Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 10 part 16/17

although in that work of three books I have answered you fully and abundantly, yet even now I will not be silent to you as to what can be briefly answered from this cause of the Maximianists — [not] even if for this reason you commend yourselves to unskilled and imprudent peoples. For so does Maximian himself, so do his associates who could not, even under the persecutions of your men, be made to yield so as to return to their communion, commend themselves to the vain and unskilled. But those who soberly consider that in the case of men who suffer some trouble, one ought to consider not the penalties but the causes, understand that these men, for the crime of a sacrilegious schism in which they were rightly and justly condemned by you, rightly and justly suffered even the disturbances of secular judgments.

For I do not mention that which you set down in your letter, that it was not Maximian's basilica but a cave, and not Optatus but the populace, that overthrew it. Although even there, even if it is uncertain that your men did it, it is nevertheless certain that he suffered persecution — yet a persecution that was not just but impious. Whence you are now compelled to confess that one ought not to attend to what each man suffers, but why he suffers. But it is too little for me to demonstrate for the present, by this example of Maximian, that he who suffers persecution is not thereby immediately just,

seeing that Maximian too, a sacrilegious man, suffered — obtaining and putting on the shadow of the name of Christ; [it is too little] unless I compel you to confess that even the religious persecute the sacrilegious, and the just the impious, not indeed from a zeal to harm, but rather from the necessity of taking counsel. Nor do I bring forward examples from the Old Testament, although you said you wished to be taught even by prophetic examples. Those, I say, too ancient, I do not bring forward; for they belonged to another dispensation and time. Now, after the meekness that was revealed and commended in due time — which indeed we say is just, but so long as you defend such a cause and such a thing there you are compelled to say — now, I say, your bishops have persecuted your own schismatics.

And so now I do not say: «Maximian suffered persecution, Optatus did it», since you answer that we are ignorant of this, and he acted in such a way that from this I can recite no acts — although, in a memory so recent, the cities themselves, if they were questioned, could not deny it. This, then, I do not say; but I do say: «Maximian suffered persecution, Primian did it», and I recite the acts by which I shall show that the house which Maximian was defending as his own, Primian took away, having committed the management to an exorcist under the name of the ecclesiastical office, with the legate Sacerdos favouring him — as the acts themselves indicate. But let him have been a judge of justice, not of favour — I do not deny it, I do not refute it —:

why then did Primian, in the acts of the magistrate of Carthage, among other things which he charged to be contumeliously pursued against us, say: «They take away what belongs to others; we [merely] withhold what has been taken away» — when he himself had taken away what belonged to another, if the house was Maximian's; but if rather Maximian had usurped it, he would not have withheld what had been taken away? But if you are unwilling that even this pertain to persecution, I say that your bishops and your clergy, while the Maximianists remained in those seats in which they had of old been ordained, carried out persecutions, accused them before the proconsuls, obtained commands, and, for executing those same commands, deserved the diligence of the officials and the aid of the cities:

so that those men — who had already been condemned by the severity of the sentence of Bagai, and, that a pestilent poison might not creep through all the members, had been cut off from the body of your communion by a summary pain, and, now causing you no danger through the diseased contagion of their communion, were, together with their own cut-off congregations, frequenting their own assemblies; who were holding, with the peoples clinging to them, in perpetual possession the places and basilicas which they had not invaded — that these men might be terrified, driven off, expelled, and, resisting, be haled forth. Read what things were said about them, or against them, by the prosecuting advocates; what crimes of sacrilege were objected; with what onset of accusation the powers were roused;

Inquire what was done to Salvius of Membressa, because he could not be forced by the harassments of that persecution to withdraw from complicity in the crime, and preferred to commit himself to trial and to answer his persecutors before the proconsular court, out of this confidence, I suppose: that he knew his adversaries could not employ the laws promulgated against heretics before the judge without ensnaring themselves equally in them. But that reasoning deceived him. For before Seranus, who was then proconsul, either favor prevailed more, or perhaps rather the Council of Bagai, which was there recited against this same Salvius.

By a certain interlocutory ruling he indeed showed what he was doing of his own accord, namely that he would either restore Salvius to the college of bishops in communion with Primianus, or drive him from his seats, so that Restitutus, whom Primianus had ordained against him, might possess without an adversary all the places that were held by Salvius; and yet in that same interlocutory ruling he made plain that Salvius was suffering persecution. For thus one reads in those very proceedings: Seranus the proconsul said: A dispute of bishops must, according to the law, be heard by bishops: the bishops have judged. Why then do you not either return to the college of old, offering satisfaction, or, as you have it written, turn your back and flee your persecutors? What seems best to you here?

Does it please you to call that Salvius righteous, to whom the proconsul—before whom he was being accused, with your bishop Restitutus standing against him—even gives counsel from Holy Scripture, that he should turn his back on his persecutors, since it is written in the Gospel: If they persecute you, flee? Surely you see what an appearance either of martyr or of confessor Salvius displays among his own people, who, while Restitutus persecuted him, deserved to hear these words from the proconsul—and yet is judged impious and sacrilegious not only according to us, but even according to you.

Now indeed, after the proconsul's sentence was alleged against the people of Abitina—by which they had obtained that the judgment be carried out through a neighboring city, seeing that almost all the people of Membressa loved Salvius—what those same Abitinians did to a man most advanced in age, it grieves me to tell, because they did it not before the court records; but since the very testimony of the cities, being of such recent memory, is clearer than any documents, I shall touch on it briefly—what I learned there while making my journey. For because Salvius had attempted to resist even after the proconsul's judgment, in defense of his seats to whatever extent, trusting in the crowd that favored him, at length being overcome he was seized—no longer to be led to the judge, where the sentence had been pronounced between the parties.

but to be triumphed over in a pitiable procession. For when the old man was captured, they tied dead dogs about his neck, and thus danced with him as much as they pleased. If I wished to exaggerate this by describing it, would I not perhaps show that this punishment could scarcely be compared even to the tortures of the Etruscan kings, who joined dead bodies to the living? Would not this old man, who wished to be regarded as a bishop, in the judgment of all deserve to be banished from the society of the living and the dead alike, if, when two punishments were set before him of which one had to be undergone, he chose rather to dance with the dogs' carcasses than to cling to human corpses? Now look at those words of mine which you supposed you had refuted—or rather, no longer those words themselves, but in their place these which I shall now say. For behold, I do not say:

'If it is not lawful to carry out a persecution, Optatus did so'—but I say: 'If it is not lawful to carry out a persecution, Restitutus did so.' Nor do I say: 'If one who suffers persecution is to be held innocent, Maximianus suffered it.' But I say: 'If one who suffers persecution is to be held innocent, Salvius suffered it.' I recite the proceedings, I repeat the words you do not wish repeated: Restitutus did it, Salvius suffered it. Which of these two will you answer me is a Christian, if not Restitutus? Which sacrilegious, if not Salvius? It must therefore lie rejected and be spurned as disproved—both what you said, that there is no just persecution, and what you said:

Who is unwilling to consent to the testament that has been produced—he who suffers persecution or he who inflicts it? For there is also a just persecution, which Salvius endured and Restitutus inflicted. Salvius suffered it, and yet Restitutus is praiseworthy to you, Salvius damnable. Nor indeed will you say that it was done in secret, nor could this be hidden from Primianus—what was done in that city, where he himself was the presiding bishop, and in so great a city, before so great a judge, that from this it could not be hidden even from other cities.

Or if this too must be reckoned among hidden things, why are you unwilling that the whole world should be ignorant if Caecilianus did anything wrong—which God forbid he did—in the time of persecution, if Primianus could be ignorant of the persecution which Salvius suffered from the very man whom Primianus himself ordained against him, and that in the city where he holds primacy over his colleagues? You will therefore confess, whether you will or not, that—lest you be compelled to condemn Restitutus, or Primianus, or the party of Donatus—not only can the unjust suffer persecution, but also the just can inflict it.

Or if you think that what is justly done should not be called persecution, then you will be able to prove neither that you suffered persecution from us, nor your people from ours; and we shall rather demonstrate that we suffer it from your clergy and Circumcellions, who with hard and senseless heart, neither understanding nor enduring what we counsel them for their salvation, rage against us with such fury that I am not able to number, nor recount, nor worthily set forth in words the things they do to us. Accordingly, when a frenzied man torments the physician and the physician binds the frenzied man, either both persecute each other in turn, or—if there is no persecution except what is wrongly done—it is by no means the physician who persecutes the madman, but the madman who persecutes the physician.

Your savagery, therefore, and most violent boldness through your Circumcellions, the henchmen of your clergy, known to all, had to be curbed by the laws that were enacted against you, and in some way to be bound—at the same time that, being at least admonished by that very terror, you might be willing to consider and amend in what error you were and by what sacrilege you were divided against the unity and peace of Christ; just as Felicianus and Praetextatus, harried by your terrors through the commands of the secular powers—which, with too hard and most perverse heart, Salvius refused—corrected the schism they had made from you and returned to your communion and fellowship. And the whole would be corrected, if by all of you a return were made to the Catholic root.

But whatever was done against you that exceeded the moderation of Christian love is as little to be imputed to the Catholic Church as I would impute to Primianus or Restitutus what the Abitinians did to Salvius. But whereas, after the persecutions you exaggerated—which you said the party of Donatus had endured—being wholly silent about what preceded on your side, and saying many things that are not proven against ours, you added a testimony from the Psalms and said: Was it not said of those who do such things: Their feet are swift to shed blood, and they have not known the way of peace?—these very things, and many others far graver, your bishops said against Felicianus and Praetextatus in that Council of Bagai.

And certainly those men shed the blood of no flesh, made no assault of bodily violence upon you; yet those who said these things against them judged that they were shedding spiritual blood far more wickedly by the sacrilege of schism. Whence, if with those men—after words so grievously and sharply spoken against them—you made peace without any tarnishing of their honor, without any rescinding of baptism, it is not to be despaired of that you might also be able to be reconciled with us.

For the whole Christian world ought to entice you to make peace far more than Praetextatus and Felicianus, since, if those whom you condemned with such atrocity of accusation did not defile you, much less does the unity of so many Christian nations defile you—against which you have not demonstrated the crimes of certain unknown Africans; and greatly does that wickedness defile you, by which you have separated your fellowship from the fellowship of that Church, on whose behalf so many and so great divine testimonies are recited. Against these divine testimonies you dared with human rashness to speak, though you yourself too were somehow compelled by the same force of truth to confess that the whole world is daily being turned to the Christian name.

You dared, I say, to resist the testament of God, though the Apostle says: No one makes void or adds provisions to a man's confirmed testament. To Abraham the promises were spoken, and to his seed. This testament you did not in the least fear to make void, and to superadd to this testament the party of Donatus; and although God says in that same testament to Abraham: So shall your seed be as the stars of heaven and as the sand of the sea, you—making this void and superadding the party of Donatus, for which you recite no testimony—say: In the few is truth often found, and to err belongs to the many.

—not understanding in what sense it was said by the Lord that few enter through the narrow gate, since He also said that many would recline from the east and the west with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and in the Apocalypse there are shown, out of every nation and tribe and tongue, thousands clothed in white, whom no one can number. These are indeed both many in themselves, and yet the same are few in comparison with the far more numerous who are to be punished with the devil. Yet this grain, destined for the divine granaries forever, joined throughout the whole world by the unity of love, endures—whether from the scandals and violence of heretics, or from the inner chaff, as it were, of the many who do not live rightly—the heat and threshing of this present age, to be purged at the final winnowing.

But to all these things nothing answers you more easily than the case of the Maximianists. For if truth is often in the few and to err belongs to the many, allow that the Maximianists, by as much as they are unequal to you in fewness, by so much surpass you in truth. You do not do so: therefore do not glory in your fewness in comparison with the multitude of the Catholic nations, just as you do not wish the Maximianists to glory in their fewness in comparison with your multitude. But as for what you narrate about the African traditors, do you really not know, or do you—in the heart of whatever sort of man—not perceive, in a contest where truth is sought, when proof does not follow, how vain and inept a narration is?

In refuting which I would not spend labor, even if I did not have in the case of the Maximianists so easy a shortcut, without any circumlocution. The Scriptures are sacred: The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken, and has called the earth from the rising of the sun unto its setting: out of Sion is the form of His beauty. To this prophetic testimony the Gospel agrees, where the same Lord says of Himself: It behooved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. For what was said there—He has called the earth from the rising of the sun unto its setting—this is said here: among all nations; and what was said there:

Out of Sion is the form of His beauty—this is said here: beginning from Jerusalem. For not only did Christ suffer there, but there also He rose again, thence He ascended into heaven, there He filled with the Holy Spirit sent from heaven the hundred and twenty men gathered on the day of Pentecost, there on one day He received three thousand, on another five thousand believers converted into His body; thence into all Judaea and Samaria and into the rest of the nations of the whole world the Church spread itself by bearing fruit, and still spreads. Foretelling this to His disciples, and now about to ascend into heaven, He said: You shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Judaea and Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth.

This Church, therefore, beginning from Jerusalem and spreading itself through all nations with such evident fruitfulness that it compels you yourself to confess that by the providence of God the whole world is daily being turned to the Christian name—this Church, I say, which, at the speaking of the Lord God of gods, is called from the rising of the sun unto its setting, could in no way have been polluted by African traditors whom it wholly did not know, if the sacrilegious twigs of Maximianus did not pollute the seed-plots of so many of his colleagues—merely because in ordaining him they did not lay hands upon him—although they praised him after he had been condemned by Primianus, and condemned Primianus, although, being established in his schism, they received a delay within which they might return. Nay, further, because I said:

We charge you with the tradition far more probably—you answer that I in this way confessed that you charged us with it probably; and you even teach a rule of speech, whereby the comparative degree augments what was placed before, not disproves what was said before, adding that just as 'well' and 'better,' 'badly' and 'worse,' so 'probably' and 'more probably' (and 'horribly' and 'more horribly'). Whence you seem to gather and you say: If we did so more probably, then we did so probably.

On this point I answered you sufficiently—or perhaps more than sufficiently—in its proper place in that more extensive work of three books, and I showed from those writings whence we learned words, how the comparative degree does not always augment what it compares, but sometimes disproves that to which it is compared. Hence: The gods grant better things to the pious; hence: I pray for better auspices. Read carefully, you will yourself find more instances. But do you not marvel, I beseech you, that in this case of the Maximianists—from which I have now determined to answer you on all points—an example even of this manner of speaking was not lacking to me? For in that most brilliant and eloquent sentence of the Council of Bagai:

A more wholesome course was found, they say, lest the pestilential poison creep through all the members, so that by a compendious pain the arisen wound might fall away. Certainly, according to your rule, they ought to have said 'wholesome,' not 'more wholesome'; for that was not wholesome, but pernicious—that the pestilential poison should creep through all the members. The course, therefore, was more wholesome, that by a compendious pain the arisen wound might fall away, although it was not wholesome but, on the contrary, destructive, that the pestilential poison should creep through all the members. Thus we charge you with the tradition more probably, although you charge us with it not probably.

Now as for what I said against Silvanus, your bishop of Cirta—that he was a traditor—the municipal proceedings bear witness, drawn up there at Cirta by Munatius Felix, curator of the commonwealth. For as we read written there, after the library was opened, empty cupboards were found there. There Silvanus produced a small silver casket and a silver lamp, saying that he had found them behind a chest. To him Victor son of Aufidius said: You would have been a dead man, had you not found them. And when Felix the curator had said to him: 'Search more diligently, lest anything remain here,' Silvanus said: Nothing remained here; we threw it all out.

When these proceedings were being recited before the acts of Zenophilus the consular, and were being inserted among many other documents of witnesses, the consular asked: What office was Silvanus then administering in the clergy? Victor answered: When persecution arose under Bishop Paulus, Silvanus was a subdeacon. Against this most evident document of the public proceedings, that it might be less believed, you seem to yourself to set something great in opposition, because you recall the sentence which he pronounced against Caecilianus as though punishing traditors, and you argue that it could not have happened that he was a traditor who stood forth as so severe an avenger of the tradition:

—as though anything more severe seemed to those most wicked elders, when they raged with such insistence to have Susanna put to death, while their own conscience was pierced by the very crime which they pretended they wished to punish in her. But let us pass over such things. What of Felicianus? Does he not now, together with Primianus, condemn what he himself committed together with Maximianus—but plainly by a better verdict more corrected, not more shameless?

If Silvanus had been willing to do this, he would have condemned by a wholesome amendment not a false tradition in Caecilianus, but a true one in himself, and would have passed over to the innocence of Caecilianus, even if not as a bishop, yet with his perversity corrected—just as Felicianus was able to pass over to Primianus (whom, like the other with Caecilianus, he had condemned as innocent) without stain either to Primianus or to himself, and even with episcopal honor. Nor should you take what I said—that certain unknown traditors, whom your forebears reproached, ought (if they truly reproached them) to have been convicted—as though they ought to have done this among themselves. For thus you answer that they did do it, and therefore judged that our people had lost their baptism.

Read first carefully that against which you write, and either understand what is said or do not turn what you understand into something else. I said that not among your people, but before the Churches beyond the sea—to whom those men who were reproached by your people seemed innocent—they ought to have been convicted. For the Maximianists too seem to themselves to have condemned Primianus as convicted, but not before those who, being placed farther off and more removed from favor or ill-will, could bring against him such a judgment as would easily be proved to the whole party of Donatus. But now a hundred condemned him, and left him to be absolved by more than three hundred, among whom they themselves would run the risk of condemnation.

For to those so many they ought to have persuaded their verdict, so that they themselves might be within with them, while Primianus was without, if being condemned he had spurned repentance. But if they could not persuade so much greater a number of colleagues, and so many churches of their communion spread throughout all Africa, then either they should by sounder counsel have rescinded their own verdict, in which, as men, they could be mistaken about a man, or, if they had without any doubt learned his true crimes—which nevertheless they were unable to persuade to so many others—they should more prudently and patiently have tolerated a guilty man whom they knew, rather than separate themselves by an impious schism from so many innocent men who were ignorant of these things.

For they would have held to that most full sentence of blessed Cyprian, full of charity and piety, in which he says: For although tares seem to be in the Church, yet our faith or charity ought not to be hindered, so that, because we perceive tares to be in the Church, we ourselves should withdraw from the Church. Which indeed would then have profited them, if, being themselves purged within the bosom of the Catholic Church, they had tolerated the refuse which they could not separate before the time. But what we say those men ought to have done in this fellowship of your error—which you suppose to be the true Church—this your forebears ought to have done in that manifestly true Church, in whose unity they were, lest they be separated from it. For just as any man of your party, wholly ignorant of the case of Primianus, nevertheless—

although he was condemned by a hundred Maximianists, simply believes him innocent, since he has proved himself to so many more—so too in the Catholic communion, one from whom the case of Caecilianus lies hidden is, not without reason, persuaded that he was innocent who was able, not only throughout Africa but even through the lands of so many Christian nations, either to become known as innocent to so many more bishops, or to remain hidden as guilty—among whom he either deserved to be absolved by one who recognized his cause, or did not deserve to be condemned by one ignorant of it, or, absolved by a corrupt judge contrary to his desert, could not be shown to be so to others who had not judged.

You therefore, by a sacrilegious separation, are cut off from the unity of so many and such great innocent peoples—who, since they could not be judges in this case, either did not know that there had been any judges in it, or whether anything at all, or what, had been judged in it, or trusted the chosen judges rather than the defeated litigants. Hence it is taught, even in that which, out of that fourfold distribution of mine, you chose as the last option—for neither could you choose otherwise—how easily you are overcome. For I said that if documents of the crimes of tradition were produced on both sides, either both are true, or both false, or ours true and yours false, or ours false and yours true.

And when in the three former cases I had demonstrated our victory to be most easy, in the fourth also you either understood less that you were defeated, or—which I rather believe—lest it be understood by others, you thought you must dispute, under I know not what shadowy pretexts, about the kind of argumentation, seeking to cover it over; whence, if there be need, we shall perhaps treat with you elsewhere, lest we now spend time on unnecessary matters. Accordingly, attend whether I am able, in that clear mirror of yours—that is, in the case of the Maximianists—to demonstrate even this. For, all being dead by whom and before whom these proceedings were done, it may sometime come to pass that between your people and their descendants a question of communion be stirred up.

Those men will say that Primianus was condemned by their forebears—about a hundred bishops or more—and will produce that sentence which was first drawn up against him at Carthage, and then another at Cebarsussi; against them your people will recite the Council of Bagai. Those men will demand that it be proved to them that the crimes of Primianus, contained in the sentence of their forebears, were dispelled. Will not your people say far more justly: These crimes which you cast against one already dead—if they be true, prove this: that you laid them before our forebears, that you showed them these to be true?

But if you attempted to do this and could not accomplish it, alien crimes—however true—which had not been demonstrated to them, could not defile our forebears themselves; how much less, if you did not even attempt to show them! Whence, then, could the guilt of that case pass over to us, which, being unknown and unproven, did not implicate even those who were then living together with Primianus?