Ad Vigilium de Iudaica Incredulitate

To Vigilius the Bishop, On Jewish Unbelief. Although I know that very many of the Gentiles, most holy Vigilius, turned away from the order and reason of truth, wander in blindness of mind so that they do not know the Lord, yet I know more that the madness of the Jewish people, with the innate wickedness of their fathers, persists even now with stubborn hardness of heart against the name of the Lord, rejecting true salvation and not seeking the giver of eternal life, so that those who are liable by the same merit of inborn wickedness for the sins of their ancient stock might, if they would believe even late, be freed from their iniquities by fear turned toward God and by every satisfaction of penance. But it persists and endures still, and I think it will always endure, and from it the innate irreligious perfidy of the fathers passes to the succeeding generation, which, strengthened by the madness of unbelief against hatred of the name of the Lord, can neither be corrected to know the truth nor be taught and persuaded by the warnings of God Himself to fear God. Since, however, the Lord teaches and shows, saying: "I am the light of the world: and he who has followed me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life," how evil a reason it is to omit the divinely shown light of life and to prefer blindness of mind, to choose the darkness of death, so that they show, by the free and permitted destruction of their own will against God, that they do not even wish for those things which are beneficial?

according to which also through the Lord’s rebuking voice to Jerusalem, because it was unwilling to be gathered when God wished to gather it, the Holy Spirit speaks and manifests the goodness of God, who continually wishes to aid sinners: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which kills the prophets and stones those who were sent to you, how often did I wish to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling?” So clearly is the stubbornness of the faithless people marked by the voice of God, that it is taught that they have always spurned their own salvation against the merciful clemency of the Lord. Another prophet likewise, offering and insinuating the benevolence of God through the exhortation of preaching, proclaims and urges, saying: “Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord. Yet another similarly, demonstrating that God’s mercy remains eternal, added, saying: “I do not desire the death of the dying, but rather that he should return and live,” says the Lord.

What then does it mean to return, if not to be able to be saved, reconciled to God, by believing in Christ through him who is the way of coming to the Father? But how can those return to God who have refused to believe him who proclaims the will of God, through whom alone is recognition of and return to God? Or how will they be able to appease God by satisfaction, who have preferred to persecute with sacrilegious attack him who is satisfaction and intercession for us before the Father? For if we have Christ as advocate before God the Father, we must certainly, with anxious fear, do those things which he has taught and enjoined and which he will plead before the Father. Therefore we, who with mind prone in fear of the Lord insist upon the warnings of his commandments and have conceived, with the faith of a religious and reverent heart, belief from that fear, what else should we follow, what desire, what more should we wish and hold, than that, with all the night of the old mind shaken off from us and the darkness of our former life wiped away, mindful of the saving commandments of the Lord and retaining the promises of eternal life, we turn to his warnings and walk, with faith confirmed, in that light which he shows: so that we, who once, ignorant of future salvation, entangled in errors, wandered in the darkness of our former life, now enlightened by the clarity of his true light and with the path of a better way shown and opened to us, we hold to the commandments of the Lord to be followed and carried out.

This light of saving life has arisen for us, this aid for the restoration of man has been born from the providence and mercy of God the Father. The Magi, coming first from the East, led by his star, openly seeking the king of the Jews with foreknowing proclamation, and also bringing gifts, demonstrated by their inquiry, witnessed by all. And so that it might not be hidden from anyone who he was, when the child was found, they fell to their knees and worshipped him, as the Gospel testifies, saying: "When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod, behold, Magi came from the East to Jerusalem, saying: 'Where is he who is born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East and have come to worship him.'" Testifying, of course, to the truth about him, that even the star was shown to them as a sign and indication of his birth, by which sign the Magi, proclaiming and affirming that he was born, were believed in Jerusalem. Likewise, Simeon the Just, who, placed in blindness, had heard by divine warning that he would not die before he had seen Christ, when the mother brought the infant into the temple with him in the presence of all the people, sensed in spirit that Christ was born, took the child in his hands, saw him, and blessing God in the sight and hearing of all, said: "Now you dismiss your servant, Lord, according to your word, in peace, because my eyes have seen your salvation.

What Simeon, blind, had heard was fulfilled with evident truth, and the truth which he saw after receiving his sight he proclaimed openly, blessing God before the people. For he had seen for this purpose: to report, to show by his revelation that Christ had been born, and to instruct the first beginnings of unbelief among the faithless people. Nor does the truth of the heavenly scriptures bear witness concerning him by this testimony alone, but also through the prophets the Holy Spirit before his coming into this world openly proclaimed it beforehand in the conscious mind of all, so that there would be no pretext of excuse for the unbelievers, either that they had been ignorant of Christ the Son of God or that they had not known of the future coming of the Savior, as David makes clear, saying: "Day brings forth word to day, and night reveals knowledge to night: they are not words nor speeches whose voices are not heard. Their sound has gone out into every land, and their words beyond the ends of the earth. He has placed his tabernacle in the sun." That is, he showed that he himself had come openly, in the light, manifestly, and by his own manifestation he confirmed his presence to all, as it were, through the preaching of the prophets. This also Isaiah, through whom the Lord himself showed his presence with a clear manifestation of announcement, prophesies and says: "I who was speaking have come," that is, I who through the prophets was speaking beforehand of my future coming, now with my own and most clear voice I myself manifest my presence as my own witness. What could be more evident, what clearer than light, what truer can be said?

so that he might be seen, as it were, by the eyes to have come—he who was to come, he showed before he came, and with the disbelief of the faithless people blocking their minds, no one recognized him when he came. As the same Isaiah proclaims in his first rebuke of the people, saying: “The ox knew its owner, and the donkey the manger of its master, but Israel did not know me, and my people did not understand me.” He appeared openly to all, just as he himself foretold, and the clear light of life shone forth for those sitting in darkness, and the injustice of the faithless, having seized their breast, set aside their own salvation and rejected it, chose rather the darkness of heart’s blindness. The prophecy of all those who, with the Holy Spirit forewarning, were allotted to be the heralds of the Lord’s advent, everywhere frequents and makes manifest this truth. That this light was given to the world, and this day of salvation dawned for us, destined also to give life to those believing in him, the Holy Spirit teaches and shows in the Psalms, saying: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner: it was made by the Lord, and it is present, wonderful in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord made; let us walk and rejoice in it.” On this day the apostle Paul also, instructing and teaching and warning us, says: “For now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed. Night has passed, but day has drawn near. Let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, and let us walk honorably as in the day.

that is, in Christ and his commandments, by whose light and admonitions we, illuminated and found in the brightness of his day, perceive with our mind the salvation near to us through belief in him. That Christ is also the sun for all who fear him, the prophet Malachi testifies and promises, saying: "But for you who fear my name, the sun of justice will rise, and healing in its wings," showing that salvation can be conferred upon us from nothing else, unless we believe with fear turned toward him in the passion of his cross, by which, stretching out his hands, he embraced all that was to be saved in the world, and unless we are animated toward the eternity of life by the hope of his future kingdom. Who, therefore, is so stupid and senseless, who so alien from understanding his own salvation, that, in the face of so many and such great testimonies of truth, he does not, as an unbeliever, soften his hardened heart against sincere faith with the understanding of truth, and, stripped of the darkness of a once mortal life, walking in the light of heavenly precepts, turn with an enlightened heart and full credulity of mind to the divine admonitions and the carrying out of the Lord's saving commands, so that he may know as Lord the one whom the prophets proclaimed, understand that Christ has shown himself openly to have come into the world, and believe, as the divine scriptures testify, that he is the Son of God and God?

just as he himself reveals what eternal life is, saying: "This, moreover, is eternal life, that they may know you alone and true God and Jesus Christ whom you sent," teaching and showing that to know God is nothing other than to believe and to open the eyes of the heart toward the Lord with the prone and unaltered faith of the breast of a devoted mind. From this it then happens that by believing you understand, by understanding what you believe you perceive God in your sense with an illuminated heart, just as the same Lord himself also earlier warns through Isaiah, saying: "If you do not believe, you will not understand." So easy, ready, generous, and abundant is the mercy from the Lord's piety that if anyone once turns himself to him with complete fear, admitted to the heavenly gift, immediately his mind lies open only to divine things and, raising the eyes of the heart to heaven and the heavens, he beholds the light of Christ of salvation already attained. An example and proof of our fear and faith is shown from the faithful belief of the patriarch Abraham himself, who believed the promise of God with a simple mind at once and therefore deserved to be counted for righteousness with a worthy reward. This God loves, this he seeks, this he kindly rewards and honors in his own: the simplicity of a pure heart by which we perceive God, the fear of the Lord's love by which we are tested, the believing faith of the mind by which we are counted for righteousness. It befits us to follow this faith, to preserve this fear of God, who, keeping the heavenly words and hoping for the divine promises, have deserved to be called sons of Abraham.

which is confirmed by the testimony of the apostle Paul, who is called by the voice of God the vessel of election, saying: "Just as Abraham believed God, and what he received was accounted to him for righteousness, know therefore that those who are of faith are the sons of Abraham." This the Jewish people, to whom from the beginning of the Law the warnings were spoken, refused to observe because of the hardness of their unbelieving mind and the madness of their faithless heart, and therefore, by the merit of their distrust, they lost the name of sons. Yet not the mind of every one of that faithless nation was hardened by hatred against the name of the Lord, so that they would fail to understand the truth. And indeed the Holy Spirit, that is, our Lord Christ, who proceeded from God the Father and came to save what had perished of Israel—who, greater and stronger, to subdue the necks of the stubborn into fear of his name and power, those who, even then, with the blindness of their mind hardened against the brightness of his illumination, he so easily converted to the knowledge of his brightness and glory, as he deigned to come, by the providence of his divine mercy, to make all safe.

Now, to pass over in silence the hard-hearted and impious people of that time, whose minds were turned to the fear of the Lord by the Lord Himself preaching, and to pass over in silence the multitude of believers multiplied and filled throughout the whole world by the preaching of His apostles: there occurs that famous, memorable, and glorious disputation of Jason, a Hebrew Christian, and Papiscus, a Jewish Alexandrian, in which the stubborn hardness of the Jewish heart was softened by the admonition and gentle rebuke of the Hebrew, and the victorious teaching of Jason, infused with the Holy Spirit, prevailed in the heart of Papiscus, whereby Papiscus, admitted to the understanding of the truth and formed to the fear of the Lord by the Lord Himself taking pity, believed Christ to be the Son of God according to the law, and begged Jason, entreating him, that he might receive the seal. The scripture of their debate proves this, which, set down in the Greek language, records the disputation of Papiscus opposing the truth and Jason asserting and vindicating the dispensation and fullness of Christ. To its translation into Latin understanding, emboldened by the animating help of the Lord and with the living faith’s firmness preserved in the propriety of the words, I have fearlessly approached; and for those who are strangers to the understanding of Greek learning, I have set forth, with the whole meaning and manifestation of the truth laid open, the sense of the Roman speech discussed, interpreted with the complete significance of the words.

I commit to you, dearest one, who are grounded in instruction in both languages, the proof of this labor by earnest request: so that you, who are reverent in the veneration of the Holy Spirit, may, by the collated reading of both works, explore the audacity of my reverent temerity and, by the examination of your judgment, approve and correct those things which have perhaps been set forth by us less adequately or improperly, by the authority of the Holy Spirit, who has flowed into your breast with an inundation of celestial grace; and let this be a mission sent to you from our humility concerning this reading, and a first petition of love to be insinuated into you toward us, so that you may join the smallness of my faith with the instruction and erudition of your disciples, and admit me—whom, set in another part of this province for the sake of seeing your face, neither the length of the journey terrified, nor old age and the difficulty of a weary and exhausted body rebuked, but whom the animating stimulus of the Lord and the urgent hastening eagerness to hurry, with all tribulation of want and poverty also despised, with whatever faculty of strength I had for coming, the celebrated fame of your sanctity has led here—to the mingled love of your affection with the unanimity of fraternity, and join and associate me equally with your love, which the Lord left to his disciples as a title of inheritance; let me await, together with the brothers, in the opening of your mouth the splendor of the grace of Christ’s light, let me follow in your treatises the light which the Lord showed, which Christ, coming, [shows] eternal.

He showed that it was life. Certainly how joyful, how desirable a day it is for me, when by the favor of the Lord's mercy, with the summons delayed, it has happened that I have prolonged this my old age, so that, with the prayers of the saints offered earnestly and continually beseeching the Lord, I may see you a martyr of Christ, so that I may behold you bearing the crown of righteousness which has been deposited for you with the Lord. But do not think, however, that the glory of martyrdom is granted to you according to the present wish of our desire. That bestowal of this happiness was conferred then, then the Lord, by his just judgment, chose the destined martyr, when he removed you from the flock of the righteous and, taking you to himself unexpectedly, established you as a priest at the altar. Truly a distinguished and glorious choice of vocation, and, by the Lord's condescension, a new and unheard-of happiness for me, that, occupied with the necessities of a transmarine pilgrimage, I came, ignorant and unknowing, to the gift destined for you, and thus the time of your return was so balanced that, by the unexpected swiftness of your coming, you would understand and discern that the honor of the heavenly priesthood was destined for you above all others, and that you came, awaited, and met what was reserved by the Lord's command. So that the Lord, with all the compassion of his mercy, might provide for his church, the delay of the people's struggle presented you, whom Christ unexpectedly offered to his people seeking a bishop, as the one he would rather choose.

and the heavenly providence clearly showed that it was pleased with the unforeseen encounter of your arrival; the evidence of a sudden and swift meeting demonstrated the management of God's will, so that what could scarcely have occurred with difficult dispatch was accomplished with easy speed by the urgent command of the Lord, and so that you would see and marvel that you were standing as bishop in the church of God before you realized you had arrived. From this, the Lord strengthened his love with you, already begun in charity; from this, he dedicated and bequeathed to you the friendship which he gave to his disciples under the triumph of his cross, saying: "If you do what I command you, I will no longer call you servants but friends." From this, he marked martyrdom, from this, the election of the priesthood. It is friendship through which you are admitted to the face of Christ, to attain the extraordinary sacrifice. Thus the just are chosen, thus the religious and the simple are tested, elected in the fear of Christ, so that you are destined for the reward of faith, so that you are deemed worthy of the prize of a devoted mind in the Lord, before the hour of judgment comes, before you receive the sentence of Christ; may the heavenly election find you tested and prepared as a sacrifice. For that God, who is not deceitful, who unexpectedly appointed you bishop for his people, will crown you with the full love of his will.

We ask and pray only that you remember us then, when the chastity of your devotion to the Lord, proven and unstained, stands as a sacrifice before the tribunal of Christ, when you receive the glory of God's grace as the reward of a devoted mind and its recompense, that the affection of charity which you deign to impart to us may cling tenaciously to your memory and remain fixed in your senses: so that by your prayers our sins may obtain pardon, so that by the merits of your righteousness the faults of our life may be cleansed. For I am confident that it is like martyrdom for a sinner to have been saved by the petition of a righteous martyr, and that when you yourself, by your prayers, can advance less on your own behalf, you may be freed by the merits of the martyr. Thus the righteous Job is shown to have prayed to God for the sins of his three friends and to have obtained his request, and the proof of his fear and faith is marked by the testimony of the Lord's voice. Therefore, when on the day of your deliverance, dearest one, you begin to present yourself before the face of Christ, when you succeed in reigning with Christ in eternity and perpetuity of life by a blessed lot, for the mercy of the Lord have me, your Celsus, in mind, most holy one.