Tractates

Contents

Reading pages: 0 · 1–2 · 3–5 · 6–7 · 8 · 9 · 10–11 · 12–13 · 14–16 · 17 · 18 · 19–21

1. 0Gaudentius's preface to Benivolus, who had missed the Easter sermons through illness, explains why he writes them down and argues that illness and suffering come to believers for correction, purgation, or proving, not always as punishment for sin.
2. 1Easter vigil sermon: Christ rose in spring, the season of creation, and Easter may fall in April by the lunar reckoning; the Exodus month as the 'beginning of months' signifies baptism, the return of penitents, and the final light of the resurrection.
3. 2To the newly baptized: the Passover lamb was a figure of Christ, whose body and blood are given in the bread and wine; the rules for eating the lamb teach how to read Scripture and how to receive the Eucharist in faith.
4. 3On Easter Sunday Gaudentius reads the renewal of heaven and earth in the newly baptized and expounds the Passover lamb: taken on the tenth day and killed on the fourteenth, foretold but not caused by God's foreknowledge, perfect, male, and a year old as Christ was.
5. 4The Passover lamb 'from the lambs and the kids' signifies Christ's flesh taken from just and sinners alike; Gaudentius warns the newly baptized against idolatrous foods, magic, and drunken feasts for the dead.
6. 5The shoes and staffs of the Passover meal: shoes are the commandments of Scripture that protect the soul's steps in this world's Egypt, to be loosed only in the holy land; the staff is the rod of correction that the apostolic pastor needs only for the unruly.
7. 6Gaudentius summarizes the Easter-week sermons and expounds the striking of Egypt's firstborn: at Christ's death and descent to the underworld he struck the demons and their idols, while the destroyer, the devil, is kept from those marked with the sign of Christ's blood.
8. 7Against Marcion and Mani, who called the God of the Law evil, Gaudentius defends the law of unleavened bread as a memorial of the Exodus and reads the leaven as corrupting teaching and the bitter herbs as the self-denial of the Christian life.
9. 8On the wedding at Cana: Christ's presence blesses marriage against the Manichees while virginity is the better part; Gaudentius warns the newly baptized against debauched banquets and reads the 'third day' as the age of grace, when Christ takes the Gentile church as bride after Israel's 'divorce'.
10. 9Continuing on Cana: Mary, called 'woman' by sex, remained a virgin in giving birth as Christ entered through closed doors; the six stone jars are the dead senses of the Gentiles filled by baptism, the steward of the feast is Moses, and the Spirit's gifts show the equal power of the Trinity.
11. 10On the 'first day' and 'seventh day' of the Passover law: God's rest does not end his working; Christ rested in the tomb on the Sabbath while his soul freed the saints below, made the first day holy by his resurrection, and points to the seventh millennium as the saints' final rest.
12. 11On John 7:21 ('I have done one work'): healing the paralytic on the Sabbath fulfilled the Law, which permits work 'done for every soul' as circumcision does; 'judge a just judgment' forbids flattering the rich, admiring outward beauty, and judging Christ only as a man.
13. 12On John 12:31 ('Now is the judgment of this world'): the 'judgment' is the world's judging of Christ in his passion, by which the devil, prince of the world by usurpation, is cast out, and Christ draws all things to himself from the cross.
14. 13A Christmas sermon on the incarnation and Mary's virginity in giving birth, followed by an exposition of Christ's gentle answer to Judas at Bethany, which leads into a long appeal for almsgiving against the luxury of rich landowners.
15. 14On John 14:25–26: the sending of the Paraclete shows both the distinction of the persons and the one omnipresent divinity of the Trinity, as Psalm 139 confesses; the incarnation is to be received in faith, not probed by curiosity.
16. 15For the feast of the Maccabean martyrs: why Christians honour Jews who died rather than eat pork; the food laws taught continence and obedience, as the tree of paradise did, and the apostolic decree kept only abstinence from idol meats, blood, and sexual immorality.
17. 16Gaudentius's sermon on the day of his consecration as bishop of Brescia: he accepted only under pressure from Ambrose, the bishops, and the people's oath, praises his predecessor Philastrius, and asks Ambrose, as Peter's successor and mouth of the bishops, to preach after him.
18. 17At the dedication of his basilica of the 'Assembly of the Saints' in Brescia, Gaudentius lists its relics (John the Baptist, Andrew, Thomas, Luke, Gervasius and Protasius, Nazarius, the martyrs of Anaunia, and the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, received from Basil's nieces at Caesarea) and retells the martyrdom of the Forty.
19. 18A letter to Serminius on the parable of the unjust steward (Luke 16:1–13): its plain lesson is almsgiving with goods entrusted by God; allegorically the steward is the devil, who 'lowers the debts' by weakening faith (wheat) and good works (oil) through heresy and vainglory.
20. 19A letter to the deacon Paul on John 14:28 ('the Father is greater than I'): against the Arians, Gaudentius distinguishes Christ's two substances, divine and human, showing from the Gospels the works of God and the weaknesses of man in him, and reads the saying of the assumed manhood before its glorification (Phil 2:6–11).
21. 20A short sermon for the feast of Peter and Paul (29 June), given at another bishop's request: the three births (natural, baptismal, and martyrdom), the deaths of Peter by inverted crucifixion and Paul by the sword under Nero, and their equality as brothers in faith.
22. 21Gaudentius's sermon on the anniversary of his predecessor Philastrius of Brescia: a true son of Abraham, a travelling preacher against heresies and Arianism (at Milan against Auxentius and at Rome), who evangelized Brescia, lived humbly and generously, and died on 18 July.