Letters of Innocent I 6.0–37.5

Innocent to Exsuperius, bishop of Toulouse, greeting. 1. When you consulted me, dearest brother, about what I thought on each of the matters you put forward, I answered what seemed right according to the measure of my understanding: what should be followed, as either teachable reason persuades, or the authority of Scripture shows, or the observed order of the times demonstrates. And indeed your love, following the practice of prudent men, preferred to refer to the apostolic see what ought to be observed in doubtful matters, rather than presumptuously to usurp the holding of whatever seemed right to itself on each point. For why should we think it more shameful to learn something than to be wholly ignorant? To me too teachableness comes from the consultation, while I am compelled to examine the reasons and answer the questions put; and so it happens that one who is asked to teach always learns something. I will set out each question, then, and add the answer.

You asked what ought to be observed about those placed in the ministries of the diaconate or in the office of the presbyterate who are or have been incontinent, as children born to them have revealed. About these both the discipline of the divine laws is manifest, and the clear admonitions of Siricius, bishop of blessed memory, have gone out: that those who are incontinent while placed in such offices be deprived of every ecclesiastical honour, and not be admitted to approach the ministry, which must be fulfilled by continence alone. For very ancient is the authority of the sacred law, kept from the beginning, that the priests were commanded to live in the temple in the year of their turn (Luke 1), so that, serving the sacred offerings, they might claim the divine ministries for themselves pure and cleansed from every stain (1 Chr 24); nor was it right that those who had carnal intercourse, even with a wife, should be admitted to the sacrifices, because it is written: “Be holy, because I too, the Lord your God, am holy.” If to them the use of a wife had been relaxed because of the succession of offspring, since no one from another tribe was allowed to be admitted to the priesthood, how much more ought these priests or Levites to keep chastity from the day of their ordination, whose priesthood or ministry is without succession, and no day passes on which they are free from the divine sacrifices or from the office of baptism! For if Paul writes to the Corinthians, saying, “Abstain for a time, that you may be free for prayer,” and he commanded this to laypeople, much more will priests, for whom the office of praying and sacrificing is continual, always be obliged to abstain from such intercourse. If one has been contaminated by carnal desire, with what shame will he presume to sacrifice, or with what conscience or what merit does he believe that he is heard, when it has been said, “To the pure all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure”? 3. But perhaps he believes this is permitted because it is written, “the husband of one wife.” He did not say this of one who remains in the desire of begetting, but with a view to future continence. For he did not exclude those intact in body, who says, “I would that all were as I myself am”; and he declares more openly, saying, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit”; and he said “having children,” not “begetting.” 4. But the judgment is plainly unequal and divided. For if that form of ecclesiastical life and discipline that went out from bishop Siricius to the provinces is shown not to have reached some, the pardon of ignorance will be granted to them, on condition that from now on they begin to abstain completely. And they shall keep the grades in which they were found, in such a way that they are not permitted to rise to higher ones; it ought to be counted a kindness to them that they do not lose the very place they hold. But if any are found to have known the form of living sent by Siricius and not to have cast off at once the desires of lust, they are to be removed in every way, since after admonition was known they judged pleasure to be preferred.

This too was asked: what ought to be observed about those who after baptism were at all times given over to the pleasures of incontinence, and at the very end of their life ask for penance and at the same time for reconciliation to communion. 6. About these the earlier practice was harder; the later, with mercy intervening, more lenient. For the former custom held that penance should be granted but communion denied. For since persecutions were frequent in those times, communion was rightly denied, lest the ease of granting it should fail to recall from lapsing people secure of reconciliation; penance was granted, so that not everything would be wholly denied; and the circumstances of the time made the remission harder. But after our Lord restored peace to his churches, now that terror has been driven away, it has been decided that communion be given to those departing, both because of the Lord's mercy, as a viaticum to those setting out, and so that we may not seem to follow the harshness and severity of the Novatian heretic, who denies pardon. So final communion will be given together with penance, so that such people, even at their last, by our Saviour's leave, may be rescued from perpetual destruction.

It was also asked about those who after baptism held public office and either applied torture alone or even pronounced capital sentence. 8. About these we read nothing defined by our forebears. For they remembered that these powers had been granted by God, and that the sword had been permitted for the punishment of the guilty, and that the minister of God had been given as an avenger in such matters. How, then, should they reprehend a deed that they saw granted by God's authority? About these, then, we hold as has been observed until now, so that we may seem neither to overturn discipline nor to go against the authority of the Lord. But all their deeds will be kept for them for the account they must render.

And this too you desired to know: why husbands who are in communion do not keep company with adulterous wives, whereas, on the contrary, wives are seen to remain in fellowship with adulterous husbands. 10. On this point, the Christian religion condemns adultery in both sexes by equal reasoning. But women do not easily accuse their husbands of adultery, and hidden sins receive no punishment; whereas men have been accustomed more freely to report adulterous wives to the priests, and therefore communion is denied to the women when their crime is revealed. But when a husband's offence is hidden, no one is easily kept from communion on suspicion; he will certainly be removed if his shameful deed is uncovered. Since, then, the case is equal, sometimes, when proof is lacking, the ground for punishment rests.

You also wished to ask whether those who draft petitions are freely permitted, after the regeneration of baptism, to ask rulers for someone's death or for blood on a charge. This the rulers never grant without inquiry; they always send the deeds or crimes themselves back to the judges, so that they may be punished once the case is known. When these have been delegated to the investigating judge, either acquittal or condemnation is pronounced according to the nature of the case. And while the authority of the laws is exercised against the wicked, the one who drafted the petition will be free of guilt.

Your love also inquired about those who, after a repudiation has intervened, have joined themselves to another marriage. It is manifest that these are adulterers on both sides. And those who, while the wife is living, even though the marriage seems to have been dissolved, have hastened to another union cannot but be seen as adulterers, so much so that even the persons with whom such men have been joined are themselves seen to have committed adultery, according to what we read in the Gospel: “Whoever puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery; likewise he who marries a woman who has been put away commits adultery.” And therefore all are to be kept from the communion of the faithful. But concerning their parents or relatives nothing of the kind can be decided, unless they are shown to have been instigators of the unlawful union.

Which books are received in the canon, the short list appended shows. These are what you wished to be told: the five books of Moses, that is, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; and Joshua son of Nun; Judges, one; the four books of Kingdoms, together with Ruth; sixteen books of the Prophets; five books of Solomon; the Psalter. Likewise of the histories: Job, one book; Tobit, one book; Esther, one; Judith, one; Maccabees, two; Esdras, two; Chronicles, two books. Likewise of the New Testament: four books of the Gospels; fourteen letters of the apostle Paul; three letters of John; two letters of Peter; the letter of Jude; the letter of James; the Acts of the Apostles; the Apocalypse of John. But the rest, which [circulate] under the name of Matthias or of James the Less, or under the name of Peter and John, which were written by a certain Leucius, [or under the name of Andrew, which were written by the philosophers Nexocharis and Leonidas,] or under the name of Thomas, and any others there may be, you should know are not only to be rejected but also condemned. Given on the tenth day before the Kalends of March, in the consulship of the most illustrious Stilicho, for the second time, and Anthemius.

Bishop Innocent to the presbyters and deacons, and to all the clergy and people of the church of Constantinople who are under Bishop John, his beloved brothers, greeting.

For what they suffer the one consolation is patience. From the letter of your charity, which you sent through the presbyter Germanus and the deacon Cassian, I have learned with anxious concern the scene of evils which you set before my eyes; by reading it over and over I have perceived with how many calamities and hardships the faith is labouring. This only the consolation of patience can heal. For our God will soon put an end to such tribulations, and it will be good to have endured them. Indeed, we recognized, praising your resolve, that this very necessary consolation was placed at the beginning of your charity’s letter, confirmed by many testimonies urging to patience. For you yourselves anticipated by your letter the consolation we owed you by ours. This patience our Lord is accustomed to give to those who labour: that the servants of Christ console themselves even in tribulations, reflecting that what they suffer has already happened to the saints before. And we too can borrow consolation for ourselves from your letter. For we are not strangers to the fellowship of your grief, since we are afflicted in you.

How unjustly a bishop was substituted for John while he was still living. For who could bear the wrongs committed by those whom, above all others, it befitted to be zealous for tranquillity, peace and concord? But now, in perverse fashion, men are driven from the sees of their churches. Our brother and fellow priest John, your bishop, was the first to suffer this unjustly, since he was not heard on any ground. No charge is brought, none is heard. And what is this ruinous counsel? That, without any form of judgment being held or sought, others are substituted in the place of living priests: as though those who have begun with such a crime could be judged to have, or to have done, anything right. For we have never found that such things were done by our fathers, but rather forbidden, since no one has been given leave to ordain another in the place of one living. For a reprobate ordination cannot take away the honour of a priest, since he who is unjustly substituted cannot be a bishop at all.

Which canons are to be received or rejected. As regards the observance of canons, we say that only those are to be obeyed which were defined at Nicaea; these alone the catholic church ought to follow and acknowledge. But if others are brought forward by some which disagree with the canons of Nicaea and are shown to have been composed by heretics, these are rejected by catholic bishops. For it is not lawful to join what heretics have devised to catholic rules. Indeed, by contrary and unlawful decisions they constantly aim at undermining the judgment of the Nicene fathers. These canons, then, we say are not only not to be followed but are to be condemned together with the doctrines of heretics and schismatics, as they were already condemned in the synod of Sardica by the bishops who preceded us. For it would be better that things rightly done be condemned than that things done against the canons obtain any validity, dearest brothers.

The evils can be healed by one ecumenical synod. But what are we to do against these things at present? A synodal hearing is needed, which we said long ago must be assembled. For it alone can calm the commotions of such storms. Until we obtain it, it will be useful meanwhile to await the remedy of these evils from the will of the great God and of Christ himself our Lord. Everything that has now been thrown into confusion through the envy of the devil for the testing of the faithful will be brought to peace. There is nothing we ought not to hope for from the Lord through firmness of faith. For we too have long and much considered by what means an ecumenical synod may be assembled, so that by God’s will the turbulent commotions may at last subside. Let us then hold out for a little while; and, fortified by the rampart of patience, let us hope that all will be restored by the help of our God. All the things that you said you are enduring we had already learned by careful questioning from our fellow bishops who fled to Rome, though at different times, namely Demetrius, Cyriacus, Eulysius and Palladius, who are with us.

The return of my most welcome fellow presbyter Germanus ought not to be empty of a service from us. For to greet the dearest through the dear seems to us in a way natural and fitting. We desire, then, most beloved, that your brotherhood rejoice in the Lord, and we pray you to repay to God equal prayers for us: because, as you well know, we accomplish more by shared and mutual prayers than by single or private ones.

Innocent to his beloved brother John.

Although an innocent man ought to expect everything favourable and to ask mercy from God, yet a fitting letter has been sent by us too, who urge patience, through the deacon Cyriacus, lest insult be stronger to crush than a good conscience to raise one up to hope. For you, the teacher and shepherd of so many peoples, do not need to be taught that all the best men are always and constantly tested, whether they remain in the vigour of patience and do not give in to any labour or trouble. And indeed conscience is a firm defence against everything that happens unjustly; and unless one overcomes these things by patience, he gives grounds for bad suspicion against himself. For he ought to bear everything who relies first on God and then on his conscience. Indeed, a good and upright man can be exercised to patience but cannot be overcome, since the divine Scriptures fortify and guard his mind. For the sacred readings which we hand on to the peoples abound in examples, which testify that nearly all the saints were troubled in various ways and tested as by a kind of trial, and so came to the crown of patience. Let your very conscience, then, most venerable brother, console your charity, for in calamities it holds the consolation of virtue. For under the gaze of Christ the Lord, a pure conscience stands in the harbour of peace.

Innocent to his most beloved brother Rufus.

To the most chosen and most glorious Moses the Lord so entrusted everything in freeing and ruling Israel that he commanded him, in a plain report, to follow the counsel of his father-in-law Jethro: namely, that he should appoint men nearly equal to him in the rank of judicial dignity, who would settle the multitudes of cases among the peoples according to the place entrusted to them, while he himself would be free above all for divine consolations. Nor was the pattern of the apostles set forth otherwise: that they, appointed as chiefs of the gospel, entrusted the cases and needs of outward affairs to their disciples to care for and attend to. So, finally, Paul, admirable in all compassion, entrusted to Titus what he should care for in Crete, and to Timothy what he should arrange through Asia, as we know from reading the sacred letters.

This grace, then, coming forward by divine providence, has taught that the churches separated from me by such long distances must be provided for in this way: that they should judge the care and the cases, if any arise throughout the churches of Achaea, Thessaly, Old Epirus, New Epirus and Crete, Dacia Mediterranea, Dacia Ripensis, Moesia, Dardania and Praevalis, to be entrusted, with Christ the Lord’s assent, to your prudence and gravity. For truly, by his most sacred admonitions, we lay this charge on the foresight and virtue of your most chosen sincerity, not establishing these things for the first time, but imitating our apostolic predecessors, who willed these things to be laid on the most blessed Acholius and Anysius for their merits. For it is most just that those who have deserved well be adorned with honours, as it seems necessary that the arrogant be blunted. It is right, then, that there be reward for the good and censure for the less good: for thus the one is corrected and the other ennobled.

Take up, therefore, dearest brother, in our stead, the care of the churches written above, saving their primacy; and among the primates themselves, let the first [bishops] not request whatever they need to send to us without your judgment. For in this way either whatever it is will be settled through your experience, or we order that it be brought on to us by your counsel. Know, moreover, that it is lawful for your brotherhood, and permitted by the favour of the apostolic see, when any church matter has to be dealt with and examined either in your province or in the provinces mentioned, to take with you as associates whichever bishops you wish from whatever churches, so that by their faith and moderation you may, as the best arbiter, direct whatever necessity or the case demands, and as chief mediator, chosen by us, decide it. We have ordered the whole preparation of the documents in the case of the archives to be made with the presbyter Senecio, a very mature man. So, reviewing well both our earlier letter and these papers, recognize what you ought to do. For we have made this will of ours sufficiently known, as was fitting, by letters to each province. Dated the fifteenth day before the Kalends of July [17 June 412], in the consulship of Honorius for the ninth time and Theodosius for the fifth time, Augusti.

The service of our charity is not broken by any distance, even if the paper bears no letters. For spiritual grace lives in each other’s hearts, and the very fellowship of priests fosters our love. Take care, as is fitting, to guard the unity of the church; and let us all alike think and declare the same, dearest brother. I have therefore written this letter in advance on the reckoning of Easter for the next year (I mean the coming one). For since on the eleventh day before the Kalends of April the moon is reckoned almost sixteen (for it is somewhat less), and likewise since on the fourth day before the same Kalends the twenty-third falls, I have judged that the feast of Easter should be celebrated on the eleventh day before the said Kalends; since we know that no Easter has ever been held before now on the twenty-third moon. I have set out and declared the substance of my judgment. Now it will be for your prudence, my brother and partner, to discuss this very matter with our like-minded fellow priests in a most religious synod, so that, if nothing conflicts with our arrangement, you may write back to us fully and openly, so that we may announce in due time the Easter day determined, to be kept, as is customary, by letters sent beforehand. Although I know that you will receive our fellow presbyter Archidamus most gladly and in your accustomed way, I nevertheless ask, beyond what is needed, that you deign to count him among your own.

Letter of exhortation of Pope Innocent to the noblewoman Juliana.

It is well known to all that the greatness of your devotion stands out as a singular member of the church and is most reverently honoured by us. For at the very summit of nobility you devote to the church a devotion far nobler, and you obey Christ’s precepts more, rejoicing in the knowledge of him, and you exult in faith rather than boasting of the flower of so great a lineage. It is the highest virtue to have conquered the flesh, and it is a great grace of Christ to have surpassed nobility by conduct, lady daughter, deservedly illustrious. Being assured, then, most beloved, strive to make whatever span of this life remains illustrious with eternal and divine duties, so that he who made you distinguished may render you more glorious for himself through the ages.

Innocent to Marcian, bishop of Naissus.

At an earlier time, if I remember rightly, I recall that I sent a letter both to your love and to our brothers and fellow bishops Rufus and the others concerning the clerics of Naissus, namely those who claimed that they had been ordained by Bonosus as presbyters or deacons before his condemnation: that if, having left and condemned his error, they wished to be joined to the church, they should be gladly received, lest any who were worthy of recovering salvation should perish in that same [error]. But now, while I was staying in the city of Ravenna because of the very frequent needs of the Roman people, Germanius, who says he is a presbyter, and Lupentius, who calls himself a deacon, having undertaken a kind of embassy for many such men, poured out their prayer and were eager to express their own griefs. They say that they hold churches in the parishes of your love, but have not been able to obtain your communion, namely for this reason: because a certain man named Rusticius had received the presbyterate by a repeated ordination. And it becomes no light hindrance, while either they grieve that such a man is kept in the church, or he thinks that others ought to be wronged as he recognizes he was wronged. And although my letter which I mentioned above contains more on this matter, we have nevertheless thought it right to admonish your brotherhood now also: if it is truly established that some were ordained by Bonosus before his condemnation and afterwards wished, or now wish, to return, we judge that they are to be received; especially since the men mentioned assert that they were ordained so long ago that the man of holy memory Cornelius, bishop of the city of Sirmium, and also our brother Nicetas, and several others were present when they were advanced to the honours they say they hold. Therefore, dearest brother, if their claim is accepted as the truth, you ought not to hesitate to receive those whom you have allowed so long to keep the churches entrusted to them.

Innocent to Rufus, Eusebius, Eustathius, Claudius, Maximianus, Eugenius, Gerontius, John, Polychronius, Sophronius, Flavian, Hilary, Macedonius, Callicrates, Zosimus, Profuturus, Nicetas, Hermogenes, Vincent, Asiologus, Terentian, Herodian and Marcian, bishops of Macedonia, and to the deacons, greeting in the Lord. Great joy filled me when, after so many perils of, so to speak, the whole world, Vitalis, the archdeacon, the bearer of your letter, arrived, sent from those parts all the way to us. When we saw him, we at once, as was fitting, asked about your state. And when we found that you were living as you would wish, we gave abundant thanks to our God, because he protects his servants who serve his altars in adversity and deigns to govern them in prosperity. When he had delivered the letter, I ordered it to be read through at once; in it I perceived many things set down which brought astonishment to our minds and made us doubt not a little whether we were thinking wrongly or whether they had been set down as they sounded. When I had had them read again and again, I noticed that some injury was being done to the apostolic see, to which the report was sent as to the head of the churches, since its judgment was still being drawn into doubt. Hence the repeated inquiry of your report compels me now to repeat, with clearer arguments, the form of the things about which I remember writing long ago.

Those who are reported to have taken widows as wives I have learned not only to have been made clerics but even to have reached the insignia of the highest priesthood, which no one is unaware is against the precepts of the law. For Moses the lawgiver cries out: “Let the priest take a virgin as wife”; and, lest anything in this precept be thought ambiguous, he added, “not a widow, nor one put away.” Against this precept, laid down by divine authority, no defence from any other command is set up, except your custom, which, as you yourselves admit, was established from ignorance (to put it more modestly), not from apostolic tradition and sound reason. But let your love know that we, and all the churches through East and West, do not admit these things at all; we do not take such men even into the lowest place of the ecclesiastical order, and if they are found, we remove them.

Next it is put forward that a man ought not to be called twice married who as a catechumen had a wife and lost her, if after baptism he obtained another; and that she should be regarded as the first who was joined to the new man, because that earlier marriage was washed away by the sacrament of baptism together with the other crimes. Since this is said of one wife, certainly, if he had three wives while still in the old man, the wife who is fourth after baptism will be the first for those who interpret so, and she who was married in fourth place will receive the name of virgin. Who, I ask, does not see that this is against the precept of the Apostle, who says that the one who is to become a priest must be the husband of one wife? 4. But it is objected that in baptism everything that was done in the old man is dissolved. Tell me, and I speak with your leave: are only crimes forgiven in baptism, or also those things that are done according to the precepts of the law and the institutions of God? To take a wife is either a crime or not a crime. If it is a crime, then (I would say it begging pardon) the author will be at fault, who blessed them in paradise, when he himself joined them, so that they might commit crimes. But if it is not a crime, because it is wrong to call a crime what God has joined, and Solomon added, “For a wife is prepared for a man by God,” how is that believed to be forgiven among crimes which we read was accomplished with God as its author? 5. What is reckoned of the sons of such men? Will those who were received from her who was a wife before baptism not be admitted to share the inheritance? And are they to be called natural or spurious, because, as it seems to you, there is no lawful marriage except that which is contracted after baptism? The Lord himself, when he was asked by the Jews whether it was lawful to put away a wife, and explained that it ought not to be done, added: “What therefore God has joined, let man not separate.” And lest he be thought to have spoken of those whom men obtain after baptism, let them remember that this was both asked by Jews and answered to Jews. I ask, and I ask anxiously: if one and the same woman is the wife of a man who was first a catechumen and afterwards a believer, and he received sons from her while he was a catechumen and afterwards others while a believer, are they to be called brothers, or will they have no share in dividing the inheritance after their father's death, those from whom spiritual regeneration is believed to have taken away the name of sons? Since it is absurd to think and judge so, what reason, for pity's sake, is there for this to be defended, and boasted of by empty opinion rather than strengthened by any authority, when what the law commanded and God joined cannot be counted among sins? 6. If a catechumen has striven after virtues, followed humility, held to patience, given alms, rescued by any means those destined for death, abhorred adulteries, kept chastity, I ask whether he loses these when he has become a believer, because everything the old man did is thought to be taken away through baptism? Let us look at the Gentile Cornelius, who by prayers and alms [was found worthy] to see a revelation and Peter himself: were these things, on account of which baptism seems to have been granted to him, taken away from him through baptism? If that is believed, believe me, the error is no small one: for whatever has been done well and kept according to the precepts of the law cannot be lost to the doer; what is done by God's command cannot be called sin; and what is not sin ought not at all to be dissolved among sins. And it will be sound to judge that the name of the former wife cannot be abolished, since it was not forgiven as a sin, because it was accomplished by the will of God.

We have come to the third question, which because of its difficulty requires a longer discussion: since we say that those ordained by heretics have a head wounded through that laying on of hands [and where a wound has been inflicted, it needs a remedy so that it can recover health; and that health, following upon a wound, cannot be without a scar], and that where the remedy of penance is necessary, the honour of ordination cannot have a place. For if, as we read, whatever the unclean man touches will be unclean, how will that be granted to him which cleanness and purity are accustomed to receive? But on the other side it is asserted that one who has lost honour cannot give honour, and that the other received nothing, because there was nothing in the giver that he could receive. We agree, and it is true. Certainly, because he could not give what he did not have, he gave, through the wicked laying on of hands, the condemnation which he did have; and how one who has been made a partaker of condemnation ought to receive honour, I cannot find.

But it is said that the true and just blessing of a lawful bishop takes away every defect that had been introduced by a defective one. Then, if this is so, let the sacrilegious, adulterers, and those guilty of every crime be brought forward to ordination, since crimes or vices are thought to be taken away by the blessing of ordination. There is no place for penance, it says, because ordination can achieve what long satisfaction used to achieve. But it is the law of our church, for those who come from the heretics but were nevertheless baptized there, to grant through the laying on of hands only lay communion, and not to advance any of them into the honour of the clergy, even the least. But those who have passed from the Catholic church to heresy, who ought not to be received except through penance, among you not only do no penance but are even heaped with honour.

But the chief deliberation of Anysius, once our brother, and of our other fellow priests was this: that those whom Bonosus had ordained should be received as ordained, lest they remain with him and no small scandal arise. We have, I think, overcome the doubtful points. It is clear, then, that what was decreed as a remedy and from the necessity of the time was not so at the beginning, and that there were old rules, handed down by the apostles or apostolic men, which the Roman church guards and orders to be guarded by those who are accustomed to listen to it. But the necessity of the time urgently demanded that this be done. Therefore what necessity devised as a remedy, when the necessity ceases, must certainly cease likewise along with what was pressing: for the lawful order is one thing, the usurpation that the time drives to be done for the present is another.

But, [they say,] the canons established at Nicaea permitted this to be done in the case of the Novatianists. First that canon instituted by the fathers must be set out, so that we may notice what was meant or commanded by them, and in what way. “Concerning those,” it says, “who call themselves Cathari, that is, the pure, and at some time come to the catholic church, it pleased the holy and great synod that, having received the laying on of hands, they should so remain in the clergy.” I can indeed say that this was commanded concerning the Novatianists alone and does not apply to the clerics of other heresies. For if they had been defining it concerning all, they would have added that those returning from the Novatianists and other heretics ought to be received in their own order. That this is so can be confirmed above all by what was said of the Paulianists, those coming from whom they command even to be baptized. Surely, when they give orders about the Paulianists, are all who return from heretics to be baptized after this example? Since no one would dare to do this, reason itself shows that it was commanded concerning them only. Finally, those rightly baptized by the evangelist Philip, Peter and John complete by the laying on of hands alone. But those whom the apostle Paul found baptized with John’s baptism, and asked whether they had received the Holy Spirit, and who confessed that they had not even heard the name, he ordered to be baptized. You see, then, that those rightly baptized cannot have that gift repeated, and that those washed otherwise, with water only, are seen to need to be baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. So too it is read, with clear evidence, that the command concerned the Novatianists only. Plain reason declares why it was distinguished for these two heresies: because the Paulianists do not baptize at all in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, while the Novatianists baptize with those same awesome and venerable names, and among them no question was ever raised about the unity of the divine power, that is, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; and therefore, all the others being set aside, this one alone was chosen to which they believed this could be granted, because they did not sin in the sacrament of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

But if anyone passing from the catholic church to heresy, or a believer gone back to apostasy, comes to his senses and wishes to return, can he for the same reason be admitted to the clergy, when his offence cannot be wiped out except by long penance? Nor do the canons themselves by their authority permit a cleric to be made after penance. Hence it is clear that those who passed from the catholic church to Bonosus after his condemnation, and allowed themselves, or desired, to be ordained by him, ought not to have received the dignity of church ordination, since, abandoning the common judgment of all the churches, they thought their own vanity in Bonosus was to be followed. But it is well known that many suffered force, were dragged in unwilling, and were ordained by him against their resistance. Let whoever believes this tell me, I ask: if after his ordination by Bonosus he was not present when he celebrated the sacraments, if he did not share in his communion, if he at once left his wicked conventicle and returned to the church, such a man can have some colour of excuse. But as for those who returned to the church after a year or months, it is understood that, because they knew that in the catholic church they could not receive ordination on account of their vices, they went to him who made unlawful ordinations at random and without any examination, believing that through that appointment they could find in the catholic church a place of which they had earlier despaired. Now I ask what remains: concerning one who returned after a month or more, when he trusted that he had been ordained presbyter by Bonosus, if he did not celebrate the sacraments, did not give them to the people, did not complete the Masses according to custom, what you judge about such men, I pray you, declare more openly. In sum, certainly those who received nothing from Bonosus are guilty of a usurped dignity, whether they claimed for themselves the authority of celebrating the sacraments or did not, and thought themselves to be what had been granted them by no regular reason.

Let your love, then, see that such things have been let pass up to now, and take care that what, as you say, necessity commanded is not presumed now that the churches are established in peace. But, as often happens whenever sin is committed by peoples or by a crowd, since punishment cannot be inflicted on all because of their number, it usually passes unpunished; I say that the past is to be left to the judgment of God, and that for the future the greatest care must be taken.

I come now to Photinus, the greatest theme, as it were, and, what is anxious and very difficult for me, I shall turn over the judgments of my elders. Something rather severe had been decreed about him in one way or another, as you yourselves remember. But since you show that this was obtained from this see by stealth through false rumour and elicited by snares, and since the matter has come back to a safe state, we grant this pardon, at your urging, after a condemnation pronounced by apostolic lips; and we judge it harder than all hard things not to give our consent to your great assurances, you being so good and so dear. In accordance, then, with your approval, dearest brothers, and your judgment and request, hold it lawful to establish Bishop Photinus as you beg, and, having obtained your wish by your labour and testimony, receive our judgment changed for the better. And do not expect that Eustathius, very often approved by me, will be stripped of the grace of the diaconate. For I gladly hear you when you are anxious for someone’s salvation; against the head, even if it has to be done, I do not gladly admit it. To whom you stretch out your hand, I stretch it out with you; to whom I stretch it out, stretch it out with me. For this apostolic kindness was declared to the Corinthians: that good men should always follow without distinction a sentence spoken and recalled in one spirit. For, I confess, this first disposes me well toward the deacon Eustathius: that he has neither spoken anything against the faith nor admitted anyone who spoke so, nor have I learned that he committed any crime unto death, or that one was ever alleged or invented. And one who is sound in these things, if in some way he has not lovable manners, is to be held as less loved for the time, not reckoned as an enemy to be handed over to the devil for ever. I learn that among those quarrels and storms he held different views against the zeal of many, I do not say of what kind, and that hence, although the matters and calamities themselves have been amended, he has not up to now been able to revive in your favour through the commendation of the subdeacons Dizonianus and Cyriacus. Extinguish, I pray, the passionate and unjust rivalries of whomever you see, against him and the men named, so that he, whole with us and restored with you along with his own, seeing a deep peace and a charity not feigned, may meet you all and each one, and, joined with you for ever by the bonds of charity which are in no way loosed by Christ, may rejoice in the Lord. Dated the Ides of December [13 December 414], in the consulship of Flavius Constantius, a most distinguished man.

The delay of our fellow bishops Maximianus and Eumenius, or rather the difficulty of the times, has caused you to repeat your complaint about Bubalius and Taurianus, and us to rise up again against these most abandoned men. But, as far as I can, I shall measure out a summary of such great evils in fewer words, and briefly go over again what I have seen in the volume of your letter. It ought not to have seemed grievous to your most pious minds that anyone’s judgment should be reconsidered; for truth, the more often it is stirred, shines the more in the light, and ruin called back into judgment is condemned more heavily and without repentance. For it is a divine fruit, dearest brothers, that justice be reviewed often.

But I see that this has moved your minds: that Bubalius, often caught in many deceits, produced copies of a letter forged as if from us, although, given the man’s habit, nothing he produced could now seem worthy of belief. But let all murmuring about such business now be silent, and let the very breathings of the convicted devil be stifled. We have attached to this our earlier letter, which we had sent through the bishops mentioned, in which the full judgment of our mind is so set out that, when you open it, you will seek again nothing doubtful, nothing further, in this case. Send this little page of ours carefully to the bishops of Crete to be read, so that they may know most fully what has been pronounced about Bubalius and Taurianus and the rest; so that those who are worthy of administration may take care to beware of such men, lest they share such things.

The grace of apostolic favour has shone all the way to us with the great beauty of peace, and has poured such light and joy upon the faithful that, while we were giving God the greatest praises, we confessed that we owed greater ones. And we were the more gladdened by God because, having examined every side of your brotherhood’s actions, we learned that all was done with such piety and patience that in everything we praised the Lord. And we see that success itself was granted to your labours because, being a lover of peace with all your strength, you sought it and found it, and, having found it, kept it with the highest charity, both toward all and especially toward those who were once counted under the name of the bishops Paulinus and Evagrius. (I have the sum of my wishes, that the cleansing of the old blemish has been granted in your times and by your merits.) Of these, I have judged that those of the same name who received the honour of the clergy in Italy should, for the good of peace, keep the grace they received. And because our fellow presbyter Cassian said that it would be pleasing to your dignity if, by my counsel, they were judged to hold clerical rank in your city, I have decided, because of your goodwill and the promises of the man mentioned, that they be numbered among the other priests and ministers who are in the city, dearest brother. I learned gladly, moreover, about the bishops Elpidius and Pappus, that they have recovered their churches without dispute; and I inquired anxiously and at length in the records, as the attached documents testify, whether all the conditions had been satisfied in the case of the blessed priest John, truly worthy of God. And since the statement of the legates confessed point by point that this had been fulfilled as desired, giving thanks to the Lord, I have received the communion of your church in such a way that I declare that the fellow disciples of the apostolic see first gave the others the way of peace; in which the kindness of the Lord Christ will so embrace and strengthen you and us, made firm, that it will not be shaken by any tickling from outside or by the slight shame of anyone’s contention.

We have received the writings of Bishop Acacius, since they were presented together with yours, lest by an injury to you he who had once been suspended by us should be rejected; and yet we have laid down abundantly enough in the proceedings, as you will kindly see to reading, what ought to be kept in his case: that if he asks to be at one in all things with your counsels and such holy acts, the grace of communion and of letters from us may be granted to the old man, given in advance by your favour and our judgment. Twenty bishops of Italy signed.

Innocent to Bishop Alexander.

How welcome to me, how pious, how necessary was the embassy sent to us from your holiness, dearest brother, you will learn from the account of the proceedings themselves. For our fellow presbyter Cassian wished this little page of our friendship to be written, through our fellow presbyter Paul, the deacon Nicholas and the subdeacon Peter, our sons, as the first fruits of our peace. I greet, then, both your brotherhood, dear to me in Christ, and all that church which thinks so well with you. And I ask that you address us, as you do, more often by letter, and gladden us more frequently with news of your welfare. For the Lord will grant, I trust, that we make up for the losses of all past time by a most loving conversation in letters.

We have read that your brotherhood rejoices in a letter over the reception of the clergy and peoples of the bishops Paulinus and Evagrius and the restoration of the fellow bishops Elpidius and Pappus, and we have seen that you cherish the grace of a peace received, though late, with all contention put aside. Hence we have sent this to your unanimity, to be delivered to our most excellent brother and fellow bishop Alexander: namely, that if all enmity, all rivalry, both concerning the name of the wonderful bishop John and concerning all who shared his communion, has departed from your passion, you may receive this letter of our fellowship, dearest brother; provided that you confess with your own mouth before our lovable mediator Alexander, as befits one in communion, everything that has been confirmed here in the proceedings. For as this cause of unanimity and charity is venerable to us, so it holds us anxious lest anything crooked or left over be known to remain in anyone.

Innocent to Bishop Maximian.

We are surprised that your prudence asks, both by your own pleading and by the petition attached below, for a letter from us to Atticus, bishop of the city of Constantinople, from whom you have brought no letters at all, even to us or to your synod; and that you think something should be granted to one who does not ask which you see granted, after examination of the case, to those who entreat. For suspended communion is restored to one who shows that the causes for which it happened have now been wiped away, and who professes that he has fulfilled the conditions of peace. This Atticus, as I said before, has neither wished to say nor to show to be fulfilled, either before you or before us, by sending any of his people, as our brother and fellow bishop Alexander of the church of Antioch both pleaded and proved by a worthy embassy. Since you deigned to be present at all these things, you learned how I examined point by point all our earlier writings on the case of the most blessed John, once our bishop, and how they showed quite clearly in everything that all that ought to be done at Antioch had been fulfilled. Embracing their peace, we certainly gave them our faith, and showed a great path to all who would ask for the same; if only they too at some time show that they have done or fulfilled, in their own place, what has been examined and fulfilled, and ask, as these did, by a solemnly appointed embassy, that communion be restored to them. We await, then, both the profession of the man mentioned that all the conditions we have laid down at various times are fulfilled, and his petition for communion, so that we may rightly restore it to one who asks and proves that he deserves it, dearest brother. For you received some time ago a very full letter about everything for the holy synod of our brothers.

The church of Antioch, which the blessed apostle Peter made illustrious by his presence before he came to the city of Rome, as a sister of the Roman church, did not allow itself to be estranged from it for long. For, sending legates, it asked for peace and obtained it in such a way that it received the Evagrians in their orders and places, with the ordination they had received from the man mentioned left unharmed, and gathered and brought together into one the clergy and laity of John of holy memory; the bishop of that city, my brother Alexander, promising that even if anyone of later ordination should perhaps come to them, whether from us or from elsewhere, he would receive him without dispute, and would recite the name of the bishop mentioned (John) among the bishops at rest. You should know, dearest brother, that we have given our hands to this and received them into our heart, lest members that had sought health should be held for long as strangers to the unity of the body. All that was done, in order, my son the deacon Paul, the bearer of this letter, will be able to relate to your love, so that you may share the common joy with us and inform those who are accustomed to intercede on behalf of Atticus.

Innocent to Bishop Alexander.

Both the burden and the honour laid on us by your brotherhood have brought up the causes of a necessary treatment, so that we may answer your letter or memorandum as the grace of the Holy Spirit grants. Turning over, then, the authority of the synod of Nicaea, which sets out the one mind of all the priests throughout the world, which decreed concerning the church of Antioch what all the faithful, not to say the priests, must keep, we recognize that the said church was established over its own diocese, not over some [single] province. Hence we notice that this was granted to it not so much for the magnificence of the city as because it is shown to be the first see of the first apostle, where the Christian religion also received its name, and which deserved to have the most famous assembly of the apostles held in it, and which would not yield to the see of the city of Rome, except that the latter obtained [him] only in passing, while this one rejoices that he was received and brought to completion with it. We therefore judge, dearest brother, that as you ordain the metropolitans by your singular authority, so too you should not allow the other bishops to be created without your permission and knowledge. In these matters you will rightly keep this measure: that for those far away you decide, by sending letters, that they be ordained by those who now ordain them by their own judgment alone; but those near by, if you think fit, you may direct to come to the laying on of hands of your grace. For those for whom your greatest care is waiting ought above all to receive your judgment.

As to your question whether, when provinces have been divided by imperial decision so that there are two metropolises, two metropolitan bishops ought likewise to be named: it has not seemed right that the church of God should be changed to suit the shifting necessities of the world, or should undergo the honours or divisions which the emperor has thought fit to make for his own reasons. Therefore it is fitting that metropolitan bishops be counted according to the former arrangement of the provinces. You assert that the Cypriots, once worn down by the power of Arian impiety, did not keep the canons of Nicaea in ordaining their bishops, and that they have presumed up to now to ordain by their own judgment, consulting no one. We therefore urge them to take care to think in the catholic way according to the faith of the canons, and to be of one mind with the other provinces, so that it may appear that they too, like all the churches, are governed by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Chapter 3. Further, as for the Arians and other pests of this kind: since we receive their laity who are converted to the Lord under the form of penance and with the sanctification of the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands, it does not seem that their clerics ought to be received with the dignity of priesthood or of any ministry. For in them we allow only baptism to be valid, which is certainly performed in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; nor do we judge that they have the Holy Spirit from that baptism and those mysteries, since when their founders fell away from the catholic faith they lost the perfection of the Spirit which they had received. Nor can they give his fullness, which works above all in ordinations, which they lost through the perfidy, rather than faith, I would say, of their impiety. How can it be that we should judge their profane priests worthy of Christ’s honours, when we receive their laity as imperfect, as I said, with the form of penance, to receive the grace of the Holy Spirit? Let your gravity, then, bring these things to the knowledge of your fellow bishops, either through a synod, if possible, or through the reading of this letter, so that what you yourself so necessarily asked, and we have so carefully answered, may be kept by the common consent and zeal of all.

For who does not know or notice that what was handed down to the Roman church by Peter, the chief of the apostles, and is kept until now, ought to be observed by all, and that nothing should be brought in or introduced that has no authority or seems to take its example from elsewhere? Especially since it is plain that throughout all Italy, the Gauls, the Spains, Africa and Sicily, and the islands lying between, no one founded churches except those whom the venerable apostle Peter or his successors appointed as priests. Or let them read whether any other of the apostles is found, or is read, to have taught in these provinces. If they do not read it, because they find it nowhere, they must follow what the Roman church keeps, from which there is no doubt that they received their beginning, lest, while they pursue foreign claims, they seem to abandon the head of the institutions. There is no doubt that your love has often come to the City and met with us in church, and has learned what custom it holds, whether in consecrating the mysteries or in performing the other secret rites. We would have held it quite certain that this was enough for the instruction of your church, or its reform if your predecessors held anything less or otherwise, had you not thought that we should be consulted about some matters. We answer them, then, not because we believe you ignorant of anything, but so that with greater authority you may either instruct your own people, or, if any stray from the institutions of the Roman church, either admonish them or not delay to report them, so that we may know who they are who either introduce novelties or think that the custom of another church than the Roman is to be kept.

You say, then, that some command the peace to the peoples before the mysteries have been completed, or the priests give it to one another; whereas after all the things which I ought not to disclose, the peace must necessarily be proclaimed, by which it may be established that the people have given their consent to all that is done in the mysteries and celebrated in the church, and that they may be shown to be finished by the seal of the concluding peace.

As for reciting the names before the priest makes the prayer and commends by his prayer the offerings of those whose names are to be recited, you yourself recognize, in your prudence, how superfluous it is to put forward the name of one whose sacrifice you have not yet offered to God, although nothing is unknown to him. First, then, the offerings are to be commended, and then the names of those whose they are are to be announced, so that they are named within the sacred mysteries, not among the other things which we put first, in order by the mysteries themselves to open the way for the prayers to come.

As for sealing infants, it is plain that this may not be done by anyone other than the bishop. For presbyters, although they are priests of the second rank, do not have the summit of the pontificate. That this pontifical right belongs to bishops alone, either to seal or to give the Spirit the Paraclete, is shown not only by church custom but also by that reading of the Acts of the Apostles which says that Peter and John were sent to give the Holy Spirit to those already baptized. For presbyters, when they baptize, whether without the bishop or in the bishop’s presence, may anoint the baptized with chrism, but chrism that has been consecrated by the bishop; they may not, however, sign the forehead with that same oil, which belongs to bishops alone when they give the Spirit the Paraclete. The words, however, I cannot say, lest I seem to betray rather than answer the inquiry.

That one must fast on the Sabbath, the clearest reason shows. For if we celebrate the Lord’s day because of the venerable resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ not only at Easter but also observe the image of that day in each round of the weeks, and fast on the sixth day because of the Lord’s passion, we ought not to pass over the Sabbath, which is seen to be enclosed between the sorrow and the joy of that time. For it is certainly established that the apostles were in mourning on those two days and hid themselves for fear of the Jews. There is no doubt that they fasted on those two days to such an extent that the tradition of the church holds that the sacraments are not celebrated at all on those two days. This form is to be kept in each week, because the commemoration of that day is always to be celebrated. If they think that one must fast once and on one Sabbath only, then the Lord’s day and the sixth day too will be celebrated once only, at Easter. But if the image of the Lord’s day and of the sixth day is to be renewed each week, it is the act of a madman to keep the custom of the two days and pass over the Sabbath, since it has no different reason from the sixth day, on which the Lord suffered, when he was also in the underworld, so that, rising on the third day, he might give back joy after the two days of sorrow before it. We do not, then, deny that one must fast on the sixth day; but we say that this must be done on the Sabbath also, because both days brought sorrow to the apostles, or to those who followed Christ. Gladdened on the Lord’s day, they not only wished it to be most festive but also judged that it should be kept through all the weeks.

As for the fermentum, which we send on the Lord’s day to the titular churches, you wished to consult us needlessly, since all our churches are within the city. Their presbyters, because they cannot meet with us on that day on account of the people entrusted to them, receive through the acolytes the fermentum consecrated by us, so that they may not judge themselves separated from our communion, especially on that day. I do not think this ought to be done in the country parishes, because the sacraments should not be carried far (nor do we send it to the presbyters stationed in the various cemeteries), and their presbyters have the right and licence to consecrate them.

As for those baptized who are afterwards seized by a demon, through some vice or sin intervening, your love is anxious whether they can or ought to be marked by a presbyter or a deacon. This is not lawful unless the bishop has ordered it. For a hand is not to be laid on them at all unless the bishop has given authority to the one who does it. But for it to be done, it is the bishop’s part to command that a hand be laid on them either by a presbyter or by the other clerics. For how could it be done without great labour for a demoniac living far away to be brought to the bishop, since, if such an attack befell him on the way, he could neither easily be carried to the bishop nor brought back home?

As for penitents, who do penance whether for graver or for lighter offences, if no illness intervenes, the custom of the Roman church shows that they are to be released on the fifth day before Easter. As for weighing the gravity of the sins, it is for the priest to judge, attending to the confession of the penitent and to the weeping and tears of one amending himself, and then to order him released when he sees fitting satisfaction. Or if anyone falls ill and comes to the point of despair, he is to be released before the time of Easter, lest he depart from the world without communion.

Indeed, since your love wished to consult about this as about the other matters, my son the deacon Celestine also added in his letter that your love had raised what is written in the letter of the blessed apostle James: “If anyone among you is sick, let him call the presbyters, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the one who labours, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sin, he will forgive him.” There is no doubt that this ought to be taken or understood of the sick faithful, who can be anointed with the holy oil of chrism, which, prepared by the bishop, may be used for anointing not only by priests but by all Christians, in their own need or that of their family. But we see as superfluous the further question that doubt should be raised about the bishop, when there is no doubt that it is lawful for presbyters. For it was said to presbyters because bishops, hindered by other occupations, cannot go to all the sick. But if a bishop is able, or thinks it worthy, to visit someone himself, he can without hesitation both bless and touch him with chrism, since it is his to prepare the chrism. For it cannot be poured on penitents, because it is a kind of sacrament. For how can one kind be thought able to be granted to those to whom the other sacraments are denied? To all these things, then, dearest brother, which your love wished us to set out, we have taken care to answer as we could, so that your church may keep and guard the Roman custom, from which it takes its origin. The rest, which it was not right to write, we shall be able to tell when you are present and ask. It will be for the power of the Lord also to bring it about that you instruct well both your church and our clergy who serve the divine offices under your episcopate, and give others a pattern which they ought to imitate. Dated the fourteenth day before the Kalends of April [19 March 416], in the consulship of Theodosius Augustus for the seventh time and Palladius, a most distinguished man.

In investigating the things of God, which it befits priests to treat with all care, and above all a true, just and catholic council, you have, keeping the examples of ancient tradition and mindful of church discipline, confirmed with true reason the vigour of your religion no less now in consulting than before when you pronounced judgment. For you approved referring the matter to our judgment, knowing what is owed to the apostolic see, since all of us placed in this position desire to follow the apostle himself, from whom the episcopate itself and the whole authority of this name arose. Following him, we know how to condemn evil things as well as to approve things to be praised. Or indeed this: that, guarding the institutions of the fathers by your priestly office, you judge that they are not to be trampled on, which they decreed by a sentence not human but divine: that whatever was dealt with, even from separated and remote provinces, they should not consider settled until it came to the knowledge of this see, so that whatever judgment was just might be confirmed by its whole authority; and that from there the other churches might take (as all waters proceed from their native spring, and through the various regions of the whole world the pure streams of the uncorrupted source flow) what they should command, whom they should wash, and whom, as soiled with filth that cannot be cleansed, the water worthy of clean bodies should avoid.

I congratulate you, then, dearest brothers, that you have sent a letter to us through our brother and fellow bishop Julius; and that while you care for the churches over which you preside, you show your concern for the good of all; and you request that what is profitable be decreed for all together throughout all the churches of the whole world: so that the church, made firm by its rules and strengthened by the decree of a just judgment by which it may beware of them, may not lie open to such men, who, equipped, or rather destroyed, by perverse subtleties of words, disputing under the appearance of the catholic faith, breathing out as it were a pestilent poison, seek to overthrow the whole discipline of true doctrine, so as to corrupt for the worse the hearts of men who think rightly. The disease must therefore be healed quickly, lest the accursed sickness creep further into minds: just as a physician, when he sees some sickness in this earthly body, thinks it a great proof of his art if one despaired of quickly escapes through his intervention; or, when he sees a putrid wound, applies poultices or other things by which the wound that has arisen can be closed; and if, remaining, it cannot be healed, lest it corrupt the rest of the body with its decay, he cuts off with the knife what was harming, so as to keep the rest whole and untouched. What has crept as a wound into a body too pure and sound must therefore be cut away, lest, if it is cleaned out too late, the bilge of this evil, which cannot afterwards be drained, settle almost in the very entrails.

For what right thing can we think hereafter in our minds about those who think they owe it to themselves that they are good, and do not consider him whose grace they obtain daily? But those who are such now obtain no grace of God, since they trust that without him they can attain as much as those who ask him can scarcely deserve to receive. For what can be so unjust, so barbarous, so ignorant of all religion, so hostile to Christian minds, as to deny that you owe whatever you obtain in daily grace to him to whom you yourself confess you owe that you were born? Will you then be more excellent in providing for yourself than he can be who made you to be? And when you think you owe it to him that you live, how do you not think you owe it to him that you live in such a way by obtaining his daily grace? And you who deny that we need divine help, as though we were perfected wholly by our own ability, how do we not call down his help upon us, since we can be such even by ourselves?

I would like to ask him who denies God’s help what he means: that we do not deserve it, or that he cannot give it, or that there is nothing for which each one ought to ask for it? That God can do it, his very works testify. And we cannot deny that we need daily help. For whether we live well, we call on it so that we may live better and more holily; or whether, thinking wrongly, we are turned away from good things, we need his aid the more, so that we may return to the right way. For what could seem so deadly, so headlong to a fall, so exposed to all dangers, as if, thinking that only this can suffice us, the free choice we received when we were born, we seek nothing further from the Lord, that is, forgetting our maker, we abjure his power in order to show ourselves free; as though he who made you free at your birth had nothing more he could give; not knowing that unless grace, implored by great prayers, comes down upon us, we would by no means attempt to overcome the errors of earthly stain and of the worldly body, since not free choice but only God’s help can make us equal to resisting?

For if he cries out that he needs divine help, who would not seek it worthily if free choice profited anyone more; since that blessed man, already chosen by the Lord, though he lacked nothing, nevertheless so entreats God, asking: “Be my helper, do not forsake me, nor despise me, O God my salvation”; we ask free choice for ourselves, he asks God as his helper; we say that what we were born with can suffice us, he begs God that he may not be forsaken. Do we not, I ask, plainly learn what we should pray for, when that man, so blessed, as we said above, earnestly desires not to be despised? For it is necessary that these things refute those who affirm those other things. Let David then be accused of being ignorant of prayer and not knowing his own nature, who, though he knows how much is in his nature, desires prostrate in prayers God as his helper, and an unceasing helper, and that unceasing one is not enough for him, but that he should never despise him; and through the whole body of the Psalter he both preaches and cries this out. If, then, so great a man knows this so well as to say it unceasingly, and confessed it so necessary as to teach it, how do Pelagius and Caelestius, setting aside every answer of the Psalms and renouncing such teaching, trust that they will persuade some that we neither ought to seek God’s help nor need it, when all the saints testify that they can do nothing without it?

For he who once experienced free choice, while using his goods too heedlessly, fell and was sunk into the depths of transgression, and found no way by which he could rise from there; and, deceived for ever by his own liberty, he would have lain crushed under this ruin, had not the coming of Christ afterwards raised him up by his grace: who, through the purification of the new regeneration, cleansed every past fault by the washing of his baptism; and, strengthening his state so that he might go forward more rightly and steadily, did not, however, deny his grace for the future. For although he had redeemed man from past sins, yet, knowing that he could sin again, he kept many things in reserve for restoring him, by which he could correct him even after these things: he gives daily remedies, and unless we strive relying and trusting on them, we shall by no means be able to overcome human errors. For it must be that, as we conquer with his help, so without his help we are conquered again.

But I could say more, were it not clear that you have said everything. Whoever, then, seems to agree with this view, by which he says that we do not need divine help, declares himself an enemy of the catholic faith and ungrateful for God’s benefits. For they are not worthy of our communion, which they have polluted by preaching in this way. For they themselves, of their own accord, by following what they say, have fled further from true religion. For since the whole of our profession consists in this, and in our daily prayers we do nothing but seek how we may obtain God’s mercy, how can we bear those who boast these things? What so great error, I ask, blinds their hearts that, if they themselves feel no grace of God, because they are neither worthy nor deserve it, they do not even consider in others what divine grace bestows daily on each one? They are indeed most worthy of every blindness, who have not left themselves even this, to believe that they can be called back from their errors by divine help. For by denying help they have taken it away completely, not from others, but from themselves: they are to be torn away further and removed far from the entrails of the church, lest the error, long unpunished and seizing much, afterwards grow incurable. For if they have long remained in this impunity, they will necessarily lead many into this perversity of their mind and deceive the innocent, or rather the unwary, who now follow the catholic faith. For they will think that those think rightly whom they see still remaining in the church. Let the diseased wound, then, be separated from the sound body, and, the breath of the raging disease removed, let what is sound endure more safely, and let the flock be purified more fully from the contagion of this bad beast. Let the perfection of the whole body be unimpaired, which we know that you follow and hold by this judgment against them, and which we keep together with you in equal assent.

If, however, they call down on themselves some help of God, which they have denied until now, and recognize that they need his aid in order to be freed from this stain into which they had fallen by the bending of their heart, and, drawn as it were into the light from foul darkness, with all removed and renounced by which their whole sight was befouled and darkened so as not to see the truth, they condemn what they have thought until now; and, at last lending their mind to right arguments, somewhat corrected from this stain, they give and submit themselves to true counsels to be healed: if they do this, it will be in the power of the bishops to come to their aid to some degree and to give such wounds some care, which the church is not accustomed to refuse to the fallen when they come to their senses: so that, called back from their precipices, they may be brought back within the Lord’s sheepfold; lest, placed outside and shut out from so great a defence of the faith’s fortification, they be exposed to all dangers, to be devoured and torn by the teeth of wolves, which they cannot resist by this perversity of doctrine with which they had provoked them against themselves.

But it is shown that your admonitions have been answered sufficiently, with such abundant examples from our law. Nor have we thought that anything remains for us to say, since it is clear that nothing has been passed over by you, nothing suppressed, by which they may be known to be refuted and wholly convicted. And so we set down no testimonies, because in these there is a full report, and it is quite clear that so many most learned priests have said everything; nor is it fitting to believe that you have passed over anything that could advance the case. And in another hand: Farewell, brothers. And at the end: Dated the sixth day before the Kalends of February [27 January 417], after the consulship of Theodosius Augustus for the seventh time and Junius Quartus, most distinguished man.

Innocent to Silvanus the senior, Valentinus, and the others who took part in the synod of Milevis, his most beloved brothers, greeting in the Lord.

Among the other cares of the Roman church and the occupations of the apostolic see, by which we deal with the consultations of various people in faithful and healing discussion, our brother and fellow bishop Julius unexpectedly brought me your love’s letter, which you sent from the council of Milevis with a more earnest care for the faith, adding also the writings of a like complaint from the synod of Carthage. The church surely exults that shepherds show such concern for the flocks entrusted to them that they not only allow none of them to stray, but, if the grass of a perverse delight has led some sheep astray, they either wish to separate them altogether if they remain in error, or, if they avoid what they long sought, to protect them with the watchfulness of their former guarding: taking counsel, that is, on both sides, lest by receiving the fallen the others be led by the same example, or by spurning those who return they seem thrown to the bites of wolves. A very prudent consultation, and full of the catholic faith. For who could either tolerate one who strays or not receive one who amends? For as I think it harsh to show indulgence to sinners, so I judge it impious to refuse a hand to the converted.

Diligently, then, and fittingly do you consult the secrets of the apostolic honour (the honour, I say, of him on whom, besides the things that are outside, rests the care of all the churches) as to what judgment is to be held in anxious matters: following, that is, the form of the ancient rule, which you know with me has always been kept by the whole world. But I let these things pass, for I do not believe they are hidden from your prudence. Why did you also confirm this by your action, if not knowing that throughout all the provinces answers always flow from the apostolic spring to those who ask? Especially whenever a matter of faith is debated, I think that all our brothers and fellow bishops ought to refer only to Peter, that is, to the author of their name and honour, as your love has now done, something that can benefit all the churches throughout the whole world in common. For they must become more cautious when they see the inventors of evils, on the report of a double synod, cut off from church communion by the decrees of our sentence. Your charity, then, will enjoy a twofold good. For you will have the grace of having kept the canons, and the whole world will enjoy your benefit. For who among catholic men would wish any longer to converse with the adversaries of Christ? Who would share even the light itself in the fellowship of life? Let the authors of the new heresy surely be shunned.

For what more bitter thing could they have devised against the Lord than to make void the divine helps and take away the reason for daily prayer? This is to say: What need have I of God? Rightly does the hymn-writer say against them: “Behold the men who did not make God their helper.” Denying, then, the help of God, they say that man can suffice for himself and does not need divine grace: deprived of which, he must fall, entangled in the snares of the devil, while he strives to fulfil all the commandments of life by his liberty alone. O perverse teaching of most depraved minds! Let him notice at last that liberty itself so deceived the first man that, while using its reins too indulgently, he fell through presumption into transgression, and could not be rescued from it, had not the coming of Christ the Lord, by the providence of regeneration, restored to him the state of his former liberty: let him hear David saying, “Our help is in the name of the Lord,” and “Be my helper, do not forsake me, nor despise me, O God my salvation.” He would have said these things in vain if what he asked of the Lord with tearful words lay only in his own will.

Since this is so, and since in all the divine pages we read that nothing but God’s help is to be joined to free will, and that it can do nothing when deprived of heavenly protection, how is it that Pelagius and Caelestius, obstinately defending this ability for it alone, as you assert, persuade themselves, and indeed, what is more worthy of common grief, already very many? We could indeed use examples of many kinds to destroy such teaching, did we not know that your holiness is fully versed in all the divine Scriptures; especially since your report is filled with testimonies so many and so great that by these alone the present doctrine can be overthrown, and there is no need of recondite ones, since they neither dare nor are able to oppose even those which, readily occurring to you, you have set down. They try, then, to take away the grace of God, which we must seek even when the liberty of our former state has been restored to us; for we cannot avoid the other devices of the devil except with the same grace helping.

But what your brotherhood asserts that they preach, that little children can be granted the rewards of eternal life even without the grace of baptism, is utterly foolish. For “unless they eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, they will not have life in themselves.” Those who defend this for them without regeneration seem to me to wish to make void baptism itself, since they preach that these have what is believed to be conferred on them only by baptism. If, then, they hold that not being reborn does no harm, they must confess that the sacred streams of regeneration do no good either. But, so that the perverse teaching of these needless men may be quickly undone by the reasoning of truth, the Lord proclaims this in the gospel, saying: “Let the little children be, and do not forbid them to come to me; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

Therefore, by the authority of apostolic vigour, we judge that Pelagius and Caelestius, that is, the inventors of novel phrases which, as the Apostle said, are accustomed to produce nothing of edification but rather most empty questions, are deprived of church communion until they come to their senses out of the snares of the devil, by whom they are held captive at his will; and that meanwhile they are not received into the Lord’s sheepfold, which they themselves, following the track of a perverse way, wished to desert. For “those who trouble you are to be cut off,” and “they wish to pervert the gospel of Christ.” At the same time we command that whoever strive to defend this with like obstinacy be bound by an equal punishment; for not only those who do these things but also those who approve those who do them [are worthy of death]: for I think there is not much difference between the mind of the one who commits and the favour of the one who consents. I add this further: one with whom no one agrees mostly unlearns his error. Let this sentence, then, dearest brothers, remain fixed against those mentioned above: let them be kept from the courts of the Lord, let them lack, for the present, the pastoral keeping, lest the dire contagion of two sheep creep perhaps through the unwary crowd, and the wolf rejoice with a ravenous heart over such great flocks of sheep scattered within the Lord’s fold, while the wound of two is overlooked by the guards. We must take care, then, lest by admitting wolves we seem hirelings rather than shepherds. We do command, however (since Christ our Lord declared with his own voice that he does not will the death of the dying, only that he turn and live), that if ever they come to their senses and return to soundness, laying aside the error of perverse doctrine, and condemn those things by whose transgression they condemned themselves, the customary remedy, that is, their reception, is not to be refused them by the church: lest, while we perhaps forbid them when they return, they, truly remaining outside the fold, be swallowed by the raging jaws of the waiting enemy, which they have armed against themselves with the darts of evil disputation. Farewell, brothers. Dated the sixth day before the Kalends of February [27 January 417], in the consulship of Honorius and Constantius, most distinguished men.

We have received with a most grateful mind your brotherhood’s letter, full of faith and strengthened with the whole vigour of the catholic religion, sent from two councils through our brother and fellow bishop Julius, because its tenor and whole texture consists, with sound reasoning, in considering the daily grace of God and in correcting those who think otherwise; so that it can both take away all error from them and, by giving any example of our law, present them a fit and worthy teacher whom they ought to follow. But of these things we have, I think, said enough above, when in answering your reports we wrote back what we thought both about their perfidy and about your judgment. But again and again it occurs and supplies what may be said against them; nor can there ever be anything that wins, since what is so wretched and impious is more fully overcome by the strength of our faith and by truth itself. For he who has spurned and despised all hope of life, confounding his heart with a hostile and damnable argument, since he believes there is nothing he receives from God and nothing left that he should ask for his healing: he who has taken this away from himself, what has he left further?

If, then, there are any whom such great perversity has bound to defend him, who give and join themselves to this doctrine, hoping that it belongs to catholic teaching, though it is shown to be far removed from it and wholly contrary, let them be led on by affection, admonitions and words …, so that they hasten to return to the track of the right way, lest the error, besetting their mind longer and as it were fed on their senses, take hold of them. For if Pelagius, in whatever place he stayed, deceived by this assertion the minds of those who easily or simply believed him as he argued, whether they are in this city, which, not knowing, we can neither declare nor deny, since even if they exist they hide, and never dare either to defend him preaching these things or to throw out such things in the presence of any of our people, and in so great a multitude of people no one could easily be caught or recognized anywhere; or whether they live in any place on earth, we believe that by the mercy and grace of our God they will easily be corrected when they hear of the condemnation of him who was found to be the obstinate and resisting author of this doctrine. Nor does it matter where they are, so long as, wherever they can be found, they are healed.

We, however, cannot be persuaded that he has been cleared, although proceedings were brought to us by some laymen or other, in which he believed he had been both heard and acquitted. Whether these are genuine we doubt, because they did not come with any dispatch from that council, nor have we received any letter on this matter from those before whom he presented his case. If he had been able to trust in his acquittal, we believe that he would rather have done this, which would have been far more proper: to make them indicate by their letters what they had judged. But since there are some things set down in those very proceedings, of which, when they were put to him, he partly suppressed some by avoiding them, and partly confounded many in total obscurity by twisting the words back on himself, he cleared himself of some by false arguments rather than by true reasoning, as could seem for the moment, by denying some and turning others by a false interpretation.

But would that, what is rather to be wished, he would now turn from the error of his own path to the true way of the catholic faith, so that he desires and wishes to be cleared, considering the daily grace of God and recognizing his help, so that he may be seen truly, and approved by all, to be corrected by manifest reason, not by the evidence of proceedings, but by a heart turned to the catholic faith! Hence we can neither approve nor blame their judgment, since we do not know whether the proceedings are genuine, or, if they are genuine, whether it is clear that he rather evaded than cleared himself with the whole truth. If he is confident, and knows that what he says is not worthy of our condemnation, or that he has already refuted all that he had said, he ought not to be summoned by us, but should rather hasten himself so that he may be acquitted. For if he still thinks such things, when will he submit himself to our judgment, summoned by whatever letters, knowing that he must be condemned? And if he had to be summoned, it would be better done by those who are nearer and seem not to be separated by a long stretch of land. But care will not be lacking, if he offers matter for a remedy. For he can condemn what he had thought and, by sending a letter, ask pardon for his error, as befits one returning to us, dearest brothers.

We have read through the book sent to us by your charity which was said to be his: in it we read that many things are written against the grace of God, many blasphemous things, nothing that pleased, almost nothing that did not wholly displease, to be condemned and trampled on by anyone; things like which no one else would take into his mind or think except the one who had written them. For we did not think it necessary at this point to argue at length about the law, as if Pelagius were present and resisting, since we are speaking with you, who know it all and rejoice with us in equal assent. For these examples are better set out when we deal with those who are known to be ignorant of these matters. For concerning the ability of nature, free choice, and all the grace of God, and daily grace, for whom who thinks rightly is it not most fruitful to argue? Let him, then, anathematize what he thought, so that those who had fallen into this by his words and precepts may know at last what the true faith holds. For they will more easily be called back when they perceive that these things are condemned by their own author. But if he wishes to persist obstinately in this impiety, action must be taken so that help can be given to those whom not their own error but rather his has led astray, lest this remedy be lost for them too, since he neither admits nor asks for such care. (And in another hand:) May God keep you safe, dearest brothers. Dated the sixth day before the Kalends of February [27 January 417], after the consulship of the most glorious Theodosius Augustus for the seventh time and Junius Quartus Palladius, most distinguished man.

Innocent to Aurelius, bishop of Carthage.

True love consists in personal letters. For the duties of charity, as a firmer right, are better earned separately. Therefore, through our brother Julius, I was eager to answer the letters sent apart from yours, lest perhaps the particular offence of a greeting refused should remain with me, dearest brother. I therefore return our brother mentioned above to your love, with the judgments of the apostolic see given on the report of the double synod. It remains that the Lord, entreated by us, may deign to grant that every stain of his church may be wiped away by our continual labours. May God keep you safe, dearest brother. Dated the sixth day before the Kalends of February.

Innocent to his most beloved brother Aurelius. Our fellow presbyter Jerome rightly trusted your most pious affection to reach us too. We suffer with a member of our flock, and what we thought should be done, or could do, we have carried out swiftly. Let your brotherhood, dearest brother, hasten to deliver the letter quickly to the man mentioned (Jerome).

Innocent [to Jerome].

The Apostle testifies that contention has never done any good in the church; and therefore he orders that heretics be rebuked at once rather than drawn out in long debate. When this rule is looked at carelessly, the evil that ought to be guarded against is not avoided but increased. Nevertheless, since your grief and groaning so shake our heart that there is no room for deliberating and consulting, I first address the faith of your constancy. That whoever is struck by injury or, as you say, by danger for the truth may expect blessedness, you have often told many; and we urge you to be mindful of your own preaching. So, roused by so great a scene of evils, we hastened to take up the authority of the apostolic see to suppress every crime; but we have not read the name of anyone against whom we should rise, nor anyone charged with any crime. What we can do, then, is grieve with you. But if you lodge an open and plain accusation against any persons, I will either grant competent judges, or, if anything more urgent and careful can be done by us, I will not delay, dearest son. Nevertheless I have written to my brother, Bishop John, that he act more circumspectly, lest anything of the kind still happen around the church entrusted to him, which he would afterwards find most grievous not to have foreseen and repelled, so that it did not happen, or does not happen.

Innocent to his most beloved brother John.

The most noble holy virgins Eustochium and Paula, of utmost gentleness, have lamented that the devil perpetrated plundering, slaughter, burning, every crime, in places of your church; for they kept silent about the man’s name and the cause. Although it is not doubtful by whom it was committed, your brotherhood ought nevertheless to have kept guard and provided more carefully for his flock, lest anything of this kind arise, which, with danger to others, your negligence provokes into the Lord’s flock; and we have heard that such lambs, stripped and weak through fire, arms and persecutions, after the slaughter and deaths of their own, scarcely live. Does nothing move that piety of your priesthood, about so great a power of the devil let loose against you and yours? Against you, I say; for so great a crime having been accomplished in the church wholly condemns the gravity of the priest. Where were your provisions? Where, surely, if such events had occurred, your help or consolation, when they say they still fear more than they complain of having suffered? I would judge more severely if they had spoken more openly with me about this matter. See, brother, the snares of the ancient enemy, and keep watch with the spirit of a good ruler, so that these things, brought to us more by report than by open accusation, may be either corrected or checked, lest the law of the church compel him who did not defend them to answer for the causes of the damage.

Innocent to Probus. The turmoil of the barbarian storm has brought misfortune on the working of the laws. For in the well-established marriage between Fortunius and Ursa, the incursion of captivity had made a blemish, had not the holy statutes of religion provided [a remedy]. For while the said woman Ursa was held in captivity, the aforementioned Fortunius is known to have entered another marriage with Restituta. But by the Lord's favour Ursa returned and came to us and, with no one denying it, proved that she was the wife of the aforementioned man. Therefore, my lord son, deservedly illustrious, we decree, with the Catholic faith in support, that that is the marriage which was first founded by divine grace, and that the union with the second woman, while the first survives and has not been cast out by divorce, can in no way be lawful.

Innocent to Felix, bishop of Nuceria. 1. We cannot wonder that your love follows the institutions of the elders and refers to us, as to the head and summit of the episcopate, all matters that can admit any doubt, so that the apostolic see, being consulted, may pronounce something certain and to be done in these doubtful matters. We both receive this gladly and approve your love as mindful of the canons. 2. You wrote, then, that by the fervour of faith in which you excel, and by love of the holy people, you have either restored the churches of God or built some new ones, but that you do not have clerics to appoint in them; that some are mutilated and some twice married. At this we were astonished, that a prudent man should have wished to consult about matters that are known to all by a sure principle. So we do not speak as to those who do not know; but we say that, occupied perhaps with other things, you have forgotten this.

Whoever, then, of his own will has cut off part of any finger, the canons do not admit him to the clergy. But one to whom it has happened by some accident, while he was attending to farm work or doing something, that he struck himself unintentionally, these the canons direct both to be made clerics and, if they are found in the clergy, not to be cast out. For in the former the will is judged, which dared to put iron to itself, so that, of course, no one could doubt that it would do this to others too; but in the latter the accident has deserved pardon.

About the twice married, however, you ought not even to have consulted, since the reading of the Apostle is plain, that the husband of one wife ought to be admitted to the priesthood or to the clergy, and that only if he took her as a virgin. For a woman who has had a husband before, even if he has died, if she has afterwards been joined to a cleric, the cleric who took her cannot be one, because it is provided in the law that a priest may not have as wife a widow or one put away.

Your reverence has also asked which laymen the canons forbid to ordain. It is certain that the ecclesiastical rules contain this; but it has not been so defined as to be laid down concerning all laymen. For clerics cannot be born and not made; but categories have been designated from which men cannot come to the clergy: that is, if any believer has served as a soldier, if any believer has pleaded cases, that is, been an advocate, if any believer has held public administration. Concerning curials the reason is plain: although men of this kind may be found who ought to be made clerics, yet because they are rather often reclaimed by the council, one must be wary of them, because of the trouble that often comes to the church from them.

But laymen who were baptized when they had wives, and have so ordered themselves that their reputation wavers in nothing, so that they have either been associated with the clergy or have kept to monasteries from the time they were baptized, if they have known no concubine and no mistress, if they have been watchful in all good works, men of this kind are not prohibited from being taken into the lot of the clergy.

This, to be sure, on condition that the intervals laid down by the elders are kept for them. Let no one quickly become a lector, quickly an acolyte, quickly a deacon, quickly a priest; for if they remain long in the lesser offices, both their life and their services are proved, so that they may come to the priesthood afterwards when the merits of their service have been completed, and not snatch what a proved life deserves to receive. 7. Since, then, it has been shown by a sure definition who ought to be admitted and who rejected, from all those whom your worthiness sees cannot be rejected you must choose those whom you make clerics. For if we wish to show no favour or kindness to men, we can find such men that we need neither incur scandal nor blush at their being taken up.