Sermons & Letters 78 part 6/6

That Leo wrote at least two letters, one to Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, the other to Paschasinus, bishop of Lilybaeum, is manifest from the letters of Paschasinus. But both, through the injury of the times, have perished. It was thought that only the reply of Paschasinus survived; and therefore Quesnel edited that one alone. But we believe that no small fragment of that letter also, which Paschasinus testifies Cyril returned to Leo, has been transmitted to us; and that this may be established, certain things must be observed. 2. Namely, that letter of Cyril concerning the Pascha, delivered to the Fathers of the African council, which Dionysius Exiguus had inserted whole into his collection under number...

135, which, from the papers of Sirmond, with a longer addition, was first edited by Petavius in volume II of his De Doctrina Temporum, at the end, and then by Bucherius in his Commentary on the Paschal Canon of Victorius, chapter 1, page 72. But two parts are to be distinguished in that which Petavius and Bucherius edited: namely, Cyril's own letter to the Africans, which is read more correctly in Dionysius; and its addition, which pertains to another letter of the same Cyril. Now when a certain unskilled person had found these two distinct letters of Cyril treating of the Pascha, he believed that both treated of the same Pascha;

and therefore to the letter to the Africans, which he first copied from Dionysius, with a few words altered at his own discretion, he subjoined and inserted the other, which in the times of Bede was read entire, its beginning being omitted; and since this announces the day of the Pascha of the year 444, the day designated in the earlier letter to the Africans, namely the ninth of the Kalends of May, was accommodated by the copyist to that same day. Hence Bucherius held this whole document to be not two letters but one, and believed that the discourse in it was of the Pascha of the year 444 alone. 3. But if the first part of this be compared with Cyril's letter to the Africans, which has been preserved by Dionysius, the same words will be found, with a few expressions excepted which the copyist changed;

so that there is no doubt that this first part pertains to the Pascha of the year 420. Thus indeed, since it is there most fittingly inscribed to Aurelius and Valentinus, and also to the whole holy congregation gathered in the synod of Carthage, and in it Cyril affirms that he is sending copies of the Council of Nicaea (which intimate the Council of Carthage of the year 419), it is wrongly subjoined, where the Pascha is treated, that it is to be celebrated on the ninth of the Kalends of May. For this chronological note indicates the Pascha of the year 444, which in the whole period of Cyril's episcopate among the Alexandrians fell on that day in this year alone, and therefore this letter would have been written in the year 443, with which the Council of Carthage in no way agrees, having long before the year 443 departed from the living.

And so Petavius had rightly reported that this letter was written in the year 419, and that it treats of the Pascha of the year 420, and therefore, in place of 'the ninth of the Kalends of May,' one should read 'the fourteenth of the Kalends of May,' on which day the Pascha was celebrated in the year 420. 4. In Dionysius indeed is read 'the seventeenth of the Kalends of May,' on which day the Pascha fell in the year 423. But besides the fact that a request was more frequently made concerning the Pascha of the following year, and more rarely concerning a Pascha to be celebrated several years later, Cyril's very letter, which announces the Pascha of the future indication, that is, of the following year, is said in Dionysius to have been transmitted to Boniface together with another letter of Atticus, after the consulship of Honorius the twelfth and of Theodosius the eighth, that is, in the year...

419. Now it was easy, by a slip of the copyists, to alter the numeral marks XIV into XVII by joining the two units. Nor should you oppose the Greek text from the codex of the African Church, as they call it, where the same numeral marks are read as in the common Dionysius. For the Greek text of the African codex is not Cyril's original, but an ancient Greek interpretation from the Latin of Dionysius, which is derived from the corrupted text of Dionysius, and confirms that this slip of the copyists is old. Hence therefore it becomes manifest that the true reading in the manuscript of...

...of Sirmond, was corrupted by that antiquary who, when he subjoined the other part to this letter and welded one out of two letters, thought that the day of the Pascha designated in this last part, of which more is treated, should also be transferred to the earlier part. By this liberty, in the inscription the same letter of Cyril is said to have been given to the synod gathered at Carthage on the fifth of the Kalends of December, whereas in Dionysius no such note occurs in the inscription, but in the title Dionysius noted the day of the sixth of the Kalends of December, on which that letter was sent by the Africans to Boniface the pontiff. Thus far concerning the letter to the Council of Carthage. 5. Now concerning the addition, or the other letter of Cyril, which is proper to our purpose.

This indeed treats of the Pascha to be celebrated in the year 444. For it says that the Pascha is to be celebrated among the Alexandrians on the ninth of the Kalends of May on account of the reckoning of the embolism of the year, but that the Latins purpose to celebrate it on the seventh of the Kalends of April, on the twenty-second moon, so that they would make of an embolismic year a common year. All these characters agree with the Pascha of the year 444 alone, such as indeed are also found in the letter of Paschasinus to be subjoined hereafter; and therefore this letter of Cyril, as also that of Paschasinus, pertains to the year 443. 6. Petavius, in his notes on this addition, in volume...

II of De Doctrina Temporum here affirms it to be the Pascha of the year 607, and thence concludes that this is not a letter of Cyril, but of an author who was nearly two centuries later. But his whole reasoning rests upon a fictitious nineteen-year cycle, which he wrongly attributes to the Romans, on the ground that the cycle of 84 years, received among the Latins at this time, was unknown to them; wherefore it is to be reckoned as nothing. But Pagi, on the year 419, number 28, when he had seen that all the characters agreed with the Pascha of the year 444, and that all the codices as well as the writers attribute this letter to Cyril, withdrew from Petavius's opinion, but believed that it was given by Cyril to certain monks on these grounds: because, he says, it is written not to one but to many;

and that these were inferior and subject to Cyril is intimated by the words, 'I command you not to do,' etc.; and that they were monks the example of Pachomius the monk, which is inserted in the same letter, seems to indicate. But since it was written to the Latins, who wished to celebrate the Pascha on the seventh of the Kalends of April, it cannot be said to have been delivered to inferiors and subjects of Cyril. But just as, at the copyist's discretion, in the letter to the Africans it was written 'we command you,' where in Dionysius is read 'we announce'; so at the same discretion we believe it was written in this letter 'I command you,' where in the original and its version something more modest was read.

But the example of the monk, brought forward to prove the point, does nothing to establish that this letter was delivered to monks; especially since it is not even permitted to suspect that the Latins consulted Cyril about the Pascha of the year 444 through monks. 7. Whether, finally, it was written to one or to many, may be doubted. Tillemont, in the Life of Cyril, article 147, thinks it was given to certain bishops of the West. If he gathered this from the words 'which we desire, dearest brethren,' he did not observe that these pertain to the end of the letter which was delivered to the Africans.

But if he deduced it from those words which are inserted in this latter fragment, 'my dearest lords, bear in mind,' which seem rather to be the words of Cyril than of Pachomius, these are indeed stronger, but do not wholly convince; since it could have happened that he who subjoined this letter to the earlier one to the Africans so rendered these places in the plural number, that they might cohere with what preceded, just as we recognize that he altered other things by his own device. 8. John Vander Haagen, author of the work entitled 'Observations on the Prologues and Paschal Letters of the Ancient Fathers and Pontiffs,' Amsterdam, year 1734, page 97, contends that it is a letter of Cyril, and delivered to Leo the pontiff.

He establishes this chiefly from this: that on the one hand it is certain from Paschasinus that St. Cyril, when Leo inquired about the Pascha of the year 444, replied to him through a letter directed to him; on the other hand, that the text which is read in this fragment Bede attributes to Cyril's letter to St. Leo, and in the very fragment there is treated the question of the Pascha of the year 444, concerning which Paschasinus has revealed that Cyril replied to Leo. And the same author alleges three testimonies of Bede: two by which that letter is vindicated to Cyril, namely from the book On the Reckoning of Times, and from the letter to Wicthed; and a third from the little work On the Arguments of the Moon, where it is said to have been written to Leo, on the testimony of Petavius and Bucherius, but he confesses that he could not find the passage.

Certainly in the Cologne edition of the year 1688, volume I, page 151, in that treatise On the Arguments of the Moon, we find this: 'So it is read in the letter which blessed Cyril wrote to Pope Leo: For I will show you what Pachomius the monk...' etc., which things indeed will be found in the fragment presently to be recited, just as in it are also read those things which Bede recites from the same letter of Cyril, both in the little work On the Reckoning of Times of the same edition, chapter 41, volume II, page 83, and in the letter to Wicthed, in the same volume, page 230.

This testimony of Bede is indeed weighty, for since he pronounces this very letter to have been delivered not to the Africans but to Leo, he is found to have discovered this letter not wrongly subjoined to the letter to the Africans, but separate and inscribed to Leo, and therefore lacking those expressions by which it is presented as given to many. We do not at all doubt that Cyril, in his genuine letter to Leo, used those formulas of honor and reverence toward the Apostolic See which are read in his other letters to the Roman pontiffs. But all these formulas we must believe were altered by him who added this fragment to the letter to the Fathers of the Council of Carthage.

But this very interpolation has persuaded us not to insert this fragment absolutely into this work, in which we have thought that only wholly genuine letters should be transcribed. But since the interpolation seems to lie only in the words, while in the matter itself this whole fragment coheres with the characters of the Pascha of the year 444, which are found in the genuine letters of Paschasinus, and also with the very opinions of Cyril, which are contained in others of his paschal little works; we have believed that it should not be wholly omitted, but subjoined to this notice, and illustrated also with some annotations... 'Let us celebrate the Pascha together on the ninth of the Kalends of May, on account of the reckoning of the embolism of the year.'

'If you do this on the seventh of the Kalends of April, on the twenty-second moon, as though you had prepared, you make a common year out of an embolismic one, while you observe the moon kindled on the third of the Nones of March, according to the rule of the Latins, on the Kalends of January, on the Lord's Day, the twenty-seventh moon; and it is not to be observed in this year, for the causes which we have stated above. For just as the Pascha which we have mentioned is to be avoided in this year, so it is to be guarded against that we make the Pascha of an embolismic year in a common year, and of a common year in an embolismic one. For we ought to investigate the lunar epacts in the months of the whole year, that we may celebrate the Pascha on the moon of the first month, at the beginning of the year after the entrance of spring.'

'For the sun itself is daily shut in alike by land and sea at the end of the day, and is opened at the day's beginning. And the sun ends the course of the whole year on the twelfth of the Kalends of April, and the fullness or diminution of the lunar globe is foreseen by the motion of the fingers, by the mastery of reason, and by some computation of the reckoning; so that we may count only twelve moons according to the lawful computation of the Hebrews in a common year, and thirteen in an embolismic one, according to the computation of days. But I will show you what Pachomius, distinguished in deeds, illustrious in apostolic grace, and the founder of the monasteries of Egypt, published to the monastery which in the language of the Egyptians is called Panum, the letters which, at the dictation of an angel, he had received, that they might not incur error in the reckoning of the paschal solemnity;'

'and that they might observe the moon of the first month in a common and in an embolismic year. My dearest lords, bear in mind that the first Pascha was appointed in Egypt as an admonition, that the children of Israel should eat the lamb as a type of the true Lamb, on the moon of the first month. But the latter Pascha was made for a remembrance, in which the Manna descended, which showed that the shadowy lamb should withdraw when the true Manna had descended. But our Lord Jesus Christ joined in one day the lamb of the Jews and the true Manna, when he blessed the bread and the wine, saying: This is my body, and my blood, on the moon of the first month, at the beginning of the year. Therefore let us remember and be mindful to offer what Jesus offered for us in the first month.'

'For the Lord Jesus said: As often as you shall do these things, you shall do them in remembrance and memory of me. Search therefore most diligently what the Synod of Nicaea ordained, the fourteenth moons of all the years through the nineteen-year cycle, that we be not deceived in the fourteenth moon with the Jews and the heretics, who are called Tessarescaedecatitae (Quartodecimans). And it was established in all the synods, except the Synod of Gangra and of Caesarea, that no Church, or city, or any region should do anything contrary to those things which were decreed concerning the Pascha in the Council of Nicaea.'

'Believe me that, if the Synod of Nicaea had not written down the lunar cycle of the first month, the cycle of the stone of Silenites in Persia would have sufficed as an example of the paschal reckoning, whose inner brightness waxes and wanes with the moon of the first month. Therefore I have announced to you all these things, because you doubted concerning the moon of the first month in this year. Therefore I command you not to make the Pascha in the month of March in an embolismic year, but on the ninth of the Kalends of May, in the unity of the Catholic Church. Let us, the true Israelites, eat the true Lamb, the immaculate the immaculate: for it was commanded to carnal Israel that in one house they should eat the yearling lamb. Concerning which immaculate lamb it was most truly commanded:'

'You shall not kill the lamb in its mother's milk, that is, in the nearest Pascha of its conception in its mother's womb. Therefore Joseph, lest Mary, being pregnant, should be killed with stones as a fornicatress and adulteress, wished secretly to put her away. But that the lamb might not be killed in its mother's milk, at the nearest Pascha of its nativity Joseph fled into Egypt, at the angel's command, in the month of March, in the returning year, in which month Cain led out Abel the just into the field, that he might kill him, in a type of Christ led out to the praetorium of Pilate on the sixth day (Friday): because on the same day he was conceived in the womb, and died on the cross; for on the sixth day the soul died for sin in paradise, and on the same day he died in the body.'

I have answered, as I think, all the things about which you have questioned me. — I received the writings of your Apostleship by the delivery of Silanus, deacon of the Church of Panormus, which brought solace and remedy in all things to my nakedness and hardships, which I incurred through a most bitter captivity, refreshing my soul with heavenly dew, and wiping away all that had been sorrowful, venerable lord Pope. Your Crown deigned to command that my littleness should intimate to your most sacred ears what the truth of the paschal computation held for the year after this one. To which pious precept I could not be, nor ought I to be, at all disobedient.

By long treatment, therefore, and by reasoning, we found that to be true which was written back to your Blessedness by the prelate of the Alexandrian Church. For since the Roman computation, by which the cycle is concluded—of which the very year in question will be the sixty-third, which cycle began from the consulship of Antoninus and Syagrius—brought us into doubt, because on the seventh of the Kalends of April the Lord's Day and the twenty-second moon would fall, and again on the ninth of the Kalends of May (as the truth of the matter holds) the Lord's Day and the nineteenth moon would occur: fluctuating in this ambiguity, we turned ourselves to the Hebrew, that is, the lawful computation, which, since it is ignored by the Romans, they easily incur error.

The ogdoad (eight-year period), therefore, began from the consulship of the most illustrious men Aetius (for the second time) and Sigisvultus, which is concluded in the year concerning which the question seems to have arisen. Such is the reckoning: The first two are common years, the third embolismic, the fourth and fifth common, the sixth embolismic, the seventh common, the eighth embolismic. Therefore the prudence of your Apostleship perceives that the eighth year of the ogdoad cannot be made otherwise than that we hold it embolismic. But if we should wish to celebrate that which we said above, namely the Pascha which first occurs, on the seventh of the Kalends of April, we shall make a common year, and thereafter the whole computation of the subsequent years will begin to waver.

And lest what we have expounded should bring any obscurity to your Blessedness, we suggest that common years have among the Hebrews only twelve moons, that is, 354 days; but embolismic years have thirteen moons, that is, 384 days. By the necessity of the embolism, therefore, we are compelled to hold that which is longer, lest we should seem to deviate from the truth. Nor should it seem to us either new or erratic, since the day of the Passion falls on the eleventh of the Kalends of May, from which (as it seems to the Greeks) the Pascha received its name; although the interpreters of the Hebrew tongue relate that Pascha is called 'a passing over,' which nevertheless is likewise confirmed by the saying of John the Evangelist, who says, when he was speaking of the Passion: When the hour had come that Jesus should pass over from this world to the Father (John...

13:1). Therefore let not one day, placed further off, terrify us, lest, while we avoid this, we incur error, as happened in the time of blessed memory my lord, the predecessor of your Apostleship, Zosimus, in the eleventh year of the consulship of Honorius Augustus, and the second of Constantius. For then, when it was declined lest the day of the Pascha be held on the tenth of the Kalends of May, it was celebrated on the eighth day of the Kalends of April, that is, in place of an embolismic year a common one was held, and a most grave error arose, to such a degree that this truth was proved by a certain mystery which is ministered by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Which I have therefore believed should be expounded, because the very place is also most well known to my holy brother, to be venerated by me, Libanius the deacon.

The miracle of which mystery is such. — A certain very lowly possession, called Moltinae, situated in steep mountains and most dense woods, and there a Church was constructed with very small and cheap workmanship. In its baptistery, on the most sacred paschal night, at the hour of baptizing, when there is no channel, no pipe, nor any water at all nearby, the font fills of itself; and when the few who were present have been consecrated, since it has no outlet, the water, as it had come, departs of itself.

Then, therefore, as we said above, under my lord of holy memory and most blessed Pope Zosimus, when an error had arisen among the Westerns, the accustomed lessons having been gone through on the holy night, when the presbyter, according to custom, sought the hour of baptizing, the water not coming even until dawn, those who were to be baptized departed unconsecrated. That I may narrate briefly: on that night which was dawning into the Lord's Day, on the tenth day of the Kalends of May, the sacred font was filled at the fitting hour. By this evident miracle, therefore, it became clear that the error had been of the Western parts. — These things, as far as I could, or as the brevity of a letter permitted, I have written back at your Apostleship's command;

prostrate, beseeching that you would deign to pray for my littleness—nay rather for the state of the whole world—that at length, delivered from so many necessities, we may know that he himself is our God, who alone does wondrous things; who may no longer deliver to the beasts the souls that confess to him, nor any longer suffer us to be tempted above that which we are able to bear, but may make with the temptation a merciful issue, according to his mercy, that we may be able to endure. Pray for me.