1. What occurred to be said concerning Symphosius and Dictinius we explained in the preceding chapter with as much brevity as we could. We are now about to say certain other things concerning some other bishops and clerics polluted with the same Priscillianist stain, who communicated with those same Symphosius and Dictinius while they were not yet penitent nor absolved by the Church, or suffered themselves to be promoted by them to the ministries of the sacred orders. And first our discourse turns to those who, canonically summoned to the synod, did not refuse to present themselves before the bishops; among whom the copies of the definitive sentence of that council, transcribed from the proceedings, disclose that Paternus held a place.
For he, before his ordination, knew and professed the errors of Priscillian. But after obtaining the see of Braga, he abjured all the poison of that heresy through the reading of the books of St. Ambrose. 3. Since, therefore, Symphosius had ordained this man contrary to the ecclesiastical laws, a certain indulgence being applied, they permitted him to retain his see, the Fathers of that first synod of Toledo undertaking moreover that they would receive him into communion once the Apostolic See should send back its reply.
They showed the same indulgence toward Isonius, who, lately baptized by Symphosius, was contrary to the ecclesiastical rules at once promoted to the episcopate; and the council judged that he ought by no means to be deposed from this rank, because he replied that he held this which he had professed in the present council. When the Fathers of the synod had decreed these things, they proceeded to examine the case of Vegetinus, who, once made bishop before the Council of Zaragoza, had likewise condemned the books of Priscillian along with their author, as the Acts testify concerning the rest. But since he had afterwards changed his faith, and had wished to adhere to the Priscillianists, he had been deprived of the sacred communion.
And it was determined by common vote that this man too should be shown indulgence, although perhaps he had committed a graver fault, and they received him into his former communion, on the condition proposed and preserved that he should consign in writing a sincere profession of faith. 3. But we understand that it was done otherwise with Herenas the bishop and his clerics. For that Herenas, who had preferred to follow his own clerics, and who spontaneously, and unasked, had proclaimed Priscillian a Catholic and a holy martyr, and had said that he himself would be a Catholic even to the end, having suffered persecution from the bishops — this man (I say), together with all these, both his own clerics and various bishops,
that is, Donatus, Acurius, and Aemilius, who had preferred to follow a partnership destined to perish, they decreed should be removed from their priestly offices. Nor indeed shall we suppose that a question of such great moment was settled by these decrees and definitions alone. For certain other things still remained, to which it was needful to attend and apply a remedy — namely, those who came to the council from Galicia and had ever continued in the communion of Symphosius, while that bishop was being infected with the Priscillianist plague. For these, therefore, we read that this decree was made, namely, that
the form sent by the council having been received, if they shall subscribe it, they too should stand in the contemplation of heavenly peace, awaiting, by like precedent, what the pope who now is, what the holy Simplicianus, bishop of Milan, and the other priests of the Churches shall write back. But if any, acting too boldly, the indulgence of this council being spurned, shall not have given their subscription to the form which we have sent, let them not retain the Churches which they hold, nor communicate with those who, having returned from the synod and given their professions, went back to their Churches.
It was moreover rightly and deservedly enacted that it be not lawful for anyone deprived of communion to hold gatherings through the houses of women, or to read the apocrypha that have been condemned, lest those communicating with them be held bound by like impiety. In which matter they willed it to be most especially enjoined upon the Catholic bishops that they should not forget their burden and office: «Since whoever shall have received them» (they say), «it is certain that these too are to be held by a graver sentence.» Lastly, they pronounced that Ortygius, the Catholic bishop of Celenis, wickedly expelled from his see before this council by the factions and violence of the Priscillianists, ought to return to his own Church, as Idatius also relates in his Chronicle, when he has discourse concerning this synod of Toledo. 4.
These, then, are all the things which those Fathers of Toledo confirmed in the year 394 or 400 for the sake of protecting religion, of repairing ecclesiastical discipline, and of establishing peace and a concord destined to endure forever. But since, in framing these decrees, the aforesaid Fathers always appended this condition — that they would grant a fuller remission to the penitents once the Apostolic See should send back its reply, as we read was done in the case of Vegetinus and Paternus, namely: «We shall receive them also into our communion, once the Apostolic See shall have replied»; or when the matter treated was of receiving those bishops of Galicia who had always communicated with Symphosius, to whom it was said that they should await, by like precedent, what the pope who now is, what St.
Simplicianus, bishop of Milan, and the other priests of the Churches shall write back; or, lastly, that which they established was to be observed likewise concerning Dictinius and Anterius, bishops, whom they willed to be held back from the ministry of sacred ordination until communion should be restored to them through the pope or the holy Simplicianus;
since, I say, we come upon formulas of speaking of this kind employed by the Spanish councils, hence it is that in these, as in a mirror, we behold the prelates of the Spains to have exhibited such and so great veneration and obedience toward the Apostolic See, and toward the Roman supreme pontiffs themselves, that they judged the very judgments synodically approved by these same prelates, in the causes of penitent bishops and clerics, to be by no means firm and ratified unless they were approved by the authority of the same Apostolic See. 5. And since I know this truth to be hateful to almost all heretics and other envious men, I must now at once wrest from them that which they might object. Namely, that the Fathers of Spain
then exhibited equal reverence to Simplicianus, bishop of Milan, and to the other priests, as they decreed, both in the cause of the bishops of Galicia who had always communicated with Symphosius, and in the cause of the bishops Dictinius and Anterius, in the last of which the judgment was reserved equally to the holy Simplicianus, bishop of Milan, and to the Roman pontiff then existing. But this way of proceeding (they say) lowers the authority of the Roman pontiffs, by equating it with the authority of other bishops, or so that at least the same causes might be referred to a Roman council to be settled. Thus indeed they babble,
and could now babble, who, desiring to rend ecclesiastical unity, strive too anxiously to equate the Roman pontiffs with the other bishops. But it has been seen through that they labor in vain in this and other like causes. For, to pass over other things — concerning which I have either already discoursed, or shall speak elsewhere — it is most fully established that the Fathers of Toledo were not led by one and the same reason to decree that the letters of Simplicianus, bishop of Milan, and of the pope who then was, should be awaited. Ambrose above all, the predecessor of Simplicianus, had discharged the office of arbiter before the Fathers of the Spains, that Symphosius and Dictinius might be received under the conditions prescribed by Pope Siricius.
To Ambrose's wishes those Fathers of Toledo assented. But because he had already departed from this light, and Simplicianus had ascended his throne, and Symphosius and Dictinius had not fulfilled the prescribed conditions, but, by necessity or by contempt, had rendered them void against the sanctions of the canons — this most grievous crime of violated faith, and of injury done to the sacred canons, on account of which they had contracted the fault of irregularity and had bound themselves in the tighter bonds of excommunication, had to become known to that Church whose pastor had interposed the office of mediator, that those penitents might be absolved.
Wherefore, since Ambrose, the intercessor of these same men, had already acted before the Catholic bishops of the Spains — not that they should be absolved from every fault, but only under those conditions which the supreme and universal pastor Siricius had prescribed for those returning from Tarragona — therefore they wrote back concerning Symphosius: «Thence he shall await communion, whence he had earlier received the hope of future peace. Which we have decreed is to be observed also in Dictinius and Anterius.» These words, even though they ought to be referred to the mediator and to the supreme judge as well, do not, however, indicate that the authority of each was equal.
For Ambrose, in this cause, exercised only a vicarious, or delegated, power of the supreme pontiff, since he himself did not prescribe the conditions under which those penitents should be received, but intimated and urged that they be received under those prescribed by Pope Siricius. We invent nothing by our own contrivance. But those words of the same definitive sentence declare as much: «By the letters of Ambrose of holy memory, which after that council he had sent to us, that, if they should have condemned what they had wrongly done, and should have fulfilled the conditions which the prescribed letters contained, they might reverently (add: be received) to the peace (which Siricius, pope of holy memory, had urged)...»
For what would those words there mean—the words 'which Pope Siricius of holy memory had counselled'—if Ambrose had written to the bishops of the Spains on his own authority and not on the authority of the apostolic see? For that great decree addressed to the people of Tarraco, of Carthage, of Baetica, of Lusitania, and of Gallaecia, and to those who dwelt in the neighbouring provinces, is Siricius's, not Ambrose's—the decree by which he laid down that pardon was to be granted to penitents on this condition: that men who had contracted a second marriage, or had married widows, and who had improperly crept into the sacred ministry, should reckon it a great benefit that, with every hope of promotion taken from them, they might remain with perpetual stability in that rank in which they were found.
When therefore, in the matter of receiving lapsed penitents, the question of dispensing from that Sirician decree was chiefly taken up by the Council of Toledo, it was fitting to have recourse to no other than the apostolic see, and from this see a definitive sentence was altogether to be awaited. For this right of dispensing with those who were impeded by such a defect of irregularity, Pope Siricius reserved to himself and to his successors—not granting it to bishops of whatever rank, nor to councils—as the words of that decree immediately following make plain: 'The chief prelates of all the provinces shall know hereafter that if beyond this we should believe that any of such persons ought to be admitted to the sacred orders...'
'...to the sacred orders, then a fitting sentence is to be pronounced by the apostolic see both concerning our own act and concerning the standing of those whom they have promoted contrary to the canons and our interdicts.' 6. Now let them tell us, I pray—these champions of a new ecclesiastical discipline, who boldly strive to assail the rights of the apostolic see, desiring to confine it within the narrowest limits—whether so grave, so holy, so peremptory (as they call it) a decree ought to have been passed over in silence by that national council? Or whether those nineteen Fathers who assembled in the council—men most illustrious surely in piety, in learning, and in integrity of morals—could have been ignorant of that decree, or have despised it? But either is most improbable.
For this decree, or interdict, as Siricius calls it, concerning those once polluted with heretical taint not being promoted to the episcopate or to the sacred orders, had already become known to all the Churches of the Spains fourteen years before; and by it not only the clerics who desired to be promoted, but also the ordaining bishops, were bound. Since therefore Symphosius, Dictinius, Anterius, Vigentinus, and all the rest—who, as men enrolled in the clerical service, doing penance presented themselves before the synod—had committed such crimes as could be most fully remitted only by the indulgence of the apostolic see, it was therefore fitting for the Fathers to appeal to that see, express mention being at the same time made of the Sirician interdict.
That the aforesaid interdict of Pope Siricius was published on the third day before the Ides of February, in the year in which Arcadius and Bauto (or Baudo) held the consulship—which is the year 385—we have already noted above from the tables of the Roman consuls. 7. Yet we marvel that matters of such moment, most apt for illuminating ecclesiastical history, have hitherto been weighed in the balance by no one, by comparing the acts of this council with the preceding decrees and canons of Siricius. Nor indeed can this letter be charged with the mark of forgery, or be rejected among the Isidorian wares.
For Dionysius Exiguus admitted it into his collection, and the same was cited both by Charlemagne in the Capitulary of Aachen of the year 789, and by Hincmar of Rheims in his tenth opuscule—to say nothing of the Book of the Pontiffs, in which one reads: 'He made a constitution concerning the whole Church,' whose authority is suspect to very many critics.
Indeed, our astonishment is chiefly increased by the licence of Tillemont, who—having set himself a purpose other than that of asserting and defending the rights of the Roman see—stumbling at the aforesaid words of the Council of Toledo enclosed in a parenthesis, namely '(add: which Pope Siricius of holy memory had counselled),' judged that these ought to be banished outside the text, and reckoned that they savoured of nothing but a pure and sheer interpolation. But here the learned man trifles, when, insisting on futile conjectures, he thinks it in no way agreeable to reason that St Ambrose, on that occasion—whether by Siricius's counsel or by his commission—should have acted to have Symphosius and Dictinius absolved by the Fathers of Toledo. Good heavens!
Tillemont ought not to have reasoned thus, lest to Quesnel or to others he should seem to wish to diminish the rights of bishops, and to assert the lawful rights of the apostolic see. Come then, let the learned man not cling to the prejudices of others, nor champion them. But let him tell us, I pray, whether those Sirician decrees could have lain hidden both from Ambrose and from the bishops of the Spains, or have been altogether despised by them? To assert or even suspect either is far too improbable. For the letters of Ambrose to Pope Siricius make all too evident how great and how deep a reverence and submission of spirit he showed toward the apostolic see, and how greatly he praised the Roman pontiff for having formerly condemned the heretics.
Ambrose therefore, when dealing with the bishops of Spain about receiving the penitents Symphosius and Dictinius, could not pass over the conditions already prescribed by that same Pope Siricius; nor could the Spanish bishops themselves take cognizance of the penitents' cause, inquire into it and judge it, except under the same conditions which the Sirician statutes contained. Therefore in the decree of definitive sentence which the Fathers of Toledo issued, it was necessary to express these words: 'Nevertheless by the letters of Ambrose of holy memory... that, if they had condemned what they had wrongly done, and had fulfilled the conditions which the prescribing letters contained, they might reverently (be admitted) to peace (add: which Pope Siricius of holy memory had counselled)... great,' etc.
But had they omitted to do this, they could have been convicted and punished not only of irreverence, but also of schism and contumacy. Yet lest at last I should seem to be sporting either with Tillemont alone or with the enemies of the apostolic see, leaving now the Sirician decrees and the copies of the acts of the Council of Toledo, it pleases me to proceed to those things which after such acts befell in the same provinces of the Spains.