講道與書信 第 226 章 第 1/2 段

1. To return, then, to our subject: let no one persuade himself that either Julian, together with his associates in impiety, so peaceably underwent exile and the other penalties that he did not attempt to throw dust in the eyes of Pope Coelestine and of Xystus his successor, in order to be absolved. Let no one either suppose that the City, Campania, and the other regions of Italy remained wholly free of the Pelagian plague after the removal of Julian and the other bishops. Julian above all, having procured for himself the protection of Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, attempted by guile and frauds to plead his own cause and that of his associates before St. Coelestine, whom he most frequently pressed that the episcopal sees might be restored to himself and to his banished associates.

Meanwhile too the Pelagians, scattered here and there throughout Italy and springing up anew, were sustained by the hope that at some time their own pastors would be restored to them, and therefore they did not desist from complaints, from tumult, from revilings. Wherefore, scarcely had Coelestine died and Xystus been substituted in his see, when Julian dared to test this man's faith and apostolic vigour, when, by suppliant petitions presented to him, he pretended to profess the Catholic faith, so that the pontiff might restore to him his former episcopal honour and offices.

Prosper of Aquitaine narrates the matter in his Chronicle, adding moreover that Julian was baffled by none other than St. Leo, then archdeacon of the Roman Church, who with the exertion of all his powers wrought upon the holy pontiff that he should guard himself and the whole Church against the feigned penitence of the heretical man. 'At this season Julian of Eclanum, the most boastful champion of the Pelagian error, whom an intemperate desire for the bishopric he had long since lost kept goading, displaying by manifold art of deceiving a semblance of correction, endeavoured to creep into the communion of the Church.

But Pope Xystus, at the urging of the deacon Leo, vigilantly meeting these snares, allowed no entrance to lie open to the pestilent attempts, and so caused all Catholics to rejoice at the rejection of the deceitful beast, as though the apostolic sword had then for the first time cut down its most savage heresy.' Thus wrote the praised Prosper, at the consulship of Theodosius the Seventeenth and of Festus, which, according to the lips of Petavius, is to be assigned to the year of Christ 439, as also the most eminent Cardinal Noris noted. 2. So great, then, was St.

—Leo's marvellous prudence, while still a deacon, and the sagacity of his talent, that he at once grasped the wiles, the bad faith, and the dissimulations of this standard-bearer of the Pelagians, who, driven merely by an over-intemperate desire for the bishopric he had lost, was clamouring to be admitted into the communion of Catholics with all his honours and offices, in order once more to disturb the Church and to assail it with new engines. But after Leo, superior in spirit to all dangers, had met these evils, he judged that the heretics—both the Nestorians and the Pelagians—should be assailed by writings as well.

And accordingly, as though foreknowing the divine election of his own self to the supreme pontificate of the Church, he roused the modest silence of Cassian, the presbyter of Marseilles, by frequent exhortations, and overcame that man's resolve and opinion with laudable zeal and most imperious affection, and as it were impelled him to write and publish seven books against Nestorius On the Incarnation. Moreover, in those same books he showed no favour at all to the Pelagians, but attacked and tore them to pieces.

Although he, having long since completed the books of his Spiritual Conferences, had reflected within himself and resolved to settle himself in the haven of silence, meaning to excuse the audacity of loquacity by the modesty of taciturnity, and to wipe out the stain of being a favourer of the Semipelagians—a stain altogether falsely cast upon him—nevertheless from so deep a recess of premeditated silence he came forth into public and formidable judgement, at the exhortation and command of our Leo, and undertook a new labour, while he still blushed for the past. So indeed the same Cassian confessed in his dedicatory epistle to Leo, in which he even addresses him thus: 'For here now your cause rather than mine is at stake, your judgement rather than my duty is put in peril.'

'For as for me, whether I be equal to your command or not, the very consideration of obedience and of humility to some extent excuses me...' And a little after these words he adds: 'Therefore this is your affair, your business, the work of your honour.' 3. Not long after, however, not only did report (than which nothing is swifter in matters of this kind) everywhere spread abroad, but messengers too ran ahead, that Xystus the Roman pontiff had departed this light. When the Pelagians heard this, they at once understood that new disasters were threatening them, if the archdeacon Leo should be raised to the pontificate. And therefore they were tormented with the greatest fear and gravest perils, and, as it were, foresaw new thunderbolts to be hurled upon their very selves as if from a higher place.

And indeed with these auspicious omens Leo set about governing the Church. For, to the common benefit of the Catholic faith, he at once declared the greatest war upon the heretics, chiefly upon Julian and the other Pelagians who were dwelling in Campania. 'While we were stationed in Italy, throughout Campania, and the venerable Leo, to be named with apostolic honour, was overthrowing the Manichees and crushing the Pelagians, and especially Julian.' In which matter, however, I judge that those writers are by no means to be heeded, who wrongly dug out of the writings of Photius that St. Leo had detained Prosper of Aquitaine in Campania against the snares of Julian. For Photius asserted no such thing in his Bibliotheca.

In Codex 54 only, he wrote concerning the Pelagian heresy reviving anew: 'After not long, when it had again begun as it were to exist and to spring up shamelessly from the evil root, and certain men at Rome too had spoken freely on behalf of the heresy, whom Prosper, a truly divine man, easily scattered and extinguished by pamphlets published against them among the people, while Leo, whom we have mentioned, was even then governing the Roman see.' Not then did Prosper, on the authority of Photius, overthrow the Pelagians dwelling in Campania, nor was he sent and appointed by Pope Leo to go to that province, as it pleased Ussher, Cave, and others; but he only published certain pamphlets against those who spoke freely on behalf of the Pelagian heresy.

By which words, moreover, we rather judge that certain men are indicated, who—neither understanding the testimonies of the Scriptures nor, with the submission that is due, obeying the judgements of the apostolic see—affected an empty and ambitious show of knowledge, while they desired to appear as champions of that heresy. Whose habit indeed is most similar to the custom of certain men today, since we very often come upon certain garrulous and clamorous doctors—not to call them busybodies—who are wont to frequent the public shops of books for sale, with this intent only: that with the utmost licence they may note and carp at the deeds and writings of others, and describe the same in slanderous verses, while yet—oh, the supreme presumption of their wits!—

—to these men it is granted, neither by nature, nor by their offices, nor by expertise in the sciences and by practice, by any reason at all, to judge even lightly concerning such faculties. 4. Such loquacity, then, and licence of men St. Prosper restrained by four or at least three pamphlets. Moreover, considering this too—that men, namely, are accustomed to be delighted by verses rather than by prose—he therefore wrote in metre. And the chief place among these pamphlets that poem On the Ungrateful would hold, in which, against the Pelagians, he not only describes the sequence of the Church's affairs, but also brings forward into the midst and overthrows all the wicked errors of that heresy.

Was not, then, from this kind of discourse, the people and the common folk able to understand with what and how great reverence those decrees of the apostolic see were to be received, which were already held by all the bishops of the Churches as the tokens of faith? Was not, moreover, the very title of this pamphlet able, in all who spoke freely on behalf of this heresy, either to excite shame or to instil a desire of reading it, inasmuch as it indicated that a grave censure of ungrateful souls was contained in the work—souls which, at every time, all nations have been wont to shudder at and to separate themselves from their company?

And indeed, if he ought to be reckoned ungrateful who for benefits received neither renders thanks nor holds any, how much more he who denies that he has even received the benefits, and who, playing the part of the ungrateful, strives to defend the vice and cause of these? Deservedly, therefore, it can hardly be called into doubt that the Pelagians acquired for themselves the name of the ungrateful: 'because no one' (says Martin Steyaert) 'labours under the vice of an ungrateful mind sooner than he who impiously prefers the human will to the divine will and mercy, as though, being originally evil, he should begin the reception of good, not from the supreme Good, but from himself.' 5. Yet to these arguments the most eminent Noris seems to be opposed. For in Book 2 of his History of the Pelagians he wrote thus concerning the testimony of Photius:

'For the rest, there are no books of Prosper against the Pelagians; since Photius calls them pamphlets, I think he understood those which Prosper published in Gaul against the Semipelagians, which nevertheless I have ascertained were written before the pontificate of Leo. That he wrote that charming poem Against the Ungrateful at Rome, Ussher alone, without a witness, affirms on page 380.' Are these things, then, to be dissembled? Lest I should seem always to wish to pick a quarrel with the most learned man, as the critics, the Venetian writers of literary matters, once published when our Rufinian edition first saw the light. Or ought one so to subscribe to Noris's conjectures, that we should seem to waver in our own opinion? Far be it that our kinship should fall into that counsel!

For the testimony of Photius is not so feeble that among us and among the assembly of the learned it does not claim for itself at least some measure of credit. Nor, moreover, do we judge that it must be so clung to that we should dare to attack or reject the conjectures and reasonings of that most illustrious and most learned man, Cardinal Noris. For it would be too disgraceful even lightly to wound the reputation of a most erudite man, who, for the affairs of the Church, after so many labours undergone, has exhibited to the Catholic world the better specimens of his studies, both in composing the History of the Pelagians and in adorning the monuments of the ancients.

When, therefore, I turned these things over in my mind, having again cast my eyes upon the testimony of Photius, I was led to believe that the opinions or assertions of both writers could easily be reconciled; and chiefly for this reason, because Photius nowhere asserts that, while Leo held the Roman see, Prosper composed such pamphlets against the Pelagians. He says only: 'Prosper, a truly divine man, easily scattered and extinguished them by pamphlets published against them among the people.'

Which manner of speaking certainly rather indicates that Prosper found at Rome an opportunity of publishing among the common people also those pamphlets which he had perhaps previously composed against the Pelagians. That the words of Photius convey this meaning, no one will deny who attends to the genuine sense of those words; and who at the same time reconsiders that it was nowhere customary to communicate one's own writings to all the Fathers indiscriminately. For so great was not then the supply of manuscript codices, that they should be thumbed even by the hands of the common crowd. Therefore it would be probable enough to judge that Prosper at length published even among the people, at Rome, the books which he had perhaps himself, on the authority of Noris, composed in Gaul, in order to scatter and extinguish the champions of the Pelagians. 6.

This last conjecture is strengthened by the epistle of Jerome to Florentius, concerning which we ourselves discoursed in our edition of Eusebius. For there we noted that there was a very great communication of books between Jerome and Rufinus. Wherefore Jerome earnestly asks Florentius that, when he has received their common friend Rufinus in hospitality, he should request from him and see to it that there be sent to him the commentaries of the blessed Rheticius, bishop of Autun, on the Song of Songs. Moreover, in the name of a certain Paul the Elder, of Rufinus's homeland, he demands that a codex of Tertullian be returned to him; likewise an Interpretation of the Psalms of David, and the very long book of St. Hilary On the Synods, copied at Trier by Jerome's own hand.

From which epistle we understand that codices of the Works elaborated by the Fathers were so very rare in the fifth century of the Church, that scarcely was there the means of procuring copies of them even for men who were most abundantly moneyed, or for those who did not shrink from undergoing the arduous labour of copyists. Although, therefore, we freely grant this—that Prosper's pamphlets, of which Photius discoursed, were composed in Gaul by their author—yet what hindrance was there in the way, but that for the benefit of the common cause they should likewise afterwards be published among the people? And indeed those will judge with us that the words of Photius bear no other sense, who shall wish to interpret them according to the fine points of grammar.

For does the praised Photius there hint at anything else than this one thing only, namely, that St. Prosper brought a great light and support to the truth in publishing abroad those pamphlets by which he easily quelled all the tumults of the common crowd, and cherished, confirmed, and increased both the piety and the religion of Catholics? And indeed the common crowd itself, although little versed in ecclesiastical matters, and not readily obedient to the authority of one teaching, yet very often, if it be free from necessary business and cares, by no means refuses to hear the discourses of gainsayers, and by them,

—as though caught by a certain lure of theirs, when it is a question of the rigour of justice, holds suspect for itself the rectitude or integrity of the judges, frequently judges preposterously concerning the crimes of the accused, and, moved by a certain pity toward the condemned—both on account of the penalties which they pay, and because it shrinks from them—does not blush to attack the most holy prelates of the Church with a black tooth. Therefore, in order that St. Prosper might meet all these evils, and at the same time cherish and rouse the piety and religion of the crowd, as we have said, it is probable enough that he wished, for this reason, in mournful verses to assail the manners and institutions of the Pelagians, so that, namely, the crowd itself might not suffer itself to be deceived, and might be drawn and kindled to the inquiry and investigation of the truth.

And indeed it must be believed that for no other cause did he set before its eyes the sequence and order of the events, the impiety and errors of the Pelagians, than that he might thereafter sing together the praises of divine grace, celebrate the faith and piety of the Catholic Church, and finally turn the deeds, dogmas, disasters, ruin, and ignominy of the heretics themselves into a song for all mouths. That Prosper attained such a happy outcome by his celebrated poem On the Ungrateful, and by three other pamphlets published among the people, the praised words of Photius not obscurely announce, whether St. Prosper composed those pamphlets long before the pontificate of Leo the Great, or in the time of that pontificate. 4.

Now indeed we shall now seem to wander beyond the purpose of our undertaking, if we resolve to inquire more diligently into the date of these pamphlets. But from this task I could by no reason be turned aside, since in inquiring into that date I have perceived that all preceding writers have erred. For the poem On the Ungrateful is not to be assigned to the year 429, or to the following one; nor are those two epigrams against the detractor of Augustine to be rejected into the year 417 or 418, as the preceding writers asserted. This is gathered chiefly from Prosper himself, who so begins the poem On the Ungrateful as to describe the whole Pelagian venom as fully abolished.

But to what would this discourse of Prosper have aimed, if, the enemy of the Church not yet crushed, he had still, swollen with pride, exalted himself throughout Campania and the other regions of Italy? By what reasoning, moreover, would Prosper have said that a full victory had been won by the Church against the Pelagians, if their standard-bearer Julian had been able to stir up new troubles, whether at Constantinople, or throughout Italy and Gaul, so as once and again to attempt to creep into the Catholic society? For such forms of speech ought not to be referred either to the African synods, or to the decrees of St. Innocent the pope only;

for, as we have most excellently understood from the ecclesiastical records, Julian had not then yet fallen into open heresy, but under the mask of religion and piety was rather endeavouring to cloak his wicked errors. Nor can the same words of St. Prosper be interpreted of the constitution of Pope Zosimus, or of the sanctions of the Council of Ephesus, since already under Xystus and Leo, the Roman pontiffs, Julian himself and the remaining Pelagian prelates, stirring up new troubles and machinations here and there, were striving with all their zeal that the episcopal sees, honours, and ministries might be restored to them. 2. Prosper's poems, therefore, seem to us able to suit no time rather than that of Xystus or of St. Leo.

And although we would not dare absolutely to assert that that poem was composed in Leo's age, nevertheless, since he so speaks as to describe the Pelagian brood as utterly extinguished, and as it were makes mention of a war finished, of a victory won, of a peace ensuing, by no means ought such a conjecture to be wholly refuted, as the reader himself will be able to judge from the poems of the same Prosper. 'A chaste love of the race kindred in Christ, instilled into me from on high, bids me to exceed my proper strength, and to kindle pious minds by song: lest, after the war and the famous victory achieved, an incautious peace should relax our unguarded souls, as though no fear now survives from the enemy laid low, and the venomous serpent, though crushed, no longer lifts its head.'

But if nevertheless anyone should contend that this statement of Photius—that at Rome too certain persons spoke freely in favor of the heresy (namely the Pelagian), whom Prosper, a truly divine man, easily scattered and extinguished by the little works he published for the public—is by no means proved of the one poem De Ingratis alone, I for my part shall not greatly resist. Indeed, although that work in fact bears the name of 'libelli' (little works), since it was divided by its author into four equal parts, to each of which its own particular argument corresponds, as the distinguished Don Antonio Salinas, a regular canon, has already demonstrated in adorning the works of St. Prosper;

and further, since this kind of composition contains satirical verses composed to censure and assail the evil morals and practices of others, it has rightly claimed for itself the name of 'libelli' even from common usage of speech. But lest, being fully occupied, I should seem to oppose Noris, I pass over these slight conjectures, and my discourse turns to three other little works of Prosper published against the Pelagians. Prosper therefore composed, as we have said, two other epigrams against the detractor of St. Augustine, to which he added that celebrated epitaph of the Nestorian and Pelagian heresy.

But these kinds of compositions would certainly have been altogether untimely, if at least Augustine had either not yet closed his last day, or if one or the other of those heresies had not yet been utterly extinguished and abolished—which two heresies indeed were by no means brought to full destruction until after Augustine had died. The editors of Prosper, foreseeing the weight of this argument, asserted that only the epitaph against the Nestorians and Pelagians was written later, referring it, namely, to the year 432, when, Augustine having been taken from the living, those two heresies were condemned in the plenary synod of Ephesus. But most weighty conjectures press upon us that this must be asserted at least of the other little works as well.

For who would suppose that, while Augustine was still living, any other person would have wished to take upon himself the role of a champion on behalf of his name and doctrine? Did not the holy doctor himself, as long as he lived, always keep his pen ready against his adversaries, checking them with a mighty arm, or destroying their contrivances with the gravest censures? It is therefore quite probable that that Augustine—who rebuked and chided the Adrumetine monks who wrongly interpreted his writings; who perpetually attacked and harassed Pelagius and Julian; who modestly cleared his own doctrine from the objections of Jerome—

it is, I say, quite probable that this Augustine by no means left those new detractions of the Pelagians unanswered, or at least rendered due thanks to Prosper his defender. Yet he would have rendered them, if he had still been alive when Prosper wrote the aforesaid little works. 3. Then Prosper's two letters to Augustine add great strength to our conjectures. But they make plain that Cave, Ussher, John Oliver, and the other editors of Prosper have erred rather gravely in assigning the date of the aforesaid little works, if we more diligently inquire into the time when such letters were written, and turn our mind's consideration to their contents.

As regards the time, Cave believed they were written in the year 426. But their most recent editor persuades himself that they were written at the end of the year 428 or the beginning of 429. So he noted in the margin on page 89. If then we weigh the contents of the letters, in them Prosper openly testifies that the remnants of the Pelagian heresy had increased in Gaul and in most other regions; that the greatest complaints had also been stirred up against Augustine's writings, and especially against the doctrine set forth in the book De Correptione et Gratia. But who would wish to affirm that Prosper had already at that time composed that poem De Ingratis together with the other little works praised by Photius, when he was writing these letters?

Did he not in them review the most weighty and most difficult questions raised by the Pelagians, which he desired to be opened up to him in clear light, and—as though wavering in the understanding of many matters—demand light from Augustine's new writings? That almost all Gaul was in turmoil when Prosper wrote these things, he declares in the earlier letter, and therefore he was eager to become more learned through the holy Father's wisdom and erudition, and, that he might profit many at his request, he entreats him, writing: 'Grant us in this cause, most blessed pope, best of fathers, as much as with the Lord's help you can, the diligence of your piety, that you may deign to open by the clearest expositions those things which in these questions are more obscure and more difficult to grasp.'

He then at once appends ten heads of these most weighty questions, and meanwhile, fearing to leap out into the open field of disputation against so many adversaries distinguished in merits and honors, and to fight against them, he restrains the ardor of his mind in silence, until he shall obtain an answer from Augustine. 'When all these have been unraveled (thus begins the last chapter of his letter), and moreover, when many things pertaining to this cause with a deeper insight, which you can better see, have been sifted, we believe and hope that not only will our slenderness be strengthened by the support of your disputations, but that even those very men, distinguished in merits and honors, whom the darkness of that opinion obscures, will receive the most purified light of grace.'

Prosper therefore could not at that time attack Augustine's detractors with his poems, nor sing of a full victory won over the Pelagians, if he himself, held suspended amid one doubt and another, was inquiring of Augustine whether the Christian faith was violated by that dissension, and how much danger it laid bare in the adversaries' opinion. Then, how through that prevenient and cooperating grace free will is not impeded, that he might explain. Then, whether God's foreknowledge remains so according to His purpose that those very things which are purposed are to be taken as foreknown—and other matters of that kind, which anyone may survey in the eighth chapter of the same letter.

Let them therefore please tell—those who refer Prosper's two epigrams against Augustine's detractor to the year 417 or 418, but the poem De Ingratis to the year 450—whether he, who is called a divine man in sacred letters, could then have summoned the Pelagians to war by his writing, when in the year 429 he was not yet sufficiently instructed concerning the pivot, foundations, and grounds of the whole controversy. Or did St. Prosper wish to engage in combat with the heretics unprepared and unarmed, and, as though trusting too much in himself, contend both for the decrees of the Church and for Augustine's doctrine, when—not yet instructed on the aforesaid questions—he was wavering in mind amid the various opinions and interpretations of the adversaries?

A feigned and fabricated tale, unworthy of a refined man! Especially since we understand that in two books, namely De Praedestinatione and De Dono Perseverantiae, written by Augustine a little before the day of his death, the questions of the Massilians and Pelagians put to him by Prosper and Hilary were unraveled. And as to when Augustine died, Possidius relates in the Life of Augustine, writing: that in the year 430, on the fifth of the Kalends of September, the holy doctor paid the debt of human life, at which time the Vandals had now been besieging Hippo for the third month. 4. When I myself diligently attended to all these things,