite man, Stephen Baluze, inquiring, namely, and doubting concerning the trustworthiness and authority of this letter of Turribius. For the observations with which he adorned the Council of Astorga, held (as they say) in the year of Christ 446, disclose that several marks of forgery had made themselves felt to him. And he confesses that he draws the whole suspicion of fabrication from the words of St. Leo. For the supreme pontiff, writing back to Turribius of Astorga, ordered that at least the bishops of Gallaecia should assemble, for whose gathering our brethren Idatius and Ceponius were to press. And, observing this, Baluze adds:

'There is a grave suspicion that that letter, namely of Leo, put into the mind of some impostor the thought of fabricating the one which is said to have been written by Turribius to Idatius and Ceponius; and therefore I abstain from it.' But, opposing himself to Baluze, the most learned cardinal de Aguirre contends that the praised letter is to be adjudged to Turribius of Astorga; and, to snatch away what is objected by that learned collector of the Councils, he first excuses him, as being aware of the innumerable fables extant in the ancient pseudo-chronicles, and moved by these, as having rejected whatever is narrated in them, so long as they are not elsewhere supported or confirmed by some certain and firm testimony.

Secondly, he says that the letter of Turribius of which we are treating was not devised and feigned by those old cheats who so disfigured Spanish history with so many fictions and absurdities, but is found in a manuscript codex of about six hundred years' antiquity, and so forth. But between these two contrary opinions my mind long remained suspended, uncertain which to subscribe to. For the antiquity of the codex, which Cardinal Aguirre valued so highly, does not remove all suspicion that the praised letter was not fabricated by some ancient impostor. It settles nothing at all that King Philip II, in the time of Ambrosio Morales, transferred that codex from the most ancient library of the distinguished monastery of St. Emilian into another more recent one, that of St.

Lawrence in the Escorial, about twenty years before the fictions of Dexter, Maximus, and Julian—this settles nothing. What of it? Were there not more ancient impostors, who for several centuries might have been able to touch it? For that, once the apostles had already departed this life, many volumes were fabricated by impostors even under the name of the sacred Scriptures, all the monuments of the Church and this very letter of which we are treating plainly disclose. The antiquity of that codex, therefore, would establish nothing, unless that a more ancient impostor, most excellently instructed concerning the affairs of Spain and Gallaecia, already in the waning of the eleventh century, or the beginning of the twelfth, forged this one letter of Turribius.

To this opinion of Baluze, however, I do not so easily subscribe, but I hold that Cardinal Aguirre's reasons are utterly weak. For if I were here to undertake to treat of the arguments for forgery to be discovered in that letter, I could indeed confess that many things in reading it offended me, which were noted neither by Stephen Baluze, nor by the Spanish collector of the Councils himself, nor by any other. Of what kind, for instance, does that exordium appear, in which Turribius discoursed of himself, as of one coming from a distant pilgrimage, in which he had spent a long span of years? Whether these things can be true of a bishop most exceedingly zealous for the safeguarding of ecclesiastical discipline, who could suspect?

For shall we suppose that, with so many calamities pressing hard, under the indignation of God and the Church, this excellent pastor wished or was able to desert his flock? No one will be able to trifle with me on this point, especially since St. Leo, to whom Turribius set forth the most wretched state of those Churches, adorns him with the highest praises, because, ever vigilantly and solicitously, he had devoted the devotion of the pastoral office to the Lord's flock. Assuredly, if Turribius had gone on pilgrimage merely led by his own choice, the holy pontiff ought rather to have carped at and rebuked him, because he had fled from the Lord's flock, subjecting the sheep entrusted to him to be torn to pieces by the fury of wolves.

For only on a twofold ground could rebukes such as these have undeservedly escaped him: on the one hand, that of exile, into which the bishop Turribius had been driven by the doing of the Arian princes; on the other, that, not yet raised to the episcopate, he had made a long journey abroad over a span of years. But both grounds waver. For if, the fury of the Arian princes blazing against him, he had undergone exile, he would not have exaggerated the labors and inconveniences of a pilgrimage, but of exile; and besides, after sentence had been passed against him, another would already have been intruded onto the throne of Astorga, just as in the fourth preceding century of the Church the Arians themselves were wont to do. What of it? If Turribius in this letter to his

two fellow-bishops of Gallaecia omits to mention this penalty of exile, as being most well known to them, would he perhaps have omitted to narrate it in the letter to Leo? Or would Leo himself in his rescript not have indicated it as a sign of fatherly compassion? What more? Would Idatius in his Chronicle, who described the other disasters of the bishops, have kept silent about this one alone concerning Turribius's exile? Finally, why would all the other writers of Spain and Gallaecia have labored under such silence in a matter of the greatest moment? Not to this evasion, therefore, must recourse be had. Nor indeed could Turribius have accomplished so long a pilgrimage of many years before he was raised to the episcopate.

For after the death of Dictinius, which occurred before the year of Christ 420, as we have seen from Augustine, Turribius had already attained the Church of Astorga. But then not Leo the Great, but Zosimus, or Boniface, presided over the Catholic Church. Wherefore, since in the opening of the second chapter of that letter Turribius speaks of himself as of a man just now arriving from a pilgrimage, it follows that what Baluze and Aguirre narrate from Idatius's Chronicle concerning the Council of Astorga can in no wise be thrown back into Leo's age, namely into the year 446.

But if at last we should feign that Turribius did not write to Idatius and Ceponius immediately after obtaining the episcopate, nor appeal to Leo as supreme master and judge, but that the whole span of twenty-seven years or so had elapsed, then Turribius would at once be blameworthy, because so late, when those most grievous evils were breaking out afresh, he had put off seeking and bringing a remedy, and, against the statutes of the sacred canons, had wished, leaving his own Church, to go on pilgrimage. It must be confessed, therefore, that in that letter there are contained at least such obscurities as can in no way cohere and be reconciled with Turribius's piety and holiness, with the discipline of the Church, with the sacred canons, and with Christian affairs.

Thus indeed I reasoned with myself, after I had more often read the letter through. In it I met with other things too which savor at least of the writer's manifest drowsiness. Of this kind, indeed, seemed to me either those things which are read in chapter 4, 'that they should no longer do this,' down to the end, in which by no means can a genuine sense be argued according to the rules of grammatical syntax; or what is observed in the following chapter 5, where the same narration concerning the apocryphal Acts of St. Thomas is repeated, and other things of that sort, which surely either prove the writer's carelessness, or greatly diminish the excellence of that codex in which that letter was found under the name of Turribius and faithfully brought forth.

But although in that letter many things shine forth which greatly disagree from truth, or at least from likelihood, yet I am afraid to judge that it is to be rejected or held as spurious. Nay, I myself, in collecting and adorning the works of St. Leo the Great—just as Quesnel transferred it into his own edition, so too in another new one which, after these Dissertations, I have resolved to make—deem it necessary that it be preserved. For that reason I have taken care, so far as I could, to adorn it with various annotations drawn from the most approved writers, so that the friendly reader might be able to guard against the equivocations and obscure senses with which it teems.

But meanwhile, before I remove my hand from the tablet, I judge that what is there described concerning the state of those Churches of Gallaecia and Spain is amply to be approved. For most abundantly it corresponds with those things which are seen in the fifteenth letter of St. Leo the Great, concerning whose trustworthiness and authority even to suspect would be the greatest crime. For both old and ancient manuscript copies contain it as the genuine offspring of the holy pontiff; the Fathers of the Council of Braga and the fourth general synod adjudged it to St. Leo; all writers, none gainsaying, since they attested this same truth, opened a most ample field to the editors, that, every scruple removed, they might print it in all the vulgate copies.

We, therefore, supported by so many and so great preceding testimonies, since we could in no wise doubt concerning the truth and authority of the fifteenth letter of St. Leo the Great, took care only to purge it of the errors, if any had crept into it. For accomplishing which labor the more happily, the necessary aids were not lacking to us; for, besides various most ancient Vatican codices, which we surveyed with our own eyes;

besides the Grimani archetype preserved at Paris, according to whose readings Paschasius Quesnel greatly glories in having adorned his edition, which we ourselves, aided by the help of friends, took care faithfully to transcribe, we compared that same letter both with the Vallicellan and with two Florentine copies, so that, God's Deity at length aiding, all the works of Leo might come forth in new type purer, brighter, and enlarged. But let us now return to our undertaking. The praised letter, then, of the holy pontiff to the bishop of Astorga has sixteen chapters appended, because just so many did Turribius propose to Leo for discussion and definition. These words intimate it:

'Since therefore thy love, with faithful diligence as much as it could, comprehended in sixteen chapters the opinions long ago condemned.' But we prove that in a very ancient Vatican copy, together with the Grimani codex, it is to be read as seventeen. This the very division of the chapters more confirms, which in the last place exhibits this Roman numeral with the following title: 'Chapter XVII. Whether the flesh of Christ truly rested in the tomb.' Let those who are wont to commend beyond measure Quesnel's zeal, labor, and diligence in adorning and correcting the works of St. Leo take note, I pray, into what drowsiness he has fallen. Let them see whether these things are an argument that he took the Grimani codex as a touchstone in religiously testing the readings of the Leonine text.

Let them say whether he diligently surveyed the works of the holy pontiff, who in a badly composed synopsis subjoins the titles of only sixteen chapters, the last being passed over, though the letter itself is now divided into seventeen, of which the last has its own title, wholly wanting in the preceding synopsis. But of this matter it will be more diligently disputed in its own place, just as of that most ancient Vatican Palatine copy of this letter, which presents to us a certain hitherto unpublished fragment concerning the canonical Scriptures.

Whether this is to be adjudged to Leo or not, we shall likewise pursue elsewhere, since they see that it pertains chiefly only to the rite and order which the Roman Church of St. Peter was wont to observe through the seasons of the year in the reading of the divine and canonical Scriptures. Let it now be permitted to our discourse only to range through the most ample field of this Leonine letter, as it hitherto stands in all the vulgate copies; for since that letter is crammed with most certain and most abundant testimonies on every side, we shall the more easily both gather from it the sources and errors of the Priscillianist heresy, and at the same time more clearly behold the authority and irreformable judgment of the Apostolic See in refuting them.

And indeed, that the Priscillianist doctrines were more wicked than the errors of all preceding heretics, and drew from them every venomous contagion of impiety, St. Leo at once taught in the exordium of that letter, calling the sect of the Priscillianists the most foul dregs of all heresies. He adds that the Priscillianists had so immersed themselves in the darkness of paganism that, employing the vain lies of the astrologers and the profane secrets of the magic art, they placed the faith of religion and the reckoning of morals in the power of demons and in the influence of the stars. These and other similar doctrines of that most nefarious sect Leo recounted, and he recalls to mind the zeal of the ancient Fathers who flourished in the preceding century, who in

the councils all applied their efforts, that such an impious frenzy might be driven from the whole Church. He then relates how the princes of the age so greatly detested this sacrilegious madness (namely, the tyrant Maximus) that they laid low its author, together with most of his disciples, by the sword of the public laws. This first kind and example of bloody judgment, by which the princes and magistrates of the age have sometimes taken measures against obstinate heretics, has been able hitherto greatly to torment the mind of both ancient and more recent writers. 'I foresaw,' says Noel Alexandre, in his Ecclesiastical History, fourth century, chapter 3, article

17, 'that heretics could abuse this history, both against the office of the holy Inquisition, which hands over, or leaves, obstinate heretics to the secular magistrates to be punished with the extreme penalty; and against the very princes and magistrates, who by their own right take measures against them even with the penalty of death.' In the same place P. Noel intends to vindicate from all censure that proposition which had crept into the earlier edition of his work: 'No Catholic has said that emperors and kings cannot take measures against a heretic even with the penalty of death.' But in what sense he said it, he then explained in the last edition, and he labors in asserting this power of the princes of the age.

His annotator Constantine Roncaglia, in the latest Lucca edition, likewise wished to treat of this same authority of princes. He first, by the suffrage of the canonists, shows that in judging causes of heresy, the Church is powerful with authority both over those things which are of law and those which are of fact. Then he says: 'That it is not foreign to the power of princes, by laws and appointed penalties, to remove heresies, sacrileges, and the like, Bellarmine taught,' and so forth. Assuredly, if both these most illustrious men, and as many as have discoursed on this and similar causes, had turned their attention to our holy pontiff, they would not have labored so greatly, but would more easily and readily have snatched away whatever can be objected by the heterodox.

But as to why the princes of that age charged that bloody kind of judgment to be exercised against the Priscillianists, the holy pontiff Leo explains in the following words: 'For they saw' (namely the princes of the age) 'that every care for decency was being taken away, that the bond of marriage was being dissolved, and that at the same time divine and human law was being overthrown, if it were ever permitted for men of this sort to live under such a profession.'

Since, then, the crimes of the Priscillianists were such that they brought not only the gravest disgrace and most serious injury upon religion, but could also lead the very commonwealth to utter ruin, especially in those matters which violate the laws of nature, the princes of that age therefore did not hesitate to destroy and abolish the profession of that sect together with its authors, capital penalties being applied. Relying on these reasons, the holy pontiff confessed that a similar judgment had long profited the leniency of the Church. For he adds:

'This strictness has long profited the Church's leniency, which, though content with priestly judgment and shrinking from bloody vengeance, is nevertheless aided by the stern ordinances of Christian princes, since those who fear bodily punishment sometimes have recourse to a spiritual remedy.' Therefore, when the Church takes action against obstinate heretics, she does not decree capital punishments, nor inflict them, nor seek to have them inflicted. Always content with her own spiritual penalties, and lest she incur any lack of leniency, she shrinks from all bloody vengeances.

But if nevertheless these are established by the public decrees of secular princes and magistrates, they profit her greatly, and she is thereby aided, especially because offenders, terrified by the severity of bodily punishments, have grown accustomed to have recourse to a spiritual remedy—namely, to the abjuration of their crimes and to penance. Nor let anyone, from a similar manner of speaking in Leo, persuade himself that the obstinacy of Idatius and Ithacius—of which we treated above, and on account of which they were hateful to the Catholic bishops, and to Marinus especially, and that Ithacius himself was openly condemned by bishop Theognostus—is thereby excused. For by no excuse can a bishop be cleared who, indulging his own private zeal,

who has despised the judgments of his fellow brethren brought together in councils, and has been willing to press secular princes and magistrates with his own accusations by procuring the death of the guilty. That this manner of acting is repugnant to Catholic leniency is most evident. But most of all do the prelates of our Churches abhor it, as does that holy office of the Inquisition, against which Father Natalis Alexander foresaw that heretics might be able to devise slander.

And indeed that these penalties of severity had been of assistance to the Church, Leo himself confirmed also from this: that bodily punishments and the executions of ecclesiastical laws had, on account of the gravest vicissitudes of wars, been obliged to cease for the space of many years, nor was it any longer permitted for the priests of the provinces themselves to assemble more frequently in one place. 'Hidden perfidy' (says the holy pontiff) 'found liberty, and was incited to the subversion of many minds by the very same evils by which it ought to have been corrected.' For which cause he at once proceeds to deplore the most wretched state of Gallicia and the Spains, of which not only the common people, as he had learned from Turribius, were corrupted by the deadly pestilence of contagion;

but, what is graver, the priests of those same regions, seized by this lethal disease, were oppressing the truth with many errors, preferring the doctrine of Priscillian to the teachings of the Gospel, and setting these things at last, depraved by profane meanings, before the people, or preaching them, so that, rejecting the revelations of the Holy Spirit, they might breathe the dogmas of the devil into the souls of their hearers. These things Turribius had proposed to be reformed to St Leo, for the deplorable state of those Churches; to which he subjoined seventeen chapters comprising the opinions once briefly condemned, which the holy pontiff, by the supreme dignity of his apostolate, condemned anew, lest any of those same blasphemies should in future seem tolerable or doubtful.

We, meanwhile, judge that it will not be unwelcome to our readers to subjoin here, briefly and as it were in a compendium, the sum of these chapters. For the accomplishing of which work, although long ago several more distinguished theologians have set their hand to writing ecclesiastical histories, yet I know not whether they have more happily noted at least all the principal errors of this sect, from which others of lesser moment also drew their origin. Nor indeed did Father Natalis Alexander fully attain this, who, undertaking to compose a certain catalogue or synopsis of all the Priscillianist errors, deceived by I know not what fate, noted only fourteen, three others—and those indeed among the more principal—being wholly passed over.

But from this single letter of Leo it becomes clearer than light to all that there were seventeen, as we shall presently declare. The holy pontiff, therefore, in order to fulfil the desire of Turribius, bishop of Astorga, treats one by one those same chapters which the deacon Pervincus had brought from Gallicia to be judged. First, the Priscillianists thought impiously concerning the mystery of the Trinity, preaching only one three-named person in God, as Sabellius and the Patripassians taught. This error the holy pontiff refutes not only by the decrees of the Nicene synod, but also by theological arguments, which seem to savour of the formulas of speech of the Athanasian Creed.

Secondly, they feigned that certain virtues proceed from God, which they affirmed God had not always possessed in His essence, but had begun at some time to possess—just as the Arians most wickedly reasoned. Thirdly, they contended that the Son of God is called only-begotten because He alone was born of the Virgin. Wherefore they either assigned to Christ a beginning from His mother, along with Paul, bishop of Samosata, and Photinus; or they believed that there was not one Son of God, but that others also were begotten of the supreme Father, of whom this one alone was born of a woman, who for this reason is called only-begotten because no other of the sons of God undertook this condition of being born.

Fourthly, they did not believe that Christ the Lord was born in the true nature of man, and therefore, with Cerdo, Marcion, and Manes, they affirmed that He had joined to Himself only an apparent and illusory flesh. Seduced indeed by this error, they spent the day of the Lord's Nativity and of His Resurrection in mourning and grief, afflicting their bodies with fasts. Fifthly, they then asserted that the soul of man is of the divine substance, and that our nature does not differ from the nature of its Creator's condition. Sixthly, they said that the devil was never good, nor was his nature the workmanship of God, but that he emerged from darkness and chaos, since forsooth he has no author of himself, but is himself the beginning and substance of all evil.

Seventhly, together with the Manichaeans they also condemned the use of nuptials and matrimony, on this account, namely, that they might shudder at the procreation of lawful offspring, and might more easily admit the licence of all vileness. To which error the eighth was most nearly akin, since they said that human bodies are the fabrications of the devil, inasmuch as the seeds of conception are shaped in the wombs of women, and that these bodies themselves, being formed by diabolical power, could by no means be suited to the dignity of the soul. Hence they denied that, once the body was dissolved, souls could and ought to come to life again through the mystery of the resurrection.

No less monstrous was their ninth remark, whereby they preached that the sons of promise are conceived not from the seed of the flesh, but from the Holy Spirit, and that these are in no way subject to the sin and mortal contagion which pass into the offspring by the fault of Adam the first parent. Tenthly, moreover, they taught that souls which are inserted into human bodies had once sinned in the heavens, stripped of all bodily mass, and on that account had fallen down from higher things to lower, and had come under princes of diverse quality, and had been enclosed by the aerial and starry powers, some in harsher, others in gentler bodies, by a diverse lot and dissimilar condition, so that whatever comes forth in this life variously and unequally might seem to happen from preceding causes.

Their eleventh blasphemy was that they held both the souls and the bodies of men to be bound by the fatal stars, and therefore, together with the gentiles, they were zealous either to worship the stars favourable to them, or to appease those adverse. Twelfthly, they described the parts of the soul as being under some powers, and the members of the body under others, and they set the qualities of the interior rulers—namely of the virtues, which they feigned to govern the soul—under the names of the patriarchs, to which on the opposite side they set the bodily signs, to whose power the bodies would be subjected. They added that the parts of the human body correspond to the twelve signs of heaven, and are composed according to them, placing Aries in the head, Taurus in the neck, Gemini in the shoulders, Cancer in the breast, and so forth.

Thirteenthly, they erred concerning the knowledge of the Scriptures, since they received the body of the canonical Scriptures under the names of the patriarchs. For they fabled that those twelve virtues which work the reformation of the interior man are indicated in these names. Fourteenthly, they so subjected man to the power of the stars and constellations that they contended that many things are found in the holy books which pertain to the exterior man, so that in the Scriptures themselves a certain contrariety is at variance with itself between the divine and the earthly nature, and that from one source is what the rulers of the soul claim for themselves, and from another source likewise the framers of the body. Fifteenthly, having adulterated the true Scriptures, they introduced false ones, which they called canonical;

in order, forsooth, that the holy pontiff might meet this most grievous evil, he laid down that general law by which he commanded the priests of the Churches to apply all diligence, lest either falsified codices should be had in use for reading, or apocryphal writings should be preserved by anyone. Concerning these he wrote thus: 'The apocryphal writings, which under the names of the apostles contain a seed-bed of many falsities, are not only to be forbidden, but altogether to be removed, and to be burned with fire.' By no defence, therefore, are heretics or innovators protected, when with many injuries they assail the more recent Roman pontiffs because they proscribe their works and command them to be burned with fire.

This discipline in the Catholic Church is exceedingly ancient, nor is it to be traced back only to Pope Gelasius, or to the council of seventy bishops then held, but to Leo the Great, who inculcates it as to be observed by all Catholic bishops. Wherefore Leo's manner of acting persuades and makes clear that, among other non-Catholics, Van Espen and Beausobre were splendidly deceived.

For Van Espen, when in the earlier part of his Works, entitled 'Of the Universal Ecclesiastical Law,' he by no means adverted to this decree of Leo, and when he undertook to treat of the Church's discipline in prohibiting the books of heretics, he relied solely upon the Gelasian decree, whose words he attempts to strip entirely of all force and strength, as it were affirming from the pulpit that the Church wished to guard only against the public, not the private, reading of proscribed books. Splendidly, I say, does Van Espen deceive himself. That this may become known, there will be no need at all that, departing from our purpose, we now begin to discuss the Gelasian decree. For that decree has come forth adorned with many learned notes, by the study and labour of Chifflet, Holstenius, and Fr Joseph Bianchini,

so that to enrich it with new observations would be altogether superfluous. To forestall Van Espen's lapse, therefore, it will suffice to advert to what St Leo subjoined. He, then, forbade under the mark of heresy—to the bishops who should permit it—not only the public use of corrupted, apocryphal, and false codices by Catholics, but also to be occupied with the private readings of these, or even to retain such copies in their houses. Wherefore he subjoined:

'Hence if any of the bishops has not forbidden the apocrypha to be had throughout the houses, or has permitted in the Church those codices to be read under the name of the canonical which are corrupted by the emendation of Priscillian, let him know that he is to be judged a heretic; because he who does not recall others from error, proves that he himself is in error.' A very ancient manuscript exemplar of the Palatine Vatican, after these words, exhibits to us a famous fragment of this letter, hitherto neither noted nor made public by the preceding editors of St Leo's Works. And although this does not seem wholly to savour of Leonine oration, yet the antiquity and authority of the praised codex, together with the tenor of the argument, most closely agreeing with the preceding words of the holy pontiff,

lead us to that counsel, that we should commit it to type, set within brackets, in the second volume. And as regards the antiquity of the codex, the appraisers of ancient characters have judged along with us that it reaches the ninth century. The tenor of the argument plainly answers to St Leo's aim in writing. For after rejecting the apocryphal writings, it seemed to concern him to designate the canonical ones, and in what order they should occur to be read in the Church, so that with the utmost concord the ministers of the holy altar might come together in chanting the divine praises and celebrating the mysteries. Moreover, by the accession of this addition, the earlier matters are most aptly joined to the later; and in the codex we came upon this heading, namely:

'Here begins the opinion of Pope Leo concerning the apocryphal writings.' Which has its exordium in those words of the praised chapter 15 of this letter to Turribius: 'Care must therefore be taken, and it must be most especially provided by priestly diligence, that falsified codices, etc.,' as far as those words which in all the printed editions close this chapter, namely: 'Because he who does not recall others from error proves that he himself is in error.' After which these other things are immediately subjoined: 'Now all the divine Scriptures of the holy canon are read in the Church of St Peter in this order from the beginning of the year to the end. In the time of spring, that is, seven days before the beginning of Lent up to the eighth day before Easter, are read the books of Moses with Joshua son of Nun and Judges, etc.'

Two things, therefore, in this brief leisure, we do not omit to note and mark down. The one, that the order described in this fragment for the reading of all the Scriptures of the holy canon throughout the course of the whole year does not differ from that distribution and arrangement which even now is seen in the Roman Breviary. For this proves the authority and antiquity of this sacred rite, derived from our forefathers, who took the resolution to distribute and accommodate, to each of the four seasons of the year, the readings of Scripture more fitting for the divine mysteries to be celebrated in the Church and more consonant, so that they might the more provide for and look to the dignity of the mysteries and the instruction of the peoples.

The other is, that in the praised fragment there are found described all the books described in the Tridentine canon, session 4, if however we except one or another. Which two things will indeed furnish to the studious men of the sacred Liturgies—who deservedly in these times spend labour on this work, with great profit to sacred antiquity—a supply of learned dissertations. We do not here subjoin the whole entire, lest we depart further than is fitting from our proposed aim. Yet that, just as it stands in that manuscript codex, we shall make public in the second volume of all the Works of St Leo the pontiff, and shall adorn it with brief notes. Returning therefore to our matters, we reason thus.

If, then, with regard to the rigour of canonical discipline, already in the fifth century of the Church, it was permitted to no one to have in his houses the sacred Scriptures corrupted and depraved by heretics, how can it now come to pass that the heterodox complain so vehemently, when they understand that their own books have been forbidden to Catholics by the Apostolic See to be read under pain of anathema? But to linger longer over this most thoroughly established matter would be reckoned a fault in me; and therefore we make a step to the sixteenth chapter, in which the holy pontiff spoke concerning the other books written by the zeal of heretics.

This sixteenth chapter, therefore, St Leo the Great calls the last, in this sense namely, that the little book of Turribius transmitted to the Apostolic See contained sixteen chapters to be discussed. But because the same bishop of Astorga had subjoined yet another thing in the extreme part of his familiar letter, which is concerning the flesh of Christ—whether it rested in the sepulchre—for that reason we have judged that the old vulgate reading, namely 'sixteen,' is to be expunged, and that by the suffrage of the codices, as we have said, a new one, namely 'seventeen,' is to be followed. To the sixteenth chapter, therefore, of the little book of Turribius, the holy pontiff,

meeting it, first of all approves the complaint of the same Turribius, namely that which was turning upon the writings and treatise of a certain Dictinius, once his predecessor in the see of Astorga. That Dictinius had committed those books to writing while he was polluted with the Priscillianist stain, the Acts of the council of Toledo, Augustine and other contemporary writers, as we have seen, and now St Leo himself, have most fully attested. Now many read those books with veneration, who ought rather to love his restoration than his lapse. 'They read, therefore, not Dictinius' (says the holy pontiff) 'but Priscillian, and they approve that which he taught while erring, not that which he chose when corrected.' Wherefore he declares that those who make use of his writings are outside the ecclesiastical assembly.

Indeed the supreme pontiff excepted no one, but that he might comprehend men of every order and state, he pronounces from the seat of the holy apostle Peter: 'But let no one presume this with impunity, nor let him be reckoned among Catholics, whoever uses writings condemned not only by the Catholic Church, but also by their own author.' After this St Leo exaggerates the secrets of the Priscillianists and the Manichaeans, which they used more secretly in order to forestall the severity of the imperial laws. Now the men of these sects, since they had hearts in accord with one another, professed the same sacrileges, although they were called by different names.

Wherefore, even though the offspring of the Manichaeans should refute the Old Testament, which the Priscillianists pretended to receive, yet 'to one end' (says the holy pontiff) 'the intention of both tends, since what these assail by rejecting, the Priscillianists corrupt by receiving.' As for the rest, that in execrable mysteries, in obscenities, and in every kind of vileness the Priscillianists agreed with the Manichaeans, I think has already been proved from the whole series of this history. Which Leo, especially inculcating here to Turribius, appeals to that most solicitous inquisition held at Rome against the Manichaeans, of whose judgment and Acts he directed copies to the same bishop of Astorga.

There remains the last chapter, which, as we have already said, Turribius had proposed in the extreme part of his familiar letter to be defined by Leo: namely, whether the flesh of Christ truly rested in the sepulchre. For this mystery of our religion had come into doubt even with very many of the Catholics, from the fact that Christ had descended to the lower regions. For by what reasoning those two things—namely the descent to hell and the repose of Christ's flesh in the sepulchre—could be joined together with true propriety, the peoples of the Spains could by no means understand. That these two dogmas of the apostolic Symbol in no way contradict one another, the holy pontiff demonstrates by various testimonies of the Scriptures.

But that the contrary assertion had derived from the dogmas of Priscillian and Manes, there is no doubt—men who (he says) 'with a sacrilegious sense so pretend to confess you, O Christ, that they take away the truth of Your incarnation, and of Your death, and of Your resurrection.' It is not therefore to be feared that in retracting those chapters St Leo has performed the parts of a supreme judge and master. For that here too there can be no place for the trifles of adversaries, the holy pontiff himself makes manifest. Who, in order that his own doctrine and canonical judgments might become known to every assembly of clerics and to individual faithful, first commands encyclical letters to be held among the bishops, designating a suitable place for holding a council.

To that place he then enjoins the priests of the neighbouring provinces to come together, where, a most complete examination having been held, he wished and commanded them chiefly to recall to scrutiny whether there were any among the bishops who were polluted by the contagion of the Priscillianist heresy. And those whom the council should find contaminated by so great a stain, all the rules of these pontifical sanctions being observed, he decrees are without doubt to be separated from Catholic communion, if however they should refuse to condemn the most abominable sect through the depravities of all its meanings. But that these things which pertain to the rights of the Apostolic See might be more fully and easily committed to execution, the holy pontiff was by no means content with this letter.

But, with no delay interposed, he gave other letters to his fellow bishops—namely the Tarraconensian, the Carthaginensian, the Lusitanian, and the Gallician—by which he proclaimed a general council; in the proclaiming of which he certainly cannot be doubted to have exercised the supreme right of his pontificate. For these words of Leo plainly make it clear. 'It will pertain' (he says) 'to the solicitude of your charity, that the authority of our ordination be conveyed to the bishops of the aforesaid provinces.' But whether Leo wrote only one encyclical, or several letters, to compel all the praised bishops of the Spains and Gallicia to come to the council, I have not dared to define;

since whatever those letters may have been, they have not hitherto come forth, and perhaps by the injury of the times they have already perished. Now indeed, if it were permitted me to inquire of the cavillers against the rights of the Roman See, why that great Turribius, being amid the greatest straits, directed his consultation to the one Apostolic See, and not indeed to the bishop of some other see—what would Launoy, Blondel, Quesnel, and the others reply among the rest? For will they dare to contend that the whole business had been remitted to a future council? They would indeed be deceived, and would put a deception upon themselves.

For the supreme pontiff, treading in the footsteps of his predecessors, from the Vatican throne not only rejected the several errors of the Priscillianists by theological arguments, but also condemned them under anathema; he proscribed the private and public reading of copies of the apocryphal writings and of the books of heretics, and commanded the same to be burned; declaring those bishops to be outside Catholic communion who should not have obeyed such statutes. What then? Did he remit these things to be defined by a future council? Would it have been permitted to the Fathers of the council even lightly to recede from these rules and statutes?

They would be dealing in trifles who feign this, since those zealous for truth understand that only the examination was remitted to the Fathers of the council—whether there were any among the bishops who were polluted by the contagion of this heresy, who, according to these responses to the Turribian consultation, were without doubt to be separated from communion. 'For in vain' (says the holy pontiff) 'do they use the Catholic name, who do not resist these impieties.' It was not therefore to be dealt with in that council concerning the condemning of the heresy, which already the Roman Pontiffs and Leo himself had condemned; but concerning the punishing of the heretics, whose cause had not yet been sufficiently explored by the Apostolic See.

Therefore our Leo, the matters pertaining to law having now been sufficiently discussed, subjected to the judgment of a general, or at least a provincial council, those things which could turn upon persons and deeds. And indeed because the whole mind of the pontiff was chiefly engaged in remedying the evils of Gallicia, and in forestalling lest, by these spreading more widely in those regions, the Catholic religion should be led to utter ruin, he judged it right to employ the following economy.

Namely, if anything should have hindered a general council from being celebrated, he commanded that at least the priests of Gallicia should come together into one; the care of assembling whom was committed to Idatius and Ceponius, as being marked with metropolitan right, to whom he also joined the solicitude of Turribius, so that a remedy might the more quickly be brought to such great wounds, even by a provincial assembly. While therefore Leo commanded these things to be done in Gallicia and Spain, and while he handed over to Pervincus, deacon of Astorga, the pontifical letters to be conveyed to the bishops of both kingdoms, already Calipius and Ardabur were holding the Roman consulate. That this happened in the year of Christ 447, the tables of the Roman consuls already make clear.

If, however, the studious of theological matters and the lovers of truth desire to obtain there anything more abundant for refuting the errors of this most abominable sect, let them consult the homilies of the same holy pontiff. For scarcely, when the impiety and sacrileges of these most wicked men had been discovered by him, could he restrain his zeal from assailing and harassing, amid the performing of the sacred mysteries, that profane religion and its dogmas. Of which manner of acting it is enough for us to have given an indication, lest this our discourse turn out more prolix than is just.

But now we must write of more obscure matters, and much more difficult than those which we have already treated, especially since, owing to the loss of ancient monuments, we are without those aids which might easily direct and lead us to the knowledge of the truth of things. Meanwhile, nevertheless, we shall not withdraw our hand from the undertaking we have taken up, until it be more clearly explored in what manner the priests of both kingdoms obeyed the pontifical mandates. Those bishops, therefore, since—both on account of the diverse administrations of civil affairs, as we have already seen, and on account of the diverse stock, dispositions, and religion of the different princes—they were by no means able to come together into one general council, the metropolitans of each kingdom convened their own synods.

For the bishops of Tarraconensis, of Carthaginensis, of Lusitania and of Baetica—over whom, in civil affairs, Theodoric the Arian, sprung from the stock of the Goths, held dominion—celebrated their council in that same year 447. And I am persuaded that a famous testimony to this very fact is found in the very source which the collectors of the general Councils supply. For after the canons of the First Council of Toledo there occurs, to be read, a certain rule of faith which bears the following heading:

「Here begins the rule of the Catholic faith against all heresies, and most especially against the Priscillianists, which the bishops of Tarraconensis, of Carthaginensis, and of Baetica composed; and, by the command of Leo, the pope of the city of Rome, they transmitted it to Balconius, bishop of Gallicia; these same bishops also established the aforesaid twenty chapters of canons in the Council of Toledo.」 That the bishops of Spain therefore assembled at Toledo, those last words indicate. But let no one persuade himself that the preceding chapters—just as they are today preserved in the collection of the Councils—were published in the time of Leo; for to those same chapters Patruinus first subscribed, along with the rest, who in the year 400 had assembled in the case of Symphosius and Dictinius.

Moreover Ortygius, bishop of Gallicia, subscribed as well—concerning whom we have already treated more than sufficiently in the foregoing. But that they could still have been surviving in the year 447, or that Ortygius should have been free to come to this assembly with the bishops of the Spains, is altogether beyond belief. It appears therefore clearer than light that Harduin's annotation is to be approved, who wrote that in the edition of this council prepared by Dionysius these words are read: 「Here ends the Council of Toledo」—which are proof that the ensuing rule of faith in no way belongs to that council, but must be referred to a council convoked by the command of Leo. 2.

By no means otherwise, in truth, was the matter judged by Pagi, who, carefully and rather maturely weighing with himself those things which seem to pertain to ecclesiastical sanctions and to the ordering of the records—so as to guard against confusion of the events—asserted that the profession of faith of which we treat was composed in the age of Leo. And to the truth of this that great diversity of the manuscripts and printed copies can in no wise stand in the way, which meets our observation in those anathematisms; namely, while some of the codices contain only twelve anathematisms, the printed copies contain eighteen, and in the Works of Augustine their number is increased even to twenty-six.

When Quesnel observed so great a diversity, he judged that it could serve his own studies and his own party. And therefore now he adjudges it to Leo, from whose Roman codex of canons he suspects it was torn away; now he attempts to conjecture that it must be ascribed to Augustine—as though (he says) at some time either he sent it to the bishops of the Spains, or it was carried off from Africa by Leo, when the latter, while still an acolyte, brought Zosimus's decree against the Pelagians, and so forth. Shall we suppose that Quesnel reasons rightly and wisely in this place and in those that follow? That both suppositions are frivolous and without foundation Harduin long ago noted.

But that this Parisian editor of Leo's Works wished, according to his custom, to fabricate and to trifle, those will clearly understand who cast their eyes both upon the profession of faith and upon those eighteen anathematisms subjoined to it. For who will flatter himself that this rule of faith, together with the subjoined anathematisms, had already long been composed and woven together before all the errors of the Priscillianists, their devices, and the sources from which these flowed, were more fully made known?—if we imagine that this profession of faith was inserted into the codex of the Roman canons before the bishops of Tarraconensis, Carthaginensis, Lusitania and Baetica had assembled, or before Turribius consulted the Apostolic See, and the holy…

…pontiff answered the consultations—that Augustine, or anyone else, published it: let Quesnel, pray, say, could it have lain hidden from Turribius and from Leo? To suspect this is by no means permissible. For both had to be well-informed about the things done in the Church, and above all the Roman pontiff would have known it, if he had either carried off that document with himself from Africa to Rome, or if his predecessors, or even he himself, had inserted it into the codex of the Roman canons. Why then did the holy pontiff never appeal to this profession of faith? Why does he not, one by one, set the subjoined anathematisms against the articles of the Priscillianists?

Why, finally, did Turribius himself consult the Apostolic See, if the bishops of the Spains had already long since received the token of faith from Augustine? This therefore is my conviction: namely, that Quesnel trifled altogether cunningly in adjudging that profession of faith to Augustine. For the bishops of Tarraconensis and the rest of the Fathers who assembled in council, had they borrowed it from his Works, would not have kept silent his name; nay, they would not even have omitted to indicate the canons and statutes of the Roman and Apostolic See, if they had taken the rule of faith from that codex. And yet in that heading nothing other than the name of Leo is found to be read: for it has:

「Here begins the rule of the Catholic faith against all heresies, and most especially against the Priscillianists, which the bishops of Tarraconensis…composed, and by the command of Leo, the pope of the city of Rome, transmitted to Balconius, bishop of Gallicia.」 5. Nor is it permissible to charge the copyist with error or negligence; for the Fathers of the Council of Braga, in the year of Christ 563, sincerely acknowledged this, when, namely, Lucretius, the bishop presiding over that sacred assembly, addressing the other bishops, appeals to the Synod of Toledo held in the age and by the command of Leo, in which, composing a rule of faith against the Priscillianist heresy together with certain chapters, they directed it to Balconius, then prelate of the Church of Braga.

Therefore, if the bishops of Tarraconensis, Carthaginensis, Lusitania and Baetica in the year of Christ 447 composed that profession of faith together with the subjoined anathematisms, or chapters, then it could not have come to light through the labor of Augustine, since the holy bishop had already closed his last day at his see of Hippo in the year 430. If, finally, those Fathers had borrowed it from the Works of Augustine, or from the collection of the Roman canons, Lucretius would by no means have said, 「composing a rule of faith against the Priscillianist heresy together with certain chapters,」 but rather, using another familiar form of speech, he would have said, 「Either the profession of faith was recited;」

「or they read the profession of faith from a codex, together with the subjoined chapters, or had it transcribed.」 But those who have run through the Acts and histories of the councils know full well that we by no means dwell upon slight guesses. Yet this too Quesnel would have known, had he not, drawn overmuch by the interests of his own studies, neglected to unroll or to understand the acts of that same Council of Braga to which he appeals. Did not the same bishop Lucretius, after those words praised by us and transcribed by Quesnel himself, immediately subjoin these other words? 「Wherefore, since we have here at hand the very copy of the prescribed faith with its chapters, for the instruction of the ignorant, if it please your reverences, let it be recited.」

But then all the bishops said: 「Very necessary is the reading of those chapters.」 Nor do they adduce any other reason than this: that the simpler folk—to whom, namely, the ancient statutes of the holy Fathers were being laid open—might come to know the fabrications of the Priscillianist heresy, long since abhorred and condemned by the See of the most blessed apostle Peter. But whether these things cut Quesnel's throat, let the reader, I pray, take note. Those ancient statutes of the holy Fathers, by which the monstrosities of the Priscillianist heresy were condemned, are indeed attributed to the Apostolic See of the most blessed Peter. Not therefore is Augustine to be called the author of that profession of faith and of those chapters;

for he, although illustrious by merits, labors, and honors, when ever did he attain the apostolic throne of Peter? 4. Nor, next, does that so great diversity in the number of the anathematisms, so much sung of by Quesnel, cast darkness over this truth. For, in the first place, the manuscript copies from which chiefly that diversity is drawn were sometimes corrupted, or enlarged, by the carelessness and negligence of copyists; or because, other causes arising, the Fathers themselves, appealing to the preceding statutes of the Church, brought forward into the midst only those things which seemed to pertain to the new questions stirred up; or else they added other things which they judged to accord better with the matters they were treating.

What wonder therefore if sometimes, in unrolling the writings of the ancients, one and the same document should meet us, now interpolated and diminished, now indeed more prolix and enlarged? For in matters of this kind, which depend upon the will of writers and users, unless their intention becomes known, it cannot without difficulty be judged, especially when the autograph copies are lacking. 5. In this business, however, I think that not much labor had to be spent by Quesnel. For the same Fathers of the aforesaid Council of Braga had at hand, contained in a genuine codex, the Acts of those who had taken part in the Synod of Toledo convoked in the year 447.

For that reason, once the copy of the faith with its subjoined chapters had been read, they deemed it necessary, after 116 years, to set forth those same chapters more simply and more evidently, so that it might be made known even to the less learned what things had once been condemned, under the sentence of anathema, from the dogmas of Priscillian by the apostolic See of the divine Peter. Although (say the Fathers of Braga) the reading of these chapters has been reckoned necessary, nevertheless let those things which are execrable be now more evidently and simply declared—the chapters being thus prefixed—so that he who is less learned may understand, and so that under the sentence of anathema the fabrications of Priscillian's error, long since exploded, may be condemned, and so forth.