Sermons & Letters 224

1. Running through the series of the Acts of Braga, Paschasius Quesnel fell into the opinion that, besides that Turribius of Astorga, of whom we spoke in the preceding pages, there existed another man of this name, who discharged the office of notary of the Apostolic See, and who had carried Leo's letters to the synod of Gallaecia. To this controversy the words of Lucretius gave occasion, who, speaking in the aforesaid synod of Braga, said:

'But I believe that the fraternity of your beatitude knows that at the time when the most abominable poisons of the Priscillianist sect were creeping through these regions, the most blessed Pope Leo of the city of Rome, who was about the fortieth successor of the apostle Peter, directed his writings through Turribius, notary of his See, to the synod of Gallaecia, against the impious sect of the Priscillianist heresy.' If these words were to be explained of Turribius of Astorga, they would contain a falsehood. For that man, since he was a bishop, is neither to be called a notary of the Apostolic See, nor is that office to be enjoined upon him—that he, like a carrier, should convey the letters to the synod of Gallaecia.

Baronius, understanding that this question could be raised, asserts that there was only one Turribius; against whom first Ambrose Morales, a not-to-be-despised writer of Spanish affairs, took the opposite side, contending that altogether two Turribii must be distinguished, of whom one held the bishopric of Astorga, to whom St. Leo the Great directed his letters; but the other, through whom the holy pontiff wrote to the bishops of Spain, who was sent from Rome into the Spains to deliver the aforesaid letters. This opinion, therefore, Quesnel adopted, who, indulging himself too much, inveighs against the most eminent writer of the Annals, and attempted to overthrow two of that man's arguments as trifling and worthless, or as containing a monstrous falsehood.

And indeed for the present we cannot have so much leisure as to relate one by one the things which Quesnel, for the sake of this controversy, contrives to subjoin. Of which sort are these: 'That it was not always customary to describe in letters the names of those through whom they were carried.' That Leo wrote back to Turribius through the same deacon Pervincius, from whom he had received the consultations: 'But to the synod of Gallaecia he ought to have sent not a foreign cleric, but some messenger torn from his own side, which office could best suit the other Turribius—not a bishop, but merely a notary of the Roman See.' These things, I say, and others of the same kind, Quesnel heaps up too laboriously, and magnifies grandly, in order to distinguish two Turribii.

Who, moreover, when he understood that he was being pressed by Baronius with the Leonine text, strove to hurl his darts back upon him, contending that that most learned cardinal of the Roman Church, and father of the Ecclesiastical Annals, had forgotten himself: 'What difference there is between a bishop attending with sacerdotal solicitude to the affairs of the Church, and a deacon, or notary, executing the bishop's mandates by command, and carrying letters hither and thither like a courier.' 2. This reasoning will perhaps seem witty to those who, desiring to flatter Quesnel, seek to touch only the external surface of things. But what is more insipid, or more trifling, than it?

'Does it, then, ill befit sacerdotal solicitude' (says Quesnel) 'if a bishop should carry to the synod of his own province the letters received from the Apostolic See? Would he not be attending to the affairs of the Church in executing such pontifical mandates by command?' But let our learned critic and annotator tell, I pray, whether Leo's letters pertained to the affairs of the Africans, the Indians, and other Eastern peoples, or to the ecclesiastical affairs of that same kingdom of Gallaecia—nay, even to the very diocese of Turribius, now more foully undermined on every side by the Priscillianist heresy? The matter is too openly evident;

for Turribius, desiring to heal the evils of his own diocese and of Gallaecia, consulted and appealed to Leo, seeking from him those decrees and rules which might purge the Priscillianist plague and bring it to destruction. What wonder, then, if the holy pontiff, meeting all the requests of this bishop, charges him to carry the causes of the clerics polluted by that stain to the synod of the province, if he enjoins upon him the encyclical letters concerning the summoning of the synod of Gallaecia? That manner of acting was assuredly more expeditious than the rest, both for coercing the Priscillianists and for correcting those abuses which had crept in either into the ordinations of the sacred ministers, or which had adulterated the sacred rites and ecclesiastical discipline.

For Pervincius, the same deacon of Astorga, who had come to Rome with the letters of Turribius, being about afterward to journey back to his fatherland, could easily carry not only the responses to the consultations already made, but also the letters enjoined upon him to the other bishops of that province—without there being any need for the supreme pontiff, to whom the zeal of Turribius for the faith and religion was very well known, to compel some other of the Roman clerics to undertake so long a journey and one full of labours. And that Leo observed this manner of acting, his following words make plain: 'We have therefore given letters to our brothers and fellow-bishops, the Tarraconenses, Carthaginenses, Lusitanians, and Gallaecians, and we have proclaimed to them the council of a general synod.'

To these words which follow, I pray, let the flatterers of Quesnel take heed: 'It will pertain to the solicitude of your dilection that the authority of our ordinance be conveyed to the bishops of the aforesaid provinces.' 3. Now, therefore, I thus ask Ambrose Morales and Quesnel: How could it have come about that it should pertain to the solicitude of Turribius of Astorga that the Leonine ordinances, or statutes, should more safely reach all the priests of those provinces, unless he had handed them over, to be entrusted to the faith of Turribius, to the deacon Pervincius journeying back to his fatherland with this letter?

For since I cannot see that Leo's words could bear any other meaning, I am easily led to this opinion: that this same Turribius of Astorga was called a notary of the Apostolic See by the Fathers of Braga for this reason—that to his faith the written ordinances of the pontifical authority were committed, and that it rested chiefly upon him to write back to St. Leo whether it would be easier for all the priests of those four provinces to come together into one general council, or whether at least the bishops of Gallaecia alone—with Ceponius and Idatius acting—should assemble in a provincial gathering, to bring a remedy to such great wounds. But as to what Quesnel adds:

'The word notary is never used in ecclesiastical documents in that signification which that author'—Baronius, namely—'attaches to it, who busies himself in referring and making known to the Roman See what is being done in the provinces'—here we could now appeal to the best Latin writers, who used that word notary to signify those who were accustomed to write down the affairs of the Church in the public records; why, then, could that office not be entrusted by the Apostolic See to Turribius? What violation of episcopal rights was there in exercising it, when the good of the Christian commonwealth was at stake, and especially that of the province in which the Roman pontiff had commanded a council to be held?

Moreover, it still escapes me why 'we should be compelled to recognize three wholly distinct letters of Leo—partly (says Quesnel) from Leo himself, partly from the interlocution of Lucretius of Braga—yet not be compelled to reckon them sent at the same time.' Trifles indeed. For if we should hold that those diverse letters of Leo were not sent at the same time, neither should the council of Gallaecia be recalled to the year 447, as the Chronicle of Idatius has it, with which all the ecclesiastical writers agree. For the earlier letter of Leo was written on the Kalends of August of this year, which the holy pontiff, as we have often said, handed to the deacon Pervincius journeying back to his fatherland.

One would have to feign, then, that this man had wings, lest they rashly suppose that in a brief interval of time Pervincius reached Gallaecia, and that again other messengers went with letters to Rome, and others returned from the city of Rome to Gallaecia. This monstrous fabrication, indeed, together with other and other futile divinations, Quesnel too laboriously attempted to build up, in order gradually to insinuate to his readers that opinion about two Turribii. 5. But now at length let us pass over these things, and others of the same kind, being about finally to take a step toward inquiring into the genuine epoch of the synod of Braga.

In this matter indeed it will seem enough if, more briefly relating the opinions of others, we rather await the judgment of the readers, than that we contend to define the thing itself. Severinus Binius, therefore, following the most eminent Cardinal Baronius, judged that this Council of Braga was assembled in the year of Christ 565, the most eminent Cardinal Aguirre, collector of the Councils of Spain, also concurring with him. But Garsias Loaysa took the opposite side, and affirms that it was convoked two years earlier, namely in the year 561, persuading himself that those Fathers assembled at Braga not under Prince Ariamirus, but under Theodomirus. And that this man was king of the Suevi, of whose wonderful conversion from the Arian error and impiety St.

Gregory of Tours has treated especially—as all writers have already affirmed. But that both those names were attributed to the same king, and that no error crept into the codices, Cardinal Baronius has already proved from most certain monuments, with Binius and the most learned Petavius, in the third part of the Rationarium Temporum, assenting to him. Antonius Pagius, moreover, having brought forward into the midst the opinions both of Baronius and of Garsias, reports that the Bollandists, on the 20th day of March in the Life of St. Martin of Dumium, affirm that the First Council of Braga was rightly assigned by Garsias to the year of Christ 561. But, Pagius subjoins, this opinion has against it Gregory of Tours, contemporary with St. Martin of Dumium.

He brings forward various arguments, borrowed from here and there out of the writings of Gregory of Tours, which would rather show that the date of that council must be sought from the year 549, or in the following year. 'Nevertheless,' he says, 'since Gregory not seldom errs in reporting the things that were done outside Gaul, I judge that we should not depart from Garsias, the Spanish writer.' At length he observes that a letter of Pope Innocent III supplies grounds for saying that the council of which we are treating was convened still earlier, namely in the year 560. 6. But in the clash of such great opinions I would by no means dare to withdraw credit from Baronius and Cardinal Aguirre.

For indeed all the conjectures which are adduced by the opposing parties display no marks of evidence, but only of probability; and in weighing these we deem it superfluous to labour at greater length, lest we should sometime seem to indulge too much in those divinations which we censure in others. Meanwhile, one thing which it concerns us to report, we have judged to be chief above all: that after that synod of Braga had been convened, no mention of the Priscillianist heresy occurs thereafter in the succeeding Acts of councils and in the decrees of the Roman pontiffs. But whether then, by the piety of the sacred prelates and the power of the Catholic princes who had begun to rule over the Spaniards and Galicians, those wicked offshoots were brought to their destruction;

or whether under another feigned name—that of the Manichees, namely, of the Gnostics, and of the Montanists—they sought hiding-places for themselves there, I would hardly dare to affirm. For it is not right to violate the best rules of criticism, from which we judge those often to depart who, indulging too much in their own zeal, and relying without any support of documents solely upon various and worthless conjectures, either bury the truth itself under certain false colours most like to darkness, or portray false appearances of things with fabricated features, so as to deceive and pervert the unwary minds and judgements of readers. That we have always shrunk from this manner of proceeding, both this and our other dissertations will abundantly make plain.