Commonitory 1–11

Since Scripture says and admonishes, "Ask your fathers and they will tell you, your elders and they will declare to you", and again, "Incline your ear to the words of the wise", and again, "My son, do not forget these words, but let your heart keep my sayings", it seems to me, Peregrinus, the least of all the servants of God, that it will be of no small use, with the Lord's help, if I put in writing what I have faithfully received from the holy fathers; certainly very necessary for my own weakness, since I shall have at hand something by which the frailty of my memory can be made good by constant reading. To this task I am urged not only by the fruit of the work but also by consideration of the time and the suitability of the place. The time: because, since time snatches away all human things, we in turn ought to snatch from it something that profits for eternal life; especially since a certain fearful expectation of the approaching divine Judgment demands that our zeal for religion be increased, and the deceitfulness of new heretics calls for much care and attention. The place: because, avoiding the crowds and throngs of cities, we live in a rather remote small estate, and in it the secluded dwelling of a monastery, where, without great distraction, there can be done what is sung in the psalm: "Be still," it says, "and see that I am the Lord." The plan of our life also fits this; for after we had for some time been tossed by the various and sad whirlwinds of secular warfare, we at last, by Christ's inspiration, took shelter in the harbour of religion, always the safest for all; so that there, having laid aside the blasts of vanity and pride, and appeasing God by the sacrifice of Christian humility, we may escape not only the shipwrecks of the present life but also the fires of the world to come. But now, in the name of the Lord, I will take up the matter in hand, namely to write down what has been handed down by our forebears and entrusted to us, with the fidelity of a reporter rather than the presumption of an author; keeping, however, this rule in writing, that I will by no means touch on everything, but only on what is necessary, and that not in an ornate and exact style but in plain and ordinary language, so that most things may seem to be indicated rather than set out. Let those write elegantly and exactly who are led to this task either by confidence in their talent or by the duty of their office. For me it will be enough to have prepared a Commonitory, a reminder, for myself, to aid my recollection, or rather my forgetfulness; which, however, by going over what I have learned, I shall try, the Lord granting, to correct and complete little by little every day. I have said this beforehand so that if perhaps it slips from us and comes into the hands of holy men, they may not rashly find fault with anything in it which they see still needs polishing according to the promised correction.

So, often inquiring with great zeal and the closest attention of very many men eminent in holiness and learning how I might, by some sure and, as it were, general and regular way, distinguish the truth of the catholic faith from the falsehood of heretical depravity, I have always received from almost all of them an answer of this kind: that if I, or anyone else, wished to detect the frauds of heretics as they arise, to avoid their snares, and to remain sound and whole in the sound faith, he ought, with the Lord's help, to fortify his faith in two ways: first, namely, by the authority of the divine law, and then by the tradition of the catholic church. Here perhaps someone may ask: "Since the canon of Scripture is complete, and is sufficient for everything, and more than sufficient, what need is there to join to it the authority of the church's understanding?" Because, namely, owing to its very depth, not everyone takes holy Scripture in one and the same sense; one interprets its words one way and another another, so that it seems almost as many opinions can be drawn from it as there are people. For Novatian expounds it one way, Sabellius another, Donatus another; Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius another; Photinus, Apollinaris, Priscillian another; Jovinian, Pelagius, Caelestius another; and lastly Nestorius another. And therefore it is very necessary, because of so many windings of such various error, that the line of prophetic and apostolic interpretation be directed according to the rule of the church's catholic sense. Moreover, in the catholic church itself great care must be taken that we hold what has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and properly catholic, as the very force and meaning of the word declares, which embraces almost everything universally. But this will come about only if we follow universality, antiquity, and consent. We shall follow universality in this way, if we confess that one faith to be true which the whole church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we in no way depart from those senses which it is plain that our holy forebears and fathers proclaimed; and consent likewise, if within antiquity itself we follow the definitions and opinions of all, or certainly almost all, the bishops and teachers alike.

What, then, will a catholic Christian do if some small part of the church has cut itself off from the communion of the universal faith? What indeed but prefer the soundness of the whole body to a diseased and corrupt member? What if some new contagion tries to infect not merely a small portion but the whole church alike? Then he will take care to cling to antiquity, which can no longer be led astray by any deceit of novelty. What if, within antiquity itself, the error of two or three men, or even of one city or some province, is found? Then he will take every care to prefer the decrees, if there are any, of a universal council of the universal church of old to the rashness or ignorance of a few. What if something arises where nothing of this kind is to be found? Then he will take pains to consult and question, compared with one another, the opinions of the forebears, of those only who, though in different times and places, yet remaining in the communion and faith of the one catholic church, were approved teachers; and whatever he finds that not one or two only but all alike, with one and the same consent, held, wrote, and taught openly, frequently, and persistently, let him understand that this too is to be believed by him without any doubt.

But to make what we say plainer, it must be illustrated with examples one by one, and set out a little more fully, so that the weight of the matters is not swept away by the speed of the speech through eagerness for excessive brevity. In the time of Donatus, from whom the Donatists are named, when a great part of Africa was rushing headlong into the madness of its error, and, forgetting its name, religion, and profession, preferred the sacrilegious rashness of one man to the church of Christ, then those throughout Africa who, detesting the profane schism, joined themselves to all the churches of the world, alone of all of them could be saved within the sanctuaries of the catholic faith; leaving to posterity an excellent pattern, namely, how thereafter, by good custom, the soundness of all should be preferred to the madness of one or of a few. Likewise when the poison of the Arians had infected not just some small portion but almost the whole world, so that, nearly all the bishops of the Latin tongue being deceived partly by force, partly by fraud, a kind of fog was poured over their minds as to what was best to follow in so great a confusion, then whoever proved a true lover and worshipper of Christ, preferring the ancient faith to the new faithlessness, was not stained by any plague of that contagion. By the danger of that time it was shown abundantly what calamity is brought in by the introduction of a new dogma. For thereby not only small things but the greatest were shaken. Not only relationships by marriage and by blood, friendships, households, but cities, peoples, provinces, nations, and at last the whole Roman Empire were shaken and moved from their foundations. For when that profane novelty of the Arians, like some Bellona or Fury, having first captured the emperor, had then subjugated all the heights of the palace with new laws, it never afterwards ceased to throw everything into confusion and disorder, private and public, sacred and profane, making no distinction of good and true, but striking whomever it pleased as from a higher place. Then wives were violated, widows despoiled, virgins profaned, monasteries demolished, clergy scattered, Levites scourged, bishops driven into exile, and workhouses, prisons, and mines filled with saints; the greatest part of whom, forbidden the cities, thrust out and banished, among deserts, caves, wild beasts, and rocks, were afflicted, worn down, and wasted by nakedness, hunger, and thirst. And did all this happen for any other reason than this: that human superstitions were brought in instead of heavenly doctrine, that well-founded antiquity was undermined by wicked novelty, that the institutions of those before us were violated, the decrees of the fathers rescinded, the definitions of our forebears torn up, and that the lust of profane and new curiosity would not keep itself within the most chaste bounds of hallowed and uncorrupted antiquity?

But perhaps we invent these things out of hatred of novelty and love of antiquity. Whoever thinks so, let him at least believe blessed Ambrose, who, in the second book to the emperor Gratian, himself deploring the bitterness of the time, says: "But now, almighty God, we have washed away enough by our exile and our blood: the slaughter of confessors, the exile of bishops, and the wickedness of so great an impiety. It has become clear enough that those who have violated the faith cannot be safe." Likewise in the third book of the same work: "Let us keep, then, the precepts of our forebears, and not violate the inherited seals with the daring of crude rashness. That sealed book of prophecy neither elders, nor powers, nor angels, nor archangels dared to open: to Christ alone was reserved the prerogative of explaining it. The book of the priesthood, sealed by confessors and already consecrated by the martyrdom of many, which of us would dare to unseal? Those who were forced to unseal it afterwards sealed it again, condemning the fraud; those who did not dare to violate it became confessors and martyrs. How can we deny the faith of those whose victory we proclaim?" We proclaim it indeed, I say, venerable Ambrose! We proclaim it indeed, and praise it with wonder. For who is so mad that he would not long to follow, even if he cannot overtake, those whom no force drove from the defence of the faith of their forebears, not threats, not flatteries, not life, not death, not the palace, not guards, not the emperor, not the empire, not men, not demons? Those, I say, whom for their steadfastness in the religion of antiquity the Lord judged worthy of so great a gift that through them he restored the fallen churches, brought to life the spiritually dead peoples, replaced the cast-down crowns of the bishops, and wiped out, by a fountain of faithful tears poured from heaven upon the bishops, those wicked writings, or rather erasures, of the new impiety; and at last recalled almost the whole world, struck by the savage storm of a sudden heresy, from new faithlessness to the ancient faith, from the madness of novelty to the ancient soundness, from the blindness of novelty to the ancient light. But in this divine virtue of the confessors we must above all consider this: that then, within the antiquity of the church itself, they undertook the defence not of some part but of the whole. For it was not right that such and so great men should maintain with so great an effort the wandering and self-contradictory notions of one or two men, or contend for some rash conspiracy of a small province; but following the decrees and definitions of all the bishops of holy church, the heirs of apostolic and catholic truth, they preferred to betray themselves rather than the faith of ancient universality. Hence they deserved to attain such glory that they are rightly and deservedly held to be not only confessors but the leaders of confessors.

This, then, is the great and truly divine example of those blessed men, to be recalled with unwearied meditation by every true catholic; who, like the seven-branched candlestick shining with the sevenfold light of the Holy Spirit, showed to posterity a very clear pattern of how thereafter, in every vain babbling of error, the audacity of profane novelty is to be crushed by the authority of hallowed antiquity. Nor is this anything new. For this custom has always flourished in the church, that the more religious a person was, the more readily he opposed new inventions. Everything is full of such examples. But not to be lengthy, we will take one, and that above all from the apostolic see, so that all may see more clearly than light with what force, what zeal, what effort the blessed succession of the blessed apostles has always defended the integrity of the religion once received. Once, then, Agrippinus, bishop of Carthage, of venerable memory, first of all mortals, against the divine canon, against the rule of the universal church, against the mind of all his fellow bishops, against the custom and institutions of the forebears, held that people should be rebaptized. This presumption brought in so much evil that it gave not only to all heretics a pattern of sacrilege but also to some catholics an occasion of error. So when all everywhere cried out against the novelty of the thing, and all the bishops everywhere resisted it, each according to his zeal, then Pope Stephen of blessed memory, bishop of the apostolic see, resisted, together indeed with his colleagues, but yet before the rest; thinking it fitting, I suppose, that he should surpass all the others in devotion to the faith as much as he excelled them in the authority of his see. Finally, in the letter that was then sent to Africa, he decreed in these words: "Let nothing be innovated, except what has been handed down." For the holy and prudent man understood that the principle of piety admits nothing else but that everything should be handed on to the sons with the same faith with which it had been received from the fathers; and that we ought not to lead religion where we wish, but rather follow where it leads; and that it is the mark of Christian modesty and seriousness not to hand on one's own things to posterity, but to keep what has been received from the forebears. What, then, was the outcome of the whole affair? What indeed but the usual and customary one? Antiquity was retained, novelty rejected. But perhaps that new invention lacked defenders then? On the contrary, there was such power of intellect, such rivers of eloquence, such a number of supporters, such plausibility, such oracles of the divine law, though understood in a plainly new and evil way, that it seems to me that whole conspiracy could in no way have been destroyed, had not the very profession of novelty, so taken up, defended, and praised, failed of itself as the sole cause of so great an effort. What, finally? What force had the African council itself, or its decree? By God's gift, none; but all of it was abolished, made obsolete, trampled underfoot, like dreams, like fables, like superfluous things. And, O wonderful reversal! The authors of that opinion are judged catholics, its followers heretics; the masters are acquitted, the disciples condemned; the writers of the books will be sons of the kingdom, while their defenders Gehenna will receive. For who is so mad as to doubt that that most blessed light of all the saints, bishops, and martyrs, Cyprian, together with his other colleagues, will reign with Christ for ever? Or who, on the other hand, is so sacrilegious as to deny that the Donatists and the other plagues who boast that they rebaptize on the authority of that council will burn with the devil for ever?

This judgment seems to me to have been promulgated by God above all because of the deceitfulness of those who, when they scheme to construct a heresy under another's name, usually seize upon the somewhat obscurely written works of some ancient man which, because of their very obscurity, seem to fit their own doctrine, so that whatever it is they put forward they may appear neither the first nor the only ones to hold it. Their wickedness I judge worthy of double hatred: both because they do not fear to give others the poison of heresy to drink, and also because with profane hand they fan the memory of some holy man as if it were ashes already sleeping, and spread abroad by reviving its opinion what ought to be buried in silence, following entirely in the footsteps of their founder Ham, who not only neglected to cover the nakedness of venerable Noah but even reported it to the others to be mocked. For this he incurred such offence against injured piety that even his descendants were bound by the curses of his sin; very far unlike those blessed brothers who would neither violate the nakedness of their revered father with their own eyes nor let it be exposed to the eyes of others, but, turning away, as it is written, covered him: that is, they neither approved nor betrayed the error of the holy man; and therefore they were endowed with a blessing on their descendants. But let us return to our subject. We must therefore dread with great fear the guilt of changing the faith and violating religion; from which not only the discipline of the church's constitution deters us but also the censure of apostolic authority. For everyone knows how gravely, how severely, how vehemently the blessed apostle Paul inveighs against certain people who with wonderful fickleness had been too quickly removed from him who had called them into the grace of Christ to another gospel, which is not another; who had heaped up for themselves teachers to suit their desires, turning away their hearing from the truth and turning to fables; having condemnation because they had cast off their first faith; whom those had deceived of whom the same apostle writes to the brothers at Rome: "Now I beg you, brothers, to watch those who cause dissensions and offences contrary to the teaching you have learned, and avoid them. For such people do not serve Christ the Lord but their own belly, and by smooth words and blessings deceive the hearts of the innocent." "Who enter into houses and lead captive silly women laden with sins, who are led by various desires, always learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth." "Empty talkers and deceivers, who overturn whole households, teaching what they ought not, for the sake of shameful gain." "Men corrupt in mind, reprobate concerning the faith"; "proud, knowing nothing, but sick about questions and disputes about words; who are deprived of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness"; "and at the same time, being idle, they learn to go about from house to house; and not only idle, but also talkative and busybodies, saying what they ought not"; "who, rejecting a good conscience, have made shipwreck concerning the faith"; "whose profane and vain babblings advance much towards ungodliness, and their word spreads like a cancer." But it is well that it is also written of them: "But they will make no further progress; for their folly will be plain to all, as theirs also was."

So when certain such people, going round provinces and cities and carrying about their errors for sale, had come even to the Galatians, and when the Galatians, on hearing them, were seized with a kind of nausea for the truth and, vomiting up the manna of apostolic and catholic doctrine, were delighting in the filth of heretical novelty, the authority of the apostolic power showed itself so as to decree with the greatest severity: "But even if we," he says, "or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel other than what we preached to you, let him be anathema." Why does he say "even if we"? Why not rather "even if I"? That is: even if Peter, even if Andrew, even if John, even if, finally, the whole choir of apostles should preach to you other than what we preached, let him be anathema. A fearful strictness, not to have spared himself or his fellow apostles in order to maintain firm adherence to the original faith! That is not all: "Even if an angel from heaven," he says, "should preach to you other than what we preached, let him be anathema." It was not enough, for guarding the faith once handed down, to have mentioned the nature of the human condition, without including also the excellence of the angels. "Even if we," he says, "or an angel from heaven." Not that the holy angels of heaven can now sin; but this is what he means: even if what cannot happen were to happen, whoever should try to change the faith once handed down, let him be anathema. But perhaps he said this in passing, and poured it out from human impulse rather than decreeing it by divine reason. Far from it. For he goes on, and drives this home with the great effort of a repeated statement: "As we said before, so now I say again: if anyone preaches to you other than what you received, let him be anathema." He did not say: "If anyone announces to you other than what you received, let him be blessed, praised, received"; but "let him be anathema", that is, separated, set apart, excluded, so that the dreadful contagion of one sheep may not contaminate the innocent flock of Christ by its poisonous mingling.

But perhaps these things were commanded only to the Galatians. Then those things too were enjoined only on the Galatians which are mentioned in what follows in the same letter, such as these: "If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become desirous of empty glory, provoking one another, envying one another", and the rest. But if that is absurd, and they were enjoined on all alike, it remains that, just as these moral commands, so also the precepts concerning faith bind all in the same way; and just as no one may provoke or envy another, so no one may accept anything other than what the catholic church everywhere preaches. Or perhaps it was then commanded that anyone who announced other than what had been announced should be anathematized, but now it is no longer commanded. Then that too which he says in the same place, "But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not fulfil the desire of the flesh", was commanded only then and is no longer commanded now. But if it is equally impious and pernicious to believe that, it necessarily follows that, just as these things are to be observed in all ages, so too those decrees about not changing the faith are binding in all ages. To announce to catholic Christians anything other than what they have received was never lawful, is nowhere lawful, and never will be lawful; and to anathematize those who announce anything other than what has once been received was always a duty, is everywhere a duty, and always will be a duty. Since this is so, is there anyone either so bold as to announce anything other than what has been announced in the church, or so fickle as to accept anything other than what he has received from the church? He cries out, and cries out again and again, to all, always, and everywhere, through his letters, he, the vessel of election, the teacher of the nations, the trumpet of the apostles, the herald of the world, the one who knew the secrets of heaven: that if anyone announces a new dogma, he is to be anathematized. And on the other side certain frogs, gnats, and dying flies, such as the Pelagians, cry back, and to catholics at that: "On our authority, under our leadership, by our exposition, condemn what you held, hold what you condemned, reject the ancient faith, the institutions of the fathers, the deposits of the forebears, and accept..." Accept what, pray? I shudder to say it; for they are so arrogant that it seems to me they cannot be asserted, nor even refuted, without some sacrilege.

But someone will say: why then does God so often allow certain eminent persons in the church to announce new things to catholics? A fair question, and worth treating more carefully and fully; yet it must be answered not from my own wit but from the authority of the divine law and the teaching of the church's magisterium. Let us hear holy Moses, then, and let him teach us why learned men, who because of the grace of knowledge are even called prophets by the Apostle, are sometimes permitted to put forward new dogmas, which the Old Testament is accustomed to call, in allegorical language, "strange gods", because heretics observe their own opinions just as the pagans their gods. Blessed Moses, then, writes in Deuteronomy: "If there rises in your midst a prophet," he says, "or one who says he has seen a dream", that is, a teacher placed in the church whom his disciples or hearers think teaches from some revelation. What next? "And he foretells a sign and a wonder, and what he said comes to pass." Some great teacher is indicated, of such knowledge that to his followers he seems able not only to know human things but also to foreknow what is above man; such as their disciples boast Valentinus, Donatus, Photinus, Apollinaris, and others of that kind to have been. What then? "And he says to you: Let us go and follow strange gods, whom you do not know, and let us serve them." What are strange gods but foreign errors which you did not know, that is, new and unheard-of? "And let us serve them", that is, believe them, follow them. What, finally? "You shall not hear the words of that prophet or dreamer." And why, I ask, is what God forbids to be heard not forbidden by God to be taught? "Because," he says, "the Lord your God is testing you, to make it plain whether or not you love him with all your heart and with all your soul." The reason is plain, clearer than light, why divine Providence sometimes allows certain teachers of the churches to preach new dogmas: "that the Lord your God may test you," he says. And it is indeed a great test when someone whom you think a prophet, a disciple of the prophets, a teacher and defender of the truth, whom you have embraced with the highest veneration and love, suddenly brings in harmful errors by stealth, which you can neither quickly detect, being led by the prejudice of his former teaching, nor easily think it right to condemn, being hindered by affection for your old teacher.

Here perhaps someone may demand that what is asserted in the words of holy Moses be shown by some examples from the church. A fair request, and not to be put off long. To begin with recent and well-known cases: what kind of test do we think it was lately, when that unhappy Nestorius, suddenly turned from a sheep into a wolf, began to tear the flock of Christ, while those very ones who were being bitten still for the most part believed him a sheep, and so lay the more open to his bites? For who would easily think that man in error whom he saw chosen by so great a judgment of the empire and attended by so much zeal of the bishops, who, celebrated with great love by the saints and the highest favour of the people, daily expounded the divine oracles in public and refuted all the harmful errors of Jews and pagans? How could he fail to convince anyone that he taught rightly, preached rightly, and thought rightly, who, to open a hearing for his one heresy, attacked the blasphemies of all heresies? But this was what Moses says: "The Lord your God is testing you, whether you love him or not." And to pass over Nestorius, in whom there was always more to wonder at than to profit from, more fame than proof, whom human rather than divine favour had for a while made great in popular opinion, let us rather recall those who, gifted with much attainment and much industry, proved no small test to catholics. Thus in Pannonia, in the memory of our fathers, Photinus is recorded to have tested the church of Sirmium. Having been taken into the episcopate with great favour from all, and having for some time administered it as a catholic, suddenly, like that evil prophet or dreamer whom Moses indicates, he began to persuade the people of God entrusted to him to follow strange gods, that is, foreign errors which they had not known before. But that is usual. What was ruinous was that for so great a wickedness he used no mean supports. For he was strong in power of intellect, outstanding in wealth of learning, and very powerful in eloquence, disputing and writing copiously and weightily in both languages, as the monuments of his books show, which he composed partly in Greek and partly in Latin. But happily the sheep of Christ entrusted to him, watchful and cautious for the catholic faith, quickly paid heed to the words of Moses who had warned them, and though they admired the eloquence of their prophet and shepherd, they did not fail to recognize the test. For him whom they had previously followed like the ram of the flock they then began to flee like a wolf. Not only by the example of Photinus but also by that of Apollinaris we learn the danger of this test within the church, and at the same time are warned to guard the faith more carefully. For he too caused great turmoil and great distress to his hearers, since the authority of the church drew them one way and the habit of their teacher drew them back the other; and wavering and tossed between the two, they could not work out which they should choose. But perhaps he was the kind of man who deserved to be easily despised. On the contrary, he was so great and of such a kind that he was all too readily believed in many things. For who was more outstanding than he in acuteness, training, and learning? How many heresies he crushed in many volumes, how many errors hostile to the faith he refuted, is shown by that most noble and very great work of no fewer than thirty books, in which he confounded the mad calumnies of Porphyry with a great mass of proofs. It would take long to recount all his works, by which he could surely have been equal to the greatest builders of the church, had he not, through that profane lust of heretical curiosity, invented something new by which he defiled all his labours as with an admixture of leprosy, and brought it about that his teaching was called not so much an edification of the church as a test.