Sermons & Letters 246 part 3/4

That is to say, so that when the bishops assembled for a synod in Italy, judgment might be passed solemnly and according to the rigor of the canons concerning the faith and crimes of the lapsed. It could not therefore be lawful, after the Robber Council of Ephesus, for the lapsed bishops, the authors of schisms, bound by ecclesiastical censures, to retain their sees; nor were the canonical penalties which they had incurred relaxed for them by Leo through the abolition of the brigand acts. Attending diligently perhaps to these things, Domnus, moved by modesty and shame, preferred to pass the private life of a penitent far from the throng of men and of his own fellow citizens, rather than to come forward in public assemblies and synods, there to give the due proofs of his faith, penitence, and satisfaction.

What Quesnel adduces from the constitution of the emperor Theodosius to prove the death of Domnus is plainly judged to be childish; for in that constitution the Acts of the pseudo-synod are confirmed, and concerning Domnus one reads: "who was bishop of Antioch." He adds that in the fourteenth session of Chalcedon it was said by Athanasius, bishop of Perrhe, ordained in the place of Sabinianus, who, giving the reason why he had declined the judgment of Domnus: "My enemy was the very man of Antioch who was judging." From these things he contends one can infer that Domnus had already departed this life. For first, if it held good, it would already prove that Domnus, once that brigand synod was concluded, had put off the man (i.e., died); since the constitution of Theodosius was issued and promulgated immediately at the instigation of Chrysaphius and Dioscorus.

Therefore his death could not have escaped anyone's notice, nor would it have been allowable for Evagrius to write truthfully that he was wholly ignorant of what had become of Domnus. Nor does Athanasius of Perrhe there speak of Domnus as a dead man, but of him who was at that time conducting the council of Antioch. Wherefore (says Baluze) those modes of speaking are indeed of past time, but of the past imperfect, as the grammarians say, in expounding which it is shameful to linger any longer. But truly, that Domnus was not dead when the Council of Chalcedon was being held, and that St.

…that St. Leo had rendered void all the brigand Acts, excepting the deposition of Domnus and the ordination of Maximus—Quesnel at length came to recognize this; for, in scrutinizing the tenth session of Chalcedon, he stumbled upon the intervention of Stephen, bishop of Ephesus, who contended that all the things done against the canons by the rapacious synod had been abolished, excepting those things which had been carried out against Domnus, for this reason (namely): "because the ordination of the most God-beloved bishop Maximus, made in his place canonically in the metropolis of Antioch by the most holy archbishop Leo, this also being present, was received by the holy and universal council."

For the adversary, perceiving the weight of these words, lest the falsely constructed edifice raised by him should utterly collapse, seeking props here and there, flattered himself that it ought not at once to fall to ruin, by writing that it should not be greatly esteemed, because it is the only such testimony, and because it proceeded from one whom in the following session we read to have been deprived of office on account of the crimes by which he had made for himself a step to the see of Ephesus; and that it is therefore probable that out of hatred of Domnus he wished his condemnation to be ratified. But by what reasoning does Quesnel suppose that an evasion of this kind can profit him? I will grant that those guilty of most grievous misdeeds are not admitted to give testimony.

But since the crimes laid to Stephen's charge were at that time not yet proved, and since his case had not yet been brought to trial, nor had he been convicted of the alleged crimes, what can they prove? Nothing. Otherwise the Fathers of Chalcedon would have admitted among the bishops and judges of the first sees a man whom the canons declared to be utterly deprived of office. And indeed that Stephen of Ephesus discharged the true role of judge in the Council of Chalcedon is made known from what follows. In the third session he condemned Dioscorus with the other bishops. In the fourth he praised the letter of Leo to Flavian and accepted it. In the sixth he subscribed to the definition of faith before the emperor. In the seventh he confirmed the agreement of Juvenal and Maximus.

Whence then does Quesnel gather that Stephen was driven by hatred to confirm the deposition of Domnus, except from sheer divination? Wherefore it should rather be thought that Stephen ought rather to have favored Domnus, whom Dioscorus had deposed by guile. Hence the most distinguished Baluze, reflecting on the manner in which Stephen of Ephesus acted, judged that he had so spoken led by no hatred or malevolence, but because he knew that Domnus, once deposed, had returned to the monastery to give himself to quiet and solitude, and had perhaps presented a libellus of resignation according to the custom of those times, so that the canonical ordination of Maximus might take place. 19. But now, the praised prop being added, the whole edifice of Quesnel is undermined.

For Stephen's testimony is neither the only one, nor did any of the Fathers contradict it. In the first place, when in the tenth session the question was raised whether all the brigand Acts ought to be read again, "so that nothing be lacking" (said Theophilus the deacon) "to those who must judge justly," at once all the vicars of the Apostolic See, through Paschasinus, said: "It cannot be called a synod in which those wicked crimes were perpetrated." And a little later he affirms that those Acts were declared void and null by St. Leo; from which it is clear, "because the most holy bishop of the city of Antioch also is outside these" (Rusticus added the following note: "Concerning Maximus ordained at Ephesus") "whom after these things the most blessed bishop received into his own communion";

to which last words the same Rusticus added this further annotation: "Once the deeds of Leo are confirmed, the things that follow are confirmed." Assuredly, had Quesnel attended to this—he who glories that he labored, in surveying both manuscript and printed copies, to adorn the Works of the divine Leo—I do not know whether he would freely have pronounced that the testimony of Stephen is the only one, to which none of those Fathers gave their suffrage. But let him still attend to those things which followed: for after the definition of the synod, none of those things availed which had been done in the synod of Ephesus, except that one concerning the most holy bishop of the great city of Antioch, since the most holy Leo, the Roman archbishop, receiving him into communion, judged him to preside over the Church of the Antiochenes.

Finally, that the rest of the Fathers assented to those three, with absolutely no one contradicting, has been established from those very Acts. For let the readers run through them, and they will clearly understand that the ordination of Maximus and the deposition of Domnus were judged ratified for no other reason than because the pontiff Leo had confirmed them. 20. Quesnel foresaw, and was not unaware, that he was being gravely pressed by those three testimonies. And therefore, thinking that by his words he had sufficiently weakened Stephen's intervention, he turned his pen to two others, those of Paschasinus and Anatolius, which we have already brought into the open. The same Stephen Baluze, well recognizing the grave contention concerning this, under number 52, says:

"It remains for us now to re-examine the intervention of Paschasinus, which we described a little before, both that we may defend the truth of the proceedings, and that we may show that the things truly said by that most learned and excellent man, Pierre de Marca, archbishop of Paris, are true. He treated of the case of Maximus of Antioch in his book On Concord, in order to teach also by a clear example that the authority of the Roman See, in tempering the execution of the canons and in granting dispensation, was extended to the Churches of the East as well. Maximus had been ordained by Anatolius, bishop of Constantinople, in the place of Domnus condemned by Dioscorus. Two very great defects were inherent in this ordination: one, that Domnus had been condemned by an impious synod;

the other, that that ordination had been carried out by Anatolius against the canons." "What did we," says Leo, writing to Marcian Augustus, "out of love of restoring the faith and zeal for peace, cease to reconsider." Leo could therefore, as Marca says, have reconsidered the ordination of Maximus, had he not borne himself kindly toward him. And he confirms this also from the fact that Maximus was received by the Council of Chalcedon on this ground alone, that the most holy father Leo had approved his ordination and communion.

Then, to show that this is true, he transcribes the words of Paschasinus related above, and notes the following—"whom after these things the most blessed bishop received into his own communion"—to be lacking in the Greek text, yet that these words were nevertheless retained by the old translator according to the trustworthiness of the ancient codices. Quesnel, who is unwilling that these things should have been said by Paschasinus, twists himself in wondrous ways to establish a good sense for that passage without those words, adding certain things on his own authority and altering several others. And in order to confirm his opinion, he says it is not necessary that the words of the legates of the Apostolic See be confirmed by the intervention of Anatolius—which Marca had therefore at once reported—since they suffice of themselves to be understood:

"And whether their judgment," he says, "differ from the suffrage of Anatolius, or accord with it, it nonetheless does not prove that to have been said by the legates which all the copies of the original Acts signify not to have been said." The distinguished man therefore contends two things: that the sense is complete without those words of Paschasinus, and that they are lacking in all the copies of the original Acts. As to the first, I appeal to public credence, whether it is not manifest that the sense is imperfect without those words. For when Paschasinus had said that the Synod of Ephesus had been rendered void by the pope Leo, he added: that it is clear that by these general words the ordination of Maximus is not comprehended, because Leo had received him into his communion.

For unless Paschasinus had rendered this reason, the sense would not have been complete, and the bishops would afterward have awaited something more to be said by him. Add that what follows has no connection with the matter unless those words be added—"for it is necessary"—which it is established are lacking in the Greek text also. But indeed, are these wanting in all the Greek copies, which the same distinguished man calls the originals? First it must be asked whether the Greek copies can truly be said to be the originals, where the legates of the Roman pontiff were speaking in Latin. Indeed, Rusticus is not found to have noted in this passage that this intervention of the pope's legates lay in Latin in the ancient codices.

But since he elsewhere recalls that they spoke in Latin, and that their interventions had been written in Latin in the ancient Greek copies, since here the compiler of the proceedings does not say that they spoke through an interpreter, it is fair to estimate that Paschasinus spoke in Latin; and so, if any error has here been committed, it does not seem to be attributable to the Latin translator, but to the Greek—or rather to the copyist, who by error omitted those things which are here lacking in the Greek text. For that the ancient Greek codices of the Council of Chalcedon are not sound we have already demonstrated above, where we also pointed out that the most distinguished cardinal Baronius believed they should be corrected on that account by the work of the Latins. So far Baluze. 21.

Of the session about which we are treating Quesnel also adduces certain marks of falsity, contending that it was not the custom of that age that the Roman pontiff should be designated by this single word "papa" (pope), without some addition; nor that any passage occurs in the Acts of Chalcedon where to that word "papa" there is not added either "of the city of Rome," or "of the Apostolic See," or something similar. This argument the praised Baluze removed by a twofold reply. The first (he says) is that it is not necessary that in the age of Domnus the word "papa" alone should be set down when it was a question of the Roman bishop;

it suffices that such a custom prevailed in the age of the translator, with whom the word answers to the word "papa" in a certain intervention of Boniface the Roman presbyter, which is extant after the subscriptions of the bishops in the sixteenth session; the second, that in the age of Domnus the word "papa" by itself is found used of the Roman pontiff, and indeed in the very Acts of Chalcedon, in the letter of Hilary to Pulcheria Augusta, and in the brief history of the Eutychianists. "I shall begin," says Baluze, "from the Acts of the council. In session 1, among the Acts of the Second Synod of Ephesus, Julius the bishop, vicar of pope Leo, says: 'Let the letter of the pope first be read,' which is read not only in the Latin text, but also in the Greek, which has it thus. Again in session"

"2 the most reverend bishops cried out: 'Pope Leo has thus interpreted'; which agrees with the Greek, where it is had thus." Nay more, Evagrius, in reviewing these things, did not set down the word in this place, but says simply. And this indeed in all the Greek editions of Evagrius. As regards the Latins, the letter of Hilary the deacon to Pulcheria Augusta, written after the Robber Council of Ephesus, which was related by the same distinguished man among the letters of St. Leo, gives sufficiently great proof that the Roman pontiffs were then accustomed to be called simply "popes." For thus he says: "There was a manifest necessity which compelled the offering of the letters of the blessed pope directed to your clemency." I shall not make use of the authority of the letter…

…the letter of Galla Placidia to the same Pulcheria Augusta, in which it is written: "The Roman Leo the pope, surrounded by a multitude of priests," because it could be objected that the word "papa" here is with an adjunct. The Brief History of the Eutychianists: "On the arrival of Uranius the subdeacon, and bringing the imperial sacred letter against John, now bishop, the pope was suspended from the confirmation of his episcopate." But those things which have already been said suffice, as I judge, to break the force of that argument which Paschasius Quesnel adduced against this passage. 22.

But since our adversary had heaped together a mass of many matters in his dissertation, in order that, the session concerning Domnus of Antioch having been ruined, the authority likewise of the Roman pontiffs in confirming the ordinations of bishops and in rescinding the decrees of councils might be utterly abolished, it was needful for us step by step to re-examine the several things which he gathered in the same dissertation.

Nevertheless, since our labor has been greatly lessened, we preferred, through the study and diligence of the most distinguished Stephen Baluze, to transfer to our own defense those things which he himself most diligently annotated—to which some things have also been added from our own industry, that would aptly answer to what was said in our preceding Exercitations—rather than to weave an entirely new Exercitation from scratch.

But since in the last place the same Paschasius Quesnel adduced many errors—and indeed grammatical ones—which crept into the session about which we are treating, and noted that the names of those bishops who were present at this session are not there recorded, and that thus the suspicions of forgery are the more increased, because there Maximus presented petitions to lay judges in an ecclesiastical cause, the bishops, the chief men of the synod, being set aside: therefore, lest we should seem negligent, we have resolved to meet these scruples of Quesnel as well, together with the same Baluze.

As to what pertains to the grammatical errors: if Quesnel's suspicion held good, all the Acts of Chalcedon, and all the proceedings of the other general councils, would have to be called spurious, and those most of all which were translated from the Greek language into Latin. Or is Quesnel perhaps ignorant that more recent translators labored greatly so that we might have the ancient version in the form in which at least Rusticus emended it? But what of the names of the bishops? For it was not necessary that they be recited after the session of Domnus. Those names were sufficiently recorded in the other sessions, and were re-entered at the foot of the proceedings.

Finally, the cause about which the matter was treated was not merely ecclesiastical, but also civil, says Baluze—to whom we do not subscribe in this part—since it concerned a pension to be given to Domnus out of ecclesiastical revenues, voluntarily indeed proposed by Maximus himself in testimony of the compassion to be exercised toward Domnus, who, just as by the law of the canons he had been deprived of the title of the Church and of the benefice, so could not receive the revenues from the Church of which he had been deprived. Wherefore, lest ecclesiastical rights be violated, a decree of the synod had to be interposed, which finally the lay judges, as witnesses, approved.

For that this is what the manner of acting of the emperor Marcian signifies is clear: he, departing from the synod after the definition of faith, ordered that the bishops should tarry three or four days, and that each should propose what he wished before the great judges. Nor is it any objection that the judges and the most ample senate were named in the first place. For those men did not sit as arbiters of ecclesiastical matters, but were merely witnesses and afforded support, so that without quarrels and contentions all cases might be brought to a conclusion—as we ourselves proved in the Exercitation held concerning the fourth session of Chalcedon in the cause of Photius of Tyre, judged there not according to the pragmatic sanctions of the age, but according to the canonical laws. 23.

Quesnel finally contends that it was very unseemly and ridiculous that Domnus was there exhibited as a beggar, and anxious to obtain sustenance. For he says that Domnus, the bishop of so great a see as was Antioch, who—since he succeeded in the place of his own uncle—must have abounded in wealth, friends, and authority, could not have come to that depth of calamity, that sustenance should fail him altogether, unless it had been provided by the disposition of his successor. But whence does Quesnel gather all these things which he is just now inventing? Domnus did not come to the synod, he did not ask that expenses be given him, no one else asked it for him; Maximus did it of his own accord.

Nay rather, if we compare the things we have described in what precedes with the words of Evagrius, praised a little before, we may suspect that Domnus never received any such fixed pension—he who, content with his lot, passed the remainder of his life hidden away in a monastery, having nothing further in common with the Antiochenes. But the other things which Quesnel added to prove the session spurious—namely, that it is separated from the body of the remaining Greek sessions of the Council of Chalcedon, that it has hitherto obtained an uncertain place, that it was inserted long after the Acts had been collected—utterly waver and fall to the ground. What then?

If the adduced reasons availed, it would already follow that the session concerning Photius and Eustathius—which in the age of Rusticus, Liberatus, and Evagrius was separated from the body of the remaining Greek sessions of the Council of Chalcedon—is false and spurious. Was not this also inserted long after those Acts had been collected? Yet since Balsamon found it observed in other ancient codices, on that account no learned man has hitherto judged it spurious, because it answers exactly to those things which befell in the Robber Council of Ephesus and in the two Synods of Constantinople, in which there was treatment of the election of Anatolius and of his ordination as bishop of Constantinople.

Have we not clearly proved from the Acts of Chalcedon that the session of Domnus has similar marks and notes? The session of Photius of Tyre likewise was tossed about among uncertain places. In Balsamon's codex it was read at the end of the proceedings, but in the common editions it is placed at the foot of the fourth session. The words of Facundus of Hermiane objected by Quesnel afford no protection whatever to his collapsed cause. For they do not pertain to the question proposed, since from the silence of Facundus of Hermiane we can elicit nothing else than that Domnus of Antioch was not condemned in the Council of Chalcedon—which we ourselves have already freely granted. 24.

Would, then, that Quesnel had not chosen to indulge his own studies so excessively—now by devising fabrications, now by weaving deceits, now indeed by striving to drag the testimonies of the ancient Fathers into depraved and violent interpretations—in order to champion the chimerical system he had set before himself concerning the authority of the Roman pontiffs; employing as often as possible those venomous props of conjectures, which overturn ancient ecclesiastical history, abolish the sacred economy of governance, and introduce a new discipline contrary to the canons. But who will affirm that he had the mind, and had spent his labor, on adorning the writings of St. Leo the Great?

Assuredly whoever is not blind must confess with us that the Leonine Works have been disfigured, mutilated, and led into a depraved meaning by him, supplying to the enemies of the Catholic Church those arms which he himself, as a presbyter of the clerical order, ought to have snatched from their hands. Meanwhile, at length, I must grieve that hitherto certain men have been found who, persisting in Quesnel's principles, have publicly dared to maintain that this session is fictitious. 1. The causes of Photius of Tyre, Theodoret of Cyrus, and Domnus of Antioch having been brought to the balance and dispatched, as the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon and the letters of St.

…the letters of St. Leo teach us, scarcely anything grave would remain for us to treat, had not at length, in that last session, the ambition of Anatolius sought, to the ruin of the rights of the other Churches, to gain for itself a primacy over the rest of the more principal Churches of the East, by coveting to make his own see as it were equal to the Apostolic Roman See. This ambition, however, Anatolius restrained with many dissimulations right up to the close of the synod.

But when at length free liberty was granted that in the synod particular questions might be raised, to forestall or henceforth remove certain abuses which had occurred in ecclesiastical administration, in the end he reserved to himself to augment his own rights, to cast down the honor of others, and under pretext of the imperial city—called New Rome—to obtain the primacy immediately after the Apostolic Roman See. Therefore, the definition of faith now being made, the Fathers of the synod, besides the causes of those three bishops, also reviewed another, that of Ibas of Edessa. For he, at the instigation of Dioscorus, had been deprived of the priesthood in the Robber Council of Ephesus, absent and unheard. On that account he had offered a petition to the emperor in defense of his cause, who brought the matter to the synod.

The Fathers, however, having examined the synodal Acts of Tyre and Berytus, and the testimony of the clergy of Edessa having been obtained, since he was found by the pontifical legates to be of approved faith and of upright life, was restored to the priesthood and to his see. Something, however, concerning Nonnus, who had received the see of Ibas, since it had still to be deliberated by the synod, was remitted to the judgment of Maximus of Antioch. To this man it seemed good that he should not lack the honor of the episcopate, until he should deliberate otherwise with the bishops of his diocese. Quesnel added besides that a decree had been issued concerning the abolition of the memory of the pseudo-synod of Ephesus, and that it should be struck from the number of the synods, the emperor being asked to forbid by decree that it be called a synod, lest its acts be received.

"(He adds:) the holy synod had already ratified the ordination of Maximus, because he was lawfully consecrated by the bishops of the province and admitted into the communion of the most holy patriarch Leo; wherefore the exception, which a few mentioned, was superfluous, since they also pronounced, by the legate of the Apostolic See, that it ought not to be reckoned among the Acts of Ephesus. The session concerning Domnus is fictitious, as we prove elsewhere." So far Quesnel, with whom we do not now intend to enter into a new contest. But he ought to have added two things for the fuller truth of the matter: the one, that the brigand Acts had long since been proscribed and abolished by St. Leo, on the ground that the Synod of Ephesus was held against the canons, and its Acts are judged illegitimate and not rightly done.

So we read in the ancient synopsis of letter 39 to Theodosius Augustus, which the Vatican manuscript copies and the Florentine codex contain, and which the old editors—Surius, the collectors of the Library of the Fathers and of the councils—preserved. Although Quesnel, in adorning the Works of St. Leo, expunged it and introduced into his edition another wholly different one without the authority of the manuscripts—as we shall observe in the notes. From this, moreover, the second thing follows, namely, that Paschasinus, the legate of Leo, being excellently aware of the pontifical decree long since passed, by a solemn declaration made in the synod, wished that the praised Acts be proscribed as void and null;

And in order to cut off from the Eutychian faction every avenue of escape, [it is said] that he sought to have this enactment strengthened by an imperial law: namely, that the preceding public law of Theodosius should be abolished, by which he had ordered and decreed that it should be lawful for no one to reject or to invalidate the synodal Acts of Ephesus, of which Dioscorus had been the author. The words of the cited Paschasinus clearly indicate this. 'If therefore,' he says, 'by the most blessed and apostolic bishop of the city of Rome all that was done there is held to be void, it is clear that the most holy bishop of the city of Antioch likewise stands outside these proceedings — whom afterward the most blessed bishop received into his own communion.'

For it is necessary that we again approach that same most tranquil and most Christian prince, that he may command that that council be not even named by any sacred and pious law; from which it rather appears that long before, in the year 449, by the decree of the most holy supreme pontiff Leo the Great, the acts of that synod had been rendered void and abolished, and that nothing new had been defined by the Chalcedonian Fathers themselves. 2. Moreover, the controversy of Bassianus and Stephen occupied the two following sessions, the eleventh and twelfth: the one deposed from the see of Ephesus, the other substituted in his place.

For Stephen — he who had been substituted in his place — testified that Bassianus had been removed, by the command of the holy pontiff Leo the Great, from the Ephesian episcopate which he had obtained by usurpation. And since Stephen himself had acquired the episcopate for himself by conspiracy, it was justly judged that another should be elected, one who both knows the faith in its integrity and is known to be adorned in life, so that he might be fit to be a bishop. In the two following sessions, the thirteenth and fourteenth, the suit of Eunomius bishop of Nicomedia and Anastasius of Nicaea was examined.