1. Among the many heresies laying Africa waste in the fourth century of the Church, the Manichaean indeed held the chief place, whether because, having arisen before the Arian, Priscillianist, Pelagian, and Donatist sects, it had, coming from Persia or Armenia, planted its foot in that kingdom in the year 290, and long lying hidden from the Catholic prelates, had struck roots now here, now there; or because, divided into two classes, namely the hearers and the elect, it could easily draw to itself two kinds of men: the one, of those who laboured under ignorance of the divine mysteries; the other, of those who seethed with the greatest ardour of the foulest lusts. But each of these two kinds of men, after their conversion, Saint Augustine
strenuously assailed and pursued, as we have seen. But he applied still greater force in refuting and rooting out the Manichaeans, when, namely, some of them having been detected at Carthage, action was taken against them by public and ecclesiastical authority. For it is established from the Chronicle of Prosper that Ursus, prefect of the royal household of the emperor Constantius, who likewise shone with the dignity of a tribune and presided over civil affairs in Africa, since he professed the Catholic religion and defended it with all his strength, intercepted some of those Manichaeans, whom they called the elect (men and women). That these, then, might be brought before the tribunal of the Church, the tribune Rufus himself, the vindicator of our rights, had given command;
decreeing that, before the bishops, in whose presence they were to present themselves as the accused, with the people also present, an inquiry should be instituted; that first they should be questioned about their crimes and dogmas; then, after the confession of all the charges had been heard, they should—as the laws prescribed—be punished. But to hear their confession there were present not only the notaries, who were drawing up the Acts, but also the bishops, who sat there as it were as judges, so that the form and order of the whole inquiry might be observed according to the human and ecclesiastical laws. The names of the bishops, however, if we except the one Aurelius, who then presided over the Church of Carthage with the highest praise, we are wholly ignorant of. But it is probable that bishops were gathered from that whole province.
Augustine also was present, to whom perhaps beyond the rest the dogmas and crimes of this execrable sect were known. 2. But what became known from the episcopal Acts of Carthage, and moreover how many were those whom the tribune Rufus had ordered to be intercepted and set before the ecclesiastical judges, is very difficult to determine. For, through the injury of the times, the Acts of this kind taken down by the notaries have perished; and Augustine on the one hand, and Prosper on the other, having made mention only of certain women who had been violated, omitted to describe the remaining series of the proceedings. Among the number of these women Augustine especially recorded two: one named Margarita, who betrayed that shameful deed;
namely, one who, being not yet twelve years of age, said that on account of this wicked mystery she had been violated. And when a certain other Manichaean woman named Eusebia, held as a kind of nun, had likewise suffered this vice of shameful outrage, she scarcely forced her to confess. For at first this woman wrongly testified that she still retained the flower of her virginity intact, and demanded to be examined by a midwife. And having been examined, and found to be what she was, she likewise disclosed that whole most foul crime, wherein flour is spread beneath to receive and mingle the seed of those who lie together (which Margarita, being absent, had not heard as she gave her information).
This confession of Margarita, then, exposed in the Church at Carthage the most shameful lusts of the Manichaeans, which they practised among themselves, of which the least grievous was the defilement of virgins. But Eusebia too, being at first compelled to confess her own disgrace and outrage, also revealed other abominable crimes of her sect, among which this one was chief: that in the abuse of women, and even of their wives, they sought only the pleasures of the flesh, while they always avoided conception and the generation of offspring; lest the divine substance (as they said), which enters into them through nourishment, should be bound by fleshly bonds in the offspring.
These things only in a general way can be recounted in this our discourse concerning that inquiry at Carthage against the elect (men and women) of the Manichaeans, since it is altogether impossible to describe the individual details that pertain to the confession of the accused and to the sum of the episcopal proceedings, unless we should wish to divine them. It will also be less easy to speak of that grave horror of the people of Carthage, which all the witnesses of this ecclesiastical inquiry must have conceived beforehand into a hatred of so pestilent a sect.
From this we conjecture not only that all the Catholics cried out for the destruction of the Manichaeans, but that everyone, moreover, willingly wished to be bound by that oath, that as often as anyone should become known to him as of the Manichaean sect, he should at once, without any wavering of mind or postponement of time, betray him to the ecclesiastical judges. Of which matter, although the Acts of the Carthaginian notaries have perished, we draw the proofs from one or another Augustinian letter. 3. For the earlier one was written to Quodvultdeus, then deacon of the Church of Carthage. For he had asked Augustine to compose a single volume concerning heresies.
To whom Augustine, replying, sets forth that the difficulty of the work had already been attempted, and accomplished, first by Philaster, bishop of Brescia, and by Epiphanius of Cyprus. Then, passing his judgement upon the volumes of each writer, he asserts that this one—namely that of Epiphanius—is to be preferred to the book of Philaster. But before he closes the letter, he asks that it may not be a burden to write back to him how a certain Theodosius, through whom several Manichaeans were betrayed, persevered in the Catholic faith. 'And those very ones whom we suppose to have been betrayed by him have been corrected.' Augustine, therefore, clearly asserts that the Manichaeans were betrayed by this Theodosius.
But whether he had ever been stained with the Manichaean taint—even if it be reckoned rather probable, and Augustine's words might obscurely hint at it—yet I would not dare to determine. Augustine's letter, moreover, is to be assigned to the year 428, namely when he dedicated the book on heresies to this Carthaginian deacon. In whose recent time again some of them had been found in that same Church, as the episcopal proceedings show, which the same Quodvultdeus had sent to Augustine; which Manichaeans likewise confessed under diligent questioning this not-sacrament but anti-sacrament—of whom one was Viator by name. But on the occasion of these episcopal Acts, it became known to the Catholic bishops that some schism had arisen among the Manichaeans.
For, split into various factions, some were called Catharistae, that is, purifiers; others, moreover, were called Mattarii, who slept on mats; others, finally, were called simply Manichaeans. This schism of the Manichaeans, then, was confirmed also from the Carthaginian Acts just reviewed. But that it had long before become known to Augustine is established from those things which he has against Faustus, book 5, chapter 5; and that this is to be assigned to another time, we shall presently explain. 4. Proudly, therefore, and equally vainly, did the Manichaeans boast of the perfection of the Christian commandments, as though they alone practised the things that are prescribed in the Gospel.
But so great a dissimilarity of morals and manner of living was there among them, that in fulfilling the Manichaean laws they by no means agreed. Wherefore, since among other things some especially vaunted themselves upon Christian poverty, which others utterly despised; for that reason Augustine, who refuted their falsehoods and pretences, chiefly attacks, assails, and harasses Faustus for teaching that money is not to be carried in one's belt—because the Manichaeans professed one thing and lived otherwise, since, namely, while not carrying money in their belts, they were more greedily eager to keep gold in their little coffers and in their money-bags.
For this cause he appeals to a certain Constantius, a Roman citizen, once infected with the Manichaean taint, who afterwards, having abjured the error, was converted to the Christian Catholic religion. This man, then, he calls upon as a most abundant witness, who, with the greatest zeal wherewith he seethed for this sect, when he had summoned and gathered together at Rome many Manichaeans into his own house for the fulfilling of the precepts of Mani—precepts indeed quite vain and foolish, yet such as were greatly esteemed by his disciples—when their weakness yielded to the severity and austerity of those laws, they were dispersed, so that each went off on his own way.
When, therefore, each contended and reckoned that he would be free in loosening the Manichaean laws, there arose among them that schism of which we spoke above; because 'some sleep on mats,' says the same Augustine, 'and are called Mattarii'—from whose beds far different were the feathers of Faustus and his goat-hair coverlets; by which affluence of delights he not only disdained the Mattarii, but even the house of his own father, a poor man of Milevis. Wittily indeed does he here mock and taunt Faustus, describing this schism of the Manichaeans; which was chiefly one of the causes that had already bred in Augustine himself a loathing of that heresy. He himself indeed narrates this in the book
On the Morals of the Manichaeans, in which book he relates more eloquently the remarkable history of Constantius, a hearer of the Manichaeans—a history which indeed had so far become widely known, that by the spreading of rumour it reached even those who were absent and set far off. But Augustine himself, who had at first known the whole affair excellently from a witness who was his friend, coming afterwards to Rome about the year of Christ 383, testifies that it was made altogether known and ascertained to him. Narrating, namely, how Constantius, bearing most grievously such and so great a dissimilarity of morals among the Manichaeans, was striving to compel all who were gathered into his house to live according to the same rule set forth in the letter of Mani. 'To many (says Augustine) it seemed intolerable; they departed;'
'yet not a few remained out of shame. It began to be lived as had been resolved, and as so great an authority prescribed, while meanwhile that hearer (namely Constantius) vehemently urged all to all things, yet nothing that he did not first undertake himself. Meanwhile most frequent quarrels arose among the elect; crimes were cast at one another in turn: all of which he, groaning, heard, and took pains that they should, in their wrangling, most incautiously betray their own selves. They betrayed things unspeakable and monstrous.' And, after a few words interposed, Augustine adds: 'What more? Being at length constrained, they murmured that those commandments could not be endured, thence going off into sedition.' 5. Meanwhile let this our discourse seem to no one more lengthy than it ought to have been.
Let no one, moreover, blame our manner of writing, because we have wished to intermingle the things done in Africa against the Manichaeans with those which had happened long before at Rome. For, that we might digress a little from the episcopal proceedings of Carthage, two things chiefly impelled us. One is that schism which was more and more laid open in the confessions of the Manichaeans taken down by the notaries. Since to this there aptly corresponds another, Roman one that had preceded, we judged it not incongruous to indicate this also for the benefit of our reader.
The other, however, is the opinion of certain men once of great name, who, turning all the monuments of ecclesiastical history upside down, contend that the coming of the Manichaeans into the city of Rome is to be traced back only from the year 427. Assuredly, if the opinion of these men stood, not only would the credit of the Augustinian writings totter, but the decrees and constitutions of many Roman pontiffs—from which the prelates of the African Church drew those rules of discipline, that action should be taken against the Manichaeans—would go to ruin. But the chief author of this opinion was Quesnel, as we reserve to show in the following chapters.
But now, returning to that law of ecclesiastical discipline from which we have somewhat digressed, that it was more rigidly observed without any indulgence at all on the part of the bishops, another letter of the same holy Augustine most evidently makes plain. For he had discovered that a certain Victorinus of Malliana, established in the clerical order of the subdiaconate, was polluted with the Manichaean taint. Therefore, moved by zeal for the Catholic religion, he at once sent a letter to Deuterius, bishop of the same province, that he should be on his guard against this cleric; lest, namely, through slackness or through his negligence, the hostile man, who had begun to lie in wait for the Lord's fold, should destroy the souls of Christians purchased at so great a price.
This Victorinus, then, Augustine had summoned into judgement; and before he could be convicted by the witnesses who had accused him, when questioned, he could not deny his injured faith. And therefore he confessed himself to be a hearer of the Manichaeans, not one of the elect. Of which confession he subjoins as it were a summary to bishop Deuterius, so that, by running through the monstrous and sacrilegious crimes, he might understand, at least in general, the most corrupt morals and impious dogmas of this sect. But after these things he wished either to suggest to him, or to recall into his mind, the rules of ecclesiastical discipline to be observed in receiving penitent Manichaeans.
When afterwards he had pondered these with himself, and diligently observed them, having excellently perceived the preceding manner of life of Victorinus, he gravely suspected that this man would not observe them. Wherefore, lest he should seem to be moved by a light suspicion, having brought into the midst the past morals of Victorinus, he appeals to that feigning whereby, under a pretended profession of the Catholic faith and the colour of the sacred ecclesiastical order of the subdiaconate, he had striven to conceal the Manichaean religion, which he professed in his heart. This man, therefore, moved by so grave a scruple, Augustine judged was not to be received into the Church even as a penitent after his errors had been abjured; but, with all the
rigour of discipline preserved, he took care that he should be coerced and driven out of the city and diocese of Hippo. Yet he charges his bishop Deuterius that he should be punished by another still severer ecclesiastical penalty; enjoining him by his letters that, with fitting ecclesiastical severity, he should cast Victorinus down from the rank of the clergy, so that, deprived of every honour and communion, he might become known to all. Finally, to him seeking it, he utterly forbids that a place of penitence be granted, unless he shall have made manifest others also whom he knows to be there—not only in Malliana, but in the whole province entirely. 6. The sum, moreover, of these matters we ourselves have excerpted from Augustine's letter 256, formerly 74, for the purpose of laying open the ecclesiastical discipline employed with the Manichaeans. But in what year the holy
doctor wrote it, the latest editors of Augustine's Works have established, who have relegated it to the fourth class of the letters—namely, of those whose time is less ascertained. But in the preface to the two books On the Proceedings with Felix the Manichaean, the editors of Augustine's Works themselves bring forward, both from Baronius and from a Gervasian codex, a certain ancient fragment of the Felician profession, by which we understand that those coming from this heresy to the Church were never received unless they first betrayed other men of the same sect, and delivered them up to the bishops or pastors of their Churches;
nor did the Manichaeans, who were received as penitents, make manifest only the names of the other men of this sect who dwelt in that very diocese to whose communion they had, after the sacrament of reconciliation, been admitted; but they were bound to betray also others scattered far and wide throughout the whole province, or elsewhere in more neighbouring places. This is clearly made known from the confession of Felix, once a Manichaean, of whom we have spoken in what precedes:
Namely, Felix, converted from the Manichaeans, said under the testification of God: 'I confess all things truly, concerning whom I know to be Manichaeans, whether men or women, in the regions of Caesarea: Maria and Lampadia the wife of Mercurius the silversmith, together with whom we likewise entreated Eucharistus the elect; Caesaria and Lucitta her daughter; Candida, who abides at Tipasa; Victorina the Spaniard; Simplicianus the father of Antonius; Pantus and his sister, who are at Hippo, whom likewise, through Maria and Lampadia, I have learned to be Manichaean women.'
From this confession, then, of Felix the Manichaean returning to the Catholic faith, that ancient discipline of the Church becomes known, whereby it was provided that they should never be admitted to the sacrament of reconciliation, unless, under the testification of Almighty God, they betrayed as many as they knew to be defiled with that heresy. Of whom, finally, if a penitent had failed guilefully to denounce to the ecclesiastical judges anyone known to him, he was thereby rendered unworthy of the aforesaid reconciliation. Therefore the same Felix closed this his confession with these words: 'This only do I know; but if it be found that I know anything more than I have said, I myself confess myself guilty.' 7.
But from this preceding confession of Felix the reason and order of that ancient discipline does not yet become more fully and perfectly known. For, since very many of the Manichaeans had never been regenerated by the sacred laver of baptism, and had always lived after the manner of the gentiles, while others, fleeing from the Catholic society, had given their name to Manes; therefore the bishops' manner of acting could not be the same in receiving both sorts. And indeed each of those who repented was bound to make at once a document of confession and of penitence, in which, an anathema having first been pronounced upon Manes, he ought earnestly to petition to obtain the place either of a catechumen or of a penitent;
documents of this kind, moreover, the bishops received, and tested them whether they were conformable to the ecclesiastical rules; nor was the letter of reconciliation given to them otherwise than with the day and the consul: so that (namely) they might suffer no trouble concerning the earlier time, either from the public laws or from ecclesiastical discipline. But if anyone, after receiving the ecclesiastical testimony and written bond, still by certain signs appeared to be a Manichaean, then he was compelled to experience the severity of justice according to the form of the civil and ecclesiastical laws; whom afterwards Catholic men were bidden altogether to beware of, according to the apostolic command of divine Paul.
Those were recommended who had received letters from the bishops to their Catholic neighbours or fellow-residents, whether clergy or laity, by whose care for them they might regularly attend the hearing of the word of God, and by whose testimony they could become known. So we read in that admonition of the Catholic Church which is commonly ascribed to Augustine, and which the most recent editors of Augustine's Works have consigned to the appendix of the eighth volume.
From this admonition we likewise understand that these converted Manichaeans were not at once admitted to baptism or to the sacrament of reconciliation, but had to persevere either in the rank of catechumens or in the place of penitents until the danger of death, or at least were compelled to remain in one or the other state for as long as the bishops—once the firmness of their faith had been examined and confirmed by the testimony of those to whom they had been recommended—judged it fair that these penalties should be relaxed for them by indulgence. 8. Finally, the testimonial of the letter, or the certificate, under which the penitent Manichaeans were dismissed, was not expressed in exactly the same form.
For just as the Elect were more wicked than the Hearers, so too they were visited with heavier penalties. Hence the Hearers, in the first place, after making their confession and after pronouncing anathema upon the blasphemies and upon their most impious and most unclean heresy, easily obtained the commendatory letters of the bishops against those who tried to charge them with the past error of Manes; but to the Elect such a testimonial was not so easily given. Rather, they were first shut up with the servants of God, whether clergy or laity, in monasteries or hospices, until, the suspicion of their former heresy being wholly purged away, they might at length deserve to receive either baptism or reconciliation. 9.
But now we must halt our steps a little, in order to snatch away the weapons from the enemies of the Apostolic See, and especially those which they might contend they could derive from our preceding discourse. For since it is their aim to try to overthrow the rights and authority of the Roman Pontiffs in crushing heresies and in strengthening ecclesiastical discipline, they might now flatter themselves that the laws of the Church described thus far issued either from Augustine or from other bishops of Africa, and that for this reason they gained such force that the Roman Church, becoming a mere follower of their deeds, afterwards adopted these same laws for herself, and chose to observe them scrupulously in judging the Manichaeans.
Thus indeed those may be convicted of prating who not only published that volume as though it were the genuine codex of the canons of the Roman Church—a volume compiled from the statutes of other Churches and from the letters of bishops—but who also, in discussing the affairs of the Eutychians, assert that Saint Leo undertook no other role than that which of old Athanasius took up against the Arians, Augustine against the Pelagians, Cyril against the Nestorians. Nay more, treating again of the cause of the Pelagians, they have fabricated that the decrees of Innocent, Zosimus, Boniface, and Celestine derived their force only from the African councils themselves.
It is all these trifles and lies, and others of the same kind, that we have wished to counter by these our historical labours, in order to dispel these slanders against the Apostolic See, and at once to wrest away even that objection which he may raise. For that law of ecclesiastical discipline cannot be attributed to Augustine, or to any other bishop of Africa, which had been confirmed and defined by the apostolic See of the divine Peter before Augustine gave his name to the Catholics and before the bishops of Africa dealt with the Manichaeans. Pope Siricius set down that law in writing, from the apostolic tradition of the Roman See, at the very outset of his pontificate—at a time, that is, when Augustine was still involved in the errors of the Manichaeans.
Indeed, not even then had the prelates of Africa begun to visit the Manichaeans with ecclesiastical penalties; for we understand from what has been said above that this was first done at Carthage when Augustine already held the bishopric of Hippo. Therefore that discipline could not have proceeded from any rule or principle of Augustine or of any other bishop of Africa, if Augustine and the rest of the African bishops, for the destruction of that sect, kept those decrees which long before had been pronounced by the apostolic See of Saint Peter. It would now be to our purpose to append the decrees of this same Pope Siricius, which afterwards, with the greatest reverence, not only the African Fathers
observed in receiving the Manichaeans, but which all the Churches of the whole world also kept most religiously. But this cannot be a work for our present leisure, since in the following chapters, where we shall have various encounters with Paschasius Quesnel, we have reserved the task of describing and pointing out the deeds of several Roman Pontiffs against the hatred and destruction of the Manichaean brood. 10. Meanwhile, lest we defraud the most illustrious lights of doctrine and sanctity of their due praise and merit, we affirm that the zeal of Augustine above all, and of the bishops of Africa, is to be highly esteemed, since with all the strength of their souls they so set themselves against the Manichaeans that they overthrew and abolished that wicked sect. To Augustine above all, every honour and praise must be given.
From the day of his conversion he thought of nothing else than to expose the abominable and more hidden mysteries of the Manichaeans, to tear down the false dogmas of this sect, to set forth in writing their obscenities, to deride and execrate the hypocrisy of the Elect, to assail with curses the profane rites and sacraments they employed; and moreover to challenge to public disputations the more learned men whom the rest of the Manichaeans held as their masters. From these disputations afterwards, once the falsity of the Manichaean doctrine had been discovered, he laboured that the holiness of the Catholic faith alone might become known to all. These indeed are the things which the holy Doctor Augustine performed with the greatest zeal for the good, honour, and profit of the Catholic Church.
His glorious labours are celebrated not only by so many and so great learned works, especially those written against these same men (whose catalogue we do not here review, lest we depart from our intended aim), but also by all the other works composed by him against the Donatists, or the Pelagians and Arians, in which here and there he attempted to refute now one, now another error of the Manichaeans. With so great a store of Augustine's books, then, was Africa in particular, and the Catholic Church, enriched—at that time, namely, when heresies swarmed in that land like the serpents of the Egyptian magicians.
Now the remaining prelates of Africa, instructed by the rules of the apostolic Roman Church and aided by the support of the civil laws, were able fully to crush and consume the Manichaeans. This we judge the holy Doctor meant to indicate in a sermon delivered in a barbarous time to the catechumens, addressing them thus: 'The poison of the Manichaeans had crept in; it has been crushed, it has been consumed.' But it was not consumed in such a way that the Manichaeans, either afflicted with exile and departing from the kingdom of Africa, migrated elsewhere in Augustine's age, or that, being brought to penance, that kingdom had been purged of every Manichaean stain. Not so, I say.