講道與書信 第 78 章 第 4/6 段

See the Commentary of Jacobus Gothofredus, especially on law 3, where he recites the indicated texts of Chrysostom. 'That very assumption of our substance into the Deity, whereby the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us—what man did it leave devoid of His mercy, save the unbeliever?' To these words of Leo, Quesnel affixed this note: 'The unbeliever devoid of the grace of Christ. But this indefinite proposition may be wrongly understood, so that it seems to favour proposition 26 condemned in the constitution Unigenitus, in which it is handed down: No graces are given except through faith.' But the holy pontiff employed the term 'mercy,' not the term 'grace.'

But lest the very name 'mercy' impose upon anyone as to the sense in which he called the unbeliever devoid of mercy, it must be explained from the context. Accordingly, he understands the unbelievers to be devoid of that mercy of which he affirms the faithful to be partakers. Moreover, to the faithful pertain those things which are immediately subjoined to the preceding testimony: 'And to whom is there not a common nature with Christ, if he has received Him who assumes it, and has been regenerated by that Spirit by which He was begotten?' where he indicates the grace of faith and baptism, as we explained in note 24 on this passage. Assuredly the holy Leo speaks of that mercy by which the Word made flesh and dwelling among us made us, united to Him through faith and baptism, sharers of the divine nature.

As therefore the faithful, who have received faith and baptism, are partakers of this mercy, so the unbelievers, who lack both faith and baptism, are rightly said to be devoid of this same mercy. I. Quesnel appended three annotations to this testimony, which we here set down. The first is on these words, 'By which the two-hundred-and-sixtieth year after the resurrection of the Lord was completed': 'Here Dionysius Petavius, in his annotations on Epiphanius, page 267, suspects that an error lies hidden, and wishes that for 260, with one number transposed, 240 be read. His reason is that the consulship of Probus and Paulinus falls about the year of Christ 277 in the Dionysian era.'

'From which number, he says, subtracting 31 years, there remain 246 years from the ascension of the Lord—as many, that is, as Epiphanius sets down according to the opinion of the other chronographers. And our Leo will have followed the opinion of these (if Petavius' correction stands), using the round number 240 for 246; which is wont to happen especially while preaching, where strict attention is not paid to the precise points of chronology. Leo will come still nearer to that epoch if for 260 he had put 250, which indeed one Oxford manuscript codex has, for it is easier, while the workmen are drowsy, for one number to creep into the place of another, and for L to be printed for X; likewise while writing it is easier for one number to be added to some sum, as X to L.' 2.

Secondly, on these words 'Probus being emperor and Paulinus consuls': 'Hence correct,' he says, 'the consular Fasti of Cassiodorus, who subjoin this consulship immediately to the consulship of Aurelian and Marcellinus. Correct also the Ecclesiastical Annals, which place this consulship, in the year of Christ 277, together with the seventh year of the emperor Aurelian. For since from all the Fasti it is established that Probus and Paulinus bore the consulship together, and our Leo calls Probus emperor, it is necessary that that consulship of Probus and Paulinus occurred after the death of Aurelian—nay, even after the demise of Tacitus, whom Probus succeeded. The Chronology of Eusebius agrees, who assigns the origin of the Manichaeans to the second year of the emperor Probus.'

'Yet the way of reconciling authors who write diversely of the beginnings of the Manichaean sect is easy. Some are to be understood of Manes himself, others of his teachers Scythianus and Buddas, of whom above; some of the very origin of that monster; some of its various eruptions into the Church, partly Eastern, partly Western; and finally others of the condemnation of its errors, which our Leo makes mention of.' 3. Thirdly, on these words, 'When already the eighth persecution against the Christians,' etc.: 'If he is speaking of the persecution of the emperor Aurelian, as seems altogether the case, this was not the eighth but the ninth, as Augustine reckons in On the City of God, Book XVIII, chapter 3, and as is clear from the enumeration of the other persecutions.'

'If the Acts of the martyr Chariton, which are read in Surius on the 24th of September, are worthy of belief in this part, Tacitus, the predecessor of Probus, had already put an end to this persecution; so that it is agreeable to interpret kindly these words of Leo, which seem to signify even the beginning of the persecution: When it was already boiling up, etc.—although three Oxford manuscript codices have raged fiercely.' All these things are Quesnel's. 4. We have discovered all the chronological notes of this passage to be taken entire from the Chronicle of Prosper. For among the three, or rather four, editions of this Chronicle, which Father Hieronymus a Prato most accurately distinguishes and establishes in Dissertation 3 on Sulpicius Severus, tome II, number

23 and following, one of the two earlier, or, if you prefer, the third, could have been of use to Leo in the matter at hand, which treats of the Manichaeans detected at Rome. The first Prosper published in the year 433; the second, which ends in the year 443, and can be confirmed from the ancient Veronese Saibante codex, which represents the whole Chronicle of Prosper ending in this year—that is, this very second of Prosper's editions. The third extends up to the year 445. That Leo drew from some one of these editions in copying out the aforesaid chronological notes, two certain indications demonstrate. For the consulship of the emperor Probus and of Paulinus is read in one Chronicle of Prosper:

for Prosper, who excerpted most things from the Chronicle of Eusebius rendered into Latin by Jerome, was the first of all to add the consulships from the passion or resurrection of Christ, and assigned the beginnings of the Manichaean heresy to the consulship of the emperor Probus and of Paulinus. The note of the eighth persecution also must be referred to the Chronicle of Prosper alone; for Eusebius indeed indicated the persecutions in their places in the Chronicle, but did not express the number which we find in Prosper. Hence, therefore, the note of the year also must be said to have been gathered by computation from the same Chronicle of Prosper. 5. But if a correct computation be believed to have been made, the year 250 rather than 260 ought to have been written.

For if from the consulship of the Gemini, to which the passion and resurrection of Christ is attributed in these same editions (for to the last edition, which came out in the year 455, must be attributed that change of opinion by which Prosper ascribed to the consulship of the Gemini the manifestation or preaching of Christ, and three years later the passion and resurrection): if, I say, from that consulship of the Gemini to the consulship of Probus and Paulinus, to which the beginning of the Manichaean heresy is affixed, you compute correctly, you will indeed find in the printed editions 247 consulships, which by a round number, as often happens, could more broadly be taken for the year 250, but not 260.

But it must be observed that in the vulgate Chronicle of Prosper some consulships were omitted through the negligence of the copyists, and others were wrongly inserted, as can be gathered from the Paschal Canon of Victorius of Aquitaine, who copied out the consulships from Prosper more accurately, and also from other arguments which Joannes Vander Haagen luminously set forth in his Observations on the Chronicle of Prosper, section 49 and following. Moreover, from the same Canon of Victorius and from other notes of Prosper's Chronicle itself, it is clear that the consulship of the Gemini, to which the passion and resurrection of Christ is assigned, was affixed by Prosper himself to that year which corresponds to the twenty-eighth year of the common era.

But if you begin to compute from this year of the common era up to the consulship of Probus and Paulinus, which concurs with the year 277 of the common era, you will find that in these consuls (the terms being reckoned in) the two-hundred-and-fiftieth year had run its course, which Leo, less accurately, calls completed. 6. It is not indeed to be dissembled that, in the Chronicle of Prosper, if the two consulships certainly to be expunged are struck out, and the four which are certainly to be added are added—as the praised Vander Haagen proved—the consulship of Probus and Paulinus from the consulship of the Gemini falls in the year 249, just as it also happens in Victorius. But since in the noting of the consulships the codices of Prosper and Victorius are evidently corrupt, it seems that not much reliance should be placed on these.

But since Prosper had already, somewhat before the consulship of Probus and Paulinus, and thereafter also, having abandoned the old anticipation of one year, begun to ascribe the consuls each to its own proper year, it is better to believe that he assigned the consulship of Probus and Paulinus also to its own proper year, so that one consulship which had been placed before is wrongly read as placed after in the codices, and therefore their consulship truly concurred with the year 250 after the resurrection of Christ. Since therefore the holy Leo took the other chronological notes from the Chronicle of Prosper, it is credible that he also noted the year 250 from the same by computation, and not 260. But only one Oxford codex, cited by Quesnel, presents that year.

But since all the rest—both of the Collections and of the Lectionaries, many and ancient codices which we have diligently searched out and collated, and among these the most ancient Vatican 385—have the year 260, and that not in Roman numerical marks CCLX, which could easily have been changed and vitiated by the copyists, but expressed in distinct words, 'the two-hundred-and-sixtieth,' which do not so easily admit of change, we have not dared to depart from the vulgate reading. For it has been made manifest by experience how far those have departed from the primitive and original reading who at their own discretion, though led by vehement conjectures, have wished to correct certain numerical notations. Nor does the excess of a decade, which is manifest in the year 260, move us.

For that the ancient Fathers of the Church were not very accurate in computing the years either from the birth or from the passion of Christ, and even exceeded by more than a decade, we have proved by several examples in Dissertation 1 prefixed to the edition of Saint Zeno, chapter 2, section 1. Thus far concerning Quesnel's first annotation. 7. As to the second, let it suffice to remark this: that Leo's words concerning the time when Manes became known as one to be condemned indicate that time when, first of all, Archelaus, bishop of Cascharae in Mesopotamia, held a public disputation with Manes, and thereupon his errors so came forth that then he became known as one to be condemned. 8. As to the third annotation, we shall now point out that the mention of the eighth persecution was taken by the holy pontiff from the Chronicle of Prosper.

But Prosper enumerated only nine persecutions: for that of Aurelian, which by Augustine and Orosius is called the ninth, and which is handed down as indeed set in motion but at once cut short by the thunderbolt and death of that same emperor, Prosper did not think should be reckoned among the persecutions with a distinct number, so that he called the Diocletianic (otherwise the tenth) the ninth. Hence when Leo called it the eighth persecution, following in the footsteps of Prosper, he understood not the persecution of Aurelian but of Valerian, which in Prosper, as well as in Augustine and Orosius, and also in Sulpicius and Jerome, is reckoned the eighth. 1. The holy pontiff in Sermon 79, on the Fast of Pentecost, the second, chapter

2, speaking of the fasts of unbelievers, not only called them vain but even asserted them to be polluted by unbelief. 'For reason under truth does one thing, deception under falsehood another. With us faith sanctifies even the one eating; with them unbelief pollutes the one fasting.' And presently he subjoins this general proposition: 'Outside the Catholic Church nothing is whole, nothing is chaste, the Apostle saying: Everything that is not of faith is sin'—by which words he seems to intimate that not so much fasts as all the acts of the other moral virtues are polluted by unbelief and are sins. To these words Quesnel affixed the note: 'Whether, and of what sort, are the good works of unbelievers.' 2. But lest anyone think that the holy Leo

favours the opinion proscribed by the Church, it must be premised that he elsewhere openly professed that works of mercy and humaneness which do not proceed from faith are worthy of praise, provided that, infected from no perverse end from elsewhere, they be elicited from the motive of the virtues themselves. For these things are read in Sermon 7 on Lent, chapter 3: 'What is happier than this humaneness? Which surely would not have to be defrauded of its praise, if for the sake of the very community of nature (behold the motive of natural virtue) it were rendered to man by man in helping him. But because,' he adds, 'that which does not proceed from the fount of faith does not attain to the eternal rewards, the condition of heavenly works is one thing, of earthly another. Worldly benevolence has its end in those whom it aids;'

'Christian piety passes over into its own Author, while we are said to be kind toward Him whom we confess to work in us.' He who affirms that such humaneness is not to be defrauded of its praise, even though it does not proceed from the fount of faith, provided that for the sake of the very community of nature it be rendered to man by man in helping him—which is the end of compassion and of natural virtue—he believed this humaneness to be good and not evil; for evil, which deserves only reproach, could not have been said to be not to be defrauded of its praise. Only he believed that these works are bounded by no heavenly reward, in which they rest, and terminate in this world.

If therefore any unbelievers produce works of mercy or of another moral virtue from the motive of virtue, although they do not do so from faith, they are not to be accused of sin according to the opinion of Leo. 3. But that he affirmed in this Sermon 79 that their fasts are polluted by unbelief, and that among them nothing whole, nothing chaste is found—this must be said to have been affirmed in another sense which does not contradict the preceding opinion, namely insofar as he believed that among unbelievers fasts and other works of the virtues generally proceed not from the motive of virtue but from some vicious end. In which matter it must be observed that the holy pontiff embraces under the name of unbelievers all who lack the Christian faith, whether they be pagans, or Jews, or even heretics.

For thus he begins the second chapter: 'But in exercising this duty of God (that is, abstinence from foods through fasting) we ought not on that account to be more sluggish, because even among the pagans themselves there are certain vain fasts.' Presently, of all these who fast, he subjoins: 'For reason under truth does one thing, deception under falsehood another. With us faith sanctifies even the one eating; with them unbelief pollutes the one fasting'—where 'unbelief' extends not only to pagans but also to Hebrews and heretics. But by a varied reason the abstinences of these (and similarly the other acts of the moral virtues) could be polluted by some depraved end.

The fasts of the pagans indeed—if any in Leo's age were in vigour in the worship of empty gods (such as was that instituted to Ceres which Licius mentions, and which is read to have been prescribed on the fourth day before the Nones of October in the ancient marble Calendar of Amiternum dug up [in Muratori, Thesaurus of Inscriptions, page 150])—insofar as they may properly be called polluted by unbelief, everyone understands. The same is true of the fasts of the Manichaeans in honour of the Sun and Moon, noted by Leo in Sermon 4 on Lent, chapter 5, and in the letter to Turribius, chapter 4, concerning which accordingly he affirms in the praised sermon: 'Who are most of all polluted by their own observance.' He also touched upon other fasts of these heretics in Sermon 4 on the Nativity, chapter 6:

'Let not fabricated and feigned fasts, which lead not to the purification but to the perdition of souls, seduce you by their deceptive arts. They indeed assume a semblance of piety and chastity; but by this guile they cloak the obscenities of their deeds, and from the recesses of a profane heart they send forth darts by which the simple are wounded.' And again, concerning fasts of this kind, in Sermon 4 on the Epiphany, chapter 5: 'Those fasts are not chaste which come not from the reason of continence, but from the art of deceit. Thus far they have harmed the unwary, thus far they have deluded the unskilled.' In which passages, since he casts the vice of that kind of fasting upon the end of deceiving, not upon the fasts in themselves;

he thereby intimates that those fasts are chaste which come from the reason of continence, that is, which, every depraved end being excluded, proceed from the motive of virtue alone. The fasts of the Hebrews also can be understood as polluted, either by that depraved intention whereby they suppose obedience is to be rendered to the legal precepts already abolished, or at least by vainglory, whereby the fasting Pharisees were puffed up, as is handed down in Matthew, chapter 6, verse 16—which the holy pontiff noted in Sermon 4 on the Fast of the seventh month, chapter 1, and especially in Sermon 7, chapter 2. 4. But that this vice of vainglory the holy

Leo especially had in view, can hence be gathered—that in the third chapter he exhorts Christians to beware most of all of boasting and pride in fasting, lest the fast, good in itself, be corrupted by this vice. 'We must beware,' he says, 'lest by elation we lose the good things which we cannot do without goodness. For every man despoils himself of all his merit's praise who glories in the pursuits of his own industry more in himself than in the Lord.' And chapter 4: 'Let us restrain ourselves from the inflation of boasting, referring all things to the glory of God.' Although he seems to have declaimed against this vice most of all when speaking of the fasts of Christians, since, as he observes in Sermon 4 on Lent, chapter

3, among those very persons who are not held by unbelief, the devil most of all lies in wait with this corrupt end, so that (as he says) those whom he could not cast down through distrust, he strives to overcome through glory. 'For the evil of pride is near to right actions, and elation ever lies in wait for the virtues at close quarters; because it is difficult that human praise should not lay hold of one living praiseworthily, unless, as it is written, he who glories glories in the Lord.' But since the holy

Leo supposed that among pagans, Jews, and heretics, who lack the right faith, the fasts were infected either with this vice of pride or with some other, and presumed that the rest of the works of the moral virtues which are done by them were corrupted by some equally depraved end, it is no wonder if he affirmed that these were thence polluted by unbelief, and that among the same nothing whole, nothing chaste is found. 5. Nor is it therefore to be gathered that he condemned as sin, absolutely and generally, all the works of the virtues which are produced by them outside the Church; for he expressly taught, as we have seen, that those things are praiseworthy and good which do not proceed from the fount of faith, if, every depraved end being removed, they be produced from the motive of virtue.

Only because among pagans and other unbelievers, right faith being wanting, some depraved end—at least of self-love or of vainglory—very easily creeps in, he affirmed that the good works themselves, which we cannot do without goodness, are vitiated, and to that extent are neither whole nor chaste—just as in the same sense Augustine, Prosper, and other Fathers handed down. Hence in Sermon 4 on the Nativity of the Lord, chapter 6, after he had reproved the vicious fasts of the Manichaeans, he exhorted his hearers to hold the right faith, chiefly for this reason: because without it nothing is holy, nothing chaste, nothing living: for the just man lives by faith—where the words 'nothing chaste' are to be understood in the sense indicated. 6. Hence, moreover, the last text supplies another observation.

For while he hands down that without faith nothing is holy, nothing living, he intimates that the works of unbelievers which are infected by no depraved end are void of true sanctity and of the merit of eternal life. So also in Sermon 8 on Lent, chapter 1, the holy pontiff, admonishing those about to fast lest they be polluted by any unbelief, brings this reason: 'For, the Apostle saying, Everything that is not of faith is sin, the fasts of those will be useless and vain whom the father of lies deceives with his illusions, and whom the true flesh of Christ does not feed.'

By these words the term 'sin,' as employed by the Apostle concerning works generally useless and vain—that is, lacking eternal merit and reward—appears to be interpreted in such a way that it embraces also those works of mercy performed by unbelievers which, with no end corrupted, being bestowed to help a man for the sake of the very common bond of nature, are not to be cheated of their due praise, that is, are good, as he had declared in Sermon 7; and which for that very reason can be called sins only in this broader sense, insofar as, without living faith, they avail nothing toward an eternal reward. Whence in this same Sermon 7 he wrote: 'What does not proceed from the fount of faith does not attain to eternal rewards.' 7. Thus the holy pontiff sufficiently distinguished two kinds of works of the moral virtues among unbelievers.

Some are good indeed in their object, yet corrupted and evil in their bad end; others, however, are infected by no bad end, and are good not so much from their object as from the end of virtue, yet devoid of the merit of eternal life and unprofitable. Concerning works of the first kind he affirmed absolutely and in general that nothing whole, nothing chaste, etc., is found among unbelievers, because in general all the good works of unbelievers are corrupted by some vicious end. But works of the second kind he admitted among them conditionally and as it were by exception, if they be performed from a motive of virtue—which he intimates to be a possible case and truly rare. 8. But this is as foreign to the condemned propositions as St. Augustine himself is foreign to them,

Augustine, who taught not dissimilarly concerning the works of the virtues among unbelievers. In his book On the Spirit and the Letter, chapter 26, he left in writing: 'Even among the number of impious men, who do not truly worship the true God, we read or know or hear of certain deeds which, according to the rule of justice, we not only cannot blame, but even deservedly and justly praise.' This agrees with those words of Leo, 'they are not to be cheated of their praise.' But shortly after he adds: 'And yet, if you examine with what end they are done, scarcely will any be found that merit the praise and defense due to justice.' By which, while he intimates that those works of justice will scarcely be found without some bad end, he certainly believed that very many of them among such men are likewise depraved:

whence in other places the same Augustine, equally with St. Leo, condemned in general the works of the virtues which are performed by unbelievers, on the sole ground of the bad end by which he presumes them, in general, to be infected, save in rare cases. 1. Quesnel, upon these words of Leo in Sermon 83 on the Nativity of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, chapter 1: 'On the day of their martyrdom,' appended this note: 'On what day or in what month the Apostles Peter and Paul completed their contest, and likewise on what day the memory of their martyrdom was once observed in the Church with solemn festivity, there are some who are unwilling to determine from the present-day calendars and custom of the Church. For, they say, there is no witness sufficiently ancient who assigns that day to the Kalends of July.'

But we have a most ancient author, contemporary with Leo himself, who records that the solemnity of the burial (depositio) of the apostles was celebrated on the eighth day before the Kalends of March. This is Polemius Silvius, whose calendar (laterculum), containing many sacred and profane feasts, John Bolland testifies to have possessed intact, in his general preface to the Lives of the Saints, chapter 4, § 3; a specimen of which calendar, published in the same place, teaches that the burial of the apostles was celebrated in the Roman Church not on June 27, as is now done, but on February 22. For thus it has it: VIII (Kal. March) THE BURIAL OF SS. PETER AND PAUL. That Silvius wrote at Rome—if the manuscript is to be trusted;

but also in the time of our own Leo, under the emperors Theodosius the Younger and Valentinian, when Posthumianus and Zeno, most distinguished men, were consuls—that is, in the year of Christ 448—and he completed his calendar in the following year, under the consul Asterius, that is, in the year 449. But it is difficult that, on account of a single manuscript of uncertain reliability, we should go against all the calendars, martyrologies, or other such monuments of the ancient Church that have hitherto come to light; such as the Sacramentary of St. Gregory the Great, the Roman Ordo, and the most ancient of all Lectionaries, that of St. Jerome; for in all these the burial or nativity of SS. Peter and Paul is assigned to the third day before the Kalends of July.

Nay, even in a most ancient parchment or martyrology, which Bolland himself had offered to Aegidius Bucherius from the papers of Heribert Rosweyde, and which the latter inserted into his commentary on the Canon of Victorius, the day of the martyrdom of the Apostles is assigned in express words to the eighth (rather: third) before the Kalends of July in this manner: 'On the third before the Kalends of July, Peter in the Catacombs, and Paul on the Ostian Way.' Certainly, since these calendars compete with one another as to antiquity, far greater trust is due to the one which is supported both by all the ancient monuments of the Church and by the consensus of all authors, than to the other, which alone suggests a novel opinion, and into which it is easy for an error to have crept.' Thus far he, and well enough.

Only it displeases that he wrote that the aforesaid calendars of Polemius Silvius and of Bucherius compete with one another in antiquity: for the calendar of Bucherius is earlier than Silvius's calendar by almost a whole century. 2. But that the age and excellence of the Bucherian calendar may be more plainly perceived, and the day of the martyrdom of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul made more certain, it will be worthwhile to note somewhat more precisely a few things about its author, which we have not seen observed by others hitherto. Now two manuscripts (so far as we know) contain this calendar: one older, but mutilated, exists among the Bollandists.

From this Bucherius published the aforementioned calendar and four other monuments, namely a Catalogue of the Prefects of the City, a Catalogue of the Roman pontiffs, a fragment of the consular Fasti, and a Roman-profane Calendar, which lacks four months. But the other, more recent, yet found intact, was in the Imperial Library, which Cuspinianus had used in his Commentaries on the Chronicle of Cassiodorus, and from it, before Bucherius, had published the Catalogue of the Prefects of the City. From this, moreover, Lambecius published the entire Calendar in vol. IV of the Imperial Library, and our Cardinal Norisius published the entire Fasti in his work On the Epochs of the Syro-Macedonians. And most recently John George Eckhart, in vol.