To Turribius, on the Errors of the Priscillianists

Leo, bishop, to Turribius, bishop, greeting. [a]

Your letter, brother, which your deacon has handed to us, proves your praiseworthy zeal for the truth of the catholic faith and the painstaking devotion you spend on the Lord’s flock in your work as a pastor. In it you have taken care to let us know the nature of the disease that has broken out in your region from the remnants of an ancient plague. The wording of your letter, your detailed statement, and the text of your pamphlet make it plain that the filthy puddle of the Priscillianists is teeming with life again among you. For there is no filth that has not flowed into this teaching from the notions of every kind of heretic. They have scraped together the motley dregs from the mire of earthly opinions and made themselves a mixture that they alone swallow whole, though others have tasted small portions of it. [b]

In fact, if all the heresies that arose before Priscillian’s time were studied carefully, hardly a single error would be found with which this impiety has not been infected. Not content with taking up the falsehoods of those who have departed from the gospel under the name of Christ, it has also plunged into the darkness of the pagan world. So they rest their religious faith and their moral conduct on the power of demons and the influence of the stars, through the blasphemous secrets of the magic arts and the empty lies of astrologers. But if this may be believed and taught, no reward will be owed for virtue and no punishment for wrongdoing, and every command, not only of human laws but also of the divine ordinances, will be broken down. For no judgment between good and bad actions will be possible if the necessity of fate drives the impulses of the mind one way or the other, and if all that people do is done not by people but by the stars. To this madness belongs that monstrous division of the whole human body among the twelve signs of the zodiac, so that each part is ruled by a different power, and the creature whom God made in his own image is as much under the rule of the stars as his limbs are joined to one another. [c]

Our fathers, then, in whose times this abominable heresy sprang up, were right to pursue it promptly throughout the world, so that the blasphemous error might be driven out of the church everywhere. Even the rulers of the world so loathed this profane folly that they struck down its founder, with most of his disciples, by the sword of the public laws. For they saw that all desire for honorable conduct would be removed, every marriage tie undone, and divine and human law undermined together, if men of this kind were allowed to live anywhere holding such a creed. For a long time this severity was a help to the church’s law of gentleness. That law relies on the judgment of its priests and shuns bloody vengeance, yet it is assisted by the stern decrees of Christian rulers at times when people who dread bodily punishment turn to a correction that is merely spiritual. But since many provinces have been overrun by enemy invasions, the enforcement of the laws has also been halted by these stormy wars. And since contact among God’s priests became difficult and their meetings rare, secret treachery found freedom in the general disorder, and was stirred up to unsettle many minds by the very troubles that ought to have checked it.

But which peoples, and how many of them, are free from the infection of this plague, in a region where, as you point out, dear brother, the minds even of certain priests have sickened with this deadly disease? Those who were thought to be the needed suppressors of falsehood and champions of the truth are the very ones through whom God’s gospel is made subject to the teaching of Priscillian. So the faithfulness of the holy books is twisted to profane meanings, and under the names of prophets and apostles what is proclaimed is not what the Holy Spirit has taught but what the devil’s servant has slipped in. Therefore, since you, beloved, with all the faithful diligence in your power, have dealt with these already condemned opinions under sixteen headings, we too subject them once more to a strict examination, so that none of these blasphemies may be thought either bearable or doubtful.

So under the first heading it is shown what unholy views they hold about the divine Trinity. They affirm that the person of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is one and the same, as though the same God were named now Father, now Son, and now Holy Spirit; as though the one who begot were not one, the one who was begotten another, and the one who proceeded from both yet another. Instead, they say, an undivided unity must be understood, spoken of under three names indeed, but not consisting of three persons. They borrowed this kind of blasphemy from Sabellius, whose followers were rightly also called Patripassians, that is, “Father-sufferers.” For if the Son is the same as the Father, the Son’s cross is the Father’s suffering, and the Father took on himself everything the Son took on in the form of a slave and in obedience to the Father. This is beyond doubt contrary to the catholic faith. That faith confesses the Trinity of the Godhead to be of one substance in such a way that it believes the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to be indivisible without confusion, eternal without time, and equal without difference. For it is not the same person but the same essence that fills the Unity in Trinity. [f]

Under the second heading their foolish and empty fancy is set out about certain powers issuing from God, which he began to possess, and which came after God himself in his own essence. In this, again, they support the error of the Arians, who say that the Father is prior to the Son, because there was a time when he was without the Son, and he became the Father only when he begot the Son. But as the catholic church abhors the Arians, so it abhors these people too, who think that God was ever lacking anything that is of the same essence. For it is as wicked to speak of him as progressing as it is to call him changeable. Increase implies change as much as decrease does. [h]

The third heading, again, concerns these same people’s impious claim that the Son of God is called “only-begotten” for this reason: that he alone was born of a virgin. They would certainly not have dared to say this if they had not drunk the poison of Paul of Samosata and Photinus, who said that our Lord Jesus Christ did not exist until he was born of the Virgin Mary. But if they want their tenet understood some other way, and do not date Christ’s beginning from his mother’s womb, they must necessarily claim that there is not one Son of God, but that others also were begotten of the most high Father; that this one was born of a woman and is therefore called only-begotten, because no other of God’s sons went through this condition of being born. So wherever they turn, they fall into an abyss of great impiety: either they hold that Christ the Lord took his beginning from his mother, or they do not believe him to be the only-begotten of God the Father. For he who was God was born of a mother, and no one was born of the Father except the Word. [i]

The fourth heading deals with the fact that the birthday of Christ, which the catholic church holds in high honor as the occasion when he took on himself true manhood, because “the Word became flesh and dwelt in us,” is not truly honored by these men, though they make a show of honoring it. For they fast on that day, as they also do on the Lord’s day, which is the day of Christ’s resurrection. No doubt they do this because they do not believe that Christ the Lord was born in a true human nature. They maintain that by a kind of illusion there was an appearance of what was not real, following the views of Cerdo and Marcion and agreeing completely with their kin, the Manichaeans. For as our examination has uncovered and proved against them, they spend in mournful fasting the Lord’s day, which for us is made holy by the resurrection of our Savior, and they devote this abstinence, so the explanation goes, to the worship of the sun. So they are out of harmony with the unity of our faith at every point, and the day we spend in gladness they pass in self-affliction. It is fitting, then, that these enemies of Christ’s cross and resurrection should hold an opinion like this, which matches the teaching they have chosen. [j]

The fifth heading refers to their claim that the human soul is part of the divine being, and that the nature of our human condition does not differ from the nature of its Creator. This impious view has its source in the opinions of certain philosophers and of the Manichaeans, and the catholic faith condemns it, knowing that nothing that is made is so lofty and so supreme that its nature is itself God. For what is part of him is himself, and that is none other than the Son and the Holy Spirit. Apart from this one Godhead of the most high Trinity, of one substance, eternal, and unchangeable, there is nothing in all creation that was not, in its origin, created out of nothing. Besides, whatever surpasses its fellow creatures is not God by that very fact, nor, if a thing is great and wonderful, is it the same as him “who alone does great wonders.” No man is truth, wisdom, or justice; but many share in truth, wisdom, and justice. God alone is free of any sharing, and whatever is in any measure worthily said of him is not an attribute but his very essence. For in the Unchangeable nothing is added and nothing is lost, because “to be” is always his own property, and that is eternity. So, remaining in himself, he renews all things, and he receives nothing that he did not himself give. Those who say the soul is part of the divine being are therefore overproud and stone-blind: they do not understand that they are simply saying that God is changeable and himself suffers whatever may be inflicted on his nature. [l]

The sixth point in the statement shows that they say the devil was never good, and that his nature is not God’s work; rather, he came forth out of chaos and darkness, because, I suppose, he has no one who prompted him but is himself the source and substance of all evil. The true faith, which is the catholic faith, confesses instead that the substance of all creatures, spiritual or bodily, is good, and that evil has no being of its own, because God, the Maker of the universe, made nothing that was not good. So the devil too would be good if he had remained as he was made. But because he made bad use of his natural excellence and “did not stand in the truth,” he did not pass into an opposite substance; he revolted from the highest good, to which he owed his loyalty. In the same way those who make such claims rush headlong from truth into falsehood, blame nature for their own freely chosen wrongdoing, and are condemned for their deliberate perversity. Of course this evil is in them, yet the evil itself is not a substance but a penalty inflicted on a substance. [n]

In the seventh place comes their condemnation of marriage and their horror of having children, in which, as in almost every point, they agree with the impiety of the Manichaeans. But their own practices prove why they detest the marriage tie: there is no freedom for lewdness where the chastity of marriage and of childbearing is kept.

Their eighth point is that the forming of human bodies is the devil’s device, and that the seed is shaped in women’s wombs with the help of demons; and that for this reason the resurrection of the flesh is not to be believed, because the stuff of which the body is made is not in keeping with the dignity of the soul. This falsehood is beyond doubt the devil’s work. Such monstrous opinions are the devices of demons, who do not mold human beings in women’s wombs but concoct such errors in the hearts of heretics. This unclean poison, which flows chiefly from the fountain of Manichaean wickedness, has already been arraigned and condemned by the catholic faith. [o]

The ninth point says that they claim the sons of promise are born of women indeed, but conceived by the Holy Spirit, so that the offspring born of fleshly seed should not seem to share in God’s own condition. This is repugnant and contrary to the catholic faith, which confesses that every human being is formed by the Maker of the universe in the substance of his body and soul, and receives the breath of life within his mother’s womb. Yet the stain of sin and the liability to death that passed from the first parent to his descendants remains in him, until the sacrament of rebirth comes to his aid. By it, through the Holy Spirit, we are born again as sons of promise, not in the womb of the flesh but in the power of baptism. That is why David, who was certainly a son of promise, says to God: “Your hands have made me and fashioned me.” And the Lord says to Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and in your mother’s womb I sanctified you.” [p]

Under the tenth heading they are reported to claim that the souls placed in human bodies were previously without bodies and sinned in their heavenly dwelling. For this reason, they say, the souls fell from their high state to a lower one and came under ruling spirits of various kinds; and after passing through a series of powers of the air and of the stars, some fiercer and some milder, they were shut up in bodies of different sorts and conditions, so that whatever variety and inequality is dealt out to us in this life seems to be the result of earlier causes. They have woven this blasphemous fable for themselves out of the errors of many people. But the catholic faith cuts all of these off from union with its body, steadily and truly proclaiming that human souls did not exist until they were breathed into their bodies, and that they were placed there by none other than God, who is the Creator of both souls and bodies. And because the whole stock of the human race was tainted through the transgression of the first man, no one can be set free from the condition of the old Adam except through Christ’s sacrament of baptism. In it there are no distinctions among the reborn, as the apostle says: “For as many of you as were baptized in Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” [q]

What, then, has the course of the stars to do with it, or the devices of fate? What has the changing state of earthly things, with their restless variety? See how the grace of God makes all these unequal people equal. Whatever their labors in this life, if they remain faithful they cannot be wretched, for in every trial they can say with the apostle: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will trouble, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword? As it is written: ‘For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.’ But in all these things we overcome through him who loved us.” And so the church, which is the body of Christ, has no fear of the world’s inequalities, because she has no desire for temporal goods; nor does she dread being overwhelmed by the empty threats of fate, for she knows she is strengthened by patience in troubles.

Their eleventh blasphemy is the one in which they suppose that both the souls and the bodies of human beings are under the influence of the stars of fate. This folly forces them to become entangled in all the errors of the pagans, and to try to win over the stars they think are favorable to them and to soften those that are against them. But for those who follow such pursuits there is no place in the catholic church. A man who gives himself up to such convictions cuts himself off from the body of Christ altogether.

The twelfth of these points is this: they map out the parts of the soul under certain powers and the limbs of the body under others. They describe the characters of the inner powers that rule the soul by giving them the names of the patriarchs, and on the other hand they assign the signs of the stars to the powers under which they place the body. In all this they entangle themselves in a maze with no way out, not listening to the apostle when he says: “See that no one deceives you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elementary principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, and in him you have been made full, who is the head of every ruler and authority.” And again: “Let no one cheat you by a self-chosen humility and worship of angels, treading among things he has not seen, puffed up for nothing by the senses of his flesh, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, supplied and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with God’s increase.” What, then, is the use of admitting into the heart what the law has not taught, prophecy has not sung, the truth of the gospel has not proclaimed, and the teaching of the apostles has not handed down? But these things suit the minds of those of whom the apostle speaks: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will heap up for themselves teachers to suit their own cravings, and will turn their hearing away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” And so we can have nothing in common with men who dare to teach or believe such things, and who strive by every means in their power to persuade people that the substance of the flesh has no part in the hope of the resurrection. In this way they break down the whole mystery of Christ’s incarnation: for if it was wrong for Christ to set the whole man free, it was wrong for him to take on the whole man. [t]

In the thirteenth place comes their claim that the whole body of the canonical Scriptures is to be accepted under the names of the patriarchs, because those twelve powers that work the renewal of the inner man are pointed out in their names; and without this knowledge, they say, no soul can achieve its renewal and return to the substance from which it came forth. But Christian wisdom despises this wicked delusion. It knows that the nature of the true Godhead cannot be harmed and cannot change, while the soul, whether living in the body or separated from the body, is subject to many passions; whereas, of course, if it were part of the divine essence, no adversity could befall it. So there is no comparison between them: the one is the Creator, the other the creature. For he is always the same and undergoes no change, but the soul is changeable even when it is not changed, because its power of not changing is a gift and not its own property.

Under the fourteenth heading their views on the condition of the body are stated: namely, that because of its earthly properties it is held under the power of stars and constellations, and that many things are found in the holy books that refer to the outer man for this purpose: that in the Scriptures themselves a certain conflict may be seen at work between the divine nature and the earthly, and that what the powers ruling the soul claim for themselves may be told apart from what the fashioners of the body claim. These stories are invented so that the soul may be maintained to be part of the divine substance, and the flesh believed to belong to the evil nature; for they hold that the world itself, with its elements, is not the work of the good God but the product of an evil maker. And to disguise these sacrilegious lies under a fair cloak, they have stained almost all the divine sayings with the coloring of their unholy notions.

On this subject your remarks under the fifteenth heading make a complaint, and express a well-deserved loathing of their devilish presumption. We too have learned this from the reports of trustworthy witnesses, and have found many of their copies thoroughly corrupt, though they are titled canonical. For how could they deceive the simple-minded unless they sweetened their poisoned cups with a little honey, so that what was meant to kill would not be detected by its excessive foulness? So care must be taken, and the diligence of priests exercised to the utmost, to keep falsified copies that are out of harmony with the pure truth from being used in the readings. And the apocryphal scriptures, which under the names of apostles are a breeding ground for many falsehoods, must not only be forbidden but taken away altogether and burned to ashes in the fire. For though there are certain things in them that seem to have a show of piety, they are never free of poison. Through the charm of their stories they secretly work first to beguile people with tales of miracles and then to catch them in the noose of some error. Therefore if any bishop has either not forbidden people to keep apocryphal writings in their houses, or has allowed copies corrupted by the spurious alterations of Priscillian to be read in church under the name of canonical, let him know that he is to be counted a heretic, since he who does not call others back from error shows that he himself has gone astray. [u]

Under the last heading a just complaint was made that the treatises of Dictinius, which he wrote in agreement with Priscillian’s tenets, were read by many with reverence. If they think any respect is due to Dictinius’s memory, they ought to admire his restoration rather than his fall. So it is not Dictinius but Priscillian whom they read, and they approve what he wrote in error, not what he chose after he recanted. But let no one do this unpunished, and let no one be counted among the catholics who makes use of writings condemned not by the catholic church alone but by their author as well. Those who have gone astray must not be allowed to put on a false show and, under the veil of the Christian name, evade the provisions of the imperial decrees. For they attach themselves to the catholic church with all this difference of belief in their hearts, aiming both to make what converts they can and to escape the severity of the law by passing themselves off as ours. Priscillianists and Manichaeans alike do this. The bond between the two is so close that they are distinct only in name and are found at one in their blasphemies. For although the Manichaeans reject the Old Testament, which the others pretend to accept, the purpose of both leads to the same end, since the one side corrupts by receiving what the other attacks by rejecting. [v]

But in their abominable mysteries, which are hidden all the more carefully the more unclean they are, their crime is one, their filthy-mindedness one, and their foul conduct alike. Though we blush to speak so plainly, we have tracked it out by the most painstaking inquiries and exposed it through the confession of Manichaeans who were arrested, and so brought it to public knowledge. We did this so that it could in no way seem doubtful, though it had been disclosed in our court by the mouths of the very men who had committed the crime. That court was attended not only by a large gathering of priests but also by men of rank and standing, and by a number of the senate and the people, as the letter we have sent to you, beloved, shows. And just what was found out about the foul wickedness of the Manichaeans has been found out and widely made known about the immoral practices of the Priscillianists. For those who are on the same level of depravity throughout in their ideas cannot be unlike in their religious rites.

So, having gone through everything the detailed refutation contains, with which the contents of the statement of their views does not disagree, we have, I think, shown well enough what we think about the matters you, brother, referred to us, and how intolerable it is if such blasphemous errors find acceptance in the hearts even of some priests, or, to put it more gently, are not actively opposed by them. With what conscience can they hold the honored position given them, when they do not labor for the souls entrusted to them? Wild beasts rush in, and they do not close the sheepfold. Robbers lie in wait, and they post no watch. Diseases multiply, and they look for no remedies. But when, besides this, they refuse to agree with those who act more carefully, and shrink from anathematizing in a written confession blasphemies that the whole world has already condemned, what do they want people to understand, except that they are not among the brothers but on the enemy’s side? [w]

Further, as for the matter you placed last in your private letter, I am surprised that any intelligent Christian should be in doubt whether, when Christ went down to the realms below, his flesh rested in the tomb. For as it truly died and was buried, so it was truly raised on the third day. The Lord himself had announced this when he said to the Jews: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” And the evangelist adds this comment: “But he was speaking of the temple of his body.” The prophet David too had foretold the truth of this, speaking in the person of the Lord and Savior: “Moreover my flesh also will rest in hope, because you will not leave my soul in Hades, nor let your Holy One see decay.” From these words it is surely clear that the Lord’s flesh, once buried, both truly rested and did not undergo decay, because it was quickly brought back to life by the return of the soul, and rose again. Not to believe this is blasphemous enough, and is beyond doubt of a piece with the teaching of Mani and Priscillian, who with their blasphemous ideas pretend to confess Christ, but only in such a way as to destroy the reality of his incarnation, his death, and his resurrection. [x]

Therefore let a council of bishops be held among you, and let the priests of the neighboring provinces meet at a place convenient to all, so that, following the lines of our reply to your request for advice, a full inquiry may be made whether any of the bishops are tainted with the infection of this heresy. Such bishops must without doubt be cut off from communion if they refuse to condemn this most unrighteous sect with all its wrongful ideas. For it can in no way be allowed that one who has undertaken the duty of preaching the faith should dare to hold opinions contrary to the gospel of Christ and the creed of the universal church. What kind of disciples will there be in a place where such masters teach? What will become of the people’s religion, or the salvation of the lay people, where, against the interests of human society, the holiness of chastity is uprooted, the marriage bond overthrown, the begetting of children forbidden, and the nature of the flesh condemned? Where, in opposition to the true worship of the true God, the Trinity of the Godhead is denied, the distinctness of the persons confused, the human soul declared to be the divine essence and shut up in flesh at the devil’s will, and the Son of God proclaimed only-begotten by right of being born of a virgin, not begotten of the Father, and at the same time held to be neither the true offspring of God nor the true child of the virgin? So that, after a false suffering and an unreal death, even the resurrection of the flesh, taken up again out of the tomb, is to be considered fictitious? It is useless for them to take the name of catholic since they do not oppose these blasphemies. They must believe them, if they can listen to such words so patiently. And so we have sent a letter to our brothers and fellow bishops of the provinces of Tarraco, Carthago, Lusitania, and Galicia, calling for a meeting of a general synod. It will be your task, beloved, to see that our authoritative instructions are carried to the bishops of those provinces. But should anything, which God forbid, prevent a general council of Galicia from coming together, at least let the priests meet. Our brothers Idacius and Ceponius will see to their assembling, assisted by your own vigorous efforts, so that remedies may be applied quickly to these serious wounds by a provincial synod too. Dated the 21st of July, in the consulship of the illustrious Calepius and Ardabur (in the year 447). [y]