Sermons & Letters 229

1. That we may not pass over even any of those things which pertain to Leo's actions against the Pelagians, it remains that in the last place we dwell only upon the arguments of the fourteenth epistle, which he wrote to Januarius, bishop of Aquileia. But first of all it is by no means to be feared that Januarius did not exactly obey Leo's mandates. For that he had bestowed more abundant labor in correcting the Pelagian clergy, Leo understood from his reply. Wherefore, to increase and more greatly to excite the care of that vigilant pastor, the holy pontiff congratulates him because he was vigilantly discharging his pastoral care for the guarding of Christ's flock, lest the wolves, who under the appearance of sheep had crept in, should with bestial savagery tear apart all the simple ones;

and not only should profit nothing by any correction themselves, but should even corrupt those things which are sound. That the holy pontiff wished by a phrase of this sort to censure and assail the Pelagians, is by no means to be doubted. For with a similar allegory and in almost the same number of words he began the first chapter of the sixth epistle, as we ourselves noted in the preceding sections. He then adds that it pertains to the peril of the soul, if anyone of those who, having fallen from us into the sect of heretics and schismatics, and having in some way stained himself with the contagion of heretical communion, coming to his senses, should be held in catholic communion without the profession of lawful satisfaction. And since he desired to heal these evils, he prescribed to Januarius most salutary rules to be observed;

namely, that the Pelagian clergy, according to the constitution of the canons, should lose all hope of higher promotion, but should remain with perpetual stability in the order in which they are found, provided nevertheless that they have not been stained by a repeated dipping (rebaptism). Fastening upon these last words, Quesnel subjoined by way of annotation: 'This exception he adds perhaps, attending to the African canons, of which, in the 27th of the African collection, is read: Neither is it to be permitted that the rebaptized be promoted to the grade of the clergy.' A witty annotation, worthy indeed of its author. Is it, then, to be supposed that the Apostolic See wished or was able, in the cases of the rebaptized, to attend to the African canons?

How could that come to pass, since long before, by the African bishops, in defense of the error of the rebaptizers, a great and horrible schism had been kindled, whereby they would receive men—whether coming from heresy to the Church, or baptized by heretics—only under a new conferral of baptism? But the Apostolic See, laboring with the utmost solicitude to guard against and to eradicate that error, just as it refused to communicate with the rebaptizers, so neither did it allow the rebaptized themselves to be promoted to the sacred clerical orders, as one may reason from a like case.

For the 'clinics' (that is, those who were baptized in bed), in the same century, although they were made unfit by no sacrilege as the rebaptized were, nevertheless by an ecclesiastical law enacted by Cornelius, as Eusebius says, were barred from the sacred ministries of the altar. Much more, therefore, were those bound by this vice or impediment of irregularity who had been stained by a repeated dipping; especially since in that century, first under Cornelius, then under Stephen, Roman pontiffs, the same question of the rebaptizers, already laid to rest, again flared up among the Africans. 3. Yet let us grant that nothing was defined by these two pontiffs; what then? Will Quesnel perhaps dissemble what the Roman synod under Pope Damasus proceeded to sanction?

It is indeed to be lamented that those Acts have not come down to us; but there survive the synodical letters of those Fathers, from which we understand that through Africa the sacrilegious rebaptizers again ran riot, whom, although the authority of the emperors Gratian and Valentinian had expelled, nevertheless by the expelled Claudianus had been ordained in the year 378, and was destined, as it were a bishop, to disturb Rome. Since therefore the Fathers of the Roman council

abhorred both crimes—namely, rebaptism and the ordinations of the rebaptized—how could it have come to pass that in the Roman Church the laws of irregularity should not have obtained against the rebaptized? From this one battering-ram, surely, Quesnel's crafty annotation utterly falls, by which he would gradually persuade his readers that the Apostolic See at some point became the follower of other Churches, so that it borrowed laws and canons from them. He then studies to seize the occasion for feigning, out of his own ingenuity, arguments by which he may adjudge to the Roman Church that codex of canons which he himself, in the second volume of Leo's Works, published, adorned with notes and dissertations.

But let the impostor at length advert to this: that the synodical letter of the Roman council was written to the emperors at a time when nothing had yet been devised concerning that 27th African canon; for that letter is to be referred to the year 378, whereas the aforesaid canon was issued in the fifth council of Carthage, convened in the year 398. But if Quesnel is unwilling to give credence to these things, let him at least subscribe to Basil, who in his epistle to Amphilochius, canon 47, affirms that the Roman Church had its own canons in the cases of the rebaptized. 4. But now let us return to Leo, who, before he closed his epistle, first congratulates Januarius on the vigor of the faith, then suggests some other things to be carried out, on account of which that same Quesnel has already stirred up a very great tempest of controversies.

St. Leo therefore instructed the bishop of Aquileia to join his own care to the arrangements of the Apostolic See, and to take pains that those things which have been laudably proposed and ordained for the safety of the whole Church be carried out both circumspectly and swiftly. Here Quesnel wields his censorial pen, inveighing rather harshly against the author of the book which is entitled 'On the Canonical Judging of Bishops.' 'I marvel,' he says, 'at the carelessness of this writer, who abuses this passage of the second and fourth epistle.' These words of Leo, he says, 'take pains that circumspectly,' bear witness that canons were established for the whole Church everywhere concerning the not promoting to a higher grade of the clergy those who return from heresy to Catholic communion.

But since the author of that book had added: 'Nor are canons of this sort numbered among the Nicene canons, nor are they found in the whole codex of Justellus; there were therefore, besides the Nicene decrees, certain others by which St. Leo wished Januarius also to be bound, and which were in use throughout the whole Church in deciding ecclesiastical matters.' Since the praised author, I say, had subjoined these things, Quesnel therefore, assailing him more unmercifully, adds this: 'What sort of drowsiness of the man is this, that he should wish to interpret these words as concerning the canons? Is it not clearer than the midday sun to one reading them, that those things which are said to have been laudably proposed are to be understood of the letters full of the vigor of faith which Januarius had written to St. Leo;

while the things laudably ordained refer to this very rescript of St. Leo, by which he commands that the constitutions of the canons be kept?' Since therefore Quesnel with these words attacks the author of the praised book, heaping up at the same time very many other things in order to twist Leo's words into an alien sense, he departs further from the aim of the proposed question. For he neither recounted nor disclosed the most ancient custom of the Church, nor its canons for receiving penitent heretics. But his phrasing and manner of writing especially betray that our Leo is dealing with some particular arrangement, that is, a law enacted by himself for receiving into the Church clerics returning from the Pelagian heresy. 5. For although in the time of that pontiff many sanctions of the canons were issued on that matter, St. [Leo]...

of the pontiff's age many sanctions of the canons had been issued, yet none of them (if we except this epistle of Leo) for that reason took away from clerics of this sort the hope of higher promotion. Wherefore we judge that Quesnel labored in vain, when he asserted that this law could be deduced from the eighth canon of the first Nicene Council. For we find nothing in that canon which seems to pertain to this perpetual defect of irregularity, or could settle this present controversy.

For there the discourse deals only with the reconciliation of the Cathar heretics, toward whom the holy synod determined that leniency should be applied, lest their clerics, cast down from their own grades and standing among the laity, should be granted only the communion of the laity, as the Church has been accustomed to do with the followers of other heresies. If therefore, besides that kind of indulgence or leniency, those words contain and profess nothing else:

'Concerning those who call themselves Cathari, that is, the pure, if at any time they return to the Catholic and Apostolic Church, it seemed good to the holy and great synod that, having received the imposition of hands, they should thus remain in the clergy'—by no means will it be one and the same thing not to be cast down from one's own grade, and by no means whatsoever ever to be able to be promoted to higher orders. This latter St. Leo defined in the epistle of which we are treating; so that he wished these clerics to be bound by the perpetual bond of irregularity as a punishment for their preceding heresy. But the 312 Fathers of Nicaea, being indulgent only to the Cathari, decreed that they should remain in their orders.

These two things being greatly diverse from one another, had Quesnel reflected on them with himself, he would nowhere have written so freely that Leo's words accord with the eighth canon of the Nicene general synod. Assuredly the canon has nothing that would correspond to these Leonine sanctions; it says nothing about perpetual stability in the order received; nothing, finally, about the hope of higher promotion being removed—all of which were laudably proposed and salutarily ordained by Leo's arrangements for the safety of the whole Church. 6. That the arrangements of the holy pontiff may at last become known, we subjoin his words: 'Concerning whom we command that constitution of the canons also to be kept, that they hold it as a great benefit if, all hope of promotion being taken from them...'

'they should remain in the order in which they are found with perpetual stability.' Quesnel thereafter reasons altogether wrongly, asserting that in Leo's age only the eighth Nicene canon existed for receiving into their orders clerics returning from heresy to the Church, and that St. Leo therefore had regard to it. Truly to speak thus ill befits a man who boasts of every kind of knowledge of ecclesiastical discipline. For the things that were sanctioned on that question by councils and Fathers before Leo's pontificate, the Fathers of the second Nicene Council in the year 787 gathered together, as it were, into one body. 7.

For in the earlier session of this synod, when it was dealing with receiving penitent heretics, nothing at all was established without consulting the ancient monuments of the Church. Therefore John, priest and monk, legate of the see of Antioch, in order to remove that controversy from the midst, suggested to the sacred assembly: 'It has been celebrated by the mouths of many (most holy Father)'—he addresses especially the patriarch Tarasius—'in what manner it behooves to receive those who return from heresy. On this account (says the same John) we advise that the sacred synod command the books of the holy Fathers to be brought forward at present, that we may know and consider what fixed rule ought to be preserved in receiving them.' Then the books were ordered to be brought.

The reading of these Constantine, notary of the patriarchate of that see, began by no means from the eighth canon of the Nicene Council, but from the fifty-third of the apostles, whose more ancient interpretation is this: 'If any priest does not receive one who is converted from sin, but rejects him, let him be deposed. For he offends Christ, who said that joy would arise in heaven over a repenting sinner.' But since a canon of this sort extended generally to the indulgence of all penitent heretics, whether they were laymen or clerics, it was at once inquired by Tarasius: 'Is there also another canon on this matter?' Then Constantine the notary presently recited the eighth canon of the first Nicene Council.

But when Theodore, bishop of Catana in the province of Sicily, had contended that not even this could be applied to the recently arisen heresy of the Agiomarchi, by the command of the same Tarasius inquiry was made about other canons. Wherefore the same notary read the third canon of the sacred and ecumenical synod of Ephesus: 'If any of the clergy in whatever city have been prohibited by Nestorius and those who follow that dogma, because they held less correct opinions, we have judged it just that these recover their own grade.' After these things the Fathers still remained in suspense, whether those who return from heresy ought to be received into sacred orders.

Therefore Stephen the monk, holding in his hands the epistles of the divine Basil on that subject, those which he had written in his earlier epistle to Amphilochius concerning the Encratites, were read; then others to the Evaiseni; and those which contribute more to our matter, excerpts of the epistles to the bishops of the West, in which he delivered a discourse concerning Eustathius of Sebaste. For that man, having lapsed several times into the Arian heresy, and to Hermogenes the bishop accusing him and reproving him for his perverse dogma, handed over a confession of sounder faith, and thus having obtained the imposition of hands from him, after that bishop fell asleep, defected anew to the party of the Arians.

But being expelled from Constantinople and having returned to Sebaste, he sought a defense, and cunningly concealing his impious opinion, and putting forward words not iniquitous but such as seemed to savor of rectitude, he easily obtained the episcopate. And since very many other examples of his depraved dissimulation occurred, which to recount would burden the reader's mind, we therefore only ask: how could the impediment of irregularity of which we are treating be defined by that eighth Nicene canon? Did not the ordination of Eustathius happen long after the Nicene Council? Indeed it must at least be assigned to the year 376, which is 51 [years] from the Nicene Council.

Therefore in that eighth Nicene canon it was not treated of denying higher promotion to clerics returning to the Church; but only those things were sanctioned which seemed to pertain to their reception and to the manner of reconciliation to be observed through the imposition of hands. 8. To this same ecclesiastical discipline accords also that definition against the impious Messalians, or Euchites, made in the third ecumenical synod, which in the same second Nicene Council the deacon Stephen recited, whose last words add greater strength to these lucubrations of ours: 'It has pleased all of us... but if anyone has execrated that very dogma, if indeed he has been a cleric, let him remain in that ordination;'

but if a layman, let him be received into the communion of the Church.' In which matter this is especially to be noted, that the Fathers of the praised third ecumenical council wished to preserve those things which had been defined in the Alexandrian synod in the year 362, when the matter of receiving apostate bishops under St. Liberius the pope was being dealt with. 9. All these things indeed, brought forward into the midst, most abundantly display the canonical practice of the Church, observed in receiving heretics before Leo's age.

But the same seventh ecumenical synod supplied us with still fuller monuments, both those drawn from the works of the divine Cyril and Athanasius, and those found in the ecclesiastical Histories of Rufinus of Aquileia and of Socrates, which wonderfully make manifest, by evident reasoning, our matter, and that Quesnel himself labored under a delusion in weighing these things. Meanwhile, since from so long and so great a series of testimonies we hold that those two questions differ very greatly from one another, namely: whether heretics returning to the Church were to be received in their orders without being cast down as degraded; and whether, leniency having been obtained, remaining in the orders they had received, they were bound by a perpetual impediment lest they could ascend to higher orders;

now Leo's aim, injunction, and decree have been brought forth, by which without doubt, if Januarius had not complied, he would have vehemently stirred up the mind of the holy pontiff to inflict some ecclesiastical penalty upon him, as the last words of that epistle betray. 'But let not your love doubt (he says) that we, if—which we do not suppose—those things be neglected which we decree for the guarding of the canons and the integrity of the faith, are to be more vehemently moved, because the faults of the lower orders are to be referred to none more than to slothful and negligent rulers, who often nourish much pestilence, while they dissemble to apply the necessary medicine.' 10.

But, jesting aside, let the annotator Quesnel attend to these things, and reflect within himself whether any bishop whatever, in those things which pertain to the safety of the whole Church, has been accustomed to address the other bishops of the whole Christian world with words of this most grave sort, full of the vigor of authority and jurisdiction, as he himself has too licentiously dared to assert. The bishops of other churches can indeed write, suggest, discuss, and inquire into all those things which can profit the utility of the whole Church.

But to define and establish something for the common good of the Christian commonwealth itself has, apart from general synods, been granted by God alone to the Roman pontiffs only, as has been proved in this and in our other dissertations. 314. Concerning the deeds of Januarius, however, we truly know nothing; but it is worth conjecturing that all of Leo's commands and decrees were so circumspectly and swiftly carried into execution by him, that the wicked offspring of the Pelagians, which was ravaging especially the clergy of that province, was almost destroyed and led to its extinction. For no exchange of letters (as far as we know) passed thereafter between Leo and Januarius.

By the injury of the times too, Januarius's report to Leo has perished, and among writers of nearly the same period concerning the things done there such deep silence is preserved that no mention of the deeds is had. Yet finally there exists another epistle of St. Leo to Nicetas of Aquileia, the successor of Januarius, written in the year 458, at which time we can conveniently and by reasonable inference conclude that no remnants at all of the Pelagian offspring existed in that province.

For in it our pontiff, by the authority of the Apostolic See, meets seven consultations proposed to him, and prescribes to Nicetas of Aquileia what remedy ought especially to be applied in those most afflicted times, that the wounds which had been inflicted upon religion by the adversity of hostility might be healed. But those consultations, since they pertain in no way to the customs, dogmas, and history of the Pelagians, we for the present pass over, lest we seem to play outside the supper, yet intending to speak of them when we shall adorn the ecclesiastical discipline of that age with our observations. 12. Meanwhile we ought rather to congratulate the so divine zeal of St. [Leo]...

that the zeal of Leo the Great in overthrowing the Pelagians and abolishing their errors obtained its desired end. To be more certain of this matter, we did not [fail] to run through all the monuments of antiquity, namely of those who flourished in the fifth and sixth century of the Church, nor do we find mention made anywhere of the Pelagian heresy as then flourishing. And this conjecture of ours is confirmed, and at the same time our congratulation is increased, by the first epistle of Pope John IV directed to the bishops and priests of Ireland, which the Venerable Bede also relates in Book II of the History of the English, chapter 19. For in it the supreme pontiff, together with the Roman clergy, [answers] two hard questions which the clergy of Ireland had proposed to him:

one concerning Easter, the other concerning the Pelagians reviving in that kingdom. For concerning these things the Roman pontiff John IV writes thus: the reasoning of the Paschal observance having been unfolded, they thus subjoin concerning the Pelagians in the same epistle; 'And this also we have learned, that the poison of the Pelagian heresy is reviving anew among you, which we altogether exhort that such a venomous crime of superstition be removed from your minds. For how this execrable heresy also was condemned ought not to lie hidden from you, since not only through these two hundred years has it been abolished, but it is daily buried by us with perpetual anathema.' But if anyone should wish to insist on these words, he will not deny that our conjecture receives strength.

For Pope John IV, in the seventh century of the Church now running, namely in the year six hundred and forty, obtained the supreme helm of the Catholic society, Severinus the supreme pontiff having already departed from life. From which year if we subtract twice a hundred years, as the testimony of Pope John displays, there now remains the four hundred and fortieth year of Christ, in which St. Leo the Great was declared pontiff of the Roman Church, as is understood from the tables of the Roman pontiffs. But in that year, namely the six hundred and fortieth, it must be affirmed without any hesitation of mind at all that Pope John IV answered the queries of the Irish.

For although the praised epistle lacks a chronological mark, it nevertheless displays such an opening that from it we may conjecture that, scarcely having assumed the Roman pontificate, John wished to grant the wishes of the Irish, who had already directed their consultations and queries to his predecessor Severinus, whose bearers reached the City only after the death of that same Severinus. This the words with which John began his epistle plainly show: 'The writings which the bearers brought to Severinus the pope of holy memory, he departing from this light, [we send] reciprocal responses to those things which had been asked...'

Now at last, however, passing over these and similar other conjectures, we resolve to lift our hand from the present tablet, being about to furnish very many other things of greater moment in what follows, since at last, as the crowning of our Exercitations, we hold the plan of speaking straightway of the affairs of Eutyches.