A Tract on the Judgment Already Passed upon the Prince of This World

(The Book on Simoniacs.)

To Bernardus, venerable abbot of Clairvaux, brother Gerhohus sends greetings in Christ.

At the court of Bamberg I could not enjoy your longed-for presence as I had wished. For, hindered by the tumult of affairs, out of many matters only a few came into question — matters on which I had desired your fatherly response, so that by comparing my questions with your answers and relating them together to the one final purpose of charity we might think and speak the same thing, until God should reveal to us, if in anything we thought otherwise.

I say this not because truth holds you otherwise, but because it moves many greatly that we, who have been sent as scouts by one Lord, do not in all things say one and the same thing. Just as when Joshua and Caleb were encouraging the people of Israel to drive out the inhabitants of the promised land, the other scouts who had been with them said, “We are by no means able to go up, for they are stronger than we” — so now, while the pontiffs of the Roman see, Nicolaus II, Alexander II, Gregorius VII, and the other successors of their line, together with our own time’s pope Innocentius, are encouraging God’s people toward the extermination of simoniacs and others who, since both ecclesiastical offices and benefices have been forbidden to them, have had the promised land, as it were, adjudged against them — while these men, I say, are encouraging God’s people to the conquest of such enemies, there is no lack of learned readers of Scripture, like scouts of the promised land, who speak in harmony with those scouts who said: “We are by no means able to go up against this people, for they are stronger than we. We saw there certain monstrous beings, children of Anak, of gigantic stock, beside whom we were like locusts.” Against these, though the spirit that was in Joshua and Caleb cries out through the mouths of a few — “Do not fear the people of this land, for we can devour them like bread; their protection has left them, the Lord is with us, do not be afraid” — against these, I say, that spirit is crying out. Therefore, so that I may rather accord with the few in the truth than err with the many, I desire to be instructed by your fatherly wisdom whether, in the matters contained in the following tract, I am speaking words of truth and sobriety, or whether it seems otherwise to you — as some suppose, since at the court of Bamberg you did not stand firm either for me or for my adversaries. I wish, however, that this tract should reach you sealed with our seal and thus intact, so that it may be examined by you first, and if you judge it proper, by you alone as its reader. But if it shall seem good to the spirit of piety that dwells in your heart that it should come to the knowledge of many, then I ask that if anything in it is to be corrected, either you correct it or suggest to me what should be corrected. You will be able to send any written response to me through Lord Adam, which I beg you not to be slow to do, since I cherish your little works and am accustomed to give thanks to the spirit of truth that rebukes the world through you. From this act of thanksgiving, then, let the beginning of our little book take its start, with God guiding our spirit and our pen. Here ends the prologue.

Here Begins the Tract on the Judgment Already Passed upon the Prince of This World.

I give thanks to the spirit of truth, who in both your spoken and written words rebukes the world concerning sin and concerning righteousness — concerning sin, indeed, because men do not believe in Christ, who though they confess him in words yet deny him in deeds; and concerning righteousness, which you so fully ascribe to divine grace that a man is no more permitted to boast of the righteousness divinely bestowed upon him than of that obedience of Christ upon which all our righteousness depends. And what is that obedience, except the one he himself designated when he said: “I go to the Father and you will see me no more”? For he said this on the night he was handed over to death, going through that very obedience of death to the Father, and leaving to his followers all the benefit of that obedience. For on that obedience of Christ rests the whole righteousness of Christians, according to that word

of the Apostle: “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous” [Romans 5:19]. Who therefore, being righteous, would boast of a righteousness that is his own — a righteousness that neither human industry nor free will, but only the obedience of Christ, produces? That obedience, indeed, by which he went to the Father and we see him no more. Through that obedience, such great grace is conferred upon our free will in those who believe in Christ and love him for the sake of that very obedience, that within the free will there is also a free counsel for pursuing what is both discerned by free will as just and approved by free counsel as right — so that man’s very righteousness is rightly held to be derived from the aforesaid obedience of Christ. Wherefore the spirit of truth rightly rebukes the world concerning this righteousness not only in those who neglect it, but in those — and far more — who ascribe it to their own powers; for the former are inexcusable on account of free will, which, as you assert in a certain work of yours, is bound by no necessity to sin, and the latter are damnable on account of their craving for vainglory.

For after Christ went to the Father by the way of obedience, which is the source and efficient cause of our justification, whoever from that moment on, having heard of Christ’s victory, serves sin — that is like what it would have been if, after the giant Goliath was laid low and the entire Philistine army put to flight, the people of Israel had chosen rather to remain subject and enslaved to the Philistines than to enjoy the freedom won for them by the strong hand of David. And those who arrogate to themselves either Christ’s victory or any righteousness derived from that victory, or even the praise and glory due to that righteousness, are found to resemble proud Saul, who was overly envious of humble David and yearned to claim David’s glory for himself. For Saul was angry and said: “They have attributed thousands to me, and ten-thousands to David” [1 Samuel 18:8]. And now many are angry if the glory owed to God alone is not offered to them instead — because they receive glory from one another and neglect the glory that comes from God alone [cf. John 5:44]. These men, as I have said, the spirit of truth rebukes both in your words and in your writings, proving that man’s righteousness is to be attributed to divine grace alone. I now recall that saying of the Apostle which you urgently impressed upon me at the court of Bamberg: “To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, to God alone be honor and glory” [1 Timothy 1:17], and that angelic word: “Glory to God in the highest” [Luke 2:14]. These two testimonies, drawn from apostolic and angelic lips, you perhaps set before me so that I, a wretch in my pursuit of glory, should not lose the grace of peace invoked upon men of good will. I rejoice, most pious and reverend father, at your solicitude for me; and yet I give thanks to God that I am not conscious in myself of a craving for human and vain glory. I am not conscious of it in myself, I say — yet in this I am not thereby justified. For it is the Lord who judges me; and even this very gift is his in me, that, as it seems to me concerning myself, it matters but little to me to be judged by you or by any human tribunal — nor do I judge myself — because I await with trembling the divine judgment concerning all my deeds, words, and thoughts, my trembling increased by your fatherly admonition in which you said that each of us ought to consider what manner and how great a fruit would come from his labor in the word of God. You were able to say this with confidence, as one who is conscious of great fruits — fruits that, through your planting and watering while God gave the increase, have sprung up from your labor about the word of God. But I, trembling, turn over these words of yours in my mind, since from much labor of mine I gather few sheaves, compared to those who draw after them a large flock of disciples, either toward the eremitic life or toward some other way of life far removed from the world and resembling the life of those who with the prophet Elisha lived on wild herbs in the wilderness, because through

the many fornications of the impious Jezebel they could find no place for holy living in the cities, inasmuch as idolatry was then reigning even in Jerusalem itself. [This was] in the holy city under Athaliah, daughter of the aforesaid Jezebel, in company with Joram — on account of whose uncleanness, while it ran rampant in the kingdom of Judah, Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah were cut from the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, where it is written: “But Joram begat Uzziah” [Matthew 1:8]. When, therefore, Judah and Israel were so alienated by the wickedness of such kings and queens that they could not, at least for the sake of the word of God, even have the freedom to teach under them — a freedom whose removal is attested by the killing of the prophet Zechariah between the temple and the altar [cf. Matthew 23:35] — many of the prophets, of whom Elijah and Elisha were the chief, wandered in mountains and in caves of the earth [cf. Hebrews 11:38]. You, father, and those like you seem to be following their example by dwelling in the forests and inviting those you can to do the same. For what is found to be lacking to you from the ancient example of Elijah, if one considers the austerity of your clothing and the wild diet you use — unless perhaps it is that excessive zeal with which he was so relentlessly hostile to Jezebel, killing in a single day eight hundred and fifty [of her prophets] — yet not before he had first shown that the fire of God was absent from their sacrifices? For the king and people, bewitched as they were by those false prophets, would not easily have allowed so many priests to be slain unless it had first been demonstrated how far their sacrifice fell short of the sacrifice of Elijah. Once it was shown, however, that the divine fire did not work in their sacrifice, neither king nor people defended them, and Elijah slew them utterly forsaken of all aid. Would that you had his zeal — first in annulling the sacrifices of heretics, and then in slaying them with the sword of the word, with which you are so powerfully armed! For to deal with one standard-bearer of the schismatics or heretics: how do you plan to separate from Petrus Leonis the people who cling to him, so long as he, cut off from the Church, is believed to offer the same sacrifice that we offer, and to differ from us in the act of offering no more than bad and good priests differ within the Church — priests who, apart from the sole efficacy of salvation, are agreed to be in no way different from the good in their sacrificing? For it does not suffice for the refutation of heretics that we distinguish them from bad Catholics by this — that their sacrifices benefit neither themselves nor those who communicate with them — since within the Church wicked priests not yet under interdict, though they do not work salvation for themselves, yet do work it for those who communicate with them and hear their Masses. This, I say, does not suffice, since the heretics glory in this alone in which the magicians of Pharaoh once gloried — namely in signs altogether similar [to those of God’s servants], except insofar as the finger of God alone distinguishes them. For what are the sacraments but signs of sacred realities, by which Pharaoh and all Egypt — that is, all this world lying in evil — is bewitched through heretics, simoniacs, and others separated from the Church? For it does not yet appear that the invisible finger of God, which many assert to be present in all sacraments whether celebrated inside or outside the Church, does not everywhere cooperate with those signs and sacraments, however altogether similar they may outwardly be. You, however — thanks be to God — do not attempt to establish this, but customarily hold yourselves as mediators between the opposing parties, so as not to be found either affirming or denying the aforesaid view; perhaps because, in hiding from this Jezebel in the cave of silence on this question — like Elijah evading the snares of Jezebel — you seek a certain security for yourselves and yours, a security you could not have if, just as you rebuke the world concerning sin and concerning righteousness, you were also willing to rebuke it concerning judgment, by asserting that the prince of this world has been judged not only in himself but also in certain of his members. Now since this is so, or at least appears to you to be so, we rejoice at your security, we rejoice that you have

all men as friends, even those who are enemies of the Christian religion, provided it is established that you are hostile and opposed to their wickedness, however much you may feel that they love you. But those men cheer us greatly who are accustomed not only to hide with Elijah but also, like him, to manifest themselves in this — that they annihilate the sacrifices of false prophets and slay those same spirits with the sword of the word. But what shall I say of those who never hide with Elijah but always dwell in the cities with Isaiah, Zechariah, Jeremiah, and the other prophets, who had no disciples or very few — and yet those who resist wicked men to their face are rendered glorious before God by this alone: that having experienced mockeries and scourges, and moreover chains and prisons, they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were tempted, they were slain by the sword [cf. Hebrews 11:36–37]? My soul, thirsting to imitate such men, is nowhere more sweetly refreshed than when it looks upon the presiders of the apostolic see. For through them Simon Magus was crushed; through them, flocks of companions are driven away from ministry at the sacred altar — namely those who fornicate like Nicolaus, Ebion, and Paulus of Samosata, or who traffic in the house of God like Simon Magus himself and Judas, that most wicked merchant. To pass over the rest in which the prince of this world has now been judged, who would judge it fitting to call the impious Simon and his followers — so often already condemned — once more to judgment, as though still awaiting sentence, when the prince of this world has been so definitively judged in him that the holy Gregorius, writing to bishop Victor about those who tolerated Simon, declared: “Whoever has not burned intensely, as befits his office, to correct this crime” — namely the heresy of simony or of neophytism — “let him not doubt that he has his portion with him from whom this accursed sin first took its beginning.” We wish it noted here, however, that we do not say that the prince of this world is condemned in doubtful cases or concerning persons who are unknown — for the cases of such persons await the judgment of the final divine examination. We say that the prince of this world is condemned only in those cases and those persons concerning whom we find that the apostolic see has clearly passed judgment. For that see, employing careful circumscriptions, does not destroy the just with the wicked: therefore its presiders do not judge others together with Nicolaus or Simon Magus, nor name them Nicolaitans or simoniac heretics, except those who, hardened in the sect of their error, knowingly and openly disobedient to the synodal definitions of the holy fathers and the decretal statutes made by them, and recalcitrant against them with the obstinacy of apostates, resist in purpose and will. Against such persons the sentence of anathema has long since been passed, and their offices have been entirely forbidden, although the Church still permits communion with them in shared living, in greeting, and in other such matters — because if they were forbidden to us even in these things, we would have to leave this world, full as it is of Nicolaitans and simoniacs. For who would doubt that hired clerics and those who hire them are simoniac and heretical traffickers? Who would doubt that those ministers of the altar who fornicate, who usurp offices forbidden to them, and who pertinaciously defend such presumption against the teaching of the apostolic see, are heretics — inasmuch as they are at odds with and rebels against the Roman Church? But because it is exceedingly difficult to determine precisely what manner of persons the pertinacious defenders of such presumption and disobedience — as manifested in the usurpation of forbidden offices — are, such that they must be named heretics and publicly avoided, especially if their own bishops instruct that they are to be avoided, or else merely cautiously shunned rather than publicly avoided — especially since they do not defend or teach that what they do ought to be done, or because their own bishops still tolerate them though they have been forbidden by the Roman see — therefore we shall perhaps more correctly count such persons among the wicked and interdicted Catholics rather than among the excluded heretics. Although in the synod celebrated in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 1059,

held at a synod celebrated in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 1059, presided over by Pope Nicholas II, that same pope — in the proceedings of the full council — had called the Nicolaitans by name and had designated their perversity itself as a heresy.

Thus, although by the authority of this Roman pontiff and council we may denounce the aforementioned unchaste and presumptuous men alongside the other heretics, yet because — as I said — they can scarcely be examined and judged, we are content that they be called wicked and under interdict, and that only this be observed concerning such men: that no one obedient to the Roman see should dare to hear offices that have been terribly forbidden by that same see. For, as is written in the First Book of Samuel, whoever calls himself a Christian but holds the apostolic see in contempt incurs the sin of divination. But this obedience can easily be maintained by those who have a more favorable situation and freedom, being obedient in all things to the apostolic see — namely, by avoiding, and teaching others to avoid, those whose offices that see forbids to be heard. But where bishops, like the angel of Thyatira, are unwilling to expel from their territories that woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess, but permit her instead to eat forbidden sacrifices, to commit fornication, and to lead astray the servants of God — there, Catholics must either endure persecution from that Jezebel, or flee as Elijah fled the ancient Jezebel, or else conceal their caution and their obedience to the Roman see from that Jezebel, just as in former times the seven thousand men who had not bowed the knee before Baal concealed their caution while Jezebel reigned. Let these words concerning unchaste clerics suffice.

But if someone has made himself so notable and conspicuous in the leprosy of simony that he can be recognized by “the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity,” I do not hesitate to declare that he must be shunned as a heretic and enemy of the Church — since he has been proscribed and condemned in the very person of Simon Magus by the blessed Petrus and by many of his successors. For, as Pope Gelasius attests, when the originators and teachers of any perversity whatsoever were condemned with anathema, all their accomplices and followers were likewise anathematized and cut off by the sword of the Spirit, and were pre-condemned even before they were born — just as Canaan, the son of Ham, was cursed before he was born, when Noah said: “Cursed be Canaan; he shall be a slave of slaves to his brothers.” Why was Canaan, still unborn, cursed because of his father Ham’s impious mockery, if not because in any condemned heresiarch the entire posterity of that heresiarch must be understood as accursed? Read, if you have time, the letter of Pope Gelasius to Euphemius, and you will find that for each heretical perversity once condemned, not only the originators but also their successors, and those in communion with those successors, are to be avoided in equal measure. For blessed Pope Gelasius himself says among other things in that letter: If any right-thinking person communicates with heretics or their successors regarding the Catholic faith, it is not permissible for him to be named among the altars of Catholics. Likewise to the Eastern bishops: All accomplices, followers, and communicants of a perversity once condemned are held in the same lot. Again to all the bishops of Dardania: Our fathers judged it sufficient that the originator of any error, together with the error itself, be condemned, so that whoever at any time should be a communicant of that error would be condemned by the principal sentence against it, when any such person could be clearly recognized either by his own profession or by his communion. And a little later: The rule of faith and Catholic communion set forth at the Nicene council excludes without appeal all Arians, or any who have fallen into that plague whether by consent or by communion. Again in what follows: The error once condemned along with its author bears both the condemnation and the punishment upon any participant in that corrupt communion. Is it not through this Roman pontiff, speaking thus, that the Spirit of truth reproves the world concerning judgment —

plainly showing that the prince of this world has already been judged — not only in the very authors of the condemned heresies, but also in all their followers, successors, and communicants? This judgment of the prince of this world, already accomplished, was well perceived by Roman diligence, which teaches that hired clerics are to be tolerated in no churches, since they are condemned in the wicked Balaam as the first hired man — marked under that same detestable name of Balaam in the Apocalypse of the Apostle John, in the letters of the Apostle Petrus, and in the letter of the Apostle Jude — indeed, anathematized many times over in Simon Magus. These hired men the free mother once judged as sons of the slave woman, saying to God the Father: “Cast out the slave woman and her son” — indeed, also the many sons of concubines, who, though they receive many gifts and revenues by God the Father’s forbearance, shall not be admitted to the inheritance promised to the sons of the free mother alone, even while they join field to field and house to house. But they shall be cast out from the fellowship of noble sons, whether these employers imitate King Balak or the hired men imitate Balaam the diviner, who “loved the wages of unrighteousness.” Because the ass, wishing to avoid the sword it sees menacing such men, speaks quite enough against their foolishness, let us set aside these Balakites and Balaamites as dry chaff reserved for eternal fire — content only to keep clear of them as men who walk disorderly — and not dispute at all about the sacraments celebrated by them. Since above we conceded that they can be counted among the wicked and interdicted Catholics (their wicked and obstinate defenders excepted), let us now turn our pen to those whom we do not hesitate to call heretics, and whom we rightly name simoniac heretics: even if they do not defend the trafficking that has been condemned once and indeed cut off many times — in the same way that Simon Magus did not defend it when, though he was “in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity,” he nonetheless said to the apostles: “Pray for me to the Lord, that none of the things you have spoken may come upon me.” Although therefore those who have been accused of simony but are not manifestly stained with the leprosy either of a simoniacal act or of a simoniacal pact must be summoned to judgment — so that those who still have a voice of denial may have room for defense — yet those hired clerics and their employers are such manifest traffickers in the house of God that not only the act but also the simoniacal pact is so evident in their case that it ought to be established as certain that they have long since been condemned together with Simon Magus and in Simon Magus, and that they have no share or lot in the priesthood of Christ; as Petrus said to Simon Magus: “You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God.” For a like case is subject to a like sentence. Did not Petrus, in condemning that magician, set forth the very same cause that no one can now deny exists among hired clerics and their employers? “For your heart,” he says, “is not right before God.” So too now, if the hired clerics ask why they have been proscribed by the vicar of Petrus, let them take as said to themselves what was said to Simon Magus: “For your heart is not right before God” — not right in what respect? Namely, because “you thought you could possess the gift of God with money.”

It is pleasing, bringing the lamp of Scripture closer and letting that light which enlightens every man illuminate the matter, to examine why simoniacs have been condemned more severely than all other heretics. For whereas all heresiarchs who obstinately defend their perversity are read to have been condemned, against Simon Magus alone — even as he begged for pardon — was a curse pronounced:

not because he had possessed the gift of God with money, but because he thought this could be done. And indeed this gift is so inestimable that whoever thinks it can be possessed, or bought, or put up for sale at a price is shown to be a son of either damnation or perdition — like that son of perdition to whom Petrus said: ”Your money perish with you in destruction.” Not so severely, not with such vehemence, was that other son of perdition, the seller of Christ, condemned, that the price of Christ’s blood should perish together with the man himself. For once the trafficker himself was destroyed at some cost, great benefit was provided through that price of his blood: for according to the authority of prophetic Scripture the potter’s field was purchased with it as a burial place for foreigners. But to Simon it is said: ”Your money perish with you in destruction” — from which we can discern that the crime of Simon is greater than the crime of Judas. For Judas indeed sold Christ, whom, being mortal, he did not understand to be God co-eternal — which we easily perceive from this, that on the very night Christ was betrayed, the disciples are read to have been rebuked with the words: ”So long a time I have been with you, and you have not known me?” If this could be said to the good disciples, how much more to that one whose avarice — which blinds even wise men’s eyes — blinded him to knowing Christ as God? For in compensation, as it seemed to him, for the ointment that had been lost, which he himself had said could have been sold for three hundred denarii, he was, stirred by avarice, content to acquire a tenth of that sum, namely thirty denarii, from selling Christ — for thirty denarii are a tithe of three hundred. How blind a seller, who for so paltry a price sold one of whom it is read in the Song of Songs: ”His head is finest gold, and his hands are rounded gold, set with jewels” — far more precious than thirty pieces of silver — indeed, who is that Wisdom of whom it is said: ”She is more precious than all riches, and nothing you desire can compare with her”! Nevertheless, just as it is said to the rulers of this world that, had they known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory, so it can be said of him that had he perceived Christ’s golden head, his golden hands, and all else desirable in him, hidden beneath the mortality of flesh, he would never have sold the Lord of glory for so vile a price. Yet through what we say Judas the worst of traffickers is by no means excused — for even if he could know nothing else of Christ than that he was an innocent man and a doer of good works, he deserved, by selling such a man to death for thirty denarii, to inherit the thirty curses foretold against him by the Psalmist, of which the first is: ”Set a sinner over him” and the last: ”Let them be covered as with a garment with their confusion.” Nevertheless, both Judas and all the heretics who sinned against the person of the Son are judged more leniently than those who sinned against the person of the Holy Spirit. For example, Arrius sinned more tolerably in his blasphemy by calling the Son a creature than did the impious Macedonius by calling the Holy Spirit a creature. For in order to say that Christ was a creature, Arrius could at first have been led by Christ’s own words spoken of himself according to his humanity and misunderstood by Arrius himself — for example when Christ says, ”The Father is greater than I” — but when he obstinately resisted the judgment of the three hundred and eighteen fathers, consonant in their declaration of the consubstantiality of Father and Son, pronounced in one Spirit and confirmed by the indubitable authority of the Holy Spirit, and thereby judged himself unworthy of eternal life, then Arrius sinned not only against the Son but also against the Holy Spirit. For the indubitable authority of the Holy Spirit is the unanimous judgment of the orthodox fathers, all saying the same thing and thinking the same thing on some point; and whoever, scorning this, is driven by a discordant spirit in such a way that he never returns from dispersion to the unity which the Holy Spirit works — that man, as the blessed Augustinus witnesses, speaks a word against the Holy Spirit, to be forgiven neither in this age nor in the age to come. Thus it is that Arrius or any other heresiarch, or even some defender of long-entrenched schism, when by loving his own opinion too much or by envying those who speak better he has become obstinate and intractable,

falls, as the initial errors grow — errors in which he had perhaps not yet sinned against the Holy Spirit — into blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, to be forgiven neither in this age nor in the age to come. But Simon Magus, or any other simoniac, is convicted of being a blasphemer against the Holy Spirit at the very inception of the simoniacal traffic, in which the gift of God is thought to be possessable with money. For that the Holy Spirit is called and is the gift of God is so evident that it requires no proof. Hence that which Christ said to the Samaritan woman — “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is speaking to you, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water” — we find expounded by great doctors in such a way that by “the gift of God” of which Christ speaks we understand nothing other than the Holy Spirit. This being so, whoever thinks that the gift of God can be possessed with money reduces the Holy Spirit — who, equally with the Father and the Son, is the creator of all things — to a price, which is certainly a price created by the Holy Spirit the creator. When therefore he compares or subordinates the creator to a vile creature, he offends far more gravely than Arrius, since Arrius indeed asserted that the Son of God was a creature, but nonetheless one of the highest excellence, to whom he did not allow even angelic dignity to be considered equal. The simoniac, however, believing and thinking that the gift of God — that is, the Holy Spirit — can as if it were his own property be bought from him with money by a man (when everything a man possesses as his own property is lower and inferior to the man himself), places the Holy Spirit who is the gift of God — indeed who is God — beneath man and equates an inestimable grace with a price, and compares with anything the incomparable, if we consider all creatures; by none of which can the creator Spirit be valued or compared — any more than the Father or the Son, of both of whom this one Spirit is equally the Spirit, equally free as the Father and the Son. Indeed, while the Son, “taking the form of a servant,” was for thirty-three years a servant, made a little lower even than the angels who served him, the Holy Spirit is of such great freedom that he even makes free the servants whom he fills; hence that word of the Apostle: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” Likewise: “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.” For the yoke of the law, which works wrath, and the yoke of sin, which weighs heavily, is removed only by this Spirit when he comes, according to that word of Isaiah: “The yoke will rot from before the oil.” Does not a man therefore commit a great and wicked sacrilege when he sells or buys this utterly free Spirit — this Spirit who is the author of all angelic or human liberty and liberation — as if he were his own slave? Indeed, since he cannot in fact do this, he thinks that he can buy or sell one who does not come to men through any purchase, but rather, being free, “breathes where he wills,” and divides his gifts “to each one individually as he wills” — not as he is purchased at a price, not as ambition demands, but, as I said, “as he wills.” Wicked Macedonius indeed sinned against this Holy Spirit by asserting that he was the servant of Father and Son, though to be set above all the angels; but the simoniac sins far more gravely, thinking that this most free Spirit can be sold by him as his own slave. And whoever strives to buy him both loses the price and does not acquire what he has priced, but the entire leprosy of the seller migrates in a wondrous way — while not departing from the seller himself — to the buyer, so that both buyer and seller may perish among the members of that one who is “exalted above everything that is called God.” For the simoniacal seller and buyer is exalted above the Holy Spirit, who is said and is, with the Father and the Son, one and supreme God; and in that presumption the Holy Spirit’s divinity is denied, since the Holy Spirit is placed beneath a vile creature, as has been shown — which is proved to be the most manifest crime and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and is more wicked than the crime of Macedonius and of those who with him blasphemed the Holy Spirit by calling him the servant of Father and Son. And lest we seem to prophesy from our own heart, it is fitting to append the testimony of a good number of the fathers, whose authority and

great number can move a faithful and non-contentious hearer, and persuade him of what we are saying. The seventh universal synod, held by the five patriarchs with three hundred and fifty fathers, in the letter it sent to Pope Adrianus, said among other things: “The divine apostle Petrus, together with the others, and your holiness, deposes those who have laid hands on men for money and who continue to do so, as Simon Magus. For more tolerable is the impiety of Macedonius and those around him who attacked the Holy Spirit than the impiety of those who, with some transaction, come and sell the Holy Spirit — the Spirit of God the Father and the Son — in a raving frenzy. For they are also thus constrained to maintain that they cast out that same Holy Spirit [from his rightful place]. For every master sells what he has and what he has bought — whether a slave or any of his possessions. Likewise, one who buys something, wishing to be master of what he has purchased, acquires it through the payment of money: and so those who carry out this transaction disparage the Holy Spirit, sinning equally with those who blasphemed by saying that Christ cast out demons in Beelzebub; and beyond doubt the grace of the Holy Spirit — that is, the holiness of the priesthood — is not in them. For Petrus said to Simon: ‘You have neither part nor lot in this matter.’ For both the twentieth and the twenty-eighth canons of the apostles, and their acts, and the third and fourth books of Kings, utterly cut off from the priesthood any who at any time give or receive money — whether before the laying on of hands or after. For ‘to receive’ is to receive at any time.” Likewise from the final letter of that same synod: “Whoever consecrates someone for money — that is, whoever is the consecrator — is estranged from the priesthood, as all of us who are nurtured on canonical discipline as children of the Church know.” Who would not be moved by the consonant authority of so many fathers sitting in one synod, proclaiming the very same thing that our lowly selves also proclaim? If anyone thinks it easy to contradict this, it remains for him to annihilate the authorities of so many fathers who agree with us and who affirm together with us that the simoniac surpasses the heretic Macedonius in his heresy.

But because many concede, concerning the laying on of hands, that if it is conferred for money both the giver and the receiver become heretics — yet concerning other ecclesiastical goods they do not concede the same — let them hear the following, from the letter of Pope Paschalis addressed to the Milanese: “If someone objects that it is not the consecrations themselves but the things that arise from consecration that are being sold, he seems to say something, yet understands nothing at all. For since the corporeal bishop or abbot of a church can no more profit in this life without corporeal and external goods than a soul can live temporally without a body: whoever sells one of these two, without which the other cannot be had, leaves both of them unsanctified. And yet the sacred canon of Chalcedon utterly destroys this objection, since it so strictly forbids the steward or administrator of a church, or any person subject to a rule, from being ordained for money, that it strikes down with the sword of anathema even the intermediaries of so great a crime.” What more need be said? If simoniacs and neophytes have been anathematized and excommunicated and separated from the Church as true heretics, who would not see that the masses and prayers of such priests provoke God to anger over the people, whom we believed to be propitiated by such men? For it is written: “The place of a true sacrifice is nowhere outside the Church.” And likewise: “After the first and second admonition, avoid the heretical man.” Since therefore we do not avoid such bishops, abbots, and other clerics if we hear their masses or

we share in their excommunication. Indeed, one must certainly believe that they are at least priests — since you thought the gift of God could be possessed with money; for [Simon] is condemned not for what he did but for what he believed he was doing, since to “think” is less than to “believe.” Therefore in what is added — “You have neither part nor lot in this matter” — it is plainly shown that nothing of holy ordination is received in such an advancement. Still some dare, even after these and other most powerful authorities, to defend hired clerics from the charge of heresy, saying that what has been said about simoniacs does not pertain to them, on the grounds that the hired contracts about which we are speaking do not appear to be expressly named in the aforementioned authorities. Let them hear the following, from the council of Pope Clement: “It has been commanded from ancient times, and we forbid under perpetual anathema, concerning the simoniacal heresy which has grown through folly, about which the holy synod has decreed: no one shall sell any church consecrations, archpresbyterships, commendations of altars, transfers of churches, abbacies, or provostships; and whoever shall have hired, or sold, or bought — let him be anathema. Amen.” And all responded three times: “Let it be, let it be.” Let the hired clerics hear this, lest they think it something new that we say hired arrangements are no less than purchases or sales of ecclesiastical goods pertaining to the anathematized traffic of simony. There are also those who strive to defend hired clerics and other such traffickers from the simoniacal heresy on the grounds that they sin out of desire for profit rather than being driven by an intent to corrupt — as if their perverse cupidity diminished rather than augmented the evil they do, when it is precisely through that cupidity that they are most culpable. For Gehazi was not thereby able to remove from himself the leprosy of Naaman the Syrian on the grounds that he had sinned more out of desire for garments and silver than with the aim of corrupting anyone. Pope Urbanus II plainly counters such men, speaking thus: “Whoever confers or receives ecclesiastical goods not for the purpose for which they were established but for private gain — whether through the gift of words, or of improper service, or of money — is a simoniac; since the principal intent of Simon was nothing but money and avarice, that is idolatry, as the Apostle says: ‘and covetousness, which is the service of idols.’” Against this authority of the Roman pontiff some make a foolish objection. They say: “If the conferral or obtaining of ecclesiastical goods through the gift of words, improper service, or money is simony, then the whole earth is already full of simoniacs, since ecclesiastical goods are sometimes granted even to stewards, other tenant farmers, and lay soldiers, with the intermediary commerce of speech, service, and gift.” Those who say this do not sufficiently distinguish between sacrilege and simony. For since an ecclesiastical benefice and office are joined together just as body and soul, whoever acquires one of them in such a way that the other is not obtained without it necessarily sins against the Holy Spirit — without whom it is established that no ecclesiastical office can be rightly administered. Ecclesiastical offices are those that go by these names: episcopate, presbyterate, diaconate, provostship, abbacy, clerical order, and the like — offices that cannot be rightly administered without the gift of the Holy Spirit. In order, therefore, to take one case, let us suppose regarding the episcopate alone that someone might obtain episcopal revenues through gift and so possess the villages and other goods that belong to episcopal administration, in such a way that he desires in no way whatsoever to be or be called a bishop — something that is known to have been done by certain associates of tyrants. Are we to judge such a man to be a simoniac — one who in no way thinks or wishes to be thought to possess the gift of God

Rather, if we assign fitting names to things, we call such a person not a simoniac but a sacrilegious thief, because by removing a sacred thing from sacred use, he renders ecclesiastical property secular, insofar as it lies within his power, stripping it of its ecclesiastical character. This sacrilege is to be charged to those laymen who render to such things an obedience owed to ecclesiastical administration, though their obedience is in fact unwarranted. In this sacrilege, laymen who occupy tithes are implicated, as are bishops who voluntarily cede those same tithes [to laymen]; yet by making such a concession of tithes to laymen, bishops do commit simony, because they attach no spiritual administration to those tithes when granting them — rather, as we believe we have sufficiently demonstrated above, they commit manifest sacrilege, inasmuch as they make ecclesiastical property, so far as in them lies, non-ecclesiastical. Pope Urbanus I, martyr, condemns such sacrilege in his decretals, saying among other things: These offerings are called such because they are offered to the Lord. They must not therefore be turned to any uses other than ecclesiastical ones and those benefiting our Christian brethren and the needy. If anyone, God forbid, acts otherwise, let him beware lest he incur the condemnation of Ananias and Sapphira and become guilty of sacrilege. We may rightly understand that those who render ecclesiastical property non-ecclesiastical, so far as in them lies, are here indicted for sacrilege. Pope Urbanus II also addressed such persons: The properties of individual parishes are under the authority of bishops, who stand and have stood in the place of the blessed apostle Peter and shall stand there in all times to come — from these resources bishops and their faithful stewards ought to supply the necessities of life to those living in common, as best they can, so that no one among them may be found in want. These same properties are called the offerings of the faithful, because they are offered to the Lord. They must not therefore be turned to any uses other than ecclesiastical ones and those benefiting our Christian brethren and the needy, for they are the vows of the faithful, the ransoms for sins, and things entrusted to the Lord for the purpose aforesaid. If anyone, God forbid, acts otherwise, let him beware lest he incur the condemnation of Ananias and Sapphira and become guilty of sacrilege, even as those did who defrauded the price of the aforesaid goods. Of these it is read in the aforesaid Acts of the Apostles: “A certain man named Ananias,” and so forth, down to “great fear came upon all who heard these things.” These things, brethren, are greatly to be avoided and feared, because the goods of the Church are not to be dispensed as if they were one’s own, but as things held in common and offered to the Lord — with the utmost reverence, faithfully, for no uses other than those aforesaid — lest those who divert them from the purpose for which they were entrusted incur the guilt of sacrilege and, what is worse, become anathema. Even if not in body, as Ananias and Sapphira were, who fell down dead, yet in soul — which is more important than the body — they shall fall dead and estranged from the fellowship of the faithful, and slide into the depths of the abyss. Thus far let it suffice us to have amplified, in the words of Pope Urbanus I, the crime of sacrilege committed in the alienation of ecclesiastical goods by bishops who, in the unlawful concession of tithes that they make to laymen, do not commit simony — since they do not attach any spiritual administration to those tithes — but manifest sacrilege, as we believe we have sufficiently demonstrated above, inasmuch as they make ecclesiastical property, so far as in them lies, non-ecclesiastical. Pope Urbanus II addressed such persons: Those who give or hold ecclesiastical properties — which are joined to ecclesiastical office and spiritual ministry just as body is joined to soul — when

together with the spiritual ministry under Simon [Magus], whether they hold them themselves or bestow them on others, under the single motivation that was avarice, that is, the desire for gain, are truly proven to be simoniacs, because they consider the gift of God, which consists in holy ministry, to be something that can be obtained with money, and they rage in contempt against the Holy Spirit by imagining that he can be thus obtained. For, as the authority of Pope Pascalis cited above makes clear, whoever sells either of two things that are jointly bound together does not leave the other unsold. And whoever commits this crime secretly is guilty before the tribunal — that is, the divine tribunal. But one who gives an open and unmistakable sign of this crime in himself, as it were by saying “racha,” is guilty not only before the divine tribunal but also before the human council, since he is known to be subject to the penalties pronounced against simoniacs in any council of the holy fathers whatsoever. And if, when justly rebuked by anyone, he says to his rebuker “fool,” he shall be liable to the fire of Gehenna — and he is altogether like those who said to Christ when he rebuked them: “You have a demon.”

Now, setting aside for the divine tribunal those who are guilty before that tribunal because their crime is hidden, let us deal with those who are guilty before the human council, because their simony is in the open: namely, the manifest buyers and sellers of churches, prebends, and other ecclesiastical things as such. Among these we are compelled to number hired clerics and those who hire them, since both parties commit not a hidden but an open simony — the hired clerics selling, and those who hire them buying, the Mass or some other administration to be performed in the Holy Spirit. These we strike first as guilty before the council — or rather we demonstrate that they have already been struck — in the Council of Chalcedon, where, concerning such wandering clerics ordained to no fixed title, it was decreed and defined by the whole council that they could nowhere perform ministry, to the injury of their ordaining bishop. In harmony with this holy and great council, Leo Magnus says: “That consecration is to be held void which is founded neither on place nor fortified by authority.” The holy Pope Gregorius, approving that same council together with the other principal councils in his synodical letter, says: “I confess that I receive and venerate the four books of the holy Gospels and likewise the four councils — namely Nicene, in which the perverse dogma of Arius is destroyed; Constantinopolitan also, in which the error of Eunomius and Macedonius is refuted; the first Ephesine as well, in which the impiety of Nestorius is judged; and Chalcedonian, in which the wickedness of Eutyches and Dioscorus is condemned — with complete devotion I embrace them, with perfect approbation I keep them, because in them, as upon a squared stone, the structure of the holy faith rises up; and whatever the life and conduct of anyone may be, whoever does not hold their solidity, even if he appears to be a stone, lies outside the building. All persons whom the aforesaid venerable councils reject, I reject; whom they venerate, I embrace. For since they were established by universal consent, whoever presumes either to loose those whom they bind or to bind those whom they loose destroys them.”

Whoever therefore thinks otherwise, let him be anathema. And so we too, thinking in harmony with the holy Gregorius, cast out wandering clerics ordained to no fixed title who wander everywhere hawking their ministry for hire, as cast out in the Council of Chalcedon — lest we either incur the anathema pronounced by the holy Gregorius or lie outside the building according to his judgment. Some object that wandering clerics of this sort were assigned to certain titles when they were ordained, though they were not regularly bound to those titles; rather, they were merely named for those titles at the time of ordination, without having any post of divine ministry in those places, since they were neither placed over those titles or churches nor canonically or monastically bound to their superiors, but were attached to them in name only. Their consecration we judge to be such as would be the consecration of a bishop consecrated to some

episcopal see to which he was never duly elected, and who himself is governed without canonical election and consecration, and to whom no place of exercising episcopal authority will be granted either there or elsewhere — though if such a person were to be regularly attached somewhere, so as to become either a canon or a monk, some ministry could certainly be assigned to him as one established in a place. As it is, however, since they are nowhere regularly or legitimately settled, they wander here and there carrying about their offices for hire, which they perform nowhere except under a money agreement. Further chapters must be brought forward to demonstrate that such offices are void and invalid, against manifest simoniacs. The Council of Piacenza, held under the presidency of Pope Urbanus, says: “Preserving the statutes of the holy fathers, let the ordination of simoniacs be held invalid.” In that same synod against simoniacs it was also said: “We confirm with apostolic authority what the holy fathers have decreed concerning simony. Whatever, therefore, has been acquired in holy orders or in churches by simony — that is, by a price given or a reward promised, by service or by any stratagem of this sort — shall never obtain any validity. If, however, some have been ordained, and they can prove that when they were ordained they did not know [that simony was involved], and if they were at that time regarded as Catholics, we mercifully tolerate their ordinations in the Church; provided, however, that a praiseworthy life commends them. Those, however, who knowingly suffered themselves to be consecrated — or rather execrated — we decree their ordination to be altogether invalid.”

We could gather many chapters consonant with these; but we believe the foregoing sufficient for an intelligent reader to confirm our thesis, by which we hold that all the offices of manifest simoniacs are voided and condemned as utterly invalid in the chapters cited above, just as we assert that the offices of the Donatists and other condemned and excluded persons are altogether invalid, even though they possess the same sacraments as we do.

Here I know that many will object, saying it cannot be that where the integrity of the sacraments is present, anything in the Mass or in other offices can be called invalid. Let us therefore inquire what the word “invalid” means, and what this other word “intact” means, since to some these two words seem to signify things that are, as it were, contrary to one another — things that cannot be predicated simultaneously of one and the same subject, just as “white” and “black,” “sweet” and “bitter,” and other names of contrary things do not simultaneously apply to one and the same subject. We, however, predicate both of one and the same subject — namely, of one and the same sacrament of an excommunicated or condemned heretic — affirming both that it is intact and yet invalid. For, as Augustinus affirms when he argues about Hagar and Ishmael, the same sacrament is known to be equally intact in both heretic and Catholic, if it has been celebrated according to ecclesiastical rite in both cases — the word joining the element — just as, in the case of Ishmael and Isaac born alike from Abraham’s seed, the nobility of their birth was equal as regards their father’s seed. Let us see, therefore, whether a sacrament that is intact in both cases is also ratified in both cases. To help us see this, it is fitting to set down something like a definition of each of the two words, “ratified” and “intact.” We call something “intact” [integrum] when it lacks none of its principal constitutive parts. For example, when a house lacks neither roof nor walls nor foundation, it is called intact; but if any of these is missing, it will not be called an intact house — indeed, it will not be called a house at all. And by “ratified” [ratum] we mean

something full of power and force; and by “invalid” [irritam] we mean something shown to be devoid of power and lacking force. Likewise we not improperly call something “ratified” when we mean to signify that it can never lose the power it contains — as, for example, a proposition or statement that contains or signifies a truth that is immutable, either affirming that what cannot not be is, or the converse, can be called a “ratified” statement; and it can fittingly be called an utterance of reason [oris ratio], since “reason” [ratio] is derived from “ratified” [ratum]. Though even a false statement is called a statement, it does not produce a ratified — that is, firm or true — understanding, and therefore, just as a false statement can rightly be called false, so too an invalid statement can rightly be called invalid, since it lacks a ratified and true understanding — because the state of affairs is otherwise than the statement signifies it to be. Let this be an example of what we are saying. If someone proposes “God is truthful”: this proposition is so true and so ratified that everyone who has received his testimony can subscribe and sign to it, because God is truthful. For what truthful men say, they mean to be true; what they not only say but also write, they indicate more strongly and more durably to be true; and what they have said, written, and sealed with some inviolable seal, they mean to remain true under that seal itself. Hence John, speaking of Christ, says: “He who has received his testimony has set his seal that God is truthful.” In what is he truthful, unless because, just as he spoke to our fathers Abraham and to his seed forever, so he did, and does, and shall do forever? In what is he truthful, unless because, sending his Son to be incarnate, he visited and made redemption of his people, and raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David his servant — in no other manner, at no other time, from no other tribe, in no other village, than through a virgin in the fullness of time, from the tribe of Judah, in Bethlehem the village of David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets, who have been from of old? And so, having received the testimony of Christ, we rightly believe, rightly write in our heart what we believe, and seal what is written — to wit, that God is truthful. For this proposition is not only intact but also ratified. It is certainly intact, because no principal constitutive part is missing from this statement; for just as the principal constitutive parts of a house are roof, walls, and foundation — if any one of these is missing, the house is not intact, indeed it will not be a house at all — so the principal constitutive parts of a statement or proposition are noun and verb, and if either of these is missing, the proposition or statement will lack integrity. In treating of that kind of statement which dialecticians call enunciative, we take “noun” and “verb” broadly, including pronouns with nouns and participles with verbs — so that, in so weighty a matter, with so slight a determination, as it were with a small fan we may drive away the persistent flies of sophisms. An intact statement, then, will not be one lacking a noun or verb — indeed, one that lacks a principal and principally constitutive part of a statement should not even be called a statement at all. But this statement “God is truthful” is entirely intact, because it lacks none of its principally constitutive parts, even though it lacks the secondary parts of a statement — conjunction, preposition, and the rest — whose absence or removal does not diminish the integrity of the statement, that is, does not destroy the statement as a statement, any more than the removal of pegs or tiles destroys a house. Pardon me, reader, for lingering so long over such trifles — but what we have said, once noted, is of value to us for demonstrating the integrity of any sacrament. Let us say again: “God is truthful” is an intact statement — intact, I say, lacking none of its principally constitutive parts. But if it were only intact and not also ratified, it would by no means need to be sealed according to the counsel of John the Baptist, but would need to be blown away, however intact it might be. But this statement is so true and so ratified that it would be more possible for heaven and earth to be reduced to nothing than for this statement to be made invalid; for what it signifies is so true, exists so unchangeably, that it can never not be.

Let another propose: “The devil is true.” This too, as an utterance constituted entirely from a noun and a verb, is intact in the manner just described; but it is by no means true, since it was not fashioned from truth. It is an imitation, and falsehood said to be true; but in seeing through to the truth, everything in him is false. We therefore say confidently that this proposition is, precisely because of this, invalid and false by its very name — impious and alien to truth, endorsed by some such notary of whom the devil bears witness that the world lies under his power.

To return, then, to the matter under discussion: let us cast into this word “sacrament” the concept of a complete whole. For it has its constitutive parts. For example, the word joining the element makes the sacrament. For example: when a man is baptized in these words — “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” — this word, joining the element of water, constitutes the sacrament, made perfect from the visible water as one of its principally constitutive parts. For the prayers that precede or follow those words already mentioned, and the other things that are customarily or habitually employed along with the water in baptism — such as oil and ashes mixed into the baptism — and other things of this sort, are not principal or constitutive parts of the baptismal sacrament. Rather, only this, as I have said: “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” rightly joining the element of water, constitutes the intact sacrament — whether celebrated in the Church or outside the Church, it is equally perfect. These words to be applied to the visible water were not handed down to the Church by an apostle or prophet, but were fashioned from on high, the weaver being the very wisdom of God — just as those words too, poured over the element of bread and wine to confect the body and blood of Christ, are fashioned from on high throughout. For from Christ alone both traditions had their origin: both that of perfecting baptism and that of confecting his body and blood — through those very words which first issued from Christ’s own mouth, either where he instituted baptism, saying “Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” or where he confected his body and blood from bread and wine, and commanded his disciples to do the same, saying “Do this in memory of me.” Whatever is added to this tradition — to this word brought to completion and abbreviated by Christ — whether in the celebration of baptism or of Mass, no more destroys the integrity of the sacraments if omitted, nor perfects them if added, than the remaining parts of a statement — aside from noun and verb — either destroy or perfect the statement by being removed or added.

For we are now compelled to use the likeness of such trifles as well. In former times, indeed, the solemn celebration of Masses was not adorned with such an elaborate outward display of splendor, nor was all this grace of religious observance brought to completion and polished by any one person. For the holy pontiffs, the brilliant lights of the Roman see, as they shone forth at different times, so too they gradually perfected, each by the brightness of his own zeal, the beauty of this saving office. And just as David and Solomon, above all, amplified with splendor the order of the old sacrifice handed down by the Lord through Moses — through the ministry of priests and levites, the great multitude of singers, the joyful dancing of the divine psalms, the illustrious glory of the temple or altar, and the abundance of sacred vessels — so the holy Roman Church, receiving the wondrous rite of the new sacrifice handed down by the Lord through the first apostles, embraced it with devout faith, preserved it with faithful care, adorned it with diligent appointment; bringing forth from its treasury new monuments of piety, it fashioned, as it were, from gold and precious stones a kind of diadem of religious office for the holy sacrifice — as one Roman pontiff established the antiphon at the Introit, another the Kyrie eleison, another the Gloria in excelsis, and yet another something else to be sung or said at Mass — not indeed to augment that unique sacrament, but to adorn the most divine worship of that same sacrament and to venerate the singular sacrifice

handed down by Christ to the apostles and through the apostles to us. For it is not more holy because of these additions than it was before, when it was consecrated by the Lord’s words alone and by the Lord’s Prayer alone; but it was above all fitting that faith, which at that time was still unpolished and, as a certain man both learned and faithful says, “turbid with rustic cultivation, with bare shoulders, uncut hair, and exposed arms,” should, where it could be adorned, be gilded above all in this part as if at its very crown, and be fitly decorated with little golden chains wrought with silver. Therefore, although, as I have said, the integrity of the sacrament established by Christ is neither increased by such additions nor diminished by their omission, yet if anyone rashly were to pluck away what the holy fathers have added to the Lord’s words, he would have to be likened to the soldiers who tore apart and divided the garments of Christ. But those Lord’s words fashioned from on high throughout, where Christ is presented speaking in his own voice and saying: “Take and eat of this, all of you; for this is my body. Take and drink of this, all of you; for this is the cup of my blood,” and so on down to “Do this in memory of me” — those words, I say, poured over the bread and wine, by the joining of which to the element of bread and wine mixed with water the sacrament is made, represent the likeness of that seamless tunic woven from on high throughout, which even Christ’s crucifiers themselves were not permitted to rend. This is the word that abbreviates and consummates all the integrity that exists in the sacrament of bread and wine, if it has been applied to the same element to which Christ applied it — that is, according to the ecclesiastical rite which we know was handed down by Christ himself. But if someone baptizing or someone offering sacrifice were to abandon the tradition of Christ, so as to employ other species of elements than those which Christ instituted in performing the sacraments, or to pass over and despise the very words of Christ himself, such a person does not perfect the integrity of the sacrament; indeed, what he performs no more bears the name of a sacrament than a thing can bear the name of a house when it is established to lack either roof or walls or foundation. A thing could still be a house if it lacked painted walls, or nail-fastened tiles, or other such things; and a statement could still stand if it happened to lack all the parts of speech except noun and verb — but with noun and verb removed, there would be nothing left from which a statement could be constituted. So too in the celebration of the offices of baptism or Mass, certain things are sometimes omitted that are known to have been added by the holy fathers — as when we baptize an infant in peril of death and recite there only the words of the one triune name, or when we sometimes omit the Gloria in excelsis and the Credo in unum — and yet we perfect the integrity of the sacraments. But if in baptizing we were to refuse to name even one person of the three, or if in offering sacrifice, reciting all that the holy fathers have added, we were not to introduce Christ speaking at his Supper — what we perform cannot be called a sacrament. Hence the holy fathers prohibit the rebaptism of those baptized by heretics in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, recognizing in them the character of Christ, that is, the integrity of the sacrament. But those baptized by heretics who did not baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit they judged should not so much be rebaptized as baptized from scratch, because the sacrament of baptism is not recognized where the invocation of the triune name over the element of visible water does not take place according to the rite handed down by God. The Donatists, however, and many other heretics celebrate the divine sacraments according to ecclesiastical rite; and therefore the blessed Augustinus argues forcefully in certain of his writings against those who rebaptize those baptized by such persons and against those who reordain those ordained by such persons, defending the integrity of sacraments celebrated, albeit by heretics — the integrity, I say, not the utility of such sacraments. For he contends that these sacraments can indeed exist outside the Church but cannot profit there,

yet he contends, and demonstrates this through many arguments. Many people, however, suppose that the integrity and form of the sacraments can be verified both outside and inside the Church, while the efficacy of those same sacraments operates faithfully both within and without. This was never his view, for he proves that the sacraments of heretics, however integral they may be, are nonetheless dead and entirely stripped of all virtue. Nor are these two things contradictory — that something may be integral and yet dead — for we have seen a human body that is whole and yet lifeless. It frequently happens that a branch remains intact and yet contains no vital sap. A limb may preserve the form of a limb while no longer performing its function. He is therefore not contradicting himself when he defends the sacraments of heretics as integral and never to be repeated, while at the same time proving them to be dead. For in his sermon on blasphemy against the Holy Spirit he says: “The visible form of a branch can exist even apart from the vine, but the invisible life of the root cannot exist except in the vine. Accordingly, the bodily sacraments which those who are cut off from the unity of Christ’s body both carry and celebrate can possess the outward form of true religion. The invisible and spiritual power of true religion cannot reside in them” — just as sensation does not follow a severed limb. Is not Augustinus, in saying this, proving that the sacraments of heretics are dead, even as he teaches that they are, with respect to their outward form, integral — by reason of which integral form the Roman authority teaches that they are not to be repeated for those returning to the Church, but are to be confirmed by the invocation of the Holy Spirit alone through the laying on of hands? Hence Pope Leo, writing to Nicetas, patriarch of Aquileia, says the following: “Those who received baptism from heretics, not having been baptized before, are to be confirmed solely by the invocation of the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands, since they received the washing of baptism without the power of sanctification. And this rule we proclaim to be observed in all churches: that the bath, once administered, is not to be regarded as having been given in vain, since the Apostle says, ‘One God, one faith, one baptism,’ whose cleansing is not to be violated by repetition. But, as we have said, sanctification is to be sought by the invocation of the Holy Spirit alone, so that what he received from a heretic, he may obtain from Catholic priests.”

Let heretics rejoice and glory in the integrity of their sacraments — provided only that it is established on our part that those same sacraments are utterly dead, utterly extinguished. Hence the same Pope Leo, speaking to the Emperor Leo concerning the excommunicated Alexandrians, who nevertheless celebrated the sacraments according to the ecclesiastical rite, says the following: “It is plain to whom your piety ought to come to the aid and whom it ought to oppose, lest the Alexandrian church, which has always been a house of prayer, should now become a den of robbers. For it is manifest that through the most cruel and monstrous frenzy the entire holy light of the sacraments has been extinguished there; the offering of sacrifice has been intercepted, the sanctification of chrism has ceased, and all the mysteries have withdrawn themselves from those parricial hands.” See, we have proved that the sacraments of heretics are dead and extinguished. Let us now affirm that those same sacraments are null, unless they have been confirmed by the Church. Let us now agree with the Council of Piacenza, which affirms that whatever has been acquired through holy orders or in ecclesiastical affairs by gift or promise of money, by servile compliance, or by persuasive speech, is wholly null and void and of no force. That synodal decree strikes also those who, having lost their offices through some crime, sought to recover them and reacquired them through gifts or promises of money, through undue compliance, or through persuasive speech.

Concerning sacraments celebrated outside the Church but nonetheless according to the ecclesiastical rite, four things have now been demonstrated: namely, that they are integral with respect to their principally constitutive parts; that they are dead, according to the testimony of Augustinus; that they are extinguished, according to the testimony of Pope Leo; and that they are null, according to the testimony of the Council of Piacenza. It is now our pleasure to distinguish between the sacraments themselves — which can be dead, extinguished, and null — and the efficacy of the sacraments, which can never be dead, extinguished, or null, but wherever it exists is living, radiant, and valid. For there is no small difference to be considered between these, and it will readily become apparent if the effects of the sacraments are first distinguished. The effects of the sacraments are not uniform: the term “effect of the sacraments” is used in a passive sense, to designate that by which the sacraments themselves are produced. It is also used in an active sense, to designate what the sacraments themselves produce. The former effect consists in this: that a sacrament is integrally celebrated according to the ecclesiastical rite — for if, in the Mass or in other divine offices, one proceeds according to a different rite than that which the Church holds as divinely transmitted, no sacrament is effected thereby, just as those heretics did who did not baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and for that reason what they did was not counted as the sacrament of baptism. Those among them who came to their senses were baptized from scratch within the Catholic Church, as though never baptized; whereas those who had been baptized outside using the ecclesiastical rite, on coming to the Church, were confirmed through the laying on of hands, chrism, and unction, inasmuch as they possessed within themselves that effect of the sacrament whereby the sacrament could be effected even outside the Church. But that active effect which the sacraments produce and bring about exists only within the Catholic Church. The former effect is discerned by the eyes and by hearing, since the sacrament itself — that is, the sign of a sacred reality — is completed from audible words and visible species. The active effect of the sacraments, which the sacraments produce, is perceived only by the eyes of faith. Since a manifold confusion arises if the effects of the sacraments are named without qualification, I beg pardon for the fact that, constrained by necessity, I am calling them the passive and active effects of the sacraments, in a manner hitherto unusual. For the Apostle warns against only profane novelties of expression, not all novelties; and there is nothing profane in a novelty of expression that conveys no new truth about reality. It has always been, and always will be, permissible to set forth the truth of a matter using words adapted to the purpose in whatever way introduces no error — just as the holy fathers did at the Council of Nicaea, who under pressing necessity introduced into the creed the new word “homoousios,” by which they expressed no new reality. So too we, under pressing necessity, are compelled to distinguish by name those effects of the sacraments that are greatly distinct in reality, so that it may be more clearly apparent in what respect we say that heretics lack the effect of the sacraments. For just as the Apostles, when they saw someone casting out demons in the name of the Lord who was not following them, and forbade him, were rebuked by Christ for having forbidden, in respect of what he shared with them, one whom they should rather have invited to follow the one in whose name he worked signs and wonders — so too we could be reproached if we were to rebuke heretics in that respect in which they act together with us, and occasionally cast out demons, namely when they baptize either infants, or others who err, in which they themselves are excusably ignorant; or even those who, at the point of death and unable to obtain Catholic baptizers, receive through heretics what they would have preferred to receive through Catholics. For those so baptized, since they do not deny in their hearts the power of true religion, the sacrament of true religion itself is not to be believed to reside in them in vain. With this in mind the aforementioned Council of Piacenza judges that those ordained not simoniacally [despite having been ordained] by simoniacal heretics

are to be mercifully tolerated, provided however that they are able to prove that when they were ordained they did not know their ordinators to be simoniacs, and provided that those who ordained them were at that time regarded as Catholics, and provided that the lives of the ordained themselves are commended by praiseworthy conduct. If therefore we tolerate those ordained by such persons when they are excused by the aforementioned reasons, far more should the Catholic Church peacefully acknowledge as her children those baptized by such persons and in no way consenting to their error — provided, however, that once they have learned of the error of their baptizers, they willingly renounce it and choose to follow Catholic truth and peace. We therefore do not forbid simoniacs and other heretics to perform signs in the name of the Lord — that is, to celebrate sacraments, which are signs of sacred realities — in the manner in which they perform them; for in performing them they do not act together with us, since in celebrating sacraments outside the Church they do not gather together with us. And since no benefit from such signs accrues to them, to those who share their depravity, or to those who are joined to them in their excommunication, they are barely and with difficulty admonished not to glory in signs, as the magicians of Pharaoh gloried, since the finger of God operates nowhere except in the Church of God, nor does he work anything through them in those they baptize or ordain, unless it is shown that the souls of these [recipients] are not cut off from the Catholic Church, and they are excused either by the ignorance of infancy, or by another invincible ignorance, or by the exigency of death — which excuse, however, is not received for any other sacrament in the same way it is for baptism. Hence Saint John of Alexandria says among other things: “Baptism may be received from any heretic or evildoer, provided that he has baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. For if someone is held back by illness and death draws near, and no priest or cleric is present to baptize him, he may even be baptized by such a person in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; but penance is to be received from no one except a Catholic.” And a little later: “If no Catholic priest, whether virtuous or even wicked, is present, it is better to remain without visible communion and to be communicated invisibly by the Lord, than to communicate with a heretic and be separated from Christ. ‘There is no concord between Christ and Belial,’ says the Apostle; ‘no part for the faithful with the unfaithful.’ Every heretic is an unbeliever; but a simoniac is a heretic, and therefore an unbeliever. Although Catholics cannot possess the holy communion of Christ visibly and bodily on account of threatening heretics, yet while they remain united to Christ in mind and deed, they possess the holy communion of Christ invisibly — like the great many saints who, living in the desert far from all company, were seen by no one whether living or dying, yet whom we believe to have been so much the more united to God as they were separated from men.” Likewise a testimony from the same author: “Never at any time,” he says, “take part in the communion — or rather, the contamination — of heretics, even if throughout the whole of your life, owing to some compulsion or necessity, being unable to find the communion of the Catholic Church, you have remained without communion. For if, while legitimately possessing a bodily wife, when staying for a long time in some distant region without that woman, we are prohibited by God and by the laws from abandoning her and joining ourselves to another; and if we do so, we are punished — how much more, when we are joined to God through right faith and the Catholic Church, as the Apostle says, ‘I have betrothed you to one husband to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ,’ shall we become partakers of the fate that awaits heretics, if we adulterate the orthodox Church and the holy faith by communicating with heretics? For communion is so named because it makes common and binds the communicant to those with whom he communicates. Therefore, I beg you, O my sons,

do not frequent oratories of this kind.” This last remark about oratories dedicated by heretics we understand to be so intended because we find the same John saying elsewhere concerning Catholic churches: “Let no one fear to enter Catholic churches for prayer even if they have been invaded by heretics, because, although executioners may have wounded the members of Christ and divided his garments, yet the most holy things remain in themselves inviolate.”

Let us now return to what we had left aside, and distinguish still more fully the effects of the sacraments briefly distinguished above. That effect of the sacraments which we have called passive is always uniform, and both outside and inside the Church has a single institution and constitution with respect to the principally constitutive parts; for in the secondary and appendant parts the manner is sometimes varied and manifold, according to the usage of individual churches. But in the principal constitution of the sacraments the manner is always one and uniform in all churches, Greek and Latin alike. For in that the Greeks offer leavened bread, they do not omit the principal institution of Christ — which they would omit if they were to offer something other than bread, for example, cheese or something of that kind, which Christ did not offer. And therefore, although they would act more reasonably if, by offering unleavened bread, they were to agree with the holy Roman Church, yet the Church has long tolerated their leavened sacrifice, not with indifference, but with the earnest effort of many men over many years, that the Greeks should come to agreement with the Roman Church. Hence Pope Leo IX, the one hundred and forty-eighth [in succession] from the blessed Petrus, wrote a distinguished letter against Michael, patriarch of Constantinople, defending the Roman custom as sincere and more consonant with the institution of Christ. But the Greeks nevertheless persevere in their own custom, without departing from us in the principal constitution of the sacraments. Similarly, among the Latins themselves, while some differ in that, whereas almost every other church holds the Gregorian order, they still hold the Ambrosian institution, yet in the principal constitution of the sacraments all these churches agree with one another so fully that not even heretics dare to alter it; and if anyone were to alter it — by offering something different, or by baptizing in some other liquid, or by reciting something other than what the ecclesiastical tradition prescribes during the oblation or baptism — what he does is on no account to be counted as a sacrament. The sacraments are therefore inviolable, since wherever they are they remain the same; and once conferred, they can never be annulled. For when those who have been ordained or baptized are excommunicated, they are in no way deprived of the sacraments they received according to the ecclesiastical rite, but the sacraments of ordination or baptism remain in them, albeit dead, albeit extinguished, albeit null — that is, effective for no virtue or salvation. Such persons [heretical baptizers], in their baptizing, confer only the outward form of true religion which they themselves possess; but the power of that same true religion, which they do not possess, they will not be able to confer — especially upon those who consent to their errors and dissent from the Church, or in the very act of knowingly receiving the sacraments that are forbidden to them. Consequently, when those who have been baptized by such persons return to the Catholic Church, the washing of the flesh is not repeated for them; but, in order that what is lacking may be completed, they are incorporated into the Catholic Mother, so that through her reconciliation they may merit to receive the grace of the Holy Spirit. For in her alone the Holy Spirit is given, because God is not in the rending of minds, but in the unity and peace that is the bond of perfection. And though such persons were begotten in a less than legitimate bed, they are nevertheless counted as children: for even from every tribe of the sons of Israel those children were counted as known to God where the servants of our God are sealed on their foreheads — from the tribe of Gad and Asher, who were born of a handmaid, just as from the tribe of Judah and Joseph, who were born of lawful wives. Yet if before the reconciliation of their legitimate mother they were to be taken from this life, they would be cast out like Ishmael from his father’s house and inheritance, nor

would they be counted among the heirs of the kingdom of God, as our Jesus says: “For the son of the handmaid shall not be heir with my son.” On which Augustinus, commenting, says: “The Church says: ‘Cast out heresies and the sons of the handmaid; for heretics shall not be heirs together with Catholics.’ But why shall they not be heirs? Were they not born? And if they have baptism, will baptism make them heirs? Pride would exclude them from the inheritance. For by the same merciful word and by the same sacrament you do not attain to that same inheritance of eternal life, unless you do what pertains to the Catholic expulsion [of heresy].” In these words of the blessed Augustinus and in the rest of his writings, examined carefully, it is quietly noted what effect of the sacraments he asserts to be fully present among heretics — namely no other than that which we may call passive. By that name we indicate not the effect that the sacraments produce, but that by which sacraments are made to be sacraments, that is, signs of sacred realities: as the water of baptism is a sign of the Holy Spirit, or as the holy oil in the ordination of a bishop is a sign of the Holy Spirit, or as the bread of the sacrifice is a sign of unity, in that just as that one loaf is made from many grains, and just as the wine flows together from many grapes, so the Church is constituted from many persons into one through the unity of faith. Now we say that the Church, one, is signified by that bread — not insofar as it is offered and consecrated, but insofar as it is made from many grains as has been said. For insofar as it is consecrated, it does not signify the individual body of the Lord, but is the body of the Lord, with the Word of God having passed into it through faith in his passion, resurrection, and ascension. For the Lord does not say “this signifies,” but “This is my body.” That bread is therefore one thing, and signifies another. For it is the body of the Lord, but it signifies the one Church, which, although it too is the body of the Lord, is nevertheless a different body of the Lord from the one that redeems. The body of the Lord that redeems is different from the body of the Lord that is redeemed. The body of the Lord that is also the Lord — of which Mary says: “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him” — is different from that body of the Lord which cannot be called Lord or God, although it is the body of the Lord. The body of the Lord by which we are redeemed is that individual body of which Christ said: “This is my body, which will be given up for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.” The body of the Lord that is the Church, however, is not one individual body, nor is it the body that redeems, but it is, through one faith, one body — the Church, one in many individual members or persons, redeemed by the body of Christ. This Church the bread of the sacrifice signifies and therefore is and is called a sacrament, that is, the sign of a sacred reality. For the unity of the Church is a sacred reality, which that bread signifies in this: that it is made from many grains and made into one thing. The same thing could be signified by any bread made from many grains; yet the holy Church venerates this signification — as the sign of a sacred reality, as a sacrament, indeed as a true sacrament — more fittingly in that bread which is set upon the sacred altar, and over which the word of Christ is recited according to the rite of the Church. And because both heretics and Catholics who sacrifice according to the ecclesiastical rite recite this in one and the same manner, both alike equally represent the sacrament, that is, the sign of the sacred reality. For what the bread offered by a Catholic priest signifies is the very same thing that the bread offered by a heretical and simoniacal priest according to the rite of the Church signifies. And in a wondrous manner, that bread signifies unity even where unity itself is manifestly absent. For the unity of the Church cannot be both within and without: it exists in the one Church as an undivided unity. The sign or sacrament of unity, however, can exist even outside [the Church’s]

unity; but unity itself, as I have said, cannot exist outside itself, nor can anyone divide an indivisible unity. When therefore the sign of unity exists apart from the unity for the signifying of which it was instituted, the sacrament itself has indeed its own effect, which we called above the passive effect; but it does not have the effect that we may call active — for while the sacrament is itself effected or produced when the sign of a sacred reality is completed by the word’s accession to the element, yet because the sacred reality is absent from that place, the sacrament does not bring about its proper effects. For just as a body without a soul accomplishes nothing, so the sacrament of unity without unity does not bring about its effects. For just as the soul cooperates with the body in order for it to accomplish anything, so unity cooperates with the sacrament of unity in order for it to accomplish anything; and just as a body is alive when it contains within itself the life-giving spirit, and is dead when that spirit is withdrawn, so the sacrament of unity lives if unity itself subsists within it and it within unity, and when severed from unity it is utterly dead and powerless to produce the effects it ought to produce. For when unity cooperates, the sacraments accomplish something, because they work in creatures the threefold work of the Creator — that is, sanctification, transformation, and salvation. Sanctification even in inanimate things, as in chrism or in a man-made temple, which are sanctified through words that are themselves signs of sacred realities; transformation, as in bread and wine, which when sacrificed are changed into something else; and salvation, because the faithful who worthily partake of the sacraments and persevere in unity are saved through them. All of these things — sanctification, transformation, and salvation — one and the same Spirit works in and with the sacraments in the creatures themselves which are sanctified, transformed, and saved through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom as to the vine the Catholic celebrants of the sacraments cling as branches. For as long as they agree with the teacher of truth through the unity of faith, preserving the bond of unity, all thinking the same in Christ, and each living from his Spirit, they possess the grace of inner vitality, and whatever sacrament they celebrate in the Church of Christ lives for the salvation of those who communicate with them. For Christ speaks in them, and whatever is done by them is rightly believed to be done by him and confirmed by his Spirit — even if they are found blameworthy in their conduct, so long as they remain within the bond of unity and cling to the one vine that is Christ. But truly, when those who dissent and divide themselves from the unity of the Church through heresies and schisms sever themselves from Christ, their every word and sacrament is dead; and whatever they appear to do is null; and whatever they are supposed to sanctify is polluted. Let them go then, and hasten to bear fruit — those seedlings of death and shoots consigned to the eternal flames: simoniacal hirers and hirelings and all other traffickers, driven out of the house of God by the Lord’s scourge; and all heretics and schismatics severed from unity and therefore utterly fruitless. For whatever is done among them, whatever is celebrated as though sacred or as a sacrament, is as truly devoid of the word of life and the spirit of truth as it is true that a branch, unless it remains in the vine, cannot bear fruit; as it is true that a hand severed from the body can neither live nor act. Therefore, since in all the deeds and words in which we receive the testimony of Christ it is necessary to note and mark this — that God is truthful — this testimony of his, as uttered by God, as uttered by the most truthful of witnesses, is to be carefully noted and marked with the seal of inviolable faith, where he says: “Abide in me, and I in you”; and he adds: “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in me.” This true testimony of God, the truthful and most faithful witness, must be carefully marked and always carried in a mindful heart — not only against heretics and schismatics, but also against all the presumptuous. For who does not know the unity of the vine and its branches? As long as the branches abide in the vine, so long do they drink the sap of its root rising through their inmost veins,

and they live in flourishing health, bringing forth blossoms and fruit. But if a branch is cut from the vine, it can no longer bear good fruit; it neither lives nor has any use except to be thrown into the fire and burned. So then, you heretics and schismatics, cut off like branches from the body of the Church, cut away by the weeding-hoes of your invented growths — do not suppose that you can bear living fruit. Likewise, you presumptuous ones and overconfident champions of free will, who think you have no need of the aiding and merciful grace of God, as if by your own will’s swiftness you could seize the fruit of eternal life: know that you are to be taken up by the terrible hand of the vinedresser and cast into the fire, unless you confess that all beauty and all loveliness of fruit proceeds not from yourselves but from the innermost root of the vine. For our faithful and truthful Witness says: “He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing” [John 15:5]. Plainly nothing — for sin is nothing, and nothing is what we can do on our own apart from him. For sin is no corruption of substance. Likewise, a lie is to be reckoned as nothing. A lie is that by which something is signified to be what it is not, or not to be what it is. When we hear someone lying, we customarily say: “You are saying nothing,” which is the same as saying: “What you say does not exist; it is not so in the reality of things as your words signify.” And therefore a lie is rightly called nothing, because it has nowhere to subsist when the signified thing is removed or denied. So, after Christ was born — of whose future birth circumcision was the sign — as the apostle affirms: “Circumcision is nothing” [1 Corinthians 7:19], that is, it is a false sign, because whatever it signified as yet to come is now past, now that Christ has been born of the seed of Abraham; it was for that reason placed in that part of the body through which seed is transmitted, so that there would be no doubt concerning the seed of Abraham from which the one promised to Abraham for the blessing of all nations was to be born. Once he was born, whoever circumcises himself does nothing, because, as the apostle testifies: “Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God” [1 Corinthians 7:19]. In the same way, whoever celebrates the sacraments of the Church given [for use] within the Church, outside the Church, does nothing — because there he applies the sign of a sacred thing where the sacred thing itself cannot exist. He offers the sign of sanctification where nothing is sanctified, and therefore that sign or sacrament is nothing. Truly therefore, “without me you can do nothing.” For this is the testimony of Truth, which Truth itself, without itself, has spoken: “For without me you can do nothing.” This is so true that the sacrament itself — that is, the sign of the sacred thing — whose outward form the severed branches display, is nothing: a form lacking all fruit, all power, all the greenness and sap of the true vine, and therefore in every respect like the circumcision of Jews who blaspheme Christ. For just as the Jews blaspheme Christ yet carry the sign that points to his nativity, so heretics — and above all, as has been shown, simoniacs — blaspheme the Holy Spirit, yet celebrate the signs that signify the operation and power of the Holy Spirit.

We wish the reader to bear in mind that, as we determined above, we are treating only of manifest and undoubted heretics who have been condemned by synodal decree; and we assert only those simoniacs to be guilty before a council, condemned as such in the holy councils, who have been shown to be in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity by the fact that their simony is clearly established, and their office accordingly interdicted by the Roman See. For when simoniacs or other heretics are so hidden that they are regarded as catholics by catholics, we do not judge them guilty before a council — as one who says “Raca” to his brother is guilty before the council — but we consider them guilty before a tribunal, as we say that one who is angry with his brother is guilty before a tribunal: namely not a human tribunal but a divine one, before which belong all things done in secret. What truth may hold regarding the sacraments of hidden heretics we think must be left to the judgment of that One who, if he even works some power of salvation through such persons not yet openly excluded, thereby commends his great mercy.

But if the Holy Spirit, who in the sacraments flees the manifest undisciplined heretic, also flees the disciplined dissembler — that is, the hidden heretic, the wolf clothed in sheep’s wool — who would dare say to him: “Why do you act thus?” We believe nonetheless that the faithful of Christ who do not know these hidden heretics and communicate with their sacraments in the faith of Christ are not defrauded of the gift of Christ and the working of the Holy Spirit, who, as he blows where he wills, so also blows through whom he wills — even through persons like Caiaphas, the killer of Christ, who, though they deserve to be condemned, yet have, by the example of Caiaphas himself, the power to judge even Christ in his members, when, as I have said, they ought rather to be judged and condemned by the members of Christ. As long then as Christ tolerates such men among his members, such a one reigns as a Caiaphas-like high priest in the house of God; his familiarity is no more welcome to the true followers of Christ and the apostles than the familiarity of Caiaphas was welcome to the apostles themselves. But they endure the whitewashed wall unwillingly, until God shall strike it. Those, however, who prop up that same wall are far removed from the apostle Paul, who, standing before one such high priest and being struck at his command, said: “God shall strike you, you whitewashed wall” [Acts 23:3]. But let us leave this whitewashed wall, plastered over with a kind of cement of apparent justice, to be struck by God; and let us at least quietly withdraw from it as it is about to fall, as best we can, lest, if we strive to prop it up like posts, we be crushed when it begins to collapse. The posts supporting this wall are learned and powerful clerks, laymen who are enemies of religion, and all their friends of such a kind as was that friend of the high priest who, when he struck Christ, said: “Is that how you answer the high priest?” [John 18:22]. The arm of the Lord could indeed have struck back him who struck, and could have instantly overthrown not only him but also the whitewashed wall that so rigid a post was propping up — that is, the one falsely called the high priest — but [Christ] accepted the injury, preserved patience, and sought no clemency from so unjust a high priest toward himself. So then let us also, with his help, preserve patience and seek no clemency, good will, or munificence from unjust high priests, if we would rather be saved with Christ than be damned among the flatterers of impious high priests. These Caiaphas-like high priests, sitting in the seat of Moses, share this further kinship with that Caiaphas: just as he held Christ captive and put him to death — not only by his own tongue but also by the Roman hand — so these men hand Christ over as it were captive in the sacraments to those to whom he himself does not wish to be handed over, so that they become guilty of the body and blood of the Lord: not only when they eat and drink judgment to themselves, but also when they hand over the very body of the Lord to be eaten by those whom they ought rather to drive from the Church until they render fitting penance — which is the same as handing Christ over to the gentiles to be mocked, spat upon, and crucified, because, as the apostle witnesses, the guilt of the body and blood of the Lord is incurred when his body and blood are eaten unworthily. But those manifest heretics — severed and withered branches, useless ministers of the sacraments — should not even suppose that they possess Christ or his life-giving body in the way that Caiaphas had him among himself, even though, as has been shown above, they do have the sacrament of the Lord’s body.

Again, let us not console ourselves with the thought that if Christ is not present in their sacraments, we ourselves do not become guilty of the body and blood of the Lord by participating in those sacraments. For it is established that the participants are bound by an equal or even greater guilt: for upon the killers of Christ himself, persevering in their guilt, even that killing was gravely imputed; but the division of Christ’s body would have been imputed yet more gravely, had they torn him apart like butchers and rent him limb from limb and broken his bones. This, however, was not fitting to be done, because the Son of Man, going to the Father according to what had been decreed concerning him, permitted nothing of pain or

injury to be inflicted on himself, except what was written concerning him. Hence when all things had been accomplished that were written about his passion, [they did to him] all that was in their power. But had they not been divinely restrained, they would gladly have broken everything with their associates, and perhaps would have torn and divided him in pieces, as we read of those who were torn apart and rent limb from limb in the schisms they form. But holy Scripture, which foretold Christ’s killing, nowhere foretold — indeed, in every way forbade — the division of Christ himself; it also forbade the breaking of his legs, the Lord saying through Moses concerning the paschal lamb as a type of Christ: “It shall be eaten in one house” [Exodus 12:46] — which amounts to the same thing: “That one lamb shall not be divided among different houses, but shall be eaten in one house.”

And in that communion of his let there be this [consequence]. The fault therefore of the wicked who receive the body and blood of the Lord unworthily in the Church is to be reckoned, by the apostle’s judgment, as a kind of killing of Christ, since he asserts that the one who eats and drinks unworthily is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord [1 Corinthians 11:27]. And this fault is indeed great, but not out of keeping with the Scriptures. A heretic or schismatic, however, is charged not so much with the killing of Christ as with the division of Christ, because, contrary to all the authority of sacred Scripture, he thinks that Christ, the common Lord, can be eaten in diverse and multiple houses, when the law says: “It shall be eaten in one house.” Although Christ is never actually divided, yet those who contentiously affirm that the paschal lamb is eaten both outside and inside the Church become guilty of this division in their own thinking. The heretic or schismatic is, moreover, worse, more detestable, and more execrable than even the Jews and soldiers who killed Christ, because what those could not do, these attempt to do — but in vain, for holy Scripture has not granted that Christ be divided and eaten both outside and inside the one house of the Church, as the following testimonies of the Fathers most evidently prove. Cyprianus in his letter to Cornelius says among other things: “Someone thinks that things of the highest and greatest importance come about without the knowledge or permission of God, and that priests — that is, the dispensers of God — are ordained without his sanction. This is to have no faith in those whom we see; this is to give God no honor. But those priests who are made outside the Church are not ordained by his sanction, who act contrary to the dispensation and tradition of the Gospel, as the Lord himself says through the twelve prophets: ‘They have set up a king for themselves, but not through me’ [Hosea 8:4]. And again: ‘Their sacrifices are like the bread of mourning; all who eat of them shall be defiled’ [Hosea 9:4]. And through Isaiah the Holy Spirit cries and says: ‘Woe to you, rebellious children, says the Lord: you have taken counsel, but not through me, and have made a covenant, but not through my spirit, in order to add sin upon sin’ [Isaiah 30:1].” The same author, to Magnus the presbyter: “The Church is one, which cannot be divided entirely and indivisibly. For if [the Church] is with Novatian, it was not with Cornelius; but if it was with Cornelius, Novatian is not in the Church and cannot be counted as a bishop.” Hieronymus on the Twelve Prophets: “God hates the sacrifices of heretics and casts them away from himself; and as often as they have gathered in the name of the Lord, he will abominate their fragrance and close his ears. But ‘to hate,’ ‘to cast away,’ and ‘not to smell’ are spoken after the manner of human speech, so that we may understand the disposition of God in our own terms.” The same author, speaking of the paschal lamb, says among other things: “Let us not suppose that this lamb can be eaten everywhere. We are commanded to eat it in one house — that is, we are not to think that the lamb can be sacrificed outside the Church.” From which it is manifest that Jews and heretics and all assemblies of perverted teaching

because they do not eat within the Church, eat not the flesh of the lamb but of the dragon, who was given as food to the peoples of the Ethiopians. We, however, eat the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth [1 Corinthians 5:8]. Augustinus to Boniface: “Let heretics not seek the Holy Spirit except in the body of Christ, whose sacrament they have outwardly, but the thing itself — of which that is the sacrament — they do not hold inwardly.” The same author: “The eunuch who had bought Joseph had no living seed in his dried genitals; so likewise one who purchases the grace of the Holy Spirit has no living seed. Similarly, the fire of the sacrifice that had lived under water for seventy years of the Babylonian captivity was extinguished when Antiochus sold the priesthood to Jason. This signifies that the fire of the Holy Spirit does not shine upon simoniacal sacraments.” Origenes in his exposition on Leviticus: “Such a man is sought who can eat the sacred flesh — not in any place, but in the holy place within the court of the tabernacle. Let those who rend the churches hear this, who, introducing foreign and depraved teachings, think they can eat the sacred flesh outside the temple of God and outside the court of the Lord. Their sacrifices are profane, being conducted contrary to the command of the law. They are commanded to be eaten in a holy place, within the courts of the tabernacle of testimony, which the wall of faith encircles, the pillars of hope support, and the breadth of charity enlarges. Where these are not present, the sacred flesh can neither be had nor eaten.”

If, moreover, authorities promulgated by the Apostolic See consonant with our assertions are required, the authorities cited above, excerpted from the writings of Leo the Great and Pope Paschal, will suffice: the former asserts that in the church of Alexandria, on account of the excommunicate, the offering of sacrifice was cut off, the sanctification of chrism failed, and the light of all the heavenly sacraments was extinguished; the latter, in his letter directed to the Milanese, confirms that saying of blessed Augustinus: “There is no place for a true sacrifice outside the catholic Church.” Since we have set forth the words of these two Roman pontiffs above, we have judged it superfluous to repeat them here, though opportune to recall them. But if anyone demands further authorities of the Apostolic See, let him hear what follows. Pope Pelagius says to Viator and Pancratius, among other things: “It is not the body of Christ that a schismatic confects, if we are guided by truth as our leader; for no one, without incurring the apostle’s condemnation, can pretend that Christ is divided. The Church, as has often been said, which is the body of Christ, is established to be one, and cannot be divided into two or more parts. For as soon as anyone departs from it, he ceases to be the Church. There is one temple of Jerusalem; one who has divided himself from it must needs sacrifice to idols.” The same author to John the Patrician: “Do not defile your catholic mind at any time by communion with schismatics. One body of Christ, one Church — this is established. One who is divided from unity cannot consecrate the truth of the body of Christ. For if we examine the very name of ‘consecration’ with rational and living understanding, to ‘consecrate’ [consecrare] means to ‘hallow together’ [simul sacrare]. But one who is divided from the bowels of the Church and separated from the apostolic sees rather desecrates than consecrates. Do not therefore, as if there were no difference between schismatics and the Church, wish to be indifferently associated with the sacrifices of both.” Gregorius in his Register: “We can in no way call a consecration that which is celebrated by excommunicated persons.” The same author in the Moralia, book 35: “It is greatly to be noted that the friends of Job are commanded to offer the sacrifice of their conversion to the Lord not on their own behalf, but through Job. For he says: ‘But my servant Job shall pray for you; his face

written in the way, lest foolishness be imputed to us and an opportunity be given to the impudent — I will receive these petitions of yours,

but I do not receive your own petitions; your petitionary words I do not hear, except through the intercession of one whose words of profession I recognize as truthful. Seek peace and the catholic Church which I love, after you have made peace with it; for it is through your own health that it may be obtained — it alone, through which the Lord willingly and confidently accepts the sacrifice offered by intercessors. Hence also, regarding the offering of the lamb, the Lord gave commandment, saying: ‘It shall be eaten in one house, and none of its flesh shall be carried outside’ [Exodus 12:46]. It is eaten in one house, because in the one sacrifice of the Redeemer’s true oblation, the divine law forbids the flesh of the catholic Church to be taken outside, since it forbids giving what is holy to dogs.”

Sacraments and Sacrifice

These sayings of the Fathers are so patent and manifest that they plainly convict simoniacs and other heretics of having no priesthood and no sacrifice — or rather, they prove they have no true sacrifice, even though they possess a true and complete sacrament when sacrificing according to the ecclesiastical rite. For “sacrifice” and “sacrament” are two distinct terms, and what they signify differs greatly: the life-giving body of Christ is properly called a sacrifice, whereas it is not properly called a sacrament except insofar as it presents a species to the senses. That species may not incongruously be called a sacrament, inasmuch as it is the sign of the one body that is the Church — composed of many persons as from many grains into one unity, and made one body as of one loaf. This union is not signified to us by the existence of Christ’s body, which is far too remote from our senses, but by the species and form that is seen and sensed. For since a sacrament is a visible sign of invisible grace, I do not venture to call the secret body of Christ — hidden from our sight — a sacrament, because it does not signify a sacred thing but is the sacred thing, unless perhaps it is called a sacrament by its effect, because it hallows the one who partakes worthily, as an ornament is so called because it adorns. Hence I am compelled to wonder at the opinion of certain masters who affirm that by both the flesh and blood of Christ — each invisible and intelligible — the visible and tangible body of Christ is signified, since invisible things are customarily signified by visible ones, not visible things by invisible ones; as the authority of blessed Augustinus also affirms: “A sign is something that, beyond the species which it presents to the senses, causes something else to come to mind.” Therefore heretics, schismatics, and all those cut off by the gospel’s pruning-hook may be able to possess the identity of the sacrament and the sign, but it does not follow from this that they likewise possess with us the identity of the sacrifice, for whom that lamb is the unique sacrifice — the lamb who, as the most evident truth of the authorities cited above demonstrates, is eaten in one house alone.

As for those authorities that may seem in some places to point in the opposite direction — affirming that the same things exist, after the manner of the four rivers of Paradise, both inside and outside Paradise — their diversity does not trouble us at all; for we do not deny that the integrity of the sacraments can exist outside the Church: what we deny, following the assertion of the authorities cited above, is the truth of the sacrifice. Nor do those other authorities, rightly considered, stand in opposition to these, for they affirm not that a holy sacrifice but an integral sacrament, not the Lord’s body but the sacrament of the Lord’s body, can exist outside the Church. In determining this matter from these diverse — not contrary — authorities, it must be carefully noted that a great difference is found among sacraments and sacraments. For some sacraments are those that concern only rational creatures, such as the sacraments of ordination and baptism; others concern inanimate things, such as those sacred signs

that come into being through divine words joining with material elements in the consecration of chrism or an altar, or even of bread and wine. Now those sacraments that concern rational creatures, when celebrated outside the Church, are void, empty, extinguished, and dead; they become valid, clear, and living when, with the rational creature — that is, the person who celebrated the sacraments outside the Church — doing penance, the Church’s confirmation follows. But those sacraments that concern inanimate things can in no way be confirmed, because those creatures cannot do penance. Hence we read at various times that personal sacraments conferred outside have either been confirmed by catholics upon the interposition of penance, or excused by the intervention of ignorance — as the sacraments of ordination and baptism celebrated by the condemned Acacius were excused by Pope Anastasius. Those who read his words carelessly think he holds an opinion contrary to the authorities cited above, but this will not appear so to one who reads attentively, if that reader is willing to attend to the difference among sacraments: namely between those that can in some way and at some time be excused, through the venial or invincible ignorance of those receiving these sacraments and seeking God’s grace alone in them, and those sacraments concerning inanimate things that, when exhibited outside, are nowhere read to have been confirmed inside or excused — but are in every way and everywhere rejected. Hence Pope Alexander says: “A church that has been consecrated — or rather, to speak more truly, execrated — by the arrangement of a price, shall by no means be regarded as a church.” What is said of a church may not inappropriately be said of all inanimate things, since neither wine nor bread nor oil execrated rather than consecrated by any heretic is to be called or held sacred. Behold, we have expressed our views about sacraments as best we can, without prejudice to better views and to those who express them better, to whom we are prepared to yield, once reason or authority is shown to us to which we ought not to object and on account of which we ought to change what we have said.

If, moreover, in our words and writings, as we recall having said before, those tokens are found by which Tamar is said to have been saved from burning — namely the ring, the staff, and the bracelet, by which faith, hope, and charity are understood — I beseech you, whoever reads in this way, do not believe my soul to have committed fornication with the father of lies, but rather declare that it has been made pregnant from the seed of Judah — that is, of Christ — so that, after the example of Tamar, it might bring forth, as it were, a son who would be called Perez, that is, division, because God is my witness that it is from no pursuit of personal glory, but from zeal for truth alone, that I either divide myself from the sacraments of heretics, or demonstrate in my words and writings that there is a great division and distinction between their sacraments and those of catholics, without prejudice, as I have said, to better views. Long ago —

Moreover, I wish still to say something about that most iniquitous plague, simony. Among all the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, no little fox is more wicked or more cunning than simony. For as a certain author says,

“By what knot shall I hold Proteus as he changes his aspect?”

so we may say: by what knot shall we hold simony — that most cunning little fox, manifold in face, thousand-shaped in habit, and almost always unlike not only the other little foxes but even unlike itself, to such a degree that, while it ruins the vineyards of Christ, it is sometimes seen in the very guise of the vinedresser? For whenever it begins to be recognized in any one of its skins, it immediately puts on another, and the vineyards it lays waste it sometimes pretends to be planting. Sometimes, and indeed many times, this little fox is caught by the shrewd hunters of Christ —

Chapter 1

Compelled by necessity, I came to the lord Pope Innocentius at his own summons. When he examined me and asked by what faith I live, in what hope I rejoice, and by what love toward God and the holy Church I am moved — thanks to Christ’s gift — it was as though he had heard from my own lips about the man from whom these things originate; he received me with gracious favor, confirmed the little work I had then composed on this very question, and by his letters commended my humble person to my lord the Archbishop of Salzburg for his protection. I desired him above all others to be appointed and to serve as my defender, because he himself — no less than I, and indeed, by reason of the greatness of his authority, far more so, that distinguished archbishop than I, a lowly cleric — strives to obtain this: that the prince of this world should be judged in such a way, not only in himself but also in the members separated from the Church, that he is to be utterly despised, even if through empty sacraments he is found transformed into an angel of light.

I have played the fool in speaking of things that greatly surpass me, but because under compulsion I have said what I have said, I believe and hope that my imperfection can be perfected by that incarnate Wisdom of God herself; compelled by her adversaries, I became a fool, as I said — not only by scrutinizing things higher than myself, but also by writing to a man of the greatest wisdom when I am most foolish. I am not unaware of who speaks to whom; but following the example of Abraham, who said: “I will speak to my lord, though I am dust and ashes,” I too — though I am obscure by name among detractors — address you, holy man, Abbot of Clairvaux; you, I say, illustrious in name and in life. Once I had begun to speak, compelled by necessity I exceeded the bounds of brevity, and I have laid out before you, as before a spiritual father, my thinking — that which has caused offense — so that where you approve of what I hold, you may be my defender and helper, and where you judge anything among them deserving of rebuke, you may be my corrector.

Chapter 2

Who is he [i.e., Simon the fox], and setting aside his own skin, then appears in such a form as can scarcely be recognized, when he reproaches the fault of another, and what he is doing does not appear at all — as though an innocent sheep? For when all simoniac prelates do not openly receive gifts for this cause, they cloak that very simoniac avarice under the name of an offering — quite improperly, to be sure, since an offering is one thing and an exaction another; what is given freely is one thing, and what is extorted and taken away even from the unwilling is quite another. The blessed Benedictus did not command this in his Rule; on the contrary, he forbade it, teaching that the poor who offer their sons should make a simple petition, while from wealthy parents he does not permit anything to be demanded; yet if they offer something of their own will, he allows it to be received — and what is received in this way may be called an offering, not an exaction. Christ too, when urging a certain rich man toward perfect conversion, did not say: “Go, sell what you have, and bring it to me”; but rather: “Give to the poor, and come, follow me.” The Apostle Petrus likewise, presiding over the common life in Jerusalem, demanded from no one what was placed at his feet as a voluntary offering. He did not demand that Ananias and Sapphira give their goods to Christ; but when they had already dedicated them to Christ, he claimed them, and executed fitting punishment on those who defrauded [the community]. By this example, great severity is owed to those who defraud tithes or other offerings already destined for the use of the common life, and bishops and other ministers of the altar ought not to be blamed when they demand the stipends owed to them, or sternly punish those who defraud such things. But what they demand in [the administration of] their divine ministries that is not owed — what is that but the most open simony, clothed in a new cloak so as to be unrecognizable, while Simon Magus seeks to be seen as Simon Peter? For bishops say that service and many expenses are owed to them when they consecrate churches — and we do not deny that service and even considerable expenses are their due; yet

these are not to be demanded from the founders of churches, nor received from them at all, unless they offer them voluntarily — not by exaction, but by devotion.

EXPLICIT OPUSCULUM AD ABBATEM.

For bishops have tithes and estates and villages, just as the Levites of old had tithes and cities with their suburbs for the pure fulfillment of the altar’s ministry — yet it is remarkable what we must say: bishops feed themselves from episcopal resources for secular courts and the business of this world; and from elsewhere they demand sustenance for the actual episcopal ministries themselves. Consecrating churches, ordaining clergy, confirming Christians — these belong to the episcopal office; tithes, first-fruits, and other ecclesiastical revenues are meant to support the bishop in this office, and therefore they are properly to be required for the use of the bishop and the clergy who assist him. If anything beyond this is demanded in the administration of spiritual offices, the leprosy of Gehazi is contracted, and in such administration one serves not God but Mammon. Hence the most just censure of Pope Honorius is to be praised, who deposed Otto, the so-called Bishop of Halberstadt, and declared him a simoniac by his letters, because he was convicted of having demanded money at the consecration of a certain church under the pretext of service. Therefore, O all you to whom the Bridegroom says: “Catch for us the little foxes that destroy the vineyards” — catch this fox, ancient in time but ever new through the constant renewal of its frauds. Separate yourselves from oratories that, through an open agreement of payment, through the exaction of undue service, have been not so much consecrated as desecrated. For if you count such churches as truly consecrated, you will be disobedient to the Roman See. For Pope Alexander II teaches — as we have noted above — that churches consecrated through an agreement of payment are not so much consecrated as desecrated, and are in no way to be considered churches. The same, celebrating a synod of more than one hundred bishops in the Constantinian church, struck this fox of which we speak with three blows. For among the other chapters of that council it is read: That churches and altars are neither to be sold nor bought; and whoever henceforth sells or buys shall be subject to anathema. Item: That churches consecrated for a price or by simoniacs are to be consecrated anew. Item: That priests ordained knowingly by simoniacs from the time of Pope Nicholas up to now and henceforth shall know themselves to be deposed. Struck by such blows, the fox might have seemed utterly destroyed, were it not perhaps that very beast of which is read in the Apocalypse: “Which had the wound of the sword and yet lived.” The Arian pestilence or any other heresy is then extinguished by the wound of the sword when it is condemned and anathematized by the judgment of a synod. Simony, however, although struck more than once by the sword of anathema, yet still lives, because the mortal wound seems to have been healed by the fact that even certain religious men receive the sacraments of manifest simoniacs, although these have been many times forbidden by the Roman pontiffs as if by the very mouth of Petrus himself.

[Simony] is forbidden. Simony plainly still lives — not, however, in such a state that those who see the death of Simon Magus walking through the lands regard it as alive; rather, for just cause we yield and concede that Simon Magus still lives in some spiritual power. Yet [in truth] he is already dead, and dies daily, and is reckoned as a rotting corpse by the elect who belong to Christ and who flee his contact, in accordance with what the Law forbade: that no one should touch a carcass. And whoever had touched one, the Law judged unclean. Note well that the Law absolutely forbids touching or eating a carcass. It does allow, under urgent necessity, that a carcass be carried, saying thus: “And if it be necessary to carry any of these dead things, he shall wash his garments, and be unclean until evening.” In view of this, we yield indeed that under urgent necessity a carcass must be carried; but we never concede that it is to be touched or eaten. For example: when we deal with a simoniac who, though some contend he is alive, we do not doubt is dead — we never concede that such a dead man is to be touched, because one must not consent to his sin. Still less do we agree that such a dead man is to be eaten, because his deeds are not to be imitated. Nevertheless we confess that, under urgent necessity, this dead man is sometimes to be carried, until a pit is dug for the sinner into which he is cast and carried no further. The pit will then be ready for the stinking corpse when, by God’s action either directly or through legitimate judges, he is cast out of the Church into the grave — either of infernal punishment, or, what is more to be desired, of penitential punishment. Where there is no opportunity to execute judgments against the false [ones], it is necessary that the carcasses be carried; but not without tearful compunction, by which we ought to wash our garments — that is, so to form and purify our outward conduct that we may not appear to tolerate sinners who have been excommunicated in councils more out of will than out of necessity. We wash our garments also when we pour out tears and prayers for them, lest perchance, as the Apostle says, God may give them over to a reprobate mind; but that they may recover themselves from the snares of the devil, by whom they are held captive at his will. Thus King David carried Saul — divinely deposed from the kingdom, yet still powerful by human support. The living king in God carried the king dead to God, but nevertheless did not, as it were, touch him: for he did not approve his deeds; rather, lest he be forced to touch him, he fled from him as a fugitive into the forests and at last into exile. David also washed his garments, in that he did not exult over the fall of his enemy, but mourned with great mourning over Saul and Jonathan his son. The Apostle Paulus likewise carried the high priest Ananias, but by no means approved his priesthood — to whom he foretold his destruction, saying: “God shall strike you, you whited wall.” Paulus also washed his garments, having great sadness for his brothers. And so, instructed by the examples of King David and the Apostle Paulus, let us carry the dead wherever it is necessary, yet as far as we can, decline their contact.

I have played the fool in treating matters above me; but because under compulsion I have said what I have said, I believe and hope that my imperfection will be perfected by that incarnate Wisdom of God herself; compelled by her adversaries, I became a fool — not only, as I said, by treating things beyond me, but also by writing to a man of the greatest wisdom when I am most foolish. I am not unaware of who speaks to whom; but following the example of Abraham, who said: “I speak to the Lord, though I am dust and ashes,” I too — though I am obscure to others in birth, in manner of life, and in very name — address you, holy man, Abbot of Clairvaux; you, I say, illustrious in name and in life. Once I had begun to speak, constrained by brevity

compelled by necessity I exceeded the bounds of brevity, and I have laid out before you, as before a spiritual father, my thinking — that which offends secular clerics and especially hired clergy — so that where you approve of what I hold, you may show yourself to me as defender and helper, and where you judge anything among them deserving of rebuke, as my corrector; adjured and besought by him from whom comes the ability to do what I ask of you. For if in our words and writings there are discerned those tokens by which Thamar is read to have been defended from burning — namely the ring, the staff, and the bracelet, by which are understood faith, hope, and charity — I beseech you, do not believe that my soul has played the harlot with the father of lies, but rather confess that she has been made pregnant by the seed of Judah, that is of Christ, so that after the example of Thamar she might bring forth, as it were, a son who would be called Phares, that is “division” — for God is my witness that with no grasping after my own glory, but with zeal for truth alone, either do I divide myself from the sacraments of heretics, or I demonstrate by words and writings that there is a great division and distinction between their sacraments and those of catholics, without prejudice to better [arguments], as I have said. Not long ago, compelled by necessity, I came to the lord Pope Innocentius at his own summons; when he examined me and asked by what faith I live, in what hope I rejoice, and by what love toward God and the holy Church I am moved — thanks to Christ’s gift — it was as though he had heard from my own lips about the man from whom these things originate; he received me with gracious favor, and by his letters commended my humble person to my lord the Archbishop of Salzburg for his protection — whom I desired above all others to be appointed and to serve as my defender, because he himself, no less than I, and indeed by reason of the greatness of his authority far more, that distinguished archbishop than I, a lowly cleric, strives to obtain this: that the prince of this world should already be judged in such a way, not only in himself but also in the members separated from the Church, that he is to be utterly despised, even if through empty sacraments he is found transformed into an angel of light. Hence, enkindled by zeal for justice, he does not permit in his diocese either hired clergy or manifestly incestuous persons to minister at the altar. For since he has a broad and wide diocese extending for a journey of ten days or more, you could not find within so large a territory so much as one hired cleric or one cleric openly guilty of incest. He also expelled irregular canons from their cloisters as true Canaanites unworthy of the holy land, and in their place introduced regular canons as true Israelites. Though we approve his action — comparing the irregular to Canaanites and the regular to Israelites — we nonetheless know that among the irregular there are some who will be saved, and among the regular some who will be damned, just as in Babylon some have lived praiseworthily and in Jerusalem some have perished. But because along the rivers of Babylon there is no safe seat, and on the banks of those same rivers — as exceedingly muddy — there is no sure footing, the good behavior of good men living there in no way commends Babylon itself, just as the dwelling of the wicked does not condemn Jerusalem, so that of these two cities it may be said of one: “Go out from her”; and of the other: “Thither the tribes went up, the tribes of the Lord, to give thanks to the name of the Lord.” And therefore it is not without reason that we rejoice wherever an irregular congregation, as if a Babylon, is destroyed, and we see Jerusalem built up in the restoration of common life from what are, so to speak, its finer stones. We rejoice, I say, and we ask that our joy may be made full through Christ our Lord. Amen.