Fragmenta Scriptorum SS Juliii I

Fragments of the Writings of Julius Saint Julius, Bishop of Rome, in a Sermon on the Homoousion. Hence it is necessary that both the corporeal be said of the whole and the divine be said of the whole. And he who cannot discern in the united differing things what is proper to each will fall into absurd contradictions. But he who discerns the proper natures and preserves the union will neither falsify the natures nor be ignorant of the union. Fragment II. Julius, patriarch of Rome, in his fifth epistle, writes thus concerning the union of the divinity of Christ with his humanity. When he himself is called God, no one shall deny his humanity, which is conjoined with the divinity: when, however, he is called by the name of his humanity on account of the body which he assumed, no one shall call his dignity and dominion into doubt. After the union, let no one divide him as though he were a principle of two natures (Royal Codex: divide him into two natures). For just as a man, consisting of two perfect parts distinct in nature (Royal Codex: of two individual things which are diverse in nature), namely soul and body, after the union is nevertheless of one nature and is designated by one name. When he is called corporeal, the soul is not excluded from him: just as when he is called animate or spiritual, the body is not excluded from him.

Fragment III. Saint Julius. It is not found in the sacred writings that a distinction is made between the Word the Son and the body which Christ assumed: but He is one nature, one person, one hypostasis, wholly God and wholly man, and it is He who acts. Observation. The sacred liturgy bearing the name of Julius is received by the Jacobites. From these fragments and from the other letter to Dionysius, which are often praised in the writings of the Jacobite doctors, it is clear with how great veneration whatever bore the name of Pope Julius was received by this sect. Moreover, this veneration seems to have flowed to them from Apollinarius and his followers. For since Apollinarius showed himself a fierce enemy of the Arians, and in that matter praiseworthy, the letter of Julius, in which those heretics are so wisely attacked and so invincibly refuted, was undoubtedly very pleasing to him. But he could not show that the one with whose agreement in attacking Arian doctrine he rejoiced was also in agreement with him in defending the doctrine which he had devised, unless his own writings were inscribed with the other's name. That this was at least accomplished by his disciples we have proved above in the letter to Dionysius. Seduced by the authority of so great a name, as also of the other Fathers to whom the Apollinarists attributed similar writings, Eutyches could not be moved from the defense of a single nature.

Deceived by the same testimonies, the Jacobites, or Monophysites, although they detest Eutyches in other respects, proved no less obstinate in defending the dogma of a single nature. Moreover, their reverence for Pope Julius is evident also in the fact that they have a sacred liturgy bearing his name, an edition of which Eusebius Renaudotius is preparing, having already published and illustrated several liturgies of this kind, well deserving of the Church. CENSURA OF THE LETTERS OF CYRIL TO JULIUS AND OF JULIUS TO CYRIL CONCERNING THE BIRTHDAY OF THE LORD. I. Franciscus Combefisius published a letter of John of Nicaea, who flourished around the end of the century, on the Nativity of the Lord, transcribed from the Royal Codex formerly 696, now 2428, page 149, in which a letter of Cyril to Julius is thus cited: "Cyril once wrote—not the one who wrote the letter to Constantine (read Constantius), but the one who succeeded him in his see—to Julius, the Roman bishop." Then this John, wishing to prove from the same letter how it was established that the Nativity of the Lord be celebrated on the day of December, brings forth this from it.

Great labor and loss befall great and splendid festivals because they are celebrated on a single day. For the readings and order of office of both festivals remain imperfect, since the Nativity and the Baptism of the Lord cannot be celebrated together. Therefore, since we cannot be present in one day both at Bethlehem and at the place of the Baptism—for Bethlehem is three miles to the south of Jerusalem, and the Jordan is fifteen miles to the east—let your Holiness order that all the Jewish commentaries be investigated, which Caesar Titus carried off from Jerusalem to Rome. Perhaps you will certainly find the day of the Nativity of Christ and our God. II. Another writer, however, whose work is entitled “A Necessary Narration,” preserved in the aforementioned Royal Codex 2428, page 120, cites the same fragment in another manner as follows: “Now the patriarch of Jerusalem, Juvenal, wrote on this matter to the Roman patriarch Julius,” and then he reports it in such a way that he disagrees with John of Nicaea not only in words but also in facts. Thus it is presented by him.

The same from the account of an anonymous author. I cannot on one day betake myself both to Bethlehem and to the Jordan. For the Jordan is distant from the city of Jerusalem to the east twenty-five miles, while holy Bethlehem is to the south of the city six miles; nor can I on one day complete both festivals. I therefore ask your holiness, father, that you examine the commentaries and, after accurate inquiry, make known to us by your writing, venerable one, on which day the Lord Christ was born, and on which day he was baptized. For we know well that the commentaries were brought from Jerusalem to Rome at the beginning by Titus and Vespasian. III. But anyone notices that those two writers disagree with each other both in words and in matters. Then, as our colleague who prepared the most recent edition of Cyril of Jerusalem observed, the hallucination of this anonymous writer is manifest: since he is separated from the age of Julius by nearly a hundred years from Juvenal. Nor can that Cyril, to whom John of Nicaea attributes the same writing, be better reconciled with the times of this pope. For to Cyril who wrote to Constantius—that is, the writer of the famous letter about the cross which was seen at Jerusalem at Pentecost—no one can be conceived to have succeeded who, with Julius still alive, held the see of Jerusalem. Epiphanius indeed, *Haer*. 66, n.

20, among the bishops of Jerusalem, he lists two Cyrils: one, the successor of Maximus, who soon wrote the aforementioned letter about the seen cross, and the other, the son of Hilarion, who presided over the church of Jerusalem in the 13th year of Valens, that is, in the year of Christ 375. But it is greatly to be feared that Epiphanius, thinking one and the same Cyril returning from exile to the Church, considered him a second, younger one. Whether, however, the aforementioned letter is attributed to one and the same Cyril returning to his church after exile, or to another substituted in his place, it is falsely inscribed to Iulius, since that pope died at least four years before Cyril was first driven from his see. IV. It is therefore false that John of Nicaea and the Anonymous relate that Iulius then wrote back to Cyril, John indeed in these words: "Then Iulius the Roman diligently sought how to satisfy this petition (of Cyril). And when he had collected all the writings of the Jews that had been captured and brought to Rome, he obtained a certain commentary of the chronographer Josephus, written by him, in which it was contained that in the seventh month, on the feast of Tabernacles, on the day of Atonement, an angel of God had appeared, and the priest had remained mute without a voice until the time when Elizabeth, his wife, gave birth in her old age.

An anonymous writer, however, relates the matter thus: "Upon receiving this letter, Julius, the patriarch of Rome, investigated the commentaries and found that our Lord Jesus Christ was born on the day of December, and that after the years from his birth he was baptized by John in the river Jordan on the sixth day of the month of January. Therefore, when the Fathers, complying with this investigation, had divided the feast, a murmur arose among many, etc." V. Moreover, the falsity of this narrative can be demonstrated by several points. First, it is nearly certain that the feasts of the Lord's birth and baptism were never separated by Cyril. This the most recent editor of his works thinks can be proven by the words of Basil of Seleucia in a homily on Saint Stephen, in which Juvenal is praised "because he began to celebrate the glorious and salutary birth of the Lord." For there he judges it to be noted that the custom of celebrating the Lord's birth on a day in December was first introduced into the church of Jerusalem by Juvenal. Yet if we give credence to the ancient writer by the name of Cosmas, who flourished under the emperor Justinian, the people of Jerusalem had not yet adopted that custom in his own time, that is, in the fifth century. For thus he speaks, cited in the newest edition of Chrysostom, vol. II, p. 353: "Only the people of Jerusalem, from a probable conjecture, but not from accurate reasoning, celebrate the birth at the Epiphany.

Then, as to what is said about the discovery of Joseph's commentary by John of Nicaea, it can be gathered that it was devised after the times of Chrysostom and the aforementioned Cosmas, from what both of them discuss concerning the day of the Lord's birth. For, positing as certain, although contrary to the truth, that Zacharias was the high priest, and that when he had entered the Holy of Holies, an angel of the Lord appeared to him and promised the birth of John, they thought it followed that that promise occurred on the tenth day of September, the one day in the entire year on which the high priest was permitted to enter the Holy of Holies; and thus that Christ, conceived six months later, was born in the month of December, not January. Now, since Chrysostom strives with great effort and much labor to persuade this, he proposes it not as something already handed down by Joseph, but as a new argument which he himself first elicits from the Scriptures. Also, that Cosmas, when he uses the same argument, took it not from the spurious letter of Julius, but rather from Chrysostom's homily, is evident not only from the fact that he makes no mention of Joseph, but also because he reports in explicit terms that the inhabitants of Jerusalem had not yet ceased the custom of celebrating the Lord's nativity at the Epiphany. Therefore, those fictitious letters of Cyril and Julius were unknown to him, and for that reason we may rightly suspect that they were forged after the fifth century.

VI. To be sure, to pass over the fact that Joseph was not the one who would count Zacharias, a simple priest performing the priesthood "in the order of his course" and entering the temple of the Lord "by lot," among the high priests: if Cyril, wishing to be taught the true day of the Lord's birth and to be relieved of the labor of celebrating two feasts on one day, had consulted Julius, that pope would not have satisfied his consultation from a previously unknown, and now no more known, commentary of Joseph, from which at most the day on which John was promised, not the day on which he was conceived, or the day on which Christ was born, is certainly learned. But if Cyril had sought some authority, it was at hand for Julius, as Chrysostom observed, to produce from the archive of the city of Rome the record of the census, on the occasion of which Mary, going with her spouse to Bethlehem, gave birth to Christ there. But leaving these inquiries aside, it can scarcely be doubted that he was rather the authority for him to follow the custom which the whole Latin Church preserved from tradition. Januarius recalled this tradition, where he asked Augustine: "Why does the anniversary day for celebrating the Lord's passion not return to the same day of the year, as does the day on which he is TRADITIONALLY said to be born," and also Augustine where he replies (Augustine, Epistle 119, now 65, n.

2): "You should know that the Lord's birthday is not celebrated as a sacrament, but only recalled in memory that he was born, and thus there was no need, except for the recurring day of the year ON WHICH THE EVENT ITSELF TOOK PLACE, to be marked with festive devotion." The Easterners finally yielded to this tradition VI. Hence Chrysostom, in the first year he was inaugurated as presbyter, and thus in the year of Christ 386, delivering a sermon in Antioch on the Lord's birthday, no. 1, speaks thus: "It is not yet the tenth year since this very day became clearly known to us, having been known from the beginning to those who dwell in the West." And no.: "The Romans, celebrating it long before and FROM ANCIENT TRADITION, transmitted knowledge of it to us." From this it is concluded that the Antiochene church began to celebrate the Lord's birthday on the December day only in the year 376 or 377. Likewise, from the sermon which Paul of Emesa, bishop of Alexandria, delivered on the December day of the year 432, it is clear that the same custom was then received in that city. Gregory of Nyssa, however, in his homily on the Nativity of the Lord, says: "Now throughout the whole inhabited world the harmonious sound of those celebrating the feast day" (of the Lord's birth) "is heard." Chrysostom in the cited homily seems to favor this. We also have an oration of Gregory of Nazianzus on the Nativity of the Lord delivered at Constantinople, by which we are persuaded that this feast was celebrated in that city on the December day.

Certainly, towards its end, having spoken beforehand about the birth of Christ, he adds: "And indeed, a little later you will see Jesus being purified by my purification in the Jordan.