Sermons & Letters 78 part 2/6

'In the moral precepts,' he says, 'no decrees of the former Testament are reprobated, but by the evangelical teaching many have been augmented, that they might be more perfect and more luminous, giving salvation rather than promising the Savior.' See Sermon 6, On the Fast of the Tenth Month, ch. 1. But that we may set alongside two peers of an older theology two chiefs, contemporaries of scholastic theology, let us hear Salvian singing in harmony with Leo, book II To the Catholic Church, where he has this before the middle: 'But perhaps someone asks,' he says, 'what is the reason that God now demands more from Christians through the Gospel than from the Jews formerly through the Law? The reason of this matter is open. For we now pay greater things to our Lord because we owe greater things;

for the Jews had a certain shadow of things, we the truth,' etc.; and a few lines before: 'There was then more indulgence and more license; then the eating of flesh was proclaimed, now abstinence; then in a whole lifetime very few days of fasts, now one might call all of life a single fast,' etc. 2. But this censure — which Quesnel, under no necessity of explaining or vindicating Leo, so lengthily set forth against the most excellent theologians, and especially against the very prince of theologians, St. Thomas — how it is not only inopportune but even extravagant, we show in a few words. They are reproved as though, from the perfection of the law of grace, they had preferred the shorter chastisements of today's fasts to the longer ones.

From the context itself it is clear that they, considering the discipline of their own time — in which the fast was broken at the ninth hour rather than in the evening — sought a certain fitting reason for this hour, one that might agree with the law of grace in a mystical sense: for thus other ancient Fathers too adduced mystical reasons for the rites to be instituted. But that they compared the shorter chastisements of the fast with the longer ones, and preferred the former to the latter as though more perfect, on account of the perfection of the new law — this you will nowhere find. For who of sound mind would think it? And if they preferred the ninth hour to the evening one, they are not therefore to be said to have set a shorter chastisement before a longer one:

for about the same chastisement could be had, if someone, abstaining for a span of twenty-four hours, took a single meal at the ninth hour or in the evening: for the abstinence that is shorter for one breaking the fast at the ninth hour is in a manner compensated by the following longer abstinence; and besides, since those theologians speak chiefly of the fast of Lent, which was then broken at the ninth hour, they could reckon the same abstinence and chastisement through twenty-four continuous hours both in the one who fasts from the ninth hour of one day, after the midday meal, to the ninth hour of the next day, and in the one who fasts from evening to evening; so that they would have made least account of the variation between a ninth-hour or an evening meal within the same twenty-four hours of abstinence.

'This formula of prayer is in the first place catholic — nay rather, it is the sum and fullness of the Christian religion, whose peculiar mark it is to worship God through Christ, as Tertullian witnesses in the Apologeticum, ch. 21, and in Optatus, book III: You call him a pagan who has prayed to God the Father through His Son before the altar? And — what is equivalent to all witnesses — the Church employs it partly in her offices, partly in the public prayer of the sacrifice. For she thus concludes all her collects, Through Christ, etc., namely the mediator of God and men. And that at the altar prayer may always be directed to the Father, it was of old sanctioned by the Council of Carthage which is called the Third, canon 23.'

Of old, however, while the Arian heresy raged, this formula of speech employed by Leo was not heard with altogether favorable ears: because the Arians concealed the impious sense of their heresy under these words, being wont to sing this doxology at the close of their hymns in this manner: 'Glory to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit'; of which thing Philostorgius is witness in book III of his History. And for that reason Eusebius of Pamphili — as Socrates relates in book II of his History, ch. 21 — came under suspicion of the Arian dogma among certain persons, because he rather often repeats in his writings these words, 'Through Christ.' Which words are also everywhere familiar to ecclesiastical writers, and first of all to the apostle Paul:

'Who nevertheless,' says Socrates, 'was never reckoned a teacher of perverse dogma.' All this from Quesnel. 'Similarly,' says Quesnel in an annotation, 'in Sermon 4 On the Epiphany, the Son of God is said to be mingled with the nature of the flesh. Such modes of speaking the scholastic theologians shunned more scrupulously than did those parents of an older theology, whose chief, Augustine, in Epistle 3 to Volusianus, proposes this definition of the Lord's incarnation, as full as it is brief: A mixture of God and man. Yet only if, as he immediately subjoins, the hearer withdraw from the custom of bodies, whereby two liquids are wont to be so commingled that neither preserves its own integrity.'

Whence a little after he too fears lest the name of mixture or blending be unworthily applied to the union of God and man, nay of soul and body. Yet they spoke more securely while the Eutychians were not yet contending, who — not withdrawing from the custom of bodies, as Augustine had warned — dreamed that the natures had coalesced into one after the union. After the rise of which heresy, Leo spoke more cautiously and weighed his words more carefully, lest — as he admonished Theodoret — he should seem, against the Nestorians or against the Eutychians, to have favored one or the other of them, but might avoid and condemn both enemies of Christ with an equal balance (Epistle 93, alias 63).

Moreover, when the one nature has been mingled with the other, it is to be noted not only that which our author everywhere declares — that neither was confounded by the commingling — but also that this was done in this manner: that when the Word of God, as Augustine says, was mingled with the soul having a body, it at once took to itself both the soul and the body (St. Augustine, Epistle 3). But in what manner the Word was mingled with the soul, who could explain, when Augustine dares not explain it? This one thing he says: that the Wisdom of God, which is His Word, everywhere present and hidden, nowhere enclosed, nowhere divided, nowhere swollen, but without mass wholly everywhere, in a manner far other than that by which it is present to the rest of creatures, took up the man, and made both itself and him one Jesus Christ, etc.

For she herself, as he says in another place of the same Epistle, joined to herself the rational soul and, through it, also the human body, and the whole man entirely, to be changed for the better — she herself in no way changed for the worse — deigning to assume from him the name of humanity, bountifully bestowing on him her Divinity. Finally, this union is nothing other than the intimate penetration of the soul and, through it, of the whole nature, into which God Himself wholly pours Himself wholly, in a manner that cannot befit a creature, since no creature truly penetrates another.

'But God,' says Augustine, 'who is capacious, not capable of being contained; penetrating, not penetrable; filling, not fillable; who is everywhere at once wholly, and everywhere diffused — through the infusion of His power was mercifully mingled with human nature; the human nature was not mingled with the divine nature' (Augustine, in Leporius's Confession). Thus far he. But we have gathered more on this subject in Dissertation 2, ch. 3, in the Works of St. Zeno, p. 91, which whoever wishes will be able to compare.

Here we insert a particular little dissertation on this subject by Giovanni Ciampini, addressed to Erasmo Gattola, which Quesnel added to his second edition. Long since has your love toward the liberal arts and toward those devoted to them become known, together with your will to deserve well of them — a love which you have always displayed and cease not to display, inviting some to studies, enticing others, instructing others by your most courteous and learned replies, sparing at last neither labors nor expenses whereby you might be of service to the literary republic to the best of your power. I too had known what was commonly reported of you in this praise, not only by the associates of your most noble order, but also by others.

Yet a more certain and most ample testimony of this matter I received with great delight of soul, when not long ago, in the month of May, I betook myself alive to visit that most celebrated arch-monastery. Doubtless I gazed in admiration upon the sanctity of the place, the beauty of God's house in the temple, and, so to speak, the illustrious colony of all the virtues, which gave to heaven so many excellent bishops for the cities, so many most worthy cardinals for the Vatican, so many most holy pontiffs of the Church, so many myriads of saints. I marveled at the structure and magnificence of the monastery, plainly worthy both of its royal founders and of its monastic inhabitants.

Most gladly I saw the most opulent gifts of Caesars, kings, and princes, in which one could recognize both their Christian piety and the glory of Benedict your father. Nay, most pleasant to me likewise was the singular liberality of the monks, who dismissed me at my departure with all the most generous offices of religious hospitality. But — that I may frankly confess what most bears upon the present matter — I took exceeding pleasure in beholding so many chests of most ancient codices in the library over whose custody you yourself preside; and doubtless greater pleasure when I heard you reading most readily the codices themselves, written out in so many and such diverse characters, with the utmost ease.

Indeed, from this singular erudition I judge it came about that, so often questioned by me in doubtful matters, you answered with that facility which we can only expect from a man long versed day and night in these studies. Nor yet are you so devoted to codices written by hand that you neglect those published in print. Nay rather, in acquiring these too you have expended no small sum of money, so far as religious discipline permits — codices which, diligently bought at Rome, you transferred into your noble museum, therein placing your rest, therein your delights, after the manner of the wise. Hence it came about that I believed no more acceptable monument of a grateful soul could be offered to you by me than some little literary work;

and this especially, which, having in a manner proceeded from you, seems by a certain right to be owed back to you. When I had already committed to type some of my lucubrations with the inscription 'On the Sacred Buildings Constructed by Constantine the Great,' and on that occasion had described the Vatican basilica, most celebrated throughout the whole world, this among many things came to be noted: that the ancient faithful, venerating on bended knees, were wont to ascend to it by steps. On which matter, when I chanced to hold a conversation with the Reverend Father

Giuseppe Maria Tommasi, priest of the Congregation of Clerics Regular, our common friend and an outstanding investigator of the ancient sacred rites of our age, chanced to hold a conversation, he told me that in Sermon 7 of St. Leo the Great, On the Nativity of the Lord, he had noticed the word ARÆ ('of the altar'), which he supposed to have been there placed by an error. Wherefore he left the solution of that doubt to my care and my investigation. Most gladly did I resolve to comply with my friend's urgings; therefore in the first place I turned to searching out the printed codices. If I recite all of these to you, I by no means think I shall be tiresome, since you love letters. The most ancient printing of St. Leo's sermons, then, is that made at Cologne in the year 1551;

in folio, which appeared in the same city and format in the year 1569; then the sermons of the same St. Leo were brought to light at Venice in the year 1553, which in the same format and in the same city came forth again in the year 1573. Then in the year 1566 the same sermons were edited at Louvain in quarto; and afterward reprinted at Antwerp in the year 1583, likewise in quarto. But in the year 1633 all the Works of St. Leo were brought to light from the presses of Lyons, which, together with St. Maximus and five other Fathers, were likewise reprinted there in the year 1652. Finally, at Paris in the year 1675, by that most erudite man Pasquier Quesnel, priest of the Congregation of the Oratory, illustrated with appendices, dissertations, and observations, they came forth from the press.

All these editions, which came into my hands, I read with careful attention, and found that all of them contained in themselves the word ARÆ. Wherefore I forthwith set my mind to investigating the manuscript codices; therefore I went to the Vatican Library, in which — since it abounds in manuscript codices, and chiefly on account of the intimacy which at that time existed with Emmanuel a Schelestrat of blessed memory, the chief custodian of the same library — I hoped I should find something therein; but hope deceived me, since I found nothing. Not terrified in mind by this — nay, made the bolder — I turned to visiting other libraries, both in the City and outside it, and to turning them over by the help of friends.

I went to the renowned Barberini, Ottoboni, and also the Angelica libraries, and although in them I had found manuscript codices in which were the sermons of St. Leo, nevertheless, on account of their being venerable for their antiquity, they were of least help, and in them I observed nothing but the word ARÆ. Afterward I wrote letters to the most reverend Father Eustachio a Sancto Ubaldo of the Order of St. Augustine, consultor of the districts and most deserving of the literary republic, that he might investigate in the Ambrosian Library whether any manuscript codex was there which contained the sermons of St. Leo, and that he might notice the aforesaid word ARÆ in them. My friend replied that he had diligently searched the codices, and had read in them the word ARÆ.

Soon I also gave you letters, and received the reply that you had found the aforesaid sermon in the codex marked number 126, and that in it the word ARCÆ was expressed; wherefore you supposed it a copyist's error, who instead of ARÆ had written ARCÆ, changing the letter E into C; and that that one codex contained above ninety sermons of St. Leo, the beginning of which codex is: 'Here begin the sermons of St. Leo the Pope. First, on the fast of the tenth month. If, dearly beloved, we understand faithfully and wisely the origin of our creation,' etc., and it ends: 'If therefore anyone, having spurned the darkness of perfidy, shall have willed to obey his precepts and commands and endeavors, he shall enter secure the gates of heaven and of paradise, Amen';

and that that codex was written out in Lombardic letters already six hundred and more years ago, since it was written by order of Desiderius, abbot of Monte Cassino, who afterward became Roman pontiff under the name Victor III, as is read in ch. 63, book III of the Cassinese Chronicle, and as the characters of this codex show, which are similar to those of other codices written out by command of the same abbot Desiderius. When these notices had been communicated to me, you wished abundantly to testify your kindness toward me, when you sent the beginnings and endings of another sixteen sermons found under the name of the same St. Leo in other manuscript codices. But I knew that nine of those you had indicated had already been printed under the name of another saint;

but of the rest I do not know the authors. Of these I found two in the Quesnellian edition, but they are by no means complete, since they are parts of sermons; namely one, which begins 'Honorabilem,' etc., is part of Sermon 1 on the anniversary day of the Assumption; the other is Sermon 48, on Lent. Of those sent, therefore, five remain, which, comparison having been made, I found by no means to agree with the clear and open style of St. Leo. I thought also in this to use the judgment of friends, who came over to that same opinion of mine.

I judged that I ought by no means to acquiesce in these investigations, but thought it fair to approach the Vatican Library again and to apply new diligence; I therefore asked the erudite man Lorenzo Zaccagni, the second custodian of the same library, that he would grant me the opportunity of searching the indexes: he most kindly indulged my petition. Nor was the new search useless. We found, then, one codex marked number 1276, written two hundred years ago, on the reverse of whose page 39 is read the word ARCE without a diphthong; but in another codex marked number 1267, page 78, second column, on the reverse, written out about six centuries ago, in plain letters I read the sought-for word ARÆ, which resolves the question of the doubt.

Of this diligence applied by me I judged I ought to make you certain, that you may know it has crept into this word, and may notice how it ought to be read. For one little letter, omitted through the copyist's carelessness, changes the whole sense, as will most clearly appear from what is to be said below. 'Ara' (altar), then, is that place in which sacred offerings are made to God; but 'area' (landing) is that level space which is interposed at the top of stairs — and sometimes also in the middle and in other parts, when the stairs have many steps — for this purpose: that those ascending by them may be able to pause there a little, on account of the difficulty and labor of the ascent. This word ARÆ is read in Sermon 7 of St. Leo the Pope, On the Nativity of the Lord, ch. 4. The particular portion of the sermon runs thus:

From such practices there also arises this impiety, that the sun, as it rises at the beginning of the daylight, is adored by certain rather foolish people from more elevated places; which some, even Christians, think they do so religiously that, before they reach the basilica of the blessed Apostle Peter, which is dedicated to the one living and true God, having climbed the steps by which one ascends to the platform of the upper court, they turn their bodies back toward the rising sun and, with bowed necks, bend themselves in honor of the shining orb. That this is done partly through the fault of ignorance, partly through the spirit of paganism, we greatly waste away in grief and sorrow.

For even if some perhaps venerate the Creator of the beautiful light rather than the light itself, which is a creature, one must nevertheless abstain from this very appearance of such an observance; for when he who has abandoned the worship of the gods finds it among us, will he not retain it with himself as a portion of his old opinion, as though plausible, since he sees it to be common to Christians and to the impious alike? Let this damnable perversity therefore be cast out from the custom of the faithful, and let not the honor owed to the one God be mingled with the rites of those who serve created things. Here I seem to behold you rightly astonished at me, that so foul an error was not in the least noticed by the learned men who have several times published the works of Saint Leo.

Do not therefore disdain to interpose a brief pause in your studies, and to read with a friendly mind those things which, for the sake of erudition, I have written after the inquiries recorded above. In the first place, then, I turn to the stairway of the Vatican basilica, which I have found to have been very great; its thirty-five marble steps afforded the ascent to the upper area of the basilica, and these were distributed into five sets. For architects observe an odd number in the arrangement of steps; for nature, when we ascend, always inclines us to move the left foot first, and on that same step we usually come to rest. Hence, if the steps be even in number, the right foot rests on the last step, while the left remains suspended, as if it wished to end the ascent.

Wherefore the one ascending suffers a certain discomfort, since, though by nature the left foot desires to find rest, it by no means enjoys it. The design of this stairway, as it was in antiquity, I set forth in plate 12 of my work concerning the Sacred Buildings constructed by Constantine the Great, where the five sets of steps are distinctly seen with landings interspersed among them; hence each set consisted of seven steps. The purpose of the landings which are placed between the flights is that the one ascending, wearied in the climb, may find rest for a little while by strolling or by standing still. But at the summit of the stairway there is one landing greater than all the others, since there the one ascending ought to find greater rest before he enters the building.

In these stairs of Saint Peter's the greatest landing was the one which Saint Leo calls 'the platform of the upper area,' to distinguish it from the other lower ones. Through the steps of this stairway the ancient faithful, for the sake of prayer or of a vow, ascended indiscriminately, namely on bended knees, as is gathered from Gregory IV and Hadrian I in the Lives of the Librarian. Having therefore shown what the word 'area' (court) is, and what it signifies in the sense of Saint Leo, the matter demands that I submit to examination that same pontiff's rebuke to the faithful.

Certain of the ancient faithful, before they entered the Vatican basilica, after the ascent of the stairs—that is, on that greatest landing of the stairs—would station themselves on the day of the Lord's Nativity and adore the rising sun, taking their pattern from the Manichaeans, who observed a profane rite of this kind. Wherefore these very faithful, ignorant of their own rites, confused the newborn Christ with the rising sun, adoring the creature in place of the Creator. Let me set this forth more precisely. Nearly all the nations, and especially those of the East, believed the sun to be the chief of the gods. This is taught by a man of admirable reading and erudition, Gaspar Barthius, in his Adversaria Commentaries, book 41, chapter 27.

The same is shown by a man of manifold erudition and varied reading, Gaspar Johannes Vossius, in his treatise on idolatry in very many places; the same by Kircher in his Oedipus Aegyptiacus. Since therefore the heresy of the Manichaeans had its origin in Mesopotamia, an eastern region, as writes Saint Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia—or Salamis—in Cyprus, in his work Against Heresies, heresy 46 (or 66), it is no wonder that these Manichaeans adored the sun; which that great light of the Church, Saint Augustine, indicates in his book On Heresies, heresy 43, writing thus concerning these same Manichaeans: 'They make prayers to the sun by day, wheresoever it goes about; to the moon by night, if it appears, toward the northern part where the sun, when it has set, returns to the east.'

Wherefore, toward that region of the sky where they saw the sun to be viewed at that hour, there they turned themselves to adore it. In the very early morning, then, the rising sun looks upon the face of the Vatican basilica, and illumines it for many hours. Therefore, if the Manichaeans, while they stood on the Vatican stairs, wished to adore the sun, in an act of this kind they turned their backs to the Vatican basilica itself. And although a profane rite of this sort was observed by the Manichaeans on every day and at every hour, nevertheless that very day, the 25th of December, of the Lord's Nativity, was esteemed honorable among the Manichaeans on account of the rising of the sun, as is most openly gathered from the praised Saint Leo in sermon 2 On the Nativity of the Lord, chapter 6, where he says thus:

'Having therefore the confidence of so great a hope, most beloved, in the faith in which you are founded, remain steadfast, lest that same tempter, whose dominion over you Christ has already shut out, seduce you again by some snares; and lest he corrupt by the art of his deceit these very joys of the present day, mocking the simpler souls with the pestilent persuasion of certain persons, to whom this day of our solemnity seems honorable not so much on account of the Nativity of Christ as on account of the rising, as they say, of a new sun. Their hearts, wrapped in vast darkness, are estranged from every increase of the true light;'

'for they are still dragged along by the most foolish errors of paganism, and because they cannot raise the keenness of the mind above that which they behold with carnal sight, they venerate with divine honor the luminaries that minister to the world. Far be impious superstition and monstrous falsehood from Christian minds. Temporal things are beyond all measure distant from the eternal, corporeal from the incorporeal, subject things from the ruler; for although they possess a wondrous beauty, they nevertheless possess no Godhead to be adored. That power, therefore, that wisdom, that majesty is to be worshiped, which created the whole of the world out of nothing, and by all-powerful reason produced earthly and heavenly substance into whatever forms and measures it willed.'

'Let the sun, the moon, and the stars be of use to those who use them, let them be beautiful to those who behold them; but in such a way that thanks be referred from them to their Author, and that God be adored, who created them, not the creature, which serves. Praise God therefore, most beloved, in all His works and judgments. Let there be in you an undoubting belief in virgin integrity and childbearing. Honor with holy and sincere service the sacred and divine mystery of human reformation.' Concerning this practice of depraved adoration the same Saint Leo again rebukes the faithful in the above-cited sermon 7, On the same Nativity, chapter 4, which I think it will not be unfitting to repeat here. Thus therefore this holy man speaks:

'From such practices there also arises this impiety, that the sun, rising at the beginning of the daylight, is adored by certain rather foolish people from more elevated places; which some, even Christians, think they do so religiously that, before they reach the basilica of the blessed Apostle Peter, which is dedicated to the one living and true God, having climbed the steps by which one ascends to the platform of the upper court, they turn their bodies back toward the rising sun and, with bowed necks, bend themselves in honor of the shining orb. That this is done partly through the fault of ignorance...'

'For even if some perhaps venerate the Creator of the beautiful light rather than the light itself, which is a creature, one must nevertheless abstain from this very appearance of such an observance; for when he who has abandoned the worship of the gods finds it among us, will he not retain it with himself as a portion of his old opinion, as though plausible, since he sees it to be common to Christians and to the impious alike?' This truth, which is drawn out from the sermons cited, will shine forth the more if the times of the same Saint Leo are weighed, with respect to the concourse of the people to the Vatican basilica.