講道與書信 第 206 章 第 1/3 段

1. The Manichaeans, after they had lost the houses in the city of Rome into which they had withdrawn, thought that they could obtain for themselves no other, more fortunate dwelling place, and with great ardour of spirit they desired to be able to bring themselves back from the exile which they were suffering. But since they greatly feared the zeal of the holy Supreme Pontiff Gelasius, with which he had proceeded against them and their books, it does not seem sufficiently consistent with the truth that they, having exhausted their punishments, resumed their standing here while he still held the reins of the supreme pontificate. Gelasius therefore closed his days in the year 496, and had Anastasius II as his successor. He, having spent two years in the pontificate, departed from this light, without anything of the sect of the Manichaeans then becoming known at Rome.

But things assuredly did not happen thus in the times of Pope Symmachus. He, when he had ascended the throne of St. Peter in the year of Christ 498, with a most grievous faction of the antipope Laurentius pressing upon him and relying on the authority and power of the emperor Anastasius, the Manichaeans—who in earlier times had twice been banished into exile—seized from that great schism the occasion of setting out again for Rome. For perhaps they judged that no other time more opportune could be offered to them than this. That is to say, when both the Church and the empire were split into two factions, neither the rigour of sacred ecclesiastical discipline nor the severity of the imperial laws could easily be advanced and enforced by the ministers of either the sacred or the civil authority.

This schism, then, was indeed most grievous, whereby the clergy and the senate were divided into two parts, one of which adhered to Laurentius, deacon of the Roman Church, who had occupied the basilica of St. Mary; the other, however, followed Symmachus himself, elected and ordained by lawful votes and sacraments in the Constantinian basilica. When the city of Rome, therefore, was tossed about by these most grievous disturbances, what wonder is it if the crafty Manichaean brood found an entrance for a third or fourth time to inhabit this City?

Indeed, a wider entrance was made for them when Pope Symmachus and his adversary Laurentius, having been summoned to Ravenna by Theodoric, the Arian king, were obliged to present themselves before him, so that he, appointed as a kind of arbiter of this schism and of these disturbances, might pass sentence upon them. Thus this shameful deed of that schism introduced into the Church a certain example of tyranny. For Symmachus, who could not be subject to the laws or decrees of secular princes in those matters which pertained to his lawful election, in order to forestall greater scandals, being compelled to submit to those afflicted times, submitted himself to the royal judgment and decree.

2. But now, that the gates of hell might not prevail against it, God Himself in wondrous ways came to the aid of equity and of the safety of His Church, and all the tumults of ambition and all the movements of that dreadful schism were brought to a fortunate and happy issue. For king Theodoric held to this opinion—one sufficiently consonant with the sacred canons—that of those two bishops the one who had been first ordained, or where the greater part should be recognized, he himself should sit upon the apostolic see. This at length (I use the words of the Pontifical Book) 'equity found in Symmachus, and the truth having been ascertained. And Symmachus was made prelate.'

Matters being thus disposed, Symmachus sets out for Rome, where, a synod having been assembled against the deacon Laurentius—who had attempted by a stealthy ordination to seize the Roman episcopate—moved by mercy, by the apostolic authority which he exercised, he released and absolved him from the canonical bonds by which he had bound himself, both on account of the attempted schism and on account of the unlawful ordination, and appointed him bishop in the city of Nuceria. Meanwhile, however, although the factions of that dreadful schism seemed almost lulled to sleep and abolished;

nevertheless, because the venom of hatred and envy had wounded the hearts of many clerics and of patrician men—most distinguished too on account of the consular dignity which they had held—and had secretly corrupted those same hearts more grievously, therefore the adversaries of Symmachus, now grown more audacious, in the course of time broke out into more savage seditions. Wherefore, four years having elapsed, with the faction of Festus and Probinus flaring up again against Symmachus, they charged him as though a criminal before that same king Theodoric, suborned false witnesses, secretly recalled the pseudo-pope Laurentius from the city of Nuceria so that he might set out for Rome, and, the earlier schism having been renewed and increased, they petitioned that same king to grant a visitation to the apostolic see;

thus, with seditions swelling day by day—both on account of the audacity of Peter, bishop of Altinum, who, relying solely on royal authority and power against the sacred canons, having undertaken a visitation, meddled in the affairs of the Roman see, and on account of the fury of the ex-consuls Festus and Probinus, who had set up a civil war within the City itself against the other senators, and especially against the ex-consul Faustus, who was hateful to them—a war whose slaughters and murders not even the clerics themselves could escape, since some of these, and even women and virgins dwelling in monasteries, were struck and wounded by blows, and priests at length, out of monstrous envy, were struck down and slain either with clubs or with the sword. 3.

That these things happened at Rome at the beginning of the sixth century, that is, in the year of Christ 502, the tables of the Ecclesiastical Annals make clear. At which time, indeed, it may be conjectured that the Manichaean brood, lurking here, never passed more joyful days than then, when ecclesiastical and civil affairs, turned upside down and disturbed, did not permit any attention to be paid to it. Yet that the joy of these men was soon turned into mourning and grief becomes known from the zeal of that same Symmachus. He, first having frustrated the attempts of king Theodoric and of his legate Peter of Altinum, then having cast out the invader of his see, gathered at Rome a council of one hundred and fifteen bishops, before which, presenting himself undaunted, he cleared himself of the crimes charged against him.

And the probity of the holy pontiff's life, the integrity of his morals, and his other virtues—which men powerless against envy and hatred audaciously assailed with calumnies—were, like gold that has been assayed, published abroad among all the nations everywhere in the world, with all upright men applauding. But this happy and just vindication of the holy pontiff was followed a little later by that other good; whereby, namely, the senators and the Roman people beginning gradually to abstain from slaughters, seditions, and rampages, peace and tranquillity shone upon the City and the Church.

But the deeds of Symmachus, and the various and many ways in which he was harassed both by king Theodoric and the emperor Anastasius, the Arians, and by other men of the ecclesiastical and civil service, I shall not recount, lest I seem to wander outside the stage and the scope we have set before ourselves.

This present discourse would surely be drawn out too far, if I were either to enumerate the calumnies with which Symmachus was accused, or to turn my speech to the six synods convened by him for the rights of his see, for the clearing of his own innocence, for the restoration and strengthening of the collapsing discipline of the Roman Church, and for driving far from the fellowship of Catholics all those heretics and schismatics who, defiled by the stain either of Arianism, or of Eutychianism, or finally of the Acephali, denied the doctrines of the true religion. For such matters do not pertain to the history of Manichaeism which we have undertaken to write—although in them many things occur which reveal and vindicate the supreme rights of the apostolic see.

It is of interest, therefore, at present only to report those things which, in the matter of which we are treating, make manifest the great fortitude of Symmachus's spirit. He, when he was pressed on all sides by the greatest calamities, could nevertheless be induced by no fear of the powers of the age to refrain from banishing from the City the Manichaeans lurking therein—whom the imperial authority patronized—and from destroying and burning their images and books. 'After all these things' (says the author of the Pontifical Book in the Life of Symmachus) 'blessed Symmachus found Manichaeans in the city of Rome, all of whose images and books he burned in a fire before the doors of the Constantinian basilica, and he consigned those men themselves to exile.' 4.

Meanwhile, upon these words, 'all the images,' our discourse ought to dwell, inasmuch as they indicate some new rite and custom of the Manichaeans which we have nowhere observed, and which no one hitherto of those who annotated the Lives of the Roman pontiffs has explained—which Beausobre dared to deny, as we saw in chapter 4 of this book. But if we were to consult especially Augustine alone, who described all Manichaean customs, we could at least obscurely conjecture that the Manichaeans employed profane signs and images to point out their rotten and fabulous inventions and their sacrilegious theology.

This above all could be indicated by those words of Augustine, in which he had called the base religion of the Manichaeans not a sect, but a schism of the pagans. Namely for this reason, that they agreed with the pagans in the more principal doctrine of those who assert many gods, but then dissented from the pagans in this, that they laid down as doctrine that good and evil, foul and splendid, perpetual and perishable, mutable and fixed, corporeal and divine, do not have one single principle. For Faustus objected this to Augustine as a Gordian knot, or an Achillean argument, so that he might not only reject that designation of pagan schismatics, but proclaim that they were far worse than the pagans.

But on the contrary, Augustine proved this assumption, harassing Faustus and the Manichaeans, because they sacrilegiously and superstitiously exhibited the worship of Divinity to the Sun and to the other signs of the heavens, or to Hyle, the Earth, and to a fabricated Atlas sustaining the world; they also adored those things which did not exist and which they falsely imagined to exist for themselves. Wherefore the holy doctor reasons thus from such rites and customs: 'Hence we say that you are worse than the pagans, similar to them only in this, that you worship many gods; but dissimilar to them in a worse respect, in that those pagans worship as gods those things which exist, but are not gods; whereas you worship those things which are neither gods nor anything at all, since they are utterly nothing.' Then the holy

doctor, adducing as an illustration some fables of the pagans invented by the poets for the sake of pleasure, briefly runs through those things which the pagans themselves tried to interpret with reference to the nature of things or to the morals of men—concerning lame Vulcan, blind Fortune, adulterous Venus, warlike Mars, and Cupid, a boy bearing the outstanding form of an archer—and concludes: 'This is what we mock in them, that they thus adore, badly interpreted, things which they do not understand; whereas they would adore them, though damnably, yet more excusably.' But Augustine asserted that something of all these things is to be found in reality, although they are of no use for the salvation and profit of men, and that those things which are interpreted from these are found in reality. 5.

These things, therefore, and many others of this kind, drawn from the fables of the pagan poets, Augustine there enlarges upon; and to these fictions he opposes the Manichaean doctrines, so as to conclude from them that this pestilent brood is worse than the sects of all nations. Among other things, moreover, those which he adds are of this sort: namely that invention whereby they describe the first of men as warring with the five elements; or that whereby they fabricated: a mighty spirit, out of the captive bodies of the race of darkness—or rather out of the members of your God, conquered and subjected—fashioning the world and splendidly holding it, having in his hand the remnants of those same members of your God, and lamenting all the rest as captured, oppressed, and defiled;

or finally the mighty Atlas bearing under his shoulders together with him that spirit, whom they fabulously devised, and trifled about beholding as though delineated on a theatrical tapestry. These things, I say, and innumerable others, equally silly and insane, Augustine testified that the Manichaeans set forth neither by painting or sculpting, nor by interpreting. But since those words seem very obscure, it will be too difficult to conjecture whether in the age of the holy doctor the Manichaeans made use of the aids of statues, paintings, or images, so that the minds of their elect and hearers might more easily imbibe these pernicious fables.

Or at least it will be altogether difficult to understand from the preceding testimonies this rite and custom of the Manichaeans in admitting images of the pagans. 6. Nevertheless, often revolving these and other things of this kind within ourselves, we have judged that we ought by no means to depart too far from the words of the Pontifical Book, or from the testimony of Anastasius the librarian, by which it is affirmed that Symmachus destroyed and consumed by fire all the images and all the books of the Manichaeans before the doors of the Constantinian basilica. Nay rather, we have reckoned it a most grievous crime not to dwell upon these considerations, or to deny them credence. For that use of images, first of all, the native laws of the Persians undoubtedly persuade us of, from which the sacrilegious religion of the Manichaeans took its origin;

and those sacred festivals of the Bema teach us the same, which they celebrated in the month of March in recurring years for the worship of the death of Manes and in contempt of the Lord's resurrection. For which reason they used to construct a lofty image of a throne, adorned with great display of riches, by which they falsely imagined the glorious birthday of their master Manes to be signified. But while we touch upon these things, it by no means escapes us that even the Manichaeans themselves wished, in honour of their master, to spread their couches over reeds, so as to stir up for themselves the memory that Manes in Persia, as though out of hatred for the truth, had been flayed with reeds, as Nicetas asserts;

or those things which the Manichaeans themselves had devised in testimony of their impious religion and in mockery of our Catholic faith, when, having borrowed from us the sign of the cross, images of the Mother of God, and other things of this kind, they sacrilegiously and superstitiously mutilated and deformed these, and, thus mutilated and deformed, at one time set them forth as things to be venerated, at another time execrated them, wishing by these artificial signs to indicate those doctrines which their wicked ringleader had introduced into the world.

Nothing therefore stands in the way but that that great pontiff Symmachus, having most thoroughly perceived the sacrileges and superstitions of this most wicked people, destroyed and burned with fire, besides all the books, also all their signs and images which portended some wicked mystery. Nor indeed could the holy pontiff indulge the Manichaeans and the objects which they used in contempt of our religion. For the very reason and office of the supreme pontificate, which he exercised while harassed by such great adversities, demanded also this public testimony of his sincere faith, so that it might become known to all how far his mind was from the Manichaean doctrine, and how greatly he abhorred that sect. 7.

Finally, we think it escapes no one that, among the other calumnies constructed against the holy pontiff Symmachus by the spite and envy of the opposing faction, this one held no lowly place, by which he was traduced through the mouths of impious men as though guilty of the Manichaean doctrine. Indeed his enemies proclaimed this mark of baseness and of injured faith so far and wide that it penetrated to Constantinople, to the ears of the emperor Anastasius, patron of the Acacian and Severian faction. For which reason, that this same Anastasius might elude the sentence of excommunication passed upon him by Symmachus, and more easily despise it, he charged the holy pontiff with this most grievous crime amid much rebuke. It behooved Symmachus, therefore, to exhibit public testimonies of his faith.

And he did exhibit it, when, the Manichaeans having been banished into exile, he destroyed their books and images. But Pope Symmachus by no means thought that this public testimony of his faith could dissolve every calumny. For when he had learned that a defamatory pamphlet had been written by the emperor Anastasius, in which he was rent apart with curses and traduced as a Manichaean among the Orientals and other peoples, he met this pamphlet with an apologetic oration on his own behalf, and thoroughly purged and destroyed every suspicion of the Manichaean stain. But now what remains to be said concerning this apologetic epistle of Symmachus and concerning the emperor Anastasius, patron of the Manichaeans, we shall presently explain in the following chapter. 1.

His enemies never more grievously wounded the reputation of Pope Symmachus than when they dared to traduce him through the mouths of many as an asserter of the Manichaean doctrine. This happened above all when a defamatory pamphlet was composed by the emperor Anastasius against the holy pontiff, filled indeed with many reproaches and curses, by which the holy pontiff was openly traduced as though guilty of many crimes and of injured faith. Placed therefore in such grave peril, having perused the defamatory pamphlets, he was moved neither by hatred nor by anger.

But, rather taking counsel for the duties of his office and for the honour of the apostolic see, never thinking of avenging the injury, with a firm pen he wrote that celebrated epistle, by which, meeting the defamatory pamphlet of the emperor Anastasius, he purged and utterly destroyed each calumny contained therein. And first indeed he began the apology of his Catholic faith from the example of the eight books which Ambrose had written to the emperor Gratian, because it did not irk that emperor to proclaim him more gloriously, and the emperor did not disdain to receive it gratefully. Then the holy pontiff makes manifest the strength and constancy of his spirit,

whereby he would not fear to present himself before a heathen tyrannical emperor threatening him with death, revolving in his mind that apostolic admonition of Paul, and appealing to it: 'Woe is me' (he says) 'if I preach not the gospel'; and it is better to fall into the loss of the present life than to be punished with eternal damnation. 2. Then, that he might proceed in his oration by even steps and gradually, persisting in the same firmness of spirit, he approaches and addresses Anastasius as a Roman emperor, and as a Catholic prince, namely so that he might assume those parts—just as he was also accustomed clemently to admit the embassies of barbarian nations, and patiently to hear the voice of any apostolic prelate whatsoever.

And just as though he could be moved by no blow of the gravest calumnies, he calls to mind that promise of the Lord, by which it is said in Matthew: 'When they shall persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you for justice' sake, rejoice.' And unable to dissemble outwardly that inward joy, he strives to repay the emperor, hostile to him, with blessing for cursing, honour for insults, charity for hatred; yet admonishing him to beware the indignation of the divine Judge, lest, in proportion as he himself, though more grievously offended, willingly forgave, so much the more heaped up would the penalty be exacted from the offender himself.

He adds not a little to these things concerning the very great scandal then arisen in the Church, both on account of the defamatory pamphlet which the emperor himself had written against the head of the Church, and on account of the opinions of Acacius, Severus, and the Acephali, condemned by anathema, which he patronized; and straightway he appeals to various testimonies of the Scriptures, so that from them the emperor might draw out the falsity of those heretical opinions. Meanwhile, since the pontiff's spirit seeks to provide not for his own honour, but for the honour and majesty of his see, from this he plucks at and presses the emperor, because, having spurned human and divine laws, with great disgrace to the imperial crown he undertook the parts of accuser and judge against the supreme pontiff of the Church. Therefore he rebukes him, writing:

'You say that I am a Manichaean. Am I perhaps a Eutychian, or do I defend the Eutychians, whose fury above all abets the error of the Manichaeans?' 3. By which manner of speaking, and figure of irony, he not only indicates that he is unjustly charged with the Manichaean stain, but he intends to censure Anastasius himself, who, while he furnished supports to the Eutychians, also patronized the Manichaeans themselves—namely by having taken up into his own clientele Xenaias, who, since he was a prince of the Manichaeans, strove more and more to foster the emperor's love toward himself by adhering to the party of the Eutychians.

Symmachus therefore, in order to blot out such marks of baseness, and to show that he had never been liable to the Manichaean disgrace, calls the city of Rome as witness, and appeals to the archives of the apostolic see, in which the authentic Acts of sincere faith were preserved. But whosoever judged less holily of his religion, or at least wished to suspect it, he provokes with these his writings, so that they should not shrink from instituting contests with him, and openly bringing forth true proofs of the crimes charged against him; otherwise he declares that they are to be held as infamous and guilty of insults. And I think it not inappropriate to subjoin his words here, so that the sentiments of the holy pontiff may become thoroughly known to all:

'Rome is my witness, and the archives bear testimony, whether I have in any part deviated from the Catholic faith, which I received from paganism upon coming to the see of the blessed apostle Peter. Let someone come forward, and by some reasoning convict me. Otherwise these are insults, not proofs of crimes.' 4. He then, after these things, commits his cause to the divine judgment, whose supreme wisdom and providence he recalls that he had once experienced. Namely when, having been declared pontiff by lawful votes, and proceeding to the Constantinian basilica to receive the order of the pontificate, he escaped free, lest he should be overwhelmed by a shower of stones.

Therefore, hoping always to have God as his helper, he trusts that God is unwilling to permit any of those things which could be harmful to himself and to his see. For neither could the emperor have arguments that God had been angry with Symmachus or with the Roman see. Therefore with the greatest vigour of spirit he thus addresses him: 'Show, then, what you think ought to be alleged, so that you may demonstrate that God, most angry, permitted things which had not been fitting.' And in order to purge or heal the ulcers which had wounded and corrupted the emperor's mind: 'Is it because I in no way acquiesce to the Eutychians? These things indeed do not wound me; but they openly and plainly demonstrate that you have thought to repel the honour of mine, which the blessed Peter imposed by his intervention.'

He therefore makes clear, by adducing various reasons, that God could not on this account have been angry with him. For when he opposed the Eutychians, whom he neither received into communion, and whose doctrines he repudiated, he was discharging those duties which most befitted a supreme pontiff, whose sacred power was as far distant from the imperial as divine things are far removed from human affairs. Wherefore, a comparison having been instituted between the two dignities, he thus addresses the emperor: 'You, emperor, receive baptism from the pontiff, take the sacraments, seek prayer, hope for blessing, ask for penance. Lastly, you administer human things, he dispenses divine things to you.'

And lest he should seem to wish to claim for himself a superior honour, he asserts that at least an equal one ought to befit each. These things, therefore, and others of this kind, Pope Symmachus brings forward for the glory of his pontifical dignity, for the safeguard of his innocence, and for the defence and adornment of his apostolic see, being about to purge above all that mark of baseness which Anastasius had unjustly branded upon him, traducing him by defamatory pamphlets as though a champion of the Manichaean sect. 5.

But since in the aforesaid defamatory pamphlets Anastasius had declared this same Symmachus guilty of conspiracy against his own person—namely because, with the Roman senate conspiring, he had excommunicated him—the pontiff, meeting this objection with wondrous and true reasonings, easily overthrew this calumny too. First the pontiff says that he had innovated nothing, but had followed the same manner of acting of his predecessors: 'You say that, with the senate conspiring with me, I excommunicated you. These things indeed I did, but without doubt I follow what was reasonably done by my predecessors.' Symmachus, therefore, was not the very first of all to pass a sentence of excommunication against the emperor Anastasius.

But two other Roman pontiffs, namely Gelasius and Anastasius II, had condemned him as a defender and patron of the Eutychian and other heresies. Which sentence indeed Symmachus would certainly have revoked, if the emperor, having abandoned the heretics—and especially Acacius—and the Constantinopolitan schism which he fostered having been settled, had been willing to associate himself only with Catholic and apostolic bishops. For the emperor, withdrawing from their fellowship, and no longer mingling himself in their assemblies, could now, as though repenting of his former contumacy, have dissolved the bonds of excommunication. Wherefore the most gentle pontiff offers this remedy for the most grievous evils by which he was so greatly afflicted:

'Do not join yourself to his excommunication (namely that of Acacius), and you are not excommunicated by us. If you do join yourself to it, you are excommunicated not by us but by your own self. Thus it comes about that in either case—whether you withdraw, you are not excommunicated by us; or whether you do not withdraw, you are not excommunicated by us.' 6. After this, with a lengthy amplification, Symmachus assails Anastasius, both because, when he himself had been raised to the apostolic see of Peter, he had not written imperial letters (as the custom was) informing the pontiff of his faith and filial love, inasmuch as to him the care of the whole Church had been entrusted by the mouth of the Lord and Saviour. This grave omission the pontiff reproves only for this reason, lest he should seem to neglect the care of the Lord's flock;