ON ST. CORNELIUS AND SS. CEREALIS AND SALUSTIA: POPE AND MARTYR AT CIVITAVECCHIA IN ETRURIA, AND MARTYRS AT ROME WITH TWENTY-ONE COMPANIONS,
In the year 252.
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Cornelius, pope and martyr, at Civitavecchia in Etruria. (S.)
Cerealis, Martyr, at Rome. (S.)
Salustia, Martyr, at Rome. (S.)
Twenty-one Companions, Martyrs, at Rome.
BHL Number: 1964
BY C. S.
§ I. The memory of the Saint variously recorded in the Martyrologies:
his most ancient cult and that of the present day.
[1] St. Cornelius, the successor of Fabian, pope and martyr, in the Roman Chair of St. Peter, and himself likewise a martyr, In several Martyrologies the martyrologies both ancient and more recent celebrate with unanimous consent on the fourteenth day of September; but some announce him alone, others together with three-and-twenty Companions, of whom only two names are given. The older Hieronymian, edited and illustrated by Francesco Florentini, has at this day as follows: At Rome, in the Cemetery, on the Appian Way, the birthday of Cornelius the bishop, and of Saturus. On this the praiseworthy Florentini makes two observations: the first is that in that Martyrology the cemetery of Callistus is designated by the generic and antonomastic name of "the Cemetery"; the second, that he somewhat suspects whether the name Saturi, which he had found nowhere but in his own codices, may not have been written through a copyist's fault in place of martyris, so that it should be read of Cornelius the bishop and martyr; yet because in his Corbie codex he had read Saturnini in place of Saturi, he preferred to believe that Saturninus should be retained, and that this man was one of the twenty—indeed the twenty-one—anonymous persons who are said to have suffered along with St. Cornelius. As to the first point, I readily assent to Florentini; for other Martyrologies expressly name the cemetery of Callistus, and rightly so, as will be plain from what is to be said. But that Saturus or Saturninus was a companion of St. Cornelius in martyrdom is plainly uncertain; indeed, since it does not appear why out of so many Companions Saturus or Saturninus alone should be listed, he seems rather not to belong to the class of these Martyrs. Let us return to the Martyrologies.
[2] The Corbie Hieronymian, which d'Achéry in the second volume of the reprinted Spicilegium calls the most ancient, St. Cornelius alone, in others announces him at the same day thus: At Rome, on the Appian Way, in the cemetery of Calestus \, the birthday of the saints Cornelius the bishop, and Saturninus. The Gellone Martyrology in the said Spicilegium: At Rome, of Cornelius; and likewise an ancient Calendar in the same place: The birthday of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian. Similarly the Rheinau Martyrology, published by Sollier in the seventh volume of June, briefly mentions Cornelius without companions thus: At Rome, of Cornelius. The Reichenau and the Labbean, printed in the same volume, sing the same tune: in the first of them one reads: At Rome, of Cornelius, and the deposition of Dionysius the bishop; in the other: At Rome, of Cornelius and Cyprian, martyrs. But it is clear that neither Dionysius nor Cyprian belongs to the fellowship of St. Cornelius. The same is to be judged of the Augsburg Martyrology, when it says in the same place: At Rome, of Cornelius, Cyprian, Dionysius, Saturus, Felix, Honorius, Eparticus the bishop*; for just as St. Cyprian, who suffered some years after our holy Pontiff and in another place, cannot be numbered among his companions, although he is listed in the same announcement, so neither can the fellowship of the others with St. Cornelius in martyrdom or in the arena be inferred from this. Let these things about the Hieronymian copies suffice.
[3] Bede too and Wandalbert acknowledged no Companions of the Saint, each in his own metrical Martyrology. with many companions The former of them sang thus:
Cornelius thence hallows the eighteenth Kalends.
And the latter thus:
And Cornelius the bishop upholds his own Rome by his valor and his blood.
But other Fasti, as I have noted, attach to the holy Pontiff not a few companions. Foremost among them, the Martyrology of Bede, prefixed to the second volume of March in our Work, has at the XVIII Kalends of October thus: At Rome, the birthday of St. Cornelius the bishop: whose mouth was first beaten with leaded whips, and who was thus beheaded together with twenty-one others \, of both sexes: and Cerealis the soldier with his wife Salustia, whom Cornelius had healed of an infirmity, suffered under Decius.* Thus far that text; which nevertheless is to be ascribed not to Bede but to Florus, in the judgment of our Sollier, a man most versed in questions of this kind. For he, in his Preface to Usuard, chapter 1, article 2, number 56, was of this opinion: that, comparing both Martyrologies of Bede with each other, namely the prose one just praised and the metrical one which we cited above, he would attribute to Bede all those Saints and elogia of Saints whom Bede had mentioned in the metrical one, and the rest to Florus: but in the metrical one, as we have shown, he announced Cornelius alone.
[4] The same Companions of the Saint are listed by the author of the Old Roman, he is announced with Companions, whose or Little Roman, published by Rosweyde, saying: At Rome, of Cornelius bishop and martyr, and of twenty-one others, and of Cerealis and Salustia. St. Ado, bishop of Vienne, following both, wove together a lengthy elogium out of the Acts which are in circulation; and since I have not judged that the Acts should be given, I here subjoin it. At Rome, on the Appian Way, in the Cemetery of Callistus, the birthday of Saint Cornelius the bishop, who under the persecution of Decius was consigned to exile at Civitavecchia with priests and deacons. Many of the Christians came to strengthen him. At which time blessed Cyprian wrote to him about Celerinus the lector, how much he had endured for the faith and the confession of Christ. Decius Caesar, having heard that many were writing to him, and about blessed Cyprian, ordered him to be brought before him. Being brought forth, and Decius asking why he had received letters from Cyprian against the commonwealth, he answered: "I have received letters about the Lord's crown, not against the commonwealth." Decius, enraged, ordered that his mouth be beaten with leaded whips, and that he then be led to the temple of Mars to sacrifice: and that if he should scorn to do so, he should be punished with death on the spot.
[5] And as he was being led along, one of the soldiers, named Cerealis, his martyrdom began to beg the blessed Pope to visit his wife, who had lain paralytic for five years. And having entered her house, he took Salustia's hand and raised her up, saying: "In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, arise, and stand upon thy feet": and she at once raised herself up, crying out and saying: "Truly Christ is the Son of God." And she said to blessed Cornelius: "Baptize me, I adjure thee by Christ"; and running, she filled a vessel with water and brought it to him. Then all the soldiers cast themselves at his feet, praying to be baptized: and when he had baptized them, he offered for them the sacrifice of praise, and they all partook of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Decius, hearing these things, sent and seized them all, and ordered that they be led with blessed Cornelius to sacrifice, and, if they were unwilling to obey, that they be struck with the sword.
[6] And being led outside the walls of the Appian gate, spitting at the temple, from Ado they were beheaded together with the most blessed Pope, twenty-one in number: and also Cerealis with his wife Salustia, on the XVIII Kalends of October. But on the same night the blessed Lucina came with clerics and her household, and carried off the bodies of the Martyrs, and buried them in her own field, in a crypt in the cemetery of Callistus. At the request of this blessed Lucina the same blessed Cornelius raised the bodies of the Apostles from the Catacombs by night, and placed that of Paul on the Ostian Way, where he was beheaded, but that of Peter near the place where he was crucified, among the bodies of the holy bishops, in the temple of Apollo, on the Golden Mount, in the Vatican of Nero's palace, on the III Kalends of July.
[7] Thus far Ado, whose rather lengthy text Usuard, after his manner, compressed into these words: and is presented by Usuard. At Rome, on the Appian Way, of blessed Cornelius the Pope, whose mouth, after the banishment of exile, Decius ordered to be beaten with leaded whips, and that he thus be beheaded with twenty-one others of both sexes. But also Cerealis the soldier with his wife Salustia, whom the same Cornelius had instructed in the faith, was on the same day struck with the sword. Finally, not to be longer than need be, Rabanus and Notker inserted like things into their Martyrologies in the ninth century, and thereafter Baronius adopted them in the Roman Martyrology. Now I have found it necessary to review here so long a series of martyrologists, in order that we may discern what may more probably be determined concerning the manner of St. Cornelius's death, the place of his contest, its time, and his Companions: for all these matters labor under no slight difficulties, which we shall set forth below.
[8] The most ancient cult of St. Cornelius I marvel that in Bucherius's most ancient Calendar no mention is made of this holy Pontiff, whereas nevertheless in the same one reads of the veneration of St. Cyprian, who was from ancient times honored together with him at Rome in the cemetery of Callistus: On the eighteenth Kalends of October, of Cyprian of Africa. At Rome he is celebrated in the cemetery of Callistus. But whatever be the cause of this silence, it is clear that the sacred cult of Cornelius flourished at Rome in the fifth century, from the church which we shall show in §13 to have been built by St. Leo I for the honorable keeping of his sacred bones. To this point also make the ancient Sacramentaries published under the names of the same Leo I, of Gelasius I, and likewise of Gregory I, in which at the XVIII Kalends of October the holy Pontiff is celebrated together with St. Cyprian, in a Mass common to both.
[9] his cult at Rome I forbear to recount the prayers prescribed in that Mass, but it will be worth while to have recited the proper Preface, as it stands in volume 4 of the Vatican edition of Anastasius in the Sacramentary of St. Leo, and in Hugo Ménard in that of Gregory. It runs thus: It is truly meet, etc.; and to proclaim thy power in the holy martyrs Cornelius and likewise Cyprian, whom, as they fed their sacred flocks with the divine bread in separate parts of the earth, thou hast crowned by one faith, and on the same day, though at different times, with a harmonious and equal confession of thy name. Through Christ, etc. Let this much suffice to have been offered by way of foretaste concerning the ancient cult of St. Cornelius among the Romans; of which, and of its propagation throughout Europe, more will have to be said in §13 and the following.
[10] on this day, which Further, although all the Martyrologies and Sacramentaries which we have hitherto adduced commemorate St. Cornelius on the fourteenth of September, Papebroch nevertheless, on page 34 \ and following of the Propylæum* of May, judges that this day is not that of his death but of his burial. He was of this opinion, namely, because along with the most ancient Catalogue of the Roman Pontiffs, to be often cited below, he holds that our holy Pontiff died not at Rome, nor by the punishment of the sword, but at Civitavecchia, where he was in exile, by a natural death, hastened however by his hardships; and that the day on which his sacred body was translated from Civitavecchia to the City and placed in the cemetery of Callistus was more celebrated among the Romans than the day of his death; and that therefore the fourteenth of September, on which he is announced in the aforesaid cemetery of Callistus, is to be taken not for the day of his death, but for the time of the translation, or deposition, of his body in that place.
[11] was more probably the day of his death. Concerning the place and manner of his death, both Pagis agree with Papebroch, the one in his Critique of Baronius at the year of Christ 252, number 12 and following, the other in his Breviary of the Pontiffs; nevertheless they hold the fourteenth of September to be the day of his death. On the contrary, the most eminent Baronius in volume 2 of the Annals at the year 255, and the learned Emmanuel a Schelstrate in dissertation 2, chapter 6, of his Antiquitas illustrata, judge that those three points are to be retained along with the Acts, namely that St. Cornelius consummated his martyrdom by the punishment of the sword, in the city of Rome, on this very day. The solution of the question as to the first two doubts depends on the authority of the Acts and of the Catalogue just praised; and therefore we shall judge of them more fitly after we have discussed this and those: but although we reject the Acts, there is no reason why we should take the day noted in all the Martyrologies, and which other testimonies of venerable antiquity also assert to have been the day of his death, for the time of his burial, along with Papebroch.
[12] For the rest, I observe that the memory of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian is indeed kept on this day in the Roman Martyrology as well as in the ancient ones, but that in the Breviary of the same Church it is celebrated only on the sixteenth, because the fourteenth day is consecrated to the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, and the fifteenth to the Octave of the Nativity of the most holy Mother of God. In the Lateran basilica at Rome they are venerated with a double rite on the twenty-second of the same month.
Annotata\* read: Callisti
\* elsewhere: XXII
§ II. Examination of the Acts, and their errors.
The Acts of St. Cornelius, We have various copies of the Acts of St. Cornelius, both in the manuscript codices of our Museum and in transcripts received from elsewhere; and although some of these are fuller and more corrupt than others, yet they agree almost entirely in the substance of the matter. A copy of this kind Mombritius has already published in volume 1, page 210, and, more correctly than he, Emmanuel a Schelstrate in volume 1, dissertation 2, chapter 6, of his Antiquitas illustrata, from codex 1190 of the Vatican library, written, as he says, easily six hundred years ago. There exists also an epitome of them in the Lives of the Pontiffs attributed to Anastasius; yet in such wise that in this some things are wanting which may be read in the others, and conversely some things are related in it which are absent from those. The author of the Acts nowhere discloses either himself or his age; yet that he wrote at a distance from the Saint's own age is sufficiently made manifest by the error whereby he refers his martyrdom to the reign of Decius, as will be plain from what is to be said.
[14] There are those who would have it that Hilduin, abbot of St. Denis near Paris, which are in circulation, most famous for his Areopagitica, composed the Acts of St. Cornelius at the command of Lothair, the son of Louis the Pious, as the learned Benedictines, the writers of the Literary History of France, have it; which opinion, however, they do not dare to affirm, being content to say that this Work is not established to them, and that for the rest Hilduin was too far removed from St. Cornelius's century for him to be judged to have treated of that subject accurately and successfully. Thierry Ruinart, in his Genuine Acts of the Martyrs, in the admonition to the Life of St. Cyprian, asserts that Acts marked with his name exist in a codex about five hundred years old of the library of St. Peter of Rebais, in the diocese of Meaux, where, on his testimony, they are entitled thus: Here begins the History of St. Cornelius the Pope, with his passion, which, at the command of the most serene Augustus Lothair, Hilduin the arch-chancellor gathered and arranged out of the various Opuscula of St. Cyprian, bishop and martyr, and other authors of the deeds. Then (Ruinart adds) it begins thus: In those days, when the whole world was under the dominion of the Romans, etc.
[15] With the same opening, but without Hilduin's name, I have at hand a copy from a manuscript of the monastery of St. Mary of Bonnefontaine, they are older than Hilduin, that is, than the ninth century: in which also many things excerpted from St. Cyprian's letters are recounted; but it is certainly no better than the other transcripts, if it is not worse, since it labors under the same faults that displease in the others. Then, if it has Hilduin, a writer of the ninth century, for its author, it can surely claim to itself but slight authority on this head. However these things may stand, the Acts of the holy Pontiff which are current to this day, or others like them, are far older than Hilduin: for it cannot be doubted that the author of the Catalogue of the Roman Pontiffs — which Henschen, having received it from the library of the most serene queen of Sweden, published before volume 1 of April, and afterwards Papebroch in the Propylæum of May, in the second place — had these or such as these in hand; and if that Catalogue is not to be referred to the sixth century, yet in antiquity it far surpasses Hilduin. We judge that like things were seen also by the author of the Little Roman Martyrology published by Rosweyde, and likewise by Bede or Florus, and afterwards by Ado, and by Hilduin himself, if the Acts praised by Ruinart were really written by him.
[16] Schelstrate's judgment on their antiquity. Schelstrate judges that those which he published from the above-praised Vatican codex are indeed ancient; yet that they were written only after the times of St. Leo the Great, who died a happy death after the middle of the fifth century. Take the reason by which he is led to believe this. Near the end of them one reads these words: But on the same night the clerics and the blessed Lucina came with her household, and carried off the bodies of the holy Martyrs, which she also buried in her own field, in a crypt in the cemetery of Callistus, where to this day their prayers flourish, to the praise, glory, and honor of our Lord Jesus Christ, etc. From this he gathers that the basilica which we said in the preceding § was founded by St. Leo already existed when the Acts were written; for this, he holds, they insinuate when they mention prayers poured forth at their bodies: As if they testified, he says, that praises and prayers were offered by the clergy and people in the basilica of Cornelius, to the glory and honor of the name of Christ. But I do not see how this can be deduced from the words adduced, since in the first Christian ages the faithful were also accustomed to pray and hold their sacred assemblies in the crypts. Nevertheless I would willingly grant him that those Acts are later than St. Leo.
[17] Against these Acts it is proved, Yet, of whatever writer or age they may be, on account of the manifest errors with which they are defiled, they displease the learned not a little, and are rejected by Papebroch, by both Pagis, and by Tillemont as documents of no credit. In the first place, what most of all displeases is that in them Cornelius is said to have been first banished by Decius to Civitavecchia, which is a maritime city of Etruria, and thence summoned back to Rome by the same emperor, and beheaded together with three or four and twenty Companions, as we saw in the preceding § from Ado. For it is established that Cornelius was driven to Civitavecchia under Gallus and Volusianus, who had succeeded to the empire after the two Decii, father and son, were slain in the Gothic war in the year of Christ 251, and that he was crowned with martyrdom under those same Augusti. But that he suffered nothing of the kind under Decius, St. Cyprian expressly testifies in letter 52 of the most recent Venetian edition of the same Saint's Works, prepared by Étienne Baluze, of the year 1728, which edition we shall follow through the course of this Commentary.
[18] that St. Cornelius under the Decii For St. Cyprian, writing in letter 52 to Antonianus after the slaying of both Decii, says of St. Cornelius among other things that he sat undaunted at Rome in the Sacerdotal Chair at that time when the tyrant (Decius), hostile to the priests of God, was threatening things speakable and unspeakable; when he would have heard with much more patience and endurance that a rival prince was being raised against him, than that a Priest of God was being appointed at Rome. Is not this man, dearest brother, to be proclaimed with the highest testimony of virtue and faith? Is he not to be reckoned among the glorious confessors and martyrs, who sat so long a time, awaiting the executioners of his body and the avengers of the raging tyrant, who might assail Cornelius with the sword, as he resisted the deadly edicts and trampled underfoot both threats and torments and tortures by the vigor of his faith, or crucify him, or burn him with fire, or with any unheard-of kind of punishments tear his vitals and his limbs?
[19] was punished neither with exile nor with death. Even though the majesty and goodness of the Lord who protects him protected also, when made, the Priest whom he willed to be made, yet Cornelius, as far as concerns his own devotion and fear, suffered whatever he could suffer, and he was the first to conquer by his Priesthood the tyrant who was afterwards conquered by arms and by war. Thus far St. Cyprian, of whom it is manifest, and admitted by all, that he here speaks of Decius as conquered and slain in the Gothic war. Nor is it less clear that the holy Pontiff, protected by the divine Majesty and goodness, suffered nothing under that same emperor beyond threats and terrors, and survived him; and accordingly was by no means driven into exile by him, much less beheaded.
[20] There are not lacking, however, those who try to reconcile with the truth what the Acts say about Decius. A reply is made to certain conjectures, The learned Schelstrate praised above, and Francesco Bencini in his annotations on Anastasius the Librarian, volume 2, page 195, confess indeed that St. Cornelius consummated his martyrdom under Gallus and Volusianus; but at the same time they judge that he had been banished to Civitavecchia by Decius. Hence Schelstrate thinks that what we have just reported from Cyprian was said of Cornelius when he was already in exile at Civitavecchia: for there, he holds, he awaited the executioners of his body, there he overcame the tyrant by his Priesthood, that is, by the priestly constancy and vigor of his mind; and finally that it was at that time that letter 57 was sent by Cyprian to Cornelius, congratulating him on his glorious confession.
[21] But, apart from the fact that even so an error must be admitted in the Acts, which are urged for the exile not even that which the said writers maintain is probable, on account of the aforecited letter of St. Cyprian, in which no mention is made of an exile, though there was opportunity for making it, and the matter itself demanded that it be made. For St. Cyprian was writing to Antonianus in order to confirm in the communion of Cornelius this man, whom he had noticed to be wavering between St. Cornelius and Novatian, the head of the schismatics. Striving to this end to commend Cornelius in every way, he shows that he was not only lawfully elected to the Pontificate, but was also most worthy of it on account of his virtues and truly sacerdotal endowments of soul. To this end, on Cyprian's own testimony, an exile endured for Christ certainly contributed not a little: for
in letter 57, written to St. Cornelius when he was already in exile, he uses this argument to prove the legitimacy of his Pontificate and the dreadful schism of Novatian, whom, with his followers, the tyrant was not persecuting.
[22] What has Novatian to say to these things, he said, dearest brother? inflicted on him by Decius Does he now at last lay aside his error?… Does he now acknowledge who is the Priest of God, what is the Church and house of Christ, who are the servants of God whom the devil assails, who are the Christians whom antichrist attacks? If therefore this argument seemed to Cyprian so effective for vindicating the legitimate Pontificate of Cornelius that he believed even Novatian himself ought to be convinced by it, why did he not use the same to retain Antonianus in the communion of that same Cornelius, if the latter were then already living as an exile at Civitavecchia? Why did the same Cyprian, in order to show that Cornelius was to be reckoned among the glorious confessors and martyrs, commemorate his faith and the vigor and constancy of his mind, by which he had undauntedly borne the tyrant's threats and the terrors inflicted, but not his exile, on the title of which alone he could with better right have been numbered among the confessors and martyrs? For no other cause, assuredly, than that the holy Pontiff, protected by the divine Majesty, had not yet up to that time gone into exile.
[23] But, you will say, in what way then did Cornelius resist the deadly edicts, as Cyprian puts it, are adduced. or trample underfoot threats and torments and tortures, or conquer Decius by his Priesthood before he was conquered by arms and by war? I reply that he did this very thing when, despising the edicts of Decius, he undauntedly held the Roman Chair, which he had ascended against the tyrant's will, while that man gnashed his teeth in vain and threatened things speakable and unspeakable against the priests; and he fulfilled all the duties of an excellent Pontiff in the tyrant's own royal City, though in secret, and thus, protected by divine providence, eluded all Decius's diligence and effort, and overcame it by sacerdotal constancy and faith.
[24] Another opinion Francesco Bianchini, in his historical Notes on the Librarian, contends that not only exile but also the supreme punishment of beheading was inflicted upon the Saint under the Decii; yet in such a way that he would have him ordered into exile after the arrival of Valerian, whom he says was created censor by the senate and sent back from the camp into the City by Decius Augustus with more severe edicts; and by "Decius," who recalled the Saint from Civitavecchia to Rome and condemned him to death, he understands Hostilian, the son of Decius Augustus, whom his father, when about to set out against the Goths, had left at Rome and named Caesar, and who after the slaying of both Decii was adopted by Gallus and reigned with him for a short time. He tries in the same place to establish this opinion of his at greater length, and among other things observes that in the Acts that Decius is called not Augustus but Caesar.
[25] likewise not to be admitted. To the first part of his conjecture, which places the holy Pontiff's exile in the lifetime of Decius the father, I think enough has been answered in the preceding numbers: for it makes no difference at all to the argument with which we are concerned whether the Saint was driven into exile by Decius present or by Decius absent. Even less probable is the second part, according to which Cornelius would have been in exile at Civitavecchia from the end of the year 251 until he was recalled to Rome to the tribunal by Decius or Hostilian and beheaded at his command: which by no means coheres with the letters of St. Cyprian, from which it is certain that St. Cornelius did many things at Rome in the years 251 and 252 before he departed into exile, as will appear from what is to be said; wherefore I forbear to say more here. But the most eminent Baronius has more correctly acknowledged, in the Annals at the year 255, number 55, that the error lies in the name of Decius; and he thinks it arose from this, that the persecution begun by that emperor, and revived a little later by Gallus, was taken for one and the same: but this reason cannot win authority for the writer of the Acts, who, if he had not been far removed from St. Cornelius's age, would not have substituted Decius for Gallus.
[26] Another error of the Acts, concerning St. Cyprian's imprisonment. In the same Acts, moreover, what they have about St. Cyprian's letter to Cornelius in exile at Civitavecchia displeases the learned. Of this one reads in the Librarian thus: After this Cornelius was driven to Civitavecchia, and there received a letter written and sent by Cyprian for his strengthening, which Cyprian wrote in prison, and concerning Celerinus the lector. These things, I say, rightly displease the learned, because it is certain that Cyprian, during the time Cornelius held the Pontificate, was never consigned to prison. Yet this whole difficulty vanishes in Schelstrate's Vatican codex, in which one reads thus: But at the same time (at which the holy Pontiff was staying in his exile at Civitavecchia) blessed Cyprian the bishop wrote to blessed Cornelius, when he was in custody, concerning Celerinus the lector, how many words he had endured for the faith and confession of Christ. Here those words, when he was in custody, may be taken without qualification of Cornelius's exile. In Ado, reported in the preceding §, no mention either is made of prison or custody: but Celerinus's confession is praised in both, of which I find not a word in Cyprian's letter 57 sent to Cornelius in exile, so that this passage of the Acts too cannot be admitted without scruple.
[27] From the same Vatican codex there are absent the things which we recounted in number 6 out of other manuscripts and printed editions concerning the venerable bodies of SS. Peter and Paul translated by Cornelius. What is to be judged of the translation of SS. Peter and Paul The same translation is read also in Anastasius the Librarian, and in the Catalogue of the Roman Pontiffs published in the second place by Henschen, with this difference, however, that by the former it is said to have been done not on the III Kalends of July, as Ado has it, but on the VI Kalends of the same month; while in the aforesaid Catalogue the matron who is there called Lucina is named Luciana. The most eminent Baronius at the year of Christ 221, number 4 and following, and with him many other learned men, not undeservedly reckon this story among the fables.
[28] Our Papebroch's judgment about it was uncertain. For in volume V of June, at the twenty-ninth day, asserted in the Acts? on which the festival of SS. Peter and Paul is kept, in the Analecta, §4, he tries by various arguments to render it not improbable. But on the thirtieth day of the same month, in the treatment of St. Lucina, the Roman matron, page 535, he plainly rejects that same translation; both because it rests only on the fabulous Acts of Cornelius, and because these seem to him to contradict the Acts of St. Sebastian, who orders himself to be buried beside the traces of the Apostles (at the Catacombs, as had been premised in the Acts), and who therefore were still lying in the Catacombs in the time of Diocletian. To confess the truth, that translation appears to me also to be fictitious; yet on account of the Acts of St. Sebastian, whatever sort they may be, Papebroch ought not to have changed his opinion; since by the traces of the Apostles their ancient monument could be understood without qualification, or perhaps their footprints impressed upon stone, of which Baronius speaks at the year 286, number 27. For the rest, that I may not do what has been done already, I refer the reader to the cited days of June, where he will be able to weigh Papebroch's arguments.
§ III. The arena of the Saint's martyrdom was not Rome, but Civitavecchia in Etruria: a conjecture concerning the Companions joined to him in martyrdom, and concerning the relics brought to Antwerp.
That the Saint did not, as the Acts have it, suffer at Rome, There remains the chief controversy about the Acts, on which their credit, and what they have concerning SS. Cerealis, Salustia and the Companions, chiefly depend. The last scene of the most holy Pontiff's life is enacted in them entirely at Rome: for having been brought thither at Decius's command on account of the frequent concourse of the people to Civitavecchia and the letters sent thither by St. Cyprian, he there steadfastly resisted the tyrant; there, while he was being dragged to sacrifice to an idol, he washed in the waters of salvation Cerealis the soldier and his Wife, after health had been imparted to her, together with twenty-one or twenty-two others, and with them was beheaded on the Appian Way — if credit is to be given to the Acts. But the contrary is set forth by the most ancient of all the catalogues of the Roman Pontiffs that we possess, which Cuspinian inserted here and there in his Commentary on the Consuls of Aurelius Cassiodorus, and which Bucherius, having received it from our Bolland, published likewise in his own Commentary on the Paschal Canon of Victorius, and afterwards Henschen more correctly before the first volume of April.
[30] Before I go further, it will be worth while to have observed a few things about the aforesaid Catalogue, so far as concerns the present argument. but far more probably at Civitavecchia Henschen, on the strength of a pair of letters which he thought had passed to and fro between St. Damasus the Pontiff and St. Jerome, believed that the second part of it had been written by the said Damasus and sent to Jerome: but Papebroch in the Propylæum of May rejected both those letters, along with other learned men, as forged upon both Saints, and rightly abandoned that opinion of Henschen's. Entering therefore upon another path, he judged that that part has four authors, of whom one began from St. Pontian, whom, after SS. Anterus and Fabian, St. Cornelius had succeeded, and ended with St. Felix I, who was raised to the Pontificate before twenty years had elapsed from Cornelius's death. But so great an antiquity of the aforesaid part, which Papebroch derived from the variety of authors to be distinguished by a certain diversity of style, does not appear to me so certain but that a doubt remains whether that same part, along with the rest that follow, is not to be referred to one and the same author, who wrote under Liberius, that is, a little after the middle of the fourth century, as the learned commonly admit.
[31] is proved from the most ancient Catalogue. Now in this Catalogue St. Cornelius is said to have died in his exile at Civitavecchia, and is said so in such a phrase that he may seem to have fallen asleep by a natural rather than a violent death. Take the words: After this, being driven out to Civitavecchia, he there received his falling-asleep with glory. And so, since the learned hold the common Acts of the Saint to be convicted of manifest error on other grounds, they commonly prefer, rejecting these, to adhere to the most ancient and otherwise approved Catalogue, and to assign Cornelius's death to Civitavecchia in Etruria, and to record it as either natural, though hastened by his hardships, or perhaps even violent. To their opinion, as far as concerns the place of his death, as the more probable and resting on a surer document, I too accede; yet in such wise that I likewise judge it far more probable that the holy Pontiff consummated his martyrdom not by a voluntary but by a violent death.
[32] Schelstrate holds the opposite, Here we have as an adversary the learned Schelstrate, who in volume 1 of the Antiquitas illustrata, dissertation 2, chapter 6, says thus: The author of the most ancient Catalogue, compiled in the time of Pope Liberius, relates that so great was Cornelius's constancy in bearing the miseries of exile that he endured them even unto death. "After this," he says, "being driven out to Civitavecchia, he there received his falling-asleep with glory." Which nevertheless I can by no means approve; since we have received from the perpetual tradition of the Roman Church that he fell not at Civitavecchia but at Rome, smitten with the sword, and was buried in the cemetery of Callistus — a tradition which Leo the Great confirmed by the construction of a basilica, and which Jerome willed to be proved by a twofold testimony, clearly affirming that Cornelius suffered at Rome. The words of Jerome,
which he praises, you have in our Work, in volume 1 of January, in the Life of St. Paul the first hermit, page 604: Cornelius at Rome, Cyprian at Carthage, were condemned with happy bloodshed; or, as the Paris edition of 1706 of the Works of St. Jerome reads in volume 4, part 2, column 69: Cornelius at Rome, Cyprian at Carthage, endured martyrdom with happy bloodshed. The other passage of the same holy doctor stands in the Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, in the volume and part of his Works just praised, column 119, where he writes of St. Cyprian: He suffered … on the same day on which Cornelius suffered at Rome, but not in the same year.
[33] to whose arguments, I confess that these sayings of St. Jerome at first made me not a little doubtful: yet I do not think that on that account we must depart from our ancient Catalogue. For its author wrote professedly about the Roman Pontiffs, and among them about St. Cornelius, and that in all likelihood at Rome: whereas Jerome, living in the desert and in the monastery of Bethlehem, mentioned him only in passing, on occasion of the time in which Paul flourished and Cyprian was crowned; whence it is no wonder that, without at all investigating the place of the Saint's death, which did not bear upon his purpose, he believed that he underwent martyrdom at Rome, where he had held the Chair, and whither he had been translated. Nay, there is even a grave suspicion that Jerome drew these things from a certain Greek Life of St. Paul, which you have printed in Latin from a Bavarian manuscript in volume 1 of January from page 603, and which is so like Jerome's that it seems beyond doubt that the one was for the greatest part composed out of the other.
[34] Now Bolland judged in the same place that the Greek Life gave Jerome his light, from the testimonies of St. Jerome because its author insinuates that he had been a disciple of Antony the Great, when he says: When he (Paul) had lived there seventy-six years (a fault lurks here in the numeral, Bolland warns), Antony was exercising himself in another desert. When therefore it had come into his mind, as he himself told me, that no one else was dwelling in the inner solitude, etc. But on the same subject St. Jerome writes thus: When blessed Paul had now for a hundred and thirteen years been leading a heavenly life on earth, and Antony, ninety years old, was staying in another solitude (as he himself was wont to assert), this thought came into his mind, that no monk more perfect than himself had settled in the desert, etc. From this, I say, Bolland gathered that the Greek Life gave Jerome his light, and that Jerome turned that phrase, as he himself told me, into this: as he himself was wont to assert. But now, to return to our purpose, that Greek writer thus begins the Life of Paul: Blessed Paul lived in the times of Decius and Valerian, born in Egypt of the lower Thebaid, at that season in which Cornelius underwent martyrdom at Rome. In a like manner also Jerome began his own lucubration after the Prologue: Under the persecutors Decius and Valerian, at which time Cornelius at Rome, Cyprian at Carthage, were condemned with happy bloodshed, etc.
[35] Everyone sees that the one was drawn from the other even as to the improper manner of speaking; testimonies, for Cornelius was not crowned with martyrdom under Decius or Valerian, but under Gallus and Volusianus, as Jerome himself acknowledges in the Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers. And so this authority of St. Jerome will come down to a certain disciple of Antony the Great, who, living in the desert of the Thebaid, could easily err about the final arena of St. Cornelius. The only thing that can be objected against Bolland is that Jerome himself in the Prologue seems to testify that the Life of Paul had been written by no one before him; for he says thus: Therefore, since concerning Antony it has been diligently handed down to memory both in the Greek and in the Roman style, I have determined to write a few things about the beginning and the end of Paul; more because the matter has been omitted than in reliance upon my talent. But how he lived in the middle of his life, or what snares of Satan he endured, is known to no man. But it may be said that Jerome only denied that the Life of Paul had been handed down to memory in the Roman style, as Antony's had been, and that therefore he wished to do this.
[36] If, however, this reply please anyone less, and he would rather believe with Rosweyde and drawn from elsewhere that the Greek Life was rather composed out of Jerome's Latin one, not even so must we depart from the most ancient Catalogue: for as St. Jerome wrote less properly of the tyrant under whom Cornelius was crowned, so also he could speak improperly of the place of his martyrdom, opposing not so much Rome to Carthage as the Roman Chair to the Carthaginian; as if he were saying that on the same day on which St. Cornelius, Pontiff of the Roman See, was crowned with martyrdom in Italy, St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, suffered at Carthage. Add that the holy doctor cared little for circumstances of this kind, since in his treatment of Cornelius himself he does not even mention his exile at Civitavecchia, being content to say: He ruled the Church two years under Gallus and Volusianus, and, when he had been crowned with martyrdom for Christ, Lucius succeeded him. Meanwhile it is certain that Cornelius began to sit at Rome under Decius, and was driven into exile at Civitavecchia under Gallus and Volusianus.
[37] sought, What Schelstrate says about the perpetual tradition of the Roman Church presses not at all. For what is that tradition, save the Martyrologies, which are later than our Catalogue? Nay indeed, what Martyrology older than the ninth or eighth century will that learned man produce, in which St. Cornelius is said to have suffered at Rome? He is indeed announced by the more ancient ones at Rome; but nothing hinders their being taken of the cult usually paid to him there, on account of the Pontificate he once held and the body buried there; just as certainly some of them are to be taken of the cult of St. Cyprian, in which this Saint is announced together with Cornelius at Rome in the cemetery of Callistus.
[38] a reply is made. But those which are later than the said centuries are to be reckoned of no more account than the Acts out of which they were composed. Nor does the other Catalogue, published in the second place by Henschen, press at all, which is comparable to the former neither in antiquity nor in accuracy of composition. Finally, the basilica built by St. Leo the Great over the Saint's tomb does indeed teach that his body lay at Rome in the fifth century, but it neither proves nor confirms that he suffered there: for it could have been translated thither in antiquity, and we judge that it really was translated. Of the manner of death by which the holy Pontiff was taken off I do not here dispute, being about to treat of it more fitly below, after his deeds in the Pontificate, lest things be handed down in a preposterous order: but of the place of his exile it was necessary to discourse here, so that the shaky credit of the Acts might be laid open.
[39] SS. Cerealis, etc., did not suffer with St. Cornelius; From what has been said thus far there remains to be solved the question of the twenty-three or twenty-four whom the Acts of St. Cornelius and Anastasius the Librarian, and those who have adhered to them, join to St. Cornelius as Companions in martyrdom, and whose baptism and slaying we recited in numbers 5 and 6 from the Martyrology of Ado, with which the Acts almost agree. For indeed, since we have shown that the holy Pontiff suffered neither under Decius nor at Rome, it is necessary that we likewise reject the history of these Martyrs as it is handed down in the said Acts. Yet on account of the by no means contemptible authority of very many Martyrologies, and on account of what we shall say below about the sacred relics taken out of the cemetery of Callistus, we do not doubt that some holy Cerealis was crowned with martyrdom at Rome along with many Companions, and was laid in the aforesaid cemetery. Nay, it is altogether probable that these holy Martyrs were crowned under the Pontificate of Cornelius, and in such a way indeed that they can and ought truly to be called his companions.
[40] it is nevertheless probable that they were his companions in confession, For from St. Cyprian's letter 57 it is established that a vast number of Romans confessed Christ together with their Pontiff. This letter we shall recite in § XI; meanwhile take only one passage from it, from which you may sufficiently gather this. What a glorious spectacle it was, says St. Cyprian, under the eyes of God, what a joy in the sight of Christ and of his Church, that not single soldiers but the whole camp together came forth to the battle which the enemy had attempted to bring on! For it is certain that all would have come, if they had been able to hear, since whoever heard came running in haste and arrived, etc. But that very many of these attained the laurel of martyrdom, St. Pacian, bishop of Barcelona in the fourth century, writes in his second letter to Sympronian, saying: You have his (Cyprian's) letters, in which he shows that Cornelius, Bishop of the City, … was made leader of very many confessors and of very many martyrs also, and was most gloriously crowned with very many.
[41] Of this number, then, could have been St. Cerealis the soldier with his wife Salustia, and were buried after martyrdom in the cemetery of Callistus, and the remaining twenty-one Companions, whom Bede or Florus, Usuard, the Acts published by Schelstrate, and the Roman Martyrology report to have been of both sexes, but our manuscripts report to have been all soldiers; with which last Ado seems to agree, who, having first commemorated the soldiers baptized by St. Cornelius along with Cerealis and Salustia, relates that twenty-one were slain with the holy Pontiff, and also Cerealis and Salustia. Whether, however, these twenty-three are to be said to have been beheaded at the same time as they were arrested with Cornelius, or some time afterwards, is uncertain. The first pleased Papebroch in the Propylæum of May, page 34 \*, where he judges by conjecture that Cornelius, after the soldiers whom he had baptized had been slain at the command of Gallus, was driven into exile at Civitavecchia.
[42] But whence the writer of the Acts could have been led to believe and that hence the error crept into the Acts. that St. Cornelius was crowned at Rome together with the aforesaid Martyrs, Papebroch in the same place sets forth in these words: But because the body (of the holy Pontiff), translated to Rome (from Civitavecchia), was laid in the same place where blessed Lucina (or whoever else) had earlier buried Cerealis and his Companions, it seems to have come about that of those whose confession, and afterwards whose burial, was joined, it was believed that the end was one also, endured through martyrdom on one day and in one place. So he, very probably. Further, that the bodies of those Martyrs were in fact buried in the Roman cemetery of St. Callistus is persuaded by the body of St. Cerealis, soldier and martyr, taken out of the same cemetery together with three others, and afterwards translated to Antwerp, where they were honorably laid in the church of our professed house, and are piously venerated, as I now proceed to relate.
[43] In a notable manuscript codex, whose cover is bound with silver-gilt plates, The bodies of St. Cerealis and of the others there are written out copies of the authentic instruments concerning the sacred relics which the church of our professed house reverently embraces. Among the rest, one is recorded concerning the sacred bodies of SS. Fortunatus, Cyrinus, Innocentius, and Cerealis, martyrs. This instrument was drawn up by Matteo Sorcio, public notary of the Capitol, and approved as such by the conservators of the Blessed City, and it was signed
on the twenty-fourth day of November of the year 1622. In it the said notary testifies that the most excellent lord Juan Fernández Pacheco, Marquis of Villena, at that time ambassador for the Catholic king to Pope Paul V, in the year 1606, on the fifth day of September, obtained Apostolic letters from the same Pontiff, by virtue of which several bodies of Saints were taken out from many cemeteries or crypts of the City on the tenth day of the same month.
[44] Matteo Sorcio testifies that he was present at this business along with Girolamo Marchetto, likewise a notary, received from the same cemetery, and that he drew up the instruments requested concerning those same bodies. Then he adds: Among which bodies there were also taken out the undersigned, in my presence as notary … the body of St. Fortunatus, the body of St. Innocentius the subdeacon, the body of St. Cyrinus, and the body of St. Cerealis, who all underwent martyrdom for the faith of Christ, etc. All which bodies named above were taken out from the cemetery of St. Callistus outside the City, etc.; and now, given as a gift by the lord Antonio Corbo, who was one of the said extractors, they have come into the hands of the very reverend father Jacobus Tirinus of the Society of Jesus, etc.
[45] and given to the professed house of Antwerp In the same codex there stands also another instrument drawn from the letters patent of the most illustrious lord Jan van Malderen, bishop of Antwerp, approving the aforesaid and certain other relics of Saints; from which I transfer hither in the same words what pertains to our argument. Jan van Malderen, by the grace of God and of the Apostolic See bishop of Antwerp. To each and all who shall see these presents, greeting in the Lord. The reverend father Jan de Tollenaere, provost of the house of the professed of the Society of Jesus in this city of Antwerp, has set before us that relics of very many Saints were long since given to that house by various persons worthy of credit, which are kept in the same house, among which are: …
The body of St. Cerealis, martyr and soldier,
The body of St. Cyrinus, martyr and soldier,
The body of St. Fortunatus, martyr and soldier,
The body of St. Innocentius, martyr and subdeacon.
[46] of the Society of Jesus, These bodies were taken out with the leave of our most holy lord Paul V, and given by the Lord Antonio a Corbi, who had been one of the extractors, as is plain from the notarial instrument, dated the twenty-fourth of November 1622, with a seal affixed, made with a thread of gold and fine linen. And since the above-named Father Provost, desiring that all the aforesaid relics should be venerated with the honor and cult that is fitting, has requested of us that we should recognize them, and grant that they might be exposed to the people for veneration; we, according to our office, being gladly attentive to those things by which the faithful of Christ may be stirred to the imitation and to the due cult of the Saints reigning with Christ, have given a special commission to the reverend lords, licentiates of Sacred Theology, Zeger van Honsum, canon and penitentiary of our cathedral church, and Peter Coens, likewise canon of the same church, that they should inspect and diligently examine the above-named relics and the said diplomas and documents.
[47] and there exposed to public veneration, And after we had been duly informed by them that all the aforesaid things, as they are set forth, are true and genuine, we have judged that the above-named relics are to be held as true and genuine, and that there is to be paid to them that cult and veneration which is deservedly owed to sacred pledges of this kind, and has always been employed in the Catholic Church; and accordingly we grant by these presents that they may be publicly exposed in our diocese for the people's veneration. In witness whereof, etc. And these letters are noted as dated in the year 1625, on the thirtieth day of October. Thus far the most illustrious Malderen in the said instrument.
[48] perhaps they are those It is further to be observed that the body of St. Cerealis, received from the cemetery of Callistus, is expressly said to be that of Cerealis, martyr and soldier, and that by the same title of Martyr and soldier SS. Cyrinus and Fortunatus are named, but Innocentius is called martyr and subdeacon; whence it seems to be established that the said bodies were found with an inscription of each one's name and of the office once held, and that this was expressed in the letters patent laid before the most illustrious Malderen, although the title of soldier is not read in the abridgment of the instrument recited in number 44, having perhaps been passed over through a copyist's carelessness or for brevity's sake. Moreover, in the case of the first two, namely Cerealis and Cyrinus, the very names remove the suspicion of a name imposed upon them after exhumation, as is often wont to happen, since they are proper names, not appellatives; and it is the latter, not the former, that are usually imposed upon anonymous Saints, as may be seen in our most Holy Lord Benedict XIV, in his notable Work On the canonization of the Blessed and the beatification of the Servants of God, book 4, part 2, chapter 28, from number 15.
[49] Concerning Fortunatus there can indeed be a suspicion; yet he could in fact have been called by that name; of the aforesaid martyrs. and then it must at least be said that his sacred body was found with the title of soldier: for it is not usual for any office to be ascribed to anonymous Saints along with a name. Whether St. Innocentius the subdeacon was also of their number, and whether that name is proper to him or was afterwards attached, I do not dispute; nor would I dare to assert with certainty that SS. Cerealis, Cyrinus and Fortunatus, of whose sacred bodies we have just treated, were the companions of St. Cornelius in the confession of the faith: for this one thing I wished to show, that a certain holy Cerealis, a soldier, was found in the cemetery of Callistus, who was perhaps the very man whom the Acts report to have been buried in that cemetery together with his companions, among whom SS. Cyrinus and Fortunatus, soldiers, and also Innocentius the subdeacon, could be numbered; for as they report these to have been of both sexes, so neither do they affirm that all were of the same office.
[50] For the rest, we have from the same manuscript codex of our church Their solemn elevation and cult in that place. that the said pledges of the Saints were in the year of Christ 1655, on the twenty-fifth day of July, elevated with a most solemn rite together with eight other sacred bodies, and each laid in its own shrine or throne, wrought of variegated marble for that purpose around the circuit of the church. I pass over the pomp of the festivity, which was celebrated with vast magnificence — described in the same place — and with a very great concourse of people from the neighboring places, and especially with a solemn procession, in which, in the company of the most illustrious lord Marius Ambrosius Capello, bishop of the people of Antwerp, with the most ample chapter of canons of the cathedral church, the said relics were carried through the city from that same cathedral church of the blessed Virgin and placed, as we have said, in the aforesaid church of our professed house. This church of ours did indeed burn down in the year 1718, but the said pledges of the Saints, rescued from the flames and laid anew around the circuit of the restored church, are even to this day piously venerated.
§ IV. St. Cornelius's Roman fatherland: his deeds before the Pontificate: his assumption to it after a long vacancy of the holy See.
[The Saint a Roman by birth, begotten, as is reported, of a father named Castinus,] The common Acts of St. Cornelius having been for the greatest part rejected, it remains for us to gather his illustrious deeds from better documents, and especially from the letters sent to and fro by himself and by St. Cyprian. Now we shall use the Venetian edition of the year 1728, edited by Étienne Baluze and after him by a certain Benedictine monk of the Congregation of St. Maur; and let it suffice to have noted this here once for all. That Cornelius was a Roman by nation, born of a father Castinus, Anastasius the Librarian writes, or whoever went before him; with whom also several transcripts of the Acts agree, and, as to his Roman fatherland, also the Catalogue of the Roman Pontiffs published from the library of the most serene queen of Sweden by Henschen before volume 1 of April. Perhaps therefore he was descended from that most celebrated of Roman families, the Cornelian gens, as Francesco Bianchini judged (from the name Cornelius, I suppose) in his historical Notes on the said Librarian.
[52] initiated into all the sacred Orders, together with the rest of the clergy, That he ascended through all the ecclesiastical Orders, and by his notable merits toward the Church, to the summit of the supreme Pontificate, St. Cyprian is an unimpeachable witness, writing thus in letter 52 to Antonianus: As to what commends Cornelius, our most dear one, to God and to Christ and to his Church, and likewise to all his fellow-priests, with praiseworthy proclamation: he did not come to the Episcopate suddenly, but, promoted through all the ecclesiastical offices, and having often deserved well of the Lord in the divine ministrations, he ascended to the sublime height of the priesthood through all the degrees of religion. From these words we have indeed that St. Cornelius, before he approached the Pontificate, was enrolled in the Roman clergy and discharged various ecclesiastical offices most illustriously; but we find his deeds recounted by no one. Yet since he was of the Roman clergy, without doubt a part — and perhaps no small part — belongs to him of those things which that clergy did so excellently, while the Chair of St. Peter was vacant through Fabian's martyrdom, in that calamitous storm of the Church; some of which we shall therefore recount here, being about to relate the rest in the deeds of St. Cyprian, to be set forth on this very day.
[53] in the persecution of Decius, while the holy See was vacant, Decius, having gained the empire after the slaying of the two Philips, father and son, scarcely made a beginning of reigning before he made a beginning of persecuting the Church of God, and, as though he had been advanced to that princely summit for this very purpose, straightway began to rage against God, as Lactantius says in chapter 4 of On the Deaths of the Persecutors. But although he was driven by a common hatred against all Christians, yet he raged more savagely against the ministers of God, of whose number, after the killing of St. Fabian the Pontiff, he consigned to prison also St. Moses and Maximus, priests, and Nicostratus, deacon. Such was the state of the Church, when the Roman clergy, taking up the care of her who had been widowed by the slaying of Fabian, fulfilled all the duties of a most vigilant shepherd, until a new Pontiff should be created. There exist various letters among those of Cyprian, from which it is evident with what zeal that clergy cared not only for the Roman diocese but also for the Carthaginian and for others. It will be worth while to have shown some specimen of this.
[54] governed the Church with vast zeal They had heard that St. Cyprian, who, prudently deferring the crown of martyrdom to another time, was preserving himself for the good of his church, had withdrawn into a voluntary exile; and, unaware with what mind he had done this, and how much even in absence he was providing for his flock by letters, they thought it their part to remind the Carthaginian clergy of its duty, and to exhort it by their own example to undertake undauntedly the shepherd's place, lest the flock should suffer any harm from his absence. And so they transmitted to the said clergy the letter which is the second among Cyprian's, in which, after setting forth the parts of a good shepherd and the ways of a bad one, they say this: We do not wish, therefore, most beloved brethren, that you be found hirelings, but good shepherds; since you know that no small danger then lies upon you, if you shall not have exhorted our brethren to stand immovable in the faith, lest the brotherhood be utterly rooted out as they go headlong into idolatry.
[55] and solicitude For we do not exhort you by words alone, but you will be able to learn from many who come to you from us, that we, with God's help, both have done and do all these things with all solicitude and worldly danger, having before our eyes rather the fear of God and everlasting punishments than the fear
of men and a brief injury; not deserting the brotherhood, but exhorting them to stand in the faith, and to be ready to go with the Lord. But we have also called back those who were going up to that to which they were being compelled (namely, to sacrifice). The Church stands in the faith, although certain persons, compelled by very terror — whether because they were persons of distinction, or seized with the fear of men — were afraid; whom indeed, though separated from us, we have not abandoned, but we have exhorted them and do exhort them to do penance, if in any way they may be able to receive indulgence from him who is able to grant it; lest, if they be left by us, they become worse.
[56] You see therefore, brethren, that you also ought to do this, he cares for. so that those too who have fallen, correcting their minds at your exhortation, may, if they be seized a second time, confess, that they may be able to correct their former error: and the other things which lie upon you, which we have likewise subjoined; namely that, if any who have fallen into this temptation begin to be seized with sickness, and do penance for their deed, and desire communion, they certainly ought to be helped; whether widows, or clenomeni, who are not able to present themselves, or those who are in prison, or those shut out from their own dwellings — they certainly ought to have persons to minister to them. But catechumens also, seized with sickness, ought not to be deceived, but to be helped. And, what is greatest, if the bodies of the martyrs or of the rest be not buried, a grave peril hangs over those upon whom it lies to do this work. And that this letter of theirs might profit others also, at the end they ask that they should transmit it in every direction, or at least should admonish by messengers or letters as many as they can, that they should stand strong and immovable in the faith. Thus they; which I have judged should be transferred hither, because there is no doubt that our Saint, who, on Cyprian's testimony, in the divine ministrations had often deserved well of the Lord, claimed for himself a great part of this zeal and solicitude.
[57] Meanwhile the persecution that had been stirred up went on raging through the Roman empire, at Decius's urging, Many fell in that persecution, and wrought a great slaughter not only of bodies but of souls. And how great this was may be gathered from another letter of the same Roman clergy, the thirty-first among Cyprian's, sent to Cyprian himself. Look, it says, upon almost the whole world laid waste, and see everywhere the remnants and the ruins of the fallen; and therefore so great a counsel is sought (for healing the lapsed) as the offense seems to have been widely spread. Similarly Moses, Maximus and Nicostratus, and the rest of the Roman confessors, call it that great offense, which has ranged with incredible devastation through almost the whole world. Moreover St. Cyprian in his book On the Lapsed laments the cowardly faithlessness of many in Africa, and St. Dionysius of Alexandria, in Eusebius, book 6 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 41, sets forth like lapses of the Alexandrians.
[58] Yet of the number of the lapsed not a few, detesting their faithlessness, kept demanding to be admitted to the peace of the Church; whose cause was by the same clergy and in Africa indeed, through the rash indulgence of certain priests and confessors, they strove to claim it for themselves without due penance, against the vigor of the Ecclesiastical discipline of that time, as St. Cyprian bitterly complains in various letters. On the same subject the same holy bishop wrote to the Romans, who replied to him by letters 30 and 31, that what he had prudently done pleased them; that the lapsed should be exhorted to penance until, by a mature examination, a decision should be made about each one's case: for the rest, that it was fixed and settled with them to decree nothing further in so great a matter until a new Pontiff should be elected.
[59] prudently handled. Although upon us, they said, there lies a greater necessity of deferring this matter, since for us, after the departure of the man of most noble memory, Fabian, no Bishop has yet been appointed, on account of the difficulties of affairs and of the times, who might govern all these things, and who could with authority and counsel take account of those who have fallen. And again: Of which tempering (of severity and indulgence) we, seeking here to hold the moderation, for a long time, and indeed many of us, and indeed with certain bishops near and neighboring to us, and with those whom the heat of that persecution had cast out from other provinces far distant, have thought that nothing should be innovated before the appointment of a Bishop; but we have believed that the care of the lapsed should be moderately tempered, so that meanwhile, while it is being endured that a Bishop be given us by God, the case of those who can endure the delays of postponement should be held in suspense.
[60] That the Apostolic See Inconvenient indeed was the Church's widowhood at so calamitous a time; but most benign God at length provided for this, and gave a Pontiff equal to so great a burden, namely holy Cornelius, about the time of whose entering upon the Pontificate there is some disagreement among the learned. The Catalogue of the Pontiffs from the library of the most serene queen of Sweden, published by Henschen, notes that the Roman Chair was vacant only six days from St. Fabian's martyrdom — a manifest error, and acknowledged by all: for thus Cornelius would have been raised to it already on the twenty-sixth of January in the year 250, which from what is to be said can by no means be admitted. In the much more ancient Catalogue in the same Henschen nothing indeed is mentioned about the time of the vacancy, but of Cornelius one reads thus: Cornelius, two years, three months, ten days, from the consulship of Decius II and Decius, until that of Gallus and Volusianus.
[61] was vacant for more than four months, Closely adhering to these words, Henschen in the preliminary Diatribe prefixed to the said Catalogues of the Pontiffs in volume 1 of April places St. Cornelius's ordination after a vacancy of the holy See of about four months and fifteen days, around the fourth of June in the year 250; to which year and day the reckonings lead when made backwards through 2 years, 3 months, 10 days from the fourteenth of September, on which he holds with us that the Saint died. Of the same opinion is Francesco Bianchini in his chronological Notes on the Librarian, where, blaming Papebroch for having deserted his colleague's opinion, he reports among other things on page 197 an old inscription, placed under an ancient painting in the basilica of St. Paul, in which he supposes that just so many years, months, and days are attributed to him in the Pontificate, as we shall say in §12.
[62] after St. Fabian's death, But from this opinion of Henschen's Papebroch, as I have intimated, departed in his Chronico-historical Attempt on the Catalogues of the Pontiffs, page 33 \, in the Propylæum* of May, and judged with the most eminent Baronius and the learned Schelstrate that the vacancy of the holy See cannot be confined within so scanty a space of months; as it also seemed to both Pagis, to Tillemont, and to others. The reason of all these is that the things which are read in Cyprian's letters as having been done by the Roman clergy while the See was vacant seem easily to require a year, as we too shall say in the Acts of that same Cyprian. There is added a second reason, no less pressing, from the time at which St. Moses and his companions were shut up and detained in the Roman prison, and at which St. Cyprian sent his letters to them, and they their replies to him.
[63] Concerning these confessors the primary Catalogue of the Pontiffs in Henschen has thus: nay, for a whole year After his passion (that of St. Fabian) Moses and Maximus, priests, and Nicostratus, deacon, were arrested and sent to prison. At that time Novatus came over from Africa, and separated from the Church Novatian and certain confessors, after Moses had died in prison, who was there eleven months and eleven days. Of their long imprisonment St. Cyprian also makes mention in letter 15, sent to those very men while they were still bound in prison, saying: Let magistrates now go their way, and consuls or proconsuls, and glory in the insignia of their yearly dignity and in the twelve fasces. Behold, in you a heavenly dignity has been marked with the brightness of a yearly honor, and has already passed beyond the revolving course of the returning year by the long duration of its victorious glory. The rising sun and the coursing moon lit up the world; but for you he who made the sun and the moon was a greater light in prison… The winter has passed through by the changes of the months: but you, shut in, were weighing the seasons of winter against the winter of persecution.
[64] Having spoken like things about the spring and summer passed in prison, and for several months he adds concerning autumn: Nor is there wanting to autumn a spiritual grace of the season for discharging its offices \. The vintage is pressed outside, and the grape, destined to profit the cups, is trodden in the presses: you, rich clusters of the Lord's vineyard, and bunches now with ripe fruits, trodden by the assault of worldly pressure, feel your own press, while prison torments you… Thus among the servants of God the year rolls round.* Thus Cyprian; from which it is clear, first, that this letter was written when the confessors had already continued a whole year, or certainly a little less, in prison, into which he intimated clearly enough that they had been cast in the winter season, since he began his praise of their hardships in prison from that season of the year. It is clear, secondly, that the same letter could have been written only at the beginning of the year 251, or when the year 250 was already far advanced; for otherwise the confessors would have to be said to have been arrested while the Philips were reigning, which no one will allow.
[65] But now, to come to our purpose: it is certain that it was vacant until the year 251 that the Roman Chair, at the time when Cyprian was writing these things, was still vacant. For the deep silence in it about Cornelius as successor altogether persuades this, since his ordination certainly could not have been hidden from Cyprian, if it had happened, as our adversaries would have it, already from the fourth day of June of the year 250. Likewise no mention is made of the holy Pontiff in letter 25 of the same Cyprian, written likewise to the aforesaid confessors; nor in their reply to that letter, or to both, which is the twenty-sixth among Cyprian's. To these negative arguments, which in cases of this kind, and under like circumstances, have great force, I add another, a positive one.
[66] It will be plain from what is to be said that St. Cyprian, already returned from his voluntary retirement, is proved. held a council at Carthage when the messengers about St. Cornelius's election to the Pontificate arrived there. Now Cyprian had withdrawn at the beginning of the year 250, and did not return to Carthage until after the space of one year and some months, as is clear from his letter 40, sent to his people around the feast of Easter, in which he says: Had not an exile of two years already sufficed, and a mournful separation from your faces and your eyes! — where, however, the two years must be taken as begun, not completed, as we shall show in the Acts of that same Saint. Cyprian therefore returned to Carthage in the year 251, but not until after Easter, as we have from the same letter; and while he was holding a council there at that same time, the messengers arrived concerning Cornelius, lately made successor in the Roman Chair; and accordingly the ordination of that same holy Pontiff cannot be referred to the fourth of June of the year 250.
[67] A reply is made To the first argument, which we drew from the time of the deeds of the Roman clergy during the interpontificate, Bianchini replies that the traffic of letters between Rome and Carthage was expeditious enough for it to be possible that, from the twentieth of January, on which Fabian was taken from among the living,
up to the fourth of June, four letters and as many replies could have been sent to and fro. Let it be so, by all means: but the authors whom we have praised argue not from an impeded traffic of letters or from the distance of places, but from the things done both at Rome and at Carthage while the holy See was vacant, judging that more than the space of four months must have been spent upon these; and that it really was so spent we shall show in the treatment of St. Cyprian.
[68] to certain reasons The difficulty which we drew from the long imprisonment of the confessors Bianchini likewise objects to himself; but we answer easily, he says, that, if the number of months in the Catalogue be supposed uncorrupted, Moses's imprisonment must be understood as repeated: for some months of Decius's persecution before the death of Fabian, which make up the greater part of the number; and for one or two after it, which fill out the sum of eleven months and as many days. For it is established from Caecilius (Lactantius), On the Deaths of the Persecutors, that Decius's persecution began from his taking up the empire… Since therefore we have seen that the empire was conferred on Decius a little after the beginning of the year of the Christian era 249, and that he straightway began to rage against God, harrying his true worshippers, Moses too with his companions could have been consigned to prison for eight or nine months before Fabian's martyrdom.
[69] brought forward for the opposite opinion. Thus Bianchini: to whom I reply just as easily, that that casting of Moses and his companions into prison before Fabian's death is gratuitously put forward against the assertion of the same Catalogue; and that the repetition of the imprisonment is contrary to St. Cyprian in the letter reported in numbers 63 and following, where he manifestly supposes that they endured through about the four seasons of the year with an unbroken captivity. As to what concerns the number of months, if it be corrupted, then from the same letter of Cyprian it must be said to labor under defect rather than excess. Nor does Bianchini get anything for himself from the words of Lactantius: for at whatever time of the year 249 Decius was acclaimed emperor by the army, he did not gain Rome until after the slaying of Philip, that is, not until that year was ending or far advanced; nor was it necessary that Moses with his companions be consigned to prison in that very year in order that Lactantius could say that Decius, having obtained the empire, straightway began to rage against God. To the old inscription praised by Bianchini in number 61 we shall reply in §12.
[70] The error of the Catalogue We believe therefore that St. Cornelius was ordained Pontiff in the year 251, and this very thing the most ancient Catalogue of Henschen teaches by the consulships noted in it, when the error which we shall show to have crept into it is corrected. For in it Cornelius is said to have sat from the consulship of Decius II and Decius: now the second consulship of Decius the father belongs to the year 250; but in it he had for colleague not Decius his son, but Gratus, as is read in the more correct Fasti, and as the author of the Catalogue himself acknowledges in the case of Fabian, whom he writes to have suffered under Decius II and Gratus. But the year of Christ 251 is marked in the same Fasti with the consuls Decius III and Decius: since therefore in the Catalogue Cornelius is said to have begun to sit when both Decii were consuls, it is plain that there is a fault in the number of the elder Decius's consulship, and that for II one must write III.
[71] But how easily erroneous numbers creep into transcripts, daily experience teaches; in the noting of Decius's II and IV consulship and this is plain even from the fact that in the same copy in which Henschen read Decio II & Decio, Gilles Bouchier, who, having borrowed it from Bolland, published it first, read Decio IV & Decio. In the latter way also Cuspinian has it, and the manuscript codex of the Imperial library of Vienna, published by the said Schelstrate after chapter 9 of dissertation 3; which, however, in the same place, chapter 2, he had premised was no more the original itself than Henschen's copy. For the rest, Decius never held a fourth consulship, and therefore neither is this reading to be admitted. But Onofrio Panvinio, in his Commentary on book 2 of the Fasti, at the year of the City 1004, testifies that Decio III & Decio is read in the Life of St. Cornelius, of which he praises Damasus as the author; by which Life indeed he seems to designate this very catalogue, which was once believed to be by Damasus on account of two letters which exist under the name of that holy Pontiff and of St. Jerome, but are now reckoned among the spurious, and about which Papebroch in the Propylæum of May, page 3, in Henschen's Apparatus, number 9, and Schelstrate, Antiquitas illustrata, volume 1, dissertation 3, chapter 3, may be consulted.
[72] The said Schelstrate does indeed deny in chapter 2 is corrected from other documents. that this Catalogue gave Panvinio his light, because, as he says, in the Index of the manuscript books and Acts which he used, which stands in the Vatican Library, no mention is made of it; but only these are cited: "The Lives of the Roman Pontiffs by Pope Damasus, by Anastasius and William, librarians of the Holy Roman Church, by Pandulf of Pisa, and by more recent authors" — out of which Onofrio thought the Liber Pontificalis had been composed. But where, I ask, in that Liber Pontificalis are the consuls Decius III and Decius read at the period of Cornelius? Certainly not even in Schelstrate himself in the same Work. By "Damasus" in the Life of Cornelius, therefore, Panvinio designated something else than the said Liber Pontificalis, and more probably this very Catalogue, as Henschen too suspected in the Apparatus to that same little Work, whom Schelstrate on that account wrongly accuses of error.
[73] I observe further here in a few words that Tillemont was mistaken Tillemont's mistake is observed, when in Note 1 on St. Cornelius he believed, from the words of Henschen — whom after his manner he calls Bolland — badly understood, that it had seemed to him that for Decius the son one should read Gratus. But the passage which he praises, before volume 1 of April, page XXVI, number 66, makes his mistake manifest. Take Henschen's words: St. Cornelius seems to have been created about the fourth of June of the year 250… But in the first year of his See the consuls cited, Decius Augustus for the second time and Q. Etruscus Caesar, his son, began the following year, and in the following year, 252, the consuls were Gallus and Volusianus. Henschen therefore said nothing else here than that both Decii opened the year 251 with their consulship, while the first year of Cornelius in the Pontificate was still running; but that Cornelius had already sat before it; which last point, however, as also the second consulship of Decius assigned to that year, cannot from what has been said be admitted. For the rest, the said Bianchini tries in vain to persuade us that the consulship of both Decii is to be fixed to the year 250, the father holding his second and ordinary consulship, and the son being substituted for him by the resignation of Gratus.
[74] As further concerns the time of his ordination, authors commonly gather from St. Cyprian's letters that it is to be placed after Easter, which in the year 251 fell on the twenty-third of March; and that it cannot, however, be deferred to too advanced a point in the year, because in the November of that year Decius perished, St. Cornelius was ordained in the year 251, under whom the same St. Cyprian testifies in letter 52 that Cornelius sat for a notable time, in the words which we recounted in number 18. Both Pagis — the one in the Critique of Baronius at the year 251, number 19, the other in the Breviary of the Roman Pontiffs — and Pearson in the Cyprianic Annals, assign the fourth day of June of the year 251, which opinion Tillemont also embraces as the more probable. These rely on the most ancient Catalogue often praised, in which, if for the two years of his See you substitute one, as we shall show must be done, and subtract this, along with three months and ten days, from the fourteenth day of September of the year 252, on which the Saint is believed to have died, you arrive at the aforesaid day of June.
[75] probably on the fourth of June. But Baronius, in volume 1 of the Annals at the year 254, number 46, prefers to refer that ordination to the month of April, because he believes the Council of Carthage, which Cyprian in letter 55 writes to have been celebrated on the Ides of May, to be later than it: but that that council was first convened in the year 252 we shall say in the treatment of St. Cyprian. Schelstrate likewise places it about the same month, in Antiquitas illustrata, dissertation 2, chapter 6; but Papebroch even determines the twenty-seventh day; yet from a conjecture founded on the authority of the second Catalogue, which he himself plainly acknowledges to be weak. For since in the said Catalogue the Roman Chair is said to have been vacant six days after Fabian's slaying, Papebroch, adding to those days one year and three months, which he says were wrongly omitted, and thus proceeding from Fabian's death, that is, from the twentieth of January of the year 250, arrives at the said day of April. But to me this conjecture of Papebroch's appears too weak for me to believe it probable; and I prefer with the former writers to refer Cornelius's ordination to about the fourth of June, although I do not think even this opinion certain.
[76] The cause of so long a vacancy is set forth. The reader will perhaps marvel at so long a vacancy of the See: the Roman clergy in the letter reported in number 59 assign as the cause the difficulties of affairs and of the times. Decius, namely, was raging against God, as Lactantius says in number 53, and was driven by such hatred against his ministers, and especially those of the Roman Church, that, on St. Cyprian's testimony in letter 52 to Antonianus, he threatened things speakable and unspeakable against the Priests of God, and would have heard with much more patience and endurance that a rival prince was being raised against him, than that a Priest of God was being appointed at Rome. Carried away by this fury, he had taken St. Fabian the Pontiff out of the way on the twentieth of January in the year 250, and had consigned to prison holy Moses the priest and some others of the Roman clergy, as has already been said above, and without doubt was also watching to do away with the remaining ministers of that Church. What wonder, therefore, if the said clergy, thinking that something must be yielded to the iniquity of the time, prudently deferred the election of a new Pontiff, which they were not unaware that Decius would bear with an ungovernable mind, until the vehemence of the persecution that had been stirred up should somewhat abate?
Annotata\ elsewhere: fundenda*
§ V. The occasion of electing a Pontiff: Cornelius's virtues and illustrious election: an account of Novatus and Novatian: the cause, manner, and time of the schism stirred up by them.
It is probable that the rebellion of Priscus or Valens The beginning of Cornelius's Pontificate having been referred to the year 251, and probably to the fourth day of June, let us set forth the manner of his ordination and the things which followed upon it. John Pearson in the Cyprianic Annals at the year 251, number 5, and others suspect that the Romans made use of the opportunity which the absence of Decius, occupied in the Macedonian war against Lucius Priscus, had afforded them, to substitute a successor to St. Fabian in the Roman chair, so long widowed. Of this expedition of Decius, Sextus Aurelius Victor in the Caesars makes mention thus: In those days sovereignty was conferred upon Lucius Priscus, who was governing the Macedonians as prefect, by an onset of the Goths, after they had reached that place, having plundered a great part of Thrace. For which cause, when Decius had departed from Rome as speedily as he could, Julius Valens seized the empire, the common people most eagerly desiring it: but both were soon slain, since the nobility had judged Priscus an enemy of the fatherland.
[78] This opinion of theirs seems to me very probable
; gave the opportunity of electing a Pontiff. for from a disturbance of affairs of this kind it had come about that the persecution was somewhat mitigated, while a more urgent care turned the minds of the tyrant and of his ministers elsewhere; just as we learn from St. Cyprian's letter 52 that it was in fact lulled to sleep in Africa about that time, and we gather that something similar happened at Rome from letter 51 of the same Saint, in which the confessors, who we said above had been shut up in prison after St. Fabian's martyrdom, are said, as they came forth from prison, to have been caught by a schismatic and heretical error; namely when, their companion Moses being now dead, they consented to the schism of Novatian and to his sacrilegious ordination, which we shall see happened at the beginning of Cornelius's Pontificate. To this also make the words of the praised letter 52: that Cornelius sat undaunted at Rome in the Sacerdotal chair at that time when the tyrant … would have heard with much more patience that a rival prince was being raised against him, than that a Priest of God was being appointed at Rome. For these words may not unfittingly be so taken, as though Decius had learned at nearly the same time of St. Cornelius's ordination and of the tyranny of Lucius Priscus or of Valens.
[79] Now concerning Cornelius's lawful election, and his virtues worthy of a supreme Pontiff, Cornelius, promoted through all the orders, is unwillingly Cyprian writes these things to Antonianus in the passage just cited: I come now, dearest brother, to the person of our colleague Cornelius, that you may know Cornelius with us more truly, not from the lying of the malicious and the detractors, but from the judgment of the Lord God, who made him Bishop, and from the testimony of his fellow-bishops, the whole number of whom throughout the whole world has consented with concordant unanimity. For as to what commends Cornelius, our most dear one, to God and to Christ and to his Church, and likewise to all his fellow-priests, with praiseworthy proclamation: he did not come to the Episcopate suddenly, but, promoted through all the Ecclesiastical offices, and having often deserved well of the Lord in the divine ministrations, he ascended to the sublime height of the priesthood through all the degrees of religion. Then, finally, the Episcopate itself he neither sought nor wished, nor, like the rest whom the swelling of their arrogance and pride puffs up, did he invade it; but, otherwise quiet and modest, and such as those are wont to be who are divinely chosen for this place, by reason of the modesty of his virginal continence and by reason of the humility of a shamefastness inborn in him and guarded by him, he did not, like certain men, use force that he might be made Bishop, but himself suffered force, that under compulsion he might receive the Episcopate.
[80] elected Pontiff And he was made Bishop by very many of our colleagues who were then present in the City of Rome, who sent us letters honorable and praiseworthy and illustrious by the testimony of their proclamation, concerning his ordination. And Cornelius was made Bishop by the judgment of God and of his Christ, by the testimony of almost all the clergy, by the vote of the people who were then present, and by the college of ancient priests and of good men; when no one had been made before him, when the place of Fabian, that is, when the place of Peter, and the rank of the Sacerdotal Chair was vacant… Then afterwards, when the Episcopate had been received not by canvassing nor by rising up, but by the will of God, who makes the priests, what virtue in the very Episcopate he had received, what strength of soul, what firmness of faith! (which we with a simple heart ought both thoroughly to discern and to praise) — that he sat undaunted at Rome, etc., which we have already recited in number 18 and following.
[81] with the fullest consent of sixteen bishops, That the bishops who were present at his election were sixteen in number, the said St. Cyprian testifies in the same place, when, arraigning the impudence of Novatian, who had wickedly invaded the Pontificate, he says in the same place: Unless perhaps he seems to you a bishop who, when a Bishop had been made in the Church by sixteen fellow-bishops, strives, as an adulterer and a stranger, to be made bishop by deserters through canvassing. Among these bishops were perhaps numbered Pompeius and Stephen, by whom, on their return to Africa from Rome, the same Cyprian affirms in letters 41, 42, and 45 that he was well informed about the lawful election of Cornelius. But that it is not probable that these same men were sent to Rome by the African church to be present at the election, Tillemont has rightly observed against Pearson in Note 2 on St. Cornelius: for thus it would by no means have been necessary that Caldonius and Fortunatus be sent thither after Cornelius's election for the sake of investigating what had been done, as we shall see was done.
[82] and of the clergy and people of the Roman Church. The Roman clergy, and the others who then belonged more nearly to the Church, St. Cornelius recounts in his letter to Fabius, bishop of Antioch, a fragment of which stands in Eusebius, book 6 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 43, in Valois's translation, in these words: In which (Roman Church) nevertheless he (Novatian, whom Eusebius and other Greeks wrongly write Novatus) knew — for how could he have been ignorant of it? — that there were forty-four presbyters (in the Greek it is: forty-six), seven deacons, and as many subdeacons, forty-two acolytes, exorcists and readers with doorkeepers fifty-two, and finally widows with the infirm and the needy more than fifteen hundred; to all of whom the grace and kindness of God supplies nourishment. Yet the unanimous agreement of almost all these, and besides of an innumerable people, upon Cornelius, most adorned with virtues, could not prevent a monster unheard of until that time in the Roman Church, a dreadful schism, from arising out of the perfidy of a few; as St. Cornelius laments in the same place thus: And yet so great and so needful a multitude in the Church, that assembly rich and numerous with the resources of divine providence, together with an immense and almost innumerable people, could not deter him (Novatian the pseudo-pontiff) from a desperation and audacity of this kind, and call him back to the Church.
[83] The authors of this schism were Novatus and Novatian, Against him Novatian stirs up a schism, whom the Greek writers commonly confound, writing Novatus for Novatian. Of Novatus more will have to be said in the treatment of St. Cyprian, whose priest he was; and therefore I shall only touch briefly below on the deeds of this wicked man before his arrival in the City. That Novatian, before he was admitted into the Church, had professed philosophy, St. Pacian teaches in letter 2 to Sympronian, saying: Do you thrust Novatian upon me? I hear that he was a philosopher of the world; nor do I sufficiently wonder that he degenerated from the Church of the living God. The same we learn from St. Cyprian, letter 52, where he thus beats down his boasting: Whoever he is, and of whatever sort he is, he is not a Christian who is not in the Church of Christ. Let him boast, and proclaim his philosophy or his eloquence with proud words; he who has held neither fraternal charity nor Ecclesiastical unity has lost what he formerly was.
[84] That he was a Stoic by sect we gather from the same letter, in which St. Cyprian, overthrowing his merciless heresy, who had earlier been a Stoic philosopher which cut off from all the lapsed every hope of peace, says this: Different is the reasoning of the philosophers and Stoics, … who say that all sins are equal, and that a grave man ought not to be easily bent: but between Christians and Philosophers there is a very great difference … We must avoid those things which come down not from God's clemency but from the presumption of a harsher philosophy. For the rest, his eloquence is proved by letter 31 among Cyprian's, which the Roman clergy, in the common name of all, transmitted to St. Cyprian — a letter written by him in a Catholic sense, before he stirred up the schism, for the care of the lapsed, as is established from letter 52 of this Saint. St. Jerome also, in his letter to Damasus on five questions, calls him most eloquent; and in his Catalogue of Writers he recounts several of his Works.
[85] The occasion and manner in which he came over from the tenets of the gentile philosophers to the Church of Christ, and, being possessed, was baptized when at the point of death, Eusebius, praised above, goes on to relate out of the said letter of St. Cornelius — or rather Cornelius himself does so. Come now, he says, let us set forth in what works and in what manner of life he trusted when he aspired to the Episcopal place. Was it perhaps because from the beginning he was engaged in the Church, and underwent many contests for her defense, and struggled with many and most grievous perils for religion's sake? By no means indeed: since it was Satan who furnished him the cause and beginning of believing, entering into him and remaining in him for some time. And when he was being tended by the exorcists, having fallen into a most grievous illness, and when he was believed to be on the very point of dying, he was drenched on the very couch on which he lay, and received baptism; if indeed he is to be said to have received a baptism of that kind. But neither after he was freed from his illness did he receive the remaining things which according to the Ecclesiastical rule ought to be received; nor was he sealed by a bishop.
[86] That he was afterwards initiated into the priesthood contrary to the ecclesiastical discipline of that time, and had been made a priest against the custom of the Church. Cornelius testifies in the same letter in these words: For when that excellent man had left the Church of God, in which after receiving baptism he had attained the rank of presbyter — and that by the favor of the bishop, who, laying hands upon him, raised him to the order of presbyters: and when the whole clergy, and many of the people, opposed this, on the ground that it was not lawful for any of those who, under the pressure of illness, had been drenched upon a couch, as he had been, to be taken into the clergy — the bishop asked of them that they would suffer him to ordain this one man alone. Before we go further, a reply must be made to Tillemont's empty suspicion about the mind of the Roman Church of that time concerning baptism.
[87] Tillemont's suspicion is refuted He, in his treatment of Cornelius, article 4, suspects, from the words cited, that the opinion of the Roman Church was then that by a baptism of this kind less grace was conferred than by immersion or washing; or at least that this opinion is ascribed by St. Cyprian in letter 76 to those who defended the validity of baptism conferred by heretics. But this suspicion of Tillemont's is empty; for Cornelius does not say: If that can be called a baptism, as he himself translated it into French; but: If indeed he is to be said to have received one of this kind. Namely, because concerning such a man's disposition, necessary for receiving baptism and its grace profitably, some doubt could arise. In almost the same manner in which St. John Chrysostom, in Catechesis 1 to those about to be enlightened, that is, baptized, says of like dying persons: For when he neither recognizes those present, nor hears a voice, nor is able to answer those words by which he may lay down the blessed covenant with the Lord of us all, but is like a useless log or a stone, and he who is soon to be enlightened differs in nothing from a dead man — what profit of the initiation is there in so great a destitution of all sense?
[88] about the mind of the Roman Church of that time Further, concerning Novatian's disposition a particular suspicion could be raised, from the fact that, on St. Cornelius's testimony, neither after he was freed from his illness did he receive the remaining things which according to the Ecclesiastical rule ought to be received; nor was he sealed by a bishop: which certainly was an indication that he had been little solicitous about his duty, to which he had been bound through baptism. But the cause on account of which those baptized on their couches in this way were held excluded from ordination to the priesthood and
from the clerical state, the Council of Neocaesarea, celebrated in the fourth century, has expressed, whose twelfth canon runs thus: If anyone shall have been enlightened (that is, baptized) when sick, he cannot be raised to the presbyterate: for his faith is not from purpose but from necessity; unless perhaps on account of his subsequent zeal and faith, and the scarcity of men. The same canon the sixth Council of Paris praises and admits in canon 8. In vain therefore did Tillemont try to raise that suspicion against the Roman Church and her holy Pontiff.
[89] about the opinion concerning baptism As regards St. Cyprian, he in letter 76 to Magnus, praised by Tillemont, first tries to establish his own opinion against St. Stephen about baptizing heretics; then, when in the second part of the letter he had taught that baptism conferred by sprinkling differs in nothing from that which is conferred by immersion, he adds: Unless it seems just to certain persons that those who are polluted outside the Church with profane water among adversaries and antichrists should be judged baptized; whereas these who are baptized in the Church should seem to have obtained less of indulgence and of divine grace, and so great an honor be paid to heretics that those coming thence be not asked whether they were washed or drenched, whether they are clinics or peripatetics; while among us something is detracted from the entire truth of the faith, and its majesty and sanctity are taken away from ecclesiastical baptism.
[90] So indeed St. Cyprian at that time when that famous question between himself and St. Stephen about the baptism of heretics was being agitated: conferred by sprinkling upon the dying. but neither from this does Tillemont get anything for his suspicion, nor does Cyprian fasten that opinion upon the Romans; but when in the first part of the letter, as we have said, he had defended his own error against them, he adds that what he had said in the second part about the manner of conferring baptism ought to be admitted by the Romans also, unless they prefer to ascribe more to baptism conferred by heretics than to that conferred in the Church; which he denies that they will at all do.
[91] From what has been said, gather also how far from the truth St. Eulogius, bishop of Alexandria, wandered, The historical errors of St. Eulogius. if he really wrote in his Work against Novatus, or Novatian, what Photius in the Bibliotheca, chapter 182, relates from him in this manner: He (St. Eulogius) relates that Navatus (that is, Novatian), while Cornelius was Pontiff, was created archdeacon of the Roman Church, to whom the Pontificate itself, according to the custom of that time, was transferred when the Pontiff departed this life: for it had been laid down that the archdeacon should succeed the supreme Priest. But this man, Eulogius says, when Cornelius had learned that he labored with pride and was plotting his death, he ordained a presbyter, thus cutting off from him all hope of reaching the supreme Chair. The same he has in chapter 28: but that none of all these words is true is more manifest from what has been adduced thus far and from what is to be brought forward than that it should be necessary to refute that narrative here. Now let us return to the point from which we digressed.
[92] Novatian's no ordinary learning and eloquence without doubt impelled the Pontiff — whether it was St. Fabian or another — Novatian to ordain Novatian a presbyter, thinking that, on account of the service which he hoped he would render the Church, the usual discipline might on that occasion be dispensed with. And indeed that he answered well enough at first to the esteem conceived of him, we learn from the author of the book against Novatian ascribed to St. Cyprian, who says that once in one house, that is, the Church of Christ, he wept over his neighbors' offenses as his own, bore the burdens of the brethren, as the Apostle exhorts, and strengthened those slipping in the faith by heavenly address. Besides, we said above that letter 31 among Cyprian's, in which the cause of the lapsed is treated in an elegant style, was written by him in the name of the Roman clergy. But afterwards he made plain how unworthy he was of the priesthood, to which he had been raised against the accustomed discipline of the Church. Hear St. Cornelius again in the same letter to Fabius of Antioch.
[93] In the time of persecution, he says, out of fear and an excessive desire of living, he denied that he was a presbyter: out of fear denies that he is a presbyter: the crimes of Novatus: for when he was admonished and asked by the deacons to come out of the chamber in which he had shut himself up, and to succor the brethren who were in need of help, so far was he from complying with the exhorting deacons that rather, roused by anger and indignation, he went away and departed. For he answered that he no longer wished to be a presbyter, but was held by desire for another philosophy. These things and the rest recounted in this paragraph St. Cornelius wrote to Fabius, in order to show by what utterly nonexistent title Novatian had claimed for himself the supreme Chair of the Church. But by what means he accomplished it, St. Pacian in letter 3 sets forth in these words: Cornelius, already made Bishop at Rome by sixteen bishops, had received the place of the vacant Chair, and in that virginal chastity with which he was endowed was enduring the frequent persecutions of an angry prince: then, as it chanced, a certain presbyter (Novatus) from Africa — having defrauded the widows in the church of Carthage, despoiled the orphans, denied the church its money, cast his father out of the house, and, when the same had died of hunger and lay unburied, having struck his pregnant wife's womb with his heel and caused her offspring to be aborted — came to Rome; and since at Carthage, with the brethren in the church pressing, the day of his trial was drawing near, here too he lay hid.
[94] at whose instigation, Novatian And not long afterwards he impels that Novatian, anxious about Cornelius's Episcopate (for he had hoped it for himself), as he wavered with a certain number of supporters on his own side, as usually happens in such a matter; he encourages him in his doubt, and exhorts him to hope for something great. He finds some of the number of those who had escaped the storm of that persecution, with whom he might stir up this very ill will against Cornelius for having received back the lapsed; he gives their letters to Novatian; he, on the authority of the letters, when a Bishop was already sitting at Rome, against the law of the singular Priesthood, takes to himself the name of a second bishop; he charges Cornelius with having communicated with the lapsed, but claims himself to be innocent. Here you have, learned reader, the cause, the authors, and the beginning of the Novatian schism, which afflicted the Church of God so long; all of which we shall somewhat elucidate.
[95] arrogates the Pontificate to himself. And that the cause was indeed the envy of a proud man, the same St. Pacian repeats in the said letter, saying: Who indeed, first goaded by envy, could not bear the Episcopate of Cornelius; then, mocked by the letters of a few, had given himself over to Novatus. And again, reproaching Novatian's followers that he changed his opinion about receiving back the lapsed, which he had earlier defended in writing, only out of envy, he says: Why then did your Novatian, not yet a priest even by a false episcopate, long before Cornelius became Bishop at Rome, before he envied his Priesthood, urge these things? … If no one had preferred Cornelius to you, that authority of the writer would remain. And so Socrates is not to be heard, a writer favoring Novatian's errors, when in book 4 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 23, he says that Novatian, whom he calls Novatus, separated himself from the Roman Church because Cornelius the Bishop received into communion those faithful who in the time of the persecution which Decius … had stirred up, had sacrificed to idols. He is not to be heard, I say: for from what has been said it is certain that the true cause of the schism was Novatian's envy and ambition; although the crafty man strove to veil it with a pretended vigor of discipline, that is, with a new heresy. Of this veil are to be understood also Eusebius in the Chronicle and Theodoret in book 3 On the fables of the heretics, in the treatment of Novatus or Novatian, where they have like things.
[96] A doubt concerning the time Concerning the time when the schism arose there is some difficulty and disagreement among the learned. According to Pacian's words Novatian did not stir it up before Novatus's arrival from Africa, and this man did not come to Rome before St. Cornelius's Pontificate. But St. Cornelius, in the letter in Eusebius often praised, writes of the same Novatian: Whom also Moses, the most blessed martyr, who lately among us fulfilled an excellent and admirable martyrdom, having his audacity and fury clearly seen, separated from his communion, together with five presbyters who had likewise broken themselves off with him from the body of the Church. But concerning Moses's captivity and death, and the schism of the confessors that followed, the author of the most ancient Catalogue of the Pontiffs records this: After his passion (that of St. Fabian) Moses and Maximus, priests, and Nicostratus, deacon, were arrested and sent to prison. At that time Novatus came over from Africa, and separated from the Church Novatian and certain confessors, after Moses had died in prison; who was there eleven months and eleven days.
[97] From these statements arguments of this kind are formed: We have proved from St. Cyprian in number 63 that St. Moses was arrested in the winter season: therefore, if he was sent to prison after St. Fabian's martyrdom, which happened on the twentieth day of January in the year 250, when the schism first arose and died in it after eleven months and as many days, he could not have survived up to Cornelius's ordination, whether you have referred this to the month of June or of April of the year 251; and accordingly neither could he have barred Novatian with five presbyters from his fellowship for having stirred up a schism, if, as some would have it, the confessors are to be numbered among them, and if these adhered to the schism only after Moses's death, as the author of the Catalogue affirms. The same argument militates also against St. Cornelius's words in the opinion of St. Pacian, who, as we have seen, hands down that Novatus, the kindler of the schism, first came to Rome when Cornelius had already been elected: but to him likewise the said writer of the Catalogue is opposed, when in the words just reported he relates Novatus's arrival after Fabian's death indeed, yet within his period, saying: At that time Novatus came over, etc.; whereas he relates Novatian's ordination only under Cornelius, saying: Under his Episcopate Novatus ordained Novatian outside the Church in the city of Rome: by which manner of writing he shows that Novatus's arrival fell in the time of the interpontificate, and Novatian's ordination after Cornelius's election.
[98] To extricate themselves from this difficulty, different authors answer differently; is set forth. but they agree in this, that they would have Novatus come to Rome before St. Cornelius was raised to the Pontificate. And so indeed it must be said: for since the letters of Cornelius about his own election, and those of the schismatics interceding, were brought to Carthage at almost the same time, as we shall show below, it appears foreign to the truth that Novatus first arrived there when Cornelius was already Pontiff; especially since, on the testimony of the same Pacian, he lay hid at Rome before he impelled Novatian to invade the Chair and won over supporters for him to that crime. I should therefore believe that St. Pacian spoke here less accurately, and wished only to signify that Novatian's schism and heresy arose from his envious mind toward Cornelius, already Pontiff, and that hence it came about that he did not distinguish the time of Novatus's arrival from the beginning of that same schismatic undertaking.
[99] Henri de Valois, in his Annotations on book 6, The opinion of Valois and Pearson chapter 43, of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, and John of Chester, or Pearson, in the Cyprianic Annals at the year 251, in order to reconcile Cornelius's words with the author of the Catalogue, lay down that Novatian
not only before Cornelius's election, which the former with Baronius fixes to the month of April, the latter to June, but even before St. Moses's death, which on the former's opinion falls in February, on the latter's in January of the year 251; they lay down, I say, that Novatian with five presbyters, at Novatus's instigation, had already then stirred up the schism, although the confessors joined their party only after St. Moses's martyrdom. On this opinion it is rightly understood that Novatus arrived at Rome before Cornelius's election, as is said in the Catalogue; and that Novatian with five presbyters was rejected by St. Moses, as St. Cornelius affirms in the praised letter. The Catalogue also retains its own authority, because among those five presbyters none of the confessors is numbered.
[100] But this opinion totters on other grounds, as Tillemont has already observed in Note 3 on St. Cornelius. For besides that on Pearson's opinion a schism of four months in the Roman clergy is invented, of those who place the rise of the schism too early of which no trace exists in Cyprian's letters; Novatus, the first author of the Roman schism, together with four other presbyters and Felicissimus, was creating vast troubles for St. Cyprian in Africa not long before Easter, which in that year was celebrated on the twenty-third day of March (as will be said in the deeds of that Saint); and accordingly in the month of January or February he had not yet come to Rome, much less had he there, with associates joined to him, broken out into schism. Pearson without doubt saw this, and therefore, though resting on no other reason, denied that Novatus was of the number of those five presbyters, whose wicked attempts he himself fixes to February.
[101] is refuted, Yet that he is to be reckoned among them is persuaded by St. Cyprian's letter 49 to Cornelius, written about Novatus and the other schismatics. It is the same Novatus, he says, who first among us sowed the fire of discord and schism, who separated certain of the brethren there from their bishop, who in the very persecution was, for overthrowing the minds of the brethren, a kind of persecution to our people. He it is who by his own faction and canvassing appointed Felicissimus, his henchman, a deacon, neither by my permission nor with my knowledge; and, sailing with his own storm to Rome also, to overthrow the Church, he there contrived like and equal things … Plainly, since in proportion to her greatness Rome ought to take precedence of Carthage, he committed there greater and graver things: he who here had made a deacon against the church, there made a bishop. Since therefore St. Cyprian attributes to the same Novatus the leading role in the African as well as in the Roman schism, it is not sufficiently probable that this very man is denied to have been of the number of the five presbyters whom we have premised to have been hostile and troublesome to Cyprian, together with Felicissimus, about the feast of Easter.
[102] as is also Baronius's opinion about Novatus The most eminent Baronius, in volume 2 of the Annals, at the year 254, number 49, did indeed judge that Novatus, by whom Felicissimus was appointed deacon, is the same as the author of the Roman schism; but he thought that this man was a bishop: while at number 61 he distinguished the aforesaid Felicissimus from the one whom we noted to have stirred up the African schism. But if this be so, the Novatus of whom we here treat will not be numbered among the five African presbyters, and the difficulty we objected will vanish. But the most eminent annalist was mistaken when he believed that Novatus was a bishop, because he had read in the praised letter 49 that Felicissimus was appointed deacon by him; thinking that Novatus did by sacred ordination what he brought about by his canvassing and faction, namely by procuring that he should become a deacon, not otherwise than he made Novatian bishop at Rome. Certainly he is called nothing but a presbyter by St. Pacian, by Eusebius in the Chronicle, and by St. Jerome in the Ecclesiastical Writers.
[103] and about Felicissimus, Baronius likewise wrongly doubled Felicissimus, from believing that the author of the African schism is said in Cyprian's letter 40 to have been a presbyter, which is not read in that whole letter. Yet perhaps it so seemed to Baronius because St. Cyprian in that place complains of five presbyters, of whom he believed Felicissimus to have been one; but not rightly, as will appear to one reading the letter. Besides, he produces in the same place another argument for doubling Felicissimus, namely that, since Felicissimus, the author of the African schism, taught that all the lapsed were to be received back at once without penance, whereas Novatus taught that all the same were to be repelled without hope of pardon, it does not seem probable that the former was ordained deacon by the latter. But from this it only follows that Novatus changed his opinion according to the circumstances of affairs, as Novatian also did, who, having earlier judged with the Roman clergy that the lapsed were to be admitted to penance and peace, introduced a heresy opposed to this Catholic opinion. For wicked men of this sort take no thought what they teach, provided they arrive at the end they have set before themselves.
[104] Tillemont prefers to depart from the author of the Catalogue, and Tillemont's opinion about St. Moses. pleading that he errs elsewhere too in his figures, and that Cornelius's authority is not to be abandoned for his sake. And so he defers Moses's death to after Cornelius's election, made in the month of June; nay, he thinks it can be deferred as far as the twenty-fifth of November, on which day he is inscribed in the Roman Martyrology; and he alleges in favor of this opinion Cornelius in the often-praised letter to Fabius, written, in his judgment, not earlier than at the end of the year 251, saying that St. Moses had lately undergone martyrdom. Nor do I think that we must depart from Cornelius's words, nor yet that the author of the Catalogue is to be repudiated, if he can be reconciled with them.
[105] Wherefore I am well pleased with the opinion of a certain anonymous Benedictine, St. Cornelius's words are explained, in the Life of St. Cyprian prefixed to that Saint's Works in the Venetian edition. He in §20 shows from Cornelius's words, as they stand in Greek in Eusebius, that there is no reason why we should believe that Novatian with the five said presbyters was rejected by Moses on account of a public schism. For where Valois has: Together with five presbyters, who had likewise broken themselves off with him from the body of the Church; in the Greek it is: σὺν τοῖς· πέντε πρεσβυτέροις τοῖς ἃμα αὐτῷ αποσχίσασιν ἑαυτοὺς τῆς εκκλησίας. Now the participle αποσχίσασι can as well be rendered by broke off as by had broken off; and then the sense will be that Novatian, together with those same presbyters who afterwards began the schism with him, had already earlier been rejected by St. Moses on account of his audacity and fury.
[106] Nor is there wanting a reason why we should believe this was done before the schism: and are reconciled with the most ancient catalogue of the Pontiffs. for we saw in number 93 that Novatian, in the time of persecution, when admonished and asked by the deacons to succor the brethren who needed help, not only did not comply with their exhortations but even departed, roused by anger: For (on St. Cornelius's testimony) he answered that he no longer wished to be a presbyter, but was held by desire for another philosophy, namely the Stoic. Now this audacity and senselessness of the man, whereby he preferred philosophy to the presbyterate and refused to succor those in peril, could seem to Moses a cause just enough for wishing to have nothing in common with him. Nor is it foreign to the truth that some of the clergy, say five presbyters, whom either a like fear of danger or the man's eloquence and authority had impelled, adhered to him, and were therefore held by Moses in the same place with him. Perhaps also Novatian was even then preparing his way to the Pontificate by unlawful arts, and this had become known to Moses.
[107] Besides, why does Cornelius mention only five presbyters as rejected by Moses, are reconciled. if that holy martyr survived among the living so long as Tillemont would have it; since from what is to be said there is no doubt that others also, and several confessors, joined the schismatic party, if not before, certainly not long after Cornelius's election — whom Moses would have repelled as well as the rest, if he had lived to that time. The studious reader will find more in the praised Benedictine. Further, on this opinion Cornelius's authority remains so entire that the statements of the most ancient Catalogue about Novatus's arrival, about Moses's death, about the confessors brought back, and about the time of all these things, are rightly reconciled with it; nor is it necessary to place the rise of the schism before Cornelius's election against St. Pacian's assertion.
[108] The occasion, manner, From what has been said thus far we judge that the things done by Novatus, so far as they pertain to the Roman schism, can be arranged in this manner. Novatus, about Easter, which we have said fell in the year 251 on the twenty-third of March, having attacked St. Cyprian in Africa in open schism together with Felicissimus and the rest of his followers, was working to prevent that holy bishop from returning to Carthage from his retirement: for, conscious to himself of many crimes, he well knew that he would not escape the condemnation which the Decian persecution had deferred, now that it was lulled and Cyprian his bishop had returned to his see, as we have from Cyprian's letter 49. Hindered by these machinations, Cyprian returned to Carthage, whither he had determined to return before Easter, only after it, and there gathered a council in which the cause of the lapsed was treated and the schismatics were proscribed from the Church.
[109] and time of the schism's rise. But Novatus meanwhile, having left Africa, came to Rome, and since at Carthage, with the brethren in the church pressing, the day of his trial was drawing near, here too he lay hid, as St. Pacian testifies above. In this hiding it seems he entered into partnership with Novatian and some others, and worked to have him raised to the Pontificate; namely, that under such a pontiff he might carry off his crimes with impunity. Then, when it had turned out otherwise, Cornelius being elected, and he was not unaware that he would have no less to fear at Rome than at Carthage so long as that Saint presided over the Church, he impelled Novatian to use his services for casting Cornelius down; and he so far succeeded by his arts that he drew even some of the confessors to his party, and thus attacked Cornelius in open schism, more probably in the month of June. Of their number, from Cyprian's letters and from Eusebius, book 6, chapter 43, of the History, are counted Maximus the presbyter, Nicostratus the deacon, Urbanus, Sidonius and Macharius; whom we learn to have been then already freed from prison from Cyprian's letter 51, in which he addresses four of them, returned to the Churches, in these words: After a schismatic and heretical error caught you as you came forth from prison, it was as if your glory had remained behind in the prison.
§ VI. Novatian's machinations against St. Cornelius: what was done at Carthage concerning this controversy: Novatian's sacrilegious ordination and pseudo-pontificate: his legates rejected at Carthage, and Cornelius's Pontificate there acknowledged.
Novatian, falsely accusing St. Cornelius, Novatian, hardened in the crime he had conceived by the accession of the confessors to his party, began to intercede against St. Cornelius's election, to accuse him with fabricated charges, and to expose him as unworthy of the Pontificate; and, that he might deceive more warily, he denied that he desired his Chair for himself, nay, even dared to affirm this with an oath interposed. Perhaps by this art he also deceived the confessors; for they too complained that they had suffered an imposture from him, and that by the loquacity of his perfidy
they had been seduced by captious talk, in letter 46 among Cyprian's; and some of them are said, in Cornelius's letter in Eusebius, to have returned to the Church when his lies and perjuries had become known. And first indeed we showed from St. Pacian in number 94 that he stirred up ill will against the holy Pontiff from the fact that the latter granted the lapsed a place of salutary penance and of peace in the Church, from whom that schismatic wished every hope cut off, and that therefore he kept boasting that Cornelius had communicated with the lapsed; and we said in number 95 that hence it came about that some sought the true cause of the schism from that source.
[111] Wherefore I cannot assent to Tillemont, who thinks in article 6 on St. Cornelius about communicating with the lapsed, that Novatian at the beginning of the schism put forward something else as a pretext for his ambition, because, he says, he had not sat long enough in the Roman Chair to have already laid down anything of greater moment in the cause of the lapsed. For I reply that it was not necessary either that he should lay down anything new, or that he should sit long, for the schismatics, who make it their custom to disfigure truths with lies, to snatch a handle for accusing him. For this the execution of those things sufficed which the Roman clergy had decreed in the interim while the See was vacant, and which may be read in letter 2 to the Carthaginian clergy, and in letter 31 to St. Cyprian, the last of which Novatus himself had written. Certainly, besides the other things which are in these clemently laid down about the lapsed, in the former it is said thus: If any who have fallen into this temptation begin to be seized with sickness, and do penance for their deed, and desire communion, they certainly ought to be helped.
[112] The same is decreed in the later letter about the sick, when there remains no hope of living according to man: he intercedes against his election. whence St. Pacian in letter 3 to Sympronian rightly says: If access to penance is to be denied, Novatian stands charged, who wrote, urged, and read these things. Further, if any of such sick persons recovered after receiving peace, they continued to enjoy the same. Perhaps this had already happened at Rome, and on that account the schismatics accused Cornelius of communicating with the lapsed. Certainly St. Cyprian in letter 52 to Antonianus teaches that they fabricated a charge against Cornelius and himself on this head. Take the words: Wherefore whatever things are bandied about, both about Cornelius and about us, neither hear easily nor believe… For if any are seized with sicknesses, help is given them in danger, as was agreed. Yet after help has been given, and peace has been granted to those in danger, they cannot be choked by us, or crushed, or forced by our violence and hand to the outcome of death, so that, because peace is given to the dying, it should be necessary that those die who have received peace; whereas rather in this the judgment of divine goodness and of fatherly leniency appears, that they who receive the pledge of life in the peace granted them should here too, having received peace, be kept for life. And therefore if, after peace has been received, a respite is given by God, no one ought to make this a charge against the priests, since it has once been agreed that help should be given to the brethren in danger. On account of these things therefore and the like Novatian could fabricate his accusations, although the holy Pontiff had as yet laid down nothing new about the lapsed.
[113] St. Cyprian, having received letters from both parties, Meanwhile Cornelius sent a letter to Cyprian about his own election to the Pontificate, which has now perished; but at almost the same time the schismatics also dispatched thither a letter full of abuse against the holy Pontiff, by which they interceded against his election. Cyprian was then at Carthage, where he was celebrating a council with the African bishops for treating the causes of the lapsed and for deciding the other matters which could not be arranged while the persecution raged. When the letters of both parties had been read, it was not difficult for Cyprian to judge on which of the two sides the equity of the cause stood: for as the letter of the Novatians was stitched together out of abuse and accusations, so Cornelius's letter, written in a religious style, breathed modesty and moderation of mind. And so, having scented what the matter was, he suppressed the schismatics' letter and ordered Cornelius's to be read out in the public session of the bishops and in the assembly of the people. So we learn from his letter 42, in which, rendering a reason why the Africans had somewhat deferred publicly acknowledging his Pontificate, he says this: Although our mind and purpose had already then been made manifest to the brethren and to the whole people there, when, having lately received letters from both parties, we read your letter and brought the ordination of your Episcopate to the ears of each one.
[114] suppresses the schismatic letter written in the confessors' name Mindful also of the common honor, and holding a regard for sacerdotal gravity and sanctity, we rejected those things which had been heaped up on the other side, in the book transmitted to us, with criminal bitterness — considering and weighing alike that, in so great a number of brethren and in a religious assembly, with the priests of God sitting together and the altar set up, they ought neither to be read nor heard. For those things are not easily to be brought forth, nor incautiously and rashly published, which, written in a quarrelsome style, stir up scandal in the hearers and confound with uncertain report the brethren placed far off and settled beyond the sea; let them see to it who, serving either their own fury or their own lust, and unmindful of the divine law and of sanctity, are eager meanwhile to bandy about what they cannot prove; and, since they are not strong enough to destroy and storm innocence, hold it enough to sprinkle stains upon it with lying fame and false rumor.
[115] written in the confessors' name. That Novatian's letter was written in the name of the confessors who adhered to him, though they themselves did not know what was said in it, we gather from Cornelius's letter 46 among Cyprian's, in which the following is read about these same men as they returned to the Church: When … an account was demanded of what they had done, at last, because letters full of calumnies and abuse had been frequently sent through all the churches, and had disturbed almost all the churches, they affirmed that they had been circumvented, and that they had not known what was contained in those letters. But what charges, besides the said calumny about communicating with the lapsed, were objected against Cornelius in the earlier letter to St. Cyprian, is not known: yet it is probable that he was exposed as a libellaticus, since St. Cyprian in letter 52 to Antonianus testifies that this crime was falsely fastened upon him.
[116] Cyprian, with the bishops of Africa, Further, although St. Cyprian did not doubt of Cornelius's lawful election, and had, as we have seen, sufficiently made this manifest to clergy and people, he yet judged it to be for the Church's advantage to hold it a little while in suspense, lest he should seem to certain persons to have hurried too much when the cause had not been sufficiently examined, and thus give the schismatics occasion for stirring up new tumults in Africa. To this end Caldonius and Fortunatus, bishops, were sent to Rome by him and by the bishops gathered in council, to take cognizance of the whole matter on the spot and to demand the testimonies of those who had been present at the election. The same men received at the same time instructions to labor with all their might to extinguish the schism. Besides, it was decreed that, matters being thus held in suspense until the legates should bring back more certain news, in the meantime letters should be written not to Cornelius but to the Roman clergy.
[117] That evasion could not but move Cornelius, holds Cornelius's election to whom the reason of such a counsel was hidden; especially since the people of Hadrumetum, who had already written a letter to him in the name of their absent bishop Polycarp, afterwards, on Cyprian's advice, dispatched it likewise to the Roman clergy; of which also the holy Pontiff complained in a letter sent to Cyprian by the presbyter Primitivus. But the said bishop of Carthage afterwards removed this anxiety from him in letters 41, 42 and 45. And in letter 42 indeed he says thus: What befitted the servants of God, and especially just and peaceable priests, we had lately done, dearest Brother, in sending our colleagues Caldonius and Fortunatus, that not only by the persuasion of our letter, but by their own presence and by the counsel of you all, they might strive as much as they could, and labor, to compose the members of the divided body into the unity of the Catholic Church, and to join them by the bond of Christian charity.
[118] And after much else: But in that we desired writings from our colleagues who had been present there at your ordination, it was not that, forgetful of the old custom, we were seeking something new; for it would have been enough that you should announce by letter that you had been made Bishop, were there not on the other side a dissenting faction, which by its criminal and calumnious inventions was disturbing the minds of colleagues and likewise of very many brethren, and confounding their hearts. For lulling this to rest we deemed it necessary that the firm and solid authority of our colleagues writing to us from there should be procured. But about the people of Hadrumetum he has this in letter 45 to Cornelius: I have read your letter, dearest brother, which you sent by our fellow-presbyter Primitivus, in which I have found you moved because, when letters were being directed to you from the colony of Hadrumetum in Polycarp's name, after we, I and Liberalis, had come to that same place, letters began to be directed there to the presbyters and deacons: of which we wish you to know, and to believe for certain, that it was done through no lightness or contumely.
[119] But when very many of us colleagues who had come together in one place had determined that, after our fellow-bishops Caldonius and Fortunatus had been sent as legates to you, all things should meanwhile be held entire and in suspense, until those same colleagues of ours should return to us, matters there being either reduced to peace or ascertained according to the truth; in suspense, until the legates the presbyters and deacons dwelling at Hadrumetum, our fellow-bishop Polycarp being absent, did not know what had been agreed among us in common. But when we came in person, our counsel having become known, they too began to observe what the rest also observed, so that in nothing should the agreement of the churches dwelling there disagree. Thus Cyprian, setting forth the reason of his counsel, which indeed he adds turned out happily for the Church, as we too shall show below.
[120] Up to this point Novatian, attacking St. Cornelius and his clergy only with calumnies, Novatian, sacrilegiously ordained, had warily concealed his ambition, that he might deceive the more; and, relying on the authority of the confessors whom he had seduced, had boasted himself the vindicator of Evangelical discipline, publicly protesting that he by no means desired the Pontificate. But not long afterwards he laid aside that mask, and made plain to the world what he had long been turning over in his mind. For having received from the aforesaid confessors letters by which the Pontificate was conferred upon him, and having been ordained a pseudo-bishop by a sacrilegious and extorted imposition of hands, he did not blush now openly to claim it for himself. That he used the confessors' letters for that crime, St. Pacian expressly testifies above; but also from among their number Maximus, Urbanus, Sidonius and Macharius, when they afterwards returned to the Church, affirmed … that, having been led astray, they too had committed schismatic acts, and had been the authors to the heretics of their suffering hands to be laid upon him as though for an episcopate. But by what arts he took care to have himself consecrated bishop, hear. A certain marvelous conversion in him, says St. Cornelius in the letter to Fabius of Antioch, dearest brother, and a change wrought in a brief point of time, we have beheld: for that excellent man, who had affirmed with certain dread oaths that he did not covet the episcopate, suddenly, as though flung into the midst by some stage-machine, appeared a bishop.
[121] made a bishop by 3, he claims the Pontificate for himself. And he who gave himself out as a teacher and a champion of ecclesiastical discipline, when he was trying to snatch and claim for himself an Episcopate by no means granted him by God, joined to himself as associates two men of desperate salvation, that he might send them into a scanty and most worthless part of Italy, and there, by a certain fraudulent contrivance, deceive three bishops summoned thence, men altogether rude and simple; affirming most steadfastly that they must set out for Rome as soon as possible, so that every discord that had arisen anywhere might be settled by their intervention and arbitration together with other bishops. And when they had arrived — men, as we have already said, of a simpler wit, and not sufficiently practiced in these arts and deceits of abandoned men — he had them shut in at the tenth hour by certain men most like himself whom he had procured for the purpose, and, drunken and overcome with surfeit, compels them by force to hand over the episcopate to him with a certain shadowy and empty imposition of hands; and by fraud and treachery he claims what belonged to him by no right.
[122] Theodoret's narrative corrected. Thus St. Cornelius: wherefore Theodoret must be said to have wandered from the truth when in book 3 On the fables of the Heretics, in the treatment of Novatian, whom he wrongly called Novatus or Navatus, he wrote thus: But this Novatus, when he had persuaded very few, and such as could easily be counted, to be associates of his heresy, went off into Italy, and, deceiving three bishops of little towns, brought them along as though they were to intercede for him with the Roman Bishop. But when he had come with them into a certain village, he compelled them to ordain him bishop by the imposition of hands. He must, I say, be said to have wandered from the truth; for the bishops whom St. Cornelius says were deceived by Novatian's two envoys and summoned as arbiters, as it were, of the discord, Theodoret writes were brought by Novatian himself, when he had set out into Italy, that is, into a certain part of Italy, as his own intercessors with the Pontiff. From Cornelius's words it also appears that Novatian was ordained at Rome rather than in a certain village; yet these words are not so clear but that they can easily be composed with Theodoret's statements.
[123] What became of Novatian's ordainers: Now the holy Pontiff without doubt learned the whole matter, as it had been done, from one of those three who had initiated Novatian, and about whom he goes on thus in the same letter: And not long after, one of those bishops returned to the Church, confessing his offense with lamentations and tears: whom we, when the whole people had interceded for him, received to lay communion. For the two remaining bishops also we ordained successors, and directed them to their places. Hence observe in passing that Theodoret erred again, when in the passage cited he added of all three: And they indeed, when they had come to Rome, complained that this violence had been done them, and made known what had been done. But who these bishops were is uncertain: for the fact that in the Acts which are entitled The Contest of Navatus the bishop — on the testimony of St. Eulogius of Alexandria, book 6 against the Novatians, in Photius, Bibliotheca, chapter 280 — they are said to have been Marcellus and Alexander of Aquileia, and Agamemnon of Tiberis, or of Tibur, deserves no credit; since those Acts, like Novatian's martyrdom, are fictitious, nor is it probable that at that time two bishops sat at Aquileia together.
[124] Henri de Valois in his Annotations on Eusebius's History, book 6, of these Trophimus and Evaristus do not seem to have been. chapter 43, judges that one of them, whom we have said returned to the Church, was Trophimus, and the other Evaristus. The first he gathers from St. Cyprian's letter 52, in which Trophimus a bishop is said to have been admitted likewise to lay communion by the same holy Pontiff: but, as Tillemont has rightly noted in Note 6 on St. Cornelius, this Trophimus's crime does not seem to have been Novatian's ordination, but idolatry; since bishops who sacrificed are treated of in that place. Then, if it were so, would not the Novatians have been about to glory over Trophimus's reception rather than to accuse Cornelius, as it is established from the same letter that they did? For Evaristus the probability stands a little greater: for St. Cornelius in letter 48 calls him the author of the schism; which can be understood of the ordained standard-bearer of the schism. Yet since the said bishops are charged by Cornelius with no other crime, but are only called men of a simpler wit, and not sufficiently practiced in these arts and deceits of abandoned men; whereas of Evaristus the same Saint writes in letter 48: But here (at Rome) he has contrived greater things by his malice and insatiable depravity than those which he always practiced there among his own — he does not seem to have been of their number either.
[125] To return to Novatian: he tried to confirm the Pontificate to himself by a crime no less than that by which he had invaded it. Novatian binds his followers to himself by a sacrilege: Hear St. Cornelius writing again in Eusebius: When the oblation had been made, distributing a portion to each, while he hands it over he compels the wretched men, in place of a blessing, to swear, holding the hand of him who received the portion grasped in both his own hands, and not letting go before they had said upon oath — for I shall use his very words: "Swear to me by the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you will never desert my party, and will not return to Cornelius." Thus that wretched man is not allowed to taste before he has called down evil upon himself. And when, receiving that Bread, he ought to have said "Amen," in its place he says: "I will not hereafter return to Cornelius." So he: whether, however, he bound his followers by this sacrilege from the very beginning of his pseudo-episcopate is uncertain: for Tillemont's conjecture is not improbable, who thinks that he first began to do this when very many were already deserting his party.
[126] Having in this manner seized the pseudo-episcopate, he sent his legates in every direction, he sends letters and legates in every direction: to announce it; and, if we believe Socrates in book 4, chapter 28, elsewhere 23, at the same time to proclaim that they should by no means admit to the mysteries those who had sacrificed to images, but should exhort them to penance and leave the remission to God. Yet, lest he should seem to have shamefully invaded the Apostolic Chair, the old fox pretended that he had been raised to it against his will, as we shall see from St. Dionysius of Alexandria's letter, praised by Eusebius in book 6 of the History, chapter 45. He labored chiefly, however, to join the African church to himself, sending thither four legates, who did not cease to assail St. Cornelius with feigned accusations. But in what manner they were received by St. Cyprian, who from the beginning, as we have said, had had St. Cornelius's cause clearly seen, and who was expecting nothing of the sort, the holy bishop himself sets forth in letter 41, sent on this matter to Cornelius.
[127] who, having been rejected at Carthage There came to us, he says, dearest brother, sent by Novatian, Maximus the presbyter, and Augendus the deacon, and a certain Machaeus and Longinus: but when from the letters which they were carrying with them, and from their speech and asseveration, we had discovered that Novatian had been made a bishop, moved by the depravity of an ordination unlawful and made against the Catholic Church, we judged that they must at once be restrained from our communion; the things which they were obstinately and pertinaciously attempting to assert being meanwhile refuted and beaten back. The African bishops were indignant, namely, that the schismatics, whom they had hoped to recall to concord, had not only not consented to their counsels, but had even dared to set up a sacrilegious head for themselves; and therefore, although Caldonius and Fortunatus had not yet returned from Rome, they nevertheless judged that Novatian's legates must be barred from their fellowship, the things which they wickedly urged being meanwhile refuted, until the said bishops should bring more certain news, by which, their audacity being wholly crushed, Cornelius's Pontificate should be publicly approved.
[128] and convicted of schism and heresy, Presently Caldonius and Fortunatus, and also Pompeius and Stephen, likewise bishops of the African church, arrived from the City, and by their testimonies and by the letters they brought Novatian's cause was so overthrown that the African bishops would not so much as hear his legates any further. And that these things were so, St. Cyprian teaches in the praised letter, adding to the words recounted the following: For both I and very many colleagues who had come together to me awaited the arrival of our colleagues Caldonius and Fortunatus, whom we had lately sent as legates to you and to our fellow-bishops who were present at your ordination; that, when they came and brought back the truth of what had been done, the wickedness of the adverse party might be broken by their greater authority and clear proof. But our colleagues Pompeius and Stephen came in besides, who also themselves brought forward, for our instruction from that quarter, manifest indications and testimonies according to their gravity and good faith; so that it was not even necessary to hear any longer those who had come sent by Novatian.
[129] St. Cornelius's Pontificate is there acknowledged. And when in the assembly they broke out into hateful revilings also and turbulent clamors, and demanded that the charges which they said they were bringing and proving should be publicly examined by us and by the people; we denied that it befitted our gravity that we should suffer the reputation of our Colleague, already chosen and ordained, and approved by the praiseworthy judgment of many, to be further tossed about by an evil-speaking mouth and by the voice of the envious. And because it would be long to heap into a letter the arguments by which they were refuted and crushed, and by which they were laid bare as having made a heresy by unlawful attempts, you will hear each thing most fully from our fellow-presbyter Primitivus, when he comes to you. Thus St. Cyprian; and he repeats like things in letter 42. But what the Novatians attempted in Africa after this, we shall say in paragraph 8.
§ VII. The time of the pseudo-episcopate entered upon by Novatian.
That Novatian claimed the Pontificate for himself, Concerning the time at which Novatian was initiated into the pseudo-episcopate, and legates were sent to Africa on this matter, more recent writers somewhat disagree; among whom Tillemont in article 9 thinks that this was not done until after St. Cornelius had already been publicly acknowledged as lawful Pontiff by the African bishops, or even by the whole Church; and he tries in Note 7 to defend that opinion of his by various reasons. But whoever shall have maturely weighed letter 41, which we recited in number 127 and following, does not seem able prudently to doubt that Novatian's legates carried his ordination to Carthage before St. Cornelius's election was approved in Africa, and publicly acknowledged as lawful, by the letters brought from Rome by Caldonius and Fortunatus, and by the testimony of Pompeius and Stephen. For what else does St. Cyprian say in that place, than that Novatian's legates, as soon as they had announced his ordination, were first restrained from communion with him and with his colleagues, the things which they were obstinately and pertinaciously attempting to assert being meanwhile refuted and beaten back, until Caldonius and Fortunatus, returned from Rome, should report more certain news; and that when at last these had arrived, and Pompeius and Stephen had come in besides, it was necessary not only no longer to refute them, but not even to hear them any further?
[131] The same we have again from the letter of the same
holy bishop, letter 42, before Cornelius had been publicly acknowledged as Pontiff in which, rendering St. Cornelius an account of the whole affair, and acknowledging his Pontificate, he speaks thus: What befitted the servants of God, and especially just and peaceable priests, dearest brother, we had lately done, in sending our colleagues Caldonius and Fortunatus, that not only by the persuasion of our letter, but by their own presence and by the counsel of you all, they might strive as much as they could, and labor, to compose the members of the divided body into the unity of the Catholic Church, and to join them by the bond of Christian charity. But since the obstinate and inflexible pertinacity of the other party not only refused the bosom and embrace of the root and mother, but also, as the discord swelled and broke out afresh for the worse, set up a bishop for itself, and against the sacrament of divine disposition and Catholic unity once delivered, made an adulterous and opposing head outside the Church; having received letters both from you and from our colleagues, and likewise upon the coming of those good men, our colleagues most dear to us, Pompeius and Stephen, by whom all these things were firmly asserted and proved with common joy, we have directed our letter to you, according as the sanctity and likewise the truth of divine tradition and ecclesiastical institution demanded. But bringing these same things also to the knowledge of each of our colleagues throughout our province, we have charged that brethren be directed from them too with letters.
[132] Here you have, learned reader, the sequence of the whole affair conducted in this part by St. Cyprian, in Africa, from which you may easily perceive that Novatian's ordination did not fall so late as Tillemont supposed. Certainly he himself confesses that this ought to have been gathered from both letters, unless weightier reasons, which we shall presently examine, persuaded the contrary. Yet lest he should seem to have made no answer at all to the difficulty objected, he says that it easily happens that in letters the order of events, when that is not the point at issue, is less accurately preserved. But in letter 42 he thinks St. Cyprian wished to set forth why Novatian's legates were promptly repelled, even unheard, and that therefore it is to be taken in this sense: The things which Maximus, Augendus, etc., wished to prove against Cornelius we refuted more effectively than those which the first legates of Novatian had brought forward; because we had learned the truth of all matters from Caldonius and Fortunatus, and besides also from Pompeius and Stephen: so that, as soon as we knew that Maximus, Augendus, etc., wished to accuse Cornelius, it was not necessary to hear them any further in order that they might be driven off.
[133] is proved against Tillemont, I reply that, although it is not altogether unusual for the order of events not to be observed in letters of this kind, yet there is no reason why we should believe it was not observed in these, as will appear from our replies to Tillemont's arguments. Then, it is not probable that the order was disturbed in both letters: for in both he renders an account of the things he had done, to which that order certainly pertained. Secondly, since in the earlier letter he says that the calumnies of those same legates were meanwhile refuted and beaten back, to what would you refer that meanwhile, if not to what he adds: For both I and very many colleagues … awaited the arrival … of Caldonius and Fortunatus …, that, when they came and brought back the truth of what had been done, the wickedness of the adverse party might be broken by their greater authority and clear proof, etc. Thirdly and finally, in letter 42, after narrating the legates' arrival, after commemorating the receipt of letters from Cornelius and from those who had been present at his election, and the testimonies received from Pompeius and Stephen, he then first mentions the letter written to the same Saint, by which he signifies that his Pontificate — which nevertheless he had already acknowledged from the beginning — was approved in Africa. Add that in none of Cyprian's letters does there exist any trace of Cornelius's Pontificate being publicly received among the Africans before mention had been made of Novatian's ordination.
[134] and a reply is made to his arguments From what has been said, Tillemont's interpretation also collapses, by which he vainly tried to twist letter 42 to his own sense: it remains, therefore, that we see whether the weight of the reasons on which he relies is such as to destroy the arguments we have produced. His chief reason is that St. Cyprian in letter 52 writes thus against Novatian: Which (place of St. Peter, by Cornelius) being occupied by the will of God, and confirmed by the consent of us all, whoever shall now wish to be made a bishop, must needs be made outside; nor does he have ecclesiastical ordination who does not hold the unity of the Church. By these words Cyprian seems to Tillemont clearly to say that Novatian was not ordained until after St. Cornelius's Pontificate had been acknowledged and approved by all the bishops, or at least by the whole of Africa. But to this the anonymous Benedictine author of the Life of Cyprian, praised elsewhere, has already rightly replied in §21, that this Saint is speaking of the state of affairs as it then was, namely when the whole world had already consented to Cornelius's election, and that therefore that consent is deservedly objected by Cyprian to Novatian, who even then did not blush to claim the Pontificate for himself.
[135] various things That the truth of the reply may appear more clearly, it must be elucidated in a few words. Antonianus, a bishop of Africa, had, with Cyprian and the other bishops of that church, by the common consent of all, rejected Novatian and acknowledged Cornelius's Pontificate, and had transmitted to Cyprian a letter on this matter to be dispatched to Cornelius. But afterwards, moved by Novatian's letters, he proposed by letter certain questions to Cyprian, and among these one about the heresy and person of that same Novatian; whence the latter perceived that he had begun somewhat to waver. Replying to these, St. Cyprian proves at length that no room remains for any longer doubting about Cornelius's Pontificate, in which the whole Church had already consented, and that therefore neither can there be any doubt about the pseudo-episcopate of Novatian, who even then boasted himself Pontiff, and who had shamefully snatched it after the election of that same Cornelius, of whose equity it was already established from that same consent of the Church.
[136] That Cyprian means nothing else is clear from what follows. from various For when in the same letter he treats of Novatian's ordination, without making any mention of the said consent, he only charges that, when Cornelius had already been created Pontiff by sixteen bishops, he invaded the Pontificate. But as regards, he says, the person of Novatian, … whoever he is, and of whatever sort he is, he is not a Christian who is not in the Church of Christ… Unless perhaps he seems to you a bishop who, when a Bishop had been made in the Church by sixteen fellow-bishops, strives, as an adulterer and a stranger, to be made bishop by deserters through canvassing. Add that the same holy bishop objected to Novatian's legates not that common consent of the Church, but the testimonies of the bishops who had ordained Cornelius, brought by Caldonius and Fortunatus, and also the testification of Pompeius and Stephen; whereas he could have put forward nothing stronger than that common consent for crushing the schismatics' attempts.
[137] Tillemont draws a second argument from letter 41, of St. Cyprian's in which St. Cyprian writes, in the words reported in number 127, that Novatian's ordination, as soon as it was heard of in Africa, was rejected as unlawful and made against the Church, and that his legates were promptly restrained from his communion. For Tillemont does not believe that they would have had to be dealt with in this way unless Cornelius's Pontificate had already then been received there. But why should not St. Cyprian have acted so, who, being by no means doubtful about St. Cornelius's right, and having sent Caldonius and Fortunatus to Rome for no other cause than to compose those who were interceding against his election and dissenting, or at least to bring back firmer arguments for beating them back more forcibly in Africa, now saw that they had not only refused to return into the bosom of the Church, but also, as the discord swelled and broke out afresh for the worse, had set up a bishop for themselves, and had made an adulterous and opposing head outside the Church, as he deservedly complains in letter 42, from which we reported much in number 131? Why, I say, should not Cyprian and the bishops who thought with him, moved by the depravity of an ordination which they were not ignorant was unlawful and made against the Catholic Church, have judged that they must be restrained from their communion, the things which they were obstinately and pertinaciously attempting to assert being meanwhile refuted and beaten back, until, when Caldonius and Fortunatus had returned from Rome, they might put the final hand to so great a matter, and declare that Cornelius's Pontificate was to be acknowledged throughout all Africa; as was done not long afterwards?
[138] Besides, Tillemont objects St. Cyprian's letter 67, letters from which he says it seems to him that Novatian had already been declared an enemy of the Church when he sent his legates into Africa, that he might be admitted into their communion as Roman Bishop; or at least that from it it is most clearly proved that St. Cornelius was then held there for lawful Pontiff. This letter was written to Pope Stephen, St. Cornelius's successor after Lucius, and in it Cyprian asked that he would take care that Marcian, bishop of Arles, who followed Novatian's heresy, should be deposed, and another substituted in his place.
[139] alleged. Now the words by which Tillemont thinks his opinion is asserted are the following: You ought to write a most full letter to our fellow-bishops settled in the Gauls, that they suffer not the stubborn and proud Marcian … to insult our college any longer, because he seems not yet to have been excluded by us; who has long since boasted and proclaimed that, being a partisan of Novatian, … he has separated himself from our communion; whereas Novatian himself, whom he follows, was long ago excluded and judged an enemy of the Church, and, when he had sent legates to us into Africa, desiring to be admitted to our communion, he carried back hence from a council of very many priests, who were present, the sentence that he had begun to be outside, and could be communicated with by none of us — he who, when Bishop Cornelius had been ordained in the Catholic Church by the judgment of God and the vote of clergy and people, attempted to raise a profane altar, and to set up an adulterous chair, and to offer sacrilegious sacrifices against the true Priest.
[140] a reply is made; Who can hammer Tillemont's assertion out of this? St. Cyprian writes that Marcian of Arles must be held as excluded, since he himself proves that he is separated from the Church by following Novatian, who was long ago excluded and judged an enemy of the Church, and whom the bishops of Africa, having rejected his pseudo-episcopate, barred from their communion. Was it necessary, in order that these things be true, that Novatian should have been declared an enemy of the Church, or that Cornelius's episcopate should have been publicly approved in Africa, before the aforesaid legates arrived there? St. Cyprian's discourse certainly does not require it. But, you will say, he is said to have been excluded and judged an enemy of the Church before he sent legates. Be it so; but St. Cyprian does not say that this was first done in Africa. It could therefore be, as is altogether probable, that when his ordination was known at Rome, he was judged an enemy of the Church by St. Cornelius and the other bishops who were present, and by the Roman clergy, before the legates arrived in Africa, and that for the reasons alleged above he was repelled by the Africans; unless perhaps someone would have it that the power of pronouncing a sentence of this kind lay with these rather than with the Romans.
[141] and it is shown Finally, when this sentence had been brought by Caldonius and Fortunatus and confirmed by the testimonies of Pompeius and Stephen, Cyprian was able to deliver a final answer to the legates whom he had meanwhile confuted and restrained from his communion, and to proscribe them together with Novatian by a decisive censure. In this way the objected sayings of St. Cyprian are excellently understood, and are rightly reconciled with letters 41 and 42 of the same Saint, with which otherwise they must be brought into collision. Much less still does Tillemont get for himself from letter 52, which he praises in the last place on his own behalf, because in it Antonianus is said to have already, on Cyprian's advice, admitted St. Cornelius's communion, before, moved by Novatian's letters, he began to waver. Much less still, I say, does he get for himself from this: for since Antonianus is there said to have signified to Cyprian in that same letter that he did not communicate with Novatian, … and that he held one accord … with Cornelius, and to have asked that he would transmit a copy of that same letter to Cornelius …, that, laying aside all anxiety, he might now know that he communicated with him, that is, with the Catholic Church — it cannot be concluded from this that St. Cornelius's Pontificate was received in Africa before Novatian's ordination.
[142] Nay rather, it favors our opinion, which has laid down that both the condemnation of that ordination there and the public acknowledgment of him took place at the same time, when the legates of Africa who had been sent to Rome returned. that those letters favor our opinion. But that Antonianus received the Novatians' letters later is no wonder; for they, being rejected by St. Cyprian and by his colleagues who had assembled, running about from door to door through the houses of many, or from town to town through certain cities, as is said in letter 41, could reach him later. But we shall see also that other legates were afterwards sent by Novatian into Africa; and nothing prevents St. Cyprian from speaking of letters brought by these latter, as the Benedictine, already often praised, has rightly observed.
§ VIII. St. Cornelius's Pontificate published throughout Africa: the Novatians' machinations and a new legation: the most salutary return of certain confessors from the schism to the Church.
St. Cyprian and the African bishops St. Cornelius's Pontificate having been acknowledged in Africa in the manner we have said, St. Cyprian sent to him the letter which in our edition is the forty-first, and dispatched the presbyter Primitivus, who should instruct him fully about the whole matter, as it had been done, more amply than could conveniently be done by a letter. Of the same subject is letter 42, in which, rendering the reason of his whole counsel, he shows that he had never doubted of his Pontificate, and had deferred its promulgation, by the common judgment of the bishops, for no other cause than that, being more fully informed of everything by the letters of the bishops who had been present at his ordination, he might more forcibly crush the calumniators, and forestall every danger of schism; as has been shown above in the same Saint's words. But how happily that counsel turned out for him, he adds in the same place: Who (the bishops living at Rome), proclaiming in their letters testimonies worthy of your character and life and discipline, have removed from the envious also, and from those who rejoice either in novelty or in depravity of affairs, every scruple of doubting and disagreeing, and, in accordance with our counsel weighed with salutary reasoning, have sincerely and firmly approved your priesthood to the minds of the brethren tossing in this surge.
[144] Concerning the letters also sent on this matter to his fellow-bishops he had premised in the same letter: take care that St. Cornelius's Pontificate According as the sanctity and likewise the truth of divine tradition and ecclesiastical institution demanded, we have directed our letter to you: but bringing these same things also to the knowledge of each of our colleagues throughout our province, we have charged that brethren be directed from them too with letters. It will be worth while also to have reported here a part of letter 45, in which, excusing himself for having once advised the people of Hadrumetum to direct their letters not to Cornelius but to the Roman clergy, he says this: Certain persons, however, sometimes disturb minds and hearts by their talk, when they report some things otherwise than the truth stands. For we, rendering an account to each of those sailing, that they might not sail with any scandal, know that we have exhorted them to acknowledge and hold the root and mother of the Catholic Church.
[145] be published. But since our province is more widely spread — for it has Numidia and Mauretania adjoining it — lest the schism made in the City should confound the minds of the absent with uncertain report, it pleased us that, through the bishops, the truth of the matter being ascertained by us and a greater authority being made for approving your ordination, then at last, every scruple having been shaken out of the breasts of individuals, letters should be made to absolutely all placed in that province, as they are being made, so that all our colleagues might firmly approve and hold both you and your communion, that is, the unity and likewise the charity of the Catholic Church. Which we rejoice to have come about divinely, and that our counsel has proceeded providently. For thus now both the truth and the dignity of your episcopate has been founded in the clearest light and with the most manifest and firmest proof, so that from the replies of our colleagues, who have written to us from thence, and from the report and testimonies of our fellow-bishops Pompeius and Stephen, and of Caldonius and Fortunatus, both the necessary origin of your ordination, and its just reason, and also your glorious innocence, might be known to all.
[146] SS. Dionysius of Alexandria Further, it does not seem doubtful that the remaining bishops of Africa also, after St. Cyprian's example, dispatched their letters on the same subject to the holy Pontiff. Certainly Cyprian in letter 42 mentions letters sent to Cornelius by his colleagues about the case of Felicissimus and his followers, in which they acknowledged his Pontificate, if they had not already done so before. Of Antonianus, a bishop of an uncertain see in Africa, this is likewise manifest from St. Cyprian's letter 52; although he, afterwards moved by the Novatians' letters, began to waver between Cornelius and Novatian. Holy Dionysius too, bishop of Alexandria in the Eastern church, rejected Novatian and defended Cornelius's party. There exists a letter of his to Novatian, brief but forceful, in Eusebius, book 6 of the History, chapter 45, in which he answers the old fox that, if he was truly raised to the episcopate unwillingly and under compulsion, as he pretended, he should show it by voluntarily laying it down and returning to the Church together with his followers; or, if he cannot persuade others to this, that at least he himself should do it.
[147] and Cyprian write on his behalf. With like zeal he admonished the Romans about peace and penance, and likewise the confessors attached to Novatian, on the testimony of the praised Eusebius, chapter 46, where one reads: He writes likewise a second letter to the same (Romans) about peace and equally about penance: again another to the confessors settled there, who even then favored the opinion of Novatus (read: Novatian): he sent also two other letters to these same men, after they had returned to the Church. The same St. Cyprian likewise did, having sent to Cornelius the subdeacon Mettius with a twin letter, one addressed to the Saint himself, the other to Maximus and Nicostratus and the other confessors, with this purpose, that Mettius should first show them to the holy Pontiff to be read, and at his discretion either deliver them to the confessors or suppress them. But what fruit these letters bore we shall see below, after we have set forth the remaining efforts of the Novatians, which preceded the return of several confessors into the Church. Novatian's legates roam through Africa;
[148] Concerning Novatian's legates, namely Maximus the presbyter, Augendus the deacon, Machaeus and Longinus, whom we have said were sent by him into Africa and were there rejected by the bishops, St. Cyprian writes this in letter 41: Lest their raging audacity should ever cease, here too they strive to tear the members of Christ into the parts of a schism, and to cut and mangle the body of the Catholic Church, so that, running about from door to door through the houses of many, or from town to town through certain cities, they may seek for themselves companions of their obstinacy and of their error. To whom we have once given an answer, and we do not cease to charge that, laying aside their pernicious dissension and contention, they should know it to be impiety to desert their mother, and should acknowledge and understand that, when a Bishop has once been made and approved by the testimony and judgment of colleagues and people, another can in no way be appointed; and accordingly, if they take peaceable and faithful counsel for themselves, if they confess that they are champions of the Gospel of Christ, let them first return to the Church.
[149] Meanwhile Novatian, having heard the sentence of the African bishops, Novatian sends other legates fitted out another legation at Novatus's instigation, and dispatched into Africa Nicostratus, Novatus, Evaristus, Primus and Dionysius, to repair the defeat received there. Nor were their designs hidden from St. Cornelius; who promptly informed Cyprian of everything through the confessor Augendus, in a letter which no longer survives. There survives, however, another, the forty-eighth among Cyprian's, of the same subject, and sent to the same bishop of Carthage, which it will be worth while to have recited here. Lest anything should be lacking, says the holy Pontiff, to the future punishment of this wicked man (Novatian), laid low by the powers of God, when Maximus and Longinus and Machaeus had been driven out from thence (from Africa), he has risen up again, and, as I signified to you in an earlier letter, which I sent by the confessor Augendus, I think that Nicostratus and Novatus and Evaristus and Primus and Dionysius have already arrived there.
[150] Let watch therefore be kept, that it may become known to all our fellow-bishops and brethren, thither, that Nicostratus, guilty of many crimes, has not only committed frauds and robberies against his own patroness in the flesh, whose accounts he managed; but also, what is reserved for him to perpetual punishment, has carried off no small deposits of the Church; and that Evaristus was the author of the schism; and that Zetus has been appointed bishop in his place, as successor to the people over whom he had formerly presided. This Nicostratus is that very deacon whom we have shown from the most ancient Catalogue of the Roman Pontiffs, often praised, to have been cast into prison after St. Fabian's martyrdom, together with the holy martyr Moses and Maximus the presbyter, for the cause of the Christian faith, and, having come out thence, to have fallen into the schism, from St. Cyprian's letter 51. Tillemont, in article 12 on St. Cornelius, not idly suspects that he was archdeacon, both from the words just recounted, in which it is intimated that the treasures of the Roman Church had been entrusted to his care, and at the same time from other letters of Cyprian, in which he is named in the first place after Moses and Maximus, presbyters.
[151] The author of the Catalogue just praised writes that he was appointed bishop in Africa by Novatus's agency. one of whom, Nicostratus, he had made a bishop; For he says thus in the treatment of St. Cornelius: Under his Episcopate Novatus ordained Novatian outside the Church in the city of Rome, and Nicostratus in Africa. Now it seems that Novatian chose Nicostratus before the rest, to send into Africa as a bishop and as head of the whole legation, because he, not only by the glory of his confession and of his long imprisonment, but also by the dignity of the office he had held, was, for repairing the losses
there, more suitable than the rest; especially since the consciousness of his crimes and despair, and accordingly a kind of necessity, urged him to perform this energetically. Hence St. Cyprian in letter 49, replying to Cornelius, so interpreted his letter as to hold that Nicostratus, having lost the diaconate of a holy administration, having withdrawn the church's moneys by sacrilegious fraud, and having denied the deposits of widows and orphans, did not so much wish to come into Africa, as flee thither from the City through consciousness of his robberies and abominable crimes. But about the empty title of confessor in which he gloried he adds this: And now, a deserter and fugitive from the Church, as though to change one's region were to change the man, he further boasts and proclaims himself a confessor, whereas he can now neither be called nor be a confessor of Christ who has denied the Church of Christ.
[152] Who were the other legates? About Novatus, the second associate of the legation, we have noted enough, and more will have to be said in the Acts of St. Cyprian. That Evaristus was a bishop of a see unknown to us, we learn from St. Cyprian's letter 49; and St. Pacian in letter 3 against the Novatians' Tract likewise recounts him among their leading men, saying: I know not what Novatian did, what Novatus committed, at what Evaristus swelled, what Nicostratus announced. And again: What? are they all saints with you, whom Novatus trained, whom Evaristus chose, whom Nicostratus taught, whom Novatian instituted? About Primus and Dionysius I have found absolutely nothing; yet that they were among Novatian's chief supporters St. Cornelius affirms in letter 48, when he adds at the end: That you may know what sort of leaders and protectors that schismatic and heretic always has joined to his side. We should perhaps have more about them, had not the letter perished by which St. Cornelius first signified that legation to Cyprian through Augendus. But let us now resume the thread of the history.
[153] Certain confessors, St. Cornelius had already written letter 48, recited in numbers 149 and following, to be carried to Cyprian by the acolyte Nicephorus, when the long-desired return into the Church of certain confessors who adhered to Novatian gave occasion for writing another to the same holy bishop. Namely, Maximus the presbyter, Urbanus, Sidonius and Macharius, Novatian's fraud being at last detected, and bewailing that they had been deceived by it, and being turned to sounder counsels, begged pardon for the past and were received into favor. Whether some others of the people also are to be numbered with these four may be doubtful from Cornelius's letter 46, to be recited presently, in which among other things he says: There came into the presbytery Maximus, Urbanus, Sidonius, and Macharius, and very many brethren who had joined themselves to them, desiring with the highest entreaties that the things which had been done before should fall into oblivion.
[154] who had adhered to Novatian, It may be doubted, I say, whether those very many brethren are said to have joined themselves to their schism, or only to their supplication. And to the former interpretation indeed favor the words subjoined a little after: As was consequent, this whole act had to be brought home to the people, that they might see those very men established in the Church … Their will being known, a great concourse of the brotherhood took place. For to what end was the people to be summoned, if very many brethren were already with them? Yet to me the contrary appears more probable from letters 47, 50 and 51 among Cyprian's, of which in the first Cyprian congratulates Cornelius, in the last the confessors themselves, on their return to the Church, while in the middle one those same confessors signify their return to Cyprian; yet in all of them only the aforesaid four are read of, and no mention is made of others. Wherefore it seems it must be said that very many is taken for some or many; but whose number was not enough for them to be said to have been received into favor publicly before the people, so as to remove the danger of scandal, and for this to become known to the whole people.
[155] That this most longed-for event is to be placed after the departure of Novatus and the other three from the City toward Africa, having returned to the Church, are clemently received by St. Cornelius: we learn from St. Cyprian's letter 49, written in reply to Cornelius's on that matter, in which, comparing Novatus, the enemy of the public tranquillity, who had thrown everything into confusion no less at Rome than at Carthage, to a whirlwind and a storm, he says at last: Finally, when Novatus withdrew from you thence, that is, when the tempest and whirlwind withdrew, quiet was in part made there, and the glorious and good confessors, who had departed from the Church at his instigation, returned to the Church after he departed from the City. Nor, however, can it be settled that it was long afterwards: for St. Cyprian in the same letter writes that he learned both of the Novatians' departure from the City and of the confessors' reconciliation through the acolyte Nicephorus, whom the holy Pontiff had sent to him with letters, on the day after those schismatics had arrived at Carthage.
[156] With these things St. Cornelius has consonant statements in letter 46, they are clemently received: namely that he wrote it at the same hour, at the same moment at which the reconciliation had been accomplished, and delivered it to the acolyte Nicephorus, who was on the very point of departing, so that he might the more quickly make Cyprian a sharer in his joy. Thus therefore the matter stood: Cornelius first wrote the letter which in the edition we use is the forty-eighth, about the departure of Nicostratus and the rest, to be carried to Cyprian by Nicephorus. Meanwhile, while he was awaiting an opportunity for sailing, the said confessors returned to the Church; and presently Cornelius added to the former letter a second, which in the same edition is the forty-sixth, the herald of so joyful an event, and dispatched it to Cyprian by the said Nicephorus, who was then about to sail for Africa. Further, between the legates' departure and Nicephorus's a few days seem to have intervened; wherefore it must be said that he had a more fortunate voyage than they, so that he could arrive there on the day after they had come to Carthage.
[157] But as there is no doubt that the aforesaid things happened a little after the departure of Novatian's legates, this seems to have happened before the Roman council. so I cannot assent to Tillemont and Pearson that the same are to be placed after the Roman council, of which we shall treat below. For we shall see that it was decreed in the Roman council that Novatus (that is, Novatian) and those who together with him had raised themselves too insolently, and whoever had presumed to consent to his most inhuman opinion, alien from brotherly charity, were to be held estranged from the Church: by which words Novatian with his followers is manifestly asserted to have been cut off from the body of the Church; and accordingly the confessors also were condemned by the same sentence, if they returned to the Church only after the said council. But that this is by no means probable, the anonymous Benedictine writer of the Life of St. Cyprian has rightly observed from St. Cornelius's letter presently to be recited; and I show it here in a few words.
[158] It seems to have been done. When the schism was objected to the confessors, they affirmed that they had been circumvented. We, they said, confess our error: we have suffered an imposture: we have been circumvented by the captious loquacity of perfidy. For although we seemed to have had a kind of communion with a schismatic and heretical man, yet our mind was sincerely always in the Church. But by what reasoning, with what face could they say these things, if they preferred to be excommunicated by a synod of sixty bishops, and of many more presbyters and deacons, rather than desert Novatian's party? Then it is not probable that Cornelius, and the five bishops who were present, and the rest of the clergy would have used so great facility in admitting men solemnly excommunicated and contumacious schismatics even after the sentence of so celebrated a synod, as we have from that same letter of Cornelius that they in fact used. Finally, to pass over the rest, Tillemont supposes that the Roman council was held before Novatian usurped the Pontificate and sent his second legation into Africa; both of which we shall refute below.
[159] Their return to the Church But that the studious reader may perceive the whole sequence of what was done, I transfer hither St. Cornelius's letter, the forty-sixth among Cyprian's. Cornelius to his brother Cyprian, greeting. As great as was the solicitude and anxiety which we endured about those confessors who had been circumvented by the guile and malice of a crafty and veteran man, and had been almost deceived and estranged from the Church, with so great a joy have we been filled, and we have given thanks to almighty God and to Christ our Lord, when they, having recognized their error and understood the poisoned cunning of the malignant man, as of a serpent, came with a simple will to the Church, whence they had gone out, as they themselves profess from their heart. And at first indeed our brethren of approved faith, lovers of peace, desiring unity, kept announcing the swelling of those men and the softness of these (elsewhere more correctly: kept announcing that that swelling of theirs was now softened), yet not with credit sufficient for it to be easily granted us to believe that they were thoroughly changed.
[160] the manner But after Urbanus and Sidonius, confessors, came to our fellow-presbyters, affirming that Maximus, confessor and presbyter, likewise desired to return with them into the Church; but since many things done by them had gone before, which you too have learned from our fellow-bishops and from my letters, so that credit was not rashly to be given them, it pleased us that those things which they had charged by their embassy should be heard from their own mouth and confession. And when they had come, and an account was demanded of them by the presbyters of what they had done, at last, because letters full of calumnies and abuse had been frequently sent in their name through all the churches, and had disturbed almost all the churches, they affirmed that they had been circumvented, and that they had not known what was contained in those letters; only that, having been led astray, they too had committed schismatic acts, and had been the authors to the heretics of their suffering hands to be laid upon him as though for an episcopate. And when these and other things had been reproached to them, they begged that they might be abolished and taken away from memory.
[161] and sequence of what was done The whole act therefore having been brought to me, it pleased us that the presbytery should be convened. There were present also five bishops, who were present today too, so that, our counsel being confirmed, what ought to be observed concerning their persons might be settled by the consent of all. And that you might discern the impulse of all and the counsel of each, it pleased us that our opinions also should be brought to your knowledge; which you will read subjoined. These things being thus done, there came into the presbytery Maximus, Urbanus, Sidonius and Macharius, and very many brethren who had joined themselves to them, desiring with the highest entreaties that the things which had been done before should fall into oblivion, and that no mention of them should be made; just as if nothing had been either committed or said, and that, all things being mutually forgiven, they might now show a clean and pure heart to God, following the Evangelical voice, saying that they are blessed who are pure of heart, for they shall see God.
[162] As was consequent, this whole act had to be brought home to the people, from St. Cornelius's letter that they might see those very men established in the Church whom they had so long seen straying and wandering, and had grieved over. Their will being known, a great concourse of the brotherhood took place: there was one voice of all giving thanks to God; expressing the joy of their heart with tears, embracing them as if they had this day been freed from the punishment of prison. And, that I may set down their own words: We, they say, know that Cornelius was elected Bishop of the most holy Catholic Church
by almighty God and by Christ our Lord. We confess our error: we have suffered an imposture: we have been circumvented by the captious loquacity of perfidy. For although we seemed to have had a kind of communion with a schismatic and heretical man, yet our mind was sincerely always in the Church. For we are not ignorant that there is one God, and one Christ the Lord, whom we have confessed, one Holy Spirit, and that there ought to be one Bishop in the Catholic Church.
[163] Who would not be moved by that profession of theirs, so that, is recounted. what they had confessed before the power of the world, they should approve when established in the Church? Wherefore we ordered Maximus the presbyter to acknowledge his own place; the rest we received with the vast approval of the people: but we have remitted all things to almighty God, in whose power all things are reserved. These things therefore, dearest brother, at the same hour, at the same moment, we have transmitted to you in writing, and I have at once sent off to you Nicephorus the acolyte, who was setting out to go down and sail \, so that, with no procrastination, you might, as though present in this clergy and in this assembly of the people, give thanks to almighty God and to Christ our Lord. And we believe it will come to pass — nay rather, we are already confident of it for certain — that the rest also who are established in this error will shortly return into the Church, when they see their own leaders acting with us. This letter, I think, dearest brother, you ought to send also to the other churches, that all may know that the guile and prevarication of this schismatic and heretic is being emptied out from day to day. Farewell, dearest brother.* Thus St. Cornelius; from which, besides the manner of the whole affair, one may gather and admire his mild and truly fatherly spirit, wherewith he deigned to receive their excuses and to admit them so clemently into the Church.
[164] To both the aforesaid letters St. Cyprian likewise replied with two, Letters of congratulation namely the forty-seventh and forty-ninth, in the former of which, which is one of congratulation, he set forth his own joy and that of his people at so glad a piece of news, and wrote that it was the greater because they did not doubt that many others would follow the confessors' example. For since the Lord, he says, … says that there is the highest joy in heaven over one sinner doing penance, how much greater is the joy both on earth and likewise in heaven over confessors returning to the Church of God with their own glory and with praise, and making a way of returning for the rest by the fidelity and proof of their example? For here an error had led certain of our brethren astray, in that they seemed to themselves to be following the communion of the confessors: which error being removed, light has been poured into the breasts of all, and it has been shown that the Catholic Church is one, and can neither be cut nor divided. Nor will anyone now easily be able to be deceived by the loquacious words of a raging schismatic, when it has been proved that good and glorious soldiers of Christ could not long be detained outside the Church.
[165] by St. Cyprian Nor was Cyprian hoping so without cause: for these confessors, on St. Cornelius's testimony in the letter to Fabius, whom (Novatian) had straightway from the beginning associated with himself, he held out as a covering for his (own) madness; on their authority the schism had chiefly stood, and their example could not but be most salutary for calling back minds from error, just as it had been pernicious for following the schism. Indeed St. Cornelius sets forth their merits in the passage cited in these words: Maximus, presbyter of our Church, and Urbanus, both of whom for a second time won excellent praise from the confession of the faith; Sidonius also, and Celerinus, a man who by God's mercy most bravely endured every kind of torment, and who, strengthening the weakness of his body by the constancy of his faith, utterly vanquished the adversary: all these … have returned to the holy Church. Here note in passing, reader, that the fourth of the confessors, Celerinus, is above called Macharius; whence one may suspect that he bore two names. Observe also that Maximus, who here and above is related to have returned from the schism, is a different man from the one whom we saw sent by Novatian into Africa, and whom we shall say was there made a pseudo-bishop.
[166] and by St. Dionysius of Alexandria, sent on this matter. For the rest, the same confessors sent a joint letter on the same subject to St. Cyprian, which is the fiftieth among Cyprian's, and to this that Saint replied with congratulation in the fifty-first. They seem also to have written a like letter to St. Dionysius of Alexandria: for he too, who, as we said above from Eusebius, had sent a letter to the Confessors settled at Rome, who even then favored the opinion of Novatus, sent also two other letters to these same men, after they had returned to the Church. Nay, it is probable that they signified their reconciliation to other churches likewise, so that they who by their error and authority had been a scandal to others might by their example recall the same to the Church. Further, how happily their penance turned out for the Roman Church one may gather from the same letter of Cornelius to Fabius, when he says: Know moreover that he (Novatian) has already been stripped bare and left almost alone, the brethren daily deserting him and returning to the Church.
Annotata\ elsewhere: festinantem, de statione*
§ IX. Councils celebrated at Rome and elsewhere, in which the lapsed were admitted to penance and peace, and Novatian was condemned: Trophimus, penitent, received into the Church with the greatest part of his people.
St. Cornelius, concerning the cause of the lapsed, Besides the aforesaid attempts of Novatian, whom we shall see hardened in his schism, another care was beating upon the holy Pontiff's mind, namely the vast number of the lapsed whom the Decian persecution had cast down, and who were demanding with the highest entreaties to be received into the Church. Their cause the Roman clergy had indeed already treated while the See was vacant, but had not dared to settle anything, save that peace should be granted to those whose life was in danger, if they had first repented of their deed; while the rest should indeed be encouraged to penance, but in such a way that judgment about them should be suspended until a Pontiff should have been substituted in St. Fabian's place, as the same clergy testifies in the thirty-first letter among Cyprian's, and as has been shown by us above. Of the same opinion, before his schism, had been Novatian, on St. Cyprian's testimony in letter 52, where, speaking of the same letter, he adds: It was added also, Novatian then writing, and reciting with his own voice what he had written, and the presbyter Moses, then still a confessor, now already a martyr, subscribing, that peace should be given to the lapsed who were sick and set at their end: which letter was sent through the whole world, and was brought to the knowledge of all the churches and of all the brethren.
[168] But after he saw the Pontificate which he had canvassed for conferred on St. Cornelius, and the heresy of Novatian, he denied that peace could be imparted by the Church to lapsed persons of this kind, and, now made a pseudo-pontiff, he began to disseminate this heresy, in order to establish his own schism, by legates and by letters sent through the whole Church. Therefore, that he might meet these evils, the holy Pontiff gathered a council at Rome, as Cyprian likewise had done at Carthage. The decrees of this synod are indeed not extant; yet what was chiefly done in it we are taught from Eusebius's History, book 6, chapter 43. Novatus \, he says, a presbyter of the Roman Church, lifted up with arrogance against those (who imparted peace to the lapsed after penance), as though no hope of salvation remained for them thereafter, even though they should fulfil all that pertains to a sincere conversion and a pure confession, became the author of a sect of his own, of those who, lifted up with a swelling of mind, named themselves Cathari* (that is, the pure).
[169] For which cause, when a synod \ had been gathered at Rome, holds a council at Rome, in which sixty bishops indeed, but many more presbyters and deacons, came together: and when in the provinces the bishops had taken counsel separately about what was to be done, a decree of this kind was promulgated to all: that Novatus \ indeed, and those who together with him had raised themselves too insolently, and whoever had presumed to consent to his most inhuman opinion, alien from brotherly charity, were to be held estranged from the Church; but that the brethren who had fallen into calamity were to be cured and cherished by the remedy of penance. There are still extant letters of Cornelius, Bishop of the Romans, sent to Fabius, bishop of the church of Antioch, in which both the acts of the Roman synod and the opinions of all throughout Italy and Africa, and the other provinces of those parts, are declared…
[170] To these was joined another letter of the same Cornelius about those things and Cyprian at Carthage: which had been decreed in the synod, and again another about the crimes of Novatus \. Finally, at the end of the same chapter Eusebius adds: And at the end of the letter he recounts the number of the bishops who, coming together into the city of Rome, had condemned the madness of Novatus \; adding also their names, and what church each ruled. Likewise of those who had indeed not been present at Rome, but had approved by their own letters the opinion of the above-mentioned bishops, he carefully commemorates both the names and the cities from which each had sent letters. For the same causes St. Cyprian had, as I have intimated, celebrated a council at Carthage, of whose decrees likewise Eusebius makes mention in the same place thus: There are extant besides, written in the Latin tongue, letters of Cyprian and of the other bishops who assembled with him in Africa, from which it is gathered that it pleased them also that help should be given to those who had fallen into temptation; and that the author of the abominable opinion, together with those who had gone over to his party, should deservedly be disowned from the fellowship of the Catholic Church.
[171] the canons of the latter approved in the Roman council, Now Cyprian transmitted these Carthaginian canons to St. Cornelius, and there they were approved and confirmed by him and by the fathers gathered in the said Roman synod, as conformable to the truth and to their own judgment: wherefore, since the Roman canons have perished, it will be worth while, for elucidating these, to have recounted Cyprian's words from letter 52 to Antonianus, whom we have said to have been somewhat moved by the Novatians' letters against SS. Cornelius and Cyprian. In accordance, however, with what had been determined before, he says, when the persecution was lulled and the opportunity of coming together in one place was given, a copious number of bishops, whom their faith and the Lord's protection preserved whole and unharmed, came together in one, and, the divine Scriptures being brought forward on both sides, we weighed a tempering with salutary moderation, so that neither should the hope of communion and peace be wholly denied to the lapsed, lest they should fail the more through despair, and, because the Church was closed to them, should follow the world and live as gentiles; nor yet again should the Evangelical censure be loosened, so that they should rashly leap forward to communion; but that penance should be drawn out long, and fatherly clemency be entreated with grief, and the cases and wills and necessities of individuals be examined, according to what is contained in the little book which I trust has reached you, where the several heads of the resolutions are written down.
[172] what they were And if the number of bishops in Africa shall seem insufficient, we have written about this matter to Rome also, to our colleague Cornelius, who himself too, having held a council with very many fellow-bishops, has consented with us in the same opinion with equal gravity and salutary moderation. Concerning St. Cornelius's
opinion, which he affirms St. Lucius his successor also held, he makes mention again both elsewhere and in letter 67 to St. Stephen, who had succeeded Lucius, in these words: There is to be preserved … the glorious honor of our predecessors, the blessed martyrs Cornelius and Lucius, whose memory, since we honor it, you, dearest brother, much more ought to honor and preserve by your gravity and authority, who have been made their vicar and successor. For they, full of the Spirit of God, and set in a glorious martyrdom, judged that peace was to be given to the lapsed, and marked in their letters that, penance having been performed, the fruit of communion and of peace was not to be denied: which thing absolutely all of us everywhere have judged.
[173] about various I have nowhere found a fixed time of penance prescribed, because, namely, it had to be measured to the guilt of the lapsed, of whom Cyprian in the praised letter 52 numbers various classes, and whose cases and wills and necessities he there bids to be examined for each one, according to the little book written on this matter, which without doubt is those letters of Cyprian and of the other bishops of Africa which Eusebius praised above in number 170, and which we grieve to have perished. That a long penance had to be performed, however, is clear from letter 53, in which St. Cyprian, being consulted whether for Ninus, Clementianus and Florus, who after an excellent confession had been overcome by the force of torments before the proconsul, a penance of three years would suffice, replied that to him indeed it seemed to suffice, but that he would inquire the opinion of others at the next synod, as he was asked. Yet that canon did not press so hard but that, where a greater advantage of the Church or a necessity of the penitents occurred, peace could be granted sooner: for besides that we have from letters 52 and 54 that it was at the same time decreed that it should be imparted to the sick in danger, we shall produce below examples from which it is plain that much of that severity was relaxed for just causes.
[174] But that bishops guilty of a crime of this kind could, after penance had been performed, be admitted only to lay communion, according to the canons of the same council, causes of the lapsed. the same St. Cyprian testifies in letter 68 to the clergy and people of Spain, sharply arraigning Basilides and Martialis, bishops of that region, who after the crime of idolatry persisted in holding the episcopate. For in vain do such men, he says, attempt to usurp the episcopate to themselves; since it is manifest that men of this kind can neither preside over the Church of Christ nor ought to offer Sacrifices to God, especially since long since, with us and with absolutely all the bishops established in the whole world, our colleague Cornelius also, a peaceable and just Priest, and honored also with martyrdom by the Lord's favor, has decreed that men of this kind can indeed be admitted to doing penance, but are debarred from ordination among the clergy and from sacerdotal honor. There exists also another letter of the same Saint, the sixty-fourth, about Fortunatianus, bishop of Assuras in Africa, who after a like lapse was attempting to discharge episcopal offices. For the rest, whether the said canon is to be understood of bishops alone or of the whole clergy, Cyprian does not declare; the latter, however, is more probable.
[175] Theodoret in book 3 of the Heretical Fables, chapter 6, Theodoret's narrative about Novatian's case elsewhere 5, has some singular things about what was done in the Roman council against Novatian, whom he calls Navatus. For after reporting the bishops' opinion about the lapsed, he goes on thus: In these counsels Navatus did not acquiesce, but openly contradicted, saying that those who had denied ought not to obtain salvation; doing the same as those who forbid the sick to use medicines. But those who were asking for the remedy of penance charged that he had often been asked and admonished to come to them and at least by words to strengthen those who were being battered by the tyrant's engines; but that he, hiding himself and trying to lie low, had denied that he too was a presbyter. But nevertheless, although the bishops who had assembled at Rome had heard these things, they tried to persuade him to assent to what had been most excellently determined. But after they saw that he was raging, and was laying down a cruelty hateful to God, they separated him from the body of the Church, while Cornelius was ruling the Church at Rome.
[176] Thus Theodoret, which things we think to be true: in the Roman synod. for it is not to be doubted that the Catholic bishops tried to extinguish the dreadful schism and the heresy so pernicious to the salvation of souls that had arisen with it, by bringing back to the Church the author of both; and that Novatian in fact refused to succor those in peril, and denied that he was a presbyter, we have reported in number 93 in St. Cornelius's own words; and therefore it is altogether probable that the lapsed brought forward these very things against him in the council, to show how senselessly he had acted in the persecution, who so cruelly denied that peace of the Church was to be granted, even after penance had been performed, even to those overcome by the force of torments. Whether, however, Novatian appeared in the council, as the words suggest, is uncertain: for he was already bearing himself as Pontiff, whose place he would neither have yielded to Cornelius, nor would the fathers themselves have permitted it.
[177] What was the Italian synod? The Roman We saw above from Eusebius that in the provinces also the bishops took counsel separately about what was to be done, and that then at last the said decrees were issued. These were without doubt the bishops of Italy and of the neighboring provinces, who, since they could not be present at the Roman council, having conferred their counsels among themselves, or a synod having been convened in another place in Italy, transmitted their opinion to Cornelius and to the fathers gathered at Rome; and this seems to be that Italian synod of which St. Jerome, in his book On Ecclesiastical Writers, in the treatment of Cornelius, says: He wrote a letter to Fabius, bishop of the church of Antioch, about the Roman, Italian and African Synod. Finally, it is not to be doubted that the holy Pontiff dispatched the canons framed in the said council throughout the whole Church; for besides that St. Cyprian sufficiently intimates this when in number 174 he writes that lay communion for lapsed bishops was decreed by Cornelius with absolutely all the bishops established in the whole world, the welfare of the whole Church so demanded, namely that a salutary remedy should be applied to the lapsed, whose number everywhere was vast, and that Novatian's madness should be guarded against.
[178] canons sent throughout the world. Socrates's, Nay, Socrates writes this very thing expressly in book 4 of the History, chapter 23, where he has this on this subject: He (Novatian, now a pseudo-pontiff) wrote letters to all the churches everywhere, that they should by no means admit to the mysteries those who had sacrificed to images, but should exhort them to penance and leave the remission to God, who is able and has authority to remit sins. When these letters had been carried to the provinces, each one made his own judgment about the matters signified in them according to his own disposition. For, since it had been signified by Novatus (that is, Novatian) that those who after baptism had committed a sin unto death were not to be received to the mysteries; the promulgation of a canon of this kind seemed to some harsh and too severe; by others it was approved, as fair and as bringing much help to ordering life rightly. While this controversy was being agitated among them, letters of Cornelius the bishop were brought, which signified that hope of pardon remained even for those who had sinned after baptism.
[179] who favors Novatian, Contrary letters therefore were sent by both: and since each seemed to confirm his own opinion by testimonies of the sacred Scriptures, each betook himself chiefly, as is the custom, to that opinion to which he was more inclined. For those who took delight in sin, snatching at the indulgence which was then granted, abused it in later time for every kind of sin. Thus Socrates; but he is deservedly to be blamed for the mind inclined toward the Novatian heresy which he here makes manifest. For he speaks no otherwise than as if Novatian's impiety had seemed to some indeed harsh and too severe, to others fair and bringing much help to ordering life rightly, but the Catholic truth had been snatched at only by those who took delight in sinning. Thus, namely, he not obscurely accuses the most holy bishops who, dispersed through the whole world, admitted this canon, as though they had opened a way to sins of every kind; whereas on this very head the Novatian heresy ought rather to be condemned.
[180] narrative, For St. Cyprian rightly writes in letter 52 that it seemed good to admit the lapsed to penance with hope of pardon, lest they should fail the more through despair, and, because the Church was closed to them, should follow the world and live as gentiles. Rightly does he exclaim in the same place: And O the mockery of a brotherhood to be cheated! O the ruinous deception of wretched men lamenting and out of their minds! O the ineffectual and empty tradition of a heretical instruction! To exhort to the penance of satisfaction, and to withdraw the medicine of satisfaction: to say to our brethren: "Weep and pour forth tears, and groan by day and by night, and work bountifully and frequently for the washing away and purging of your offense; but after all these things you will die outside the Church; you will do whatever pertains to peace, but you will receive no peace, which you seek." Who would not straightway perish? Who would not fail from very despair? Who would not turn his mind away from his purpose of lamentation? Into despair, therefore, from which the fallen man is prone to every crime, Novatian's impiety was casting wretched men; whence also we shall see in number 202 that he was condemned in the synod of Antioch as one who was a patron of sinners; and accordingly Socrates would more fairly have accused this impiety.
[181] But how happily the opinion of St. Cornelius and of the other Catholic bishops turned out for the Church, unjust to the Church, is refuted, is clear both from other sources and from letter 57, in which St. Cyprian says this of the Romans who had lapsed in the Decian persecution and afterwards been admitted to salutary penance, and were now contending in the persecution of Gallus: How many there who had lapsed were restored by a glorious confession! They stood strong, and by the very grief of penance were made stronger for the battle. The same is clear from the author of the Work against Novatian once ascribed to St. Cyprian, who among other things says: For to none of us is it doubtful or uncertain, most beloved brethren, that those who were wounded in the first line, that is, in the Decian persecution, afterwards, that is, in the second battle (under Gallus), so bravely persevered that, despising the edicts of secular princes, they held this unconquered, that they neither feared, after the example of the good shepherd, to hand over their life and to pour out their blood, nor to refuse any savagery of a raging tyrant.
[182] Further, lest the hope of pardon offered should make men more prone to lapse, is refuted, sufficient provision had been made by the severity of the canons, which anyone will easily gather both from St. Cyprian's letters and from his book On the Lapsed: yet it will be worth while to have exhibited one specimen from letter 53. You have written to me, he says, dearest brethren, what our brother and colleague Superius reported to you: that Ninus, Clementianus, and Florus, our brethren, who had earlier been seized in the persecution and, having confessed the name of the Lord, had conquered the violence of the magistrate and the onset of the raging people, afterwards, when they were being tortured with grievous punishments before the proconsul, were overcome by the force of torments, and from the rank of glory, to
which they were pressing with a full valor of faith, fell away through long-continued torments; and yet after this grievous lapse, undertaken not by will but by necessity, they have not ceased from doing penance through these three years. About whom you thought counsel should be taken, whether it were now lawful to admit them to communion. Now Cyprian replies that to him indeed it seems they can be admitted, but that nevertheless he would refer that matter, as they had asked, to a council of bishops. But now, if such severe animadversion was made upon those who through weakness had yielded to torments, how much more severely shall we believe this was done upon those who had fallen away of their own accord? These things having been observed against Socrates, let us pursue the rest.
[183] Thus far I have deferred disputing about the time at which this council was celebrated, It seems that only one lest on account of the most eminent Baronius's opinion I should be compelled to recite the same things twice. For he, in volume 2 of the Annals, judges that a twofold council was held by Cornelius at Rome, of which he fixes the first to the year of Christ 254, the second to 255; and since he here anticipates the common years by two, the first council would have to be referred to the year 252, the last to 253. Now he judges that the council must be doubled from the different decrees; for in the former indeed nothing was done against Novatian, but only the lapsed were treated of, and it was laid down that these, having performed penance, should be admitted to communion, but priests to lay communion only: whereas in the second Novatian with his sectaries was condemned by Cornelius and sixty bishops and the rest of the clergy, and besides it was decreed that the brethren who had fallen by an unhappy chance ought to be cured by the medicines of penance and restored to health.
[184] From these things, I say, he thinks the council must be doubled to the years cited, at numbers 90 and 3; council was celebrated by St. Cornelius; saying again in the latter place: That this is a different synod from that which we said was likewise celebrated at Rome, the different decrees enacted in each declare: since in that one (as we have seen) the lapsed had been bidden still to wait; but in this one they are bidden to be admitted. So indeed the most eminent annalist, praising in the margin Cyprian's letter 52 to Antonianus, and Eusebius's History, book 6, chapter 55; but with his leave I would say that to me no necessity of doubling the council here appears. For, first, it is not probable that in the council which he mentions in the first place from Eusebius nothing was done against Novatian, who by his schism — which Baronius at the same year 254, number 47, admits to have been stirred up at the very beginning of Cornelius's see — was troubling the Church, and against whom, even if no other cause had urged, a synod ought on that account deservedly to have been convoked. Secondly, in the decrees produced by the praised Eusebius and by St. Cyprian, and cited by Baronius, no difference appears, as will be plain to one reading them.
[185] and that it was celebrated not before, For as to the most eminent one's saying that the lapsed, who according to Cyprian's letter 52 had by the council's decree been bidden still to wait, are in Eusebius said to have been bidden to be admitted; this indeed I do not find in Eusebius, who only asserts that the lapsed, according to the council's canon, were to be cured and cherished by the remedy of penance, the very thing which Cyprian in the cited letter affirms to have been enacted. Antoine Pagi in the Critica at the year 251, number 25, likewise dissenting from Baronius, thinks that he came to this opinion because he supposed that Cyprian's letter 52 to Antonianus had been written at the very beginning of Cornelius's see: but that it was written later is clear even from this, that, as is said in the same letter, St. Cyprian had already sent another before it to Antonianus, moved by which he had rejected Novatian's communion and embraced Cornelius's. Hence Labbe, although in volume 1 of the Councils, columns 714 and 715, he followed Baronius and distinguished a twofold Roman council under Cornelius, yet in the Synopsis of the Councils praised by Tillemont in Note 5 on Cornelius, confessed that the decrees about admitting the lapsed to penance and peace, and about condemning Novatian, could have been framed in the same synod.
[186] Among those who acknowledge with us that only one Roman council was celebrated under Cornelius, there remains another question about the time. Tillemont, who, as we said above, fixed Novatian's ordination after Cornelius's Pontificate had been acknowledged in Africa, judges in articles 8 and 9, and likewise in Note 5, that this council is to be put before that ordination. His reason is that it is not to be doubted that the African bishops, as soon as it was permitted to assemble, celebrated a synod about the lapsed, and dispatched its canons to St. Cornelius to be confirmed as soon as they had acknowledged his Pontificate: nor does it appear more doubtful that Cornelius, who while the See was vacant had, together with the rest of the clergy, judged that the cause of the lapsed should be deferred until a Pontiff should be elected, did this too promptly when he had received the letters of the African bishops; especially since the schism of Novatian — not indeed yet ordained a pseudo-bishop, but already raging — urged this very thing.
[187] He adds that from the calumnies with which Novatian, in order to veil his usurpation of the Pontificate, but after straightway assailed the holy Pontiff — namely, that he communicated with the lapsed — it is sufficiently gathered that the cause of the lapsed had already been decided before his ordination. He praises besides Theodoret, cited in number 175; who, since after the words there reported he speaks first of Novatian's ordination, seems to him to have believed that it was later than the Roman council. So, roughly, Tillemont, laying down in Note 5 that the aforesaid council can be fixed before Novatian's ordination and about one or two months after Cornelius's: for so much time seems sufficient for the first letters of Cornelius and of the schismatics to be carried to Africa, for Caldonius and Fortunatus to discharge their embassy to the Romans and return to Carthage, if their return had to be awaited; and finally for the letter by which the fathers of the Carthaginian synod acknowledged Cornelius's Pontificate and transmitted the decrees about the lapsed to be able to reach him, the Roman council being perhaps by then already gathered.
[188] I reply that I readily assent to Tillemont, on account of the reasons brought by him, that the Roman synod as well as the Carthaginian was celebrated at the first time it was permitted: the Pontificate invaded by Novatian, but that it has been shown by us in paragraph 7 that Novatian usurped the Pontificate before Cornelius's election had been received and approved in Africa. Wherefore, since, on Tillemont's own testimony, the Carthaginian synod preceded the Roman, and its decrees cannot be said to have been transmitted to Cornelius for confirmation before his Pontificate was acknowledged, it must likewise be said that the Roman synod was convened after the episcopate was usurped by Novatian. In the same paragraph too we set forth in what way that schismatic could accuse the holy Pontiff of communicating with the lapsed, although as yet nothing had been enacted in council about their cause.
[189] Nor ought Theodoret to detain us, a writer a century and a half later than the synod, and the return of the confessors. even if he clearly placed Novatian's ordination after it; since he, by Tillemont's own censure in Note 8 on St. Cornelius, was mistaken more than once in the same passage about Novatian's ordination, as we too admitted in number 122 and following. Against Tillemont there tell besides the things we disputed at §8 about the time of the confessors' return to the Church: for if that fell after the synod, as he would have it, and this preceded Novatian's ordination, those confessors must be said to have consented to that ordination even after the synod; which from what was said there is not probable. We do not doubt, therefore, that the Roman council preceded the confessors' return; but in what month precisely it was celebrated is plainly uncertain. Nothing, however, compels us to defer it with Pearson as late as the October of this year 251; since it was for the Church's advantage that it be celebrated at the first time conveniently possible, and the things done in the meantime do not hinder its being said to have taken place in the month of August or September. But the reason for a council deferred until that time could have been the persecution, less lulled at Rome than at Carthage, and which seemed likely to be revived if so numerous a synod of bishops were promptly celebrated in the tyrant's royal City. Then perhaps the synods of bishops which, as we said in number 169, were held separately in the provinces, and whose opinions were sent to the Roman one, preceded it.
[190] Trophimus, probably a bishop, Perhaps the fathers of the said synod had not yet departed from Rome when a certain Trophimus, repenting of his deeds, together with a vast number of Christians likewise repenting, demanded to be admitted into the Church. That he was a bishop in Italy is altogether probable from St. Cyprian's letter 52 to Antonianus, in which, vindicating St. Cornelius from the schismatics' calumnies, and about to treat of Trophimus, he premises: But neither have we found that he mingled a sacrilegious communion with the bishops who sacrificed. Certainly he calls him a priest in the same letter, by which name he is wont to call bishops. But also his great authority among the people, the greatest part of whom clung to him both when he sinned and when he repented, sufficiently hints that he presided over some church. The crime of him and of those who had followed him I have nowhere found clearly expressed; but that it was not the ordination of Novatian and partnership in the schism, but more probably idolatry, we laid down in number 124 against Valois.
[191] lapsed with very many and repenting, And so, to come to the matter, when Trophimus was bringing back to the Church the greatest part of the people, whom he had led by his example into the lapse, and who had now been turned to sounder counsels by his counsels and authority, it seemed good to Cornelius and to the bishops who were with him that, on account of the accession of so many of the faithful, the severity of the canon, so far as concerned the length of the penance, should on that occasion be dispensed with, and that all of them should be received into favor; yet in such a way that Trophimus should for the future enjoy only lay communion. It will be worth while to have heard St. Cyprian writing on this matter in the praised letter 52, in which he also washes away the stain which the Novatians had tried to brand upon St. Cornelius from it. But know, he says, that our colleagues have investigated, and have most truly found, that he (St. Cornelius) is stained with no blot of a certificate, as certain men keep bandying about; but neither has he mingled a sacrilegious communion with the bishops who sacrificed; but has joined to us only those whose case has been heard and whose innocence has been approved.
[192] is received into the Church. For about Trophimus too, concerning whom you desired that I should write to you, the matter is not as rumor and the lying of the malicious have reported to you. For, as our predecessors have often done, our most dear Brother yielded to necessity in gathering together our brethren. And since the greatest part of the people had gone away with Trophimus, now that Trophimus is returning to the Church, and making satisfaction, and confessing his former error with the penance of entreaty, and calling back with full humility and satisfaction the brotherhood which he had lately drawn away, his prayers were heard, and there was admitted into the Church of the Lord not so much Trophimus as that very great number of brethren who had been with Trophimus: all of whom would not have been about to return to the Church, had they not come with Trophimus accompanying them. A discussion therefore having been held there with very many colleagues, Trophimus was received, for whom the return of the brethren and the salvation of many restored were making satisfaction. Thus
was Trophimus admitted, however, that he should communicate as a layman, not, as the letters of the malicious have reported to you, as though he usurped the place of a priest. Thus far St. Cyprian.
Annotata\* elsewhere: Novatianus
\ add: maxima*
\* Novatianum
\* Novatiani
\* Novatiani
§ X. A new legation of the Novatians, and their machinations in Africa: their heresy condemned in the synod of Antioch, and rejected in the East: Felicissimus, another schismatic, repelled by Cornelius.
Novatian sends new legates We saw in §8 that Novatian's legates, Nicostratus, Novatus, Evaristus, Primus and Dionysius, set out for Africa to repair the losses they had suffered from the African bishops; now we shall set forth their other efforts, both here and elsewhere. These, having arrived there, do not seem to have made any further trial of the minds of St. Cyprian and of the other Catholic bishops who had been present with him at the Carthaginian synod, and who perhaps were then with him also; for after their schism and heresy had been recognized, this would have been useless to them, especially since they had as their associate Novatus, once a presbyter of the church of Carthage, long since infamous there for his crimes and condemned by the sentence of those same bishops. Certainly so we gather from St. Cyprian's letter 49, who, having been informed of their arrival by St. Cornelius's letters brought by the acolyte Nicephorus, in replying to him makes no mention of any conference held with those legates — which without doubt he would not have passed over in silence, if anything had passed between them and himself.
[194] When on the previous day, he says, the harmful contagion of heretical depravity had come there (that is, to Carthage), into Africa; itself already lost, and about to ruin others also who should consent to it, on the following day Nicephorus arrived with your letter; from which we both learned, and began to teach and instruct the rest, that Evaristus, from a bishop, has now remained not even a layman, but, banished from his chair and his people, and an exile from the Church of Christ, wanders about through other far-off provinces, and, having himself made shipwreck of truth and faith, stirs up like shipwrecks among certain men like himself: but that Nicostratus, having lost the diaconate of a holy administration, having withdrawn the church's moneys by sacrilegious fraud, and having denied the deposits of widows and orphans, did not so much wish to come into Africa, as flee thither through consciousness of his robberies and crimes. And now, a deserter and fugitive from the Church, as though to change one's region were to change the man, he further boasts and proclaims himself a confessor, whereas he can now neither be called nor be a confessor of Christ who has denied the Church of Christ, etc.
[195] It seems therefore that these men traversed Africa, to join the incautious to their now desperate party, Nicostratus and Maximus just as we saw the earlier legates, convicted and rejected by the fathers of the Carthaginian synod, running about from door to door and from town to town for the sake of propagating that same schism. That the holy Pontiff might guard against this evil, he had admonished Cyprian that through him their crimes and machinations might become known to the other bishops of his province; and that this was straightway done by him is clear from the praised letter. Further, it was not enough for the schismatics to have appointed one bishop in Africa, Nicostratus; but that Maximus the presbyter also, whom we have said to have been one of the associates of the second legation, was afterwards likewise ordained bishop by them, St. Cyprian testifies, writing in letter 55 to Cornelius: The party of Novatian is said now to have made for itself there a pseudo-bishop of Maximus the presbyter, lately sent to us as a legate by Novatian, and rejected from our communion.
[196] schismatics, Tillemont in article 12, and elsewhere, judges from this passage that Maximus was ordained bishop of Carthage: which he no doubt gathered from the adverb there, and from the fact that Cyprian says this is despised by him, and therefore seems to have concerned him more nearly, as bishop of that same see. But this conjecture is plainly uncertain: that by the adverb there any place of the Carthaginian province can be understood, is manifest from what he adds presently: Nor yet had I written to you about this, since all these things are despised by us, and I lately sent you the names of the bishops established there, who, sound and whole, preside over the brethren in the Catholic Church. It is beyond doubt that these bishops were not of Carthage but of various sees in Africa, and accordingly neither in the former place is the adverb there necessarily to be referred to Carthage. But in whatever part of that province Maximus usurped an episcopal chair, that matter pertained to Cyprian as primate of Africa. For the rest, this ordination of his first happened in the year 252, in which the letter was written.
[197] and perhaps other bishops also appointed there. That sacrilegious ordinations of this kind were made by the Novatians elsewhere also, St. Cyprian again intimates in letter 52 to Antonianus in these words: Whereas by Christ there is one Church throughout the whole world divided into many members, and likewise one episcopate, spread abroad in the harmonious multitude of many bishops; he (Novatian), after God's tradition, after the connected and everywhere joined unity of the Catholic Church, attempts to make a human church, and sends his new apostles through very many cities, that he may set up certain fresh foundations of his own institution; and, whereas bishops have long since been ordained through all the provinces and through each city, ancient in age, whole in faith, proved in tribulation, proscribed in persecution, he dares to create other pseudo-bishops over them! I confess, however, that these things could have been said of Nicostratus and Maximus alone.
[198] Antonianus favors the schism Nor did those same schismatics cease to solicit certain Catholic bishops by their letters to leave Cornelius, whom they loaded with feigned accusations and abuse, and to go over to their party. That among these Antonianus was somewhat moved by their letters, St. Cyprian's letter 52 declares, which he wrote to him in order to bring him back to his duty, and in which he excellently vindicated the Pontificate to Cornelius, and, refuting the schismatics' calumnies against this holy Pontiff, sharply assailed Novatian's schism. But about Antonianus we have already said enough, so that it is not necessary to add anything here. Whether, however, he complied with these most salutary admonitions of Cyprian is uncertain: but a favorable suspicion is raised by the name of Antonianus, which occurs among the other bishops of Numidia to whom, as to Catholics, Cyprian afterwards addressed letter 70.
[199] and Fabius, bishop of Antioch, Involved in the schism also, or at least inclining to it, was Fabius — by others called Fabianus and Flavianus — bishop of Antioch, to whom on that account Cornelius seems to have written both that letter which we have often mentioned from Eusebius, and another which, together with the aforesaid, St. Jerome commemorates in the Ecclesiastical Writers in these words: He (the praised holy Pontiff) wrote a letter to Fabius, bishop of the church of Antioch, about the Roman, Italian and African synod; … a fourth to the same Fabius, very lengthy, and containing the causes and the anathema of the Novatian heresy. A great part of the latter we have inserted into this Commentary from that fragment of it which stands in Eusebius, book 6 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 43; but the other we grieve to have perished, to the great loss of ecclesiastical antiquity.
[200] That St. Dionysius of Alexandria also labored to confirm the wavering Fabius in the faith, who summons a synod at Antioch, we learn from the praised Eusebius, chapter 44, who says that he wrote many things pertaining to penance to Fabius, who was in some way inclining to the schism; and from St. Jerome, in the place just cited, where he says: To Flavianus, bishop of the city of Antioch, he wrote about penance. Further, what our Bosch judged in the Chronological History of the Patriarchs of Antioch, prefixed to volume IV of July, page 22, is probable; namely that Fabius, if he was not bent to the Catholic side by these letters, was at least moved to take care that a synod on that cause should be summoned at Antioch, not long before he departed this life, which he shows to have happened in the year of Christ 252, which was also St. Cornelius's last.
[201] In favor of this opinion he praises Eusebius, book 6, in which, under Demetrianus, his successor, chapter 46, writing this of St. Dionysius of Alexandria: He writes besides to Cornelius, Bishop of the city of Rome, whose letter written against Novatus (read: Novatian) he had received: in which letter indeed he signifies that he had been invited by Helenus, bishop of Tarsus in Cilicia, and by the others who had assembled with him, namely Firmilian of Cappadocia and Theoctistus of the province of Palestine, bishops, to attend the synod of Antioch, in which certain men were attempting to confirm the schism of Novatus. He writes also that it had been announced to him that Fabius indeed had met his last day, but that Demetrianus had been appointed bishop of the church of Antioch in his place. Bosch therefore thinks that Fabius died when the synod had been summoned, and that this synod is ascribed in the Synodicon in Labbe, volume 1 of the Councils, column 719, to St. Demetrianus, Fabius's successor, because he carried out what the other, prevented by death, had been unable to do.
[202] Novatian was condemned, That Novatian was condemned in that synod the praised Synodicon declares in these words: The divine and sacred provincial synod gathered at Antioch by Demetrius (in Greek is read Δημητριανοῦ), its most holy bishop, which deposed Novatus (that is, Novatian) as one who was a patron of sinners; namely because, by his cruel heresy cutting off from the lapsed the hope of pardon, he was calling them away from penance, and thus dragging them headlong into despair. Finally, the praised Bosch thinks that by this synod was effected what Eusebius in book 7, chapter 4, says was written by St. Dionysius of Alexandria to St. Stephen, Cornelius's successor after Lucius; namely that all the churches everywhere, the fury of the persecution being now softened, detesting the turbulent novelty of Novatus, had entered into peace among themselves.
[203] From the letter of Dionysius to St. Cornelius just cited one may gather with a most happy outcome, as it appears. that not only Fabius favored the Novatian party in the East. Nay rather, since the same holy bishop, in the praised Eusebius, chapter 5, says of the said peace: But know, brother, that all the churches throughout the East (of which he recounts the chief below) and those placed further off, which were formerly divided, have now at last returned to unity, and that all the bishops of the churches everywhere hold one and the same view, and exult with incredible joy at the peace restored beyond hope: when, I say, he writes this, he indicates clearly enough that vast tumults had been stirred up there by those schismatics. Gather also that the said synod was not convened until after St. Cornelius's death, or at least did not obtain so happy an outcome before it.
[204] Marcian of Arles also adhered to the schism. But that among the bishops of the West Marcian, bishop of the church of Arles in the Gauls, followed Novatian's party, is established from St. Cyprian's letter 67, in which he asks Pope Stephen to command by letters sent to the bishops of the Gauls that he be deposed, and another substituted in his place; which our Bosch, in the Acts of that holy Pontiff, volume 1 of August, page 115, gathers was also done. Further, Cyprian in the praised letter (which Bosch in the same place observes was not written before the year 254), in order to make Stephen prompt
to Marcian's deposition, says among other things: Let it suffice that many of our brethren there have in these past years departed without peace: at least let help be given to the rest who survive, who both groan by day and by night, and, entreating the divine and fatherly mercy, demand the solace of our aid. From which it seems it may be gathered that Marcian had already from Cornelius's Pontificate consented to Novatian, although at the beginning he perhaps sought to lie hid. More about the progress and extinction of this schism and heresy, which do not belong to St. Cornelius's times, the studious reader will find in the writers of Ecclesiastical History.
[205] Felicissimus, the standard-bearer of the African schism, Besides this heresy, another schism also was troubling the Church of God in Africa, kindled indeed by the same Novatus, but led by Felicissimus, and plainly opposed to the Novatian errors. For as the Novatians contended with detestable severity that every hope of pardon was utterly to be denied to the lapsed, so those men, with an equally damnable connivance, from the very first day of the persecution, when the crimes of the offenders were fresh and hot, and when with abominable sacrifices not only the devil's altars but the very hands and mouths of the lapsed were still smoking, did not cease to communicate with the lapsed and to obstruct the doing of penance, on Cyprian's testimony in letter 55 to Cornelius. The wicked machinations of this Felicissimus against Cyprian we touched on in §5, and much will have to be said about him in that Saint's deeds; here we shall recount only what concerns St. Cornelius.
[206] having had a pseudo-bishop ordained in Africa, Felicissimus, being condemned with his followers by many bishops of Africa, in order to establish his schism, no otherwise than the Novatians had done at Rome and in Africa, planned likewise to set up a bishop of his own at Carthage; and, a rumor having been spread among the crowd that twenty-five bishops were about to come from Numidia to make a bishop for them, whereas in fact only five assembled, and those excommunicated for their crimes, he took care that Fortunatus, one of the five presbyters, associates of his schism, and condemned by the same sentence, should be ordained bishop. Then with certain men of the same bran he sailed to Rome, that he might be admitted into St. Cornelius's communion; lyingly boasting that Fortunatus had been ordained by twenty-five bishops. In which lie of theirs, says St. Cyprian in the same place, after they had been detected and confounded (at Carthage), only five shipwrecked men assembling, and those excluded by us, they sailed to Rome with the merchandise of their lies, as though the truth could not sail after them, to convict lying tongues by the proof of a certain fact.
[207] seeks Cornelius's communion; repelled by him, And again he speaks thus of their rash approach to the Roman Church: After these things (the crimes which Cyprian had set forth) they yet moreover, a pseudo-bishop having been set up for them by heretics, dare to sail, and to carry letters from schismatics and profane men to the Chair of Peter and to the principal Church, whence sacerdotal unity took its rise, and not to consider that these are the Romans, whose faith was praised by the preaching of the Apostle, and to whom perfidy can have no access. Nor indeed were the seditious men received there otherwise than the dignity of the Roman Church demanded: for Cornelius, to whom their crimes had long since been made known by the letters of St. Cyprian and of the other bishops who had assembled at Carthage, of which mention is made in letter 42, repelled them with the fortitude that was fitting, and made this known to Cyprian by letters sent through the acolyte Saturus.
[208] Nor even so, however, did Felicissimus and those who had come with him lose heart; threatens many things. Letters written by Cornelius but, assailing the holy Pontiff again, they threatened that, if he did not receive the letters they had brought, they would read them publicly, and would bring forward many other things of which he would repent. The threats of the faithless men moved the Pontiff's mind somewhat, especially since Cyprian had signified nothing to him about Fortunatus's ordination; and therefore he dispatched a second letter to him, by which he might make him more certain of the whole matter. To both these letters, which are lost, St. Cyprian replied by the fifty-fifth, from which I cull the following: I have read your letter, dearest Brother, which you sent by our brother Saturus the acolyte, full enough both of brotherly love and of ecclesiastical discipline and of sacerdotal censure; in which you signified that Felicissimus, an enemy of Christ not new, but long since excluded on account of his very many and most grievous crimes, and condemned not only by my sentence but by that of very many fellow-bishops, was rejected by you there; and that, when he had come surrounded by a crowd and faction of desperate men, he was driven out of the Church with the full vigor with which a Bishop ought to act…
[209] But when I had read your other letter, Brother, which you subjoined to the first, and Cyprian on this matter to each other. I marveled not a little, when I noticed that you had been somewhat moved by the threats and terrors of those who had come, since, according to what you wrote, they had assailed you with the utmost desperation, threatening that, if you did not receive the letters which they had brought, they would recite them publicly, and would bring forward many base and shameful things, worthy of their own mouth. But if the matter is so, dearest Brother, that the audacity of the most worthless is to be feared, and that what the wicked cannot accomplish by right and equity they accomplish by rashness and desperation, it is all over with the vigor of the Episcopate and with the sublime and divine power of governing the Church; nor can we any longer either endure or be Christians, if it has come to this, that we should be terrified by the threats and snares of abandoned men. Thus Cyprian, showing by many reasons and examples that we ought no more to yield to Christians than to gentiles or Jews, and that it makes no difference to glory whether death or evils be inflicted for Christ's sake by these or by those.
[210] Tillemont in article 15 deduces from these things that St. Cornelius, in a manner terrified by the schismatics' threats, betrayed in his second letter to Cyprian a little of fear and of levity in himself, St. Cornelius is vindicated from the mark of pusillanimity which at first sight can seem probable to one reading Cyprian's letter. But if we weigh it more attentively, we shall recognize without difficulty that the holy Pontiff was in this part free from all fault of a timorous and light mind, and shall confess that he acted truly prudently. In the first place, the threats leveled by the schismatics aimed not at Cornelius but at Cyprian: for this the latter clearly signifies when, having premised that they are to be despised, he adds: But what self-exaltation is this, what a swollen and puffed-up and empty boasting of men threatening, to threaten one absent there (at Rome), when they have me present here in their power? We do not fear their revilings, with which they daily mangle themselves and their own life; we do not shudder at the cudgels, stones, and swords which they keep brandishing with parricidal words, etc.
[211] and of levity. And so, if those seditious men struck some terror into the holy Pontiff, he feared not for himself but for Cyprian, whom, since he knew him to be most useful to the Church at that calamitous time, he could with no less virtue be moved by his perils, than Cyprian could despise his own. Then Felicissimus with his followers was boasting that his Fortunatus had been appointed bishop by twenty-five Numidian bishops; and Cornelius could not refute them, having as yet received no letter on this matter from Cyprian. For that he complained of this silence, St. Cyprian sufficiently intimates in the same letter, excusing himself for not having written of that matter sooner, and adding that, having afterwards found an opportunity, he had wished to do it by the acolyte Felicianus; but that he, delayed by the wind, and detained by him for the receiving of other letters, had been forestalled by Felicissimus.
[212] He is vindicated. The holy Pontiff could therefore, without any pusillanimity of mind, fear evil from these schismatics both for Cyprian and for the African church, and modestly be displeased with the former for having written nothing to him about a matter of such moment. He could prudently relax something of his usual vigor, until he should have received more certain news about the number of schismatic bishops who were said to have ordained Fortunatus; just as Cyprian himself had done in the case of St. Cornelius and Novatian. He could also receive the letters thrust upon him, in order to suppress them, lest they should be read publicly by Felicissimus, as he was threatening. Whether, however, he received them, is plainly uncertain from the praised letter, in which Cyprian only says that he was somewhat moved by the terrors and threats of the seditious men if he did not receive the letters; and at the end, no mention being made of the schismatics' letters, he only asks that he would order his own to be read before the Roman clergy, as he had elsewhere also been wont to do of his own accord; saying: That, this letter of mine being read, if any contagion of poisoned speech and pestiferous sowing had crept in there, it may all be shaken out of the brethren's ears… Although I know that our brotherhood there, fortified indeed by your providence, but also sufficiently wary by its own vigilance, can neither be caught nor deceived by the poisons of heretics. For the rest, what St. Cornelius further did in the case of Felicissimus, none of the ancients has handed down; but perhaps he could not do anything, while the persecution raged, some sparks of which we shall show in the following paragraph to have been rekindled in Africa when Cyprian wrote these things.
§ XI. The persecution revived by Gallus: provision made for the lapsed against it: the illustrious confession of Cornelius and of the Romans: the Novatians exempt from persecution.
The emperor Gallus renews the persecution, Decius having been slain in battle against the Goths about the month of November in the year 251, Caius Vibius Trebonianus Gallus, having taken up the empire, and his son Volusianus having been named first Caesar and then also Augustus, revived in the year 252 the Decian persecution, which had been lulled, and disturbed such peace as the Church had, to his own and the empire's great loss, as St. Dionysius of Alexandria, a contemporary writer, testifies in Eusebius, book 7 of the History, chapter 1, in the words which I subjoin. Dionysius in his Letter to Hermammon writes thus of the emperor Gallus: "But neither did Gallus understand Decius's fault, nor foresee what in the end had ruined him; nay rather, he struck against the same stone set before his eyes. Who, when his empire was in a prosperous state, and all things were succeeding according to his heart's wish, persecuted the holy men who were pleading prayers to God for his peace and safety: together with them therefore he put to flight also the prayers that were wont to be made for him." These things about Gallus, Dionysius.
[214] Pearson in the Cyprianic Annals at the year 252, perhaps on the occasion of sacrifices, and Tillemont in the treatment of Cornelius, article 15, and others, are of opinion that the occasion for renewing the persecution was given by sacrifices proclaimed everywhere throughout the Roman empire by Gallus and Volusianus for the sake of extinguishing a plague. Of this savage pestilence, by which Aurelius Victor in the Caesars writes that Hostilian Augustus, Decius's son, was also carried off, and which devoured the whole Roman world in a horrible manner, many of the ancient writers make mention, and there will be a place for treating of it in the case of St. Cyprian. Nor is this opinion far from probable: for since, on the testimony of the same Victor, out of that plague favor was sought by Gallus and Volusianus, in that they anxiously and most zealously took care of the funerals of even the meanest, it is also probable that they, after the manner of the gentiles, sought to ward off so great an evil by public sacrifices; and that they punished with torments the Christians who refused to sacrifice, as authors of the calamity. To this
Pearson also refers coins of those same emperors, inscribed on the reverse Apollini salutari, or, as Pagi in the Critica at the year 252, number 26, has it, Apollo salutaris.
[215] Yet the said Pagi at number 10 denies proclaimed to extinguish the plague. that this persecution, which he holds to have arisen at the end of the month of June, was decreed on the occasion of the said plague, relying on the testimony of Cedrenus, who, treating of Gallus and Volusianus, says: At that time a plague prevailed, spread from Ethiopia to the Western part of the earth: nor was any city free of it; many were even twice infested with that pestilence. It held for fifteen years, began in autumn, and ceased at the rising of the Dog-star; which indeed he suspects in the same place Cedrenus borrowed from some ancient author, perhaps Philostratus. Pagi is favored by St. Dionysius's words, reported in number 113, in which the empire is said to have been in a prosperous state before Gallus persecuted the holy men who were pleading prayers to God for his peace and safety. Yet it is not so certain as Pagi would have it that that pestilence did not arise before the autumn of the year 252; since it is not altogether improbable that it had already begun under Decius, although it did not then rage so savagely as under Gallus and Volusianus, as may be seen in Tillemont, Note 14 on St. Cyprian.
[216] However these things may stand, that edicts had already been posted at Carthage by which sacrifices were commanded, Cyprian, divinely forewarned of the persecution, at the time when St. Cyprian was writing letter 55 to St. Cornelius, of which we made mention in the preceding paragraph, he testifies in these words: In these very days in which I made this letter to you, on account of the sacrifices which by a posted edict the people were bidden to celebrate, I was again demanded for the lion in the circus by the shouting of the populace. But before the persecution had begun, St. Cyprian, divinely forewarned of the imminent persecution, had decreed in a synod of forty-one bishops that peace should promptly be imparted to those penitents who had done penance from the first day of their lapse and had not withdrawn from the Church of God. But since in the synod of the year just past it had been laid down that men of this kind, except in danger of death, should not be admitted to peace until after a long penance, both he and the aforesaid bishops informed St. Cornelius of this new decree by a joint letter, which is the fifty-fourth among Cyprian's.
[217] sends a new decree about the lapsed to St. Cornelius. Now the reason for changing the decree they set forth in the same place thus: For the penance of the sorrowing was deservedly drawn out to a longer time, so that help should be given to the sick at their end, so long as quiet and tranquillity were present, which allowed the tears of those long lamenting to be deferred, and help to be given late to those dying in sickness. But now peace is necessary not for the weak but for the strong; nor is communion to be given by us to the dying, but to the living; so that those whom we rouse and exhort to battle we may not leave unarmed and naked, but may fortify with the protection of the Blood and Body of Christ. And since the Eucharist is made for this, that it may be a defense to those receiving it, let us arm with the fortification of the Lord's fullness those whom we wish to be safe against the adversary. These same things they confirm by many arguments, and at length add: Which we believe will please you also, in contemplation of fatherly mercy. Nor does it seem doubtful that the holy Pontiff assented to it; but we have no document on this matter.
[218] The persecution having suddenly arisen at Rome, Not long after these things a sudden persecution arose at Rome against the Church and its Pontiff St. Cornelius, in which he, after a confession worthy of Christ's Vicar, was driven into exile. Papebroch in the Propylæum of May, page 34 \*, suspected that the council of sixty bishops which we said was celebrated at Rome by St. Cornelius, and his frequent traffic of letters with Cyprian, cast a fear of sedition into Gallus, and impelled him to persecute the Pontiff and his people. Which, though it is not far from probable, yet, since we cannot doubt that at Rome no less than at Carthage the deadly edicts by which the people were commanded to sacrifice were posted up, we think the cause of the persecution is to be sought from nothing else than the constancy of the Romans in the faith.
[219] St. Cornelius, Further, how great glory from this persecution St. Cornelius, and by his example the other Roman faithful — not only those who had stood unconquered under Decius, but also those who under his tyranny had succumbed either through fear or through the force of torments — how great glory, I say, all these won back, we learn from St. Cyprian's letter 57, which he wrote in congratulation to the holy Pontiff when he was already in exile, and which therefore, though later in time, we here report. Cyprian to his brother Cornelius, greeting. We have learned, dearest Brother, the glorious testimonies of your faith and virtue, and we have received the honor of your confession with such exultation that we reckon ourselves also partakers and associates in your merits and praises. For since we have one Church, and a joined mind, and an undivided concord, what priest would not rejoice in the praises of his Fellow-priest as in his own; or what brotherhood would not everywhere be glad in the joy of the brethren?
[220] It cannot be sufficiently expressed how great was the exultation there (at Carthage), with the greatest part of the faithful and how great the joy, when we had learned prosperous and brave things about you: that you had stood forth there as leader of the confession to the brethren, but that the leader's confession also grew by the brethren's agreement, so that, while you go before to glory, you have made many companions of glory, and have persuaded the people to become confessors, while you are the first ready to confess for all: so that we do not find what we ought first to proclaim in you, whether your prompt and steadfast faith, or the inseparable charity of the brethren. There the virtue of the Bishop going before was publicly approved; the unity of the brotherhood following was shown. While among you there is one mind and one voice, the whole Roman Church has confessed. There shone forth, most dear brethren \, the faith which the blessed Apostle proclaimed of you. This praise of virtue, and this firmness of strength, he was even then foreseeing in the spirit, and, attesting your merits by his heralding of things to come, while he praises the parents he challenges the sons.*
[221] While you are thus unanimous, while you are thus brave, you have given great examples of unanimity and fortitude to the other brethren also. freely and of his own accord confesses Christ; You have taught mightily to fear God, to cleave firmly to Christ, that the people be joined to the priests in danger, that in persecution brothers be not separated from brothers, that concord joined together can by no means be conquered, that whatever is asked together by all, the God of peace grants to the peaceable. The adversary had leapt forth to disturb Christ's camp with violent terror; but with the same onset with which he had come, with the same onset he was driven back and conquered; and as much dread and terror as he brought, so much fortitude and strength did he find. He had believed he could supplant God's servants again (as lately under Decius), and, as though they were raw recruits, as though less prepared and less wary, shake them after his usual manner.
[222] Assailing one first, he had tried to separate him, as a wolf a sheep from the flock, and those who had earlier lapsed excellently wash away their fault. as a hawk a dove from the company of the flying: for he who has not strength enough against all seeks to circumvent the solitude of individuals. But beaten back by the faith and vigor alike of a united army, he understood that Christ's soldiers were now watching sober, and standing armed for battle; that they cannot be conquered, but can die; and that by this very thing they are unconquered, because they do not fear to die, nor fight back against their assailants, since it is not lawful for the innocent to kill even the guilty; but readily hand over both their lives and their blood; so that, when so great a malice and savagery ranges in the world, they may the more swiftly withdraw from the evil and the savage. What a glorious spectacle that was under the eyes of God, what a joy in the sight of Christ for his Church, that not single soldiers but the whole camp together came forth to the battle which the enemy had attempted to bring on! For it is certain that all would have come, if they had been able to hear; since whoever heard came running in haste and arrived.
[223] How many there who had lapsed (in the Decian persecution) were restored by a glorious confession! They stood strong, and by the very grief of penance were made stronger for the battle: so that it appears that they were lately taken by surprise, and trembled with dread at a new and unaccustomed thing; that afterwards their true faith returned to them, and that their strength, gathered from the fear of God, was steadfastly and firmly braced for every endurance; and that they now stand not for pardon of a crime, but for the crown of suffering. Thus St. Cyprian; upon which some things come to be observed. That this persecution broke out suddenly at Rome, the same holy bishop of Carthage signifies in letter 58, sent to St. Lucius, Cornelius's successor; saying: We understand, dearest brother, and we perceive with the whole light of our heart the salutary and holy counsels of the divine Majesty, whence that sudden persecution lately arose there, whence the secular power suddenly rushed forth against the Church of Christ and against Bishop Cornelius, the blessed martyr, and against you all.
[224] That one man whom Gallus first assailed Not all, however, at once, but first some one man, as we have seen from the same Cyprian, Gallus assailed, with crafty indeed but frustrated counsel; but whether this was St. Cornelius himself, or some other, to strengthen whom the Saint hastened up, Tillemont doubts in article 16. His reason for doubting is that the holy Pontiff is there said to have been leader of the confession to the brethren, and by going before to glory to have made many companions of glory, and to have persuaded the people to become confessors. Yet the latter altogether seems to be what must be said: for Cyprian, who is wont to call bishops shepherds and the people the flock, would not have compared the holy Pontiff to a dove of the flock, or to a sheep of the flock, but to the flock's shepherd; as has already been observed in volume 2 of September, page 520, in the treatment of SS. Censurinus and Companions, with the addition of a not improbable conjecture that Censurinus is to be understood as that one man praised by St. Cyprian. I judge therefore that the matter happened in about this way. Gallus, that he might the more easily scatter Christ's flock, determining to attack them singly, ordered a certain one man, whether of the clergy or of the people, to be summoned to sacrifice.
[225] was not St. Cornelius; yet to him Hearing this, Cornelius, out of his pastoral solicitude, promptly ran to him; and, not unmindful of the cowardice of certain persons in the recent persecution, in order to challenge the rest by his own example, offers himself ready to profess Christ first on behalf of all. Nor did hope deceive him: for the Roman faithful, when the mind of their most holy Shepherd was understood, were kindled with so great an ardor of martyrdom that whoever heard came running in haste to him and arrived; and that St. Cyprian did not know what he ought first to proclaim, whether the Pontiff's prompt and steadfast faith, or the inseparable charity of the brethren. Further, being thus animated, they did not fear to confess Christ of their own accord; and Gallus, who by assailing one man had hoped to circumvent the solitude of individuals, beaten back by the faith and vigor alike of a united army,
understood that Christ's soldiers were now watching sober, and standing armed for battle; that they cannot be conquered, but can die, and that by this very thing they are unconquered, because they do not fear to die.
[226] the chief praise of the confession is owed; Hence St. Cyprian rightly exclaims in the same place: What a joy that was under the eyes of Christ for his Church, that not single soldiers but the whole camp together came forth to the battle which the enemy had attempted to bring on (upon individuals separately). Now on this opinion of ours the other things also which we just reported from St. Cyprian are rightly explained. For, first, it is plain why that one man whom Gallus assailed before the rest is compared to a sheep and to a dove of the flock; which of the head of all, the Roman Pontiff, could have been said only ineptly. It is plain, secondly, why Cyprian nevertheless asserts that Cornelius stood forth as leader of the confession to the brethren, that he went before to glory, that he persuaded the people to become confessors, that he was the first ready to confess for all, etc., as will be manifest to one who considers.
[227] of which no part reached the Novatians, Yet that no part of this glory belonged to the Novatians, St. Cyprian observes, both in the praised letter and in the fifty-eighth, writing that it came about by divine counsel that, while these lived exempt from persecution, it should be made plain to the world with whom Christ's Church was. Hear him in the earlier letter addressing Cornelius. What has Novatian to say to these things, dearest Brother? Does he now at last lay aside his error? Or rather, as is the way of madmen, has he been driven the more to fury by our very good and prosperous fortunes; and, the more and more the glory of love and faith grows here, the more the madness of dissension and jealousy breaks out afresh there; nor does the wretched man cure his own wound, but wounds still more grievously both himself and his own, clamoring with his tongue to the ruin of the brethren, and hurling the javelins of a poisoned eloquence, harder through the depravity of secular philosophy than peaceable through the gentleness of the Lord's wisdom — a deserter of the Church, an enemy of mercy, a slayer of penance, a teacher of pride, a corrupter of truth, a destroyer of charity.
[228] Does he now acknowledge who is the Priest of God, what is the Church and house of Christ, by divine providence. who are the servants of God whom the devil assails, who are the Christians whom antichrist attacks? For he does not seek those whom he has already subdued, nor is he eager to overthrow those whom he has already made his own. As an enemy and foe of the Church, those whom he has estranged from the Church and led outside, he despises and passes by as captives and conquered; those he proceeds to harass in whom he sees Christ to dwell. Although, even if any of such men be seized, there is no reason for him to flatter himself as though in a confession of the Name; since it is established that, if men of that kind be slain outside the Church, it is not the crown of faith but rather the punishment of perfidy; and that those will not dwell in the house of God among the unanimous whom we see to have withdrawn from the peaceable and divine house through the fury of discord. Thus he: but let us return to the confessors.
Annotata\ elsewhere: Frater carissime*
§ XII. The Saint's exile: the length of his see: his martyrdom more probably inflicted upon him by capital punishment: his genuine letters, and the spurious ones: the Ordinations made by him.
Cornelius is banished Whether from so great a number of confessors some were soon crowned with martyrdom, St. Cyprian does not hand down; nay, by his silence he rather intimates the contrary: below, however, we shall see that not a few of them happily consummated it in that same persecution, among whom perhaps SS. Cerealis and his Companions are to be reckoned, whom the Acts and the Martyrologies mention, and about whom much was treated in §3 of this Commentary: yet the martyrdom of all these could have happened some time after that glorious confession. Perhaps Gallus, who had determined at first to attack only one man, deterred by the multitude of confessors running to the tribunal of their own accord and eagerly against all his expectation, abstained at the beginning from slaughter, thinking it more advisable to delay somewhat until that first ardor of those professing should cool. Hence he did not then punish even the Pontiff himself, who was going before the rest, with a capital penalty, but drove him into exile, as has already been often said above from the primary Catalogue of the Roman Pontiffs, with which in this part the Acts agree, although they wrongly note Decius for Gallus.
[230] As regards the place of exile, it was Civitavecchia, to Civitavecchia, a city of Etruria founded on the shore of the Tyrrhenian sea with a famous harbor, about whose situation and growth Pliny, book 6, letter 31, may be consulted. That it was afterwards destroyed by the Saracens, and restored by Pope Leo IV in a better-fortified place, Anastasius the Librarian writes in the Life of that Pontiff. It is now called Civitas vetus, commonly Civitavecchia. Further, it is probable that others also, especially of the clergy, were banished thither with Cornelius the Pontiff, and the Acts in Schelstrate intimate this in these words: But at the same time Decius (rather, Gallus) seized the most blessed Pope Cornelius with all his clergy, both priests and deacons; whom he ordered to be deported into exile at Civitavecchia. Among these glorious exiles Baronius at the year 256, number 64, recounts St. Lucius, Cornelius's successor in the Roman Chair of St. Peter: which we can neither deny nor confirm. Of this St. Lucius treatment has been made in our Work at the fourth day of March, on which he is venerated.
[231] where he receives from Cyprian a letter of congratulation, St. Cornelius, therefore, was in exile at Civitavecchia when Cyprian congratulated him on his glorious confession by letter 57, which we have recited for the greatest part in the preceding §. Toward the end of that letter that holy bishop, presaging that the time of the last contest was drawing near both for himself and for him, asks and promises mutual prayers; and asks that whichever of them should first deserve to be crowned should not cease to pray to God for the rest of the faithful. We exhort you plainly, he said, as much as we can, dearest Brother, by that mutual charity by which we cleave to one another, that, since we are instructed by the providence of the Lord admonishing us, and are warned by the salutary counsels of the divine mercy, that the day of our contest and struggle is now drawing near, we may not cease, together with all the people, to persist in fastings, vigils, prayers.
[232] and one presaging his imminent death; Let us apply ourselves to constant groanings and frequent supplications. For these are our heavenly arms, which make us stand and persevere bravely. These are the spiritual fortifications and divine weapons which protect us. Let us be mindful of one another, in concord and unanimous; let us on both sides always pray for each other; let us relieve pressures and straits by mutual charity; and if any of us hence shall have gone before by the swiftness of divine favor, let our love persevere with the Lord, let prayer for our brothers and sisters not cease before the mercy of the Father. I wish you, dearest Brother, ever to fare well. Thus far St. Cyprian; whose presage, however, concerned St. Cornelius more nearly than himself, since he survived among the living some years after that letter was written.
[233] and undergoes martyrdom after a See of 1 year, 3 months, 10 days. But St. Cornelius perhaps within less than a month flew to heaven: which happened not at Rome, as the Acts would have it, but at Civitavecchia, as we showed in §3, following the most ancient Catalogue with Papebroch and the greater number of the learned. The time of his See is reported in the praised Catalogue thus: Cornelius, two years, three months, ten days, from the consulship of Decius II and Decius, until that of Gallus and Volusianus: but that for Decius II one must read Decius III we proved in §4, which consulship falls in the year of Christ 251, from which we also began St. Cornelius's Pontificate. But now, since Gallus and Volusianus held the consulship in the year 252, and under it Lucius was substituted for our Saint, it is manifest that an error crept into the praised Catalogue by the addition of one year, which being cut away, the rest will stand rightly. For by going backward one year, three months, ten days from the fourteenth of September of the year 252, on which the Saint's death is marked, one arrives at the fourth of June 251, on which it has been shown above that the beginning of his Pontificate can be placed. As to the one year of his See, the Catalogue of the queen of Sweden published in the second place by Henschen agrees with us; but it adds two months and three days.
[234] This opinion of ours, although it is now the more common, has nevertheless its difficulties and its learned adversaries. Others attribute to him 2 years The most distinguished Emmanuel a Schelstrate in dissertation 2, chapter 6, of the Antiquitas illustrata, and Francesco Bianchini in his chronological Notes on the Librarian, contend that Cornelius held the Pontificate for two years. To this end the former of them praises, besides Henschen's Catalogue, Eusebius in the Chronicle, St. Jerome in the book On Ecclesiastical Writers, and St. Prosper in the entire Chronicle. To these he adds besides two Corbie Catalogues, of which he says one was written in the sixth, the other in the eighth century; likewise the Palatine-Vatican Catalogue, drawn up in the time of Charlemagne, and another of the Alexandrian library in the ninth century; and finally the author of the Liber Pontificalis, and the Florentine, Royal, and Vatican manuscripts.
[235] Bianchini, besides various codices also, recounted in volume 2 of Anastasius, of Pontificate, page XCVII, brings forward on page 197 an old inscription placed under a certain painting in the basilica of St. Paul, which, because it is partly worn away by age, he exhibits in such a way as to express the letters which remain in larger characters, and those which have fallen out in smaller, in this manner:
✠ Corne
LIUS
SED
AN
NI i. m. III
DX.
Resting therefore upon these, and thinking that the year of Christ 252, the fourteenth day of September, must nevertheless be retained as the day of the Saint's death, Bianchini began his Pontificate from the month of June of the year 250, which we observed in §4, following very many learned men, is not probable.
[236] To the inscription objected by Bianchini I reply and whose that it is too uncertain for anything certain to be had from it; nay, that it favors our opinion no less than his, I shall show from that very man. For in his Prolegomena to the same volume 2, page XCVII, the praised inscription is read thus:
Corne
LIVS
SED
AN
N I. m. III
DX
But then below there follows this note: It is uncertain whether the paintings report that he sat ANNIS III, or rather ANN. I. m. III. D. X., which seems more likely, as is proved from the consuls: namely from the consulships of both Decii, and then of Gallus and Volusianus, in which he had read that the beginning and the end of Cornelius's Pontificate was recorded in the Fasti, as has also been said by us above. Gratuitously therefore does the learned man afterwards on page 197 advise that two years rather than one should be read; nor does he seem to have so judged in the latter place except in order to have the praised inscription favoring his own chronology, which nevertheless we have proved cannot on other grounds be admitted.
[237] Taking an entirely opposite path, Schelstrate, having begun the Saint's Pontificate from about the month of April of the year 251, arguments set the end of it and of his life at
the fourteenth of September of the year 253, and thus by that one year by which Bianchini made his See too early, he prolonged the same. Consistently with this he confesses that Cornelius reached the consulship of Volusianus and Maximus, by which the year 253 is marked; nor does he think that this is repugnant to the most ancient Catalogue, although in it he is only said to have sat until Gallus and Volusianus, that is, until their consulship, which falls in the preceding year: for it is proper to that Catalogue, he says, to express the penultimate consulship, lest it be compelled to repeat the same consuls perpetually in the following Pontificate. So indeed it seemed to the learned man, but wrongly: for although in the first part of the Catalogue, which is completed with St. Urban, the same consuls under whom the predecessors died are not repeated in the successor's period, yet it is usually otherwise in the second part, as Henschen observed in the Apparatus to the Pontifical Chronology, and as will be evident to one consulting the Catalogue.
[238] a reply is made; But let us grant for a moment that this happened in this part too, as may seem to have been done in the cases of Stephen and Sixtus; yet Schelstrate will get nothing for himself from the reason adduced: for according to it, the penultimate consulship, namely of Gallus and Volusianus, would have been marked in the praised Catalogue only for this reason, that the consulship of Volusianus and Maximus was passed over lest it should have to be repeated in the following Pontificate. But now, in St. Lucius's period, who succeeded Cornelius, no mention is made of the consulship of Volusianus and Maximus, and accordingly it was by no means to be omitted in Cornelius's, lest it should be repeated in Lucius's. Wherefore, when he says of Lucius: He was in the times of Gallus and Volusianus, until Valerian III and Gallienus II, he sufficiently indicates that he came to the Pontificate under the same Augusti as consuls under whom he had said St. Cornelius died; for otherwise, contrary to his custom, the author of the Catalogue would have noted the consuls under whom Lucius began to sit neither in Cornelius nor in Lucius.
[239] and especially To the objected Chronicles of Eusebius and Prosper, and the other testimonies adduced by Schelstrate for a two-year Pontificate of Cornelius, I reply that in Eusebius's Chronicle, which the rest followed, an error must be acknowledged, and that his statements cannot be composed with Schelstrate's own opinion, as I show in a few words. Eusebius in the praised Chronicle mentions Cornelius's two successors, the saints Lucius and Stephen, before the slaying of Gallus and Volusianus, thus: Lucius holds the Episcopate of the Roman Church as the twenty-first, eight months; after whom the twenty-second, Stephen, three years. Then he presently adds: Gallus and Volusianus, when they had set out from the City against Aemilianus, who was plotting revolution in Moesia, were slain at Forum Flaminii, or, as others think, at Interamna. Now it is established that this slaying happened in the year of Christ 253, before the second year of their reign was completed; which Prosper too teaches in the entire Chronicle, where, having borrowed the very words from Eusebius, he recounts the eight-month Pontificate of Lucius, and Stephen's succession, and also the death of Gallus and Volusianus, under the consuls Volusianus II and Maximus, that is, at the said year of Christ.
[240] to the authority According to these things, Lucius, St. Cornelius's successor, having held the Pontificate about eight months, died in the year 253, and in the same year Stephen succeeded him: how then could St. Cornelius have died, as Schelstrate would have it, on the fourteenth day of September of that same year? Further, although about the year of St. Lucius's death, and the beginning of St. Stephen's Pontificate, my Elders at the fourth day of March, on which the former is venerated, and in the Propylæum of May, thought otherwise, yet Bosch, in the deeds of St. Stephen set forth at the second day of August, §2, after Pearson in the Cyprianic Annals and both Pagis, embraced in fixing that Stephen's accession to the Pontificate at the aforesaid year the opinion of Eusebius and Prosper as more common and more probable, and indeed judged that his ordination could probably be referred to the thirteenth day of May of that year.
[241] But to return to the Chronicle, it must be confessed of Eusebius, either that Eusebius erred in assigning two years, or that he reckoned to his See the interpontificate which came between Fabian's martyrdom and Cornelius's ordination. And the latter indeed appears to me more probable from his Ecclesiastical History, in book 7, chapter 2, of which he attributes to Cornelius in the Pontificate not merely two years but about three: Meanwhile at Rome, he says, when Cornelius had held the Episcopate about three years, Lucius is substituted in his place: who, having discharged that office for scarcely the space of eight months, dying left the episcopal office to Stephen. For if you count from the twentieth day of January of the year 250, on which St. Fabian was crowned with martyrdom, to the fourteenth of September of the year 252, on which we say St. Cornelius died, you will find 2 years, 7 months, 25 days intervening, which could have been taken by Eusebius for about three years.
[242] For the rest, since St. Jerome and Prosper drew the two years of Cornelius's Pontificate from Eusebius's Chronicle; of St. Jerome, etc. and of the chronologists praised above some likewise drew the two years, others the three, without doubt from the same source or from the cited Ecclesiastical History, to all these one must reply in the same way as to Eusebius. The most eminent Cardinal Baronius in the Ecclesiastical Annals, volume 2, at the year 255, number 58, likewise acknowledges an error in the said documents, and alleges the cause of the error in these words: That some set down two years of Cornelius's See, others three or thereabouts, whereas in fact it is established that he did not complete even two, seems to have come about from this, that that great interval of time of the vacancy of Fabian's See was entirely unknown to all of them, which it is possible to reach only from St. Cyprian's cited letters, and those diligently inspected. Thus he at the year, as we said, 255, to which he fixes Cornelius's death, anticipating the common era after his manner; on which matter Pagi in the Critica, and others, may be consulted.
[243] By what manner of death or punishment the holy Pontiff died St. Cornelius's martyrdom is plainly unknown: for what his Acts report about his martyrdom in the city of Rome under Decius we have already shown in §3 cannot be admitted. The author of the most ancient Catalogue of the Pontiffs only says that he received his falling-asleep with glory at Civitavecchia; whence some have supposed that he died by a natural rather than a violent death, hastened however by the hardships of exile and perhaps also of prison, and therefore is deservedly venerated by the Church as a martyr. Yet there are not lacking weighty testimonies which persuade that that ambiguous phrase, he received his falling-asleep with glory, is to be taken of a martyrdom consummated by capital punishment. In the first place St. Cyprian in letter 58 to St. Lucius, Cornelius's successor, expressly calls him the blessed martyr.
[244] He does the same in letter 67 to St. Stephen, likewise Pope; is proved from ancient writers saying: There is to be preserved the glorious honor of our Predecessors, the blessed martyrs Cornelius and Lucius; whose memory, since we honor it, you, dearest brother, much more ought to honor and preserve by your gravity and authority, who have been made their vicar and successor. For they, full of the Spirit of God, and set in a glorious martyrdom, judged that peace was to be given to the lapsed. With this agrees Eusebius in the Chronicle, saying: The Episcopate of the Roman Church, after Fabian's glorious death, Cornelius received as the twentieth, for two years; who himself also was crowned with martyrdom. Of his martyrdom St. Eulogius, bishop of Alexandria in the sixth century or at the beginning of the seventh, makes mention with praise, on the testimony of Photius in the Bibliotheca, in Andrea Schott's translation, column [ ], where one reads: But that afterwards Cornelius, the Roman Bishop, ended his life by an excellent martyrdom, Eulogius the archbishop of Alexandria relates. But of what kind that martyrdom was, since neither Photius from Eulogius, whose Work does not survive, nor St. Cyprian, nor Eusebius declares, the crown of martyrdom is indeed established, but it remains in doubt whether it was inflicted by punishment or by the hardships of exile.
[245] and it is shown St. Pacian, bishop of Barcelona, who flourished in the fourth century, says something more: for he in letter 2 to Sympronian not obscurely intimates that St. Cornelius was slain. For when Sympronian was boasting of Novatian's fictitious martyrdom, he replied in these words: As to your thinking that Novatian suffered first, and adding that Cyprian said "My adversary has gone before me," see how manifestly I answer. Novatian never underwent martyrdom, nor has that been heard or read from the words of the most blessed Cyprian. You have his letters, in which he relates that Cornelius, Bishop of the City, whom Novatian then envied, resisting hostile princes, often confessed, was often harassed; that he was made leader of very many confessors and of very many martyrs also, and was most gloriously crowned with very many; while Novatian was then still living, and moreover secure…
[246] that he more probably underwent it, Further, even if Novatian suffered something, yet he was not also slain: even if slain, yet not crowned. Why not? Outside the peace of the Church, outside concord, outside that mother of whom he who is a martyr ought to be a portion… But Cyprian suffered in the concord of all, in the common peace, in the flock of the confessors, and, having often confessed in repeated persecutions, and been harassed with much mangling, at last was given the saving cup to drink. This was to be crowned! Thus far St. Pacian; who, though he here speaks chiefly of St. Cyprian's martyrdom, and opposes it to Novatian's fictitious one, yet, since he denies that this schismatic was crowned or underwent martyrdom on this very ground, that he was not slain, sufficiently indicates that St. Cornelius, whom he had said was most gloriously crowned with very many, was slain; which seems to designate something other than a natural death from hardships.
[247] not through the hardships of exile alone, Still more clearly does St. Jerome speak in two places; first in the Life of St. Paul the hermit, in our volume 1 of January, page 604: Cornelius at Rome, Cyprian at Carthage, were condemned with happy bloodshed: or as the most recent Paris edition of the same holy doctor's Works has it, volume 4, part 2, column 69: Cornelius at Rome, Cyprian at Carthage, endured martyrdom with happy bloodshed. The other place is in the Catalogue of Writers, in the volume and part just praised, column 119, where he writes of St. Cyprian: He suffered … on the same day on which Cornelius suffered at Rome; but not in the same year. See, however, what we said about the arena of his martyrdom in §3. With Jerome agrees, if you except the place of the slaying, the ancient author of a homily delivered in Africa on St. Cyprian's very feast-day in the time of the Vandal persecution, that is, in the fifth century, and published by Thierry Ruinart in the History of that persecution, in which, raising up his hearers with hope of divine help to be obtained through St. Cyprian, he adds: Present too is St. Cornelius, Bishop of the City of Rome, who suffered on this same day.
[248] but by a death violently inflicted, Not obscurely does Prosper also speak in the entire Chronicle, saying: The Episcopate of the Roman Church, after Fabian's glorious death, Cornelius receives as the twentieth, for two years, who after two years is crowned with the same martyrdom. Now it is established that
Fabian was crowned by the supreme punishment, and perhaps by the sword, as the Greeks hand down, as has been shown in our Work in volume 2 of January at the twentieth day, on which he is venerated. That Cornelius was beheaded was judged also by Abbo, abbot of Fleury, a writer of the tenth century, in the Lives of the Pontiffs, saying: He was driven out to Civitavecchia, and there received the (letter) written by Cyprian the martyr in prison; in which place also he was beheaded. I confess, however, that his testimony, besides being more recent, is suspect to me, because he mentions a letter written by St. Cyprian in prison; for thus he betrays that the fabulous Acts, in which this very thing is said, gave him his light, and at the same time raises the suspicion that he learned the kind of punishment from the same, although he rightly placed the arena not at Rome but at Civitavecchia, contrary to what is said in the Acts.
[249] Further, it seemed good to me to heap up so many testimonies, both that his most holy Pontiff's martyrdom might be established, or by the supreme punishment. and that it might appear not to be so certain as some have thought that he was crowned by a natural death, hastened however by hardships, rather than by a violent one, that is, by capital punishment. For although those words of the most ancient Catalogue, There he received his falling-asleep with glory, favor the former opinion, yet they do not make it certain, since a martyr crowned by a violent death can also be said to have received his falling-asleep with glory. Of the day of his death we have already treated in §1, and we said that there is no reason why we should depart from the martyrologists and other venerable writers who mark the fourteenth of September. Of the Companions of his martyrdom too we disputed in §3.
[250] It remains that we say a few things about the Saint's writings. That St. Cornelius is recounted among the ecclesiastical writers by St. Jerome we have already mentioned more than once; The letters written by the Saint, and the holy doctor's words are of this kind: Cornelius, Bishop of the city of Rome, to whom eight letters of Cyprian are extant, wrote a letter to Fabius, bishop of the church of Antioch, about the Roman, Italian and African synod, and another about Novatian and about those who have lapsed; a third about the acts of the synod, a fourth to the same Fabius, very lengthy, and containing the causes and the anathema of the Novatian heresy. Of the same letters, before Jerome, Eusebius had already made mention, in book 6 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 43, saying: There are still extant letters of Cornelius, Bishop of the Romans, sent to Fabius, bishop of the church of Antioch, in which both the acts of the Roman synod and the opinions of all throughout Italy and Africa, and the other provinces of those parts, are declared… To these was joined another letter of the same Cornelius about those things which had been decreed in the synod; and again another about the crimes of Novatus.
[251] That these were written in the Greek tongue one may gather from what the praised Eusebius adds after those words, the opinions are declared, thus: of which several are lost. There are extant besides, written in the Latin tongue, letters of Cyprian and of the other bishops who assembled with him in Africa. For Eusebius would have added this about the language in vain, if all had been written in Latin. Of those four letters of Cornelius none has come down to us, except a notable fragment of one to Fabius of Antioch, which Eusebius inserted in the cited passage of his History, and which we have recited from him through the course of this Commentary. Besides these he also wrote several to St. Cyprian, among whose letters two are still read, namely the forty-sixth and the forty-eighth; the rest have likewise perished.
[252] Two Decretals Under his name there circulate besides two Decretals, produced by Isidore Mercator, and reported in Labbe, volume 1 of the Councils, columns 668 and following. One of these is directed to the whole Church, and treats of the translation of SS. Peter and Paul, as made by him, and of Novatian and other heretics; the other, addressed to Rufus or Rusticus, an Eastern bishop, treats of the oath, or the swearing, of bishops and of their cases. Both are rejected by the learned, and by Labbe himself, as spurious, and prove their own falsity by the consulships noted in them. For the former is given on the seventh (elsewhere the eighth) Ides of September, under the most distinguished men Decius and Maximus, consuls; the latter is marked on the eleventh Kalends of June, under the same consuls; of whom it is established from the Fasti that the last entered upon his consulship only in the year 253, that is, in the second year after Decius's death, and some months after St. Cornelius's martyrdom. If anyone should wish that by Maximus there be designated Gratus, who is read to have had that name also, he will yet accomplish nothing, since his consulship belongs to the year 250, in which Cornelius had not yet been ordained Pontiff. More indications of manifest forgery are adduced by Noël Alexandre, Ecclesiastical History, Century 3, chapter 4, article 3.
[253] and other things falsely ascribed to him. Coustant in the Letters of the Supreme Pontiffs, column 26, observes besides that the decree by which it is laid down that an oath be taken by those who are fasting, and that boys be not compelled to swear before the fourteenth year of their age, which stands in Gratian's compilation, causa 22, question 5, chapter 16, is likewise wrongly ascribed by Ivo and Burchard to our holy Pontiff. Certainly fictitious also is that sharp and vehement letter which, after Cyprian's, in the Venetian edition which we use, column 343, is recited among the doubtful ones, as sent by Cornelius to Cyprian about not rebaptizing heretics. For it is established that this controversy was not agitated under Cornelius, but first arose between Cyprian and Stephen, his successor after Lucius, as was said in the treatment of St. Stephen at the second of August, and as we shall say on this very day in the treatment of St. Cyprian.
[254] The same is to be judged about the letter The most eminent Robert Bellarmine, in his book On Ecclesiastical Writers, in the treatment of St. Cornelius, mentions another very brief letter to Lupicinus, bishop of Vienne. It stands in volume 3 of the Bibliotheca Patrum of the Paris edition of the year 1589, in Labbe, volume 1 of the Councils, and in Jean du Bois in the Antiquities of the library of Fleury, from which it is said to have been first unearthed, and therefore on the latter's credit I subjoin it here. Cornelius the Bishop to his brother Lupicinus, archbishop of Vienne, greeting. Know, most blessed brother \, that the Lord's threshing-floor is being most fiercely shaken by the wind of persecution, and that by the emperors' edicts Christians everywhere are being afflicted with various torments. For in the city of Rome a prefect has been appointed for this purpose. Whence it is not permitted to Christians to hold Masses either publicly or in the better-known crypts. Let your charity therefore exhort all who believe in Christ not to fear those who kill the body, but rather him who has the power of destroying body and soul. Already many brethren have been crowned with martyrdom. Pray that we may finish our course, revealed to us by the Lord. Farewell, brother in the Lord, and greet all who love us in Christ.*
[255] to Lupicinus of Vienne. But although Labbe notes nothing about this letter except that Baronius received it from the library of Fleury, yet he sufficiently makes his mind manifest when on the two certainly genuine ones which he subjoins in the same place he notes thus: This and the following letter, together with those which the Roman clergy wrote, show what a distance there is between bronze and lupine counters, and between copper-plated wares and the golden writings of the ancients. The same letter Tillemont, and the cited Noël Alexandre and Coustant, and others, likewise place among the spurious: and certainly it bears great indications of forgery. In the first place, the title of archbishop was not in use in Cornelius's age; and if it had been, the holy Pontiff, calling himself only a bishop, would not have addressed Lupicinus of Vienne by that name. Baronius indeed in the Annals at the year 255, number 47, where he reports it as genuine, omits the title of archbishop; but in the praised Bibliotheca Patrum and in Labbe's Collection of Councils it is entitled in this way: Cornelius, the Roman Bishop, to his brother Lupicinus, bishop of Vienne, greeting. But besides that it is uncertain in which of them the reading is more conformable to the Fleury original, this heading too does not agree with Cornelius's manner of writing: for he began his letters sent to Cyprian, which are still extant, omitting the title of episcopate on both sides, with these words: Cornelius to his brother Cyprian, greeting; which Cyprian likewise habitually did in his letters to Cornelius.
[256] Secondly, it is doubtful whether St. Lupicinus, while Cornelius was still living, it seems must be laid down already presided over the church of Vienne. Certainly on Baronius's opinion this must be denied: for he at the year 262, number 58, writes that St. Florentius, Lupicinus's predecessor, suffered under Valerian: to which the most eminent Annalist did not advert when he admitted the said letter, or conversely when he placed his martyrdom so late. The praised Jean du Bois says thus of the same St. Florentius: He ran through the times of Gordian, Philip, Decius, Gallus and Volusianus \: but of Lupicinus: Him succeeded blessed Lupicinus the martyr, who ruled the chair while Valerian and Gallienus were living among men. The same has Jean Chenu in the Episcopates of Gaul*, from whose statements St. Florentius's martyrdom has been deferred to about the year 258 in our Work at the third day of January. Nay rather, it seemed to Tillemont very probable that Lupicinus obtained that see only after the year 374; which will have to be examined in the treatment of St. Lupicinus at the fourteenth of December.
[257] Thirdly, that letter was written either after Decius, before or after the persecution begun by Gallus. it seems. If the former, with what appearance of truth does it say that Christians everywhere are being afflicted with various torments, and that many had already been crowned with martyrdom? If the latter, why does he not mention his own confession or exile, since from what has been said it is established that he was among the first to confess and be arrested? The other things which besides displease some in the same letter may be seen in Tillemont and Coustant: I should not, however, wish to assert with the latter that the word Masses, which occurs in it, is certainly later than Cornelius's age.
[258] Besides, Tillemont notes that the Tract On Discipline and the good of chastity, which is recounted among St. Cyprian's doubtful Opuscula, Two Tracts ascribed to him without solid reason. seemed to Erasmus capable of being ascribed to St. Cornelius. But since no other reason is adduced than that it was written by a bishop who was away from his flock, I do not see why it should be attributed to St. Cornelius, in exile at Civitavecchia, rather than to any other bishop absent from his people. Nor did the same Erasmus divine any better when, again on Tillemont's testimony, he believed that the discourse To Novatian the heretic, likewise ascribed by some to Cyprian, was also Cornelius's work. Nay rather, it is not improbable, as Tillemont observes, that it was written after Gallus's persecution, at the beginning of which the holy Pontiff was banished and crowned, and that in it his confession and martyrdom are commemorated under the figure of the good shepherd.
[259] About the ordinations made by him I add a few things. Henschen's primary Catalogue, after its manner, mentions none: but the second one mentions one, in these words: After this deed he made one ordination, priests
seven. Anastasius, attributing two to him, The Ordinations made by him. says thus: He made two ordinations in the month of December: four priests, four deacons, bishops in various places to the number of seven. Which of the two is the more correct I do not divine: but if the Saint made two ordinations in the month of December, he must have performed both in the same December of the year 251, since he passed only this one in the Pontificate. As regards the bishops ordained by him, the Saint himself expressly asserts this of two in number 123, where we gave his words, which are also more probably to be taken of a third. A fourth could have been Zetus, whom in number 150 we said, likewise in the same Saint's words, was substituted in Evaristus's place; or perhaps the successor of Trophimus, who, led by penance, returned to the Church with a great part of the people, and was admitted only to lay communion, as was shown in number 192.
Annotata\ chariffime*
\ decurrit*
§ XIII. The Saint's body translated to Rome, and laid by St. Leo I, and afterwards by St. Hadrian I, in another church: his Translation into France.
[260] The body translated to Rome to the cemetery of Callistus, That the venerable body of the holy Pontiff and martyr was afterwards translated from the place of exile, where he was crowned, to Rome, and laid at the second milestone from the City on the Appian Way in the cemetery of Callistus, is manifest from the Martyrologies produced in §1, which announce his festival in that place; and this very thing, so far as concerns his burial, his Acts also, and the other documents which we have praised, testify. Certainly that it long rested at Rome we shall presently see: but who took care of that translation we do not know. Probably, however, it was made by one of his nearest successors, after the example of St. Fabian, who had brought the body of St. Pontian, who suffered in Sardinia, into the same cemetery.
[261] then honored with a basilica by St. Leo I, That in the fifth century that sacred body was honored with a basilica by St. Leo I, Anastasius the Librarian is the authority, in volume 3 of the Vatican edition, page 156, in these words: And he (St. Leo) also made a basilica for blessed Cornelius, Bishop and martyr, beside the cemetery of Callistus on the Appian Way. Of this basilica, as still existing in his time, that is, in the twelfth century, William of Malmesbury makes mention in On the Deeds of the Kings of the English, book 4, where among the churches situated on the Appian Way is recounted the church of St. Cornelius and his body: but that the same is sought in vain in our age, Bianchini observes in his historical Notes on the praised Librarian. Further, although we cannot deny that it still existed in Malmesbury's time, yet what he added about the Saint's body being kept there cannot from what is to be said be admitted; and that author seems to have thought so because he knew that it had once been translated thither by St. Leo, and had learned nothing about another translation of it.
[262] it is carried by St. Hadrian I into another Church, For St. Hadrian I, Pope, in the eighth century already far spent, most solemnly transported that sacred body into a basilica erected by himself, on the testimony of the same Anastasius, who, treating of the churches and other pious places either built or restored by that Pontiff, writes this: This same most holy Prelate, in a cultivated estate (that is, a villa) which they call Capracorum, which of his own right he offered for the sustenance of the poor to blessed Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, his patron and nourisher, founded from the ground and built a church, and at the same time splendidly adorned it, and dedicated it in his name to God his Maker… Into which most sacred church, going with all his own \ and with the Roman senate with the greatest glory and exultation, rejoicing together, and making there the accustomed great almsgiving to the poor of Christ, he translated and brought into it the bodies of the holy martyrs and likewise Pontiffs, namely the body of Saint Cornelius, martyr and Pontiff, and the body of Saint Felix, in like manner martyr and Pontiff, and likewise the body of Saint Innocentius, confessor and Pontiff. Whom, as patrons in the Lord, the gracious holy Pontiff honored, as was fitting, for love of the holy Apostolic See, over which they also had presided.*
[263] But Francesco Bianchini in his Notes on Anastasius in the treatment of St. Cornelius, but not by St. Paschal I. page 206, mentions another translation, made, as he thought, by Paschal I: (Where, in a crypt beside the cemetery of Callistus on the Appian Way, as he had premised,) then Leo the Great built a church, marked with the name of blessed Cornelius, as below in his Section. But thence the body of the same Pontiff, taken out by Paschal I, was carried, with SS. Urban, Cecilia, Tiburtius and Valerian, to the Title of St. Mary across the Tiber, where it rests. Thus he, which by no means agrees with what has been said above. But also the praised Vatican edition of the Librarian, as well as the Paris edition of Charles Fabrot, in the treatment of St. Paschal I have indeed that the bodies of SS. Urban, Cecilia, Tiburtius, Valerian, and also of Maximus and of Lucius the Pontiff were brought by the same St. Paschal into the said church; but about St. Cornelius they are silent: wherefore I do not doubt that the name of Cornelius crept in upon the learned man in place of Lucius.
[264] That afterwards the same sacred pledge was translated into France, Thence translated into France the Passion of St. Cyprian hands down, prefixed by Jacques de Pamele to that Saint's Works, and ascribed by him to Paul the deacon, who flourished under Charlemagne. For in it one may read the following: Let us therefore, brethren, pray to Almighty God for the most serene emperor Charles, that he who has caused blessed Cornelius, Pope and martyr, to be brought near to him from the Roman parts for the defense of himself and of all the faithful, and has honored us with so great a Patron, may, by the suffrages of this renowned Martyr, having obtained for himself the blessedness of everlasting life, grant us to deserve to attain the fellowship of all the Saints whom he venerably honored, to be possessed forever. So the author of the praised Passion, who does not determine the place to which that translation was made, but that it was Compiègne, a town in the Île-de-France, will be established from what is to be said.
[265] I have at hand a manuscript which is entitled The Translation of St. Cornelius the Pope, and at Compiègne and is noted: Sent in the year 1666 by Br. Louis Nicque, Librarian of the Celestines of Soissons. In its margin it is written in the French tongue that this fragment was collated with the Compiègne manuscript of St. Cornelius. Its anonymous author sufficiently indicates that he is by no means contemporary with the translation, when, about to narrate a miracle which had occurred during the transfer, he prefaces: One at least, which I have learned by the truthful report of the fathers, and have set down and entitled to my own, though frail, victory \, … I shall take care to impart to fraternal ears, as I have heard it. For it is reported, etc. The same he likewise intimates, asserting that the church of Compiègne, from the time when the sacred body was laid in it up to the time at which he was writing, had already twice been burnt by flames and restored: Let no one therefore of those present, he says, marvel that the present place is stripped of abundance of gold and silver; because he may know that twice, after a grievous invasion of licking flames, it was restored by our predecessors.*
[266] laid in the basilica Now these things show that he wrote after the times of Charles the Simple, in whose diploma, in Mabillon, De Re diplomatica, page 560 and following, given in the year 917 for the restoration of that church, that twofold fire is recorded in these words: It is known therefore to all that the monastery built by our grandfather Charles (the Bald), most glorious emperor, in the palace of Compiègne, our sins requiring it, was twice set on fire. Whence it pleased our serenity to rebuild and restore it \, which we have done once and twice.* But how long after Charles's reign he wrote, I have not ascertained: yet he seems to have done so before the year 1150, in which Benedictine monks succeeded there in the place of canons, because, although he expressly mentions the foundation of the former, he keeps deep silence about the monks substituted. Further, the author interweaves into his narrative much about Cornelius's praises and glory, almost to the point of nausea, which we shall pass over, and shall recite only those things which shall seem to pertain to the subject before us.
[267] by the emperor Charles, He writes that the translation was taken care of by Charles, emperor and king of the Franks, asserting that the sacred body of the Pontiff was brought by him from Rome and laid in the basilica of St. Mary at Compiègne. The Passion of St. Cyprian, praised in number 263, likewise attributes it to the emperor Charles, and this, according to Pamele, was Charlemagne, since he supposes that the said Passion was written under that emperor. But Tillemont, in the treatment of St. Cornelius, article 17, and in Note 45 on St. Cyprian, prefers to interpret the author of Charles, surnamed the Bald, and Charlemagne's grandson; because, as he says, he seems to intimate that the bodies of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian, the last of which was first brought into the church of Compiègne under Charles the Bald, rested together in the same place while he himself was writing.
[268] not the Great, but the Bald: Whatever be the case with that reason of Tillemont's, of which we shall return to speak below, his opinion is expressly handed down by Alberic, a Cistercian monk of Trois-Fontaines in the thirteenth century, in his Chronicle at the year of Christ 877, where he has this: That Charles the Bald founded and completed the monastery of St. Cornelius at Compiègne. And after some other matter: When Charles the Bald had brought from Rome the body of blessed Pope Cornelius, having been newly created emperor, he came to his own estate of Ponthion, which was then a royal domain; and there he rested with the Saint's body; and when he wished to depart, the holy body could not be moved, until the king should give to the same St. Cornelius, in the district of Depteto (de Perteto), that is Perthois, the forest of Hur, between the river Saulx and the Marne, and certain other enclosed lands. Thus far he, praising Elinand or Helinand, a monk of the same Order and century at Froidmont; which, however, seems to be taken only of the foundation of the church of Compiègne. To the same Charles this translation is ascribed by the Rheims codex of SS. Timothy and Apollinaris, at the fourteenth day of September, among the Auctaria of Usuard in our Sollier, in these words: Whose body, translated from Rome by Charles the younger Augustus, was placed in the monastery which he built within the buildings of the palace of Compiègne. With this agrees also Saussay in the Supplement to the Gallican Martyrology, on what occasion this happened at the fourth day of March.
[269] I too entirely assent to Alberic, because from his assertions, which are solidly proved from other sources and are conformable to the manuscript of the translation, the occasion is manifestly brought out on which St. Cornelius's body was brought from Rome by the said Charles and laid in the basilica of Compiègne. In the first place, that the said church was founded by the praised emperor is established both from Charles the Simple's diploma cited above, and from the ordinance of Charles the Bald himself in Mabillon, volume 3 of the Annals, in the Appendix, pages 681 and following, in which he expressly says that, after the example of his grandfather Charles, namely the Great, who had built a basilica to the most blessed Mother of God at Aachen and had consecrated it with a very great heap of relics, that he, I say,
after his example, in his own palace of Compiègne, because Aachen did not obey him, built from the foundations a monastery and church to the same most sacred Virgin, and, having appointed a hundred clerics to serve God in it, endowed it munificently. Its dedication is said in the same instrument to have taken place in the year 877, on the third Nones of May. Of the same the Annalist of Saint-Bertin also makes mention, in Pagi in the Critica at the same year, number 3, but he assigns the dedication to the Kalends of May. On the Kalends of May, he says, (Charles) summoned to Compiègne the bishops of the province of Rheims, and also of other provinces, and caused the church which he had built in that same oratory to be consecrated by those same bishops with much ceremony, in his own presence and that of the envoys of the Apostolic See.
[270] But now in our manuscript Translation it is likewise said that the sacred body of the Pontiff was received in the palace of Compiègne and placed by the emperor Charles in the basilica of the most blessed Virgin. it happened, Here therefore Charlemagne cannot be understood, in whose reign as emperor the said basilica did not yet exist, but his grandson, surnamed the Bald, by whom we have proved it was built from the foundations, and who, imitating his grandfather and founding a church of the Mother of God like that of Aachen, without doubt took care, after his grandfather's example, to enrich it with sacred relics. Secondly, the author of the Translation asserts that the emperor Charles brought that treasure back when returning from Rome, whither he had set out with an army: now from the Annals of Saint-Bertin it is established that Charles the Bald, on hearing of the death of Louis II, set out for Rome with his forces in the year 875, and there having been crowned emperor by Pope John VIII, returned into France in the following year.
[271] The same Charles therefore is designated in both places, and rightly is he said by Alberic — Charles the Bald … having been newly, that is, recently, created emperor at Rome — to have done this, is shown: and the Translation is presented. using this occasion, namely, to enrich with such notable relics the basilica which he was shortly to dedicate. Rightly also in the Rheims codex of SS. Timothy and Apollinaris, among the Auctaria of Usuard in our Sollier, one reads at the fourteenth day of September: At Rome, of blessed Cornelius, Pope and martyr, whose sacred body, translated from Rome by Charles the younger Augustus, was placed in the monastery which he built within the buildings of the palace of Compiègne. For the rest, although in the cited diploma of Charles the Bald that church is said to have been consecrated to the most holy Mother of God, no mention being made of St. Cornelius, yet Mabillon in volume 3 of the Annals, at the year 877, number 94, judges that it was also dedicated to SS. Cornelius and Cyprian, and praises the Ordinances of Charles the Simple and of Louis d'Outremer, in which those same Saints are commemorated as patrons of that building: but at the same time he adds that in his own day it was commonly called by the name of Cornelius alone.
[272] Receive now the Translation from the manuscript praised in number 265, with the author's superfluous digressions cut away, as we have warned. When all the army of the Franks had again been gathered, he (Charles, as will presently be plain) said that he wished to seek Rome, Charles brings the Saint's body from Rome, with more than usual desire of a burning mind: and without delay every renowned soldier of the armies of the Franks, daring in nothing to go against the imperial commands, hastens to procure for himself, so far as he could, the equipment for so great an expedition, so that at the hour at which the emperor Charles should order the camp to be moved, he might seem to bring no delay to the royal chariots \ ardently hastening to the parts of Italy. And when it had thus been done, the emperor, with loosened reins, sought Rome the more swiftly, and, Christ helping, fulfilled and attained the holy desire which he had long purposed in his mind, bearing away with him thence the body of the most blessed Pope Cornelius, and, glad in all his body and soul, bringing it with rejoicing into the victorious parts of the Franks.*
[273] and indeed, if we believe the author, entire: The cause of undertaking the Roman journey we have assigned above: after these things the author, who sufficiently makes plain that he was but very lightly informed of the sequence of the matter, turning his discourse to the City of Rome, consoles her for the loss of so precious a body, saying among other things: Yet do not on this account, renowned City, be worn down with excessive sadness of heart, because, if we are consoled by the abundance of bones and sinews, you too are besprinkled with the dust of the mass of the holy flesh. By which words he indicates that the whole body of St. Cornelius was brought into the Gauls, nothing of it being left at Rome except the ashes. Then he proclaims the Saint's glory, virtues and patronage, all of which being here passed over, I subjoin from him the rest that pertains to the translation.
[274] he is pressed down by a heavy weight divinely; Let the Roman people, who envy us you, blessed Pope, hear how worthily you were received in the palace of Compiègne by the hands of the Franks; but before we come to that, I think it useful enough to insert in this page, by writing, what was done on your happy journey before you were brought within the thresholds of this basilica. And if I cannot fully bring out \ what was done there, which is exceedingly difficult, one thing at least, which I have learned by the truthful report of the fathers, and have set down and entitled to my own, though frail, victory \, speaking to Christ, having driven off every kind of frivolity, I shall take care to impart to fraternal ears, as I have heard it. For it is reported that, while the bones of your most sacred body were being carried along the passable ways through the shady places of the above-said forest (this forest he had not mentioned in our manuscript) upon episcopal shoulders, it happened by divine will that in about the middle part of it they were so weighed down that the props of the shoulders of the bishops carrying them were utterly unable to bear them further.
[275] but after vows Who, as quickly as possible drawing off their golden garments, and laying down to the ground the burden of so great a mass, ordered the royal person to be summoned, that he should hasten to be present at once at this spectacle. And as soon as the common \ seemed to be present, gathering himself within himself, he began wisely to consider, by divine clemency, what and how much of honor you, blessed Martyr, were demanding in this basilica in which you were to be placed in body. For without doubt the emperor Charles perceived in his mind that you willed to be glorified not as a guest of this hall, but, after the Virgin of blessed memory, as was consequent, as the chief of the whole Lord's basilica. And when this was divinely known, having folded his pledges after the manner of suppliants, whatever he could perceive that you willed to demand, he did not delay gladly to fulfil with devoted mind, more swiftly \ than the imperial word.
[276] made by Charles And thereafter he enacted such a privilege that between your servants and those of Saint Mary there should be no distance, nor thereafter any quarrelsome division; but that, since they were able equally to perform your service, they should enjoy an equal weight of prebends. And that he might be able to do this secure from all worldly want, without the interval of any hindrance, out of his own goods, with all the by no means small phalanx \ of the Franks that seemed to be present, he took care to enlarge imperially, under the most illustrious honor of your name, the whole endowment of this royal hall with twofold gifts. Nor was there then seen there any of the armies of the Franks who would have wished to deny to this church a gift of benefaction according to his own ability.*
[277] Before we go further, some things must be observed here. in the same place Where the aforesaid things happened, the author did not note, being content to say that they were done in the above-said forest, which he had not named. Alberic, reported in number 267, asserts that they happened near the royal estate of Ponthion, and rightly places it in the district or tract of Perthois, namely that which lies between Champagne Proper and the duchy of Bar. As regards the river Saulx, between which and the Marne he says was situated the forest given on that occasion by Charles, it seems to be that of which Hadrien de Valois in the Notitia Galliarum, at the word Pontico, writes thus: The letters of Charles, whom they surname the Simple and the Foolish, given in the year 907, place "Ponthion, a public estate in the district of Perthois upon the rivers Saltus and Brustio": from which the river Saltus is even now called Saut. It seems, I say, that this Saltus or Saut is called Saus in Alberic. About the Marne, a most well-known river, it is not necessary to add anything. Whether Alberic or the author of the Translation has more correctly expressed Charles's donation and its cause, I have not ascertained: but the latter's narrative is inept enough. For the rest, the estate of Ponthion was afterwards given to the church of Compiègne by Frederuna, the wife of Charles the Simple, who had received it by way of dowry; on which matter Mabillon, De Re Diplomatica, book 6, instruments 123 and 128, may be seen. Now let us resume the author's text.
[278] For what mortal of so obstinate a breast could be present in that place who, he shines with miracles, and to Compiègne, having seen so many signs of miracles wrought in that same solitude by the power of the threefold eternal might, would not have provided to bestow upon this blessed Pope, at whose merit they were being done, a gift of fleeting substance by which his service might be sustained; while to three blind men he loosed sight, to three deaf men likewise hearing, and to three dumb men the bond of the tongue; and while the eye drank in that very many paralytics in the presence of the blessed Pope recovered the remedy of their former health? Which the sign of the cross fixed upon that same lofty post still attests with most true assertion. Hence indeed this place so far grew in honor of the Blessed one that, amid so many turns of losses, no place of France would have presumed in any way to compare itself with this one in adornment.
[279] But where devouring fire is often known to happen, the mass of the people's sins requiring it, it is wont to bring forth a grievous destruction of things and an inextricable loss of earthly goods: whose church's varying fortune is narrated, let no one therefore of those present marvel that the present place is stripped of abundance of gold and silver; because he may know that twice, after a grievous invasion of licking flames, it was restored by our predecessors: but rather, ceasing from such wonder, let him strive to pour forth prayers suppliantly to Christ, that he may deign, at the prayers of blessed Pope Cornelius, so mercifully to preserve this place, that it may have no further need of restoration for such a cause. The author mentions above the post as though previously mentioned; and yet I find nothing about it in the foregoing narrative. He seems, however, to indicate that in his own time there existed in the place where the miracles had happened a cross inscribed with them, or at least erected as a monument of them; and therefore perhaps one should read: In the same place, fixed upon a lofty post.
[280] it is most easily carried. O supreme and ineffable eternal vigor of the Godhead, the author goes on, which never ceases in such marvelous ways to bestow honor upon its witnesses! For as soon as it beheld the desire of the present Martyr, of whom our discourse treats, effectually fulfilled from the Olympian height, it permitted his little body again so to be lightened that, if — so to speak — it had wished to run through the great void, it could, with every barrier of things far removed, have flown after the manner of birds that sometimes pass beyond the very clouds by the rowing of their wings. Which is proved by the most certain outcome of the thing itself; because that which a while before could not be moved by two thousand hands of men is now seen to be carried by the shoulders of only two bishops from the present hall as far as the forecourt. And, as is known to have been uttered by the mouth of the bearers themselves to certain of us who were present at that time, the coffin \ of the blessed Pope, in which his bones were being conveyed, seemed to them so very light, as if it remained entirely empty. Whence, in no way hesitating, blessed Pope, I believe that, obedient to the divine will,*
at the announcement, being about to profit all the inhabitants of France, you desired to rest beneath the shadow of the crypts of the basilica standing by. Here are subjoined rhythmic verses in which the author describes, after his own fashion, the magnificence of the translation, which I have likewise judged should be passed over.
[281] About St. Cyprian's body an examination will be made elsewhere. We said above that the author of the Passion of St. Cyprian in Pamele seemed to Tillemont to say that the bodies of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian rested in the same place while he himself was writing. But Mabillon too, in volume 3 of the Annals at the year 877, number 94, asserts that they are kept at Compiègne in one precious shrine; and besides a certain manuscript Martyrology, in which one reads at the Ides of March: At Compiègne, the reception of the blessed martyrs Cornelius and Cyprian, he praises several other things by which he may persuade of this. But since these things concern St. Cyprian more nearly, we shall examine this translation, together with others, in that Saint's deeds, to be set forth on this very day.
[282] St. Cornelius's body at Compiègne in the 11th century: thence That St. Cornelius's body rested at Compiègne in the eleventh century also, the charter of a donation made by Robert, king of France, and his wife Constance teaches, to the church of St. Mary of Compiègne, … and to the holy martyrs Cornelius and Cyprian, resting in the same church, as is read in the praised charter, signed in the year 1029, in Mabillon, book 6 of the De Re diplomatica, page 582. That in the forty-ninth year of the same century the same body of the Saint was carried by clerics from Compiègne to Rheims, where Pope St. Leo IX was celebrating a council, Anselm, a monk of St. Remigius of Rheims and contemporary with the event, writes in his Opusculum which stands under the title of the Council of Rheims in volume 9 of the Councils in Labbe, from column [ ], and in Mabillon in the Acts of the Saints, Century VI, part 1, from page 713, where it is entitled The History of the dedication of the church of St. Remigius.
[283] is carried to Rheims to the council by the canons, I transfer hither Anselm's words. And when morning had come, the holy martyr Cornelius was received by the lord Pope (St. Leo IX) within the church, whom, with other pledges of the Saints, the clerics of Compiègne had brought thither on account of the many violences which their church was suffering from certain evildoers. Then among the acts is subjoined: Finally, he (the Pontiff) excommunicated those about whom the clerics of Compiègne had made their complaint, on account of whose injustice they had brought thither the body of the holy martyr Cornelius. Further, do not so take these words as though the people of Compiègne transported both this and the other pledges of the Saints to Rheims in order that, being withdrawn from the injuries of those who harassed them, they might be deposited there. Do not, I say, so take them: for they brought those sacred relics to Rheims for no other end than that, according to the custom anciently received, they might by their presence and patronage the more powerfully move the religious minds of the assembled fathers to just mercy and to the bringing of prompt help, and, having obtained it, might bring them back to their own church.
[284] For the rest, since mention has been made both here and elsewhere of the clerics of Compiègne, to whom Benedictines were afterwards substituted. it will be worth while to have observed that the clerics or canons to whom the church of Compiègne had been granted by Charles the Bald were, as I have already intimated above, expelled thence in the year 1150, Benedictine monks being substituted in their place. Alberic in the Chronicle derives the cause of the expulsion from a slain stag, I know not what; saying: On occasion of a stag which came each year to the church of St. Cornelius of Compiègne, which the canons of Compiègne had killed, the king removed the canons and placed there monks from the abbey of St. Denis; and thus the abbey of Compiègne began. But whatever be the case with this story or fable of the stag — unless perhaps one should read servi, "of a servant" — that the true cause of the expulsion was their irreligious life is clear from letter 163 of Suger, abbot of Saint-Denis, in Du Chesne, volume 4 of the History of France; where also other letters bearing on this are recited. Mabillon may also be consulted, volume 6 of the Annals, at the year 1150, number 99 and following.
Annotata\ elsewhere add: clero*
\ perhaps memoriæ*
\ id*
\ add: in*
\ promere*
\ memoriæ*
\ fulcra*
\ perhaps cominus*
\ citius*
\ phalange*
\* i.e. a shrine
§ XIV. The Saint's relics and celebrated cult in the abbey of Inda near Aachen.
Some relics of St. Cornelius What we produced in the preceding paragraph sufficiently proves that St. Cornelius's body, once translated to the church of Compiègne, rested there also about the middle of the eleventh century; where Mabillon, praised above, affirms that it was in his own time also enclosed and honored in the same precious shrine together with the body of St. Cyprian of Carthage. But if these things are to be taken of the entire body, or even of a far greater part of it, they will be able only with difficulty to be reconciled with what is read about the relics of the same holy Pontiff kept in other places. In the first place Inda, which is an ancient imperial abbey of the Order of St. Benedict, six thousand paces distant from the palace of Aachen, and called from our holy Pontiff and Martyr the Monastery of St. Cornelius, commonly Kornelimünster, believes that it has possessed a notable portion of this sacred treasure now for many centuries, and populous pilgrimages and frequent miracles confirm this: but whence and at what time it came to it is not easy to say.
[286] I have at hand a manuscript Life of St. Cornelius, defiled — not to say compacted — with many fables, carried long ago to the abbey of Inda near Aachen which the Reverend Father Lhem, rector of the college of the Society of Jesus at Aachen, having taken it from the manuscripts of Inda, transmitted to my Elders in the year 1644, at the end of which the following is read to our purpose: At last the emperor Charlemagne translated the body of blessed Cornelius from Rome to the monastery of Inda of St. Cornelius, of the Order of St. Benedict, which he himself had founded. But afterwards, after many years indeed, Charles the second translated the bodies of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian into France, leaving however in the aforesaid monastery the head of blessed Cornelius and his right arm, where daily great and frequent miracles take place, to the praise of almighty God and of his martyr St. Cornelius.
[287] carried long ago; There is also among the instruments deposited with us at this day a certain copy of a letter of the most reverend and most ample lord Johann von Wachtendonck, abbot of Inda, transmitted by Father Gamans, a priest of our Society, in which the said abbot commemorates to all the faithful of Christ the notable relics of his monastery, and invites them to inspect these for the sake of investigating the truth. He, having premised that his abbey was founded and endowed by Charlemagne and by his son Louis the Pious, says among other things thus: The aforesaid St. Charles … brought with him from Rome, eight hundred years ago or thereabouts, the entire body of St. Cornelius into and to the said monastery, to be devoutly venerated by the faithful of Christ.
[288] not however by Charlemagne; And the same relics have always, from the aforesaid time, been devoutly venerated by various pilgrims, both very noble and plebeian, ecclesiastical and secular, of both sexes, flocking to the said monastery from all regions professing the name of Christ (who daily also flock to it), and many pilgrims laboring under the disease of epilepsy (which is called St. Cornelius's) have often, aided by the suffrage of the same saint, been restored to their former health, and are daily restored. This abbot, on the testimony of Gabriel Bucelin in part 2 of the Germania sacra, died on the Kalends of October of the year 1534, after a prelacy of three years and four months. And so, if we believe these things, our holy Pontiff's body was translated thither from the city of Rome by Charlemagne, the founder of the monastery of Inda, yet in such a way that, according to the Life, it was afterwards carried by Charles II, or the Bald, to Compiègne, only the head and the right arm being left with the men of Inda; but according to the said abbot, the same body seems never to have been removed thence, entire, up to his own times.
[289] (as some would have it,) As regards the author of the translation, that he was not Charlemagne is clear from the preceding §; but the authors both of the aforecited Life and of the letter seem to have been led to believe so because they thought that the monastery of Inda was founded first by this emperor and then by his son Louis the Pious, as the said abbot had premised in the letter. For since they were ignorant from whom they had received those sacred relics, it was easy to set them down as received from Charlemagne, whom they believed to be their first founder; especially since he is said to have enriched the basilica of Aachen and other churches with sacred treasures of this kind. Johann Noppius, book 1 of the Chronicle of Aachen, chapter 40, likewise writes that it was begun by Charlemagne and, after his death, completed by Louis the Pious. But St. Ardo, the disciple and biographer of St. Benedict, the first abbot of that place, writes that the said monastery was built with marvelous workmanship by Louis the Pious in a valley which was six miles distant from his palace of Aachen, no mention being made of Charlemagne. That Life stands in our Work at the twelfth day of February, where chapter 7, number 34, may be consulted.
[290] but at a time and by an author unknown to us: Of Louis alone in this matter the monks of Inda likewise made mention in their letter written about the life and death of that same St. Benedict, and printed after the Life just praised, chapter 10. And hence collapses their argument, from which they seem to have believed that Cornelius's sacred body was given to them by Charlemagne's agency. False also is what the aforesaid Life from the manuscript of Inda has about the bodies of both Saints being translated by Charles II, or the Bald, from Inda to Compiègne; for we have shown that St. Cornelius's body indeed, received from Rome, was deposited at Compiègne by the said Charles; and about St. Cyprian's body we are to treat on this very day. Perhaps the author of that Life came to that opinion because the bodies of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian, which he had wrongly persuaded himself had once been brought entire to Inda by Charlemagne, and of which he knew that only St. Cornelius's head and right arm remained there, he had heard were deposited at Compiègne by Charles the Bald and were honored there in his own time; and thence he conjectured that that translation was made from the monastery of Inda to the church of Compiègne.
[291] Further, although the recited words of the said abbot Johann von Wachtendonck suggest where the Saint's head that the whole body of the holy Pontiff and martyr is kept at Inda, yet in the same letter he rather intimates that only some parts of it remain there. For he says thus: And if anyone shall be unwilling to give true faith to the foregoing, which for seven hundred years have by no means been called into doubt, let him appear in the said monastery (if he desire to be made more certain of this), and in it let him behold the entire head of St. Cornelius and his right arm devoutly laid up in little silver vessels skillfully wrought, and each of the foregoing and following things, out of what he is there to see and hear, more clearly
recognize, supported by the truth. Then he adds: But that it may be established to all the faithful of Christ concerning the precious relics devoutly laid up in my said monastery, there follows a specific designation of the same. In the first place, in the said monastery there was and is preserved the entire head and right arm of the great lord Pontiff and martyr, the solemn marshal St. Cornelius, with the other relics of the same Martyr.
[292] In both these places he expressly mentions the head and the right arm; and arm are held in great veneration, in the second place he adds indeed with the other relics of the same Martyr; but by that very thing he sufficiently intimates that the portion of these is far smaller than the head or the arm, much less can be held to be the whole remaining body. Only St. Cornelius's head and right arm are likewise mentioned among the other relics of Inda by Pope Innocent, the sixth of that name, as appears in the Bull of which we shall treat below, as also by the Cologne Fasti at the XVIII Kalends of October. Mention is made even of the head alone both in chapter 40 of the Chronicle of Aachen, by Johann Noppius, doctor of law, published in German at Cologne in the year 1632, of which chapter I have a manuscript copy in hand; and in the little book about the most sacred relics which are exhibited to public veneration every seven years both at Aachen and in the monastery of Inda. In the latter one reads thus: The head of St. Cornelius the Pope, patron of that place, with certain other lesser relics of the Saints.
[293] I should therefore believe that the men of Inda claim for themselves, besides the holy Pontiff's head and arm, no relics from his sacred body, or certainly only very slight ones; and are frequented with pilgrimages. but at what time or on what occasion they received these very things, I prefer to be ignorant rather than imprudently to divine. Meanwhile, until certain testimonies about their translation thither be brought forward, there will stand in place of proof the immemorial possession of those same relics, a church dedicated to the Saint himself, an abbey called from him the Monastery of St. Cornelius, by the inhabitants Kornelimünster, and finally the vast concourse of pilgrims, especially for a remedy of the epileptic disease, divinely attested by frequent miracles. Besides the testimony of the most reverend abbot Johann von Wachtendonck about pious pilgrimages of this kind, reported in number 287, Noppius, praised above, writes thus on this subject: In that place (in the monastery of St. Cornelius of Inda) almighty God is chiefly invoked by the people, that by St. Cornelius's prayers he may deign to render them free of the falling sickness, and at the same time to impart the rest of the health and welfare of the body.
[294] Indulgences In a sheet also transcribed from the Cologne Fasti, and set aside for this day, I read: On the XVI Kalends of August … Today too there take place populous pilgrimages to St. Cornelius on the river Inde, which merit the Indulgences granted by the Apostolic See. Of the same Saint's celebrated cult in that place Molanus also makes mention in the Indiculus of the Saints of Belgium, saying of the said monastery: In which place St. Cornelius's memory is more celebrated, and a greater portion of the relics remained. As regards the Indulgences, I have a twofold transcript of a Bull of Pope Innocent, one of which Father Jacobus Kritzraedt, having received it from Father Jacobus Polius, historiographer of the Order of Friars Minor of the Observance, transmitted to our Museum from Cologne in the year 1652; by whom the other was sent is not indicated; but in both it is added: It hangs near the altar of St. Anne in the aforesaid church.
[295] there Which Pontiff of that name he was is not expressed; but since it is marked as given at Villeneuve of the diocese of Avignon, on the IV Nones of August, in the … seventh year of our Pontificate, it is clear that he was Innocent VI, who sat at Avignon and had a palace at Villeneuve when he was a Cardinal, where, when now Pontiff, he built a Charterhouse. This Bull, since it is short, I here subjoin entire. Innocent, Bishop, Servant of the Servants of God, to all the faithful of Christ who shall inspect the present letters, greeting and Apostolic blessing. The Splendor of the Father's glory, who illuminates \ the world with his ineffable brightness, then chiefly follows with kindly favor the pious vows of the faithful who hope in his most clement Majesty, when their devout humility is aided by the prayers and merits of the Saints.*
[296] granted by Innocent VI Desiring therefore that the church of the monastery of St. Cornelius of Inda, of the Order of St. Benedict, of the diocese of Cologne, in which, as is asserted, are known to be the clean Shroud in which the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ was placed \ after it had been taken down from the cross, and the linen cloth with which the same our Lord wiped the feet of his disciples at the supper, and the head and right arm of St. Cornelius himself, and many other relics of the Saints: on account of which a great multitude of people flocks to that monastery from various parts of the world, and especially from seven years to seven years, in which those relics are shown there, and also each year, namely on the XVI Kalends of August — that it be frequented with fitting honors.*
[297] and by Pope Urban VIII. And that the faithful of Christ may the more gladly come to it for devotion's sake, the more they shall have seen themselves refreshed there by the gift of a more abundant heavenly grace; trusting in the mercy of almighty God and in the authority of his blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, to all who are truly penitent and confessed, who on the days of the feasts of the Nativity and Resurrection of the same Lord, and of Pentecost, of the Most Holy Trinity, and on each of the four principal feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of the Nativity of blessed John the Baptist, of the aforesaid St. Cornelius, and of the dedication of the same church, and on the XVI Kalends of August of the same, shall devoutly have visited that church, we mercifully relax yearly one year and forty days from the penances enjoined upon them, namely on each of the aforesaid days on which they shall have visited that church, as is set forth. Given at Villeneuve of the diocese of Avignon, on the IV Nones of August, in the seventh year of our Pontificate; that is, in the year of Christ 1359. I have at hand also another copy printed in the year 1641, in which the faithful are invited to gain plenary Indulgences, which, at the request of Hermann van Eynatten, at that time abbot of Inda, Pope Urban VIII had granted on the thirty-first day of July of that same year to all who on the feast of St. Cornelius should visit the church of Inda, having confessed and been refreshed by the sacred Banquet, and should there recite the accustomed prayers.
[298] Among the papers pertaining to St. Cornelius's cult I also find Water customarily consecrated there: the fable about the horn rejected. that water was customarily purified and consecrated with his relics, which, as is clear from the prayers customarily used, is happily drunk especially by the sick afflicted with the falling sickness. Noppius in the Chronicle cited above says besides this: Moreover in the monastery of St. Cornelius there is preserved St. Cornelius's horn, out of which those with fever are wont to drink, and many of them are granted health. Whence this use of a horn, with which set in his hand the Saint's image has also been customarily painted and carved — whence, I say, it arose, I plainly do not know: for what is narrated about a griffin in the manuscript Life of Inda is too gross a fable. It is read, it says, that a griffin, a very great bird, came also to him (the Saint, then in exile) laboring under a like falling sickness, which, a prayer having been first made, he also cured. And the griffin, feeling herself healed, shaking off one of her claws, left it behind to St. Cornelius as a thanksgiving, which he afterwards used for a cup, and he is painted with a horn. But away with these insipid fables, and let another more prudently divine the use of such a horn.
§ XV. The Saint's relics and cult at Ronse in Flanders: their profanation by the heretics and recovery by the Catholics.
The collegiate church of Ronse in Flanders Rotnacum, or Roturnacum, in the Belgian tongue Ronse, is a town of present-day Austrian Flanders in ancient Brabant beyond the river Scheldt, two and a half miles from Oudenaarde toward Tournai, formerly situated in the diocese of Cambrai, now in the archdiocese of Mechlin. It flourishes with an ancient chapter of secular canons, which was erected out of a monastery once founded by St. Amand, as was said in the deeds of this holy bishop of Maastricht, set forth at the sixth day of February, §6. Aubert Le Mire in the Belgian Fasti at the twenty-eighth day of August, and at the fourteenth of September, affirms that St. Cornelius's relics were brought hither from Compiègne by Louis II, son of the emperor Lothair; where also to this day they are honored as such, enclosed in a precious shrine. But let us hear Le Mire.
[300] In the year 860 (he says in the first place cited) on the sixth day of July, the body of St. Hermes was translated from Inda to Ronse, to the basilica of the canons venerates some relics of St. Cornelius; founded by St. Amand, bishop of Maastricht, by the emperor Louis, son of the emperor Lothair …; who also deposited among the people of Ronse the relics of SS. Cornelius the Pope, Cyprian bishop of Carthage, and Celestine, an ample endowment being added, so much so that the emperor Louis is held by the men of Ronse to be, after St. Amand, the second founder of the church of Ronse. Thus there: but at the fourteenth day of September, after he had treated of the martyrdom of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian, and of the translation of their sacred bones to the church of Compiègne, he went on in this manner: Afterwards Louis, son of Lothair, transported from Compiègne to Ronse, if not all, at least very many of them, and honorably placed them there with the remains of St. Hermes, the most celebrated martyr; as I have gathered partly from Ado, partly from the documents of the church of Ronse.
[301] but it is uncertain from what time: He has like things in the Chronicle of Belgian Affairs at the aforecited year 860: but when he praises Ado above, he is to be understood of the foregoing, not of the translation made to the men of Ronse, of which no mention is made in Ado; and about the documents of Ronse we shall treat more fully below. Our Henschen, in the preliminary Commentary to the Life of St. Benedict, abbot of Aniane and of Inda, at the twelfth day of February, § I, touching in a word upon the same translation from Le Mire's praised Fasti, rightly desired that it should be proved to him from ancient documents, which I have found done thus far by no one, and which I confess cannot be performed by me. Yet the things we are about to recount scarcely allow us prudently to doubt that some relics of St. Cornelius were granted to the men of Ronse, though perhaps at another time and by another agent than Le Mire supposed. For from what has been said above it is not probable enough that they were given by Louis, son of Lothair.
[302] perhaps they received them from the abbot of Inda, Molanus in the Indiculus of the Saints of Belgium has this to our purpose: Some relics of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian are had at Ronse in the territory of Tournai, in a gilded shrine. Which relics were brought thither from Inda, or the monastery of St. Cornelius, which is near Aachen; in which place St. Cornelius's memory is more celebrated, and a greater portion of the relics remained. Meanwhile some relics were translated thence to Ronse, when the territory of Ronse had as its temporal lord the abbot of Inda: but afterwards it was sold to Guy, count of Flanders. That Ronse, or the Cell called Hrodnace, was given by Louis the Pious to the monastery of Inda, that very emperor testifies in a diploma which you have printed in our Work at the third day of February, in the Life of St. Anskar, §16: but the instrument of the sale,
by which Reinold or Rainard, abbot of Inda, handed it over to Guy, count of Flanders and Namur, in the year 1280, may be read in Le Mire, Supplement to the Diplomata, part 2, number 114.
[303] once lord of the place, But now we have seen in the preceding § that it cannot prudently be doubted that notable relics of our holy Pontiff and Martyr are kept among the men of Inda. And although what the men of Inda, cited in the same §, report about the entire body being translated to the said abbey, and thence for the greatest part to Compiègne, or being retained wholly in it, cannot be admitted, yet it is not far from probable that besides the head and arm some other relics of that same sacred pledge were once there, and were given by the abbot of this place, at the time when he enjoyed the secular lordship of Ronse, to the church of Ronse, so that the cult of St. Cornelius, their patron, which flourished at Inda not without vast consolation to the wretched, might likewise be had in a town subject to them; just as Molanus writes that they were in fact given.
[304] obtained them About the time of the donation some suspicion is raised by Jacob Meyer in the Annals of Flanders, book 5, at the year 1160, where he says: In the same year, on the Kalends of June, the body of the divine Cyprian, bishop and martyr, was translated at Ronse, at which translation Arnulf, abbot of Ename, was present. At the same day of June this translation is celebrated in Molanus's Usuard in our Sollier among the Usuardine auctaria. But since both the canons of Ronse and other writers would have it that his relics and St. Cornelius's were brought thither together, and are to this day enclosed there in one and the same shrine, one may suspect that these too were received at Ronse in the same year; unless perhaps Meyer used the word translation for elevation. For the rest, since he says that Arnulf, abbot of Ename, was present at this solemnity, he seems to have seen some instrument whence he learned it. The same things are read in the reprinted Gallia Christiana, volume 5, column 34, and in the Sacred and Profane History of the archbishopric of Mechlin by Cornelius van Gestel, volume 2, page 250, perhaps drawn from Meyer. Now Ename is an illustrious abbey of the Order of St. Benedict in Austrian Belgium, situated about half a mile from the town of Oudenaarde on the river Scheldt.
[305] Now let us proceed to the documents of Ronse, and to the cult which St. Cornelius obtains there. The precious shrine in which the aforesaid relics Jacques de Pamele prefixed to his edition of the Works of St. Cyprian, among other things, a letter of Jean de la Haye, theologian and canon of Tournai, once sent to the most ample president lord Viglius Zwichem of Frisia; which, although it treats chiefly of St. Cyprian's relics, mentions at the same time Cornelius, whose name he says is celebrated there. He therefore, having said that he had gone to Ronse in order to investigate in person what he had heard about St. Cyprian's body being kept there, goes on in these words: After a discourse of sufficient length held with the canons, they led me to the treasury of the church, and there set before my eyes a copper-gilt shrine, studded with images of the Apostles, divided as it were into three caskets by three gilded plates; which work the goldsmiths called in judged most ancient.
306] *Its length nearly equals five feet, on whose margin such verses as these are inscribed:* [were enclosed.A twofold life holds the heavens, here the bones are held: It is enough for the title. The hall receives Celestine; Here a laborious hand has sealed up the bones. Cornelius and Cyprian rejoice in the heavens. Celestine's life had been given to its end by the sword; Cornelius met his death by the sword's edge, With whom twice ten and one are cut down \* by the sword; And so by the executioner's hand had Cyprian suffered. This place sets the saints, Celestine and Cyprian. This is the driver-out of the demon and of the falling sickness; This short ark joins the three apostolic fathers.
Then the praised Jean de la Haye, after some other matter, says: I have taken care that what was written down in the archives and ancient codices should be transcribed in good faith: all which, transcribed in good faith by the hand of the chapter's secretary, I dispatch to your Lordship. At length, after a few things interposed, he recites from the same archive certain matter from Ado's Martyrology which pertains to St. Cyprian alone.
[307] That I might therefore learn more certain things about our Saint's relics and cult in that place, A twin annual festivity of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian there. I asked the most ample canons through a friend that, if they had anything besides what Pamele published, they would not be unwilling to communicate it to me: which was most kindly and diligently performed both by the most ample lords Jean Baptiste Delzoy, dean of the chapter, and Jean Louis De Pascal, treasurer, cantor and secretary of the same chapter, who even subscribed their names to give it credit, in the year 1751, on the thirteenth day of March. These praised men transmitted among other things a manuscript copy of the Office which is celebrated there yearly on the fourth day of July on the feast of the translation of the relics of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian, martyrs and pontiffs, and of St. Celestine, Pope and confessor, under a double rite. Now they are taken from the Common of many Martyr-pontiffs, except the prayer and the Lessons of the second Nocturn, which are proper.
[308] an annual festivity. And the Prayer indeed is this: O God, who gladdenest us by the yearly solemnity of the blessed Cornelius, Cyprian and Celestine, mercifully grant that we may also rejoice in the protection of those whose translation of relics we venerate. Through our Lord, etc. In Lesson VI it is said that the emperor Lothair, namely the first of that name, deposited at Inda the relics of SS. Cornelius and Celestine obtained from the city of Rome, together with St. Cyprian's body taken from the church of Compiègne, and that afterwards Louis II, son of the same Lothair, translated them all to Ronse: which narrative, from what we have disputed in §14, is not probable enough. Further, besides the said festivity of the translation, the men of Ronse celebrate in their collegiate church also the birthday feast of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian, and that on the fourteenth day of September, on which they are inscribed in the Roman Martyrology, not on the sixteenth with the likewise Roman Breviary, as is expressly noted in the Office just praised.
[309] The aforesaid shrine, about which some things are observed, But to return to the sacred relics: that shrine persuades that some relics of St. Cornelius were once enclosed in it, and that these are still kept in it we shall see from what follows. The men of Ronse do indeed err when they think that the bones of that St. Celestine are those of the Roman Pontiff of the same name, namely the first of that name; into which error they seem to have been led by the epithet apostolic, which is there proclaimed as common to those three Saints whose relics are kept in that shrine: but besides that the word apostolic cannot here be taken in its strict sense, and as it is proper to the Roman Pontiff, since certainly St. Cyprian was never a Roman Pontiff, that St. Celestine of Ronse is said in the same inscription to have fallen a martyr by the sword, whereas the holy Roman Pontiff, a confessor, rested in peace. But although, I say, the men of Ronse have erred in this part, the author of the inscription, who used the word apostolic in a broader way, is not on that account to be said to have erred about Celestine, or about SS. Cornelius and Cyprian. Consult, if you please, volume 1 of April at the sixth day, where St. Celestine the Pope is treated by my Elders, and volume IV of May at the seventeenth day, where the Saint of the same name is treated whose relics are kept at Ronse.
[310] carried to Pamele, the sacred relics were scattered by the Calvinists, In the sixteenth century, while the Calvinist heretics were infesting Spanish Belgium, the aforesaid sacred relics were carried for safety's sake into the castle of Pamele, which adjoins Oudenaarde; but when it, together with the said town, was occupied by the heretics, they were impiously scattered by them, until, those same heretics having been driven thence by the army of the Catholic king, they were sent back to Ronse by a certain priest who had been present at the whole affair and had reverently collected them. The authentic instrument of this matter, transmitted to me by the often-praised most ample lords the dean and cantor of Ronse, I here transcribe. In the name of the Lord, amen. Whereas it is so, that in the year of the same Lord 1572 the relics of the divine Cornelius, Cyprian and Celestine, enclosed in a shrine belonging to the collegiate church of St. Hermes of Ronse, of the diocese of Mechlin, on account of fear of the heretics ranging everywhere in the Belgian dominions of Philip, Catholic king of the Spains, were placed in the castle of Pamele within the walls of the town of Oudenaarde, of the diocese of Ghent, as in a safe place, by deputies of the reverend lords the provost, dean and chapter of the aforetouched collegiate church.
[311] And afterwards, namely in the September of the same year, when they took Oudenaarde in the year 1572, the said town having been treacherously taken by the aforesaid heretics on the seventh day, which was a Sunday, of the same month and year, and the aforesaid castle having been occupied by them, they were scattered and cast away in the said castle; and whereas it is so, that at the same time the venerable man Master Jacobus Maucouvent, priest, master of arts, deacon of the parish church of Pamele within the walls of the said town, and also chaplain of the generous and illustrious lord Jacobus Du Jongny, called of Oudenaarde, baron of Flanders, golden knight, lord of Pamele, etc., was then in the said castle, who can know excellently well what was done at that same time about the said relics; hence it is that I, Jacobus Bleekerius, priest, dean of Christendom of the district of Ronse of the said diocese of Mechlin, and also notary public admitted by the official of Cambrai and by the council of Flanders, at the instance of the aforesaid lords went whither it was therefore necessary to go, and, having summoned before me and the witnesses undersigned the aforesaid lord Jacobus Maucouvent, interrogated and diligently examined him concerning the scattering and recollection of the said relics, with the circumstances pertaining thereto, and faithfully reduced to writing his deposition made thereupon by means of his oath, in the manner and form following.
[312] In the first place the aforesaid lord Jacobus Maucouvent, in the castle of Pamele, and collected by a priest, by means of his oath taken with his right hand laid upon his breast, deposes and says that the aforesaid shrine was in the last September torn apart and broken by the abovesaid heretics in the said castle in order to snatch the gold and silver and precious stones with which it was adorned, and that he saw the aforesaid relics cast away by those same heretics while they tore apart and broke that same shrine, and scattered here and there in the same castle, and that on this account he had grievous sorrow \ of mind, and that he lifted up those same relics (as being the organs or instruments through which the Holy Spirit wrought many good things, and which shall one day live again unto eternal life) with all the reverence and honor he could, and gathered them again, and placed them back in the said castle in a secret place; until the said heretics (after they had despoiled very many men, both ecclesiastical and political, in the same town and in the neighboring places, and had perpetrated fires and very many other robberies) were driven out by the besieging soldiery, at the command of Lord Ferdinand of Toledo, duke of Alba, etc., governor and captain general of the said Philip, king of the Spains, etc., through the Belgian province, on the fifth of October of the year above written.*
[313] Which heretics indeed, fleeing to the maritime parts, and, the heretics being afterwards driven out, brought back to Ronse. carried off all the gold and silver, and all the precious stones with which the said shrine was adorned, together with many other spoils; and a little afterwards the witness himself (as he deposes) faithfully, and again with all the reverence he could, handed over those same relics to the aforesaid lords, namely to master Ludovicus de Winghene, provost, Aegidius Bacquereel, dean, and the other canons of the aforetouched collegiate church; who received those same relics out of his hands with all the reverence and honor also that they could, to be carried, as they asserted, to the aforesaid collegiate church, and carried them away with them. In faith of which foregoing things the same witness has subscribed the present letters together with me the notary and the witnesses undersigned. Done at Pamele of the said town of Oudenaarde, in the presence of the upright and discreet men, master Simon Bynius, pastor of the Lord's flock of Etikhove and also canon of the aforetouched collegiate church, and Jacobus Bauters, deacon of the said church of Pamele, in the year of the Lord 1573, on the twenty-fourth day of the month of July. And it was subscribed: D. Jacobus Maucouvent, Si. Bynius with his sign-manual, Ja. Bauters with his sign-manual, J. B. Bleerkerius, notary, with his sign-manual.
[314] A list of the relics of Ronse: After this instrument there follows in the same manuscript of ours from Ronse a certain list of the relics of the same church, in this manner: These are the relics of the church of blessed Peter of Ronse, of the diocese of Cambrai, in the greater shrine: Relics of the body of the most illustrious soldier of Christ, blessed Hermes the martyr… Item, relics of St. Cornelius, Pope and martyr, etc. But in the margin one reads written: It is to be noted that besides the relics here mentioned there are still found three distinct silver reliquaries, namely two in the form of an arm, and one in the form of a cross, in each of which there are kept under crystal, among others, some of the arm of St. Cornelius. In what year this list was made is not declared; but since Ronse is there said to be of the diocese of Cambrai, it was made before the year 1559, in which Pope Paul IV erected the church of Mechlin as a Metropolitan, or before the year 1561, in which Pius IV, Paul's successor, established the limits of that same metropolitan see, within which Ronse is numbered, which before, like Mechlin itself, had been of the diocese of Cambrai. Further, according to the same list of relics it seems that at that time the relics of SS. Cornelius, Cyprian, Celestine and Hermes were in one and the same shrine, since these are all enumerated there under the same heading, in the greater shrine.
[315] their shrine inspected in the year 1675. Further, the praised relics of the Saints, arranged in a twin shrine, were in the year 1675, on the tenth day of May, recognized, and found sealed up under the seal of the most illustrious archbishop of Mechlin. So we learn from the often-praised canons of Ronse, who transmitted among the instruments in the last place the following. From the Register of the chapter of the notable collegiate church of St. Hermes of Ronse, in which among other things there is the following: "Extraordinary chapter meeting, the tenth of May, 1675, in the afternoon. In this meeting the reverend lords opened the casket of the relics of St. Hermes, in which they found the said relics duly sealed up under the seal of the most illustrious lord archbishop of Mechlin, to which they added their own greater seal, and closed the same casket again, placing parchments all around under the same seal of theirs. Item, they opened the shrine of the relics of SS. Cornelius, Cyprian and Celestine, which they likewise found duly sealed up under a like seal, which shrine, like the abovewritten one of St. Hermes, they also closed up again with like bindings and seals." And let this suffice concerning St. Cornelius's relics and cult among the men of Ronse.
Annotata\ elsewhere illuminat* is absent
\ elsewhere: depositum*
\ i.e. cæduntur*
\ mœrorem*
§ XVI. The same Saint's cult and relics in certain other places.
Cult and relics at Ninove in Flanders, Besides the said places there are others also made illustrious by the same Saint's cult, or by his relics, as they will have it, some of which I shall here briefly touch upon. In the first place, the abbey of Ninove, of the Premonstratensian Order in Flanders and in the diocese of Mechlin, has a church dedicated to SS. Cornelius and Cyprian, and glories in their relics. About these the most reverend lord Charles Louis Hugo, bishop of Ptolemais and abbot of Étival, writes thus in volume 2 of the Annals of the Premonstratensian Order, column 380: Ninove possesses notable relics of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian, most famous for many kinds of cures and for the frequent vows of pilgrims. Every year they celebrate a twin Office of the same Saints; the first, namely, of their Birthday, the other of the Translation, on the fifth day of November. In Lesson 4 of this Office the following is read about the relics received there: But that, when the relics of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian were being translated from the monastery of Inda to Ronse, a part of them was left among the people of Ninove, the ancient tradition of the church of Ninove testifies. Which both the frequent pilgrimage to them for many centuries of years, and the miracles, and the yearly and public solemnity of their translation, celebrated by the people, confirm.
[317] Two other places of Gallo-Belgium in the district of Lille, called by the inhabitants Hem and Englos, and at Hem and Englos Martin L'Hermite, priest of the Society of Jesus, celebrates as renowned for our St. Cornelius's relics and cult, in the History of the district of Lille, Douai and Orchies, published in French in the year 1638. He lays down that this cult in both places began not later than the year 1280; but on no other foundation than that in that year Guy, count of Flanders, bought the lordship of Ronse from the abbot of Inda; from which I do not see by what reasoning that follows. More certain are the things he has there about the cult flourishing at Hem in the fifteenth century, if the Bull be authentic which he says was given by Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church in the year 1413, and part of which he recites in the French tongue. In it, on the author's testimony, the praised Cardinals, bestowing certain indulgences, say that they do so since in the church of Hem there is in the baptistery a certain altar before an image of St. Cornelius, at which Mass is wont to be solemnly celebrated; and since a great throng of people from distant parts, at various seasons of the year, flocks thither and venerates the divine Majesty in his Saint; to which is added that those afflicted with the falling sickness are very often relieved before the said image, and are quickly delivered through the holy Martyr's patronage.
[318] Further, he says that St. Cornelius's relics were given by the chapter of canons of Ronse to the people of Hem, in Gallo-Belgium. and are honored there enclosed in a silver shrine, pilgrims flocking thither in great number both at any season of the year and especially on the fourteenth day of September and the following octave, from the districts of Cambrai and Tournai, and from Hainault and Flanders. He adds also that there flourishes there under the title of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian a confraternity of both sexes, promoted by Guilibert, lord of the place. And with no less cult and concourse of people he asserts the same Saint is honored at Englos, where also some of his bones, which he sets down as received from the abbot of Inda, renowned for many miracles, to which the votive offerings hung up bear witness, are kept; and where likewise a confraternity of both sexes under the same holy Pontiff's protection was erected by the authority of Pope Paul V, and endowed by the same Pope with notable Indulgences, which on the first Sunday after the fourteenth of September are plenary.
[319] That our St. Cornelius's head is kept at Pavia, Jacopo Gualla writes in the Sanctuarium of Pavia, book 4, The people of Pavia, of Trier, chapter 10: but a great part of it also is ascribed to the people of Trier by Johann Enen, doctor of sacred Theology, in the Epitome or Marrow of the deeds of Trier, published in German and afterwards rendered into Latin by Brother Johannes Scheckmann, folio 42 verso, where he says thus: Seventhly, a part of the head of St. Cornelius, Pope and martyr, namely the crown from the eyes and nose upward, brought by blessed Agritius. The same is asserted in a certain other German book which treats of the sacred relics of Trier, and in which besides half a rib of the same Saint is recounted, and both are said to have been brought to Trier in antiquity together with the sacred tunic of Christ, and to have been found with it in the year of Christ 1507. But Brouwer and Masen in the Annals of Trier, volume 2, book 15, write that that sacred tunic was found in the year 1196, and make not a word of mention there about St. Cornelius's head or relics.
[320] and the people of Spoleto also believe they have notable relics of him; That at Spoleto too in Umbria, in the college of the Society of Jesus, the upper part or crown of the head of St. Cornelius the Pope was shown him, as the letters patent set forth, our Papebroch noted in his manuscript booklet about his Roman Journey. He adds that these relics, together with certain others, were taken out at Rome by the ambassador of the king of the Spains, the marquis of Villena, by Pontifical authority, and afterwards given by doctor Vulpius to the aforesaid college; but that they had not yet then been exposed to public veneration. But what we have reported in this and the preceding number can by no means be reconciled with what we recounted in §14 about the head kept at Inda, if this is really entire, and if the people of Pavia and of Trier likewise claim it entire or the greater part of it for themselves. About the Spoletan portion it can besides be observed that the holy Pontiff's body was many centuries ago removed from the Roman crypts, whence that Spoletan portion was extracted, as is established from §13. For the rest, for lack of instruments I can determine nothing certain about these matters.
[321] [which a certain anonymous writer also asserts about the monastery of Cornilly among the people of Bourges.] Finally, an anonymous writer of the History of the patriarchs of Bourges, chapter 61, in Labbe, volume 2 of the Manuscript Library, narrates that a certain most noble count, who with the Christian army had stormed Jerusalem at the end of the eleventh century, when he was returning from Rome into France, easily obtained from the supreme Pontiff that the relics of the saints Cornelius and Cyprian should be given him; and that then, having returned into France, he built a certain monastery in the territory of Orléans, which, being made illustrious by the aforesaid relics, he wished to be called Cornilly, and handed it over to monks obtained from the Congregation of Vallombrosa. Almost the same things Mabillon narrates from him in volume 5 of the Benedictine Annals at the year of Christ 1088, number 62; but he differs in this, that he would have it done some years earlier; namely not under Léger, the first archbishop of Bourges of that name, but under Richard II; and he adds that that monastery, founded on the border of the dioceses of Orléans and Bourges, is commonly called Cornilly-le-Contres, and was afterwards subject to Cassemale (it is now called Cassebénédict) and obeys it in his own time also.
[322] is asserted by a certain anonymous writer. But how could that count obtain St. Cyprian's relics from the Pontiff at Rome, since that Saint's body is known never to have been translated to that City? About St. Cornelius's relics the difficulty is less; for although his body too was brought to Compiègne in the ninth century, it is not necessary that we should say nothing of it remained at Rome; since we have shown elsewhere also that it was not customary for sacred pledges of this kind to be transmitted from Rome elsewhere without some part of them being kept in that place. Further, that writer,
whom others believed to be Benedict Vernier, a monk of Saint-Sulpice, but the praised Mabillon rather Christopher of Vlierden, a religious of the same monastery, is not older than the fourteenth century; and therefore he could easily by error believe that the said relics of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian, which that count had perhaps received from Compiègne or from elsewhere, were brought by him from Rome. For the rest, I do not doubt that elsewhere too some relics of this same Saint of ours, whose cult is celebrated throughout the world, are piously honored.