Victricius

ON ST. VICTRICIUS, CONFESSOR,

ARCHBISHOP OF ROUEN.

About the year 417.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

His name, cult, fatherland, age, and deeds.

Victricius, Archbishop and Confessor, at Rouen (S.)

J. B. S.

We call St. Victricius a Confessor, not by that title alone that the Saint rested in peace, Passed over in the Martyrologies but also by that most deserved reason by which those were once called Confessors who had undergone torments for the defense of the faith of Christ — which this man most bravely endured, as will be most manifestly plain from the letters of St. Paulinus written to him. Here we inquire first about the name, which Franz Pommeraye, of the Order of St. Benedict, of the Congregation of St. Maur, in his history of the prelates of Rouen, confesses that he has found expressed otherwise, since he is elsewhere named also Victoricus and Victoricius, yet in such a way that these are to be understood of this same archbishop of Rouen, eighth in the series; in which name, however expressed, he not incongruously observes that there are somehow foreshadowed the contests from which, coming forth victorious, he most gloriously carried off the happy omens of that same name; whence it will seem exceedingly wonderful that so illustrious a champion, so celebrated a prelate, so zealous an apostle of the Nervii and the Morini — as will also be manifestly plain — should nowhere have been recorded in any ancient or classic Martyrologies.

[2] But this is somehow to be pardoned to our Martyrologists, he was marked by Baronius, since they were less authors than compilers of the Acts or eulogies which, sought out from every quarter, they entered into their Registers; that is far more to be wondered at, that not one man was found at Rouen who undertook to commend to posterity the so illustrious deeds of his most holy Prelate, so that whatever can be reported or declared concerning that most illustrious Saint must be credited to St. Paulinus, removed by so many spaces of lands. Nor did Baronius find another guide whom he might follow in enrolling or praising St. Victricius in the sacred Roman Calendars; so that accordingly the brief but elegant eulogy of the most Eminent Annalist at this day deserves to be here enrolled from the Roman Martyrology: At Rouen, of St. Victricius, bishop, who, while still a soldier, casting off his belt for Christ under the same Julian, was afflicted by the tribune with many torments and condemned to lose his head; but, the executioner who had been sent to slay him being struck with blindness, he himself, his bonds being loosed, escaped free: afterward, made a bishop, he led the untamed nations of the Morini and Nervii to the faith of Christ by the preaching of the word, and at last, a confessor, rested in peace.

[3] Galesinius had treated of St. Victricius in fewer words; but Molanus and Miraeus have adorned the Apostle of the Flemings with deserved praises. praised by Saussay. Saussay's announcement will stand for all of them, framed in these words: On the same day, at Rouen, the metropolis of Lugdunensis Secunda, of St. Victricius, bishop and confessor of that city. He, as blessed Paulinus, prelate of Nola, testifies, while still a soldier showed himself a true confessor and martyr of Christ. And while he endured adversities for Christ, he by a miracle loosed the bonds by which his hands were bound as he was to be punished with death. Then, made by a wonderful vicissitude of affairs a prelate, his own church being well ordered, he evangelized foreign peoples; with great labors he converted the Morini to the faith, and likewise the farthest peoples of the Nervian shore; and in these barbarous regions he first built monasteries. Then, returning to his own see, over which he presided eighth in order, glorious with so many pious trophies, he rested in peace as a confessor. St. Innocent the Pope honored him with Apostolic rescripts, in which he both answered his consultations and commended his wisdom and outstanding virtue with distinguished eulogies. Here you have very nearly all the things which could be adduced from the writers already cited and from the Sainte-Marthe brothers or others.

[4] The Saint's fatherland not sufficiently certain Concerning the true place of his birth there is nothing from which you may establish anything certain; this St. Paulinus indicated in his earlier letter, namely that St. Victricius was brought forth into the light of his people from the utmost or farthest part of the world: where also a little after he indicates the tract of the Nervian shore, not the Évreux one, as Rosweyde rightly proved, reported by the latest editor of the works of Paulinus of the year 1685, whom I hear named elsewhere Jean-Baptiste le Brun, in his note LVIII. Further, concerning the Nervian shore there is a new dispute, since the Nervii or people of Tournai in no way border on the sea, so that indeed those words seem to be taken in a somewhat wider signification, of the farthest tract of the Morini or people of Thérouanne, indeed also of Boulogne, somewhat nearer the sea, to which the Pauline words are here to be extended; certainly most probably to those very regions which the same Saint illuminated by his untiring apostolic labors with the light of the Christian religion, which up to then had scarcely yet reached there, by his incomparable zeal: whether he was already bishop of Rouen, or before he undertook the care of that church, I would not indeed dare to define at least according to Pommeraye's mind, since I judge that he preached with greater authority and fruit when already a bishop.

[5] as neither is his age. For determining the Saint's age all things are no less entangled, as the already praised Pommeraye candidly confesses, who says that some defer the beginnings of his pontificate to the year 406, others to 404 and to 402, all of whom the same man rightly refutes; indeed also those who draw it back to the year 396, whom he himself precedes by a whole two years, marking 394. But not even thus is it permitted to suppose that his true beginning is fixed, if his sojourn with St. Martin of Tours at Vienne on the Rhone, where St. Paulinus also was present, is to be assigned to the year 389, as the more recent Life of St. Martin has it, or at least 390, at which time, even by the testimony of St. Paulinus himself, St. Victricius was most certainly a bishop, inasmuch as he confesses that he venerated him as such there, being at that time ignorant how greatly, as a younger soldier under Julian, he had suffered for Christ. The year of his death is almost equally uncertain. If he truly survived to the year 417, since we suppose that he was already a bishop in the year 389, he governed his church not for twenty-three years alone, as Pommeraye will have it, but for a full twenty-eight, and perhaps longer. Now indeed if he followed military service under Julian, he suffered in the year 362, whence he must have been born at the least about the year 340, so that he was summoned to the crown of his labors nearly an octogenarian. He is said to be adorned by Ordericus Vitalis with this brief metrical eulogy:

Victricius the victor, brave also as avenger of vices, Imbued the Church of the Lord with kindly commands.

[6] We have already said that some sort of series of his deeds cannot be drawn from elsewhere Deeds taken from St. Paulinus. than from the two letters of St. Paulinus, already so often praised, which le Brun (for us Brunus), the more recent editor of his works, also reported above, arranges in such an order that he rightly judges to be the first the one which is placed eighteenth in the series, and which was most probably written in the year 399, when St. Paulinus had not yet been promoted to the islands — which the very inscription sufficiently indicates: To the ever most blessed and venerable father Victricius, Paulinus; whereas in the other he so speaks as to profess himself equal to him in dignity by this formula: To Victricius, his brother of one mind, Paulinus. This latter, moreover, he refers to the end of the year 404, in which very year he had undertaken the government of the church of Nola. I hesitated in doubt whether it would be better to transcribe both these letters, as the former was published for the greater part by Surius, or rather to use that dissertation which is extant at the end of the works, divided into four chapters, in which the things that can be said of the Saint's deeds are so orderly contained that at last it seemed superfluous to expend labor in arranging them more laboriously in another manner or order. Have, therefore, the said dissertation of Brunus, which it has pleased us for the time being to call a Life, omitting the nearly innumerable citations, which critics may consult in the source. We shall not neglect to annotate those things which more nearly regard the Life.

LIFE

By the author Jean-Baptiste le Brun. From St. Paulinus, letters 18 and 37.

Victricius, Archbishop and Confessor, at Rouen (S.)

BY BRUNUS.

CHAPTER I.

The history of St. Victricius, bishop of Rouen. He lays down his arms; and suffers for Christ, who guards his innocence with miracles.

Stripping off his arms for Christ Victricius seems to have been born in some borders of the empire, from which God brought him forth into the light of his people. He was younger than Martin, who was born in the year 316 or 317. By the Lord's ordering Victricius was made a soldier; he served Caesar, and in that very military service he first had entrance to the faith. When he was first kindled with the love of Christ, he rejected military service in his mind, and on a notable day of a military council ^a, he suddenly stripped off his arms, which he cast at the feet of his tribune. The tribune being roused to fury at this, Victricius was stretched out for blows, and broken with cudgels, and thus afflicted, was worn down in prison upon a sharp fragment of potsherds; and, his wounds not yet closed, he was presented to the count: which count ^b, as it seems, had come to torture him. Paulinus says that Victricius triumphed over that more powerful enemy, whence it is gathered that this count applied torments to him.

[2] having suffered many things, he is freed by a miracle. The attendants did not dare to inflict tortures again; but Victricius was condemned by a capital sentence. But God then confounded his enemies with conspicuous miracles. For while he was being led to the place of execution, the executioner who went before, when he had insultingly touched his neck with his hand, as though feeling beforehand the place of his stroke, his eyes being at once struck out, was smitten with blindness. But he was blinded for this reason, that more might be enlightened, and that he himself might perhaps receive the lights of the mind. The chains, knotted more tightly, which the guards had been unwilling to loosen even by a slight favor at Victricius's request, they saw, when prayer had been turned to God in their sight, flow of their own accord from his freed hands; nor did the soldiers dare to fasten them again, but ran in fear to the count, confessing the truth of the miracle.

[3] Whether on account of the faith The count himself, turned from fury to clemency by God's providence, gave credence to the testimony of the soldiers, and sent him to the emperor, to whom he related the whole matter as it had been done — who detained the Confessor, as is probable, not as a guilty man, but sent him forth as a holy one. Paulinus, who reports the above things, does not say whether Victricius wished only to cast away his arms so as to devote himself wholly to God, or rather because the soldiers wished to compel him to something contrary to religion, as happened under the emperor Julian; nor does he even say whether he was condemned as a deserter, or rather for the Christian religion. In the opening of his narration the first cause alone is brought forward; and if he had been condemned as a Christian under Julian, the count, as is probable, would not have sent him forth praising him as a saint, whether before he had received the mandate from the emperor to send him forth, or after receiving it.

[4] he truly suffered, On the other hand, Paulinus says that the count wished to be a persecutor of Christ in Victricius, and wished to punish the witnesses of the faith: that the tribune, at whose feet Victricius cast his arms, was sacrilegious; and that the soldiers who tortured him were attendants of the devil. This can indeed seem remarkable, if they knew Victricius only by the name of a soldier who wished to lay down his arms. It seems also that he ought not to have been distinguished with the title of confessor and martyr, with which he is many times adorned by Paulinus ^c, on account of all the things which he endured for this cause; nay, even many seem to have been condemned for the same cause as Victricius, who were sent forth with him, all of whom Paulinus calls confessors. By these reasons Baronius was led to assert that Victricius suffered under Julian; and in the Roman Martyrology his birthday is assigned to the seventh day of August.

[5] or on account of deserting the military service. If he suffered under a Christian prince, and only in order to devote himself wholly to God, by no more excellent example can it be demonstrated how much violence each one ought to do to himself in order to obey grace, and to strip off even all things not plainly harmful in themselves: whence it also evidently appears that God can crown in heaven men guilty by the civil laws, which the Church cannot defend by her own laws. St. Martin was cast into prison because he was unwilling to stand any longer under arms, but not chiefly for that cause; nor indeed did he come into peril of his head. Victricius's virtues corresponded to this illustrious first exercise, which for few is the consummation of long labors. For he was always seen to be powerful in merits and rich in graces; and Paulinus asserts that God made him equal in merits to Martin. This man, not using lawful things and abstaining from comforts, held the rich glory of Christian poverty, and the virtue of faith shone forth in his whole life.

CHAPTER II.

Victricius is created bishop of Rouen. He makes his church illustrious for piety; he preaches the Faith in Belgium.

How highly St. Martin esteemed him, God, unwilling that Victricius's virtue should lie hidden and obscure under the bushel of silence, raised him upon the candlestick of the apostolic see of the church of Rouen. This happened before Paulinus was free from the cares of this world, that is, before the year 390, at which time Paulinus saw him at Vienne with St. Martin; and although he then knew him only as a bishop, not indeed as a martyr, he nevertheless showed him all the offices of courtesy, and commended himself and his own to his prayers, and embraced him with an altogether singular affection. Sulpicius Severus relates that the bishops Valentinianus and Victricius were present when a certain parent offered to Martin at Chartres a girl twelve years old to be healed: which miracle Martin wished to refer to those two bishops, asserting that he was much inferior to them in sanctity, and that they could do all things.

[7] But they, together with that parent, entreated Martin, and with what zeal who, the people being dismissed, with the two bishops and the father standing by, restored health to the girl. That Victricius was without doubt the bishop of Rouen, since among the rest of the bishops of Gaul we acknowledge no other of that name. After Victricius was created bishop, he announced the mystery of Christ in faith and truth, not in the inflation of knowledge, nor in the loftiness of speech, judging himself to know nothing among men save Christ Jesus, and him crucified. To him God granted what he is wont to grant only to men of exceptional sanctity, namely to match his words with deeds, and to instruct equally by life and by words; and indeed no one could excuse himself by the command of difficulty, since he was first bound by the example of Victricius's virtue. By that means he stood forth as the blessed parent of many blessed ones. He gathered around himself innumerable flocks of Saints of both sexes, whom he had begotten to Christ by his wise institutes, and to whom he was the formula of faith, as also the example of perfect virtue. To his church too he gave the appearance of that primitive church of Jerusalem, and in it every kind of virtue seemed to flourish. Daughters in the greatest number preserved an unstained virginity, to whom Christ alone was guest and spouse; innumerable widows, by pious ministry in holy works, by their service to the church night and day, overcame those assaults by which the devil harassed their bodies. Many married persons professed the secret brotherhood of brethren, and by assiduous prayers invited Christ to visit them and to bless their chastity.

[8] and he animated them to perfection Others in turn exercised themselves both in conjugal chastity and in continence. Everywhere the bowels of mercy were opened; continually by day and by night the name of Christ the Lord resounded in preaching. With daily concord holy canticles were chanted through the frequented churches and monasteries, and with most chaste hearts and voices the saints, both in heaven and on earth, were delighted. Therefore Paulinus adds that the Apostles, when they had found in Victricius a lodging most fitting for themselves, cooperated with him, and by the effect of divine works proved that their spirit was present in that church from which their relics were absent; that they rested in the sons of piety and justice; that they loved Victricius among all the sons of their instruction, and loved Christ in him; and that, to attest him a sharer of their glory, they had wrought plainly divine miracles chiefly in his diocese.

[9] making Rouen illustrious And so by St. Victricius's zeal and care Rouen, a city before divulged among neighboring regions with a slender name, began to be named venerably even in far-off provinces, and to be numbered with divine praise among the cities noble for consecrated places. Nor was Victricius made a colleague of the Apostles only by pontifical dignity, but also by this, that God made him — to use Paulinus's words — the Beautiful foot of his word, kindling a bright flash of light in regions before dark, among the remote nations of the peoples who sat in the region of the shadow of death; a cloud watering the deserts with abundant rain; and finally a master and teacher of the nations. In the times of Diocletian the faith of the truth had already breathed with a slender spirit upon the Morini and Nervii in Belgium, but through the negligence of the pastors and the frequent incursion of barbarians it had made no increase.

[10] and the Morini and Nervii. God chiefly chose out Victricius as a vessel of election, in whom he might sanctify his name there; for in him the faith of the truth first shone forth more brightly and appeared more nearly, and charity grew warm more ardently. At last, where once foreign barbarians or resident brigands frequented the deserted places of the woods and the equally unsafe shores, then venerable and angelic choirs of Saints, cities, towns, islands, woods, monasteries and churches numerous in people, with concordant peace celebrated the divine praises. Into all the earth his sound went forth, and the name of God was sanctified ^a.

CHAPTER III.

Paulinus writes to Victricius. Victricius is accused concerning the faith: he comes to Rome; and writes to Paulinus.

St. Victricius's companions Very probably Victricius preached in the above-mentioned regions when already a bishop, for Paulinus had very recently heard of him when he sent him a letter in the year 399. These things Tychicus had made known to him, whom he calls St. Victricius's dearest brother and faithful minister in the Lord ^a; and then Paulinus lamented the negligence of his own unhappiness, that he had not sufficiently recognized and venerated Victricius's sanctity, when he had formerly seen him at Vienne with St. Martin, and had not licked his scars. He sought an occasion of writing to him, and none was given, until that which had once not befallen him when he desired it came to him at Rome when he was looking on, whither Paulinus had come; and not long after there met him, together with a certain catechumen Ursus, Paschasius also, deacon of St. Victricius of Rouen, in whose kindness and grace Paulinus says that he gathered, as it were in a returning mirror, certain lineaments of St. Victricius's virtues and graces; whom the modesty of his manners, the humility of his heart, the meekness of his spirit, his constancy in the faith of the truth, and his speech seasoned in all things with salt, proved to be both a disciple of Victricius's instruction and a companion of his way.

[12] And so, besides the grace of fraternal fellowship in the sacred ministry of the diaconate, led by St. Paulinus to Nola Paulinus received him the more venerably and lovingly because he was of Victricius's clergy, and body, and spirit. Nor did he suffer him to set out when he desired to return from the City to Victricius, but by a certain violence of charity led him to Nola; that he might longer enjoy, through his presence, as it were a certain portion of St. Victricius's grace. Nevertheless Paulinus lost no small consolation of his converse, being at that time afflicted with a bodily sickness. Nor indeed was Paschasius troubled and compassionate only in Paulinus's infirmity; but he was also worn out in the most grievous languor of Ursus, whom he had had as an inseparable companion of his pilgrimage — in which Paulinus asserts that he perceived faith and charity full in the Lord.

[13] At last by the labor and faith of Paschasius, whom the Lord willed to test, they are healed of their infirmity. Ursus, sick unto death, found the power of his holy confessor Felix with him, and found salvation out of danger, and, begotten to Christ through the hands of the deacon Paschasius, was baptized in his little bed, although St. Paulinus was present, already a priest, and many other priests could have been at hand. But when Ursus was in sound and robust health and Paschasius was meditating his return to Victricius, Paulinus sent through him his eighteenth letter to Victricius, in which, having excused his having retained Paschasius rather long with him, he makes mention of the Morini and Nervii, whom Victricius had begotten to Christ through the Gospel, and of how he had formed the church of Rouen, as we have related above; finally, after he had woven the history of his martyrdom or confession, he signifies that he is held by the greatest desire of seeing him.

[14] He makes no mention in it of Victricius's coming to the City, When he himself came to Rome, which we shall presently demonstrate to have taken place in the year 404. The war of Alaric being extinguished, Honorius came to Rome in the last days of the year 403, where he stayed at least until the twenty-fifth day of July of the year 404. At the same time Victricius of Rouen betook himself thither, and himself saw with how great labors and how great zeal Innocent the Roman Pontiff urged the emperor not to drag ecclesiastical men into civil burdens and offices. Concerning this pilgrimage of Victricius to Rome Paulinus speaks; for he hoped that Victricius, who had come to Rome from Rouen through so great spaces of lands, would come by a short journey to him at Nola; and when he had not come, Paulinus confesses that by the loss of this good he was not only saddened but even confounded

and that never had his sins been made more manifest to himself, nor to others, than when the hand of God, which had led Victricius so far, did not permit him to come nearer to himself.

[15] With what purpose Victricius undertook this pilgrimage and for what cause: is not plainly evident, unless we say that he was drawn thither by the lying tongues of the malevolent who envied his sanctity. He seems to have been accused of not thinking rightly concerning the faith, about which, when Paulinus wrote to him, he expounds to him the Catholic faith in a long discourse, chiefly concerning the mysteries of the Trinity and of the Incarnation. But God suffered him to be affected with this injury, that he might rejoice again over a victory, and that he who had departed a victor from the fight might be given a crown, and that it might be allowed him to say, according to blessed Paul, that he fought on the right hand and on the left through the arms of justice, through ignominy and good report, through glory and ignobility: for neither could the arrows of wicked tongues find a place of wounding in a body hedged about with the powerful arms of God, nor a blemish in his light: for who would doubt that the faith of the truth dwells in his spirit, in whose life he sees the virtue of faith stand forth.

[16] where he abundantly clears himself, Nor was anyone confounded in this, that he thought more rightly concerning him, and this new proof of his true faith and also of his virtue came to many for the advancement of the Gospel. For what cause Victricius came to Rome is not open; nor is it sufficiently established, as we have already said, whether he was drawn thither by the accusations of the wicked. However it may be, certainly there the praise both of his doctrine and of his virtue stood forth as very great in the mouths of all; for a few days having intervened, Pope Innocent, in a letter sent to him, praises him because in the direction of doctrine, in the virtue of his manner of life, and in the instruction of others according to the norm of the Church, he had attained the praise of a true bishop; nor did he notice anything in his doctrine which did not accord with the sacred pages. Not long after his return to Rouen he sent Candidianus into Italy, to whom he gave a short letter to Paulinus, which Paulinus himself received with incredible joy; and which wholly wiped away his former grief that Victricius had not come to him:

[17] Nevertheless he does not meet Paulinus. Of which nevertheless he complains most sweetly and most humbly in his reply, and confesses that this solace was owed to himself as a sinner and a sick man. For I do not wish you, says Paulinus, to be so secure about us as to think that all the languors of our soul are now healed, in which we have sinned and do sin against the Lord. On that matter he subjoins many things after his manner, and implores the suffrages of his prayers; the remainder of the letter regards that persecution which he had endured. Augustine speaks about the year 404 of a certain Candidianus, a priest, into knowledge of whom he had come through the agency of Paulinus, and by whose ministry the same Augustine sent the book On Care for the Dead to Paulinus. The bearer of Victricius's letter to Paulinus had not yet attained the dignity of priest, since Paulinus calls him son; and at that time he seems to have been rather Victricius's man than Paulinus's.

CHAPTER IV.

Innocent I, the Roman Pontiff, writes to Victricius.

Having recourse to Pope Innocent, To the same Candidianus, perhaps, Victricius gave a letter to Pope Innocent; for he wished to learn from that Pontiff what was the rule and practice of the Roman Church concerning discipline and the direction of morals. He complained of the perverse manner of acting of certain men who, not fearing the divine judgment, but angling for popular favor, presumed to infringe the sacred and ancient decrees of the Church, no account being had of its sanctity; wherefore he had it in his prayers that the same discipline of the Roman Church be preserved in his own province: to whose most equitable petition Innocent consented, and sent to Victricius a book which he calls Regular, as it were a teacher and monitor, in which he wished not to enjoin new precepts, but that those things which had been neglected through the sloth of some, and which had been established by Apostolic tradition and that of the Fathers, should be observed by all, account being had of the divine judgment; and Innocent asserts that he sends these things lest he himself seem by his silence to favor errors and abuses; and he admonishes Victricius to make them known to his suffragan bishops and to the neighboring churches, so that it may be known what is the practice of the Roman Church, and that whoever have undertaken the care of instructing Christians may follow this rule; by the observance of which they would easily attain to the knowledge of the other decrees which are not here noted.

[19] That Regular book, which Innocent says was sent by him with his letter, and receiving from him a letter does not seem to me to be other than those decrees which are so joined to the letter itself that they seem to constitute a part of it; of which the first forbids: That no one dare, without the knowledge of the metropolitan, to ordain a bishop, or be ordained by one bishop. The second prohibits: That he be not admitted into the clergy who, after the remission of sins in baptism, has held the belt of secular military service. For it is established that penance alone excluded from the clergy, even though one had not professed secular military service.

[20] The third, which Dionysius Exiguus joins to the second, establishes That causes or contentions among clerics, both of the higher order and of the lower, are to be terminated by the bishops of the same province; (without prejudice, however, to the Roman Church, as Justel's edition has it, page 197) and that those who have transferred the judgment of their cause into other provinces are to be deposed from the clerical state; but concerning greater causes, when the bishops have given judgment, they shall make it known to the Supreme Pontiff according to custom, and according to the decree of the Council, as it seems, of Sardica. The fourth, fifth, and sixth prohibit: That clerics be not ordained who have had a second wife, or a widow, or a woman put away, whether after or before baptism, contrary to Jerome's opinion: which he asserts is observed by the individual bishops. The ninth, that Levites and priests should not come together with their wives, because they are occupied with the necessities of the daily ministry.

[21] It seems to have been lawful for clerics of the lower order to use marriage at their pleasure, and rules by which except for those, as Innocent says in chapter 10, who had stayed long in monasteries, where they had bound themselves to perpetual continence; for it would have been alien from reason if what they had long preserved they should lose when placed in a better grade. He notes in the same article that those corrupted before marriage did not receive the Church's blessing when they took wives; and that those who before baptism had not stood in virginity had promised, according to the ancient use and practice of the Church, when they were admitted into the clergy, that they would not contract marriage. In the seventh article it is prohibited: That no one usurp the right to ordain a cleric from another church, unless his bishop, entreated by prayers, be willing to grant it; and let one church not receive a cleric cast out by another.

[22] he might order his church Eighth: That those returning to the Church from the Novatians or the Montenses, that is, the Donatists, be received by the imposition of hands alone, apart from those who, passing over from the Catholic Church to them, were rebaptized; for these are by no means to be admitted without a long satisfaction of penance. In the eleventh Innocent admonishes Victricius not to make clerics of curials or of men occupied with any public functions whatever, since they would sometimes be recalled from the priesthood by the princes to be subjected to those offices in which they exhibited pleasures (namely the public games), which it is not doubtful were invented by the devil; and at the same time he recalls to his memory the things which he himself, when stationed at Rome, had seen. The twelfth decreed that those who have spiritually wedded Christ and have merited to be veiled by a priest, if afterward they either publicly marry or secretly corrupt themselves, are not to be admitted to perform penance, unless he to whom they had joined themselves has departed from the world; and that those who, while their husband is still living, have married another, are held adulteresses, nor is the license of performing penance to be granted them, unless one of them has died.

[23] and establish other things. The thirteenth establishes that penance is to be performed for some time by those who have married after they had promised to remain always in the purpose of virginity, even though they were not veiled. The last two articles are cited from the letter of Pope Innocent I to Victricius of Rouen in the Second Council of Tours, and are there approved. Most ineptly do the heretics of this time use those last two articles to bring reproach upon this letter of Innocent. Others utterly reject it and contend that it is not Innocent's, because it embraces word for word the letter of Siricius. But since Innocent wished to renew the ancient rules and to make known the discipline of the Roman Church, he could not have performed this better than by handing down the institutes of his forefathers.

[24] At what time Wherefore no one would rightly have doubted concerning the letter of Siricius, praised by the Council of Telepte and by Ferrandus, nor concerning the decretal letter of Innocent, which Dionysius Exiguus inserted entire in the codex of the Roman Church, and which is cited in the year 570 by the Second Council of Tours and by very many others. A greater difficulty is engaged in assigning the time of the writing of the letter, which is the fifteenth of February; because the letter relates that Victricius was a witness of the great troubles with which the Roman Pontiff urged the emperor when present: for on that account it must be asserted by us that he was staying at Rome at the same time as Honorius, who did not arrive there except in the month of December of the year 403. From the poem which Claudian published concerning that journey, on his sixth consulship, it is established that he had never come there before from the time he had been created emperor: but besides, Innocent did not attain the pontificate before the year 402.

[25] it was given If therefore Victricius was present at Rome in the month of December 403, who would think that Innocent wrote to him on the fifteenth day of February of the year 404? This one thing could be supposed, that Victricius, still staying at Rome, requested this instruction from him, and received it from him in the form of a letter, that it might be of greater weight. But from these words, "which you yourself, stationed with us, learned," it is manifest that Victricius was already then absent from the city of Rome; and in fact indeed he asserts that these decrees were sent by him with the letter; and these words, "for you assert that certain men have arisen," sufficiently indicate that the Pontiff is not replying to those things which Victricius had said in person, but to those things which Victricius himself had written back from that time. And so if we place his departure from Rome at the end of March 404, which indeed cannot be assigned earlier, since it is necessary that Victricius wrote from Rouen to Rome, and that Innocent prepared his reply over some time, which he could not give before this year, on the fifteenth of the Kalends, not of March, but of January, that is, the eighteenth of December ^a.

[26] In certain editions and in Justel's manuscript there is not found at what time this letter was written, although each is assigned to its own time

other letters: the letter already mentioned. and indeed those things which follow: This rule, therefore, etc., seem to be excerpted from certain other writings, nor do they cohere in any way with the preceding, unless the whole letter be understood of this rule. History teaches nothing further concerning St. Victricius, who on the seventh day of August is venerated by the Church among the Confessors of Christ. His body is handed down to have been translated to Braine and laid in the church of St. Remigius ^b.

* read also

* namely, public

* read "to be subjected"