Letters 59.1–67.3

The letter of summons came to me on the fifth day before the Ides of November, when the day was already over, and found me very unprepared, so that I could not possibly attend. Nevertheless, whether my lack of experience has moved me, or I have been moved justly, it is for your Holiness and Gravity to judge. I read in that same summons that it had been written also to the Mauretanias. We know that those provinces have their own primates. If a council had to be summoned to Numidia from them too, the names of some Mauretanian bishops who are senior there ought certainly to have been placed in the summons; and not finding this in this summons, I was very surprised. Then, to the Numidians themselves it was written with such a disturbed and neglected order that I found my name in the third place, I who know after how many I was made bishop. This is both injurious enough to others and invidious to me. Moreover, our venerable brother and colleague Xanthippus of Thagura says that the primacy belongs to him, is so regarded by very many, and sends letters as such. Even if this error can easily be recognized and corrected between your Holinesses, his name ought nevertheless not to have been passed over in the summons which your Venerableness sent. If it had been written in the middle and not placed first, I would be very surprised; how much more surprising is it that no mention at all was made by you of him who above all ought to come to the council, so that the very order of the primacy, which is the concern of all the bishops and churches of Numidia, might be dealt with.

For these reasons I would even hesitate to come, lest perhaps the summons, in which such perversity appeared, should be false; although the shortness of time and other serious necessities also hindered me in many ways. So I ask your Blessedness to pardon me, and first to be good enough to press for it to be settled harmoniously between your Holiness and the aged Xanthippus which of you ought to summon the council; or at least, what I think more wholesome, both of you summon our colleagues without prejudice to either, especially those who are near you in seniority as bishops, who can easily recognize which of you speaks the truth; so that this question may be settled first among you few, and once the error is removed, the junior bishops may be summoned by the others, who neither can nor ought to do anything in this matter but believe you as their seniors, and who do not now know which of you they should rather believe. I have sent this letter sealed with a ring which shows the face of a man looking sideways.

I have received no letter from your Venerableness since we parted from each other in body. But now I have read your Kindness's letter about Donatus and his brother, and I have long wavered about what to answer. But considering again and again what is useful for the salvation of those whom we serve by nourishing them in Christ, nothing else could occur to me but that this way should not be opened to servants of God, that they should think they are more easily chosen for something better if they have become worse. For it is both an easy fall for them and a most unworthy injury to the clerical order, if deserters from monasteries are chosen for the service of the clergy, since even of those who remain in the monastery we are accustomed to take into the clergy only the more tested and better. Unless perhaps, as common people say, 'A bad piper makes a good chorister,' so the same common people will joke about us, saying: 'A bad monk makes a good cleric.' It is greatly to be lamented if we raise monks to such ruinous pride, and think the clergy, in whose number we are, worthy of so grave an insult, since sometimes even a good monk hardly makes a good cleric, if he has sufficient self-restraint but lacks the necessary instruction or the integrity of a man under a rule.

But concerning these men, I believe, your Blessedness supposed that they had left the monastery with our consent, so as to be more useful to the people of their own region. But it is false; they left of their own accord; of their own accord they deserted, while we resisted as much as we could for their salvation. As for Donatus, since it has already happened that he was ordained before we could decide anything about this in council, let your prudence do what it wishes, if perhaps he has been corrected from the perversity of pride. But as for his brother, on whose account above all Donatus himself also left the monastery, since you understand what I think, I do not know what to answer. Yet I do not dare to contradict your prudence, rank, and love, and I certainly hope that you will do what you see to be wholesome for the members of the church. Amen.

When your Kindness was speaking with me about how we receive clergy from the party of Donatus if they wish to be Catholics, I resolved to put what I answered you in writing also, in this letter sent to you, so that, if anyone asks you about this matter, you may show what we think or do about it, produced even in my own hand. Know, then, that we detest nothing in them but their dissension, by which they have become schismatics or heretics, because they do not hold the unity and truth of the Catholic Church, in that they do not have peace with the people of God, which is spread through the whole world, and in that they do not recognize the baptism of Christ in men. We disapprove, then, of the evil error, because it is their own; but the good name of God which they have, and his sacrament, we recognize in them, revere, and embrace. But for this reason we grieve over them as erring and long to win them for God through the love of Christ, so that the holy sacrament which they have outside the church to their destruction they may have in the peace of the church to their salvation. If, then, the evils of men are taken out of the way, and the good things of God in men are honoured, there will be brotherly concord and lovely peace, so that in the hearts of men the love of Christ may conquer the persuasion of the devil.

So when they come to us from the party of Donatus, we do not receive their evils, that is, dissension and error; these are taken out of the way as obstacles to concord, and we embrace them as brothers, standing with them, as the apostle says, in the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, and recognizing in them the good things of God: whether holy baptism, or the blessing of ordination, or the profession of continence, or the consecration of virginity, or faith in the Trinity, and whatever else there is; all of which, even if they were there, profited nothing, since love was not there. For who truly says that he has the love of Christ when he does not embrace his unity? So when they come to the Catholic Church, they do not receive here what they had; so that what they had may begin to profit them, they receive here what they did not have. For here they receive the root of love in the bond of peace and in the fellowship of unity, so that all the sacraments of truth which they have may avail them not for condemnation but for deliverance. For branches ought not to boast that they are not the wood of thorns but of the vine; for if they do not live in the root, they will be thrown into the fire with all their fine appearance. But of certain broken branches the apostle said that God is able to graft them in again. And so, dearest brother, whoever of them you see perhaps doubting on what terms they are received by us, show them this handwriting of mine, which you know well; and if they wish to have it, let them have it; for I call God to witness on my soul that I will receive them in such a way that they will keep not only the baptism of Christ which they received, but also the honour of their sacred profession and their continence.

When we came to Subsana and inquired into what had been done there in our absence and against our will, we found some things done as we had heard, others otherwise, but all to be lamented and borne; and, as far as the Lord helped, we corrected them partly by rebuking, partly by admonishing, partly by praying. As for what grieved us most after your Holiness's departure, that the brothers were sent away from there without a guide for the journey, we ask you to forgive it and to know that it was done more from timidity than from malice. For since they thought that those brothers were being sent by our son Timothy expressly to provoke your Charity to anger against us, and since they themselves wished to keep everything untouched for our arrival, which they hoped would be together with you, they thought that the brothers would not set out if they did not get a guide for the journey. Yet who doubts that it was a sin? Hence it also came about that Fossor was told that Timothy had already set out with those brothers. This was certainly false, but it was not said by the presbyter; and it has been most plainly shown to us, as far as such things are usually shown, that brother Carcedonius was wholly ignorant of all these things.

But why dwell on this further? Our son Timothy, very greatly disturbed at having, much against his will, fallen into so unexpected an uncertainty, told us that, while you were urging him to serve God at Subsana, he burst out and swore that he would never leave you at all. And when we asked what he wished, he answered that he was prevented by this oath from being where we had wished him to be even before, especially now that he is assured by the clear proof of his freedom. And when we had shown him that he would not be guilty of perjury if it came about not through him but through you that he could not be with you, to avoid scandal, since he could swear about his own will and not yours, and he admitted that you had not sworn anything to him in return, he finally said, as a servant of God and a son of the church ought to say, that whatever we, together with your Holiness, decided about him he would follow without hesitation. Therefore we ask and beseech your prudence, by the love of Christ, to remember all that we said, and to gladden us by your reply. For we who are stronger (if indeed this may be said amid such great dangers of temptations) ought, as the apostle says, to bear the burdens of the weak. Brother Timothy has not written to your Holiness because your holy brother has reported everything that happened. Mindful of us, may you glory in the Lord, most blessed lord and venerably dear and most sincere brother.

If I say what the case itself compels me to say, where will be the solicitude of love? But if I do not say it, where will be the frankness of friendship? Yet, wavering meanwhile, I have chosen rather to clear myself than to accuse you. You wrote that you wondered that we had been willing to tolerate, with grief to ourselves, what could have been amended by correction; as if what has been done wrongly were not to be grieved over, even if afterwards it is corrected as far as possible; or as if that were not above all to be tolerated which, though it is plain that it was done wrongly, cannot be undone. So stop wondering, most sincere brother. For Timothy was ordained subdeacon at Subsana without my counsel and against my will, while the deliberation about what should be done with him was still floating between our differing opinions. See, I still grieve, although he has now returned to you, in which we do not regret having obeyed your will.

Hear too what we corrected by rebuking, admonishing, and praying, even before he set out from here, lest it still seem to you that nothing was corrected by us then because he had not yet returned to you. By rebuking we corrected first Timothy himself, who disobeyed you by setting out to your Holiness earlier without consulting brother Carcedonius, from which the origin of this tribulation of ours arose; then the presbyter and Verinus, through whom, we found, his ordination was brought about. For when all of them, as we rebuked them, confessed that all these things had not been done rightly and asked to be forgiven, it would have been too proud of us not to believe them corrected. For they could not bring it about that these things had not been done; but neither did we aim at anything else by rebuking than that they should recognize that they had acted wrongly and be sorry. By admonishing we corrected, first, all of them, that they should not dare such things in future, lest they experience the wrath of God; then especially Timothy, who said that only his oath compelled him to go to your Charity, that, if your Holiness, considering what we had said together, should not wish him to be with you, as we hoped would happen, because of the scandal to the weak, for whom Christ died, and because of church discipline, which they dangerously neglect (since he had already begun to be a reader here), he should then, free from the bond of the oath, serve God with a most even mind, to whom we shall render account of our actions. Brother Carcedonius himself too we had brought, as far as we could, by admonishing, to accept most patiently whatever provision for and necessity of preserving church discipline might require to be done about him. By praying we had corrected ourselves, so as to commend to the mercy of God both the guidance and the outcome of our counsels, and, if any indignation had stung us, to be healed by taking refuge under his healing right hand. See how much we had corrected, partly by rebuking, partly by admonishing, partly by praying.

And now, considering the bond of love, so that we may not be possessed by Satan (for we are not ignorant of his designs), what else ought we to have done but obey your will, since you did not think that what had been done could be corrected unless the man himself, in whose case you complain that you were wronged, were restored to your jurisdiction? Brother Carcedonius himself also did this with an even mind, thinking of Christ in you, though not without considerable disturbance of mind, for which I ask you to pray for him. And while I still thought I should consider whether to send another letter to your Brotherliness while Timothy stayed with us, he himself feared your fatherly displeasure and cut short my deliberation, not only allowing but even urging that Timothy be returned to you.

But I, brother Severus, leave my case to your judgement. For I am sure that Christ dwells in your heart, by whom I beseech you to consult him as he presides over your mind, which is subject to him, whether a man who had already begun to read in the church entrusted to my stewardship, and had read not once but a second and third time at Subsana, and, accompanying the presbyter of the church of Subsana, at Turres, at Cizau, and at Verbalis, can or ought to be judged not to have been a reader. And just as we, at God's command, corrected what was done afterwards against our will, so you too, at the same command, correct likewise what was done earlier without your knowledge. For I have no fear that you fail to understand how wide a door is opened to dissolving the order of church discipline if a cleric of one church swears to anyone that he will not leave him, and that person allows him to stay with him, claiming that he does so in order not to be the cause of his perjury; whereas surely the one who does not allow this, and will not permit him to remain with him, keeps the peaceable rule without any blame, since the cleric could swear only about himself and not about another.

We do not disdain to look at bodies that are less beautiful, especially since our own souls are not yet beautiful, as we hope they will be when he who is ineffably beautiful appears to us, in whom we now believe without seeing; for then we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. We admonish you, if you receive me gladly and as a brother, to think so of your soul too, and not to presume that it is beautiful, but, as the apostle commands, to rejoice in hope and to do what follows; for he says: 'Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation'; for in hope we have been saved; as again the same apostle says: 'Hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.' May this patience not fail in you; and in a good conscience wait for the Lord, act manfully, let your heart be strengthened, and wait for the Lord.

It is indeed plain that, if you came to us while not in communion with the venerable bishop Aurelius, you could not communicate with us either; but we would do this with the same love with which we do not doubt he does it. Nor would your coming be burdensome to us on that account, since you too ought to act with an even mind for the sake of church discipline, especially with a clear conscience, which you and God know. For neither has he, if he has postponed the examination of your case, done so out of hatred for you rather than because of his own pressing duties; if you knew them as you know your own, you would neither wonder nor be saddened. We ask you to believe the same of ours, since likewise you cannot know them. There are bishops greater than we, more worthy in authority and nearer in place, through whom you could more easily pursue the cases of the church in your charge. Yet I have not kept silent about your tribulation and the complaint of your letter to my venerable brother and colleague, the aged Aurelius, whom I am bound to esteem with the honour due to his merits, but I have taken care to convey your innocence to him by a copy of your letter. I received your letter either the day before or two days before the Lord's birthday, in which you indicated that he was coming to the church of Badesila, by which you fear the people of God will be disturbed and corrupted. Therefore I do not dare to address your people by letter. I could reply to those who wrote to me; but to write of my own accord to a people not committed to my stewardship, how could I?

Nevertheless, what I say to you alone, who wrote to me, let it reach through you those to whom it needs to be said. You yourselves, first of all, do not scandalize the church by reading to the people Scriptures which the church's canon has not received; for by these heretics, and especially the Manichees, are accustomed to overturn untrained minds, and I hear that they are gladly hiding in your district. So I wonder at your prudence, that you admonished me to order that those who come from you to us, to the monastery, should not be received, so that what was decreed by us in council might stand, and you do not remember what was laid down in council as to which are the canonical Scriptures that ought to be read among the people of God. So go over the council again and commit to memory all that you read there; and there you will also find that the decree was only about clergy, not also about laymen, that those coming from anywhere should not be received into the monastery; not that a monastery was mentioned, but it was laid down that no one should receive another's cleric. But at a recent council it was decreed that those who have left or been expelled from any monastery should not become clerics or superiors of monasteries elsewhere. So if anything about Privatio has troubled you, know that he has not yet been received into the monastery by us; but I have sent his case to the aged Aurelius, so that I may do whatever he decides about him. For I wonder whether one can already be counted a reader who has read Scriptures only once, and those not canonical. For if he is on that account a church reader, then that scripture too is church Scripture; but if that scripture is not church Scripture, whoever reads it, even in church, is not a church reader. However, about this young man I must observe whatever the said bishop decides.

But if the people of Vigesila, very dear to us as to you in the heart of Christ, refuse to receive a bishop degraded in a plenary council of Africa, they will act with sound judgement; and they neither can nor should be compelled. And whoever compels them by violence will show what he is, and will make it understood what he was before, when he wished nothing bad to be believed of himself. For no one betrays what kind of case he had so much as one who tries, through secular powers or any kind of violence, with disturbance and complaint, to recover the rank he has lost. For he does not wish to serve Christ, who wills it, but to lord it over Christians who do not will it. Brother, be careful; the devil is very cunning; but Christ is the wisdom of God.

Greeting your Worthiness with the duty owed to your merits, and commending myself warmly to your prayers, I inform your prudence that a certain Abundantius was ordained presbyter on the estate of Strabonia, which belongs to our charge. Since he did not walk in the ways of the servants of God, he had begun to have a bad reputation. Alarmed by this, though not rashly believing anything, but plainly made more anxious, I took pains to see whether I could in any way arrive at some sure evidence of his bad conduct. First I found that he had embezzled money of a certain countryman entrusted to him as a sacred deposit, so that he could give no plausible account of it. Then he was convicted and confessed that on the fast day of the Lord's birthday, when the church of Gippi too was fasting like the others, after he had said farewell to his colleague the presbyter of Gippi, at about the fifth hour, as if he were going to his own church, and having no cleric with him, he stayed on the same estate, both lunched and dined at the house of a certain woman of bad reputation, and stayed in the same house. In this woman's lodging a certain cleric of ours from Hippo was already staying; and because that man knew it very well, he could not deny it; what he denied I left to God, judging what he was not allowed to conceal. I was afraid to entrust a church to him, especially one placed amid the fury of heretics barking round it. And when he asked me to give him a letter to the presbyter of the Armenian estate in the district of Bulla, from which he had come to us, explaining his case, so that nothing worse might be suspected of him, so that he might live there, if possible, more corrected, without the office of presbyter, I did so, moved by pity. But I had especially to inform your prudence of these things, lest some deception creep up on you.

I heard his case when there were a hundred days to the Lord's day of Easter, which will be on the eighth day before the Ides of April. I have taken care to inform your Venerableness of this because of the council, which I did not conceal from him either, but faithfully told him what had been decreed; that if within a year he neglects to bring his case, if he thinks he has any case to bring, no one should hear his voice thereafter. But, most blessed lord and venerably esteemed father, if we think that such evidence of bad conduct in clerics, especially when a bad reputation has begun to accompany them, is to be punished only in the way decreed in the council, we begin to be compelled to wish to examine what cannot be known, and either to condemn what is uncertain or to pass over what is truly unknown. I certainly judged that a presbyter who, on a fast day, when the church of that place too was fasting, after saying farewell to his colleague the presbyter of the same place, dared to stay with a notorious woman, having no cleric with him, to lunch and dine and sleep in one house, should be removed from the office of presbyter, fearing to entrust the church of God to him thereafter. But if perhaps the church judges think otherwise, since the council decreed that the case of a presbyter should be settled by six bishops, let whoever wishes entrust to him the church committed to his care; I confess that I fear to entrust any people whatever to such men, especially those whom no good reputation defends, so that this could be forgiven them; lest, if anything more harmful breaks out, I should blame myself in grief.

You ought indeed to have feared God; but since in rebaptizing the people of Mappalia you wished to be feared as a man, why should a royal command not have force in a province, if a provincial command had so much force on an estate? If you compare persons, you are a landowner, he is emperor; if you compare places, you are on an estate, he is in a kingdom; if you compare causes, he acts so that division may be mended, you so that unity may be divided. But we do not frighten you with man. For we could act so that you would pay ten pounds of gold according to the imperial orders. Or perhaps you do not have the means to pay what rebaptizers have been ordered to pay, because you spend so much to buy people to rebaptize? But, as I said, we do not frighten you with man; let Christ rather frighten you. I want to know what you would answer him if he said to you: 'Crispinus, was your price dear for buying the fear of the people of Mappalia, and my death cheap for buying the love of all nations? Did what was counted out of your worldly goods avail more for rebaptizing your tenants than what flowed from my side avails for baptizing my peoples?' I know you could hear more if you lent your ear to Christ, and be warned from your very possession how impiously you speak against Christ. For if by human law you presume that you possess firmly what you bought with your silver, how much more firmly does Christ by divine law possess what he bought with his blood! And he will possess unshaken the whole, of which it was said: 'He shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.' But how can you be confident that you will not lose what you seem to have bought in Africa, when you say that Christ, having lost the whole world, has remained in Africa alone?

Why say more? If the people of Mappalia went over to your communion of their own will, let them hear us both, in such a way that what we say is written down and, signed by us, is interpreted to them in Punic; and, with fear of their master removed, let them choose what they wish. For from what we say it will appear whether they remain in falsehood under compulsion or hold the truth willingly. For if they do not understand these things, with what rashness did you bring them over without understanding? But if they understand, let them hear us both, as I said, and do what they wish. If any peoples too have come over to us whom you think compelled by their masters, let the same be done there; let them hear us both and choose what they please. But if you do not want this done, to whom will it not be plain that you do not trust in the truth? But the wrath of God must be guarded against, both here and in the world to come. I adjure you by Christ to answer these things.

I have heard that my letter has reached your hands; but that I have not yet been favoured with a reply I would by no means charge to your Affection; something no doubt has hindered it. So I recognize that I should rather pray the Lord to give your will the means of sending what you have written in reply; for he has already given you the means of writing it, since you can do so very easily whenever you wish.

This too has been reported to me, and I hesitated whether to believe it; but I ought not to hesitate whether to write you something about it as well. It is brief: I have been told that some brothers or other have suggested to your Charity that I wrote a book against you and sent it to Rome. Know that this is false; I call our God to witness that I have not done it. But if perhaps some things are found in some of my writings in which I am found to have thought otherwise than you on some point, I think you ought to recognize, or, if it cannot be recognized, to believe, that it was not said against you but written by me as it seemed to me. I would say this, indeed, in such a way that I am not only most ready, if anything in my writings has troubled you, to receive in a brotherly way what you think against it, ready to rejoice either in my correction or in your goodwill itself, but also ask and beg this of you.

O, if it had been possible, if not living with you, at least as your neighbour, to enjoy you in the Lord in frequent and sweet conversation! But since this has not been granted, I ask you to strive to preserve this very thing, that we are together in Christ as far as we can be, and to increase and perfect it, and not to despise replies, however rare. Greet with my respects the holy brother Paulinianus and all the brothers who rejoice with you and in you in the Lord. Remembering us, may you be heard by the Lord in every holy desire, my dearest and most longed-for lord, and brother to be honoured in Christ.