Pope Hormisdas compels the Manichaeans still inhabiting the city of Rome, after they had been examined by the trial of stripes, to depart into exile. The trifles and cavils of Beausobre are refuted. The Constantinopolitan synod of the patriarch Mennas condemns Severus, Anthimus, and the other chiefs of the Acephali as champions of the Manichaean dogma. Finally, certain things are noted concerning the Manichaeans from the historical books of Peter of Sicily and Photius. 1. Before we undertake to say anything about the deeds of the Eastern bishops in the cause of the Manichaeans, we deem it necessary to describe in a few words the manner of Hormisdas's action and his judgment against those same heretics.
For when he had found this viperous offspring lurking at Rome, he applied all the sinews of his mind to abolishing it utterly. Therefore in the year of Christ five hundred and fourteen, when Anastasius held the reins of empire, Pope Symmachus departed from this light. The ecclesiastical records make plain that Hormisdas was substituted for him at Rome in the same year. But whether at the beginnings of this pontificate he found certain remnants of the Manichaean sect, surviving from the preceding inquisition of Pope Symmachus and there hiding; or whether, Symmachus alone having ended his life, in the third or fourth year they flocked from other regions of Africa, the East, or Italy to inhabit the City—this is made known by no monument of the Christian record.
But if we are willing to follow the order of the Pontifical Book, in which the deeds of the Roman bishops are described, it must be believed that Hormisdas found the Manichaeans at Rome after many years of his pontificate had passed. For that same supreme pontiff expended the first four whole years of his rule in trying to reduce to good conduct the Emperor Anastasius—the champion and defender, as we have seen, of many heresies. And when he had striven in vain to obtain this once and again, both through his legates sent to Constantinople for that cause and through letters, and the pious will of the Roman Pontiff had ever remained frustrated, at last the emperor, struck by a thunderbolt at the nod of the Divinity, most wretchedly perished.
When the most religious prince Justin had been substituted for him in the empire, Hormisdas wonderfully attained that which he had so greatly striven for, in the year 519, with legates sent to Constantinople, among whom was that most holy man Germanus, bishop of Capua. 2. Peace therefore having been restored between the Easterns and the Roman See, and at the same time the memory of Acacius, Euphemius, and Macedonius having been condemned along with the heretics, as also that of the emperors Zeno and Anastasius, at last he compelled the offspring of the Manichaeans, banished, to depart from the City. Wherefore, if we shall judge that the author of the Pontifical Book followed the order of events and times in describing the deeds of Pope Hormisdas, we shall affirm that this pontiff's judgment against the Manichaeans occurred after the year 519;
but, passing over this little-useful and uncertain question, let us attend to Hormisdas's manner of proceeding against the Manichaeans. 'He' (says the praised writer) 'found the Manichaeans, whom, after they had been examined with the trial of stripes, he also deported into exile.' Plainly this is a new form of ecclesiastical judgment, which the author describes as employed by Hormisdas against the Manichaeans. For we do not read that before the time of this pontiff heretics were examined by ecclesiastical authority with the trial of stripes.
And although the emperors and the judges of the age had long since decreed various kinds of penalties in order to destroy that offspring utterly—either by proscribing their goods, or by compelling them, stripped of every human right, to go into exile—yet we do not understand that it had hitherto been ordained by anyone that they should be afflicted with stripes and scourges. But we suppose that it was carried out by the public authority of the age, lest, forsooth, the laws of leniency, to which the pastors of the Church most sacredly clung, should be violated.
Moreover, having sought out all the books or codices of the Manichaeans, the supreme pontiff, following the same examples of his predecessors, burned them before the doors of the Constantinian basilica; and, so great a fear and terror having been stirred up in the minds of these most wicked men, they no longer thought of returning to the City from exile. Yet this manner of Hormisdas, Symmachus, Gelasius, Leo, and the other Roman pontiffs in burning the books of the Manichaeans has not been altogether approved by non-Catholic men.
For Isaac Beausobre chiefly endeavors to show it to be little useful and safe—he who, in his books on the Manichaean History, reviewed the various laws of both emperors and magistrates concerning the destroying and utterly blotting out of the codices of heretics or of Christians. But he vindicates these as reasonable, for this cause, namely, that codices of that kind contained certain things which corrupted the piety of religion and human society—a matter about which we ourselves treated most lucidly in chapter 4 of this book. 3.
But come now: Beausobre's trifles and fabrications being rejected, we undertake to weigh other Manichaean customs, worship, and ecclesiastical governance from the Constantinopolitan synods; of which one is to be referred to the times of Hormisdas, but the other to pertain to the age of Agapetus, as we shall make plain from most certain monuments. Now that those synods condemned Severus, Anthimus, Zoaras, Philoxenus, and others who bore the name of the Acephali, as champions of Manichaean dogmas, by the common consent of the Fathers, is well ascertained by those who have surveyed their Acts. Wherefore, in running through these same Acts, we have judged without any doubtfulness of mind that professors of Manichaean rites strove to hide themselves under the name of the Acephali.
But that I may not seem to relate falsehoods, I will first recall to memory those things which the impious Emperor Anastasius employed to enlarge his heresy—namely, when he both brought Xenaias to Constantinople, and honorably received the abominable man Severus, coming to the same place with two hundred monks. This (says Petavius) was the beginning of that impure Severus, who in the year 513 by force occupied the see of Antioch, from which Flavian had the year before been driven out on account of his constancy in the Catholic profession; and he attempted to bring all the Easterns to the condemnation of the Synod of Chalcedon, and cast out from their sees the Catholic bishops who resisted.
Who Severus was, from what people he drew his origin, in what religion he was first instructed—we deem it necessary to explain in a few words. All which things surely ought by no means to seem foreign to our scope of writing to those who shall read these present Exercises of ours. Severus, then, was born at Sozopolis, one of the cities of the province of Pisidia. When he had grown up, as Evagrius, Nicephorus, and the deacon Liberatus relate, he frequented the forum at Berytus, a city of Phoenicia, yet assiduously devoting himself to the manners and rites of the heathen.
But afterwards, having abandoned the study of jurisprudence, when he had received holy baptism in the church of the admirable martyr Leontius—who is worshipped with the highest honor in Tripoli, a city of Phoenicia—he straightway embraced the monastic life, which is situated midway on the journey between the city of Gaza and the town of Majuma. But that this man was, from his early age, caught in sorceries, and that in the city of the Berytians, before he was baptized, he had rendered religious worship to demons, is disclosed by the little book of the monks recited in the Constantinopolitan synod of Mennas.
Wherefore it is at least permitted us to suspect that he was led to receive baptism only feignedly, in order, namely, that he might escape those penalties which the laws of the emperors commanded to be inflicted upon sacrilegious men and sorcerers. Severus's flight increases the suspicion—the flight he snatched from Berytus, so that he might betake himself to Tripoli. And at last this same conjecture of ours is all the more strengthened by this: that Severus, before the time was yet completed during which those newly illuminated by baptism sojourned in monasteries, being no longer able to restrain the wickedness of his mind under the color of the Catholic religion, nor again able openly to return to the old vomit of his heathen opinion, arrived by another way at that which he was pursuing. 4.
Driven therefore by the fear of penalties, he shrank from openly returning to the old rites of the heathen. Therefore, having devised new frauds, he strove to hide his Manichaean profession under the dogmas of the Acephali, so that he might more zealously devote himself to the rites and mysteries of Manes. It is no wonder, therefore, if, having denied the Church by Severus and him by whom he had been baptized, he at once hastened to Constantinople to the Emperor Anastasius, the patron and vindicator of all the most wicked men, by whom, together with two hundred monks, he was received with much joy and honorably.
Supported therefore by the protection of so great a power, and raised to the see of Antioch or Theopolis, he not only ordered many bloody slaughters to be carried out by military force upon the Catholic priests and archimandrites who strenuously opposed his unlawful ordination, made in violation of the canons, but also defiled with the blood of the slain the houses of God and the churches, consecrated with the greatest and most solemn rites and mysteries, calling them lodging-places of heresy and impiety, and reprobating the baptism which he had received. But that Severus did not sincerely adhere to the Acephali, but rather simulated the very religion of the Acephali, was manifest from all that followed (say the religious monks in the aforesaid little book).
For they relate that, in the first place, he admitted no union of the two natures in Christ, nor a 'unitive' (as they say), but only a 'novative,' calling it 'divisive,' and anathematizing it in his own proper writings. Which manner of speaking, although it savors of an obscure sense, nevertheless signifies that the divine Word did not assume a true humanity, nor couple it to itself. Then he was unwilling to communicate with Peter Mongus—who had been intruded into the see of Alexandria on account of the primacy of the Acephali—nor with those who had been seduced and taught by that same Peter Mongus, because Peter ought to be snatched away from the Church of Alexandria.
For this cause, indeed, he wished the names of Peter Mongus and of the others communicating with him to be erased from the diptychs of the Theopolitan Church. Therefore, by stirring up daily new tumults against all men whatsoever, he endeavored to overthrow and destroy not only the Catholic religion, but even the religion of the Acephali themselves and its followers.
Then, having taken to himself as an associate in crime a certain Peter (whom they call the Iberian), inasmuch as he had usurped for himself the episcopal throne of Apamea, they resolved upon the final overthrow of the city of Alexandria, applying divisions to the Alexandrians and inciting the people there one against another, so that civil wars might arise, many houses be set on fire, and the blood of many men be shed; and they themselves indeed scarcely at any time escaped by flight the penalties due for these deeds. 5. From this series of deeds, moreover, the monks in their little book skillfully reasoned that Severus and Peter the Iberian, or of Apamea, were nowhere worshippers of the Christian religion, seeing that they appeared with even-handed disposition hostile to Catholics and heretics alike.
For since they had dared to anathematize the whole Church iniquitously, they were deservedly anathematized by the whole Church. And indeed, that they should be proscribed by all with a certain universal anathema, and that all should shudder at their manner of life, the inhuman and savage manner of acting by which they sought out the worshippers of Jesus Christ for death and destruction so persuaded. By which manner, forsooth, all sacred and divine laws being broken and abolished, they delivered over to violent death the priests and other ministers of the Church who dwelt in the temples and served and attended the altars, and strangled them with their own hands; or, when for the plundering of all the goods of the monasteries they harried devout monks with chains and prisons, they butchered them with swords and darts;
or when, making their journeys, penetrating the venerable cloisters of St. Simeon, having gathered a multitude of robbers of the Jews, they rushed upon those honorable monks; and not reverencing their gray hair, they did the work of the sword upon them, being about 350 in number, and scattered their limbs along the way, not delivering their venerable relics to sculptured burial, nor sparing their huts. All these things, I say, although they are an evidence of a soul monstrous, savage, truculent, and far from all piety and religion, would nevertheless not display their Manichaean institutions, unless the aim of the deeds to be done were attended to. For what else did Severus and Peter the Iberian ponder within themselves in the perpetrating of these monstrous slaughters?
Nothing but to render bloody sacrifices to the demons whom they served—a rite which it is most fully ascertained the Manichaeans employed. Moreover, Severus and Peter used other superstitious and magical rites: for instance, when their profane and false priests (like the soothsayers of the heathen) laid on their strangling hands, and over those to be ordained uttered the words of invocation on behalf of the dead man living, speaking not from divine grace, but saying various things out of the belly, and speaking from the earth;
or when they strove to overthrow and lay waste the churches of God, the mystical sacraments and mysteries of our faith, establishing new conventicles and contrary baptisms, boldly and shamelessly snatching away the souls of Christians unto money, unto glory, unto carnal delights. For entering houses, they led captive the souls of men and of women not confirmed, and corrupted them not only according to the soul with depraved dogmas, but even bodily.
That a report of these things and the like had already been transmitted to Hormisdas, prelate of the Roman and apostolic see, and that the same supreme and greatest pontiff had pronounced the sentence of deposition and anathema against those same heretics, is evinced from many monuments—so the aforesaid assembly of archimandrites and monks from the monasteries of St. Dalmatius, of Jerusalem, of Second Syria, of Mount Sinai, and of the three Palestines professes; that venerable company of ascetics most constantly demanding nothing else than that these abominable men be held and punished as Manichaeans. 6.
And indeed, that the holy pontiff Hormisdas took action against them as followers of the Manichaean dogma, his letter to the presbyters, deacons, and archimandrites of Second Syria, and to the remaining orthodox dwelling in whatever Eastern clime and persisting in the communion of the apostolic see, makes plain clearly enough.
For Hormisdas, from the apostolic throne of Peter, pronounces that the heresies then swelling throughout the whole East had issued either from the impure sources of Photinus or of Manes, and that their insane dogmas had been widely propagated by the zeal of Severus of Antioch, Xenaias of Hierapolis, Cyrus of Edessa, and Peter of Apamea, who, unceasingly wrapped in abominable and superstitious filth, defiled the episcopal thrones with innumerable crimes. Lest, therefore, the presbyters, deacons, and archimandrites of Second Syria, and the remaining orthodox Easterns, be deceived by profane rites, the supreme pontiff there generally commands them to cast away whatever, contrary to the rules of the Fathers, had been brought forth from certain false commentaries.
'Let no one' (he says) 'move you with incongruous precepts or with new institutions. For if they are worldly, they cannot even hold the churches, since it befits them rather to learn than to teach.' And at last, perhaps alluding to the Manichaean oblations, he adds: 'For it is unlawful to bring foreign libations to pious altars: because God has prescribed fixed bounds for religious disciplines even amid the very beginnings of His own worship.' 7. But besides monuments of this kind, of no uncertain faith, which show that Severus,
Peter of Apamea, Zoaras, and their other associates were professors of Manichaean rites and dogmas—there survives another supplication of the clergy and monks of Antioch of that age to John, bishop of Constantinople, in which are reviewed not only the preceding crimes described above, but also many other things which can befit none but the worshippers of Manes. For such are those things which Severus had borrowed for himself from the society of the Jews: namely, when, the slaughters of Christians having been everywhere perpetrated, he cast forth the flesh of the holy Syrian martyr-monks to be mangled by dogs and birds;
when he presumed to act around the fountains at Daphne, and using sorceries there, worshipped demons with wicked sacrifices; when, sparing neither the sacred altars nor the sacred vessels, he broke some and melted down others, the money, bronze, and silver being disbursed for altogether abominable and profane uses. For he appropriated to himself, along with other things, the silver chalices and golden doves hung in the form of the Holy Spirit over the divine fonts and altars, saying that the Holy Spirit ought not to be named under the appearance of a dove. For who will deny that in this kind of curse there lay one of the chief dogmas of Manes? For they obstinately denied that God could assume any form in a body.
And therefore he taught that neither the Word had appeared under true human flesh, nor the Holy Spirit under a visible and corporeal figure. Wherefore, to do away with these two heads of the Christian religion, they cast down the figures of Christ, of the Holy Spirit, and of the angels, and endeavored to blot them out on every side. That these were the principles of Manichaean philosophy and theology, not even the non-Catholic man Beausobre was able to deny—who, although in describing the history of the Manichaeans, indulging his own party too much, applies all his zeal to make trouble for the Catholics, despises the opinions of the most holy and most ancient Fathers and writers of the Church, makes jest and mockery, and assails Catholics with brawls and curses;
and finally, in order to refute the more principal dogmas of our faith, or to pervert them more perniciously than by the depraved fabrications of the Lutherans, Calvinists, and Socinians—nevertheless, in his eighth book, those things which we have described concerning Severus, Zoaras, and the others, he ascribed to Manes and his followers.
Concerning Severus, however, Zoaras, and the others, who in the sixth century of the Church strove to hide their Manichaean impiety under the mask of the Acephali, Beausobre made not even one word, since his manner and scope of writing extend only to Manes and his first associates, and their profane and equally abominable institutions—those places and those authors, by which that heresy raged, being afterwards neglected by him, and by whose aid and industry, in the course of time, it was far and wide propagated.
Wherefore, if anyone will more attentively consider within himself the scope of that author, he will without doubt understand that he proposed to himself by no means to compose a sincere historical and critical work concerning the Manichaeans, but only to harass the Catholics, and to carp at those most holy and most ancient Fathers who strenuously opposed themselves to this abominable sect, and to arraign them on the charge of ignorance and errors—as we have already indicated in the foregoing. 8. But that we may not, in reviewing Beausobre's evil arts, pervert the thread and order of our history, let us subjoin the new demands of the Eastern orthodox bishops against Severus, Anthimus, and the other Acephali.
From all which it will above all become known that we have feigned nothing in the cause of which we are now treating by our own invention, nor clung to conjectures alone; but that we have wished both to inquire into and to draw the truth of the matter from the most certain monuments. Accordingly, forty-seven orthodox bishops of the East, either in person or through their legates, when Agapetus the Roman pontiff had been summoned to Constantinople, offered a petition, in which they not only attested the criminal deeds of Severus hitherto described, but demanded that this man be condemned as an assertor of the Manichaean dogma and its abominable champion. 'We supplicate' (they say), 'most holy one…, we cry out:
Help us and the holy souls slain by Severus, whom picture to yourselves prudently as standing by, and showing you that for Christ's sake they were delivered over to death by the many-headed beast, lest again out of his mongering, manifest to all, and out of his Manichaean error, wherein trusting this wicked man dared to enter the pure royal halls.' Into which opinion, or judgment, the aforesaid bishops descended, led by no other reason than that, having examined Severus's morals and his doctrine, they diligently inquired of what sect it behooved them to name him the assertor and champion.
For inasmuch as it had become known to them that he held the same views as the heathen, that he was of the same feignedly-held opinion as Eutyches, and sometimes followed the manners of Nestorius—along with these very people—they deservedly and with truth called him both an instrument of the devil and a Manichaean. Let no one, therefore, imagine that the aforesaid bishops of the East judged preposterously concerning Severus's dogmas or errors. Especially since they issued a judgment of this kind not from the uncertain rumor of the crowd, but from facts and things thoroughly examined and known. 9.
Moreover, from the principles of Manichaean philosophy and theology, they denied the true nativity of Christ the Lord from the Virgin, and His true flesh and death; while Severus himself, Peter of Apamea, Zoaras, and Isaac the Persian diligently devoted themselves to magical studies and practices—in which Beausobre also explained in various places that the Manichaeans were wont superstitiously to be engaged. For concerning Zoaras we read in the aforesaid little book, that this man was ignorant of divine Scripture and of all the sacred orders and of the Mass. Nay rather, with the utmost audacity of soul, he ruined all the true and sacred ecclesiastical rites, through the conventicles and counterfeit-baptisms which were daily performed by him.
'Whose synagogue' (say the aforesaid bishops of the East to Agapetus) 'wanton women, given over to carousings and drunkenness, luxuries and adulteries, filled.' Which evils, indeed, that the rest of the most holy bishops of the East might repel far from the bosom of the Church, they applied all their efforts, even intrepidly presenting themselves before the emperor, and earnestly entreating him not to permit blood-devouring beasts to be gathered together with the lambs; otherwise, little by little, the religion of Christ being wholly polluted and undermined throughout the East, now modesty, justice, holiness, and the true worship of God would be brought to destruction. 10.
It has moreover been established that Isaac the Persian, who had come into the East and had joined himself as a confederate to those other wicked men, perpetrated crimes yet more grievous. For those orthodox bishops, when about to address words to Agapetus concerning this man, could neither restrain their tears and wailing, nor were they able to set forth in speech the things which he did not shrink from doing with his own unholy hands. They relate but a single deed concerning him, which they testify they abhor above all: namely, that betaking himself into a certain lodging in which was set an image of the most pious orthodox emperor Justinian, this aforesaid wicked and arrogant man blasphemed God, as though contending to do so after some newer manner of speaking.
The preceding words already clearly indicate that this Persian devised against God some peculiar species of blasphemy and uttered it. But of what sort it was, we have been unable to learn either from this or from any other record; especially since those Fathers, continuing the narrative they had begun, at once add: Stretching forth the staff on which he pretends to steady his dishonoured old age, and filling up his feigned imposture in the sight of those who had been seduced by him, he struck without shame the likeness of the emperor most beloved of Christ, calling him a heretic though thus united to God, kept by Him, and keeping the truth of his preaching.
They affirmed that Isaac persisted in this fury until he tore apart the tunic bearing the noble effigy, and kept a part of it for himself, which he also delivered to the fire; yet he could not destroy the whole. But we judge that, together with the emperor's image, a figure representing Christ the Lord had also been depicted upon it. For in a subsequent part of the discourse they add: For it was preserved by the better providence of the Deity, as a manifest and marked refutation of his murderous rashness. And these things which up to now we have either transcribed or expounded concerning Isaac the Persian and the rest, we judge to be placed beyond any hazard of doubt as betraying Manichaean manners, institutions, and impious religion.
And we are especially drawn to this persuasion, because the sect of the Manichaeans cast down, overturned, and shrank from temple, altars, sacrifice, images, and the other mysteries pertaining to and representing the true human nature of Christ; so that afterwards, in certain synagogues or lodgings, they would gather with their depraved women only at the nocturnal hours, to offer to God certain profane oblations. Yet Beausobre has discoursed more fully concerning their institutions;
but with such a mind that he dared to contend that certain of these institutions were altogether consonant with the primitive religion, rites, discipline, and dogmas of Christians—as though indeed the Manichaeans had striven to conform themselves in all things to the apostolic men. What? He contends that the Fathers of the first three centuries held the same views as the Manichaeans: namely, that they taught that only a pure oblation of prayers ought to be offered to God by Christians; and he does not scruple to appeal to Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria, adding that the first worshippers of Christ admitted neither temples, nor altars, nor images, from which they shrank, lest they should seem to follow the religion of the Gentiles.