Commonitorium

II. A REMINDER FROM SAINT AUGUSTINE How one should act with Manichaeans who confess the depravity of this nefarious error. When they have anathematized that same heresy through the form written below, and each of them has presented a libellus of his confession and penance, and, having been anathematized, they seek in the church the place either of a catechumen or of a penitent, if his libellus has pleased the bishop and he has accepted it, let him give him a letter with the day and the consul, so that he may suffer no trouble from the earlier time, either from the public laws or from ecclesiastical discipline. And after that day, if he appears to be a Manichaean by any indications, let him feel the severity of justice which is to be applied to such persons: that is, that Christians should abstain from his company, friendship, or any association whatsoever, according to apostolic discipline. Moreover, let them be commended to neighboring or cohabiting catholic religious, whether clerics or laity, through whose care for them they may frequent the hearing of the word of God and by whose testimony they may become known; nor should they be easily admitted to baptism, if they are catechumens, nor to reconciliation, if they are in the place of a penitent.

have received it, unless the danger of death is pressing, or unless the bishop has found them to be proven over some time through the testimony of those to whom they were commended. Therefore, the form according to which those who are being corrected ought to anathematize this heresy is as follows. Whoever believes that there are two natures existing from different principles, one good, which is God, and the other evil, which God did not create (having its own princes and its own evils, which God did not create), let him be anathema. Whoever believes that the two natures waged war against each other and that a part of God’s nature was mixed in that same war with the princes of darkness and with all the kinds belonging to the evil nature, and is held bound, oppressed, and polluted by them, through which he also causes it to be believed that God’s nature is mutable and pollutable, let him be anathema. Whoever believes that a part of God is held bound and polluted in demons and in all kinds of animals and plants, and is released and purified through the foods of the Manichaean elect, so that it is believed that a polluted part of God is held in cucumbers and melons and roots and leeks and in whatever most worthless little herbs, and that it is helped when these are eaten by the Manichaean elect, let him be anathema.

Whoever believes that the first human, who was called Adam, was not made by God, but was born from the princes of darkness, and that a part of God, which was held captive in their members, was held more copiously and abundantly on earth, and was created in this way: when the male and female princes of darkness had intercourse and gave their offspring to the greater prince of darkness, and he devoured them all and had intercourse with his own consort, and thus generated Adam from her, binding in him the great part of God that had been bound in all the offspring of the princes of darkness which they gave him to devour—let him be anathema. Whoever believes that the princes of darkness are bound in the sky, having within themselves the vital substance, that is, a part of God, bound together in straits and agonies, and that they are freed from their members in this way: when the blessed father, who has the luminous ships as dwellings and habitations, that is, the sun and the moon, transforms his powers into beautiful women, which he sets before the male princes of darkness to be desired, and into beautiful men, which he sets before the female princes of darkness to be desired, so that through this very desire the vital substance, that is, the part of God, is released from them and, freed from their members, is purified—let him be anathema.

Whoever believes that a part of God, which could not be freed and purified from the mixture of the race of darkness, is condemned and fastened forever in a horrible globe, in which globe the race of darkness is enclosed, let him be anathema. Whoever believes that the law which was given through Moses was not given by the one and true God, but that the prophets who were among the people of Israel and are held in the canon of the divine scriptures by the Catholic Church spoke by the spirit of the good and true God, let him be anathema. Whoever believes that the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, did not have true flesh, nor was born of the Virgin Mary, nor suffered a true death and rose from the dead, but was only a spirit without flesh, and that he wished to appear in such a way that flesh was supposed to exist which did not exist, and in this way contradicts the Gospel, where it is read that the Lord himself says: "See my hands and my feet: touch and see, because a spirit does not have bones and flesh, as you see me to have"; therefore whoever confesses God in such a way that he denies that he is also true and complete man, let him be anathema.

Whoever believes that Manes or Manichaeus, who preached and taught all the things written above, which are worthy of anathema and condemnation, had the Holy Spirit as Paraclete—since the Spirit of Truth could not have taught all those things, but rather the spirit of falsehood—let him be anathema. And especially Manes himself, or Manichaeus, who taught and wrote down all the impieties written above and other sacrilegious fables, and persuaded wretched people to believe them, heeding seductive spirits and the doctrines of lying demons—let him be anathema. Likewise, the form of the letter which the bishop gives to converts is this: Since you repent of having been a hearer of the Manichaeans, as you yourself have confessed, pronouncing anathema upon the blasphemies and the most impious and most foul heresy of theirs, from which only the Catholic faith has saved you—you shall have this letter against those who might think to reproach you for the error of past time, insofar as it pertains to that nefarious sect, which letter was written on that day and in that consulship.

As for their Elect, who say they are converting to the Catholic faith, even if they themselves have anathematized the same heresy according to the above form, letters are not to be given to them easily, but they ought to be with the servants of God, whether clerics or laity, in a monastery or a xenodochium, until it becomes evident that they have been completely freed from that superstition. And then let them either be baptized, if they have not been baptized, or be reconciled, if they have received a place of penance. Nor, having received letters, should they quickly change places and, through the same written document, seek out the unwary among those they know, so that they themselves may be healed and thus be received.