Sermons & Letters 222 part 1/3

1. 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 little tranquility began to dawn, strove utterly to purge away the Priscillianist plague and to proscribe, disperse, or entirely consume by fire the books of Dictinius and other apocryphal writings, which were either kept in private houses or read openly in the Churches. And since he had all this most earnestly at heart, following the examples of the other catholic Fathers, he judged at once that no other judge and master ought to be consulted than holy Leo, the Roman pontiff, to whom he directed his writings.

Therefore Turribius himself entrusted to Pervincius, the deacon of his Church of Astorga, the task of setting out for Rome and of delivering such writings to St. Leo. Now what kinds of writings he transmitted to the apostolic see, Leo himself indicated at the outset of his fifteenth letter, saying that from the discourse of the letter, from the sequence of the memorandum, and from the text of the little book, he had learned that the most fetid dregs of the Priscillianists had grown warm 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 ruin we can in some measure repair only by the letters to the bishops Idatius and Ceponius, which are circulated under the name of Turribius of Astorga, and then by that genuine and celebrated letter which Leo wrote back to Turribius in this cause. On both, therefore, it behooves us at present to dwell, so that we may complete this history of the Priscillianists which we have undertaken to elucidate. 1. And certainly Turribius himself, or whoever bore the person of Turribius, described the deplorable state of those Churches in that letter, when indeed, discoursing of a troublesome and unpleasant pilgrimage, which he had undergone amid two labors and lamentable necessities.

Among these he asserts that he had gained some help, since by approaching things unknown and by learning things unheard-of we are increased with a certain advancement of mind, coming to know by better reasoning that very often those things which among us seemed best had become depraved and made most base. But concerning what matters Turribius, by his travels, came forth better instructed, so that he could easily perceive that things had been rendered depraved and most base which at one time had seemed to him best, he at once makes plain, chiefly commending that unity which he found in all the Churches of those provinces through which he had passed.

For in these, with the highest agreement of minds and without any schism, all communicated with one another, and, all sects of errors being condemned, 'I found' (he says) 'one and the same sense of the catholic faith to be held, coming from the purest fountain of truth, which, cut into no divisions by manifold rivulets, does not dissolve the level plains of the fields into miry gulfs that impede the right path of faith.' By which narrative he wished to recall nothing else to the mind of those bishops than the zeal for procuring this catholic unity and communion.

For long since it had cast out and banished from the Churches of the Spains and Gallaecia the pestilential poison of the Priscillianist heresy. Therefore, in order to kindle the minds of Idatius and Ceponius to zeal for religion, he sets before them the examples of the Churches he had visited, whose pastors reform by the bosom of a pious parent those whom the poison of depraved dogmas had infected, or, if obstinate, cast them out from the fellowship of the holy inheritance like abortive births and not lawful offspring. 2. After long spans of years, therefore, Turribius, having returned to Astorga, was keenly tormented, when he perceived that the traditions long since condemned by the Church, which he had thought fully abolished in those regions, still flourished more stubbornly.

Indeed such torment was increased in him as he came to know that, according to each man's zeal and depraved will, wicked dogmas sprouted forth as though from certain hydra-heads. Of these, some heretics contributed the arguments of their blasphemies to the old error; others openly professed the whole doctrine of Priscillian; others finally, having abjured only in part the more principal dogmas which plainly conflicted with catholic truth, while still retaining some, seemed to cling to the rest. All these things, I say, Turribius asserts had grown more freely here and there throughout the Spains and Gallaecia, since the assemblies and decrees of synods had ceased.

And at length he deplored a most grievous and most impious crime, worse indeed than all the rest—namely this, that men gathered at one and the same altar with differing senses of the faith. But when Turribius recounted all these things, he was moved solely by that charity toward his fatherland, not by rash presumption, from which he was utterly alien. And therefore, zealously pursuing catholic truth, he likened the homegrown heretics to thieves and adulterers, who, truth being withdrawn from sacred dogmas, execrated the authority of the divine word, and, that they might the more easily corrupt it by adultery, having repudiated the canonical and evangelical Scriptures, devoted themselves only to the reading of apocryphal books.

Lest he should become burdensome and troublesome to the bishops to whom he was writing, or seem to exercise mastership over them, serving at once prudence and zeal, he professes that he offered them no exhortation of authority at all, but only the instruction of a suggestion—reckoning himself guilty before God of a graver crime had he kept silent. 4. This, I say, was Turribius' moderation of spirit toward his brother bishops, this his zeal in describing the perfidy of heretical men, whose doctrines and teaching, if any of the catholics rebuked them a little more firmly, they at once evaded the disputations of the debates, going away unaware, and strove to hide their perfidy by perfidy;

and, that they might do this no longer, he describes and lays bare their crafty and cunning devices, by which they either prefer apocryphal Scriptures to the canonical books, or venerated hidden and secret traditions, expressed indeed in no books, not even apocryphal ones, through which they lyingly claimed that the apostles had spoken: or perhaps finally they kept certain other books more secretly among themselves, disclosed only, as they themselves say, to the perfect. 5. But which apocryphal books the Priscillianists especially used, he indicated a little afterward, discoursing in particular of the Acts which were circulated under the name of St. Thomas.

Among these one thing above the rest he notes and marks as to be execrated, in that he says it teaches that one should baptize not with water, as the Lord's preaching holds, but with oil—which depraved custom the Manichees pursued together with Manes himself, their standard-bearer. This offspring, therefore, execrable to all and condemned in all parts of the earth, either received only apocryphal books, or made use of certain other fables stuffed with apocryphal matter, as had become known by their own confession. But among the Priscillianists other books of the same kind were used—namely those Acts which are called of St. Andrew, or those which were said to be of St. …

…John, which Leucius once composed with sacrilegious mouth; or finally that volume, a prodigy of all blasphemies, which was wrongly inscribed 'The Memorial of the Apostles.' For in it pseudo-apostles and pseudo-prophets, lending great authority to this perverse doctrine, forged their teaching; the whole law of the Old Testament was destroyed, and all things that were divinely revealed to St. Moses concerning the diverse natures of the creature and of the Maker. 6. When therefore Turribius had found Gallaecia especially, and the Spains, undermined by so many and so great afflictions and by these wicked and sacrilegious errors, he then stirred up the minds of the other holy bishops to procure and 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 in order those testimonies full of blasphemies which were found in the writings of the Priscillianists, and to these, as he was able, he responded according to the quality of his understanding. This work, wrought out by himself, we suppose he first took care to spread abroad among the people, so that no one (he says) should thereafter, as though ignorant of the matter, say that he simply had or read such books. Then next he submitted it to the judgment, censure, and estimation of Idatius and Ceponius, so that they might indeed weigh all things, and take care, together with other brethren associated with him, to reject and abolish whatever seemed without ambiguity contrary to truth and faith. 7.

But there meets us a learned and erudite man, Stephanus Baluzius, who indeed inquires and doubts concerning the trustworthiness and authority of this letter of Turribius. For they report that to him many marks of forgery had come to light, from the observations with which he embellished the council of Astorga held in the year of Christ 446. Now he confessed that he drew the whole suspicion of the 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 shall press.' Observing this, Baluzius adds:

'A grave suspicion (that this letter, namely of Leo, put into the mind of some impostor the thought of fabricating that one which is said to have been written by Turribius to Idatius and Ceponius); and so I abstain from it.' But, opposing himself to Baluzius, the most learned cardinal de Aguirre contends that the aforesaid letter is to be adjudged to Turribius of Astorga; and, to remove what that learned collector of the Councils objects, he first excuses him, as one aware of innumerable fables existing in the old pseudo-chronicles, and led by them to reject whatever is narrated in them, so long as they are not supported elsewhere or confirmed by some sure and firm testimony.

Secondly, he says that the letter of Turribius which we are treating was not devised and feigned by those old tricksters who defaced Spanish history with so many fictions and absurdities, but is found in a manuscript of about six hundred years' antiquity, etc. But between these two contrary opinions, to which I should subscribe, my mind long hung in suspense. For the antiquity of the codex, which cardinal Aguirre made so much of, did not remove all suspicion, namely that the letter might have been fabricated and yet praised by some ancient impostor. It settles nothing at all that king Philip II, in the time of Ambrosio de Morales, transferred that codex from the most ancient library of the notable monastery of St. Aemilianus into another, more recent, of St. …

…Laurence's at the Escorial, about twenty years before the fictions of Dexter, Maximus, and Julian. What of it? Were there not more ancient impostors, who could have forged it many centuries earlier? For, the apostles having already departed this life, that under the very name of the sacred Scriptures many volumes were forged by impostors, all the monuments of the Church, and this very letter of which we treat, plainly disclose. The antiquity of that codex, therefore, would prove nothing, unless it proved that a more ancient impostor, exceedingly well informed about the affairs of Spain and Gallaecia, forged this one letter of Turribius, already in the waning eleventh century or the beginning of the twelfth. 8. Yet to this opinion of Baluzius…

…I do not so readily subscribe, but I contend that the reasons of cardinal Aguirre are utterly weak. For if I were to undertake here to treat of the arguments of forgery found in the letter, I could indeed confess that many things in the reading of it offended me, which were noted neither by Stephanus Baluzius, nor by the Spanish collector of the Councils himself, nor by anyone else. Of what sort, for instance, that exordium appears, in which Turribius discoursed of himself as of one coming from a distant pilgrimage, in which he had consumed a long span of years. That these things could be true of a bishop most earnestly zealous for guarding ecclesiastical discipline, who could suspect? For, with so many calamities pressing hard, under the indignation of God and the Church…

…shall we suppose that this excellent pastor wished or was able to desert his flock? No one can 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 vigilant, he had anxiously bestowed on the Lord's flock the devotion of his pastoral office. Truly, if Turribius had gone on pilgrimage led merely by his own will, the holy pontiff ought rather to have censured and chided 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.

Only on a twofold ground could he have escaped these and like reproaches: on the one hand, that of exile, into which, at the instigation of the Arian princes, bishop Turribius had been driven; on the other, that, not yet raised to the episcopate, he had set out on a journey abroad over a long span of years. But each supposition falters. For if, the fury of the Arian princes blazing against him, he had undergone exile, he would exaggerate not the labors and inconveniences of a pilgrimage, but of exile; and moreover, after sentence was passed against him, another would already have been intruded onto the throne of Astorga, just as the Arians themselves were wont to do in the preceding fourth century of the Church. What then?

If Turribius in this letter, to his two other fellow-bishops of Gallaecia, passes over the mention of 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 other disasters of bishops, have kept silent about this one alone concerning Turribius' exile? Finally, why should all the other writers of Spain and Gallaecia have labored under such silence in a matter of the greatest moment? Not therefore is one to have recourse to this evasion. 9. 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 befell before the year of Christ 420, as we have seen from Augustine, Turribius had already attained the Church of Astorga. But then it was not Leo the Great, but Zosimus or Boniface, who presided over the catholic Church. Wherefore, since in the exordium of the second chapter of that letter Turribius speaks of himself as of a man just now arriving from a pilgrimage, it thence follows that what Baluzius and Aguirre relate from Idatius' Chronicle concerning the council of Astorga can by no means 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 consulted Leo as supreme master and judge, but let that whole span of 27 or 28 years slip away, Turribius would at once be to blame, because so late, when those most grievous evils were breaking out afresh, he deferred to seek and apply the medicine, and, against the statutes of the sacred canons, wished to go on pilgrimage, having abandoned his own Church. It must therefore be confessed that in that letter there are contained at least such obscure things as can in no way cohere and be reconciled with the piety and sanctity of Turribius, with the discipline of the Church, the sacred canons, and Christian affairs. So indeed I reflected within myself, after I had repeatedly read the letter through. In which I met with other things too, which at least savor of the manifest carelessness of the writer.

Of such a sort indeed seemed to me either the things which are read in chapter 4, from 'that they should no longer do this' to the end, in which the genuine sense can by no reasoning be made out according to the rules of grammatical syntax; or what is seen in the subsequent chapter 5, where the same narrative concerning the apocryphal Acts of St. Thomas is repeated, and other things of that kind, which certainly either prove the writer's carelessness, or greatly diminish the excellence of that codex in which, under the name of Turribius, that letter was found and faithfully drawn forth. 10. But although in that letter many things shine forth which differ very much from truth, or at least from verisimilitude, yet I am afraid to judge that it is to be rejected or held as spurious.

Nay rather, in collecting and adorning the Works of the divine Leo the Great, just as Quesnel transferred it into his edition, so also in another new one which I have resolved to make after these Exercitations, I deem it necessary that it be preserved. For that reason I have taken care, to the best of my strength, to embellish it with various annotations drawn from the most approved writers, so that, namely, the friendly reader may be able to guard against the equivocations and obscure senses with which it teems. Meanwhile, however, 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 to be abundantly approved. For most fully do they correspond with those things which are seen in the fifteenth letter of St. …

…Leo the Great's letter, concerning whose trustworthiness and authority even to suspect would be the greatest crime. For both older 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, with none gainsaying, since they attested this same truth, opened to the editors a most ample field, so that, every scruple being removed, they might print it in all the vulgate copies. 1. We therefore, supported by so many and so great preceding testimonies, since we could in no way doubt concerning the truth and authority of the fifteenth letter of St. …

…Leo the Great's, we have taken care only to purge it of the errors, if any crept into it. For accomplishing this labor 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 most greatly boasts to have adorned his edition—which we ourselves, aided by the help of friends, took care faithfully to transcribe—we tested that same letter both against the Vallicellan and against two Florentine copies, so that at length, the divine Godhead assisting, all the Works of Leo might come forth in new type, purer, more polished, and fuller.

But let us now return to our purpose. The aforesaid letter of the holy pontiff to the bishop of Astorga has sixteen chapters appended, because Turribius had proposed just so many to Leo to be discussed and defined. These words hint at it: 'Since therefore your dear self, with such diligence as it could, in faithful care comprised the opinions once condemned in sixteen chapters.' But a most ancient Vatican copy, together with the Grimani codex, proves that seventeen ought to be read. 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 sepulcher.'

Let those who have been wont to commend Quesnel's zeal, labor, or diligence in adorning and correcting the Works of the divine Leo beyond what is fair, take note, I pray, into what carelessness he lapsed. Let them see whether they have this as an argument, that he took the Grimani codex as a touchstone in scrupulously testing the readings of the Leonine text. Let them say whether he diligently surveyed the Works of the holy pontiff, who in a badly arranged synopsis subjoins only sixteen chapter-titles, the last omitted, when the letter itself is already divided into seventeen, of which the last has its own title, entirely wanting in the preceding synopsis. But of this matter it will be disputed more diligently in its own place, as also concerning another most ancient Vatican …

…Palatine copy of this letter, which presents to us a hitherto unpublished fragment concerning the canonical Scriptures. Whether this is to be adjudged to Leo or not, we shall pursue elsewhere too, since it seems to pertain chiefly only to the rite and order which the Roman Church of the divine Peter was wont to observe throughout the seasons of the year in reading the divine and canonical Scriptures. Now let it be permitted to our discourse only to range so far in the most ample field of this Leonine letter, as it hitherto stands in all the vulgate copies;

since indeed that letter is on every side crammed with most certain and most abundant testimonies, we shall more easily gather from it both the sources and errors of the Priscillianist heresy, and at the same time more clearly behold the authority of the apostolic see and its irreformable judgment in refuting them. 2. And indeed that the Priscillianist dogmas were more wicked than the errors of all preceding heretics, and drew from them every virulent contagion of impiety, St. Leo at once taught in the exordium of that letter, who calls the sect of the Priscillianists the most fetid dregs of all heresies.

He adds that the Priscillianists had plunged themselves so deeply into 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 rule of morals in the power of demons and in the influence of the stars. These and other like dogmas of that most abominable sect Leo recounted, and calls to mind the zeal of the ancient Fathers who flourished in the preceding century, who in councils applied all their efforts that such impious fury 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, with very many of his disciples, by the sword of the public laws. This first kind and example of a bloody judgment, by which the princes and magistrates of the age at times punished obstinate heretics, has hitherto been able greatly to torment the mind of old and more recent writers: 'I foresaw,' says Noël Alexandre, Eccl. Hist., fourth century, chap. 5, art. 47, '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;'

'as well as against the princes and magistrates themselves, who by their own right punish them even with the penalty of death.' In the same place Father Noël intends to vindicate from all censure that proposition which had crept into his earlier edition: 'No catholic has said that emperors and kings cannot punish a heretic even with the penalty of death.' In what sense, however, he said it, he then explained in his last edition, and labors in asserting this power for the princes of the age. Concerning the same authority of princes his annotator Constantine Roncaglia also wished to treat, in the last Lucca edition.

He, by the primary suffrage of the canonists, shows that in cases of heresy to be judged, the Church possesses power both over those things that are of law and those that are of fact. Then he says: 'That it is not foreign to the power of princes to remove heresies, sacrileges, etc., by enacting laws and penalties, Bellarmine taught,' etc. 3. Truly, if both these most illustrious men, and as many as have discoursed on this and like causes, had attended to our holy pontiff, they would not have labored so greatly, but would more easily and readily have refuted whatever can be objected by the heterodox. But why the princes of the age gave order to exercise that bloody kind of judgment against the Priscillianists, the holy pontiff Leo explains in the following words:

For they (namely the princes of that age) saw that all regard for decency was being taken away, that the whole bond of marriages was being dissolved, and that at once both divine and human law was being overthrown, if men of this kind were anywhere permitted to live with such a profession. Since, therefore, the crimes of the Priscillianists were such that they brought not only the utmost disgrace and gravest injury upon their own religion, but could also lead the very civil commonwealth to complete ruin—in those matters especially which wound the laws of nature—the princes of that age therefore endeavoured to destroy and abolish the profession of that sect together with its authors, employing capital penalties. Resting upon these grounds, the holy Pontiff confessed that a like judgement had long been of benefit to ecclesiastical leniency.

For he adds: This strictness has long benefited ecclesiastical leniency, which, though content with priestly judgement and shrinking from bloody vengeance, is nevertheless assisted by the severe ordinances of Christian princes, since those who fear bodily punishment sometimes have recourse to the spiritual remedy. Capital punishments, therefore, when the Church takes action against obstinate heretics, she does not decree, does not inflict, nor seek to have inflicted. Content herself with her own spiritual penalties, and lest she incur a failing of leniency, she shrinks from all bloody vengeance.

But if nevertheless these things are established by the public decrees of secular princes and magistrates, they profit her greatly, and she is thereby especially assisted, chiefly because offenders, terrified by the severity of bodily penalties, have become accustomed to have recourse to the spiritual remedy—that is, to the abjuration of their crimes and to penance. 4. Nor should anyone, from Leo's similar manner of speaking, persuade himself that the obstinacy of Idatius and Ithacius—of which we have treated above, and on account of which they were hateful to the Catholic bishops, and to Martin especially, and Ithacius himself was openly condemned by Bishop Theognostus—should then be excused. For a bishop can by no excuse be cleared who, indulging his own pursuits,

has despised the judgements of his brethren gathered in councils, and has even wished by his own accusations to press secular princes and magistrates to procure the death of the guilty. It is most evident that this manner of acting is repugnant to Catholic leniency. But from it there shrink most of all the prelates of our Churches, and also that holy office of the Inquisition, against which Father Natalis Alexander foresaw that heretics might be able to devise objections.