Letters 52.1–55.2

Though very late, and beyond what I had hoped, I gladly received the letter of your Brotherliness. I was filled with still greater joy when I learned that your man had come to Hippo for this sole purpose, to bring me your Brotherliness's letter. For I thought that it was not without reason that it arose in your mind to recall our kinship, unless perhaps because you perceive, as I know the considerable weight of your prudence, how much it is to be lamented that we who are brothers according to the flesh do not live in one fellowship in the body of Christ; especially since it is easy for you to observe and see the city set on a mountain, of which the Lord says in the gospel that it cannot be hidden. For that is the Catholic Church, for which reason it is called in Greek katholikē, because it is spread through the whole world. No one may be ignorant of it; therefore, according to the word of our Lord Jesus Christ, it cannot be hidden.

But the party of Donatus, among the Africans alone, slanders the whole world, and does not consider that by the barrenness with which it refused to bear the fruits of peace and love it has been cut off from the root of the Eastern churches, from which the gospel came to Africa; if earth is brought to them from there, they worship it; but if a believer comes from there, they exorcize him with breath and even rebaptize him. For the Son of God, who is the truth, foretold this, that he is the vine and his sons the branches, and his Father the vinedresser: 'Every branch in me that does not bear fruit,' he says, 'my Father will take away; and every branch that bears fruit in me he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.' It is no wonder, then, if those who refused to bear the fruit of love have been cut off from that vine which grew and filled all lands.

If their forebears, when they made the schism, had brought true charges against their colleagues, they themselves would have won their case before the church overseas, from which the authority of the Christian faith flowed to these parts, so that those against whom they brought the charges would be outside. But as it is, when the former are found inside, in communion with the apostolic churches, whose names these men have and read in the holy books, while the latter are placed outside and separated from that communion, who does not understand that those had the good case who were able to win it before impartial judges? Or if they had a good case and could not prove it to the churches overseas, what harm did the whole world do them, where bishops could not rashly condemn their colleagues who had not been convicted before them of the charges brought? And so innocent men are rebaptized, and Christ is exorcized in the innocent. But if the Donatists knew true crimes of their African colleagues and neglected to show and prove them to the churches overseas, they have cut themselves off from the unity of Christ by a most wicked schism and have no excuse; and you know it, especially since so many criminals have emerged among them, and they have tolerated them for so many years so as not to tear the party of Donatus apart, and yet did not hesitate at that time, alleging their false suspicions, to break the peace and unity of Christ; and you see it.

But some carnal habit or other, brother Severinus, holds you there; and I have long grieved, long groaned, thinking especially of your prudence, and I have long wished to see you, so as to speak with you about this matter. For what profit is there in temporal well-being or kinship if in our kinship we despise the eternal inheritance of Christ and everlasting salvation? Let it suffice for me to have written this for now: to hard hearts it is very little and almost nothing, but to your mind, which I know well, it is very much and very great. For these words are not mine, who am nothing except that I wait for the mercy of God, but are of almighty God himself; and whoever despises him as Father in this world will find him as Judge in the world to come.

Since you wished us to know of the letter which a presbyter of the Donatists sent you, although you too laughed at it with a Catholic mind, nevertheless, so that you may rather do him good, if his folly is not hopeless, we ask you to deliver to him this reply. For he wrote that an angel had commanded him to set out for you the order of the Christianity of your city, when you hold the Christianity not of your city only, nor only of Africa or the Africans, but of the whole world, which has been proclaimed and is being proclaimed to all nations. Hence it is not enough for them that they are not ashamed of being cut off and do not help themselves by returning to the root while they can; they even try to cut others off with themselves and destine them for the fire like dry wood. Therefore, if the angel had stood by you yourself, whom that man, as we think, invents with cunning vanity to have stood by him on your account, and had said to you the very things which he says he is setting out to you at the angel's command, you ought to remember the sentence of the apostle, who says: 'Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel other than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed.' For it has been preached to you by the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ himself that his gospel will be proclaimed to all nations, and then the end will come; it has been preached to you through the prophetic and apostolic writings that the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed, which is Christ, when God said to him: 'In your seed all nations shall be blessed.' If, then, while you hold these promises, an angel from heaven said to you, 'Abandon the Christianity of the whole world and hold that of the party of Donatus, whose order is set out to you in the letter of the bishop of your city,' he ought to be accursed, because he would be trying to cut you off from the whole, thrust you into a part, and estrange you from the promises of God.

For if the order of bishops succeeding one another is to be considered, how much more surely and truly wholesomely do we count from Peter himself, to whom, as bearing the figure of the whole church, the Lord said: 'Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not overcome it.' For Peter was succeeded by Linus, Linus by Clement, Clement by Anacletus, Anacletus by Evaristus, Evaristus by Sixtus, Sixtus by Telesphorus, Telesphorus by Hyginus, Hyginus by Anicetus, Anicetus by Pius, Pius by Soter, Soter by Alexander, Alexander by Victor, Victor by Zephyrinus, Zephyrinus by Callistus, Callistus by Urban, Urban by Pontianus, Pontianus by Anterus, Anterus by Fabian, Fabian by Cornelius, Cornelius by Lucius, Lucius by Stephen, Stephen by Sixtus, Sixtus by Dionysius, Dionysius by Felix, Felix by Eutychianus, Eutychianus by Gaius, Gaius by Marcellus, Marcellus by Eusebius, Eusebius by Miltiades, Miltiades by Silvester, Silvester by Mark, Mark by Julius, Julius by Liberius, Liberius by Damasus, Damasus by Siricius, Siricius by Anastasius. In this order of succession no Donatist bishop is found. But they sent one ordained in Africa from the side, who, presiding over a few Africans in the city of Rome, spread the name of 'Mountain-men' or 'Cutzupitae'.

Into that order of bishops which runs from Peter himself to Anastasius, who now sits in that same chair, even if some traitor had crept in during those times, it would not prejudice the church and innocent Christians, for whom the Lord provided when he said of bad leaders: 'Do what they say, but do not do what they do; for they say and do not do'; so that the hope of the faithful may be sure, which, placed not in man but in the Lord, is never scattered by the storm of sacrilegious schism, as these men have been scattered, who read in the holy books of the churches to which the apostles wrote and have no bishop in them. What is more perverse and insane than to say to readers reading those same letters, 'Peace be with you,' and to be separated from the peace of the churches to which those letters were written?

But so that he may not flatter himself even about the order of bishops of Constantina, that is, of your city, read him the records of proceedings before Munatius Felix, perpetual flamen and then curator of that same city of yours, in the eighth consulship of Diocletian and the seventh of Maximian, on the eleventh day before the Kalends of June, in which it was clearly established that bishop Paul handed over the Scriptures, and that Silvanus, then his subdeacon, handed over with him, producing the Lord's vessels, even those that had been carefully hidden, a silver chest and a silver lamp, so that a certain Victor said to him: 'You would have been a dead man if you had not found them.' This Silvanus, a most manifest traitor, that man mentions with pride in the letter he wrote to you as having been then ordained bishop by Secundus of Tigisis, bishop of the first see. Let their proud tongue be still, then, and acknowledge its own crimes, so as not to rave and speak of others'. Read him also, if he wishes, the church records of that same Secundus of Tigisis held in the house of Urbanus Donatus, where he left to God as judge confessed traitors, Donatus of Mascula, Marinus of Aquae Tibilitanae, and Donatus of Calama; and with these confessed traitors he ordained for them as bishop the aforementioned traitor Silvanus. Read him the records before Zenophilus the consular, where a certain deacon Nundinarius, angry with Silvanus for having excommunicated him, disclosed all these things to the courts, which were established clearer than light by sure documents, the answers of witnesses, the reading of records, and many letters.

There are many other things you could read to him, if he is willing not to argue contentiously but to listen prudently: the petitions of the Donatists to Constantine, asking him to send bishops from Gaul as judges to settle this case among the African bishops; the letter of the same emperor in which he sent bishops to the city of Rome; the records also of the proceedings in the city of Rome, where the case was heard and discussed by the bishops he had sent; and another letter, in which the said emperor declares that they had complained to him about the judgement of their colleagues, that is, the bishops he had sent to the city of Rome; in which he also wished other bishops to judge at Arles; where these men appealed from their judgement too to the same emperor; where finally he himself heard the case between the parties; where he most vehemently denounces them as defeated by the innocence of Caecilian. If he is willing, he will hear these things and be silent and stop lying in wait for the truth.

And yet we rely not so much on these documents as on the holy Scriptures, where the inheritance of Christ is promised to the ends of the earth among all nations. Separated from it by a wicked schism, these men hurl charges at the chaff of the Lord's harvest, which must be tolerated, mixed in, until the end, until the whole threshing floor is winnowed at the last judgement. From this it is plain that these charges, whether true or false, do not concern the Lord's wheat, which must grow throughout the whole field, that is, this world, until the end of the age, as not a false angel in this man's error but the Lord in the gospel says. And so, since these wretched Donatists hurl many false and empty charges against innocent Christians who throughout the world are mixed with bad Christians as with their chaff or tares, God has justly repaid them: they condemned by their universal council the Maximianists at Carthage, their own schismatics, who condemned Primian, baptized apart from Primian, and rebaptized after Primian; and then, after no short time, under the compulsion of Optatus the Gildonian, they received back some of their number in the rank of their episcopate, Felicianus of Musti and Praetextatus of Assuras, together with all whom they had baptized outside while condemned. If they are not stained by those whom with their own mouth they condemned as criminal and sacrilegious, and compared to those first schismatics whom the earth buried alive, when they communicate with them, received back again in their rank, let them at last wake up and consider with what blindness and madness they say that the whole world has been stained by unknown crimes of Africans, and that the inheritance of Christ, promised and now displayed among all nations, has been destroyed by the sins of Africans through the contagion of communion, when they do not wish to be seen as destroyed and stained while they communicate with men whose crimes they knew and judged.

Therefore, since the apostle Paul says again that Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light, so that it is not surprising if his ministers transform themselves as ministers of righteousness: if that man really saw some angel, a messenger of error wishing to separate Christians from Catholic unity, he has encountered an angel of Satan transforming himself as an angel of light. But if he is lying and saw nothing of the kind, he is himself a minister of Satan transforming himself as a minister of righteousness. And yet, considering all these things, if he does not choose to be excessively perverse and obstinate, he can be freed from all seduction, whether of others or his own. For through the opportunity you gave us we have addressed him without any hatred, observing toward him what the apostle says: 'The servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle toward all, apt to teach, patient, correcting in modesty those who think otherwise, in case God may grant them repentance to know the truth, and they may come to their senses out of the snares of the devil, by whom they have been taken captive to do his will.' If, then, we have said anything harshly, let him know that it aims not at the bitterness of dissension but at the correction of love. May you live safe in Christ, dearly beloved and honoured brother. Amen.

As to the questions you asked me, I would rather have known first what you yourself would answer if asked; for in that way, by approving or amending your answers, I could reply much more briefly and very easily either confirm or correct you. That, as I said, I would have preferred. But in order to answer now, I chose to make my discourse longer rather than delay. First, then, I want you to hold what is the main point of this discussion: that our Lord Jesus Christ, as he himself says in the gospel, has placed us under his gentle yoke and light burden. Hence he has bound together the fellowship of the new people by sacraments very few in number, very easy to observe, and most excellent in meaning, such as baptism consecrated in the name of the Trinity, the communion of his body and blood, and anything else commended in the canonical Scriptures, apart from those which burdened the servitude of the old people, suited to their hearts and to the prophetic age, which are read in the five books of Moses. But the things which we keep not by writing but by tradition, which are observed throughout the whole world, are understood to be retained as commended and established either by the apostles themselves or by plenary councils, whose authority in the church is most wholesome: such as that the Lord's passion, resurrection, and ascension into heaven, and the coming of the Holy Spirit from heaven, are celebrated with yearly solemnity, and anything else of the kind that is observed by the whole church, wherever it spreads.

Other things vary from place to place and region to region: for instance, some fast on Saturday, others do not; some communicate daily in the Lord's body and blood, others receive on certain days; in some places no day passes without the offering, in others only on Saturday and Sunday, in others only on Sunday; and whatever else of this kind can be noticed. This whole class of things allows free observance, and there is no better rule in them for a serious and prudent Christian than to act as he sees the church act to which he happens to come. For what is shown to be neither against faith nor against good morals is to be treated as indifferent and kept for the sake of fellowship with those among whom one lives.

I think you have heard it at some time, yet I mention it now too. My mother, having followed me to Milan, found that the church did not fast on Saturday. She began to be troubled and to waver as to what she should do. At that time I did not care about such things, but for her sake I consulted on this matter that man of most blessed memory, Ambrose. He answered that he could teach me nothing but what he himself did, because if he knew something better he would observe that instead. And when I thought that, giving no reason, he had wished to admonish us by his authority alone not to fast on Saturday, he went on and said to me: 'When I come to Rome, I fast on Saturday; when I am here, I do not fast. So you too, whatever church you come to, keep its custom, if you do not wish to be a stumbling-block to anyone or anyone to you.' When I reported this to my mother, she gladly accepted it. And I, considering this judgement again and again, have always held it as if I had received it from a heavenly oracle. For I have often perceived, with grief and groaning, that many disturbances of the weak arise from the contentious obstinacy or superstitious timidity of certain brothers, who, in matters of this kind which cannot be brought to a definite conclusion either by the authority of holy Scripture or by the tradition of the universal church or by usefulness for amending life, merely because some reasoning or other of their own lies behind it, or because they were so accustomed in their own country, or because they saw it elsewhere and think themselves the more learned the farther they have travelled from their own people, stir up such quarrelsome questions that they think nothing right but what they themselves do.

Someone may say that the Eucharist should not be received daily. You ask: 'Why?' 'Because,' he says, 'days should be chosen on which a man lives more purely and continently, so that he may approach so great a sacrament worthily; for he who eats unworthily eats and drinks judgement on himself.' Another, on the contrary, says: 'No; if the wound of sin and the violence of the disease are so great that such medicines must be put off, then each one ought to be removed from the altar by the bishop's authority to do penance, and be reconciled by the same authority (for to receive unworthily is to receive at a time when one ought to be doing penance), not that by his own choice he should withdraw from communion or return to it whenever he likes. But if his sins are not so great that he should be judged worthy of excommunication, he ought not to separate himself from the daily medicine of the Lord's body.' Perhaps someone settles the dispute between them more rightly who advises that they should above all remain in the peace of Christ, and that each should do what, according to his faith, he piously believes should be done. For neither of them dishonours the body and blood of the Lord; rather they vie with each other in honouring the most saving sacrament. Nor did Zacchaeus and that centurion quarrel with each other, or either of them put himself above the other, when one of them joyfully received the Lord into his house, and the other said, 'I am not worthy that you should come under my roof': both honouring the Saviour in different and as it were opposite ways, both wretched through sins, both obtaining mercy. It is also relevant to this comparison that among the first people the manna tasted in each one's mouth according to his own wish; so in each Christian's heart does that sacrament by which the world has been subdued. For the one out of honour does not dare to receive it daily, and the other out of honour does not dare to let any day pass. This food will not be despised, just as the manna would not be loathed. Hence the apostle says that it was received unworthily by those who did not distinguish it from other food by the veneration singularly due to it; for immediately after saying, 'He eats and drinks judgement on himself,' he added, 'not discerning the body'; which is clear enough from that whole passage in the first letter to the Corinthians, if it is carefully considered.

So too some stranger, perhaps in a place where, keeping Lent strictly, they do not bathe or break the fast even on the Thursday, says: 'I will not fast today.' The reason is asked. 'Because,' he says, 'it is not done in my country.' What else is he trying to do but put his own custom above another's? For he will not read this to me from the book of God, or contend for it with the full voice of the universal church wherever it spreads, or show that the other acts against faith and he according to faith, or prove that the other violates the best morals and he keeps them. They certainly violate their own quiet and peace by quarrelling over a superfluous question. But in such matters I would rather that each, in the other's country, did not shrink from what the rest do. Or again, if when travelling in a foreign country, where the people of God are more numerous, more frequent in attendance, and more fervent, he has seen, for example, the offering made twice on the Thursday of the last week of Lent, both in the morning and in the evening, and on coming to his own country, where the custom is to offer at the end of the day, he contends that this is done wrongly and unlawfully because he has seen it done otherwise elsewhere: this is a childish attitude, to be avoided in ourselves and to be tolerated and corrected in our people.

Consider, then, to which of these three classes your first question belongs, which you put in your memorandum. For you ask in these words: 'What ought to be done on the Thursday of the last week of Lent? Should the offering be made in the morning and again after supper, because of what is said, Likewise, after supper; or should we fast and offer only after supper; or should we also fast and, after the offering, take supper, as we are accustomed to do?' To this I answer thus: if the authority of divine Scripture prescribes which of these should be done, there is no doubt that we must do as we read, so that we may argue no longer how it is to be done but how the sacrament is to be understood. Likewise, if the whole church throughout the world practises any of these; for to doubt that it should be done so would be most arrogant madness. But neither the one nor the other applies to what you ask. It remains, then, that it belongs to the third class, which varies from place to place and region to region. Let each, then, do what he finds in the church to which he comes. For none of these is against faith, nor are morals made better by one or the other. For these are the reasons, namely faith or morals, for which either what was done wrongly should be amended or what was not done should be instituted. For the very change of a custom, even one that helps by its usefulness, disturbs by its novelty. Therefore a change that is not useful is, by its fruitless disturbance, consequently harmful.

Nor should it be thought that the practice of offering on that day after a meal was instituted in many places because it is written, 'In the same way also the cup after supper, saying'; for he could have called 'supper' the fact that they had already received the body, so that they then received the cup. For since he says elsewhere, 'When you come together, then, it is not to eat the Lord's supper,' calling this very reception of the Eucharist the Lord's supper, what may rather have moved people to offer or receive the Eucharist on that day after eating is what the gospel says: 'While they were eating, Jesus took bread and blessed it,' having said earlier: 'When evening came, he reclined with the twelve; and as they were eating he said, One of you will betray me.' For afterwards he gave the sacrament. And it is clear that when the disciples first received the body and blood of the Lord, they did not receive it fasting.

Must we then slander the universal church because the sacrament is always received by those fasting? For from this it pleased the Holy Spirit that, in honour of so great a sacrament, the Lord's body should enter a Christian's mouth before other food; for that is why this custom is kept throughout the whole world. For it does not follow that, because the Lord gave it after food, the brothers should come together to receive that sacrament after lunch or supper, or mix it with their own meals, as those did whom the apostle rebukes and corrects. For the Saviour, to commend more forcefully the depth of that mystery, wished to fix this last in the hearts and memory of the disciples, from whom he was about to depart to his passion. And therefore he did not prescribe in what order it should be received thereafter, so that he might reserve this matter for the apostles, through whom he was going to order the churches. For if he had advised that it always be received after other food, I believe no one would have changed that custom. But when the apostle says, speaking of this sacrament, 'Therefore, brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another; if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, so that you may not come together for judgement,' he at once adds: 'The rest I will set in order when I come.' From this we are given to understand that, since it was too much to set out in a letter the whole order of practice which the universal church throughout the world observes, what is not varied by any diversity of customs was set in order by him.

But a certain plausible reason has pleased some: that on one fixed day in the year, on which the Lord gave that supper, as for a more notable commemoration, it may be permitted to offer and receive the body and blood of the Lord after food. But I think it more fitting that it be done at such an hour that one who has fasted may come to the offering after the meal which is taken at the ninth hour. Therefore we compel no one to take lunch before that Lord's supper, but neither do we dare to oppose anyone. I think, however, that this was instituted only because more people, almost all in most places, are accustomed to bathe on that day; and because some also keep the fast, the offering is made in the morning for those who take lunch, since they cannot bear fasting and bathing at the same time, and in the evening for those who fast.

If you also ask why the custom of bathing arose, nothing more probable occurs to me in thinking about it than that the bodies of those to be baptized, made dirty through the observance of Lent, would come to the font offending the senses unless they bathed on some day. And this day was chosen for the purpose rather than another, because on it the Lord's supper is celebrated each year. And because this was allowed to those about to receive baptism, many wished to bathe with them and relax the fast. Having discussed these things as I could, I advise you to keep what I said at the beginning, as far as you can, as befits a prudent and peaceable son of the church. The other things you asked I will deal with at another time, if the Lord wills.

When I read your letter, in which you reminded me to pay my debt by unravelling the remaining questions which you had asked long before, I could not bear any longer to put off the most welcome and dear desire of your zeal; and although I am in the midst of heaps of occupations, I have made this my chief one, to answer what you asked. I do not want to discuss your letter at length, lest this very thing hinder me from at last paying what I owe.

You ask why the yearly day for celebrating the Lord's passion does not return to the same day of the year, as the day on which he is said to have been born does; and then you add: if this is done because of the sabbath and the moon, what is the meaning of observing the sabbath and the moon in this matter? Here you should know first that the Lord's birthday is not celebrated as a sacrament, but only recalled to memory, namely that he was born; and so nothing was needed but to mark with festive devotion the day of the year on which the event took place, as it comes round. But there is a sacrament in a celebration when the commemoration of the event is made in such a way that it is also understood to signify something that is to be received with reverence. So we keep Easter in such a way that we not only recall to memory what happened, that is, that Christ died and rose again, but also do not omit the other things attested concerning him for the meaning of the sacraments. For since, as the apostle says, he died for our sins and rose again for our justification, a certain passage from death to life has been consecrated in that passion and resurrection of the Lord. For even the word itself, 'pascha', is not Greek, as is commonly thought, but Hebrew, according to those who know both languages. For the thing was not named from suffering, because in Greek 'to suffer' is paschein, but from the fact that there is a passing over, as I said, from death to life, by a Hebrew word; in that language pascha means 'passage', as those who know these things affirm. The Lord himself wished to touch on this when he said: 'He who believes in me has passed from death to life.' And the same evangelist is understood to have wished to express this especially when, as the Lord was about to celebrate the Passover with his disciples, at which he gave them the mystical supper, he says: 'When Jesus saw that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father.' So the passage from this mortal life into another, immortal life, that is, from death to life, is set forth in the passion and resurrection of the Lord.