To Turribius, Bishop of Asturia¹³⁷

137 This Turribius was a man of learning and zeal, Bishop of Astoria (Astorga) in Spain (province of Gallicia):  canonized by the Roman Church and commemorated on April 16 (Hurter).  The date of the letter is given as 21 Jul., 447.

Leo, bishop, to Turribius, bishop, greeting.

I.  Introductory.

Your laudable zeal for the truth of the catholic Faith, and the painstaking devotion you expend in the exercise of your pastoral office upon the Lord’s flock is proved by your letter, brother, which your deacon has handed to us, in which you have taken care to bring to our knowledge the nature of the disease which has burst forth in your district from the remnants of an ancient plague.  For the language of your letter, and your detailed statement, and the text of your pamphlet¹³⁸

138 Hurter distinguishes these three documents thus:  (1) epistola, the private letter of Turribius to Leo; (2) commonitorium, the detailed statement (under 16 heads) of the Priscillianist errors; and (3) libellus, Turribius’ refutation of each head.  This heresy was of Spanish origin, having been broached by Priscillian about 380.  Their views will be seen in the sequel.

139 Priscillianistarum fœtidissimam apud vos recaluisse sentinam.

140 Multiplicem sibi fœculentiam miscuerunt.

In fact, if all the heresies which have arisen before the time of Priscillian were to be studied carefully, hardly any mistake will be discovered with which this impiety has not been infected:  for not satisfied with accepting the falsehoods of those who have departed from the Gospel under the name of Christ, it has plunged itself also in the shades of heathendom, so as to rest their religious faith and their moral conduct upon the power of demons and the influences of the stars through the blasphemous secrets of the magic arts and the empty lies of astrologers.  But if this may be believed and taught, no reward will be due for virtues, no punishment for faults, and all the injunctions not only of human laws but also of the Divine constitutions will be broken down:  because there will be no criterion of good or bad actions possible, if a fatal necessity drives the impulses of the mind to either side, and all that men do is through the agency not of men but of stars.  To this madness belongs that monstrous division of the whole human body among the twelve signs of the zodiac, so that each part is ruled by a different power:  and the creature, whom God made in His own image, is as much under the domination of the stars as his limbs are connected one with the other.  Rightly then our fathers, in whose times this abominable heresy sprung up, promptly pursued it throughout the world, that the blasphemous error might everywhere be driven from the Church:  for even the leaders of the world so abhorred this profane folly that they laid low its originator, with most of his disciples, by the sword of the public laws.  For they saw that all desire for honourable conduct was removed, all marriage-ties undone, and the Divine and the human law simultaneously undermined, if it were allowed for men of this kind to live anywhere under such a creed.  And this rigourous treatment was for long a help to the Church’s law of gentleness which, although it relies upon the priestly judgment, and shuns blood-stained vengeance, yet is assisted by the stern decrees of Christian princes at times when men, who dread bodily punishment, have recourse to merely spiritual correction.  But since many provinces have been taken up with the invasions of the enemy¹⁴¹

141 He alludes to the invasion of Spain by the German tribes (Perthel, p. 38).

142 See above n. 6.  Quesnel draws attention to the fact that Leo’s refutation of the Priscillianist heresy, which here follows, was adopted (almost) word for word by the first council of Bracara (Braga, in Portugal), held in 563, as a sufficient exposition of their own position.

II.  (1)  The Priscillianists’ denial of the Trinity refuted.

And so under the first head is shown what unholy views they hold about the Divine Trinity:  they affirm that the person of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost is one and the same, as if the same God were named now Father, now Son, and now Holy Ghost:  and as if He who begot were not one, He who was begotten, another, and He who proceeded from both, yet another; but an undivided unity must be understood, spoken of under three names, indeed, but not consisting of three persons.  This species of blasphemy they borrowed from Sabellius, whose followers were rightly called Patripassians also:  because if the Son is identical with the Father, the Son’s cross is the Father’s passion (patris-passio):  and the Father took on Himself all that the Son took in the form of a slave, and in obedience to the Father.  Which without doubt is contrary to the catholic faith, which acknowledges the Trinity of the Godhead to be of one essence (ὁμοούσιον) in such a way that it believes the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost indivisible without confusion, eternal without time, equal without difference:  because it is not the same person but the same essence which fills the Unity in Trinity.

III.  (2)  Their fancy about virtues proceeding from God refuted.

Under the second head is displayed their foolish and empty fancy about the issue of certain virtues from God which he began to possess, and which were posterior to God Himself in His own essence.  In this again they support the Arians’ mistake, who say that the Father is prior to the Son, because there was a time when He was without the Son:  and became the Father then when He begot the Son.  But as the catholic Church abhors them, so also does it abhor these who think that what is of the same essence was ever wanting to God.  For it is as wicked to speak of Him as progressing as it is to call Him changeable.  For increase implies change as much as does decrease.

IV.  (3)  Their account of the epithet “Only Begotten” refuted.

Again the third head is concerned with these same folk’s impious assertion that the Son of God is called “only-begotten” for this reason that He alone was born of a virgin.  To be sure they would not have dared to say this, had they not drunk the poison of Paul of Samosata and Photinus:  who said that our Lord Jesus Christ did not exist till He was born of the virgin Mary.  But if they wish something else to be understood by their tenet, and do not date Christ’s beginning from His mother’s womb, they must necessarily assert that there is not one Son of God, but others also were begotten of the most High Father, of whom this one is born of a woman, and therefore called only-begotten, because no other of God’s sons underwent this condition of being born.  Therefore, whithersoever they betake themselves, they fall into an abyss of great impiety, if they either maintain that Christ the Lord took His beginning from His mother, or do not believe Him to be the only-begotten of God the Father:  since He who was God was born of a mother, and no one was born of the Father except the Word.

V.  (4)  Their fasting on the Nativity and Sunday disapproved of.

The fourth head deals with the fact that the Birth-day of Christ, which the catholic Church thinks highly of as the occasion of His taking on Him true man, because “the Word became flesh and dwelt in us¹⁴³

143 S. John i. 14.

144 Viz. the Manichæans.

VI.  (5)  Their view that the soul is part of the Divine being refuted.

The fifth head refers to their assertion that man’s soul is part of the Divine being¹⁴⁵

145 This Pantheistic view was not, of course, a new one, nor pseudo-Christian in its origin, as Leo himself shows.  Cf. Virg., Georg. IV. 219–227, and Æn. vi. 724–727. The philosophi quidam to which he makes reference are the Pythagoreans, and following them with modifications the Platonists and the Stoics.

146 Ps. cxxxvi. 4.

147 The reader need hardly be reminded of the recorded revelation of the great “I am” (Jehovah) to Moses (Ex. iii.).

148 Cf. Rev. xxi. 5.

VII.  (6)  Their view that the devil was never good, and is therefore not God’s creation, refuted.

The sixth notice points out that they say the devil never was good, and that his nature is not God’s handiwork, but he came forth out of chaos and darkness:  because I suppose he has no instigator, but is himself the source and substance of all evil:  whereas the true Faith, which is the catholic, acknowledges that the substance of all creatures spiritual or corporeal is good, and that evil has no positive existence¹⁴⁹

149 i.e., that evil is not anything positive, but only the negation or absence of good which is positive, just as black is not itself a colour, but only the absence of colour, whereas white is the presence (in due proportion) of all the colours of the spectrum.

150 S. John viii. 24.

VIII.  (7)  Their rejection of marriage condemned.

In the seventh place follows their condemnation of marriages and their horror of begetting children:  in which, as in almost all points, they agree with the Manichæans’ impiety.  But it is for this reason, as their own practices prove, that they detest the marriage tie, because there is no liberty for lewdness where the chastity of wedlock and of offspring is preserved.

IX.  (8)  Their disbelief in the resurrection of the body has been already condemned by the Church.

Their eighth point is that the formation¹⁵¹

151 Plasmationem, a vile hybrid, being the Greek πλάσμα, with a Latin ending (-atio); for which apparently the Low Latin of the Vulgate is responsible.  Cf. Ps. cxix. 73, “et plasmaverunt me” (quoted below, chap. x.).

152 Olim   Perhaps Leo refers to his own action mentioned in Lett. vii. 1.

X.  (9)  Their notion that “the children of promise” are conceived by the Holy Ghost is utterly unscriptural and uncatholic.

The ninth notice declares that they say the sons of promise are born indeed of women but conceived by the Holy Spirit:  lest that offspring which is born of carnal seed should seem to share in God’s estate.  This is repugnant and contrary to the catholic Faith which acknowledges every man to be formed by the Maker of the Universe in the substance of his body and soul, and to receive the breath of life within his mother’s womb:  though that taint of sin and liability to die remains which passed from the first parent into his descendants; until the sacrament of Regeneration comes to succour him, whereby through the Holy Spirit we are re-born the sons of promise, not in the fleshly womb, but in the power of baptism.  Whence David also, who certainly was a son of promise, says to God:  “Thy hands have made me and fashioned me¹⁵³

153 Ps. cxix. 73.

154 Jer. i. 5.

XI.  (10)  Their theory that souls have a previous existence before entering man refuted.

Under the tenth head they are reported as asserting that the souls which are placed in men’s bodies have previously been without body and have sinned in their heavenly habitation, and for this reason having fallen from their high estate to a lower one alight upon ruling spirits¹⁵⁵

155 In diversæ qualitatis principes incidisse, cf. Rom. viii. 38; Eph. iii. 10; Col. ii. 10, &c.

156 The Pythagorean doctrine of μετεμψύωσις (transmigration of souls) which was in a modified form accepted by Plato (Phædr. et alibi), would seem to have been the original source of this view of the soul’s origin.  It would naturally be palatable doctrine to the Gnostics and other philosophizing sects.  In Lett. XXXV., chap. iii., it is attributed to Origen.  For a modem exposition the reader cannot do better than refer to Wordsworth’s ode on the intimations of Immortality in childhood.

157 Gal. iii. 27, 28.

158 Rom. viii. 35–37.

XII.  (11)  Their astrological notions condemned.

Their eleventh blasphemy is that in which they suppose that both the souls and bodies of men are under the influence of fatal stars:  this folly compels them to become entangled in all the errors of the heathen, and to strive to attract stars that are as they think favourable to them, and to soften those that are against them.  But for those who follow such pursuits there is no place in the catholic Church; a man who gives himself up to such convictions separates himself from the body of Christ altogether.

XIII.  (12)  Their belief that certain powers rule the soul and the stars the body, is unscriptural and preposterous.

The twelfth of these points is this, that they map out the parts of the soul under certain powers, and the limbs of the body under others:  and they suggest the characters of the inner powers that rule the soul by giving them the names of the patriarchs, and on the contrary they attribute the signs of the stars to those under which they put the body.  And in all these things they entangle themselves in an inextricable maze, not listening to the Apostle when he says, “See that no one deceive you through philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ; for in Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in Him ye are made full, who is the head of every principality and power¹⁵⁹

159 Col. ii. 8–10.

161 2 Tim. iv. 3, 4.

XIV.  (13)  Their fanciful division of the Scriptures rejected.

In the thirteenth place comes their assertion that the whole body of the canonical Scriptures is to be accepted, under the names of the patriarchs¹⁶²

162 Leo’s commentary on this obscure fancy of the Priscillianist is disappointing, as it is merely a repetition or continuation of his remarks on the 12th head.  They seem to have divided the scriptures in some mystic fashion into portions corresponding to the qualitates interiorum præsulum in patriarcharum nominibus (statutæ) of chap. xiii., and to have insisted on knowledge of the Scriptures as necessary to the proper action of those “ruling principles” on the soul.  Cf. S. Aug. Letter CCXXXVII., chap. iii. (Hurter).

XV.  (14)  Their idea that the Scriptures countenance their subjecting of the body to the starry influences denied.

Under the fourteenth heading their sentiments upon the state of the body are stated, viz., that it is, on account of its earthly properties, held under the power of stars and constellations, and that many things are found in the holy books which have reference to the outer man with this object, that in the Scriptures themselves a certain opposition may be seen at work between the divine and the earthly nature:  and that which the powers that rule the soul claim for themselves may be distinguished from that which the fashioners of the body claim.  These stories are invented that the soul may be maintained to be part of the divine substance, and the flesh believed to belong to the bad nature:  since the world itself, with its elements, they hold to be not the work of the good God, but the outcome of an evil author:  and that they might disguise these sacrilegious lies under a fair cloak, they have polluted almost all the divine utterances with the colouring of their unholy notions.

XVI.  (15)  Their falsified copies of the Scriptures, and their apocryphal books prohibited.

And on this subject your remarks under the fifteenth head make a complaint, and express a well-deserved abhorrence of their devilish presumption, for we too have ascertained this from the accounts of trustworthy witnesses, and have found many of their copies most corrupt, though they are entitled canonical.  For how could they deceive the simple-minded unless they sweetened their poisoned cups with a little honey, lest what was meant to be deadly should be detected by its over-nastiness?  Therefore care must be taken, and the priestly diligence exercised to the uttermost, to prevent falsified copies that are out of harmony with the pure Truth being used in reading.  And the apocryphal scriptures, which, under the names of Apostles¹⁶³

163 Viz., such writings as the Actus of Thomas, Andrew and John, and the Memoria apostolorum, qui totam destruit legem veteris Testamenti, according to Turribius’s letter to Idacius and Ceponius, chap. v., subjoined to this letter in the Leonine series.

XVII.  (16)  About the writings of Dictinius¹⁶⁴

164 Dictinius was a bishop who had turned Priscillianist, and afterwards, at the synod of Toledo (400), had returned to the fold of the Church (Perthel, p. 41)

Under the last head a just complaint was made that the treatises of Dictinius which he wrote in agreement with Priscillian’s tenets were read by many with veneration:  for if they think any respect is due to Dictinius’ memory, they ought to admire his restoration rather than his fall.  Accordingly it is not Dictinius but Priscillian that they read:  and they approve of what he wrote in error, not what he preferred after recantation.  But let no one venture to do this with impunity, nor let any one be reckoned among catholics who makes use of writings that have been condemned not by the catholic Church alone but by the author himself as well.  Let not those who have gone astray be allowed to make a fictitious show, and under the veil of the Christian name shirk the provisions of the imperial decrees.  For they attach themselves to the catholic Church with all this difference of opinion in their heart, with the object of both making such converts as they can, and escaping the rigour of the law by passing themselves off as ours.  This is done by Priscillianists and Manichæans alike; for there is such a close bond of union between the two that they are distinct only in name, but in their blasphemies are found at one:  because although the Manichæans reject the Old Testament which the others pretend to accept, yet the purpose of both tends to the same end, seeing that the one side corrupts while receiving what the other assails and rejects.

But in their abominable mysteries, which the more unclean they are, are so much the more carefully concealed, their crime is but one, their filthy-mindedness one, and their foul conduct similar.  And although we blush to speak so plainly, yet we have tracked it out with the most painful searches, and exposed it by the confession of Manichæans who have been arrested, and thus brought it to the public knowledge:  lest by any means it might seem matter of doubt, although it has been disclosed by the mouth of the men themselves, who had performed the crime, in our court, which was attended not only by a large gathering of priests, but also by men of repute and dignity, and a certain number of the senate and the people, even as the missive which we have addressed to you, beloved, shows to have been done.  And there has been found out and widely published about the immoral practices of the Priscillianists just what was also found out about the foul wickedness of the Manichæans.  For they who are throughout on a level of depravity in their ideas, cannot be unlike in their religious matters.

So having run through all that the detailed refutation contains, with which the contents of the memorial of their views does not disagree, we have, I think, satisfactorily shown what our opinion on the matters which you, brother, have referred to us, and how unbearable it is if such blasphemous errors find acceptance in the hearts even of some priests, or to put it more mildly, are not actively opposed by them.  With what conscience can they maintain the honourable position which has been given them, who do not labour for the souls entrusted to them?  Beasts rush in, and they do not close the fold.  Robbers lay wait, and they set no watch.  Diseases multiply, and they seek out no remedies.  But when in addition they refuse assent to those who act more warily, and shrink from anathematizing by their written confession blasphemies which the whole world has already condemned, what do they wish men to understand except that they are not of the number of the brethren, but on the enemy’s side?

XVIII.  The body of Christ really rested in the tomb, and really rose again.

Furthermore in the matter which you placed last in your confidential letter, I am surprised that any intelligent Christian should be in difficulty as to whether when Christ descended to the realms below, his flesh rested in the tomb:  for as it truly died and was buried, so it was truly raised the third day.  For this the Lord Himself also had announced, saying to the Jews, “destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up¹⁶⁵

165 S. John ii. 19.

166 Ps. xvi. 10.

Therefore let a council of bishops be held among you, and let the priests of neighbouring provinces meet at a place suitable to all:  that, on the lines of our reply to your request for advice, a full inquiry may be made as to whether here are any of the bishops who are tainted with the contagion of this heresy:  for they must without doubt be cut off from communion, if they refuse to condemn this most unrighteous sect with all its wrongful conceptions.  For it can nohow be permitted that one who has undertaken the duty of preaching the Faith should dare to maintain opinions contrary to Christ’s gospel and the creed of the universal Church.  What kind of disciples will there be in a place where such masters teach?  What will the people’s religion, or the salvation of the laity be, where against the interests of human society the holiness of chastity is uprooted, the marriage-bond overthrown, the propagation of children forbidden, the nature of the flesh condemned, and, in opposition to the true worship of the true God, the Trinity of the Godhead is denied, the individuality of the persons confounded, man’s soul declared to be the Divine essence, and enclosed in flesh at the Devil’s will, the Son of God proclaimed only-begotten in right of being born of a Virgin, not begotten of the Father, and at the same time maintained to be neither true offspring of God, nor true child of the virgin:  so that after a false passion and an unreal death, even the resurrection of the flesh reassumed out of the tomb should be considered fictitious?  But it is vain for them to adopt the name of catholic, as they do not oppose these blasphemies:  they must believe them, if they can listen so patiently to such words.  And so we have sent a letter to our brethren and fellow-bishops of the provinces of Tarraco, Carthago, Lusitania and Gallicia, enjoining a meeting of the general synod.  It will be yours, beloved, to take order that our authoritative instructions be conveyed to the bishops of the aforesaid provinces.  But should anything, which God forbid, hinder the coming together of a general council of Gallicia¹⁶⁷

167 The whole district over which Turribius was Vicar is here called Gallicia, though, as just above, we find it included the provinces of Tarraco, Carthago, and Lusitania, as well as Gallicia.

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