Sermons & Letters 236 part 4/7

I am persuaded that he set himself such an aim in all his writings. But I understood this most of all when I undertook to examine his eighth dissertation. For I thought that, treating there of the famous appeal of Saint Flavian to the Apostolic See, he had suffered himself to be led by no spirit of envy; but that he had wished, in the business of the argument, to follow the footsteps of the prudent and erudite writers who long ago preceded him in treating this argument, of which we now resolve to speak, namely Baronius, Bellarmine, John David, Cardinal Du Perron, Christian Lupus, and others.

For these men, sincerely seeking the truth, not only narrated the state, order, and things done in the Ephesine brigandage, with no disguise of lies at all employed, as was needful; but also asserted that the appeal of Saint Flavian himself to the Apostolic See was ratified and valid, and made according to the form of ecclesiastical law.

So far is Quesnel from having been willing to enter upon this excellent road, which leads to a sincere study of ecclesiastical history, that rather, having abandoned the most level paths which those most distinguished men of former times pursued, he chose instead to drag them onto the stage to be hounded, and branded them with the mark of ignorance, because they had judged that Flavian appealed to the Apostolic See, and not rather to a general council. He himself, on the contrary, following the false conjectures and fabricated opinions of Launoy, held that the appeal of that same Flavian was not made to the Apostolic See or to St. Leo, but was directed to a general council by that bishop, as one who was protesting and demanding a new trial.

Quesnel therefore, about to undertake his dissertation, pretends to compose it from what the holy pontiff Leo has in Letters 39 and 40, which he wished to indicate by the following heading: 'Eighth Dissertation, concerning the cause of Flavian, bishop of Constantinople, condemned and deposed in the pseudo-synod of Ephesus, on Letters 39 and 40 of St. Leo to the emperor Theodosius.' He takes up this dissertation by writing that 'of the appeals which are said to have been brought to the Apostolic See in the first centuries of the Church, by far the most celebrated of all is the one made by Flavian after the sentence passed against him by Dioscorus.' In a few words he sets out the foundations of those who champion the affirmative side. And immediately he adds:

'Concerning an appeal of this kind, which is the chief and almost the only subject-matter of Letters 39 and 40, the purpose I have undertaken bids me discourse at least briefly, even if the topic, long since ventilated by the learned, does not demand a more extended treatment.' Yet, in order more easily to draw away, little by little, from the opinion of the learned who have illustrated this subject, he thought it should be noted that it was never written by St. Leo that his See was appealed to by Flavian, but that it is said generally that an appeal was interposed, as he speaks in chapter 3 of this very letter, and that the legates faithfully reported it, and that bishop Flavian gave them a written document of appeal.

He thinks that the Greek Acts of the synod of Ephesus, re-read in the ecumenical council of Chalcedon, agree with him, in which nothing else is reported as having been said by Flavian than this, 'I reject thee,' and it is contradicted by Hilary, Leo's legate. From these things, he says, he proceeds to reason. 'For whether Flavian understood it as a true appeal, as a recent writer laboriously contends against Marca, or as a refusal, which others affirm and David himself at last admits, it makes no difference: this one thing I assert, that no mention of Leo was made by Flavian whether appealing or refusing.' He undertakes to defend the opinion of the most distinguished Pierre de Marca, which had been assailed by David;

and he gravely inveighs against the impugner of that opinion, because the latter obstinately wished to maintain in this case the customary formulas of canonical judgments, although everything done by Dioscorus is known to have been presumptuously usurped against right and justice, and the customary procedures and formulas of judgments can in no way be applied to the Ephesine brigandage. 'For grant,' he says, 'that there is no place for a refusal according to the order of law, except before sentence is passed, nor for an appeal except after judgment is pronounced — quite rightly so, either when the lawful judge deservedly falls under suspicion, or when a judgment is set up by one who has no competence.' At last Quesnel concludes: 'But you would find nothing of the sort in the council of Ephesus.'

He says that a synod lawfully convened by command of the prince and with the assent of the Roman pontiff, who was even present through his legates, could in no way be refused or repudiated. But who does not see that thus far Quesnel wished merely to jest, in order to deceive his readers and, having deceived them, to draw them into his own opinion? He pretends to sharpen his pen against John David, the adversary of Pierre de Marca, and, sporting in his words, flatters himself that that synod of Ephesus could in no way be refused and repudiated in its beginnings, because it was lawfully convened by command of the prince and with the assent of the Roman pontiff. But that the difficulty does not lie in this convocation is known even to the blear-eyed and the barbers.

Nevertheless we must hold to what was said above, showing that Theodosius employed the authority of the Apostolic See — not merely its consent — for holding that synod. Therefore that synod could be refused and repudiated at once in its very beginnings. Namely, when Dioscorus, supported by no lawful authority, undertook of his own arbitrary will to conduct the synod, by thrusting Flavian himself, the lawful pastor of that Church, from the place in which the bishop of Constantinople ought to sit; when, though informed of the mandates which St. Leo's legates were bringing, he gave neither to them the due place and honor, nor ever permitted that the commonitory and the dogmatic letter which they presented should be read in the synod.

What need of more? That synod could be rejected and refused, when it became known to Flavian, to the pontifical legates, and to the rest of the orthodox Fathers that already every stone was being moved by Dioscorus, so that only those adhering to the Eutychian faction might prevail in number, authority, and force against the catholic faith and the piety of religion. Could not, in those beginnings, Flavian, Eusebius bishop of Dorylaeum, and the pontifical legates have refused to have a place in that assembly? But they were detained by imperial soldiers, who guarded the church and its doors. Truly, where there are soldiers, swords, and clubs, what kind of synod is that, which cannot be refused?

To this, then, Quesnel ought to have given heed, before he wrote so freely that the synod could not be refused at the outset. But (he adds) only then could Dioscorus and his synod be refused, when he, having seized everything for himself by violence and crime, and overturning every form of judgment, was seen to pass from a bishop into a robber and assassin, and to convert the synod, at first lawful, into a brigandage. Then there was room not so much for an appeal, which presupposes a lawful and competent judge, as for a refusal and a protest against an assembly which no reason, as St. Leo speaks, allows to be called a synod.

My opinion, at least, is that Quesnel is not consistent with himself, or else has surveyed the history of the council of Ephesus none too carefully. Therefore let him say, I beg, whence is to be taken the beginning of this brigandage, in which Dioscorus claimed everything for himself by crime and overturned every form of judgment? Perhaps he supposes that Dioscorus did not begin to exercise such crime and so great a tyranny the moment the synod assembled? Nay rather, the crime, already conceived in his mind three months before, he disclosed freely and as if raving — no longer able to restrain it in his soul — in those first beginnings, and by degrees he increased and consummated it in those tragic proceedings with which the whole series of acts was crammed.

If, therefore, on Quesnel's own authority, there was room for refusal, protest, and appeal as soon as Dioscorus rendered himself an unlawful and incompetent judge, it follows that Flavian could, in its very beginnings, refuse and repudiate that synod, because even in its beginnings Dioscorus was an incompetent judge, and one who deservedly, by all the arts he had employed over the space of three months, gave rise to suspicion of such great crimes. Does Quesnel believe that the arts and machinations of Dioscorus, his old rivalries and private hatreds, lay hidden from Flavian, from Eusebius of Dorylaeum, and from the pontifical legates?

He jests wittily. And so with truth it must be concluded that that synod was lawful only as regards its convocation, in that the emperor willed to employ the authority of the Apostolic See for assembling it. Quesnel proceeds to assign the difference between a refusal and an appeal, saying that it consists in several points; of which one is that a refusal renders a sentence null, as one passed by an incompetent judge, whereas an appeal merely suspends the effect of a sentence, as one passed unjustly by a judge, although a competent one, until it be called up for examination by a higher authority.

He then adds that the Ephesine judgment was declared by Leo to be unworthy of the name of a synod, even before a fresh examination, so as to signify sufficiently that there was room for a refusal rather than for an appeal. But what follows from this? Only that the synod was unlawful in its beginnings, which Quesnel a little before had denied. Wherefore, in order to attain another, his chief, the aim he had set before himself, he recited those words of St. Leo which are read in various of his letters, in which he complains that those who were assembled concerning the faith and concerning those in error did not proceed according to custom; where the leaders of the synod spared neither those who resisted them nor those who consented; where we have learned that not all who had assembled were present;

where we have learned that some were rejected and others let in, who at the sole arbitrary will of Dioscorus gave their hands captive to impious subscriptions; where cruelty was inflicted upon all the Churches. To these words of St. Leo, Quesnel added these others, and indeed reasonably: where the writings of the Apostolic See were not permitted to be made public to the ears of the bishops; where its legates were not granted their place; where the Fathers of Chalcedon testified that the utmost violence had been done. Yet from all these things he thinks this consequence is to be inferred. 'Hence you see,' he says, 'with what right;'

with what right Flavian cried out, 'I reject thee.' I should wish, however, that the reader here would mark the artifice of Quesnel, by which he strives to advance the step from a refusal to an appeal, and with what colors he is eager to adorn it. For he subjoins: 'Because the consent and subscription of almost all the bishops conferred some semblance of a synod upon that impious assembly, and the authority of the emperor and of the powers intervened, it seemed good to Flavian, when afterward he handed over the document to the legates of the Apostolic See, to make use of this word of appeal, so that by right of appeal a forum might be given to a new synod.' Does the reader see to what aim the whole preceding fable of Quesnel tends?

For from Launoy and other writers of novelties he drew this doctrine, which nevertheless John David skillfully and learnedly wrested from its authors after refuting them, by clearly showing that that formula of speech used by Flavian signifies a true appeal. And indeed Quesnel himself, after a great and useless apparatus of words, was forced to grant both: namely, that Flavian's refusal indicated an appeal. But all the considerations which converge to demonstrate this true appeal he strove to interpret so malignantly, that he contended it was not brought to the Apostolic See, because Flavian when appealing did not insert Leo's name, and Leo himself, in his letters written after the synod of Ephesus, supports this.

Quesnel at last would have Flavian's appeal to be vague, and directed toward a new council, since the holy pontiff nowhere affirms that his own See was appealed to: 'Which the pontiff, most zealous for the rights of his See, would never have omitted, had it been so. But he asserts that an appeal was simply interposed.' This doctrine, as we said, he borrowed from Launoy. And in order to prove it against Bellarmine, Launoy copied out the letter of the holy pontiff to Theodosius, and cast it in the teeth of that most eminent writer, the vindicator of pontifical rights, writing: 'When I look into Bellarmine's argument and into Leo's letter, I am easily led to believe that Bellarmine had not read Leo's letter,

but that he was deceived by his amanuensis, who told him that Flavian had appealed to Leo. For the pontiff does not write this in his letter. He writes that Flavian gave a document of appeal, but to whom he gave it he does not write.' Hence, then, as if divining from what precedes, he undertakes to reason thus: 'It is credible that Flavian had appealed to a synod which would be freer and more numerous. For Leo and the Roman synod aim at this one thing, that the emperor should order a general synod to be held within Italy, which would put an end to the tumults and controversies that had arisen.' At last the same Launoy closes that paragraph or chapter of his aforesaid letter with these words: 'But did Flavian appeal to Leo?

He did not appeal for the purpose that Leo alone should judge Flavian's cause, but that a general synod together with Leo should judge.' A pretty lie, adopted by Quesnel, as we said. But how can these things be made to cohere with Flavian's plan and manner of acting? — Flavian who had long since ratified Eutyches' appeal to the Roman pontiff, by expressly writing that he too had 'appealed to your holiness'; and who four months earlier had refused that his own cause and that of Eutyches should be brought to a general council, and had besought the holy pontiff to abstain from convoking it. Yet now, his opinion changed, he becomes anxious for a new general synod, and, in order to have it convened, after so many and so great disasters and calamities, did he interpose an appeal? What?

Did Flavian perhaps foresee that he would have Leo hostile to him — Leo whom a little before he had desired to have as his lawful judge, who wrote that the defense of the Roman pontiff alone, his consent alone, could profit himself and the whole Church? Flavian, I say, on the authority of Launoy and with Quesnel as his supporter, sought a general council for his own defense — he who likewise affirmed that on account of holy synods the Churches everywhere were thrown into turmoil, and that the cause at issue needed only the pontifical aid, and who demanded that pontifical letters or writings be given to him? That Flavian, then, who had not merely turned these things over in his mind, but had also expressed them in writing — with changed resolve and counsel —

is it credible that he appealed to a general synod, and indeed to a more numerous one? Away with the fiction! For after the Ephesine brigandage he had learned by experience that old rivalries and private hatreds prevail especially in synods on account of the various factions, and that his adversaries find their chief patronage in the powers of the world; therefore he could not even conceive in his mind the thought of appealing to the Roman pontiff with intent to demand a new synod. Either, then, Launoy wished to depict Flavian as an inconstant man, or as one out of his mind, or at least he utterly failed to grasp the purpose and deliberation of that man's mind. Wherefore, if it were permitted me to employ his forms of speech, I would turn them back against him, by affirming that he never

read Flavian's letter to St. Leo, or at least dissembled it, so as to indulge his own pursuits in selling so many and so great fables and trifles to Jacob Boethius — just as he did under the pretext of assailing Cardinal Bellarmine and overturning his doctrine. Flavian's words, set forth by us hitherto without any violent interpretation, are too clear. Nor do we think we labor in vain, if we here subjoin them. Thus, then, says Flavian, writing to St. Leo in the cause of Eutyches before the council of Ephesus: 'For the cause needs only your solace and defense, by which you ought, with your own consent, to bring all things to tranquillity and peace.

For thus the heresy that has arisen and the disturbances that have been caused on its account will most easily be destroyed, with God working together, through your most holy letters. And the council too, which is reported to be about to be held, will be removed, so that the most holy Churches may by no means everywhere be disturbed.' This testimony of Flavian John David cast in Launoy's teeth; and to it he added the response by which St. Leo the Great, meeting the foregoing petitions of the bishop of Constantinople, said that the cause of the council to be held arose by no means from any necessity, but was derived from the will of the emperor, who was employing the authority of the Apostolic See.

And because the most clement emperor, solicitous for the peace of the Church, willed a synod to be assembled, although it evidently appears that the matter in question by no means needs synodal treatment. Therefore one may marvel how Launoy and Quesnel could so confidently affirm that appeals to a general synod, as a remedy to be applied, were necessary for settling that controversy which had arisen, when Flavian and Leo have handed down the contrary.

Nay rather, Leo himself, who had attentively surveyed the series of the Constantinopolitan proceedings, knew full well that for composing the dissensions which existed between Flavian and Eutyches the judgment of the Apostolic See alone was most sufficient, and he could not bring himself to the plan of convening a new synod except as led by the motive of having a more solemn judgment, as he testified in his letters, both to the emperor and to Julian of Cos, of whom we have spoken in what precedes. But now, leaving Launoy aside for a little, let us see how Quesnel reasons:

'I read,' he says, 'that the legates protested here; I read that an appeal was interposed; I read also that a document of appeal was given to the legates; but to whom it was appealed I do not read at all.' Hence he seizes the occasion of assailing John David, who wrote that it is evident the Roman pontiff was appealed to, since every appeal must necessarily be brought to some judge. When, therefore, Flavian gave the document of appeal to the legates, he acknowledged in them the jurisdiction of receiving the appeal. Which right could by no means belong to them as private men; whence it is necessary that he handed over the document to them as legates of the pope, because he recognized the pontiff as a competent judge to examine the appeal.

He therefore assails David for having written thus, departing from the rules of jurisprudence, and being ignorant of what no one who has saluted the court even from the threshold is unaware of. Then the same Quesnel subjoins that, according to the form of Roman law, the document of appeal is given to him to whom appeal is made, who decrees to the litigant the apostoli, that is, letters dimissory. And at last he brings forward the example of Paul appealing from the governor Festus to Caesar: 'He directed the voice of the appellant to none other,' he says, 'than to the governor himself.' Now Flavian, appealing from Dioscorus and his ill-omened synod to another council, to whom would he have handed over his document, if not to the Roman legates, who almost alone had not consented to the iniquitous machinations of Dioscorus?

He undertakes to prove that Flavian was bound to present the document of appeal to the pontifical legates, by the following four reasons. First, because Dioscorus, doing everything by violence and want of self-control, would have permitted no form of law to be observed; second, because all the prelates of the synod gave their hands captive to Dioscorus; third, because Flavian was appealing especially to the Western bishops, as did also Theodoret, and therefore it was necessary that the appeal of Flavian should become known to the patriarch and to the primate of all. Finally, to whom should one rather have recourse with a document of appeal, when appealing to the universal council of the whole Church,

than to him who is both the supreme summit of the whole Church, and is, as it were, the universal proctor in the cause of faith, upon whom devolves the chief solicitude and care for convening an ecumenical synod; to whom, finally, the first sentence and the first place belong in councils? At last Quesnel closes this chapter of his dissertation with these words, writing: 'These are the true reasons which moved Flavian to deposit the document of appeal or of refusal into the hands of the legates, who for this effect needed not to have proper jurisdiction or to act in the pontiff's name, but it sufficed that they were part of the council and competent witnesses of the appeal interposed.' Thus far Quesnel.

He who employed all the sinews of his art to overturn and abolish the appeal of Flavian made to the Apostolic See, bringing forward one violent interpretation after another, which he reckoned both to favor his own pursuits and to assail the doctrine and arguments of most distinguished men. But just as in his reasonings he was copious, so he was inept, nor did he appear at all consistent with himself in his discourses. Even if we understood this fault of his from no other source, we could best gather it from that admonition appended by him to the letters of the emperor Valentinian, and of the empresses Galla Placidia and Licinia Eudoxia, written to the emperor Theodosius. For what does it contain? He tries to persuade his readers that the praised letters were written

at the exhortation of St. Leo and of the whole Roman synod which was then in session, and he adds that they were dictated by Leo himself. If, then, he judged the matter to be so, why in this dissertation did he write that nowhere is it read to whom Flavian appealed? Valentinian indeed in his letter, without any wrapping or obscurity of words whatever, affirms that Flavian appealed to Leo. 'For the sake of this matter,' he says, 'according to the solemnity of councils, the bishop of Constantinople too appealed to him by documents, on account of the contention that has arisen concerning the faith.' Now two things here occur to be noted, which refute the assertions of Quesnel:

the one, that from the testimony of the emperor Valentinian, Flavian observed the order of law, by interposing his appeal according to the solemnity of councils; the other, that Flavian appealed by documents to St. Leo the pontiff, not to a council. Nor does it stand in the way that the supreme pontiff held a deliberation concerning an appeal of this kind in the Roman synod, which he was wont to hold every year in the month of October. For it was most just that, when the deacon Hilary had come to the City, the most faithful narrator of all the things that had happened at Ephesus,

and since there were still present in the City some bishops of other provinces who had come for the synod, it was most just that Leo should disclose to them what had been done, to the destruction of the catholic faith and religion, to the ruin of the orthodox bishops, and to the contempt of the Apostolic See, through the violence of Dioscorus alone. For these things Leo had to report to the assembled body of bishops as null and void, damnable and execrable, prelated before them; namely, that they might persist in communion with Flavian, abstain from Dioscorus, and defend, as was fitting, the rights of the Roman See, gravely injured and violated. For the supreme pontiff did not need their suffrage, since he was already turning over in his mind to remedy these most grievous evils in another way, and to repair all the damages.

But the reason for that synod to be held every year the same holy pontiff indicated not obscurely, by writing: 'Since, with the grace of God assisting, it will more easily be provided that in the Churches of Christ no scandals, no errors may arise, when in the presence of the most blessed apostle Peter this is always to be treated in common, that all his constitutions and the decrees of the canons may remain inviolate among all the priests of the Lord.' Since therefore in the Church no graver scandals nor a more pernicious heresy could be given, which had shaken almost the whole faith of the East;

therefore, with the anniversary celebration of the Roman synod recurring, he had to discuss these matters with the other bishops, determining that no other remedy was to be applied to those most grievous and spreading evils than to convene a new general council, so that provision might be made for the safety of the catholic faith, that the rights of the Apostolic See, basely violated and abolished, might be repaired, and that to the bishops who had deviated from the right path, with so great a destruction of the souls subject to them, pardon might be granted through a solemn retractation freely to be made.

This is indicated by those other words of the emperor Valentinian, by which he recalled to the mind of Theodosius the duty of defending the faith received from our forefathers; he likewise adds that the honor of the supreme priest must be defended, and the dignity of his proper veneration preserved inviolate in our times for the blessed apostle Peter; so that the most blessed bishop of the city of Rome, on whom antiquity conferred the primacy of the priesthood over all, may have the place and the faculty to judge concerning the faith and concerning priests. Let Quesnel now say, I pray, how St. Leo the Great could

have consulted for the honor of his supreme dignity, repaired the damages of his violated jurisdiction, and restored in full the faculty which antiquity conferred over all, if he had not convened a general synod from all the bishops of the whole world? Were not in the synod of Ephesus the catholic faith, the pontifical dignity, the primacy of the priesthood, and the honor of the chair of the divine Peter held in contempt and solemnly cast down? In a new solemn synod, therefore, both the faith was to be confirmed, and the rights of the Apostolic See had to be repaired; and on that account he had to bring the appeal made to him by Flavian to a general council, although holy Flavian himself had appealed to the pontiff alone, as the lawful judge of his cause.