That this sermon was known before it was brought to light by Muratori in the Paduan edition, volume IV of the Anecdota, page 99, is most certainly established not so much from Baronius as from Gothofredus. For Baronius, in his notes on the Roman Martyrology under 31 January, not only mentions it but has in its very words the same description of the impious sacrifices; while Gothofredus, in his notes on Title 10, Book 16 of the Theodosian Code, when he makes mention of the laws passed by the emperors against idolatry, opportunely uses this testimony for his purpose. This sermon was brought forth by Muratori, just like the next one which follows immediately, from the celebrated Ambrosian codex, where it is inscribed to Saint Maximus. Its title is as we have transcribed it:
On removing idols from one's own possessions. Some days ago, brethren, I had admonished your charity that, as religious and holy men, you should remove all the pollution of idols from your possessions, and root out from your fields the whole error of the heathen. For it is not right that you who have Christ in your hearts should have Antichrist in your dwellings; that while you adore God in the Church, your people should venerate the devil in shrines. Nor let anyone think himself excused by saying, 'I did not order it to be done, I did not command it.' For whoever understands that sacrileges are being practiced in his domain and does not forbid them to be done, in a certain way commands it himself; for by keeping silent and not rebuking, he lends his consent to the one sacrificing.
For the blessed Apostle says that not only those who do these things are guilty, but also those who consent to those who do them. You therefore, brother, when you see your peasant sacrificing and do not forbid him to offer sacrifice, you sin; if not by granting the means, yet by permitting the license; if your command is not in the crime, yet your will is in the fault. For while you keep silent, what your peasant did pleases you, which, if he did not do it, would perhaps displease you. For not only does the subject sin against himself when he sacrifices, but also against his master, who does not forbid it; who, if he forbade it, would certainly not sin. A great evil, therefore, is idolatry: it pollutes those who practice it, it pollutes those who dwell nearby, it pollutes those who look on, it penetrates to the ministers, it penetrates to the accomplices, it penetrates to those who keep silent.
For when the peasant sacrifices, the master is defiled. He cannot but be polluted where he takes food which a sacrilegious cultivator has produced, a bloodstained earth has yielded, a foul granary has stored: for all things there are defiled, all things are abominable, where the devil dwells in the buildings, in the fields, in the peasants. Nothing there is free from crime, where the whole is engaged in crime. When you enter the storeroom, you will find in it pallid turves and dead coals, a fitting sacrifice for a demon, when supplication is made to a dead thing with dead things. And if you go out to the field, you behold wooden altars and stone images—a fitting service, where to insensible gods with rotting altars ministry is performed.
When you rise up early and see a peasant sick with wine, you ought to know that, as they say, he is either possessed of Diana or a soothsayer; for the mad deity is wont to have a frenzied priest. For such a priest prepares himself with wine for the wounds inflicted upon his goddess, so that, being drunk, he may not himself feel his own pain. And this they do not only out of intemperance but also as a technique, so that they may feel their wounds less while they are tossed about by the drunkenness of wine. A vain seer indeed is he who thinks to establish piety by cruelty. How merciful toward foreign gods is he who is so bloody toward his own priests! For, that we may briefly describe the appearance of this seer:
he has a head shaggy with false locks, bearing bare breasts, his legs half-girded with a mantle, and after the manner of gladiators, ready for the fight, he carries a blade in his hands—except that he is worse than a gladiator, because the one is compelled to fight against another, while this one is forced to fight against himself. The one seeks another's entrails, this one tears his own limbs; and, if it may be said, the trainer urges the one to cruelty, the deity urges the other. Clad, therefore, in this garb, bloody with this slaughter, judge whether he is a gladiator or a priest. Therefore, just as the public crime of gladiators has been abolished by the religious devotion of princes, so also let these frenzied gladiators be removed from their own dwellings by the observance of Christianity.