A Commonitory⁴²²

422 Commonitory. I have retained the original title in its anglicised form, already familiar to English ears in connection with the name of Vincentius. Its meaning as he uses it is indicated sufficiently, in § 3, “An aid to memory.” Technically, it meant a Paper of Instructions given to a person charged with a commission, to assist his memory as to its details.

For the Antiquity and Universality of the Catholic Faith Against the Profane Novelties of All Heresies.

Chapter I.

The Object of the Following Treatise.

[1.] I, Peregrinus,⁴²³

423 Peregrinus. It does not appear why Vincentius writes under an assumed name. Vossius, with whom Cardinal Noris evidently agrees, supposes that his object was to avoid openly avowing himself the author of a work which covertly attacked St. Augustine. Vossius, Histor. Pelag. p. 246. Ego quidem ad Vossii sententiam plane accessissem, nisi tot delatæ a sapientissimis Scriptoribus Commonitorio laudes religionem mihi pene injecissent.—Noris, Histor. Pelag. p. 246.

424 Deut. xxxii. 7.

425 Prov. xxii. 17.

426 Prov. iii. 1.

[2.] To this I am incited not only by regard to the fruit to be expected from my labour but also by the consideration of time and the opportuneness of place:

By the consideration of time,—for seeing that time seizes upon all things human, we also in turn ought to snatch from it something which may profit us to eternal life, especially since a certain awful expectation of the approach of the divine judgment importunately demands increased earnestness in religion, while the subtle craftiness of new heretics calls for no ordinary care and attention.

I am incited also by the opportuneness of place, in that, avoiding the concourse and crowds of cities, I am dwelling in the seclusion of a Monastery, situated in a remote grange,⁴²⁷

427 Noris, from this word, “villula,” a grange or country house, concludes that Vincentius, at the time of writing, though a monk, was not a monk of Lérins for there could be no “villula” there then, Honoratus having found the island desolate and without inhabitant, when he settled on it but a few years previously, “vacantem insulam ob nimictatem squaloris, et inaccessam venenatorum animalium metu.” Histor. Pelag. p. 251. Why, however, may not the “villula” have been built subsequently to Honoratus’s settlement and indeed, as a part of it? Whether Vincentius was an inmate of the monastery of Lérins at the time of writing the Commonitory or not, he was so eventually, and died there.

428 Ps. xlvi. 10.

Moreover, it suits well with my purpose in adopting this life; for, whereas I was at one time involved in the manifold and deplorable tempests of secular warfare, I have now at length, under Christ’s auspices, cast anchor in the harbour of religion, a harbour to all always most safe, in order that, having there been freed from the blasts of vanity and pride, and propitiating God by the sacrifice of Christian humility, I may be able to escape not only the shipwrecks of the present life, but also the flames of the world to come.

[3.] But now, in the Lord’s name, I will set about the object I have in view; that is to say, to record with the fidelity of a narrator rather than the presumption of an author, the things which our forefathers have handed down to us and committed to our keeping, yet observing this rule in what I write, that I shall by no means touch upon everything that might be said, but only upon what is necessary; nor yet in an ornate and exact style, but in simple and ordinary language,⁴²⁹

429 “Il dit qu’il l’a voulu écrire d’un style facile et commun, sans le vouloir orner et polir; et je voudrois que les ouvrages qu’on a pris le plus de peine à polir dans ce siècle (le 4me) et dans le suivant, ressemblassent à celui-ci.” Tillemont, T. xv. p. 144.

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