Libellus Adversus eos qui contra Synodum Scribere Praesumpserunt

II. A SMALL BOOK AGAINST THOSE WHO HAVE PRESUMED TO WRITE AGAINST THE SYNOD. PREFACE. The desire to speak is often compelled by the ardor of many things: either if the mind is greedy for praise and wishes to purchase favor with toil, so that through the blandishments of glory it ignores the cross of the narrator; or if, bound by the fetters of gain, it sells its compliance with its tongue, so that while the mind, subjugated by the lust for possession, thinks it already holds the presumed profit, it does not know to fear the dangers pressing in through the exercise of style; or if, constrained by necessity, it produces speech without any polish, captive and displaying a brow ignorant of shame in public, so that while it serves its intention, it forswears diligence in ornament, because the adornments of speaking belong not to business but to leisure, nor are painted words the stuff of military service but of idleness. The battlefield demands a strong man; deep peace demands a garlanded one. He who asserts what will be useful scorns speech colored by the brush of art. With these things thus standing, I set forth the reason for my narrative and commend my compelled voice, provoked by the barking of the wicked, to religious minds, remembering that it is written: a time for silence, a time for speech, or following the example of a certain orator after the faith of a prophetic oracle, who reports that the condition of speaking is exceedingly inept unless it is necessary.

Therefore, I devote the service of speech to the priests, according to the strength of my ability, against whom the poisons of hissing tongues have been poured forth, although the religious patience, fortified by the shield of faith, does not fear the shower of darts, and the weapons that are launched without the art of war return to their author. For those for whom Christ is a breastplate do not fear force and lay low their enemies by long endurance. Yet would anyone think that in this battle line the contest is to be feared, in which the struggle is waged against God and the pontiffs without any estimation of strength? Would anyone see the shifting and provoking enemy and tremble at a weak adversary because of the causes of the battles? He who hesitates to attack an enemy wounded in conscience denies himself the victory. He who in conflicts considers not the causes first but something else proceeds to the profit of his foe: innocence gives strength to the javelins, and the equal vows of those coming to battle sharpen the sword: we know that a just grievance has given more force to the impulse of striking than arms have: hence the multitude has not withstood the weapons of the few. Therefore, with the prophet saying with me: "More are with us than with them," I will begin the work that will please the good, as I judge.

It would indeed be sufficient that the schismatic ignorance has fallen by its own proposition, especially since the objections carry their own refutation with them, and the title deserves to be condemned along with its author without any examination of the reading, since in the very heading the meaning of the work reveals the foulness of those who say "Against the Synod of Incongruous Absolution." Nevertheless, I shall now proceed as if it were necessary for those who propose evil to perish by another's sword. This preface can, O most senseless of men, be attributed only to ignorance. Is there anyone besides you who is to be counted among the ulcerous and straying sheep, who could have assailed the great flock of shepherds, with the prophet saying: "I nourished and raised sons, but they themselves have spurned me," and the Lord concerning the apostles: "He who spurns you, spurns me," whom the prophet testifies were bishops when speaking of Judas: "And let another receive his episcopate," and the apostle Paul equally proclaiming: "Obey your superiors, for they themselves will pray for you"?

But let us return to that grave and venerable proposition—one not merely produced from the sty, but reeking of its filth. "Not all priests," they say, "were summoned to the council by the king's authority, nor did all take part in the judgment." Minions of Tartarus and outright ministers of Satan, the cause itself dragged in those whom the prince's letter did not summon, with the new coils and snares of your own acts. I will not say what their inclination was, or what deliberation those who withdrew entertained, or what weariness that waiting produced, when they saw the venerable pope granted long reprieves in life, contrary to his own custom. They saw the heavens beaten only by the javelins they themselves had launched. Lest these wretches be allowed to lurk in secret, consoled by their evil deeds, your books expose them in their hiding places, and through you they are not permitted to have solitude in their shameful act, as the Lord says in the Gospels: every evil man hates the light. After this, you assert that the opponents of the Roman pontiff ought not to have been so called, since they were accusing the aforementioned man by presenting petitions, and you add, to support the credibility of your assertion, that the royal edicts had not called them by that name. O men shaped by every file and forged in the smithies' furnaces, who have found, after much toil, such testimonies to support your words! We love, reverend sirs, your opinion, and, as they say, we go on foot into it: we acknowledge the errors you mention. Should someone call his accuser an enemy and apply a tragic name to one who does not deserve such contumely?

Then you gnawed at the appended question with a rhetorical fable, alleging: "The city of Rome is witness whether all the bishops, old and infirm, assembled." Behold a speech straining with the sinews of truth, and to be preferred even to Cepasius for its elegance of expression. Therefore, because they said they were strong in age but weak in body, they themselves testify that they are unfit for judgment, since they declared they already suffer the loss of their limbs—especially if they presumed to thrust this into the ears of the most merciful lord. You think that, driven from all the sights of God, in that manner of your gatherings everything is to be confused and told everywhere, and that before the prince another speech was delivered concerning the gathering of the pontiffs, except by those whom the maturity of age made authors of the speech to be begun, to whom advanced years conferred reverence, who were thought to have been preserved long by the support of good merits. Therefore it was fitting for those same men to complain about the weariness of advanced age, whom age had commanded to plead. Excellent men, you added that the cause of the summons was already known from the royal commands, and that the one governing the highest affairs of Italy was not to be consulted as if about a new matter: that more was owed to paper and writing of religion than to the principal presence. Therefore no title remained in the aforesaid matter, for the investigation of which those proceeding might justly utter that beginning.

After this digression, you praise the king for good things and cultivate innocence with words, though you are ignorant of it in your deeds—if indeed there is any cultivation in your speech, which you furrow with a rough plowshare like oxen driving through a devious path, entrusting tares to a withered soil, about to receive in return for such outlay the chaff by which the fire of Gehenna is kindled for your destruction. But now, as someone is said to have asked, which things am I to prefer to which? You say, contrary to the Apostle, that the accusers of the supreme pontiff were not heard, those who, mindful of the heavenly command, withdrew their party from fellowship with an adulterer. Here I do not attack ignorance; I do not accuse a leaky memory. I do not wish to say that you attributed the words of a prophet to the Apostle, because I know that those who are sent are rightly called apostles. For David says: "You saw a thief and ran with him, and you placed your portion with adulterers." Then who could disentangle himself from that question of yours, in which you say: "In the crimes alleged, what is not excluded is approved"? Or from the voice of the Roman Church, fitting for soldiers, in which you do not know whether to praise first its brilliance or its savor. Do you think you have heard it read: "What is just, you execute justly"? Have you heard, from the misdeeds of men—if indeed human intercourse ever held you—that whatever is not approved in its own orders is excluded?

Where is that saying of the prophet: "The Lord will come to judgment with the elders of his people," and of you it was said: "They proclaimed their sin like Sodom: woe to their souls"? But what need is there of action, whenever no remedy succors the desperate, unless the Lord is to be implored, who promised through the prophet that he would be over every proud man, and the exalted, and over every arrogant man, so that he may be humbled? But I will follow the foul work in its tracks with iron-shod feet, and if I am able, I will crush it with a hobnail boot, so that, to speak truly, thing will fight with thing, cause with cause, reason with that which they think is reason. You allege that priests were slandered by royal commands, and you believe it to be some kind of sacrilege, something evil, when you are ignorant of the celestial, to be felt from the command of an earthly lord, by objecting: "Who ought to have said to the king that the pope should have convened a synod?" Certainly, what example stands in this part? That man especially, who already lay prostrate by the criminal propositions of many; whom to condemn was the same as to accuse, from whom the prerogative ascribed by heaven had already been taken away by the slander of his enemies? Your evil deeds have drawn you by their steps and increments to this madness, that you believe to be provocation what is conviction, and that hatreds, which for the most part, when unjustly attacked, fashion vows obedient to zeal, not to reason, have no difference from truth in your eyes? Where is that saying: "Before you know, do not judge anyone"?

Once you were received by the flock placed on the left as colleagues, among whom it is believed that a sentence has been passed by prejudice against one who has deserved to be brought to trial, and that to be a defendant is to enter the scales of judgment. Nevertheless, you have admirably subjoined a divine example to your preface, which is so fitted with apt addresses that you would think Chrysippus himself held the line in it: God says to the sinner: "Why do you recount my justices?" To this saying, joining it as if to the priests an apostrophe: "Because he is considered the vicar of the blessed apostle Peter, you forbid his physician to bring medicine to his body: how do you refuse to provide the cure for his soul?" I know not whether this is a great jest at the divine or the greatest lamentations. You seek a cure for another's fever, you desire that medicine be applied to a failing soul, and, placed in the proximity of death, forgetful of yourselves, you treat of another's salvation. What if that saying of the prophet were truly spoken to you: "Is it not enough that you are troublesome to men, troublesome also to my God?" And again: "Physician, heal yourself"? But of this elsewhere. We know that one who is given up and wicked, coming to the depths, cannot be healed and with wondrous rashness scorns it. But I believe he lives in these men and in the death of his evil conversation there is counsel, and he can wish for another what he himself has already lost. Now rightly shall we say with the prophet: "Everything this people speaks is a conspiracy, and do not fear their fear nor dread it.

Let this itch of tongues that is in us cease from us, those whom the same prophet truly rebukes: "Writing injustice, you have written." We do not judge that blessed Peter, as you say, received from the Lord, together with the privileges of the see, a license for his successors to sin. He sent to posterity an everlasting dowry of merits together with the inheritance of innocence: what was granted to him for the light of his deeds pertains to those whom an equal splendor of conduct illuminates. For who would doubt that a man is holy whom the summit of such great dignity elevates, in whom, if goods acquired through merit are lacking, those supplied by the predecessor in the office suffice? For either it raises the illustrious to these heights, or it illuminates those who are raised: for it knows beforehand what is suitable for the foundation of the churches, upon which the edifice itself rests. But from this you think that heavenly power is a support to your actions, because you lend, as you say, a helping right hand to the protection of the blessed apostle. You do not know, dullards, that the sun is not aided by torches, nor are lamps lit for the support of daylight? For it is written: "God searches hearts and reins.

But in that part, who would dare to respond to your arguments, except that truth is spoken without artifice and faith is stitched to the falsehood of your verbal tricks? "Why," they say, "did you come to the prince, if the accused was not permitted to be heard?" Do you, in such a way, become so dulled by the fog of sin or divine dread into a bestial stupor that your mind either passes over a shameful excuse through deceit or, pressed by the brutishness of beasts, does not recognize it? Or perhaps you think it was something else, that it was said that he himself ought to have convoked the synod, whose task it was by office, so that you, clearly, through pontifical examination, might be struck by divine sentence, whom insane fervor had cut off from the unity of your head to the detriment of salvation. After the mention of Esau, you inserted into your work—I know not whether with words or barks—comparing your bishop to him, who lost the benefit of his elder nature by the exchange of a single meal and forfeited the hoary dignity of the firstborn by obeying his gullet. To these things, what shall I reply, I who am hemmed in from every part of the objections? Who, I ask, of you snatched the blessing from Symmachus, while he served his father more? To whom was the nobility of such great gifts conferred by the voice of Jacob? Who among you, about to obey the desires of a blind parent, came to meet him? Which of you, by his devotion, made the venerable father, captured in his eyes, feel no loss of light? Is it not that, by comparison with your darkness, the night is thought to show a gleaming radiance through clear sky, and every obscurity, compared to your deeds, takes on the beauty of the sun?

Moreover, Jacob at that time, although his sons' conduct was savage, nevertheless conferred the blessing already promised. Why do we linger longer on these matters, when those who have applied spurs to the heels are not to be taught? Believe me, the things you bring forth are hostile to peace and are not suitable for refutation. But there follows a bond with a riddle, which we are to solve by some art of repetition. For we have entered the sea of Tullian depth, and they send our little boat through the uncertain shores of questions with the blasts of their disputes. Yet in this, with Christ holding the helm, I shall enter the harbor and discuss one by one all things from your whirlwinds, having in their guidance not my own ability. For they say: "If the assertion of the bishops is true, that the prelate of the apostolic see never submitted to the judgment of his inferiors, why was he brought to trial by a strict summons?" Here indeed our long-standing infancy labors greatly, for which that one must be summoned who always surpasses with us the weight of the unshaken proposition, when I openly cry out with the prophet on behalf of the priests: "Shall the axe boast against him who cuts with it? Or shall the saw exalt itself against her who draws it?" So that for me that divine oracle may serve: "Just as when the tax collector ceases, the tribute rests, so the Lord has crushed the rod of the impious." Grant, Lord, what you have foretold in them, that just as a drunkard errs and vomits, so may the unbeliever who acts faithlessly perish.

For this reason the prophet, mocking you, cries out: "Hear the word of the Lord, you men of mockery." Does anyone establish the outcome of a case from foreknowledge and set a limit to raging conflicts in such a way that a swift decision, while it becomes known that it is older in investigation, accuses the favor of the judge? Now, for a little while, I, unworthy in speech, deeds, and years, will rebuke you with a pontifical voice. We, who did not wish our statutes to stand with you on a single scale, for whom the canons were issued concerning the quality of the attackers, among whom it is a crime to transgress the ancient definitions of the fathers, to whom it is written in the Council of Carthage—which the authority of the Apostolic See, through Bishop Faustinus, who was then sent by it and was present, approved—that accusers coming from the house of an enemy are not to be believed, in whom hatred-kindled neighborhood through dry fuel rekindles the flame of persecution and composes the entire fabric of deceit with expense and interlocking machines by secret arrangement: which house would have vomited forth these men, could our assembly have known, unless it had learned the quality of the attack from the present parties and from a written proposition? In which case, would it have recognized the bilge of crimes, while they pretend that they owe persecution to crimes?

After those things which were brought forward concerning the accusers, you added why the persons were ordered to be presented, whom imperial authority had often demanded, that this pertains to defrauding the genius of him who now stands in the apostolic see as if in some citadel. Truly Wisdom says to you: a weak man of short time will not attain understanding, but let him labor to know what is acceptable to the Lord, and again the Proverbs say: he hates himself who neglects studies, for death confronts the unskilled. Why do you feign that ignorance which descends from viperine knowledge? Why do you apply, with a marvelous art of thievery, tricks while showing a front of simplicity? It is truly said of you: he who speaks falsehood speaks from his own. You have removed from the eyes of your priest, with crafty foresight, that face of joy coming from the censure of judgments, so that you might drive him, fortified with such defenses against your battle lines and bearing weapons from the testimony of the world for his innocence, from the very sanctuaries of the judgments, providing that the innocent man should neither live without attack nor have solace from the uncorrupted investigation of the judges when assailed. You both gave and begrudged the aforementioned man a trial, when by one and the same path from you he is both forbidden and compelled to undergo the uncertainties of disputations, and is summoned along a singular path to be shut out from his case, lest he either obtain manifest safety unprovoked or snatch it away when acquitted.

I recall having read in my youth, in the times of a certain man, this saying: "You command exile to an exile, but you do not grant it." The prophet's sentence attacks you: "These are the men who disturbed the earth and who shook kingdoms," and again: "Their little branches shall be cut off with sickles, and what is left behind shall be lopped off," and again: "While you do not hope, your destruction will come, and your multitude will be shattered like a potter's jar." Nor did the prophet, speaking specifically to this case, fail to thunder: "The Lord will incline His hand, and he who bears aid to evil will fall, and he to whom aid is given will fall, and all together will be consumed." Yet, after these ancient refuges of examples, I return to the recent definitions of the canons. In another place, the Council of Carthage cries out: "Whatever persons the public laws do not admit to accusation, we also remove from them the license to attack another." I ask you, men, to whom a perfection polished to the fingernail is given, what condition were those slaves whom you demanded in your principal writings? If they were still held by the chain of another in servile power, and no footsteps released into freedom were loosening them from the fetters of base obligation, would the words of the aforementioned have carried any credibility even with you as judges?

But, I believe, you will reply: the truth, which when freely uttered could not have been absent from them, this truth a pious torturer had extracted from its hiding places by various torments, so that, while bodies were being dissolved by punishments, the soul would not conceal what it knew had taken place. But first, I beg you, turn your attention to the public laws, then to the judges, who can speak thus in their own defense: "We, whom the service of God has made free men after the rejection of these things, who either despise or laugh at the insults of insolent little slaves, to whom it is written by the apostle concerning servants: 'Remember that your master and theirs is in heaven'—shall we be recalled to these evils of the world? Must we do what we contend is profane when another does it? Shall what would defile our sight through the agency of a command and another's hand be carried out by our authority? Do not preserve this mind, like that of rapacious wolves, for all churches, because even if a bloody investigation had stained us, perhaps, for your desires, it would have no effect in those matters toward which you are heading. But, with the prophet telling us, 'Let us put a ring in your nostrils and a bridle on your lips, and lead you back on the path by which you came,' you are assailed by the same prophet who declares: 'They will be as if they were not, and the men who contradict you will perish.'

This also you have added against us as a novel invention: that our Lord and Redeemer himself underwent the judgments of servants, and that the maker of heaven voluntarily subjected himself to a certain earthly particle, when he testifies and says: "Man of Judah and you who dwell in Jerusalem, judge between me and my vineyard." You also relate that the blessed Peter, and Paul the apostle, did not shrink from this, and you drag that elegance of yours into law, preceding it with the bonds of examples, as if in this matter contention with a resisting party remained for you, and the offerings were exacted by the strong fingers of your eloquence. You also say that the wondrous prophet Samuel implored the testimony of the common people from the serenity of his conscience. For what did Samuel say? That the Lord knows that he had never driven away anyone's property, anyone's flock, that he had opposed himself to bribes and, what is above man, had avoided gifts that came spontaneously, foreseeing of course, lest he suffer losses of reputation through the prejudices of suspicion. Finally, with divine attestation he laid bare his innocence, lest he undergo human examination. Our Redeemer, when he looks upon your evils in the present business, implores the judgment that he wishes to occur between himself and his vineyard.

Saint Athanasius, bishop of the city of Alexandria, when the envy of your partisans was brought against him, recognizing that through a multitude of insults an exercise came to him, not fear, truly joined to the price of the crown what he yielded from dignity, and before the heavenly sentence of acquittal, he, a good assessor of innocent character, fulfilled the role of the defendant. For in this way the soldiers of Christ procure for themselves increases of honors by their own sweat, while they chasten granted heights with loftier humility, about to earn accumulations of praise from the very point where they moderate attained pinnacles with sublime restraint. But although the position shows the blessed Athanasius to be unequal to the Roman pontiff, as far as we can know, yet in deed they are compared in their affairs. He was present before judges; this one, as you yourselves say, summoned them. He did not shun an untried examination as a servant of God; this one placed the hope of his triumph in the gathering of the examiners. But why should we linger longer on these comparisons? This one also wished for, loved, drew in, and entered into judgments, and—what could prick the hearts of the faithful with stings of just grief—he granted authority to the venerable council even against himself, if he should deserve it. Who would not know, from the very front of this allegation of his, that he, supported by testimonies of purity, came to his fellow bishops, he who shrank from what was less permitted to their strictness, deeming that what a weak judge had decreed should rather be undermined in any way? Why do you assail the aforementioned one with canine loquacity?

Why do you harm one who does not deserve it? His desire is what you think to be your terror, but a more cunning serpent than among the adversaries of Athanasius hisses with a novel poison among you. They did not know what you know very well: how a triumph is taken away from one who is attacked. They feared that he, once provoked, would not come to be heard; you, unable to bear the delays which the examinations required, repelled him with javelins as he came, and you exchanged the tedium prepared for you by the sentence for the assumption of avenging arms. O remembrance of evils, which both grants and undermines speech, while it confuses the words even of those whom it has driven to outcry by the gravity of the deed. Who can endure you chattering with equanimity? Therefore, according to your assertion, do we not love the advantages of a new utility, while we show obedience to the elders who define things? Here you spread all the sails of your intellect: here, from the recess of the breast, the belch of whatever breath it had has vomited forth from a neck bent backward. For they say: "The fasts of Moses and the miracles which Elisha performed, when he raised the dead, are condemned by you if you follow only the aged." What reason does a suitable examiner find here? If a pale seeker of gold should appear, he would not find the movement of hidden veins in your senses, nor would a digger admit light into the unfamiliar hiding places of your words. Therefore, do we not approve of gray-haired miracles, if we do not give consent to youthful excesses?

If we subject a slave to his master, a disciple to his teacher, mindful of the Gospel, do we neglect whatever could have been of benefit? There are other things, most wicked of men, which we employ for recent use without injury to antiquity. Next, you have disclosed a new charge, one which our investigation had passed over: "Why did the pope convene a synod without the precedent of an example, to judge concerning the accusation of his crimes?" After this, you accuse us of falsehood, because we say that what was written in the aforementioned matter was demanded by the emperor. Grant, Lord, that we may overcome without error the winding turns of this labyrinth: direct the path, which the twisting serpent works according to the fabric of his own body or mind, so that we may truly say: the Lord of hosts is with us, our helper is the God of Jacob, and with Solomon let us exclaim: a horse is prepared on the day of battle; but all protection is with the Lord. It is indeed superfluous to respond to absurd propositions, as the prophet says: do not answer a fool according to his folly. But if contempt has passed over something, I fear that what I have not touched might be considered valid. It is better for us, with the blessed Paul, to incur causes for insult and to testify with full voice: I have become a fool, you have compelled me. Was this, then, established by no example, that the pope of priests should convene a council, whose judgment is the synodal assembly? Or were the things that were condemned among you, with this multitude, concerning your crimes, of little account?

Are not the words of the canons straightforward, that any cleric who departs from his bishop before the time of sentence on account of a doubtful suspicion remains under manifest censure? For the ministry of this matter, a devoted band of God's servants ought to have hastened, so that an army of physicians might come to the aid of the wounds of a lost and ruined flock, because whenever the violence of diseases rushes with swift step to the secrets of the soul, salutary counsel cannot bring opposing hands unless from the consultation of many. For this also our petition demanded from the king: that, with the prejudgments of the clerics cut away, the heavenly authority might judge through a human mouth concerning the merit of the accused pope. Let us see, however, if you please, and let us review those subtleties of your didascalic little book, we also having before our eyes the sanctions of the fathers, by which the bilge-water of your excesses is weighed. Ecclesiastical law requires that a pontiff accused by others not be abandoned before the charges have been established in the light. But you, mindful, as I think, of divine law, who despise light errors, who rejoice in the nobility of sin, so that not even one guilt from the abandonment of the priest might look back upon you, accused him with increments of crimes. That one who is your leader led you to this state of health, so that after the pontiff was deserted, after he was attacked, you believed the censure of the bishops of almost all Italy to be disapproved without the force of any sentence: as one of your cohort said: he did not entrust a hastening soul to a single death.

Can you, unteachable mind, already enriched by the successes of crimes, rest from your detestable purpose as if worn out? That man made you rich in these evils, to whom the abundance of your pride removed angelic riches and begrudged the divine treasury of harm, with which his overflowing storehouse abounds. But, mindful of our promise, let us touch upon everything that we recall is inserted into their work. Pope Symmachus is accused in a most brilliant style, because, anticipating the convention, he entered the examination with gatherings of the people, and afterwards spurned the judgments, though he had been summoned four times. Have you so departed from the affection for truth that you think the testimony of the world is enveloped in the clouds of lies, and that words painted with the brush of falsehood have more power than the truth which Rome retains? Did he, then, approach the disputation importunately, or flee from it when expected? Did that multitude of the people devoted to God come together more from Christian diligence of faith than from madness? Does anyone running to inflict violence have tears as companions, and does he who strives to be feared show the face of one who is afraid? That multitude, joined to the offices of the priest, brought to us lamentations, not javelins, and came not threatening with weapons, but pitiable with tears, burdening your intention by one display alone, because by the abundant rivers of their eyes they showed how pitiable was the condition of the one assailed through your harshness, and in the sobriety of a venerable examination they commended by their own affliction the one whom they could not commend by voice.

But you have a clear sign from this matter of what kindles your bile and fury: because the man for whom the world weeps came to the judgment almost acquitted, and while you gather against him, by your speech, ill-will that is foreign to the facts, for a little while your proud neck is bowed before our reverence. For you call it a sacred congregation only when you wish to assert that our destroyer Symmachus, and you think that by cruel piety it adds to our honor that he, seated in the citadel of the churches, lost it. We not only did not feel this, but we feel the opposite: turn the poisons of your protection to others instead. The defender has no testimony who pays the service of his lips to one who resists: the one who gives something to an unwilling recipient loses the grace of what he thinks is a benefit, because it is not a gift unless you wish to receive it. Now there is no need for a long admonition to those already lost: we owe hatred to the deed, of which nothing remains for the authors to be condemned for. You assert that crowds of women gathered with the aforementioned man at the judgments, using your urban colors, and by that subtlety of yours, the sex is shown which ought to have owed greater affection to the bishop. Most profane of men, I hold the scripture: it is one thing to speak ill, another to accuse, and the prophet said: rejecting the word, you hoped in slander and in tumult, and you are in that state; therefore this iniquity will be for you like an interruption, because God says for us: but those who judge you, I will judge.

And again He says to His servants: "Do not fear the reproach of men, and do not dread their blasphemies." Again He also cries out to you: "Come here, seed of an adulterer and fornicator: over whom have you played, over whom have you opened your mouth and thrust out your tongue? Are you not, then, wicked children, a lying seed?" Consider to what you join these things, saying: "The case having been announced, the pope departed, his defenders abandoned," setting before us examples of the forum and of the marketplaces, of which you are hypocrites. It is written to us by the Apostle Paul: For those for whom the world is crucified, what have they to do with the forum? But you do not know these things, or, what is more serious, you know them and despise them. The pope departed, I believe, demanding something foreign and separated from reason. Did he not hope for this, bound by pastoral care for the state of the tottering Church, which both religious providence and the order of the case itself demanded? For what form of judgment had preceded, so that, with us hostilely torn apart, and even by your suggestion the resources of the Church removed, he who had long been the food of the hungry seemed to be made a slave of famine, while the distributor of sustenance was in need, so that servitude might arise in dominion and dominion in servitude? What quality of a previous age did this bring back through memory into the midst of the past? What sort of man, convicted by censure, was able to be made, in whom the adjudication preceded the case? It was not a privilege by which he, already stripped bare, could be despoiled.

You thought that your only remaining support in the sacred assembly was to join priests to you as accomplices in the savagery of crimes to be defended, and that the crime would go unpunished through the pollution of many. A censor is never summoned at a suitable time who is called to a case that is almost already decided: even if the criminal has merit, the accuser removes it, because he wants more license for his own fury than for the judge. For the prophet, attacking you, says: "This is the portion of those who have laid us waste, and the lot of those who plunder us. Go, swift angels, to the torn and mangled flock and the terrible people." An angel was sent to you, namely through the priests, by whose voice and merit gifts to be conveyed to Christ are received and, with the Lord appeased, granted prayers are conceded to mortals, through whom gifts of rejected peace were offered to you, who brought rewards of love to those deserving punishment, who, while considering themselves, looked at nothing of what you deserved.

Who saw him," they say, "engage in open combat, as they call it, with his accusers?" Most shameless of men, consider with whom you wish him to contend, and if any sense of well-being remains in you, attend to the places, times, and persons of both sides. And if the wealth heaped up by your wickedness has not yet subdued your still perverse heart, lift your eyes briefly to God and for a short time despise the commands of your sinister adviser. You recognize that you are not fortified by the precepts of the highest king in those things which are justly to be punished, because although the quality of the response is dictated by the doctrines of the request, and the petition, when it arises, describes what is to follow, nevertheless you have never caught the free words of the ruler in your nets, never have imperial writings served your desires through the snares of cunning. How often has an ineffective bite resounded in your vain gapings for harm? How often has whatever you held in hope concerning the accused escaped, and the image, occupied by presumption, left you empty? Thanks be to God, who instilled this providence in him to whom he entrusted the sum of human affairs. A sure hope of peace and perfect safety lies in the wisdom of the governor. The ship, whose master is prepared for the helm by the gift of understanding, has everywhere a station, everywhere a harbor in the waves. The security of the commonwealth is certain when one trained in noble arts rules the republic. Our emperor knows how to offer a hand of opposition, by heaven-inspired dispensation, to those infamous in their genius for deception.

There is no need for effort with him whom naked truth has long since chosen as its defender. Let the impious cease to feign simplicity with fraudulent deceit before him: whatever moves against justice is soon held fast; nothing is safer before the aforementioned one than innocence. He who presents matters consistent with equity employs a powerful embassy. That which is often a grievous attack for princes is not bound up with the flatteries of the less faithful. But these things are better told to God, from whom the plant of this fruit descends. I am brought back to you by the unfriendly condition of the work I have undertaken, I who have hitherto wished to devote my efforts to better discourses, while imperious necessity demands a captive speech. For you have said: "How did you first treat the case or its quality, when the synod did not yet have firmness?" O the shamelessness of that foul utterance and the face of that booklet, which not only ignorance has stained. You both narrate and inquire about the province of our treatment. We were indeed in doubt on this point, because, as you put it, the synod did not have firmness: the quality of the matter was passing beyond those who would hear, and more still remained in the reverence of the one who was challenged than there was in the integrity of our college.

Then you repeat that, as a torment to the questions, the venerable bishops Laurentius and Petrus suspended themselves from the pope's communion, and you turn whatever the caution of those summoned provided into a charge against the accused. Was there, therefore, any time when, while these men were celebrating the sacred rites of the Mass, the commemoration of his name ceased? Did the named bishops ever, according to your desires, offer half-filled sacrifices without Catholic rite and canonical custom? Was an offense against God ever committed through grace, as may be ascribed to your leader, and did the mother of offense, the offering, become the nurse of pardon? They were indeed separated by a mere convention of the body, those of whom you speak; yet they did not shun the presence of souls. If you think those whom the clasp of religion joins with a pious biting tooth are disunited from mutual fellowship, your affection has led you far from the estimation of faults. The dwelling of the heavenly mandate either mixes us or separates us: it does not matter what intervals separate us, if we are held in a single chamber in the heavenly abode. Truly from this we infer that you are slaves of the belly and the body, and by this baseness of your judgment you declare yourselves to be earthly slaves. For it is written: the carnal man does not perceive the things of the spirit.

After these things, turning your orders to flight with the frenzy of a madman's speech, you added: "Therefore, the councils of priests decreed by ecclesiastical laws annually throughout the provinces, because they do not have the presence of the pope, have lost their validity?" Read, you most insane ones, whether anything was ever established in those councils apart from the sanction of the apostolic see, and whether, concerning greater matters, if anything occurred for discussion, it was preserved by the judgment of the aforementioned see. For thus you have: if any bishop has been deposed by a provincial judgment, let him appeal again to the Roman pope, if he wishes, and he, if it seems fit, may restore the judgments in aid of the condemned one. Behold, it is clear what you have prepared for the snare, unless perhaps we are bound by the tightest knots in that part and the paths of our replies do not lie open, while the previously passable path is clothed with new obstructions of brambles. For you detain us with these thorny words of speech, while we walk on level ground, when you say that the prince has been offended, because we wished to depart at first glance from the appointed visitor contrary to ecclesiastical rules, so that nothing more might then be permitted to vices, lest the tares harden, lest the profane harvest, cut down by no sickle of discipline before maturity, fall and it be thought permissible what the judges did not forbid. Hence it is clearly evident that you are supported by no authority of examples apart from the excellence of the most pious king, which you vainly desire to be linked to guilt.

It remains for me to teach that in these excesses, what befell for the good of the whole is not binding, because he wished the directive to be not an occasion for litigation nor fuel for quarreling, but a cause of concord, foreseeing, of course, that unless the protection of his commands fortified a simple order, your poisons would quickly steal it away as food for discord. For it is written: "A simple man believes every word." Therefore, he fixed a limit to the command, which no transgression was permitted to violate. He ordered that the aforementioned man, as soon as he had been brought to Rome, should proceed to the basilica of the blessed Peter, making the king's command from the priest's vow. For who would not think that the pontiff would willingly comply in that part which the prince did not believe was permitted to himself, even if he forbade it? And there he ordered that the pope, having been greeted by him, should be addressed by his own mouth, so that he might hand over to the fellow bishop the slaves to be subjected to no tortures, to be kept indeed for the discussion of the synodal examination. O the chastity of the command, which, while it bears a torch to present times, drives ancient things into shadow, which snatches light from the old with the inauspicious splendor of novelty! Who, rich in tongue, has joined this to anyone poor in merit, or to a fabricator of opinion? Who has so enriched with fabricated praises the reputation of a lord beggared by the truth of his own deeds? I do not detract from you writers, by whose benefit it happens that the adorned deeds of our ancestors are transmitted to us: but I will not be silent about the benefits of God, because our prince surpasses the ornaments of words by his deeds.

It does not seek a glory exposed to tongues: it considers that which is joined to be negligence toward its own praise. Behold, as if with a balance, with what discretion the venerable examiner of causes looked into it, so that while the craftsman of the effect was provided to your petition, he nevertheless preserved ecclesiastical law in all things. What hearts, even those sharper than others, suffice for this estimation? At one time, by one writing, without detriment to equity, your desires are fulfilled, and the same document is destined both for the ministry of religion and for your joy. For the inquiry of a good prince foresaw that a servile assertion should not be proven by an innocent examination. For in the election of the venerable judges, he himself rejected the accusers beyond the order, he himself restored the accused to hope. Let us see, nevertheless, if these things were done, if you were not enemies of God and also of an earthly lord, while you despise Christ and the king with equal temerity, and one path was drawn for you to both insults. The designated bishop is snatched from the very threshold of the command to be fulfilled by the coils of your mouth and is fitted for the fuel of confusion, he who had come to serve peace. He is summoned, already unaware of himself, to the revered thresholds of the blessed apostle for the use of your fury, and that foundation of churches which draws the devout from all corners of the earth, placed in proximity, is passed by: the mediocre structure is not permitted to be approached. Then the hope of good fruits perished, separated from the root.

Perhaps, if it is thought that a citizen of heaven is confined to earthly places, he is plucked from the genius of the apostle. Yet, although blessing is everywhere granted to those who seek it, and the faith and devotion of the suppliant demand the presence of the martyr, it cannot be denied that more is attributed to the diligence of his native soil, and that places from which one passes to the heavens obtain greater affection. The multitude of cures has already given that faith to the allegation, and we now use witnesses already healed after the diabolical siege. Although these things are celebrated throughout the whole world through our Redeemer, there is nevertheless no small nobility of that monument acquired by frequentation, because the nature of the earth could be illuminated through him who changed a man into an angel. You have begrudged this grace to your visitor, thinking that he would cease to be a follower of your errors if he had touched the sanctuary of the venerable passion. Behold, you have no support in royal authority; behold, after the heavenly disturbance, the censure of the prince, which you caused to be spurned, justly strikes you as well.

Let us see if any defense remains from a regular proposition. "He himself," they say, "gave visitors and other bishops, and it is just that he be bound by the law of his own making." I do not attack you on this charge of falsehood; I do not argue that words clinging to lies are long-standing: I say, however, that the bearer of a legal definition is not confined by its terms unless he wishes, and unless the highest authority tempers the summit of disdain, he is vainly called to the law which he has given. The law is of probity and of the mind, which chastens a man living without law: he properly imposes on morals who ought not to owe discipline to necessity. Perhaps God has willed that the causes of other men be settled by men; but the prelate of this see he has reserved to his own judgment without question. He willed that the successors of the blessed apostle Peter owe innocence only to heaven and exhibit an inviolate conscience to the scrutiny of the most subtle examiner. Do not think that those souls have no fear of inquisitors whom God has reserved for his own examination above others. Before him, a defendant has no support from the brilliance of his allegation, when he uses as judge the very witness of his deeds. You might perhaps say: such will be the condition of all souls in that judgment.

I will repeat a saying addressed to one: "You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed also in heaven." And again, by the voice of the holy pontiffs, the dignity of his see is made venerable throughout the whole world, while to him everything that is of the faithful everywhere is subjected, while he is designated as the head of the whole body, concerning which it seems to me to have been said through the prophet: "If this one is humiliated, to whose aid will you flee, and where will you leave your glory?" What if I, having unclean lips and washed by no waters kindled by a coal, as was granted to Isaiah, were permitted to summon the Apostle Peter himself to defend the privileges of his possession, and what he does through prayers were to speak with a human voice? If you were to hear him, he would say this: "Sons of men, how long will you be heavy of heart? Why do you love vanity and seek falsehood? Know that the Lord has magnified His saint. Why do you wish to undermine the foundations established by Christ's hands? Why do you batter with a battering ram the genius of that possession, which grows young through faults, and subject me, after the flesh, to new passions by the rending of the ecclesiastical flock? It is an unheard-of kind of sacrilege, which you color with the honor of a feigned religion: he dishonors the reverence of a venerable name who promises himself as an assistant in those things which he boasts are committed against God. It is a kind of insult, as if to be present as a solace to the sublime, according to the Apostle: 'Who are you, who judge another's slave?'

Why do you deceive unskilled ears and make the appearance of vengeance graver than the fault itself? If you owe hatred to excesses, purify yourselves. Why do you condemn crimes more freely than you avoid them? He is his own assailant who presses adultery with the offices of fornication and accuses the flesh through the defilements of souls. Surely you recall the text: "Cursed are all who fornicate away from you." Therefore, a foul person is released from the obligation of his Lord's purity who renders the duties of heavenly statutes with less than pure faith. The splendor of our possession, as I see, has moved you to envy, which you transfer through feigned indignation at the possessor's faults, while you sweat over expenses. The citadel, in which you were conspicuous, you proposed to undermine with repeated blows and, unless I resisted, to overthrow, and to show through ruin how great a structure, fixed in heaven, it is. Do not await victory from your own disaster: do not, by conquering, lose the triumph sought by my labors and my sweat. Whatever leads to a trophy, I have obtained: whatever would make you illustrious, I have gathered in the seat. That torch, which you think to extinguish with viperous poison, bestows splendor upon you. He who rages thus against the offshoots of his own grace, so as to cut off the plants, kindles a fire for his own destruction: anger more violent than is just provokes its author more than others.

Symmachus's excesses, as you call them, if they exist, I await with the same expectation as you: it is wrong for a sinner not to love the patience of a judge. What else does he demand but vengeance, who, while he himself is guilty, accuses another of delays in punishment? That is the voice I owe to those pursuits, because I hold that God has said that man is prone to evil and that every flesh is a friend to sins. I do not wish that, on the occasion of a person, a possession should become abject, giving dignity to countless others, lest, while a man is attacked, divine law be broken. Believe me, if these things you speak of exist, I look back, because I have also examined what would have been in those of whom nothing of the sort was said. He errs who believes that a man near to God can be deceived: the Lord says, 'Leave vengeance to me, I will repay.' You rather, sons, long since, with whom a spiritual womb was heavy in childbirth, return to the concord you have abjured: let mother church receive you in her pious bosom, as she has done so far. Correction is never too late: she knows how to wait long for those sought with excessive labor: she does not know how to despise for cheap things those bought at a great price. There is a return to salvation by many steps: no one is excluded except the one who despairs: the fruit of pardon should be next to the crown. Do not help Pope Symmachus by your pressures: if he is guilty, believe me, when the ministry of human attack ceases, divine judgment will soon follow. Is not either punishment or reward owed to the aforementioned in the balance of the most splendid judge? Do not seek from me syllogisms of speeches and figures.

I still use the old net after the man, and I have not abandoned the little boat mocked by the wise of this world. That boat sustains me through the straits of the world: the net, proven in the capture of men, enriches me, as you see. "Therefore return, because flight snatched you away even when you were rustics: run to the fold, lest you expose yourselves to the snares of wolves, lest through delay you lose the grace of those who come willingly, because a despised invitation is followed by gehenna. If I, as a father, owed you any sweetness, if I, as a teacher appointed by God, fulfilled any strictness, see to it that a sparse crown of Levites does not for long surround whatever corner of my cross, that a lamentable solitude does not long hold sway even among strangers, that the labor of my womb does not, in place of sterility, have given birth to a hostile family, and that numerous offspring do not, through wicked deeds, show the barrenness of the parent. The things I have set forth are few, but judge how much depends on them. Come, sons, hear me: I have taught you the fear of the Lord.

Look to Rome, which was freed from the servitude of idols without the price of gold or silver by the shedding of Christ’s blood, which also commanded me, its humble servant, to pay my own death, which for many ages displayed worship in notorious shrines, which long venerated in images of demons the terror that a master hand, at the cost of its resources, had instilled, which looked up to the power of divinities bought with the price of metals, for which a more practiced hand of the craftsman produced more sublime gods, and the divinity which man conferred through craftsmanship had among men a form greater than that of God. Behold, now with Christ’s favor, the images have returned to new furnaces: behold, now from obsolete superstition your practice receives something to rejoice over, while from the old thunderer new vessels are deservedly prepared. Why do you strive to interrupt this peace? Why do you trifle with vain intentions with happiness? This madness has no excuse, if you believe: it matters not by what paths he who withdraws from holy unity runs to the prince of the world: he sacrifices fat victims to the devil who saddens the church. Therefore reject your vain little snares: the affection for peace has a simple defense: he is too well armed who despises the weapons that the enemy of concord supplies: the naked opposition of faith suffices against all the darts of quarrels. Why do you recall the times of Eulalius and Boniface into the midst, while you seek comfort from evils?

what do you present as the growth of excesses, old contagions, and by your wicked will, do you make nothing permissible for old age in covering up crimes? The cause of discord was different then, and unless I were compelled by the narrative to endure past events, I would show you that no comfort comes from comparing deeds, because those whom a fervor obedient to intention had raised to the pontifical summit, I rejected both; I chose this one because, by the proven outcome, none of them pleased me; of these, I made the one striving against the rules a fugitive, and I preserved the one lawfully promoted despite the world’s opposition. You know these things, and they are not new, because while that one is thrust out, this one is confirmed; your assent served me. “Then why do you harm the priestly council to your own ruin? Why do you tear apart the sentence in which, with Christ inspiring, heavenly oracles were revealed, and the tongue of the pontiffs stood as interpreter between God and men? Why do you cause the grief of the universal church, though committed in the principal see, yet in one? For that heavenly court, enriched with the gifts of various curule chairs and adorned with much gold and purple of our Redeemer, produced nothing in that decision as its author, but through the ministry of human language served the divine command. It understood that whatever it established under compulsion was not its own; it has nothing in that sentence except that for which it may rejoice solely in devotion; the pen perceived a foreign eloquence, taking from it only the glory that it both preserved and cultivated what was infused into it.

What have you prepared as a slander against these evangelical examples? As it is written of you: they erred in drunkenness, they did not know the one who sees, they were ignorant of judgment. For when you strike the aforementioned with profane words, you betray both ignorance and envy. Do these men, therefore, who preach the resurrection of the body, not believing it, mingle with heretics in their contagions? Do these men pursue in their hearts what they abjure with their tongues? Therefore, because they said that one must fear Him who can kill the body and send the soul into Gehenna, did they weave something alien to the faith? Behold profound ignorance! O blessed Luke, by whose assertion you can be refuted, who cries out: fear Him who, after He has killed the body, has the power to send the soul into Gehenna. What place is there for error here, where words of example and history concur with a like course and are not different from Catholic understanding and readings? A knot is never well sought in a rush: clouds do not envelop those who preach the author of light. Do they therefore not believe in the resurrection of the flesh, because they confess that the body can be killed, because they confess that the sinful soul is consigned to Gehenna? Your heart is choked by dense brambles, and it strives to ascribe internal vices to others. You also boast that the writings of the apostle John are violated, because it was said to him in his own words: if we say that we have no sin, we are liars, and truth is not in us. I make no complaint about the diversity of codices.

Therefore, are the apostles' warnings corrupted because they did not add: we deceive ourselves, and because they added: we are liars, ignorant not only of divine but also of human reason? He who does not possess the truth is rightly considered a liar, and he who is found empty of integrity is filled with nothing but falsehood. But these things are not to be heeded by us: the tongue is to be moved by the speech of groans, and you are to be offered not so much words as tears, because clearly guilty is he who opposes to the innocent either the merit of the blameworthy or a name. I shall not review the remaining heads of your objections: it is better that things worthy of condemnation be buried in silence. Nobility is given to crimes by one who transmits their airing in a manifold account to later ears. The opinion of blessed Paul is to be followed, who through his disciple warns all and proclaims: avoid idle questions. For there are many things in your propositions which the love of sin embraces with such filthy arms that they become unworthy of remembrance; many are dishonored by levity, while your words are disemboweled with weights removed and a windy elocution is composed concerning matters of religion, having obtained a gravity suited to the ear, which in an abundance of chaff will bring nothing of wheat into the granaries, while it gives birth to a barren fertility of stalks and deceives farmers with the hope of the luxuriance of the grass.

concerning which the winnowing-fans of profit find nothing, these are owed to the fire and will perish by burning: concerning these it is written: they slept their sleep of nitre, and found nothing. Nothing, dearest ones, is sweeter than peace, unless a breast not full of bitterness excludes its flavor. I ought to have given a briefer admonition, but the consideration of you, not small, and your brow, long exercised in quarrels among yourselves, produced a lengthy one; the fault of many sinners is not corrected by a concise address, and the majority seek in admonitory speeches the same prolixity they had in their offenses. It is enough for me that I have obeyed both your diligence and the heavenly commands. In what is to follow, I will leave no room for speeches, because I report that Rome, the head of the world, has been laid low through your contentions, and the chair, the nurse of the pontificate, has been despised as if it were to see a last seat. His voice the blessed Paul took up, and with that freedom of speech he always used, he thundered, rebuking the prince of the apostles for his leniency, because he still preserved a parent's attitude toward fickle and profligate minds.

affection would not come to the aid of wounds driven deep, even with a healing blade, teaching that the hidden recesses of diseases must be cut open by the knife, and that for manifest despair a salutary wound must be applied, lest, while the physician’s hand is withheld from cutting corrupt flesh through impiety, death is invited by the abstinence of the weapon, because, while the right hand spares the sick, it kills those who should be cured, and there is no great difference whether you inflict death or admit it. He who, when he can, does not exclude death, inflicts it upon the languishing. Therefore, to these he opened the door of speech with these words against them: “Everyone who judges, in that wherein you judge another, you condemn yourself: for you do the same things that you judge. But we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who do such things, and again: blessed is he who does not judge, wherein he proves himself. What evil reason is it, that one who steals should preach that one must not steal, and should clothe a prodigal brow of shame with the cloud of another’s attack? No one rightly takes up the person of a monitor unless he condemns errors by his own actions and demonstrates love of innocence by his conduct. For it lies near even to publicans, friendly to customs, to condemn vices in speech and to punish with the more criminal offices of the tongue what they love, as if it were not a certain kind of greater excess, to give affection to a thing with the lips while you despise it in your mind, and to clothe the venom of your wit with the honey of conversation.

I do these things as if you had shame, modesty, grace, or affection, and as if it were permitted to you to accuse a teacher and to fit the bite of a livid mouth against the chosen one, although I, foreseeing the future, had warned you in full voice through the letter given to you: who will accuse the chosen ones of God? God, who justifies: who is there who condemns? And again: O man, who judges those who do such things and does them yourself, do you think you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you despise the riches of his goodness and patience and long-suffering? You accuse malice, filled with iniquity, fornication, avarice, wickedness, envy, murders, condemnation, deceit, malignity, proud, haughty, inventors of evils, not obedient to a parent, foolish, disorderly, without affection, without mercy. You teach that no one should be mixed with fornicators, you followers or forerunners of the adulterer Laurentius, through whom he either put forth the poisons he had or, pouring them out, showed what he received. After that stain of seductive communion and the pestilence execrable to the whole world, you blame priests of God as if they were corporately joined in obsolete communion: you consider guilty those who entered into fellowship with no witness convicted, and you follow a man pierced through not by the pen but by the sword of ecclesiastical inscription. What is not permitted is permitted, and what is permitted is not permitted.

Just as Jannes and Mambres resisted the truth, so also you, reprobate in mind, traitors concerning the faith, insolent, puffed up, loving pleasure more than God, having indeed the appearance of piety, but denying its virtue. O the violence of internal grief! which cannot bring forth what it has conceived, which breaks forth into the affection of speaking, which it has commanded, thrust deep into the entrails. I will say nothing more to you: what remains of speech, lamentations will supply. After these things, if you grow sick under the hands of physicians by the treatment, and no consideration for your salvation from the beginning recalls you, at least look back upon your city, the parent of the world: she herself, grieving, approaches you after her defenders the apostles; she herself addresses you and, if any piety remains, begins a speech that will obtain its request:

Me, whom they made conspicuous, rejecting the shrines of pagan cults and rejoicing in the brightness of new light, whom the shedding of the Lord's and the apostles' blood purified from the foul altars and the pollution of much animal gore from the blood of sacrifices, whom the restored health after a long fever taught to despise temples, whom the offering freed from victims, who acquired the peace of Christ through the enmities of idols, to whom gifts were scarcely more numerous than the gods, whom her own religion made a beggar through her varied devotion, whom poverty, from the frequency of seeking benefits from her gods, had oppressed, who sent Curii, Torquati, Camilli, whom the church did not regenerate, and the rest, a barren mother of very many offspring, to Tartarus, while I withered, ill-fated, with exhausted womb, because the Fabii, though the fatherland was saved, did not redeem them, and the glory won with much sweat by the Decii availed nothing. Innocence without faith in works is overthrown: Scipio, most observant of equity, is joined with criminals, because he was ignorant of Christ. I would wish to draw my pen through the whole, if her bereaved heart could endure infancy. But whoever rereads the past of lamentation seems to desire times of tears. No one is believed to have been present at things whose telling does not harm him: he who reports with a dry face the funerals of his children is convicted of cruelty by a sure witness. That posterity, when lost, brought more sorrow than joy when acquired.

Let us, however, consider by what successes these things have been changed. Behold, in that sanctuary of liberty nothing servile from the cults of idols is now found; behold, the crown of honors, the genius of the world, the Roman flower, which was long venerated, now tramples altars full of sanctity; behold, my curia is called to heaven, praised, accepted, and I cannot say that I have lost offspring after the grace of baptism whom a sudden death has taken away. Many possessors of the trabea or curule chairs the supreme ruler embraces without loss of cult or dignity; almost already the munificence of an earthly triumph merits divine affection, and this profits the grace of Christ, that you, venerable to me, strive for the world. I lie, unless the needy throngs await the arrival of your consulship as a support in miseries; for your purple, by which you ennoble the name of the year, drives away the creeping cold from the wretched by the generosity of garments; almost again do the ornaments of the fasti bring aid to necessities; and with old infidelity set aside, in such a preparation the expenditures of property become gains of souls. Behold now, at the gestatorial chair of apostolic confession, the wet thresholds send candidates, and with abundant joy, the exactor of tears, gifts conferred by the bounty of God are doubled.

At what time, when we dry the precious udders with offspring, when our eternal mother now receives our progeny about to give birth again, whose womb is filled with aged fetuses after the first birth, who makes the child I have borne sweet to me by regenerating it, who makes those coming to M put off old age and the broken return to the beginnings of life, who, I ask, changes this happiness by interference? Who, through discord planted with a viper's mind, orders the benefits of the golden age to perish for me? Who, in my renewal, secretly inspires ruin and acquires strength for enmities through the appearance of a smooth brow? I do not recognize a noble lineage in such a matter. Yet if there are any of the highest, whom the storm of this time has allied with the base, they are stained by participation in the crimes of other authors. The splendor of blood, even if it incurs a share in the crimes, does not know how to offer itself as a leader to those sinning. Perhaps it has guilt from neglected caution, but it does not deserve the punishment of leadership in crimes. With a certain modesty, one who is summoned to mature quarrels joins those who are delinquent: one in whom only easy credulity is disapproved does not merit the despair of a lost man.

I see you rather, offspring of the crossroads, I recognize you, in whom the baseness of nature has produced manners suited to themselves, whom it would have been a distinction to have degenerated, who rejoice in the impunity of your vices under the title of a feigned religion, whose lips have never tasted the flavor either of honors or of peace, who violate every right by obeying your origin, whom the present case has revealed as brought forth from hiding-places and caves. Who, before the contrivance of this evil, knew who you were? For a long time you were hidden in the secrecy in which the night of our birth had concealed us. Return rather to your beloved blindness: leave to us the serene light of day: provide peace to the Church either by your absence or by your correction. If, however, you wish to be counted among the illustrious lineages, let me recognize it by the amendment of your deeds.