Observationes in Sermones S. Leonis Magni (Quesnelli postillae cum Balleriniorum responsis)

OBSERVATIONS ON THE SERMONS OF ST LEO THE GREAT

ON SERMON III.

In what sense St Leo understood the rock, upon which Christ built the Church, of solid faith.

1. To these words of Leo, sermon 3, ch. 2: The solidity of that

faith which was praised in the prince of the apostles is perpetual, Quesnel subjoined this annotation. "He explains the words of Christ the Lord, which he goes on to transcribe; and he asserts that the solidity of the faith which was praised in Peter is that rock upon which [He promises that] He [will build] the Church

He promises that He will build, and against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, because it is perpetual; and, as he says in ch. 3, it received the firmness of a rock which should be shaken by no assaults, so that neither has heretical depravity ever been able to break through it, nor pagan unbelief to overcome it. He expounds the same words in the same sense in sermon 3 (now 4), ch. 2 and 3, and sermon 60 (now 62), or On the Passion 11, ch. 2." Thus far he. But lest this interpretation, which fits the name of rock to the faith praised in Peter, be believed to favour those who, expounding the testimony of Christ, Upon this Rock I will build My Church, not of Peter but of faith, contend that it has nothing at all to do with establishing the prerogatives of Peter and of his successors, Leo's mind must be explained more exactly.

2. When the holy pontiff explained the rock, upon which Christ promised that He would build the Church, of faith, or of the solidity of that faith which the same Christ praised in Peter, we shall show most certainly that Leo understood not faith in general, nor the private faith of Peter, but that faith which Peter preached, and the deposit of which he left in the Roman see and handed on to his successors with an equal privilege of solidity; and from this it will be plain how inaccurately Quesnel, in the note appended to sermon 65, ch. 2, wrote in general terms: The rock upon which the Church is built, and against which hell does not prevail, is solid faith.

3. That in Leo's mind it is the faith preached by Peter that is to be understood, the same pontiff openly declares in the sermon 62 already cited, ch. 5. For he affirms that Peter, God revealing it, went before all the apostles in the profession of faith, so that, being prepared for the government of the whole Church, he might first learn what he was to teach, and for the solidity of the faith WHICH HE WAS TO PREACH might hear: You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. See, he assigns the solidity and the name of the rock, upon which the Church was to be built and against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, to that faith which Peter was to preach, and by preaching which he was to build the Church. But lest the name of rock be on this account taken away from Peter, the Author testifies in sermon 4, ch. 2, that on account of this solidity of the faith to be preached Peter himself also was made a rock. For he brings in Christ speaking thus: You also are a rock, because you are made solid by My power; and therefore he calls not so much Peter's faith as Peter himself the rock of the Catholic faith, in letter 119, to Maximus of Antioch, ch. 2.

4. But since the same Peter left the deposit of this faith chiefly in the Roman Church and see, and handed it on to his successors the Roman pontiffs, Leo plainly discloses that the same solidity of faith which was in Peter continues, and will continue to the end of the world, by a peculiar privilege in this Church and in the successors of Peter, in these words of sermon 3, ch. 2: For the solidity of that faith which was praised in the prince of the apostles is perpetual: and as that abides which Peter believed in Christ, so that abides which Christ instituted in Peter. Christ, that is, instituted that his faith, upon which the Church was to be built, should be so solid that the gates of hell should never prevail against it, which requires a perpetual solidity of faith. And he who thus affirmed this solidity of faith to be perpetual surely acknowledged that it did not cease in Peter, but passed over to his successors: whence in sermon 5, ch. 4, he says: For that solidity which he himself (Peter), made a rock, received from Christ the rock, pours itself over also into his heirs. It was poured over, namely, into those heirs in whom, as he indicates in many places, Peter lives and still rules and teaches the Church. Wherefore in sermon 3, ch. 3, attributing to blessed Peter the ever-persevering solidity of the rock, he says:

The disposition of the truth therefore abides, and blessed Peter, persevering in the strength of the rock which he received, has not abandoned the helm of the Church which he took up. We could bring forward concordant testimonies of other Fathers, which we have gathered in another treatise to be published some day, if it please God. But our purpose here was to open the judgement of Leo alone. And how much this judgement contributes to establishing the prerogatives of the Roman see, there is no one who does not see.

ON SERMON IV.

What Leo meant by these words of ch. 3: Peter's privilege therefore abides, wherever judgement is passed out of his equity. Quesnel's annotation is weighed.

1. On the testimony transcribed Quesnel made this annotation. "So excellent a sentence, although already illustrated by the observations of many, the plan of our undertaking does not allow us to pass over untouched. After St Leo has asserted at the beginning of the chapter that the building rises upon the firmness of the faith asserted through Peter, and that in view of this confession there was delivered to him the power signified by these words: To you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven, etc. (Matt. 16:19); he adds that the right of that power was not given to Peter alone, but passed over also to the apostles: yet that it was intimated to Peter singly for this reason, that in one man all the rulers of the Church might learn what had been entrusted to them, and that the pattern of Peter might be set before all. For as the prince of the apostles had uttered the confession of faith for all, and all had answered in him and through him; so also he received the power of the keys for all, and all received it in him and through him. Hence again Leo asserts, as a power common to all, so also a privilege common to all, the honour of the primacy excepted: and that this privilege of Peter abides wherever on earth judgement is passed out of Peter's equity through the bishops, the successors of the apostles; and accordingly that Peter's privilege does not abide wherever judgement is not passed out of his equity. By which sentence, says Charles the Bald, king of the Franks, in a letter drawn up by the pen of Hincmar of Rheims, it is established that Peter's privilege does not abide where judgement is not passed out of his equity. For when it is said wherever, as no place, so no ruler of the Church passing judgement out of Peter's equity is excepted, nor is one pronouncing against his equity commended. And since wherever, without any exception, Peter's privilege does not abide where judgement is not passed out of his equity, shall we obey a command, or accept a judgement, which has not been pronounced out of Peter's equity, and has thereby been left destitute of his privilege? (Letter of Charles the Bald to Pope Adrian, among Hincmar's letters in the latest edition). To the same words of Leo the same Hincmar alludes at the synod of Troyes of the year 878, as do also other Gallican bishops, who, confirming at the wish of Pope John VIII, present in the synod, the condemnation of Lambert, an enemy of the Roman Church, excommunicated, as they say, by the privilege of blessed Peter and of the apostolic see, seem to interpret that privilege and equity of the apostolic see of a judgement pronounced according to the sacred canons framed by the Spirit of God and consecrated by the reverence of the whole world; and again, according to the path of the Scriptures and the decrees of the sacred canons. See Peter de Marca pursuing these matters more fully in book IV of On the Concord of Priesthood and Empire, ch. 6 and 8." So Quesnel, where towards the end, gradually bending St Leo's words to his own mind rather than to that of the holy pontiff, he insinuates that only those judgements of the Roman pontiffs themselves enjoy the privilege and equity of Peter, and are valid, which are passed according to the rule of the canons. And he perhaps carried so lengthy an annotation to this point with the design that Leo himself, this testimony being so explained, might seem to favour what he was planning to establish

in the case of Hilary of Arles, dissertation 5, in which he contends that Hilary rightly resisted Leo, who was exercising judgement, as he himself invents, against the rules of the canons, for the reason that it was no secret, he says in the same place, part III, ch. 4, that the prerogative of the chief prelates over the lower bishops is inert and idle, when nothing is claimed by them except according to the rule of the canons. This is not the place to discuss Leo's judgement in the case of Hilary of Arles, which will be shown at length, in the Observations on that same dissertation of Quesnel, to have been taken up and held at Rome both out of natural equity and out of the rules of the canons. Here, only lest the holy pontiff's testimony be dragged off into a meaning foreign to him, one which would favour disobedience and assail the prerogatives of the Roman see, the genuine sense of Leo's proposition must be explained out of Leo himself.

2. When therefore the holy pontiff declares that Peter's privilege abides wherever judgement is passed out of his equity, he is speaking of judgements concerning persons and especially concerning crimes, as is clear from what he at once adds in the same sermon about excessive severity or excessive laxity, and also from sermon 5, ch. 5, where he says: The right of binding and loosing abiding with us, through the governance of most blessed Peter both the condemned is brought to penance and the reconciled to pardon. Now Peter's privilege is this, that whatever he shall have loosed or bound on earth is bound or loosed in heaven. And in those judgements which are passed by the princes of the Church concerning the guilty, Leo teaches that this privilege of Peter abides if the judgement is passed out of the equity of Peter himself, that is, if it is as right and just as Peter's judgements were right and just. Equity, namely, is taken in this place for real justice, so that he who is bound or condemned is truly a sinner, and he who is absolved is truly penitent. For those who are such, when they are bound or loosed on earth, are bound or loosed also in heaven. But if by some error or by someone's fraud a man be bound or condemned who is indeed judged guilty in the external forum but is in truth innocent, or a man be absolved who is believed penitent but in truth approaches feignedly and has not been converted before God: who would believe that to be bound or loosed in heaven which is in such a way loosed or bound on earth? Nothing more can be drawn out of the whole of Leo's context. He looks wholly to the judgements of the Church held on earth in relation to the divine judgement in heaven.

3. Nothing here [is given] to the canons or to the method of the canons; and those who think that Peter's equity must necessarily be derived from them ought to point out what canons they were that Peter followed in order to pass judgements out of equity. The canons did indeed have natural equity in view when they prescribed fixed rules for judgements. But the equity of Peter which is indicated here is to be referred to natural justice, or equity, which the substance of the canons regards, and not to the discipline or method of the canons, without which Peter bound or loosed most equitably.

4. So long as the judgements of the Roman pontiffs keep this natural justice and equity, it makes no difference whether they are passed according to the fixed method and discipline of the canons, or otherwise, in virtue of that supreme authority by which they can, sometimes out of equity itself, dispense or change, not in the substance of natural equity, but in the method and discipline of the canons: for they will always enjoy the privilege of Peter, and whatever they shall have loosed or bound by Peter's authority will be bound or loosed in heaven. Just as, on the other hand, if any judgements were passed by the same men even according to the rules and method of the canons which lacked real equity and justice, as can happen especially through an error of fact and through the deceit of witnesses or documents, the method and discipline of the canons, though observed, would avail nothing. For although they would have to be held valid and kept in the Church so long as the error is not detected and the judgement not revised (as theologians and canonists teach at length from the very institutions of the Fathers and the rules of the canons), yet they would not possess the privilege of Peter, in so far as before

God he would not be bound or loosed in heaven who on earth was bound or absolved through error and deceit. This is the genuine and open interpretation of Leo's principle, from which the use or abuse of the same principle will easily be discerned, so that there is no need to discuss further the testimony of Charles the Bald, which, having to be weighed from the whole context and from its particular circumstances, would demand a longer disputation, and one by no means necessary to the present matter.

ON SERMON XVII.

Leo's judgement on usury, forbidden not only with the poor but also with the rich.

We have kept for this place Quesnel's longer annotation on usury, against a novel error, appended to sermon 17. "So evidently," he says, "is the novel doctrine of a free licence to lend at interest to the rich overthrown in this place (a doctrine into which it is to be lamented that some Catholics are carried away), that it is worth the trouble to consider Leo's teaching more attentively. It is clear, then, that he does not assail only that lending at interest which is practised with the poor, but that all usury whatsoever is reprobated by him. For first he adduces those places of Scripture which condemn all usury and have nothing peculiar about the poor. Secondly, he condemns the man who seizes upon the necessities of men in distress in order to multiply his wealth by immoderate increases: which hardly comes about from a small gain received from the poor, but rather from the abundant profits which are reaped when someone seizes upon the necessities of those in distress, that is, of men in trade, and receives back the money lent swollen with immoderate profits. Thirdly, he refutes the reasoning of those who contend that they are conferring a benefit when they give their money at usury to men in trade; for such a benefit he calls deceitful services, deceitful gain, unjust and shameless avarice, which says that it confers a benefit when it deceives, the desire of unjust profit, etc. Fourthly, he pronounces in general that interest on money is the funeral of the soul; that the iniquity of interest is to be altogether fled, and that he is a stranger to the holy mountain of God who seeks deceitful gain from the usury of his money. Fifthly, he says that the lender at interest is either wretched in losing what he gave, or more wretched in receiving what he did not give. Where he shows that the iniquity of usury is properly reckoned to lie in this, that a man receives what he did not give, against the general sentence of God, which, as St Ambrose writes in the book on Tobias, excludes every increase of the principal. For usury, as Jerome defines it, is to receive more than one gives. Sixthly and lastly, how weak are the petty reasonings which lenders at interest hold out as a cover for their avarice, gather from these words: Whatever outcome may follow, the account of the lender at interest is always bad, for whom it is sin both to have lessened his money and to have increased it. Whence, in Leo's mind, whether this lending at interest seems to turn out to the advantage of him who receives the loan or to his loss, whether with risk and loss to the giver or with profit, the account of the lender at interest is always bad. See also his letter 3, otherwise 1 (now letter 4), ch. 3 and 4, where, with no mention made of the poor, he condemns by a general sentence all who employ money usuriously and wish to grow rich by interest; and he grieves that this falls upon those who desire to be called Christians." So Quesnel. But more that has been argued on this subject against the same error will be found in several works very recently published, and especially in the most celebrated work of the reigning supreme pontiff Benedict XIV, On the Diocesan Synod, book VII, ch. 47, who moreover condemned the same error by apostolic authority in the Encyclical issued on the 1st day of November of the year 1745 and inserted in vol. I of the Bullarium of the same pontiff.

ON SERMON XX.

Quesnel's censure against Alexander of Hales and St Thomas struck out.

1. Quesnel, on these words of Leo, sermon 20, ch. 1: Rightly did the apostolic ordinances arrange that the usefulness of the ancient fasts should remain, and although the custom of the Church

had learned to exercise itself with more prolonged chastisements, it should nevertheless embrace the sanctification of continence that comes from the law, etc., appended this annotation: "Let the theologians of a later age, who on the ground of the perfection of the law of grace prefer the shorter chastisements of present-day fasts to the more prolonged, see by what reasoning they can reconcile their teaching with the lessons of the holy Fathers. So Alexander of Hales argues, part IV, question 28, on fasting, member 7, art. 2: The hour of refection more fitting in time of fasting, he says, is the ninth hour, rather than [waiting] until evening .... The Church ought to hold the mean, so that in time of fasting we should take refection at a middle time. St Thomas treads in his master's footsteps, 2-2, question 147, art. 7, ad 1: To the first, therefore, he says, it must be said that the state of the Old Testament is compared to night, but the state of the New Testament to day; according to that saying in Rom. 13: The night has gone before, and the day has drawn near. And therefore in the Old Testament they fasted until night, but not in the New Testament. Our Leo reasons otherwise in the present sermon: The commandments, he says, and the moral precepts continue just as they were issued, because they convey nothing other than what they say, and in Christian devotion they grow by increase, they do not fail by ceasing. And below: Although many things have been added from the newness of grace, yet nothing has been diminished from the antiquity of righteousness. Accordingly he shows that to practise the more prolonged chastisements is the custom of the Church, by this excellent reason: For it was unbecoming that those to whom it had been given to be able to do what is greater should not celebrate what is less. In the same sense he writes in sermon 14 on the Passion, ch. 5: In the moral precepts, he says, no decrees of the former Testament have been rejected, but many have been enlarged by the teaching of the Gospel: so that the things which give salvation should be more perfect and more luminous than those which promise a Saviour. See sermon 6 on the Fast of the tenth month, ch. 1. But that we may compare with two contemporary chiefs of scholastic theology two Fathers of the older theology who were of the same age as each other, let us hear Salvian chiming in with Leo, book II to the Catholic Church, where he has this before the middle: But perhaps someone asks, he says, why it is that God now demands more from Christians through the Gospel than formerly from the Jews through the law. The reason of this matter is plain. For we now pay greater things to our Lord for this reason, that we owe greater things; the Jews indeed had a certain shadow of things, we the truth, etc.; and some lines before: There was then more indulgence and more licence; then the eating of flesh was proclaimed, now abstinence; then in a whole life the days of fasts were very few, now the whole of life is as it were one fast, etc.

2. Now how not only inopportune but also extravagant is this censure, which Quesnel, with no necessity of explaining or vindicating Leo, has set out at such length against the most eminent theologians, and especially against the very prince of theologians, St Thomas, we show in a few words. They are blamed as though, on the ground of the perfection of the law of grace, they had preferred the shorter chastisements of present-day fasts to the more prolonged. From the context itself it is indeed plain that, having regard to the discipline of their own time, by which the fast was broken at the ninth hour rather than in the evening, they sought some fitting reason for this hour which should agree with the law of grace in a mystical sense: for so other ancient Fathers too have brought forward mystical reasons for the institution of rites. But that they compared the shorter chastisements of fasting with the more prolonged, and set the former before the latter as more perfect on the ground of the perfection of the new law, you will nowhere find. For who of sound mind would think that? And if they preferred the ninth hour to the evening one, they are not on that account to be said to have set a shorter chastisement before a longer: for about the same chastisement could be had, if a man, abstaining for the space of twenty-four hours, takes a single meal at the ninth hour or in the evening: for the abstinence which is shorter for him who breaks his fast at the ninth hour is in a manner made up by the longer abstinence that follows; and besides, since those theologians speak chiefly of the fast of Lent, which at the ninth hour

was then broken, they were able to consider the same abstinence and chastisement through twenty-four continuous hours in him who fasts from the ninth hour of one day, after the meal, to the ninth hour of the next day, and in him who fasts from evening to evening: so that, the abstinence of twenty-four hours being the same, they made very little of the difference between a meal at the ninth hour and one in the evening.

ON SERMON XXI.

On the formula used by Leo in ch. 3: Thanks be to God the Father through His Son in the Holy Spirit.

"This formula of prayer is in the first place Catholic, nay rather it is the sum and fullness of the Christian religion, whose proper mark it is to worship God through Christ, as Tertullian witnesses in the Apology, ch. 21, and in Optatus, book III: Do you call him a pagan who has besought God the Father through His Son before the altar? And, what is worth all witnesses together, the Church employs it partly in her offices, partly in the public prayer of the sacrifice. For she concludes all her collects thus, Through Christ, etc., that is, the mediator of God and men. And that at the altar the prayer should always be directed to the Father was once enacted by the council of Carthage which is called the third, can. 23. Yet formerly, while the heresy of the Arians was raging, this formula of speech employed by Leo was heard with ears not altogether favourable: because the Arians used to hide under these words the impious meaning of their heresy, they who were accustomed to sing this doxology at the end of their hymns in this manner: Glory to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit; of which fact Philostorgius is witness in book III of his History. And for that reason Eusebius Pamphili, as Socrates relates in book II of his History, ch. 21, came with some under suspicion of the Arian doctrine, because he rather often repeats in his writings these words, Through Christ. Which are familiar also to ecclesiastical writers everywhere, and above all to the apostle Paul: who nevertheless, says Socrates, has never been thought a teacher of perverse doctrine." All this Quesnel.

ON SERMON XXIII.

On another expression of Leo, by which in ch. 1 he says that the divine and the human nature were so united in Christ that the one nature was mingled with the other.

"Similarly (says Quesnel in his annotation) in sermon 4 on the Epiphany God the Son of God is said to be mingled with the nature of flesh. The scholastic theologians have shunned such modes of speaking more scrupulously than those parents of the older theology, of whom the chief, Augustine, in letter 3, to Volusianus, puts forward this definition of the Lord's incarnation, as full as it is brief: A mixture of God and man. Provided, however, as he at once adds, that the hearer withdraw from the habit of bodies, by which two liquids are wont to be so mingled that neither keeps its own integrity. Whence also a little later he fears that the name of mixing or mixture may be unworthily admitted for the union of God and man, nay of soul and body. Yet they spoke with less risk while the Eutychians were not yet disputing, who, not withdrawing from the habit of bodies, as Augustine had warned, dreamed that the natures after the union had grown together into one. After the rise of that heresy Leo spoke more cautiously and with more weighing of his words, lest, as he warned Theodoret, in acting against the Nestorians or the Eutychians he should seem to have turned his back to one of them, but that he might with an even balance shun and condemn both enemies of Christ (Letter 93, otherwise 63). Further, when the one nature was mingled with the other, it is to be noted not only, as our author everywhere declares, that neither was confounded by the mingling, but also that this was done in such a way that when the Word of God, as Augustine says, was mingled with a soul having a body, He took up at once both soul and body (St Augustine, letter 3). But how the Word was mingled with the soul, who shall explain, when Augustine does not dare to explain it? This one thing he says, that the Wisdom of God, which is His Word, everywhere present and hidden, nowhere shut in, nowhere rent asunder, nowhere swollen, but without bulk everywhere

whole, in a certain manner far other than that in which it is present to the other creatures, took up man, and made itself and him one Jesus Christ, etc. For it, as he says in another place of the same Letter, fitted to itself a rational soul and, through the same, a human body also, and altogether the whole man, to be changed for the better, itself in no way changed for the worse, graciously taking from him the name of humanity, bountifully bestowing on him that of Divinity. In fine, this union is nothing other than the inmost penetration of the soul and, through it, of the whole nature, into which God Himself, whole, pours Himself whole, in that manner which cannot belong to a creature, since no creature truly penetrates another. But God, says Augustine, Who is able to contain, not able to be contained, penetrating, not penetrable, filling, not able to be filled, Who is everywhere at once whole, and everywhere diffused, through the infusion of His power was mercifully mingled with human nature; human nature was not mingled with the divine nature" (Augustine, in the confession of Leporius). Thus far he. But we have gathered more on this subject in dissertation 2, ch. 3, on the Works of St Zeno, p. 91, which whoever wishes can consult.

ON SERMON XXVII.

On the emendation of the word AREAE.

We insert here a special little dissertation of Giovanni Ciampini on this subject, addressed to Erasmo Gattola, which Quesnel added to his second edition.

TO THE MOST REVEREND FATHER ERASMO GATTOLA OF GAETA.

Giovanni Ciampini, Roman, master of the briefs of grace and referendary in both signatures.

Your love for the liberal arts and for those devoted to them has long been known, and your will to deserve well of them, which you have always shown and do not cease to show, by inviting some to studies, drawing others on, instructing others with most kindly and learned replies, and finally by sparing no labours or expenses by which you may, to the best of your power, be of service to the republic of letters. I too knew what was commonly reported of you in this regard, not only by the members of your most noble order but by others also. Yet I received a surer and most ample testimony of this, with great delight of mind, when not so long ago, in the month of May, I betook myself to visit the most celebrated arch-monastery in which you live. I beheld, assuredly with wonder, the holiness of the place, the beauty of God's house in the church, and, so to speak, the illustrious colony of all the virtues, which has given so many distinguished bishops to cities, so many excellent cardinals to the Vatican, so many most holy pontiffs to the Church, so many myriads of saints to heaven. I marvelled at the structure and magnificence of the monastery, plainly worthy both of the kings its founders and of the monks its inhabitants. I saw most gladly the very rich gifts of emperors, kings and princes, in which one could recognize both their Christian piety and the glory of your father Benedict. Most pleasant to me likewise, moreover, was the singular kindness of all the monks, with which they received me on my coming and, having most liberally rendered every service of religious hospitality, sent me away on my going. But, to confess it frankly, and what bears most upon the present matter, I took exceptional pleasure in looking upon the cases of so many most ancient codices in the library over whose keeping you yourself preside; and greater, beyond doubt, when I heard you reading with the utmost ease and most readily those very codices, written in so many and such different characters. Assuredly it is from this singular learning, I think, that it has come about that, so often questioned by me on doubtful matters, you have answered with that ease which we can expect only from a man occupied in these studies day and night. Nor indeed are you so attached to codices written by hand as to neglect those published in type. Nay rather, on procuring these too, as far as religious discipline allows, you have spent no small sum of money, and, carefully bought at Rome, you have transferred them to your noble museum; in these your rest,

in these your delights, after the manner of the wise, you place. Hence it has come about that I have believed no memorial of a grateful mind more acceptable to you could be offered you by me than some small literary work; and this one especially, which, having in a manner proceeded from you, seems by a certain right due to be returned to you.

When I had already committed to the press some lucubrations of mine under the title On the sacred Buildings constructed by Constantine the Great, and on that occasion had described the Vatican basilica, most celebrated throughout the whole world, this among many things came up as worthy of note, that the faithful of old were accustomed to go up to it by the steps reverently on bended knees. And when I happened to be conversing on this matter with the Reverend Father Giuseppe Maria Tommasi, priest of the congregation of clerks regular, our common friend and in our age an outstanding investigator of the ancient sacred rites, he told me that in sermon 7 of St Leo the Great on the Nativity of the Lord he had noticed the word ARAE, which he held to have been put there by mistake. Wherefore he left the solution of that doubt to my care and my investigation. I resolved most willingly to comply with my friend's urgings; accordingly in the first place I turned to searching through the printed books. If I recite all these to you, I do not think I shall be at all burdensome, since you love letters. The most ancient printing of the sermons of St Leo, then, is that made at Cologne in the year 1551, in folio, which came out in the same city and format in the year 1569; next the sermons of the same St Leo were published at Venice in the year 1553, which appeared again in the same format, in the same city, in the year 1573. Then in the year 1566 the same sermons were published at Louvain in quarto; and afterwards reprinted at Antwerp in the year 1583, likewise in quarto. But in the year 1633 all the Works of St Leo were published from the presses of Lyons, which, together with St Maximus and five other Fathers, were likewise reprinted in the same place in the year 1652. Lastly at Paris in the year 1675 they issued from the press, illustrated with appendices, dissertations and observations by the most learned man Pasquier Quesnel, priest of the congregation of the Oratory. All these editions, which have come into my hands, I read with careful attention, and I found that all contain the word ARAE. Wherefore I at once set my mind to searching out the manuscript codices; accordingly I went to the Vatican library, both because it abounds in manuscript codices and above all on account of the friendship which at that time existed between me and Emmanuel Schelstrate of good memory, first keeper of the same library, and as I was hoping that I should find something in it; but hope deceived me, since I found nothing. Not dismayed in mind by this, nay made bolder, I turned to visiting other libraries, both in the City and outside it, and to having them searched through with the help of friends. I went to the illustrious Barberini and Ottoboni libraries, and also the Angelica, and although I had found in them manuscript codices in which were the sermons of St Leo, nevertheless they were by no means venerable for their antiquity, and in them I observed nothing but the word ARAE. Afterwards I sent a letter to Milan, to the most reverend Father Eustachio a Sancto Ubaldo, of the order of the discalced of St Augustine and consultor of the most holy Inquisition in those parts, a man who has deserved excellently of the republic of letters, that he might inquire in the Ambrosian library whether there was any manuscript codex which contained the sermons of St Leo, and might take note of the aforesaid word ARAE in them. My friend replied that he had diligently searched the codices and had read in them the word ARAE. Presently I sent a letter to you also, and received the answer that in the codex marked with the number 126 you had found the aforesaid sermon, and that in it the word ARCAE was written out; wherefore you thought it the error of a copyist, who had written ARCAE in place of AREAE, changing the letter E into C; and that that codex contains ninety-one sermons of St Leo, of which codex the beginning is: Here begin the sermons of St Leo the pope. First, on the fast of the tenth month. If faithfully, dearly beloved, and wisely we understand the beginning of our creation

etc., and ends: If anyone therefore, having spurned the darkness of unbelief, is willing to comply with his precepts, and commands, and endeavours, he will enter secure the gates of heaven and of paradise, Amen; that this codex was written in Lombardic letters already six hundred years and more ago, since it was written by order of Desiderius, abbot of Monte Cassino, who afterwards became Roman pontiff under the name Victor III, as is read in chapter 63 of book III of the Chronicle of Cassino, and as the characters of this codex show, which are like those of the other codices written at the command of the same abbot Desiderius. Having communicated the aforesaid information to me, you wished to attest abundantly your kindness towards me, since you sent the beginnings and endings of sixteen other sermons found under the name of the same Saint Leo in other manuscript codices. But I know that nine of those indicated by you have already been printed under the name of another saint; of the rest, however, I do not know the authors. Of these I found two in Quesnel's printing, but they are by no means complete, since they are parts of sermons; namely one, which begins Honorabilem, etc., is part of sermon 1 on the anniversary day of his elevation; the other is sermon 48, on Lent. Of those sent, therefore, five remain, which, a comparison having been made, I found by no means to agree with the clear and open style of Saint Leo. I thought also in this matter to make use of the judgement of friends, who came over to this same opinion of mine.

I judged that one should by no means rest content with these investigations, but thought it right to go again to the Vatican library and to apply fresh diligence; I therefore asked the learned man Laurentius Zaccagna, second keeper of the same library, to give me the opportunity of searching through the indexes: he most kindly granted that request of mine. Nor was the new search useless. And so we found one codex marked with the number 1276, written two hundred years ago, on page 39 of which, on the verso, the word ARCE is read without the diphthong; but in another codex marked with the number 1267, page 78, second column, on the verso, written about six centuries ago, I read in plain letters the word sought, AREAE, which resolves the question of the doubt. Of this diligence applied by me I judged that I should make you certain, so that you may know that a slip [σφάλμα] has crept into this word, and may observe how it is to be read. For one small letter, omitted by the carelessness of a copyist, changes the whole sense, as will appear most clearly from what is to be said below.

An altar [ara], then, is that place in which sacred things are offered to God; but a landing [area] is that level space which is interposed at the top of stairs, sometimes also in the middle and in other parts, when the stairs have many steps, for this purpose, that those ascending by them, on account of the difficulty and labour of the ascent, may be able to pause there a little. This word ARAE is read in sermon 7 of Saint Leo the pope on the Nativity of the Lord, chapter 4. The portion of the sermon runs thus: From such practices there is also begotten that impiety, that the sun, rising at the beginning of the daylight, is adored by certain more foolish persons from more elevated places: which some Christians also think they do so religiously that, before they arrive at the basilica of the blessed apostle Peter, which is dedicated to the one living and true God, having mounted the steps by which one ascends to the platform of the upper ARA, they turn themselves round with body reversed towards the rising sun, and with bent necks bow themselves in honour of the shining orb. That this is done partly by the fault of ignorance, partly by the spirit of paganism, we greatly pine and grieve. For even if some perhaps venerate the Creator of the beautiful light rather than the light itself, which is a creature, one must nevertheless abstain from the very appearance of a service of this kind; and when he who has abandoned the worship of the gods finds it among our own, will he not keep with him this part of his old opinion, as though approvable, which he has seen to be common to Christians and the impious? Let therefore the damnable perversity be cast away from the custom of the faithful, and let not the honour owed to the one God be mingled with the rites of those who serve creatures.

Here I seem to behold you rightly astonished that so plain an error was by no means observed by the learned men who have several times edited the Works of Saint Leo. Do not therefore disdain to interpose a brief delay in your studies, and to read with a friendly mind those things which, after the investigations related above had been made, I have written out for the sake of learning.

In the first place, then, I turn to the staircase of the Vatican basilica, which I have found to have been very large, whose thirty-five marble steps afforded ascent to the upper landing of the basilica, and which were distributed into five flights, so that each flight consisted of seven steps: for architects observe an odd number in the distribution of steps: for nature always, when we ascend, inclines us to move the left foot first, and on the same foot we generally bring our step to a halt: whence, if the steps are even, the right foot halts on the last step, while the left remains suspended, as though it wished itself to finish the ascent. Wherefore the one ascending suffers a certain annoyance, because, although nature wishes to find rest with the left foot, it by no means enjoys it.

A drawing of this staircase, as it was of old, I set forth in plate 12 of my work on the Sacred Buildings constructed by Constantine the Great, where the five flights of steps with small landings interspersed are distinctly seen: wherefore the several flights consisted of seven steps. Now the purpose of the landings which are interposed in staircases is that the one ascending, wearied in ascending, may for a little while find rest by walking about or by standing still. But at the top of a staircase there is another, greater than all the other landings, since there the one ascending ought to find greater rest before he enters the building. In these stairs of Saint Peter's there was a very large landing, which Saint Leo calls the platform of the upper landing, to distinguish it from the other lower ones.

By the steps of this staircase the faithful of old, by a vow of prayer or for its sake, without distinction made their ascent, namely on bended knees, as is gathered from the Lives of Gregory IV and Adrian I in the Librarian.

Having shown, then, what the word area is, and what it signifies in Saint Leo's meaning, it is worth the while that I should subject to examination the same pontiff's rebuke to the faithful.

Some of the faithful of old, before they entered the Vatican basilica, after the ascent of the stairs, namely on the very great landing of the stairs, would halt on the day of the Lord's Nativity and adore the rising sun, the reasoning being drawn from the Manichaeans, who observed a profane rite of this kind. Wherefore the faithful themselves, ignorant of their own rites, confounded the Christ being born with the rising sun, adoring the creature in place of the Creator. I will set these things forth more closely. Almost all the nations, and especially the Eastern ones, believed the sun to be the chief of the gods. Gaspar Barthius, a man of admirable reading and learning, teaches this in his Commentaries of Adversaria, book XLI, chapter 27. The same is shown by a man of manifold learning and varied reading, Gaspar Joannis Vossii, in his treatise on idolatry in very many places; the same by Kircher in his Oedipus Aegyptiacus. Since therefore the heresy of the Manichaeans had its origin in Mesopotamia, an Eastern region, as Saint Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia or Salamis in Cyprus, writes in Against Heresies, heresy 46, or 66, it is no wonder that the Manichaeans themselves adored the sun, which that great light of the Church, Saint Augustine, intimates in the book On Heresies, heresy 46, writing thus of the same Manichaeans: They make their prayers towards the sun by day, wherever it goes round; towards the moon by night, if it appears; towards the northern quarter, by which the sun, when it has set, returns to the east. Wherefore towards that region of the sky where they saw the sun to be visible at that hour, there they turned themselves to adore it. At earliest morning, then, the rising sun looks upon the face of the Vatican basilica, and through many

hours. Therefore if the Manichaeans, while they stood on the Vatican stairs, wished to adore the sun, in an act of this kind they turned their back on the Vatican basilica itself; and although a profane rite of this kind was observed by the Manichaeans every day and at every hour, nevertheless the very day of 25 December, of the Lord's Nativity, was held in honour among the Manichaeans on account of the rising of the sun, as is most plainly gathered from the said Saint Leo in sermon 2 on the Nativity of the Lord, chapter 6, where he speaks thus: Having therefore the confidence of so great a hope, dearly beloved, remain steadfast in the faith in which you have been founded, lest that same tempter, whose dominion Christ has already shut out from you, should seduce you again by some snares, and corrupt these very joys of the present day by the art of his deceit, mocking simpler souls by means of the pestilent persuasion of certain persons, to whom this day of our solemnity seems worthy of honour not so much on account of the Nativity of Christ as on account of the rising, as they say, of the new sun. Their hearts are wrapped in vast darkness, and are strangers to every increase of the true light; for they are still drawn by the most foolish errors of heathendom, and because they cannot raise the gaze of the mind above that which they behold with bodily sight, they venerate with divine honour the luminaries that minister to the world. Far be from Christian souls the impious superstition and the monstrous lie. Beyond all measure do temporal things differ from the eternal, bodily things from the incorporeal, things subject from the One Who rules: for even if they have a beauty to be wondered at, yet they have no Godhead to be adored. That power therefore, that wisdom, that majesty is to be worshipped, which created the universe of the world out of nothing, and by almighty reason brought forth the earthly and the heavenly substance into what forms and measures it willed. Let the sun, the moon and the stars be serviceable to those who use them, let them be fair to those who behold them; but in such a way that thanks for them be rendered to their author, and that God, Who made, be adored, not the creature, which serves. Praise God therefore, dearly beloved, in all His works and judgements. Let there be in you an undoubting belief in the virginal integrity and childbearing. Honour with holy and sincere service the sacred and divine mystery of the restoration of mankind.

For this practice of perverse adoration the same Saint Leo again rebukes the faithful in the above-cited sermon 7, on the same Nativity, chapter 4, which I think it will not be unfitting to repeat here. Thus then does this saint speak: From such practices there is also begotten that impiety, that the sun, rising at the beginning of the daylight, is adored by certain more foolish persons from more elevated places: which some Christians also think they do so religiously that, before they arrive at the basilica of the blessed apostle Peter, which is dedicated to the one living and true God, having mounted the steps by which one ascends to the platform of the upper LANDING, they turn themselves round with body reversed towards the rising sun, and with bent necks bow themselves in honour of the shining orb. That this is done partly by the fault of ignorance, partly by the spirit of paganism, we greatly pine and grieve. For even if some perhaps venerate the Creator of the beautiful light rather than the light itself, which is a creature, one must nevertheless abstain from the very appearance of a service of this kind; and when he who has abandoned the worship of the gods finds it among our own, will he not keep with him this part of his old opinion as though approvable, which he has seen to be common to Christians and the impious?

This truth, which is drawn out from the sermons adduced, will shine forth more if the times of the same Saint Leo are weighed, as regards the concourse of the people to the Vatican basilica. For the ancient Roman pontiffs, down to the times of Gregory VII, that is, down to about the end of the eleventh century, were accustomed to celebrate the divine offices which were celebrated on the feast of the Lord's Nativity in three distinct places and at distinct hours: and this is most plainly drawn out from the ancient Mass books of the Roman Church, namely the Antiphonary of Saint Gregory the pope lately brought to light by the said Joseph Maria Tommasi, where, on page 15, it is read thus in the ancient books: The seventh day before the kalends of January. The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. In the middle of the night of the Lord's Nativity. At Saint Mary's, the antiphon at

the introit: The Lord said to me, etc.; and on page 16: Likewise at early morning. At Saint Anastasia's. Antiphon at the introit: A light shall shine today upon us, etc.; and on page 17: On the day of the Lord's Nativity, at Mass. Station at Saint Peter's. Antiphon at the introit: A child is born to us, etc. And in the Comes emended by Albinus at the command of the emperor Charles (namely the Great), page 1, after the Antiphonary, it is read thus: Here begin the titles of the lessons of the following book. I. On the Vigil of the Lord. II. At Saint Mary's. III. At Saint Mary's. IV. At Saint Peter's. And in the Capitularies of the Gospels for the cycle of the year, page 141: On the Nativity of the Lord. At Saint Mary Major, etc. Likewise at Saint Anastasia's, etc. Likewise at Saint Peter's, etc. What has been related thus far is more plainly understood from Peter Mallius, who flourished in the twelfth century, in this place: At the first Mass of the same night, at the Crib. In the morning, at Saint Anastasia's. But at the Mass of the day, of old, namely down to the time of Gregory VII, the station was at Saint Peter's, whence the canons still [have] for the presbyterium of the night 8 solidi. But now the Mass of the day is celebrated at Saint Mary Major, because the way is short, the days are small. Mallius has been printed, but mutilated; these words adduced are at the beginning of the manuscript. Wherefore I conclude that in the age of Saint Leo the station on the day of the Lord's Nativity was in the Vatican basilica, and that thus the concourse of the people was in that same place, and that there Saint Leo delivered the homilies related above. That most wise pontiff did not intend to forbid prayer with the face turned to the east; he knew very well the sayings of the ancient Fathers; but he wished to abolish the perverse rite of the Manichaeans. And let these things suffice to have been said on the word AREAE.

Yet I think that the opinion of Casali, On the Ancient Sacred Rites of the Christians, chapter 3, should by no means be passed over in silence, who supposes that this rite of turning oneself to the east was observed by the faithful in the atrium of Saint Peter's: and that for that reason, to avert all suspicion of idolatry, in the year 1300 there was made by Giotto the Florentine, an excellent painter, at the order of Cardinal Stefaneschi, nephew through a brother of Boniface VIII, supreme pontiff, the ship in mosaic work, in which Saint Peter with the other apostles, and Christ our Lord on the shore of the sea calling Peter to Himself, are seen; which picture, since it was in the inner part of the portico, was not placed there to take away this rite of turning oneself to the east, but on account of a particular devotion, or another cause: since a rite of this kind was observed outside the portico at the top of the stairs, before the faithful entered the portico itself.

Receive, then, what I have said thus far as a token of mutual love; and I foretell to you that, as you flourish in age and in studies, so also, ripe in the same age, you will gather the most abundant fruits of your studies. Farewell.

ON SERMON XLIII.

Some marginal notes of Quesnel examined. The doctrine of Saint Leo opposed to propositions 1 and 3 of Jansenius.

1. Quesnel noted two things on chapter 1 of this sermon. First, to these words of the holy pontiff: The hand of our Author has so built us up that he also who is being restored may work together with his Maker, he subjoined an annotation of this kind: "It is helpful to explain these words by the words of blessed Bernard, in the book On Grace and Free Will, chapter 14: To this end, assuredly, does grace go before, that free will may thenceforth cooperate with it. Yet in such a way is that which was begun by grace alone accomplished equally by both, that they work jointly, not separately; together, not by turns, through each stage of progress; not partly grace, partly free will; but each accomplishes the whole by an undivided work. The whole indeed this one, and the whole that one; but as the whole is in the former, so the whole is from the latter." This is well enough.

2. Further, on those words of the Author: Let not human disobedience therefore withdraw itself from the grace of God; nor fall away from that good without which it cannot be good: and if it experiences anything impossible or arduous for itself in the carrying out of the commandments,

let it not remain in itself, but have recourse to Him Who commands, Who gives the precept for this reason, that He may arouse desire and furnish help; on these words, I say, Quesnel set in the margin a note of this kind: The commandments of God impossible to man remaining in himself. Yet the words of Leo recited do not properly and generally present this opinion. For he does not pronounce generally about all commandments, or rather, as he says, the carrying out of the commandments. And those words, let it not remain in itself, were clearly said properly with this intention only, that men may be warned not to trust in themselves in matters which they experience as impossible or arduous, but to have recourse to God Who commands: and since to them is indicated the way of obtaining the divine help, by which the commandments even of very difficult, or, as they seem, impossible things may be fulfilled, the impossibility of the commandments properly so called is itself excluded.

3. On this occasion it is helpful to consider two other places of the same Quesnel on sermon 90, by which it will be more plainly recognized how far he, anxious to press the impossibility of the precepts, is from Leo's opinion. The holy pontiff wrote in that sermon 90, chapter 2: And lest we be led by despair even to idle sloth, the things which are impossible to man from his own weakness He (the Lord) promises to be possible from the divine power. Nothing sounder and truer. But Quesnel in the margin: The precepts impossible without grace; and in the synopsis of the second chapter: Nothing possible without the grace of Christ even to the regenerate. Do you see the wide difference between the words of Leo and of Quesnel? Quesnel affirms a general impossibility without the grace of God, and lays it upon the precepts themselves; and he so affirms it that (unless the proposition be about a subject which never occurs) he presumes that this impossibility is sometimes found even in the regenerate. Leo on the contrary neither in the words recited nor in the whole context hints at a general impossibility; nor does he attribute that which he asserts to the divine precepts, but to the weakness of man, in such a way that it can be overcome by the divine help. Now this impossibility of weakness, so to speak, signifies not an absolute and true impossibility, but a difficulty, which in common speech is wont to be called impossibility: whence the holy pontiff, in the text cited from sermon 43, used impossible or arduous as synonyms; and in sermon 94, chapter 2, saying, When that which I command seems to be difficult, he called difficult what elsewhere he had called impossible.

4. Elsewhere, moreover, he indicated the precepts of God to be possible in such a way that he attributed to them the arousing of man to ask for help, which, if it be asked, will be obtained; but if it be not asked and be wanting, the impossibility will be voluntary, which will wrongly be ascribed to the precepts, nor will it afford a fitting excuse; whence he wrote in sermon 49, chapter 4: For the precept is given for this reason, that the help of Him Who commands may be sought. Nor let anyone excuse himself on the pretext of weakness, since He Who has granted the willing gives also the power. Hence rightly Saint Thomas, question 24, On Truth, article 14, after he taught in the reply to 1: That which God has commanded is not impossible for man to keep, added this in the reply to 2: Rightly is the man reproved who does not fulfil the precepts; because it is from his negligence that he does not have the grace by which he is able to keep the commandments.

5. We observe moreover that Leo, in sermon 43, speaks of all the just, to whom those words apply: Nor let it fall away from that good without which it cannot be good. That in sermon 90 he also speaks of the regenerate and the just can be gathered from chapter 1. Further, that no commandments are impossible to man, especially to the just man, the Author plainly teaches in sermon 18, chapter 1, where he writes of the nature of man already redeemed and already reborn by holy baptism: It would be corrupted by carnal desire, unless it were fortified by spiritual help: because, as there is never wanting to it that whereby it may fall, so there is ALWAYS at hand that whereby it may stand, as the Apostle says: For God is faithful, Who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able, but will make an issue, that you may be able to bear it. On this Quesnel in a marginal note: What the soul, even regenerate, is without the help of God? He did not write what it would be, but what it is: as if

some soul already regenerate, and therefore just, according to Leo's opinion were sometimes without the help of God; whereas he nevertheless testifies: There is always at hand that whereby it may stand. To this man, therefore, Leo could not, in sermon 43, affirm the divine commandments to be impossible, since this impossibility is removed by that divine help which he taught to be always at hand for him. Hence the holy pontiff is plainly opposed to the first proposition of Jansenius, by which the divine commandments are held to be impossible even to just men, and the grace by which they may become possible to be wanting to them. When Leo teaches that there is always at hand for them that whereby they may stand, he assuredly recognized that some grace is always present to them, by which they might either do what they could or ask for what they could not, as, after Augustine (book On Nature and Grace, chapter 43), the synod of Trent (Session 6, chapter 11) taught: whence in the more difficult cases the holy pontiff, both in this sermon 43 and elsewhere, as we have noted, frequently suggested the remedy of prayer. See how finely he accords with Catholic doctrine, and how he disagrees with the Jansenist.

6. Quesnel therefore, leaving out that note which he affixed to chapter 1 of sermon 43, would have done better to substitute another more in keeping with Leo's opinion, at those words of the testimony recited: Let not human obedience therefore withdraw itself from the grace of God; namely this, Let not obedience be withdrawn from the grace of God: which proposition, since it presumes that it can be withdrawn and is in fact sometimes withdrawn, is opposed to the third Jansenist proposition, and also to the fifteenth of Quesnel condemned in the constitution Unigenitus, which openly insinuates that human obedience never withdraws itself from interior grace: When God accompanies His commandment and His eternal speaking with the anointing of His Spirit and the interior force of grace, it works in the heart the obedience which it asks.

ON SERMON XLIV.

On Christian righteousness, always to be increased.

1. On these words of Leo, chapter 1: Among the degrees of progress there is none who ought not always to be better, Quesnel made this annotation: "He has the same in sermon 11 on Lent, chapter 1: No one, he says, is so holy that he ought not to be holier; no one so devout that he ought not to be more devout. He sins therefore who does not always tend towards greater righteousness. For it is sin, says Augustine, when either there is not the charity which ought to be, or it is less than it ought to be (On the Perfection of Righteousness, chapter 6 and following). Indeed everyone is blameworthy who does not love God with his whole soul, Whom he is commanded so to love, and everyone who covets what he is forbidden to covet. Yet He does not impute it to those who faithfully say to Him: Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. Whoever thinks that this need not be prayed by him professes himself not to be a Christian. For as long as we live here, there is still something of carnal concupiscence to be bridled at least by continence, until righteousness be made perfect as a full health: and health is then full when charity is full; charity is then full, when we shall see Him as He is." Thus he.

2. Besides the precept of charity, which requires the increase of charity itself and of righteousness, as Saint Thomas taught on 3 Sentences, distinction 29, question 1, article 8, sub-question 2, Leo himself opens a more obvious and readier way, who both in the present sermon 6 on the Nativity of the Lord, and in sermon 11, which Quesnel cited, so joins this duty of increasing Christian righteousness with the temptations and concupiscences that lie in wait on every side for anyone, even a saint, as though the one depended on the other. For indeed it is certain that the precept of the love of God, while it demands that we beware of sins even of the lighter kind, also truly requires that we resist the concupiscences and temptations which goad to sinning. Now in this daily resistance, which everyone, even a saint, must apply, many acts of the virtues, and especially charity, will have to be exercised; and so there stands an occasion and a duty of always increasing Christian righteousness. But as never in this life

will temptations and concupiscences be wholly taken away, so there will never be a ceasing from resisting them, and consequently from growing in righteousness from day to day, until we arrive at that eternal life in which there will be no temptations, no concupiscences to be resisted; and therefore in this life, among the degrees of progress, as Leo says, there is none who ought not always to be better.

ON SERMON XLV.

In what sense Saint Leo wrote in chapter 2: Without love there is no believing. Quesnel's annotation examined.

1. To the said testimony of Saint Leo Quesnel subjoined this annotation: "A doctrine drawn from the principles of Augustine, nay from the principles of faith itself. For since no one can obey the precepts of God as he ought without charity, and among the precepts of God the precept of believing is not the last, it is manifest that it was shrewdly said by Leo that without love there is no believing. One place of Augustine will stand for all, that the like sense and doctrine of both may be understood. So then, in the book On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter 16: Grace therefore goes before faith also, he says; otherwise, if faith goes before it, without doubt the will goes before it too: since faith cannot be without the will. But if grace goes before faith, since it goes before the will, assuredly it goes before all obedience, it goes before charity also, by which alone God is truly and sweetly obeyed. And all these things grace works in him to whom it is given, and in whom it goes before all these things." Thus far Quesnel.

2. Now the whole force of this annotation of Quesnel lies in this, that Saint Leo affirmed, Without love there is no believing, for the reason that, as with the other precepts, so also the precept of faith no one can obey as he ought without charity: by which alone, as Augustine says, God is truly and sweetly obeyed; and on that account he held Leo's doctrine to be drawn from the principles of Augustine. But here care must be taken lest a way of speaking of this kind be taken in that sense which Quesnel's proposition 47, proscribed in the constitution Unigenitus, conveys, namely: The obedience of the law ought to flow from a source, and this source is charity. When the love of God is its interior principle, and the glory of God its end, then what appears outwardly is pure: otherwise it is nothing but hypocrisy, or false righteousness; which agrees with proposition 17 condemned by Saint Pius V among those of Baius: That is not true obedience of the law which is done without charity. And indeed in defence of Quesnel's proposition 47 we read the testimony of Augustine from the book On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter 16, pressed in the Quesnellian Hexapla, and wrongly explained, or rather twisted. For since the holy doctor said that one truly obeys by charity alone, they thence inferred that without charity one does not obey truly, but through a deceit, whereby all obedience of that kind would not be true obedience of the law, but would have to be referred to hypocrisy and false righteousness.

3. If Quesnel subjoined that annotation in this so perverse and proscribed sense and intention, he would have wished to signify that those words of Leo, without love there is no believing, are to be taken in this meaning, that the faith which is found without charity in sinners is not the true faith by which the precept of faith is truly obeyed: to which opinion, indeed, propositions 52 and 58 condemned in the said constitution are akin, by which Quesnel asserted that true faith and religion by no means stand without love and charity. This monster of doctrine, expressly as regards faith, the synod of Trent had long before condemned in advance, session 6, canon 28: If anyone shall say... that the faith which remains (in the sinner) is not true faith, though it be not living; or that he who has faith without charity is not a Christian, let him be anathema. Whence also there was proscribed by Alexander VIII proposition 12: When in great sinners love fails, faith also fails; and even if they seem to believe, it is not divine faith, but human.

4. But if Quesnel took the words of Leo in that note in another sense, namely so as to indicate that he is speaking

not of any faith whatever, but of living faith, and as is needful for the merit of eternal life, and that Augustine wrote in the same sense that one truly obeys by charity alone, namely as is required for true righteousness and for meriting the eternal reward, he would indeed have understood rightly, but would not have explained this opinion fitly enough, as it ought to have been explained and demonstrated in an annotation. Now it greatly concerns us to establish this evidently, so that it may become plain how far the words and opinion of Leo are from the condemned sense.

5. If this proposition be considered apart from the context: Without love there is no believing, someone might suspect that the holy pontiff took the name of love in a wide sense, namely not of charity only, but of any love whatever, so that even that love is included by which whoever believes loves at least the truth and faith itself in some measure. But just as from the context, from which the genuine sense of words is always to be gathered, it becomes plain that Saint Leo understands by the name of love that charity which brings forth eternal fruit, so by the name of faith he understands living faith, which together with charity contributes to seeing and meriting God. For indeed in the second chapter of that sermon, in which the cited words are inserted, he had already from the beginning proposed to himself to set forth by what kind of ways we must tend towards the promises of God, namely to eternal glory. He presently subjoins two ways from sacred Scripture, namely of mercy and of truth, and warns that these are not divided, since both virtues ought to be connected, that we may tend to that end. Presently he passes to faith and charity, and affirms that the bond of these virtues likewise is necessary for the same end; whence he adds: Then is there the true name, and the true fruit (namely the eternal) of both, when the connexion of the two remains indissoluble. And being about to explain that this connexion is altogether necessary for that end, he at once adds: For where they are not together, they are together wanting, because (let the reason be noted, which sets forth the end of beatitude) they are mutually to each other both help and light: until the reward of vision fulfil the desire of belief, and that be unchangeably seen and loved which now is both not loved without faith and not believed without love, that is to say, so that it may be believed profitably for obtaining the reward of vision. This connexion and this end are more plainly intimated by what is at once subjoined: Because therefore, as the Apostle says, in Christ Jesus neither circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith which works through love, let us apply ourselves at once and conjointly both to charity and to faith. For this is a certain most effectual flight of twin wings, by which purity of mind is lifted up to merit and to see God, lest it be pressed down by the burden of carnal cares. For he who says: Without faith it is impossible to please God, the same says: If I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not charity, I am nothing, namely before God, before Whom without charity nothing profits, as the Apostle says in the same place; for thus the holy pontiff expounded it in sermon 2 on the Fast of Pentecost, chapter 3: Since the Apostle says that no virtues profit him without charity. Hence again Leo in chapter 3 of sermon 45 inserted that principle: What does not proceed from the fount of faith does not attain to the eternal rewards, where he indicates that he is speaking of the faith by which we merit the eternal reward, which cannot be without charity. You see therefore how rightly all things are referred to the end of eternal beatitude.

6. Finally it will become evident that there can be no other interpretation of Leo's mind than this from sermon 4 on the collections, chapter 1, where he sufficiently intimates that in many there is faith without charity; but that faith of this kind, separated from charity, avails nothing for salvation or the eternal reward. For speaking of many Christians, From many, he says, from whom he (the devil) could not take away faith, he has taken away charity; and the field of their heart being occupied by the roots of avarice, he has despoiled of the fruit of works those whom he has not deprived of the fruit of the lips. What could be plainer? Hence also in sermon 10 on Lent, chapter 3, that right faith, by which the precept of faith is sufficiently obeyed, can stand without charity, but is not

fruitful for future glory, if it be without charity, he openly confesses. For although, he says, it is a great thing to have right faith and sound doctrine, and the circumcision of gluttony, the gentleness of meekness, the purity of chastity are worthy of much praise, yet all virtues are naked without charity, nor can that be called fruitful, in whatever excellence of conduct, which the travail of love has not brought forth. Hence will be understood those words of sermon 18, chapter 3, where, describing the various advances of Christians, he says: In faith is the bud, in hope the growth, in charity the ripeness; by which he acknowledges faith and hope to be virtues, but not fruitful for eternal life unless they obtain ripeness from charity. Thus the doctrine of the holy Pontiff is recognized as drawn from the principle of faith, which the synod of Trent established together with Scripture and tradition, and as foreign to the proscribed theses.

7. Nor does it cohere less with the principles of Augustine, who in many places expressly taught that faith is repeatedly found without charity, as in sermon 90, number 8: You can have faith without love; and only for him who believes without charity does he affirm this faith to be empty, or useless for the eternal reward, writing this in the Enchiridion, number 117: But he who does not love believes in vain, even if the things which he believes are true; and in book VIII On the Trinity, chapter 4: Unless He be loved through faith, the heart cannot be cleansed, so as to be apt and fit for seeing God. Now in this sense, when in the book On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter 16, he wrote of charity, by which alone God is truly and sweetly obeyed, he took the word truly of the perfect obedience of the law, by which a man becomes apt and fit for seeing God, as those prove more fully from other testimonies of Augustine who treat expressly of this doctrine of his. For us, however, let it suffice to have explained and established Leo's opinion.

ON THE SAME SERMON XLV.

On these words of chapter 4: Let those guilty of crimes rejoice that they have come to these (paschal) days, in which by holy and pious princes even the harshness of public punishments is remitted.

"He has the same (says Quesnel in the annotation subjoined to the testimony recited) above, in sermon 2 on Lent, chapter 5: The most pious emperors of the Roman world, he says, keep by a holy observance of old standing [the practice], who, in honour of the passion and resurrection of Christ, the severity of their constitutions being softened, order those guilty of many faults to be released. And in sermon 9, chapter 3: That the severity of punishments, which now is relaxed even in the public courts, etc. How far this remission and relaxation extended, whether the guilty, loosed from their bonds only, remained in custody, or were also dismissed from prison, I do not find clearly defined. In the petition of the monks who were under Eutyches, inserted in action 1 of the council of Chalcedon, this is found: There has come upon us, they say, both the day of the saving passion and the sacred night, and the feast of the Resurrection, on which indeed for very many sinners also sentences of condemnation are loosed by our holy Fathers; and moreover by the emperors criminal bonds are relaxed for the guilty: and every house and every forum is filled with just gladness. From these words some at least of the guilty seem to have been set at liberty at the paschal feast by the imperial laws. Yet there is no [law] in the Code that asserts this, though there are several that suspend all proceeding against the accused, some through the whole of Lent, others through the fifteen days of the paschal feast. Code, book III, title 12, On Holidays: On the days of Lent, which by the inauguration of the ceremonies anticipate the paschal season, let every hearing of criminal inquiries be stayed. The emperors Valentinian, Valens and Gratian, Augusti. On the fifteen paschal days let the compulsory collection of the provision-tax and the exaction of all public and private debts be deferred. Valentinian, Theodosius and Arcadius, Augusti. Another constitution of the same contains an exception, which confirms rather than weakens the opinion of our Leo: On these days, however, they say, let all have leave both to emancipate and to manumit. But

the place of Leo cited first, from sermon 2 of Lent, seems to assert more clearly that those guilty of many faults were released by the imperial constitutions during this solemnity of the paschal days. For that to be released is nothing other than to be dismissed is proved from sermon 47, the 8th on the Passion, chapter 3, where he writes that the peoples cried out that he should release Barabbas by an indulgence." Thus far Quesnel. But if he had noticed the title of the Justinianic Code On the episcopal hearing, book I, title 4, he would have found a law of Valentinian II, number 3, drawn up and issued in the year 385, in which this is found: Let the judges carry out what we have been accustomed to grant. When the first paschal day has come, let the prison hold no one shut in, let the bonds of all be loosed; and exceptions of certain accused persons and crimes are subjoined. And in the Theodosian Code, book IX, title 28, On indulgences of crimes, five laws of this kind occur, two of Valentinian the Elder and three of the Younger, of which the last is the one already cited, from which it is gathered that formerly this indulgence, introduced by a certain usage, or even prescribed by custom through letters of the emperors sent every year to all the cities, as is clear from two testimonies of Chrysostom, gave rise to some doubts about certain accused persons, whether they were to be released by the same indulgence; and those laws were given in order that these doubts might be resolved. In the last law, moreover, a general enactment was issued which comprises all the exceptions. See the Commentary of Jacobus Gothofredus, especially on law 3, where he recites the texts of Chrysostom indicated.

ON SERMON LXVI.

Quesnel's marginal note on the testimony of Leo in chapter 4 is examined.

That very taking up of our substance into the Godhead, by which the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, what man, save the unbeliever, has it left without a share in its mercy? To these words of Leo Quesnel affixed this marginal note: The unbeliever without a share in the grace of Christ. Now this indefinite proposition can be wrongly understood, so that it may seem to favour proposition 26 condemned in the constitution Unigenitus, in which it is held: No graces are given except through faith. But the holy pontiff used the name of mercy, and not the name of grace. And lest the very name of mercy should deceive anyone, in what sense he called the unbeliever without a share in mercy must be explained from the context. He understands unbelievers, then, to be without a share in that mercy of which he affirms the faithful to be partakers. Further, to the faithful belong those words which are immediately subjoined to the preceding testimony: And who has not a nature in common with Christ, if he has received Him Who assumes it, and has been regenerated by that Spirit by Whom He was begotten? where he indicates the grace of faith and of baptism, as we have explained in note 24 on this place. Saint Leo is speaking, that is, of that mercy by which the Word made flesh and dwelling among us has made us, united to Himself 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 unbelievers, who lack both faith and baptism, are rightly said to be without a share in this same mercy.

ON SERMON LXXVI.

On that place of chapter 6 in which it is said of Manes: He became known, to be condemned, at that time when the two hundred and sixtieth year after the resurrection of the Lord was completed, Probus the emperor and Paulinus being consuls, when already the eighth persecution was raging against the Christians; three annotations of Quesnel and some observations of our own are set forth.

1. Quesnel subjoined three annotations to this testimony, which we transcribe here. First, on those words, When the two hundred and sixtieth year after the resurrection of the Lord was completed, "Dionysius Petavius," he says, "suspects that an error lies hidden here, in his annotations

on Epiphanius, p. 267, and for CCLX, with one numeral transposed, he wants CCXL to be read. His reason is that the consulship of Probus and Paulinus falls in about the year of Christ CCLXXVII in the Dionysian era. From which number, he says, when XXXI years are subtracted, CCXLVI years remain from the ascension of the Lord; just as many, that is, as Epiphanius sets down according to the opinion of other chronographers. Our Leo, then, will have followed their opinion (if Petavius's correction stands), using the round number CCXL for CCXLVI; which is especially apt to happen in preaching, where no attention is paid to the strict niceties of chronology. Leo will come nearer still to that epoch if for CCLX he set down CCL, which indeed one Oxford manuscript codex, kept in the Laudian archives, has. And certainly, as when the types for printing are being set in order it is rather easy for one numeral to creep into the place of another while the workmen nod, and for LX to be printed for XL, so in writing it is rather easy for one numeral to be added on to some sum, as X to L.”

2. Secondly, on the words, Probus the emperor and Paulinus being consuls: “From this,” he says, “correct the consular Fasti of Cassiodorus, which place this consulship immediately after the consulship of Aurelian and Marcellinus. Correct also the Ecclesiastical Annals, which at the year of Christ 277 join this consulship with the seventh year of the emperor Aurelian. For since it is established from all the fasti that Probus and Paulinus held the consulship together, and our Leo calls Probus emperor, it must be that that consulship of Probus and Paulinus fell after the death of Aurelian, nay, even after the decease of Tacitus, whom Probus succeeded. The Chronology of Eusebius agrees, who assigns the origin of the Manichaeans to the 2nd year of the emperor Probus. Yet the way of reconciling the authors who write differently about the beginnings of the sect of the Manichaeans is easy. Some are to be understood of Manes himself, others of his masters Scythianus and Budda, of whom above. Some of the very origin of that monster; several of its various irruptions into the Church, partly the Eastern, partly the Western; and lastly others of the condemnation of his errors, of which our Leo makes mention.”

3. Thirdly, on the words, When already the eighth persecution against the Christians, etc.: “If he is speaking,” he says, “of the persecution of the emperor Aurelian, as he altogether seems to be, this was not the eighth but the ninth, as Augustine numbers it, On the City of God, book XVIII, ch. 3, and as is clear from the enumeration of the other persecutions. If the acts of the martyr Chariton, which are read in Surius at 24 September, are worthy of having credit given them in this matter, Tacitus, the predecessor of Probus, had already put an end to this persecution; so that it is as well to interpret kindly these words of Leo, which seem to signify even the beginning of a persecution: When it was already boiling up, etc., although three Oxford manuscript codices have, was raging itself out.” All this Quesnel.

4. We have discovered that all the chronological notices of this passage were taken from the complete Chronicle of Prosper. For among the three or rather four editions of this Chronicle, which Fr Hieronymus a Prato most accurately distinguishes and establishes in dissertation 3 on Sulpicius Severus, vol. II, no. 32 and following, one of the two earlier, or, if you prefer, the third, could have been of use to Leo for the present matter, in which the detection of the Manichaeans at Rome is treated. The first is that which Prosper published in the year 433; the second, that which ends in the year 443, and can be confirmed from the ancient Veronese Saibante codex, which presents the complete Chronicle of Prosper ending at this year, that is, this very second edition of Prosper. The third, that which extends as far as the year 445. And that Leo drew on some one of these editions in writing out the said chronological notices two sure indications show. For the consulship of Probus the emperor and Paulinus is read in the Chronicle of Prosper alone: for Prosper, who culled most things from the Chronicle of Eusebius rendered into Latin by Jerome, was the first of all who, from the passion or resurrection

of Christ onwards added the consulships, assigned the beginnings of the heresy of the Manichaeans to the consulship of Probus the emperor and Paulinus. The notice of the eighth persecution also is to be referred to the Chronicle of Prosper alone: for Eusebius did indeed indicate the persecutions in their places in his Chronicle, but did not express the number which we find in Prosper. Hence, moreover, the notice of the year too must be said to have been gathered by reckoning from the same Chronicle of Prosper.

5. But if the reckoning be believed to have been rightly made, the year 250 ought rather to have been written than 260. For if from the consulship of the Gemini, to which the passion and resurrection of Christ is attributed in those same editions (since it is to the last edition, which came out in the year 455, that that change of opinion is to be assigned by which Prosper ascribed to the consulship of the Gemini the manifestation or preaching of Christ, but the passion and resurrection to three years later): if, I say, you reckon rightly from that consulship of the Gemini to the consulship of Probus and Paulinus, to which the beginning of the heresy of the Manichaeans is attached, you will find in the printed texts, indeed, 247 consulships, which in a round number, as often happens, could more loosely have been taken for the year 250, but not 260. But it must be observed that in the common Chronicle of Prosper some consulships have been omitted by the carelessness of the copyists, while others have been 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 has excellently set forth in his Observations on the Chronicle of Prosper, § 49 and following. Further, from the same Canon of Victorius and from other marks of Prosper's Chronicle itself it is clear that the consulship of the Gemini, to which the passion and resurrection of Christ are assigned, was attached by Prosper himself to that year which answers to the twenty-eighth year of the common era. And if you begin to reckon from this year of the common era down to the consulship of Probus and Paulinus, which coincides with the year 277 of the common era, you will find that under these consuls (the terms being counted in) the two hundred and fiftieth year was running, which is less accurately called completed by Leo.

6. It is not indeed to be concealed that, if in the Chronicle of Prosper the two consulships that are certainly to be struck out are struck out, and four are added which are certainly to be added, as the aforesaid Vander Haagen has proved, the consulship of Probus and Paulinus falls in the year 249 from the consulship of the Gemini, just as happens also in Victorius. But since in the noting of consulships the codices of Prosper and of Victorius are evidently corrupt, it does not seem that much weight should be laid on these. But since Prosper, already some while before the consulship of Probus and Paulinus, and thereafter too, abandoning the old anticipation by one year, began to ascribe the consuls each to their own year, it is better to believe that he assigned the consulship of Probus and Paulinus also to its own year, so that one consulship, which had been placed before, is wrongly read placed after in the codices, and that therefore their consulship truly coincided with the year 250 after the resurrection of Christ. Since, therefore, St Leo took the other chronological notices from the Chronicle of Prosper, it is credible that he also noted the year 250 from the same by reckoning, and not 260. But only one Oxford codex, cited by Quesnel, exhibits that year. But since all the rest, both of the Collections and of the Lectionaries, codices both many and ancient, which we have diligently sought out and collated, and among these the most ancient Vat. 38[ ]5, have the year 260, and that not in Roman numeral signs, CCLX, which could easily have been changed and corrupted by copyists, but expressed in distinct words, two hundredth and sixtieth, which do not so easily admit of change, we have not dared to depart from the common reading. For it has been shown by experience how far those have fallen away from the first and original reading who, of their own judgement, though led by strong conjectures, have wished to correct certain numerical notices. Nor let the excess of a decade, which is manifest in the year 260, cause disquiet.

For that the ancient Fathers of the Church were not very accurate in reckoning years whether from the birth or from the passion of Christ, and that they even went astray by more than a decade, we have proved by several examples in dissertation 1 prefixed to the edition of St Zeno, ch. 2, § 1. So much as regards Quesnel's first annotation.

7. As regards the second, let it suffice to point out this, that Leo's words about the time at which Manes became known as one to be condemned indicate that time at which, first of all, Archelaus, bishop of Caschara in Mesopotamia, held a public disputation with Manes, and from then his errors so came to light that he then became known as one to be condemned.

8. As regards the third annotation, we have already indicated that the mention of the eighth persecution was taken by the holy pontiff from the Chronicle of Prosper. Now Prosper reviewed only nine persecutions: for that of Aurelian, which is called the ninth by Augustine and Orosius, and which is related to have been set in motion indeed, but at once cut short by a thunderbolt and by the death of the same emperor, Prosper did not believe should be entered among the persecutions with a distinct number, so much so that he called that of Diocletian (elsewhere the tenth) the ninth. Hence when Leo named the eighth persecution, treading in Prosper's footsteps, he understood the persecution not of Aurelian but of Valerian, which in Prosper, just as in Augustine and Orosius, and also in Sulpicius and Jerome, is counted the eighth.

ON SERMON LXXIX.

Whether St Leo taught that all works of the moral virtues in unbelievers are sins.

1. The holy pontiff in sermon 79, the second on the Fast of Pentecost, ch. 2, speaking of the fasts of unbelievers, not only called them vain, but also asserted them to be polluted by unbelief. For reason does one thing under the truth, deception another under falsehood. Among us faith sanctifies even him who eats; among them unbelief pollutes him who fasts. And presently he subjoins this general proposition: Outside the Catholic Church nothing is whole, nothing chaste, since the Apostle says: 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. And to these words Quesnel attached the postil: Whether there are good works of unbelievers, and of what kind.

2. But lest anyone should think that St Leo favours an opinion proscribed by the Church, it must first be stated that elsewhere he openly professed that works of mercy and humanity which do not proceed from faith are worthy of praise, if, tainted by no evil end from elsewhere, they are elicited from the motive of the virtues themselves. For these words are read in sermon 7 on Lent, ch. 3: What is happier than this humanity? Which assuredly would not have to be defrauded of its praise, if on account of the very fellowship of nature (see, the motive of natural virtue) it were rendered by man for the helping of man. But because, he adds, what does not proceed from the fount of faith does not attain to eternal rewards; the condition of heavenly works is one thing, that of earthly works another. Worldly benevolence has its end in those whom it helps; Christian piety passes over to its own author, while we are called kind towards Him Whom we confess to be working in us. He who affirms that humanity of this kind is not to be defrauded of its praise, even though it does not proceed from the fount of faith, provided that on account of the very fellowship of nature it is rendered by man for the helping of man, which is the end of compassion and of natural virtue; he assuredly believed this humanity to be good, and not evil: for an evil thing, which deserves blame alone, could not have been said to be not to be defrauded of its praise. He added in what follows only that these works are void of the heavenly reward which God would render, and that their whole reward ends among men, in whom they come to rest, and in this world. If, therefore, any unbelievers perform works of mercy or of another moral virtue from the motive of virtue, although they do not perform them from faith, they are not to be accused of sin, according to Leo's judgement.

3. But if in this sermon 79 he affirmed that their fasts are polluted by unbelief, and that among them nothing whole, nothing chaste is found, he must be said to have affirmed it in another sense, which does not contradict the foregoing opinion, namely in so far as he believed that fasts and other works of the virtues among unbelievers for the most part proceeded 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 so he begins the second chapter: But in exercising this gift of God (that is, continence from foods through fasting) we ought not on that account to be more sluggish, because both Jews and heretics often restrain themselves from the liberty of eating, and among the pagans themselves there are certain vain fasts. Presently of all these who fast he subjoins: For reason does one thing under the truth, deception another under falsehood. Among us faith sanctifies even him who eats; among them unbelief pollutes him who fasts; where unbelief is extended not only to pagans but to Hebrews and heretics also. Now the abstinences of these (and likewise other acts of the moral virtues) could have been polluted in various ways from some evil end. The fasts of the pagans, indeed, if any in Leo's time were in force for the worship of empty gods (as was that which Livy records as instituted for Ceres, and which is read prescribed for the fourth day before the nones of October in the ancient marble Calendar dug up at Amiternum [in Muratori, Thesaurus of inscriptions, p. 150]), everyone understands in what way they are properly said to be polluted by unbelief. The same holds of the fasts of the Manichaeans in honour of the Sun and Moon, noted by Leo in sermon 4 on Lent, ch. 5, and in the letter to Turribius, ch. 4, of which accordingly he affirms in the sermon cited: Who are polluted most of all by their own observance. He also censured other fasts of those heretics in sermon 4 on the Nativity, ch. 6: Let not fasts feigned and simulated by deceitful arts seduce you, which avail not for the purification but for the perdition of souls. They assume to themselves indeed an appearance of piety and chastity: but by this guile they cover over the obscenities of their acts, and from the inmost recesses of a profane heart they send forth darts by which the simple may be wounded. And again of fasts of this kind in sermon 4 on the Epiphany, ch. 5: Those are not chaste fasts which come not from the principle of continence but from the art of deceit. Thus far let them have harmed the unwary, thus far let them have mocked the unskilled. In which, while he throws the fault of that kind of fasts upon the end of deceiving, not upon the fasts in themselves, he then indeed intimates that those fasts are chaste which come from the principle of continence, or which, every evil end being shut out, proceed from the motive of virtue alone. The fasts of the Hebrews also can be understood to be polluted either by that evil purpose by which they think that obedience is to be rendered to legal precepts now abolished, or at least by vain glory, with which the holy pontiff noted that the Pharisees when fasting were puffed up, as is related in Matthew, ch. VI, v. 16, in sermon 4 on the Fast of the seventh month, ch. 1, and especially in sermon 7, ch. 2.

4. Now that St Leo had this vice of vain glory especially in view in the sermon with which we are now dealing can be gathered from the fact that in the third chapter he exhorts Christians to beware above all of boasting and pride in their fasts, lest fasting, 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 he deservedly strips himself of all praise who glories over the efforts of his own industry in himself rather than in the Lord. And ch. 4: Let us restrain ourselves from the swelling of boastfulness, 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, because, as he remarks in sermon 4 on Lent, ch. 3, among those very ones who are not held fast by unbelief the devil lies in wait chiefly by means of this corrupt end, so that those, he says, whom he has not been able to cast down through distrust he may strive to overcome through glory. For the evil of pride is neighbour to right actions, and elation always lies in wait close at hand for the virtues; because it is difficult that human praise should not take captive one who lives laudably, unless, as

it is written, he who glories glory in the Lord. But since St Leo thought that among pagans, Jews and heretics, who lack right faith, fasts were tainted either by this vice of pride or by another, and presumed that the other works of the moral virtues which are done by them were corrupted by some like evil end, it is no wonder if he thence affirmed that those things are polluted by unbelief, and that among the same nothing whole, nothing chaste is found.

5. Nor is it therefore to be gathered that he absolutely and generally condemned as sin all the works of the virtues which are performed by them outside the Church; for he expressly taught, as we have seen, that those which do not come forth from the fount of faith are worthy of praise and good, if, every evil end being set aside, they are produced from the motive of virtue. Only, since among pagans and other unbelievers, right faith failing, some evil end, at least of self-love or of vain glory, most 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, as in the same sense Augustine, Prosper and other Fathers have handed down. Hence in sermon 4 on the Nativity of the Lord, ch. 6, after he rebuked the vicious fasts of the Manichaeans, he exhorted his hearers to hold the right faith for this reason especially, because without it nothing is holy, nothing is chaste, nothing living: for the just man lives by faith; where the words nothing chaste are to be understood in the sense indicated.

6. Now this last text supplies another observation. For while he teaches that without faith nothing is holy, nothing living, he intimates that the works of unbelievers which should be tainted by no evil end are void of true holiness and of the merit of eternal life. So also in sermon 8 on Lent, ch. 1, the holy Pontiff, warning those about to fast lest they be polluted by any unbelief, brings forward this reason: For since the Apostle says, Everything that is not of faith is sin, useless and vain will be the fasts of those whom the father of lies deceives with his illusions, and whom the true flesh of Christ does not feed. By which words he seems to interpret the name of sin employed by the Apostle of works generally useless and vain, that is, lacking eternal merit and reward, so that, namely, it embraces also those works of mercy performed by unbelievers which, bestowed with no corrupt end on account of the very fellowship of nature for the helping of man, he had pronounced in sermon 7 not to be defrauded of their praise, that is, good, and which accordingly can be called sins in this wider sense alone, in so far as without living faith they avail nothing towards the 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. The holy pontiff, therefore, distinguished clearly enough two kinds of works of the moral virtues in unbelievers. Some good indeed from their object, but corrupted by an evil end and evil; others, however, tainted by no evil end, good not so much from their object as from the end of virtue, but devoid of the merit of eternal life and useless. Of works of the first kind he affirmed absolutely and generally that nothing whole, nothing chaste, etc., is found among unbelievers, because generally all the good works of unbelievers are corrupted by some vicious end. But works of the second kind he admitted in them conditionally and as it were by way of exception, if they are performed from the motive of virtue; which intimates a case possible and very rare.

8. And this is as far removed from the condemned propositions as St Augustine is removed from the same, who taught not differently about the works of the virtues among unbelievers. In the book On the Spirit and the Letter, ch. 26, he left it written: Even in the number of impious men, and of those who do not truly worship the true God, we either read, or know, or have heard 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 defrauded of their praise. But presently he subjoins: Although, if you examine with what end they are done, scarcely will any be found which deserve the praise and defence due to justice. And while by these words he intimates that those works of justice will scarcely be found without some evil end, he certainly believed that most were accordingly depraved in the same persons: whence in other places the works of the virtues which by unbelievers

are done, the same Augustine, just like St Leo, generally condemned solely on account of the evil end by which, rare cases excepted, he generally presumes them to be tainted.

ON SERMON LXXXII.

On the day of the martyrdom of the holy apostles Peter and Paul. The age and excellence of the Bucherian list, and its author, are brought to light. On the Calendar and testimony of Polemius Silvius.

1. Quesnel, on these words of Leo, sermon 83 on the Feast of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, ch. 1: On the day of their martyrdom, subjoined this note: “On what day, or in what month, the apostles Peter and Paul completed their contest, and on what day likewise the memory of their martyrdom was of old kept with solemn festivity in the Church, there are some who would not have it decided from the Church's present-day calendars and custom. For there is no witness, they say, of any great antiquity who assigns that day to the third day before the kalends of July. But we have a most ancient author, and one contemporary with Leo himself, who records that the solemnity of the deposition of the apostles was celebrated on the eighth day before the kalends of March. He is Polemeus Silvius, whose list, containing many sacred and profane feasts, Joannes Bollandus testifies that he had complete in his own possession, in the general preface to the Lives of the Saints, ch. 4, § 3; a specimen of which list, published in the same place, teaches us that the deposition of the apostles was celebrated in the Roman Church not on 27 June, as is now done, but on 22 February. For it has thus: VIII (kal. Mart.) THE DEPOSITION OF SAINTS PETER AND PAUL. That Silvius wrote at Rome, if the codex is to be trusted; and moreover in the time of our Leo, in the reign of Theodosius the younger and Valentinian, Posthumianus and Zeno, most distinguished men, being consuls, that is, in the year of Christ 448, and he finished his list in the following year, Asterius being consul, that is, in the year 449. But it is hard that on account of a single codex of uncertain credit we should go against all the Calendars, or martyrologies, or other monuments of this kind of the ancient Church which have hitherto seen the light; such as are the Sacramentary of St Gregory the Great, the Roman Ordo, the very Lectionary of St Jerome, the most ancient of all; for in all these the deposition or feast of Saints Peter and Paul is assigned to the third day before the kalends of July. Nay, even in the most ancient parchment or martyrology which Bollandus himself had offered to Aegidius Bucherius from the papers of Heribert Rosweyde, and which the latter inserted in his commentary on the Canon of Victorius, in express words on the eighth before the kalends of March there is read not the deposition of the apostles Peter and Paul, but the feast of Peter of the chair; and to the third before the kalends of July the day of the martyrdom of the Apostles is assigned in this manner: III kal. Julii, of Peter at the Catacombs, and of Paul on the Ostian [Way]. Certainly, since those lists vie with each other in antiquity, far greater credit is due to that one which both all the ancient monuments of the Church and the consent of all authors support than to the other, which alone suggests a novel opinion, and into which it is easy for a fault to have crept.” Thus far he, and well enough. This alone displeases, that he wrote that the said lists of Polemius Silvius and of Bucherius vie with each other in antiquity: for the list of Bucherius is earlier than the list of Silvius by almost a whole century.

2. But that the age and excellence of the Bucherian list may be more plainly perceived, and the day of the martyrdom of the holy apostles Peter and Paul be made more certain, it will be useful to remark more exactly some things about its author which we have not hitherto seen observed by others. Now two codices (so far as we know) contain this list: the one, older but mutilated, is extant with the Bollandists. From this Bucherius published the said list and four other monuments, namely the Catalogue of the prefects of the City, the Catalogue of the Roman pontiffs, a fragment of the consular Fasti, and the Roman profane Calendar, which lacks four months. The other, more recent but complete, was found in the Imperial library, which Cuspinianus

had used in his Commentaries on the Chronicle of Cassiodorus, and from it had published the Catalogue of the prefects of the City before Bucherius. From this, moreover, Lambecius, in vol. IV of the Imperial Library, published the complete Calendar, and our Cardinal Noris, in his work on the Epochs of the Syro-Macedonians, the complete fasti. And most recently Joannes Georgius Ecard, in vol. I of the Corpus of the History of the Middle Age, reprinted most accurately from the same codex, besides the Calendar, the four remaining monuments in the same order in which they are presented in the manuscript, and even with the same errors of the copyists. Now from the examination of these five documents it is clear that all were written in the reign of Constantius. For in the Roman profane Calendar no birthday is noted of emperors who are later than Constantius; and he is called by the title not of divus, like the others who had already departed life, but of dominus, which is the sign of one living. The consular Fasti and the Catalogue of the prefects of the City end in the year 354. The list which is wont to be called Bucherian, and is entitled The Deposition of martyrs and bishops, while it notes the day of death and the place of burial of the Roman pontiffs, ends with Julius, who died in the year 352. Finally, the Catalogue of the supreme pontiffs is so concluded with Liberius, the successor of Julius, that the day of his ordination indeed is noted, but not that of his death, as it had been marked in his predecessors, which indicates that he was still surviving. Now from these observations one and the same author of all monuments of this kind, and one contemporary with Liberius and Constantius, is recognized. And from the profane Calendar the name of the author is drawn out, namely Furius Dionysius Philocalus. Since, further, all the things both sacred and profane which are noted in these monuments are Roman, and are filled with particular and even most minute pieces of information about the Roman city and Church, it seems ascertained that this Philocalus learned and wrote down these pieces of information at Rome, which contributes very greatly to winning credit for these documents.

3. Moreover, for the present matter it is not to be concealed that the complete text of the Bucherian list is expressed in these words: III kal. Jul., of Peter at the Catacombs, and of Paul on the Ostian [Way], Tuscus and Bassus being consuls. Now from this notice of the Catacombs and of the consulship some have suspected that the day of some translation rather than of the death was marked in this list. But Philocalus resolves this difficulty in himself from two other little works, in which the day of the martyrdom of the holy apostles Peter and Paul is marked as the third before the kalends of July, namely in the Catalogue of the Roman pontiffs in these words. He suffered (St Peter) with Paul on the third day before the kalends of July, p. 26 of Eccard's edition: and in the consular Fasti, p. 10: Nero Caesar, Vetus. In this consulship Peter and Paul suffered, on the third before the kalends of July. The words he suffered and they suffered assuredly indicate expressly the day of death. Therefore if, the one list, as it is wont to be called, the Bucherian, being considered apart from the other little works, it could be doubted, especially from the addition of the consulship, whether the day of a translation rather than of the death is not marked there according to the author's mind, certainly from the comparison of the same list with the two other little works of the same author it cannot be doubtful that in it, just as in those, the author wished to indicate the day of the martyrdom, with which perhaps a translation too, or some other deed unknown to us and denoted by the consulship of Tuscus and Bassus, coincided. So much on the author and the meaning of the Bucherian list.

4. Further, that Silvius, the author of the other profane Calendar, was a Gallic writer is known not only from the fact that he dedicated his little work to the bishop Eucherius, who presided over the Church of Lyons, as may be seen in Bollandus, vol. I of January, in the preface, ch. 4, § 3, but is also gathered from the Life of St Hilary of Arles, in which Silvius is reckoned among other writers who were hearers of the same Hilary when he preached: and hence also the author of the Chronicle published under the name of Prosper Tiro, who is likewise a Gallic author, at the year 439 mentions the same writer Silvius, passed over by others, because he had been known to him in Gaul. Now of this

Silvius the Calendar is not sacred but profane; and that he had other lists from which to make excerpts, and set forth some things more fully in his own style, and changed or added others, Bollandus shows in the preface of vol. I. Now among the profane feasts a very few sacred ones are noted there in passing, as may be seen in the Bollandists, vol. VI of June, part II, where the complete Calendar of Silvius was published. And among these feasts noteworthy is the feast of St Vincent the martyr on the eleventh before the kalends of February, which was not then celebrated among the Romans, and likewise the feast of the Maccabees on the kalends of August, which we have shown, in the admonition prefixed to sermon 18 of the Appendix, not to have been begun at Rome in that same age contemporary with Leo. But that this Calendar was written at Rome, as Quesnel indicates, nowhere appears from the codex. Nay, from the very notice of the deposition of the holy apostles on the eighth before the kalends of March, which the three monuments of Furius Philocalus together with all the other ecclesiastical documents oppose, it is clear that that Calendar could not have been written at Rome; and this is much more manifestly proved by the most ancient Roman sacramentary published under Leo's name and to be reprinted by us in vol. II, which, redolent of the age of Leo and of Silvius himself (as will be shown in the same volume), exhibits the day of the martyrdom of the same apostles as then celebrated in the month of June, and the octave in the month of July. Indeed, the very same may be gathered from Leo himself. For in sermon 85, delivered on their octave, ch. 1, he indicates that on the day of their festival Rome was delivered from the Vandals. Now since this deliverance fell on the 29th day of June, as we have established in the admonition to the same sermon, we understand that that festival, and accordingly the day of the martyrdom, was ascribed to the same day also. It is therefore more probable that Silvius, writing in the Gauls and less skilled in the Roman feasts, who in the cited Chronicle of Prosper Tiro is said to have been of a much disturbed mind, by an error noted on the eighth day before the kalends of March the deposition of Saints Peter and Paul instead of the Feast of St Peter of the Chair, which is ascribed to this day in the list of Philocalus. Perhaps, since he saw the feast of the Chair of St Peter celebrated among the Gauls on the eighteenth before the kalends of February, he supposed that the Romans then celebrated that festival on the same day, and therefore took the feast noted in some documents like the Bucherian on the eighth before the kalends of March to be the day not of the chair but of the deposition. Thus the authority of Silvius in this matter, which alone was giving trouble to all the critics, seems altogether removed.

ON SERMON XC.

What St Leo taught about the two loves, of God and of the world. Quesnel's postil examined.

1. Most celebrated is Leo's text on the two loves, of God and of the world, expressed in these words in sermon 5 on the Fast of the seventh month, ch. 3: For there are two loves from which all wills proceed, as different in their qualities as they are divided in their authors. For the rational soul, which cannot be without love, is a lover either of God or of the world. To these words Quesnel attached this postil: Whatever is not from the love of God is from the love of the world, and therefore sin. But since this opinion can be referred to the condemned propositions of Baius and of Quesnel (whence this text of the holy pontiff above all is pressed by the Baianists and Quesnellians), it must be explained more accurately what was condemned in the proscribed theses, and how far Leo's words are from the condemned sense.

§ I. The condemned propositions on the twofold love are set forth, and what was proscribed in them is explained.

2. Among the Baian propositions, prop. 38 is of this kind: Every love of the creature is either that vicious cupidity by which the world is loved, which is forbidden by John, or that praiseworthy charity by which, poured forth in the heart through the Holy Spirit, God is loved. And prop. 40: In all his acts the sinner serves dominant cupidity. Among the Quesnellian propositions, prop. 44: There are only two loves, from which the volitions

and all our actions are born: the love of God, which does all things for the sake of God, and which God rewards; and the love by which we love ourselves and the world, which does not refer to God what ought to be referred to Him, and on this very account becomes evil. And prop. 45: The love of God no longer reigning in the heart of the sinner, it is necessary that carnal cupidity reign in him and corrupt all his actions. The discourse here is of the love reigning in the heart of men, and all acts are so taught to proceed from the reigning love that the very acts of the virtues in sinners, in whom not the love of God but the love of the world reigns, being tainted by this love, must be sins: whence there is another proposition of Baius, 35: Everything that the sinner or slave of sin does is sin.

3. How false and absurd these things are, there is no one who does not see. For just as the just, in whom the love of God reigns, can perform, and from time to time do also perform, some slightly evil acts, not indeed from a love of the world dominating in them, which cannot be reconciled with the habitual charity of God reigning in the just, but from some lighter and stealthily creeping love of the world, for example, of vain glory, of gluttony, etc., by which neither does cupidity dominate in them nor is the habitual love of God expelled, so by sinners, in whom the love of the world reigns, certain good acts can be produced from some love of virtue, for example, of faith, of hope, of mercy, of prayer, etc., which, although it is not that love of God by which the reigning love of the world is expelled, yet is not the love of the world, nor can be referred to the love of the world. For this reason the Synod of Trent, session 6, canon 7, struck with anathema the dogma of the Lutherans who say that all works which precede justification are sins: If anyone shall say that all works which are done before justification are truly sins... let him be anathema. It is therefore condemned to say that all works which do not proceed from the charity of God reigning in the heart of men belong to the love and concupiscence of the world, and are accordingly sins; which nevertheless Quesnel's postil, transcribed above, indicates.

4. But if anyone should strive so to soften some of the condemned theses that the discourse in them is not of the reigning love of God, but of the love of God taken more widely, by which works are referred to God, it is equally condemned to say that all acts of virtue, however good, if they are not referred to God by this love, are sins, as the last part of the Quesnellian thesis 44 intimates. For, to prescind from the question celebrated among theologians about the referring of works to God, it is certain among all Catholics that works of the moral virtues performed from the motive of virtue, not only by sinners but even by unbelievers, are good of themselves, or at least from their office, as they say, although they are not referred to God: for even according to those who more strictly maintain the debt of such referring, this omission does not vitiate the good work in itself, but from another side stains him who omits.

5. Certainly St Leo is most remote from both evil senses. For in sermon 48, the 10th on Lent, ch. 3, he acknowledges that in Christian sinners, in whom the love of the world dominates, both right faith and other works of the moral virtues can be found; and he testifies only that from the lack of charity, at least habitual, they are void of eternal fruit. For although, he says, it is a great thing to have right faith and sound doctrine, and the circumcision of gluttony, the gentleness of meekness, the purity of chastity are worthy of much praise, yet all virtues without charity are naked, nor can that be called fruitful, in whatever excellence of conduct, which the birth of love has not brought forth. Moreover, in sermon 44, the 7th on Lent, ch. 3, speaking of the works of mercy which do not proceed from the fount of faith, and accordingly are performed by unbelievers themselves, who, not knowing God, referred nothing to Him, he asserted that they are not to be defrauded of their praise, and are accordingly good, if they are produced from the motive of compassion with no evil end intermixed, and he taught only that they are for the most part sins, because he presumed that they were mostly performed by unbelievers not from the motive of virtue but from the end of self-love, of vain glory, or some other corrupt end; on which see the observation on sermon 79. See, then, how far from the senses of the condemned

propositions the mind and doctrine of Leo is; and if you are unwilling to invent him as contrary to himself, the testimony of the present sermon 90 cannot be said to favour the proscribed theses.

§ II. What is the proper meaning of the Leonine text of sermon 90.

6. There are indeed not wanting those who think that the love of God was taken widely by the holy pontiff for any love of the virtues, and the love of the world for any love of the vices. For just as every love of the vices is aptly referred to the love of the world, in so far as the world loves and fosters vices, so the love of all the virtues can widely be referred to the love of God, in so far as God loves and enjoins all the virtues. Nay, since every virtue is justice and truth, as it is quite often called in sacred Scripture, and God is justice and truth, he can be said in a wide sense to love God who loves the virtues from their own proper motive, with no evil cupidity intermixed. That the holy pontiff sometimes took the love of God in this sense for the love of any virtue can be gathered from those words of sermon 95, ch. 6: To love God is nothing other than to love justice. So, therefore, he who loves any virtue whatever, since he loves justice, on this principle of Leo equally loves God. And he who exercises some act of virtue from the motive of virtue must needs love the virtue itself. Now on this hypothesis of the twofold love of God and of the world, to one or other of which all acts of the will are to be referred, it is beyond doubt better to refer the acts of the moral virtues which are performed from the pure motive of virtue to the love of God widely taken than to the love of the world. For in what way they can be brought back to the love of God, at least widely, can be explained and understood from the reason indicated; but in what way they are to be referred to the love of the world, which, set in the evil one, is a lover and persuader of vices, as we have intimated, and not of virtues, and indeed so referred that he who loves and exercises the virtues from the motive of virtue must be said to love and exercise them from love of the world, no one of sound mind will understand.

7. But it is one thing that this hypothesis is far from the condemned theses, and another that the words of Leo which we are now weighing are to be taken in this sense. What meaning, further, properly underlies those same words you will easily perceive if you premise two observations. The first, that the holy pontiff writes that there are two loves from which all wills proceed, and not from which all acts of the will proceed; and therefore he speaks of the wills themselves, and not of the single acts of the will. Hence, moreover, when he pronounces those wills as different in their qualities as they are divided in their authors, or loves, he indicates wills that are different, that is, good or evil, according as they differ among themselves and are divided by a different love. The second, that the two loves are here taken not of any love whatever of God or of the world, but of the love reigning in the will of man, is clear from this, that of such a love alone can it be verified that a man is constituted a lover either of God, that is, just, or of the world, that is, a sinner: whence also at the beginning of the following chapter the Author said: This affection (of God), by which earthly love is excluded; which things are true of the dominating love of God. This is confirmed much more clearly by those words which he presently subjoined: And therefore one must cleave inseparably to eternal goods (which signify a predominating love of the last end), but temporal things are to be used in passing, not enjoyed, nor cleaved to as to a last end.

8. These things premised, see the open and genuine sense of the Author. There are two loves from which all wills proceed, as different in their qualities of goodness or of malice as they are divided in their authors. Those, namely, which are moved by the love of God, so that they love God above all things, and the man is thence a lover of God, or in the charity of God, are good wills; but those are evil in which the love of the world so dominates that the man, the charity of God being excluded, is constituted a lover of the world. And since the rational soul without love towards the one or the other side

prevailing cannot be, therefore it is a lover either of God or of the world; and accordingly all wills, good or bad, are as diverse in their qualities as they are divided in their authors. Here the obvious sense of the words concerns all wills that are good or bad from the predominating love. Who then would not see how wrongly his words are dragged to each and every act of the will, as if Leo had taught that each and every act proceeds from one or the other of those loves, so that whatever acts are not from the love of God are from the love of the world, and therefore sins, as Quesnel's postil insinuates; and that on this reckoning those very works of the virtues are to be charged as sins which the holy pontiff declared to be, in sinners or even in unbelievers, not bad but good?

§ III. Another postil of Quesnel on the same sermon 90 is weighed.

9. In this same sermon, chapter 3, Saint Leo writes: What allures by the beauty, by the abundance, by the variety (of creatures) is not easily turned aside from, unless in that beauty of visible things the Creator rather than the creature is loved. Quesnel noted in the margin on these words: Only the love of God draws back from the love of the creature. Do you see, from the comparison, a less than correct interpreter? It is not easily turned aside from, says Leo: for those who halt in the love of creatures, and in their beauty, abundance, variety

do not love God rather than creatures, do not easily turn aside from their perverse allurements, and sin most easily. This is the whole of Leo's meaning. But whether here the love of God, without which one does not easily turn aside from blandishments of this kind and from the illicit love of creatures, alone draws one back from this forbidden affection, it is not Leo but Quesnel who affirms; whereas it is nevertheless certain that men are drawn back from sins (though not so easily) by fear also, especially by that fear of Gehenna and of punishments which brings in sorrow for sins, and which, conceived by the gift of God and the impulse of the Holy Spirit, not only restrains the hand from the illicit work but also excludes the very will to sin, as is gathered plainly enough from the Council of Trent, session 14, chapter 4. Here certainly the fear of Gehenna, into which one falls not so much by deed as by depraved affection, ought of itself to impel and move towards excluding both the deed and every affection for sinning (as is necessary for escaping Gehenna). This had to be pointed out, lest perhaps there should creep in among the rest Quesnel's proposition 61, condemned in the constitution Unigenitus: Fear restrains nothing but the hand, while the heart is given over to sin for as long as it is not led by the love of justice. But it is not for us to discuss this matter in this place; for our purpose was only to show that Leo's meaning is foreign to Quesnel's interpretation.