講道與書信 第 246 章 第 1/4 段

Among the Quesnellian dissertations we come upon that one placed in the ninth position, in which the author undertook to examine the cause of Domnus, the former bishop of Antioch; in which, treating of his condemnation and of the ordination of Maximus his successor, and then proposing to himself to illustrate various epistles of St. Leo and the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, he at length flatters himself that he can demonstrate, or has demonstrated, that the action concerning Domnus inserted in these Acts may be fabricated. Indeed the author promised this to himself from the title or heading of that same dissertation, but wrongly to be sure.

For all the points which, scattered here and there, he gathered for the patronage of his cause, either yield as being weak, or the series of events makes manifest that they are wholly irrelevant to the question with which we deal. He begins his dissertation, then, by inquiring why the ordination of Maximus was confirmed, while the deposition of Domnus was not rejected. He adds: nearly all catholic writers who treat this question bring forward this one thing: that Maximus, although elected by suspect men and consecrated by the bishop of Constantinople against the canonical rule, and ordained over Domnus while he was still living, was nonetheless received by the synod for this reason, because he had been confirmed in the episcopate by St. Leo.

He notes the deposition of this man and of other bishops, carried out at the Robber Council of Ephesus through the greatest impiety; but Domnus alone, though the others were reinstated, was not restored to his see; which manner of acting is the cause of a graver difficulty. He adds that the Acts of the Robber Council of Ephesus were rendered void by the Westerners before the Council of Chalcedon, and that Leo the pontiff testified that he should order all things to be in that state in which they were before the unhappy synod, until all things should be reformed by an ecumenical synod. The consequence was that the deposition of Domnus and the ordination of Maximus should be void, and that Domnus should recover his place. He sets forth Baronius' opinion more affirmatively, namely that St. Leo, the case being known, understood Domnus to have been justly condemned.

After these things he reports the conjecture of those who affirmed that Domnus voluntarily lent his hand to his own deposition, enticed by the delights of the solitary life in which he had once been nurtured by Euthymius the abbot; and when, against the will of the holy Father, he was planning to leave them in order to bring aid to John his uncle, who was deviating from the catholic faith, he heard from him these words foretelling the future: 'If, neglecting these things and the thoughts content with endurance, you attempt to depart from the Laura, you will indeed obtain the administration which your uncle holds, but evil men and impostors will take it from you again, when you have first been seduced by them through ignorance.' These things, and others of this kind concerning the deeds done by Euthymius, he reports from Cyril the monk.

Thirdly Quesnel concludes: those, moreover, who think that Leo's authority effected this, that Maximus should remain placed in the see of Antioch under such evil auspices, and that Domnus should be compelled to yield his place, say that this is manifest from the Acts of Chalcedon. Indeed, in the action which is entitled 'concerning Domnus of Antioch,' it is read in express words that Maximus was confirmed by the authority of Leo. Quesnel finally transferred that whole action into his dissertation, in order to investigate the truth of ecclesiastical history; so that, with it placed before his eyes, the reader might more easily interpose his judgment concerning it.

Having therefore prefaced such and so great an apparatus of questions and words, Quesnel, having transcribed that action concerning Domnus of Antioch reported among the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, confessed that he most earnestly wished with all his heart that it were by no means fabricated, but genuine: 'For if this were so (he says), we would have in hand a testimony of the supreme authority of the Roman pontiff both over synods and over the Eastern bishops, the bishops, I say, of the greater and principal sees. For indeed how great is the power, that the consecration, or at least the confirmation, of the bishop of Antioch, and consequently of Alexandria and of the other bishops, should reside with the Roman bishop, as Cardinal Bellarmine and his apologist James Gretser argue from this passage.'

What a prerogative, that when several bishops had been deposed by the unhappy synod through force and crime, their condemnation and deposition should be ordered to be valid which the Roman pontiff should judge ought to be valid, and only the substitution of another bishop into his place should hold good which that same one had confirmed! Whence at length there would evidently shine forth from this his supreme power over synods, whose Acts have force in that part to which he has added force, and those things are null and void which he willed to be void!

'But just as it belongs to a learned and wise theologian to vindicate with his whole heart and from solid and genuine proofs the true and genuine privileges of the primary see against the innovators, so it is the mark of a mind little sincere and generous either to extend the same beyond the prescribed limits, or to prop them up with uncertain, perishing, and false supports and buttresses.' He concludes at last: 'For truth has no need of a lie, but rather, from association with a lie, even the most attested truth is wont to be called into suspicion of falsity.' Who, however, persuades himself that Quesnel made that protestation sincerely and with all his might?

Indeed, if he had wished from his heart that the action concerning Domnus of Antioch were not fabricated but genuine, he would have sung a recantation and palinode, and would have destroyed the ninth dissertation written for this cause, and burned it up in flames and fires. For while he was still alive, the most illustrious Stephen Baluze, applying the greatest zeal and with the highest expenditure of labors, procured for himself new information from here and there from men devoted to the study of ancient literature, so that at length Quesnel himself might most fully have been able to judge, without any hesitation of mind, that he had erred, deceived in his studies, and that the action with which we deal cannot be called fictitious.

Wherefore the same Baluze, both for the utility of literary matters and for the increase and good of ecclesiastical history, in adorning a new collection of the Councils, met and resolved all and each of the Quesnellian arguments, and rejected from each one's mind those suspicions of falsity which readers might imbibe. And so Quesnel gathers his first argument from the Greek codices of the Council of Chalcedon, in which an action of this kind is lacking. 'This,' he says, 'is certainly no slight indication of a forgery made by some Latin impostor. For if it had truly been done in the council, it would surely have been in Greek, and, inserted into the Greek Acts of this synod, would be read along with the other actions.'

'For why this one alone should have been torn away from the body of the rest of the Greek actions plainly does not appear.' But who will not judge this first conjecture of Quesnel to be too fallacious? Shall it be permitted to Quesnel to suspect that that action was fabricated by a Latin impostor, because it does not appear in the Greek codices that survive, and will he not rather suspect that the Greeks sought to abolish it, and strove to tear it away from the body of the rest, so that they might more easily contend with the Roman bishop concerning the primacy? Did not the Easterners, in the fifth, sixth, seventh and following centuries, strive to arrogate to themselves the honors and prerogatives of the primacy, on account of the Church of Antioch having first been founded by the Lord Peter?

Did not the Acephali and the Eutychians, immediately after the Council of Chalcedon, move every stone to abolish that same synod? And since they could never obtain this, they wished at least to blot out the memory of the fact that the Eastern bishops, the Antiochene and the Alexandrian, were held to be canonically elected only by the consent of the Roman pontiff, or his confirmation. This indeed Quesnel ought to have pondered with himself;

especially since in the see of Antioch, after Maximus and Basil, catholic bishops, there sat several bishops who were heretics, schismatics, and most wicked men, whose catalogue we could set forth from the Acts of subsequent councils, if we were having an engagement with a man in no way versed in ecclesiastical history.

Meanwhile, however, passing over what might be said concerning Peter the Fuller, Severus, Macarius the Monothelite, and other men of wicked sects, who could have lent their efforts so that that action might be utterly stolen away from the ancient Greek exemplars, lest there should exist a certain monument of indubitable credibility concerning the full power of the Roman pontiff in confirming at least the elections and consecrations of the Eastern patriarchs, let us consider whether the preceding argument wavers or collapses.

Certainly, in order that it might be invalidated by the Quesnellian suspicions alone, the adversary ought to have set before us some Greek autograph of those same Acts of Chalcedon, so far as a defense for his conjectures could thus far be made from the Greek sources; therefore we now make our step to wresting away another argument of Quesnel. Secondly, then, he contends that this action came forth from a single codex which no authority, no antiquity commended, since it was only on paper, and is reported to have been received from two unknown German scholars. Those devoted to ancient matters owe much to the most illustrious Stephen Baluze.

For he judged that, in refuting this difficulty of our adversary, one ought to act more advisedly and prudently, lest he intrude fables into his collection of the Councils. He therefore, hanging in suspense about giving credence to Quesnel, began partly to survey with his own eyes the Latin versions of the Council of Chalcedon; then he inquired of friends whether in other libraries outside Gaul manuscript exemplars were preserved in which that action concerning Domnus was written. Among the others who indulged his wishes was the most illustrious and most eminent Jerome Cardinal Casanata, most skilled in ancient matters, whose memory, on account of the more notable goods and increase conferred upon the literary commonwealth, will never perish.

He, I say, consulted by Baluze, ordered many codices of the Vatican Library (over which he presided) to be surveyed by most skilled men; in which, since the action with which we deal was found, he not only purged those imaginary scholars of Germany, suspected by Quesnel, from the mark of impostors and ignorance, but also demonstrated by very many arguments that Quesnel himself had most grievously erred. For in the first place the action with which we deal was contained in Greek in the codex of Patricia Julia, of which Rusticus makes mention, although it was lacking in other codices examined by the same man. For Rusticus himself, after the sixth action of the Council of Chalcedon, appended that note which the Bohierian codex displays: 'Here ends action 6.'

'Here begins action 7 concerning Domnus of Antioch, formerly patriarch, translated from Greek into Latin.' But to this note of Rusticus, in the course of time, this other was added: 'But other codices display it at the end of the tenth action.' Two things, then, Quesnel ought to have noticed: the one, that codices not on paper, but made of parchment, not more recent but of the highest antiquity, make mention of this action as translated from Greek into Latin; and therefore that it was not permitted to him to affirm that the Greek collection of the Acts of Chalcedon could never have been separated from the rest, since the most ancient interpreters of that synod affirmed that they had found it placed in the seventh position:

the other is that that action did not come forth from a single codex which no authority, no antiquity commended, since it was only on paper and is reported to have been received from two unknown German scholars. For what forbids that some paper exemplar of ancient monuments was copied from more ancient archetypes? For innumerable are the manuscript exemplars, even written in more recent characters, which were copied from the most ancient parchments, as is plain to the blear-eyed and to barbers, that is, to everyone.

Therefore it was necessary for him, before he should define the matter as if from the tripod, to inquire more diligently whether in libraries and archives older exemplars of this action, written on parchment, were to be found. He ought at least to have given some credence to the most eminent Baronius, who wrote: 'This very action, in an old Latin Vatican codex which is said to have belonged to Proculus and Albinus, is placed under the ninth action, and under the same day; namely, on the sixth before the kalends of the same month of November.' Of which codex he made so much that, wishing to refute the argument drawn from the constitution of the emperor Justinian, addressed to John the supreme pontiff, in which one reads: 'The holy Council of Chalcedon

synod condemned after his death Domnus, made bishop of Antioch, who dared to write that the twelve chapters of Cyril alone ought to be done away with' — wishing, I say, the same Baronius to wrest away this argument, he adds that the emperor Justinian was ignorant of this action. Which saying indeed of Baronius lends great strength to our preceding conjectures, namely that the Eastern Acephali and Eutychians applied all the sinews of their effort to destroy this Greek action with which we deal. But divine providence, which has always provided for the ecclesiastical government, willed that at least in the most ancient Latin exemplars that action should be preserved.

Now the praised Cardinal Casanata communicated three codices of more notable distinction, from the Vatican Library alone, to the most illustrious Baluze, with the various readings which occur in them noted by the zeal of most skilled men.

'Among them (he says) one is most ancient, inasmuch as it was written, in the judgment of experts, at least a thousand years ago.' Wherefore, lest Baluze should defraud the same Cardinal Casanata of his due praise, he committed to print the words of his letter: 'The action concerning Domnus of Antioch is thus displayed by the most ancient Vatican codex no. 1322, in majuscule character of the second age, written, it seems, at least a thousand years ago, corroded at the beginning and mutilated, yet supplied by a hand of eight hundred years and more. But the various readings noted in the margin had been drawn from two other codices, 1321 and 1323, of the same Vatican Library.' That these codices are not on paper but written on parchment, no one will be permitted to doubt. But besides those three praised exemplars, the same Casanata affirms that others more recent were discovered in the Vatican repositories, writing:

'Two other Vatican codices, numbers 5405 and 4166, are most recent and contain nothing worthy of notice.' Nor indeed ought the other codices, which the preceding editors used, to have escaped Quesnel — namely the Corbie and the Dijon ones, which, although they do not agree among themselves in the order of the actions, nevertheless in them the action of Domnus is not lacking — so that he should rely on the authority of merely a single paper codex displaying no antiquity. For in the Bohierian codex this action is placed at the beginning of the seventh action, as we have said.

But in Crabbe's edition it is subjoined to the same seventh action, with this prefixed as a note to the reader: transcribed from an old paper codex, and it is said to have belonged to Proculus and Albinus, German scholastics. Nevertheless the diversity of order supplies no foundation for us to reject this as spurious. For Crabbe in his edition subjoined these words to the tenth action of that council: 'At Constantinople, on the sixth before the kalends of April, in the 13th indiction, on the sixth weekday' — these are to be referred to Rusticus, deacon of the Holy Roman Church, which things Crabbe, by the help of the Bohierian codex, assigned to the same interpreter; which, since they had long since created very much trouble for readers, the Roman and other editors believed must be overcome.

But come, let us investigate from Baluze the reason why in manuscript codices we sometimes find the action concerning Domnus of Antioch placed immediately after the sixth, and at the beginning of the seventh action, before the meeting of Juvenal of Jerusalem and of Maximus, the successor of Domnus; or set in the ninth, as it now stands in the ninth section, or in the tenth, as it now stands in the Labbean collection of the Councils; and it must be believed that the cause of such great discrepancies is to be adjudged to the discretion and negligence of the notaries. But lest this learned man should seem to use divination, he wisely noted: that bishops, when they set out to synods, were accustomed to bring their notaries with them, who would take down the synodal acts in shorthand;

so that, when the synod was finished, each one might carry the codex of the Acts back to his homeland. He proves this custom first from the observations of Henri de Valois on Evagrius. But we confirm it the more from the epistles of St. Leo the Great, who, about to send legates to the Second Council of Ephesus, joined to his legates — namely Julius, Renatus, and Hilary — Dulcitius the notary, whose fidelity he held sufficiently proven, as he testified both in epistle 24 to Flavian and in the other, 29, to the same Council of Ephesus. But Baluze, passing over this observation, reported another drawn from the Council of Chalcedon itself, which he was adorning with learned notes.

'In the first action (he says), when part of the acts of the Robber Council of Ephesus had been recited, and certain bishops cried out that they were false, Theodosius, bishop of Claudiopolis, said concerning Dioscorus: "Let him bring forth his notaries; for, casting out the notaries of all, he made his own write." And when the judges and the senate asked by whose hand the records of the proceedings had been written, Dioscorus said: "Each one wrote through his own notaries — mine wrote mine, those of the most religious bishop Juvenal wrote his, those of the most religious bishop Thalassius wrote his." And there were also many notaries of the other most reverend bishops taking it down. If it is not the writing of my notaries, that is because each one has his own.'

Hence, then, Baluze gathers that, since they published the codices of the records page by page, each one arranged them according to his own grasp and pleasure, and thus it came about that they referred the beginning of the cause, e.g., of Ibas, to the sixth action, others to the seventh, others even to the ninth, others finally to the tenth, and so in the other actions. In setting forth these things, however, we have digressed a little from the order which Quesnel kept in vainly trying to show that this action of Domnus is wholly spurious.

For although it had by no means escaped him that it is found either in the Bohierian codex praised above, or that it is indicated after the sixth action as turned from Greek into Latin, nevertheless he preferred to accuse the bad faith of Rusticus the deacon, as a schismatic and one struck with anathema by Vigilius, rather than to persuade himself that it is the genuine offspring of the Fathers of Chalcedon. What? He falsely believed that the translation of this action could be assigned to Rusticus, although the latter subjoined his name to the first action alone, in this manner, from the Bohierian manuscript codex: 'Here ends the first session of the Council of Chalcedon…. Amending and collating the manuscripts on the day before the kalends … the 13th indiction' (that is, on the fourth weekday of December, in the 13th indiction, on the fifteenth before the kalends

of April), 'I, Rusticus, by the grace of God deacon of the Holy Roman Church, collated, annotated, and divided it. Thanks be to God.' He adds besides the things which are to be read in the edition of Peter Crabbe, of the Order of Minorites, namely: 'The end of the first session of the Council of Chalcedon, which was finished and amended in the year of the Lord 417 (it is corrected in the margin to either 454 or 457; in all of them very badly, says Labbe), on the fourth weekday, in the 13th indiction, on the twelfth before the kalends of April. I, Rusticus, by the grace of God deacon of the holy Roman Church, collated, annotated, and divided it.'

'Thanks be to God.' 'The same (Quesnel finally concludes), almost, in the Roman edition, with few variants.' Wherefore he flatters himself that certainly nothing can be established from annotations of this kind, which do not cohere among themselves, and that therefore that mention in the Bohierian codex is not of Rusticus alone, but of several annotators. He will gather various things here and there, in order at length to persuade his readers that Rusticus re-read the Council of Chalcedon against the codex of the Acoemetae, which the earlier correctors had already collated and amended; and that he likewise appended his own attestation, just as they had appended theirs; but whereas they reviewed the remaining actions, he does not seem to have progressed beyond the first.

He adds that the years which the prior annotation designates cannot pertain to the age of Rusticus, and that that prior annotation is rendered suspect by this word 'manuscripta.' That word was wholly superfluous before God had bestowed upon men the art of emending codices. He subjoins: 'And even if we grant that all the Chalcedonian actions were re-read and amended by Rusticus, deacon of the holy Roman Church, it is clear that the action with which we deal was not found by him.'

These and similar conjectures, therefore, Quesnel exaggerated in the fifth and sixth paragraphs of his dissertation, with that zeal which is his wont, but in vain indeed. For, as the same Stephen Baluze noted, he neither attained a correct view of the time of the edition made by Rusticus, and, moreover, laboring vehemently under the vice of inconstancy, Paschasius Quesnel denied what he had been obliged to affirm both in his notes on the 24th epistle of St. Leo and in the cause of Theodoret. As regards the time of the edition, Baluze notes that Rusticus came to Constantinople in the year of the Lord 547, with the Roman pontiff his uncle, from whom he afterward defected at the beginning of the year 549, and was cast down from the honor and ministry of his rank in the following year.

But before his deposition he undertook the emendation of the acts of the Council of Chalcedon, on the tenth before the kalends of March in the year 549, and completed it in the following year, on the third before the kalends of April, devoting a whole year and somewhat more to this work. It is doubtful, however, whether he did this at Constantinople or at Chalcedon. To make me incline toward Chalcedon, there are the most corrupt notes appended at the end of the first action, from which I seem to have detected the ancient and true reading, as I state in that place. To this conjecture, however (he subjoins), there seems to stand in the way the mention of the codex of the Acoemetae, which all know was situated at Constantinople.

But this must be explained, so that we say that Rusticus does not speak of the codex of the Acoemetae of Constantinople, but of those who were under the bishop of Chalcedon, whose archimandrite John subscribed to the petition of the monks given to Menas the patriarch and to the whole synod in the fifth session of the Council of Constantinople under Menas. And lest anyone could doubt the truth of this matter, we willingly resolved to consult the passage praised by Baluze, and we came upon the name of the archimandrite John written, as we subjoin in a note appended at the foot. There remains, then, the difficulty whether Rusticus the deacon amended the remaining actions besides that first Chalcedonian one.

Quesnel's arguments are that nowhere in the acts does mention occur of an emendation made by Rusticus except in the first action. Afterward he adds that he does not wish these things to be taken as certain. Rightly, writes Baluze. For he himself above — namely, on the 24th epistle of St. Leo, which was written to Flavian, bishop of Constantinople, and which was re-read in the second action of the Council of Chalcedon — seems to acknowledge that this action too was amended by Rusticus the deacon; and in the dissertation on the cause of Theodoret, he likewise acknowledges that Rusticus accurately examined the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon against the codices of the monastery of the Acoemetae.

I add, moreover, these words placed at the end of the fifth session in the manuscripts of Rusticus: 'the same man collated.' They must necessarily be referred to him who had collated the earlier sessions with the ancient manuscripts, that is, to Rustica, of whom mention is made in the manuscripts anciently emended.

For as to what that same most distinguished man surmises—that the manuscript of the Acoemetae, which Rusticus had begun to examine, was first emended in the East by men older than Rusticus, who had appended their attestations to it, then was carried over to us in the West, and was copied by many, so that the emendations noted in the margins were not those of Rusticus alone but of several different annotators—this, with his leave I would say, is mere conjecture, which is not supported by reason; since in the remaining sessions we expressly meet with marks that indicate there was one and the same annotator and interpreter. Nor does it stand in the way that the session of which we are treating is missing in Greek.

For there are many writings of the ancient Greeks which today survive only in Latin, and are not on that account thought any less genuine, as is established by very many examples adduced by the same distinguished Stephen Baluze, which he himself gathered from the Acts of the Council of Ephesus and from the Council of Chalcedon itself, in which the session concerning Domnus was also held. Finally, Rusticus testifies that this session was translated from the Greek, and it has been at least obscurely indicated that it survived even into his age. Baluze also chides Quesnel with a gentle hand, as it were for drowsiness, because he had wrongly interpreted the note of Rusticus, in which he wrote:

'The session concerning Domnus of Antioch, which I found in the parchment codex of Patricia Julia, transcribed anew from an old paper codex, which she said had belonged to Proculus and Albinus, German scholars.' All understand that this session was copied not from the new codex, but from the one that was old in the age of Rusticus, which had belonged to Proculus and Albinus, brothers and most eloquent men. That this, however, did not come from a single paper codex is proved by the copies which Crabbe, Surius, and Jerome Casanata used; and the codices of Corbie and of Divion indicate the same.