De Canonibus Observandis

THE SECOND PART OF THE WORKS. SHORT TREATISES AND LETTERS. ON THE CANONS TO BE OBSERVED. A CONSTITUTION OF THE HOLY BISHOPS WHO ASSEMBLED IN THE CITY OF ARLES. TITLES OF THE CANONS. I. That a deacon not be ordained before twenty-five years, and a priest before thirty. II. That a layman not be ordained before a year of conversion. III. That penitents and digamists not be ordained. IV. That one who receives another’s cleric be deprived of communion. ANCIENT TITLES, Or sentences of this Council from an old Codex of Lucca, 490. From the Council of Arles. A deacon not be ordained before the years of age. A bishop, priest, or deacon not be ordained unless they have been converted for one year. PREFACE. When, by the will of God, the priests of the Lord had assembled in the city of Arles for the dedication of the basilica of Saint Mary, it seemed to them fitting and reasonable that, first of all, treating with the most careful solicitude concerning the canons to be observed, they should determine by wholesome counsel how the ecclesiastical rule might be kept by them.

CANONS. I. And because it is known that the statutes of the ancient Fathers regarding the ordination of clerics have not been observed in full, as is expedient, lest the priests of the Lord be wearied by the importunate and disorderly petitions of certain persons, and be compelled to transgress those things which have been so often commanded, they define that this is to be observed among themselves: that no bishop presume to ordain a deacon before he has completed twenty-five years. No layman shall receive the honor of the episcopate or the presbyterate before a prior conversion, or before the age of thirty. II. And although the ancient Fathers ordained that longer periods be observed concerning laymen, yet because, with the growing number of churches, it is necessary for us to ordain more clerics, this is agreed among us, without prejudice, however, to the ancient canons: that no metropolitan grant the dignity of the episcopate to any layman, nor shall the other bishops presume to confer the honor of the presbyterate or the diaconate, unless a full year of conversion has preceded on their part.

III. Let no one dare to ordain a penitent, a digamist, or the husband of a woman who is not a virgin to the aforesaid offices. And although these provisions are already contained in the canons of nearly all councils, nevertheless, lest the importunity or wicked suggestion of supplicants, as has already been said, steal upon any of the priests of the Lord, it was necessary that the priests of the Lord now impose a stricter rule upon themselves. And therefore, whoever from this day presumes to ordain a cleric contrary to what is set forth above, from the day on which this can be proved against him, let him not presume to celebrate Mass for a full year. If anyone refuses to observe this, and acting against the consensus of the brethren, presumes to celebrate Mass, let him know that he is cut off from the charity of all the brethren: because it is fitting that he who so often contemns the wholesome institutions established by the holy Fathers should feel the severity of ecclesiastical discipline. IV. And if by chance any cleric, evading the rule of ecclesiastical discipline, has wandered off, whoever receives him and does not reconcile him with his own bishop, but rather presumes to defend him, let him be deprived of the communion of the Church.

SUBSCRIPTIONS OF THE BISHOPS. Caesarius, bishop in the name of Christ, having read over this definition of my holy brothers, and of myself, I have consented and subscribed. Noted on the eighth day before the Ides of June, under the consulship of Opilio, a most illustrious man. Contumeliosus, bishop, I have consented and subscribed. Philagrius, bishop, I have consented and subscribed. Praetextatus, bishop, I have consented and subscribed. Maximus, bishop, I have consented and subscribed. Julianus, bishop, I have consented and subscribed. Florentius, bishop, I have consented and subscribed. Likewise Florentius, bishop, I have consented and subscribed. Cyprianus, bishop, I have consented and subscribed. Montanus, bishop, I have consented and subscribed. Caelestinus, bishop, I have consented and subscribed. Porcianus, bishop, I have consented and subscribed. Eucherius, bishop in the name of Christ, I have consented and subscribed. Cataphronius, presbyter, sent by my lords Agraetius and Severus, bishops, I have consented and subscribed.

Desiderius, a presbyter sent by my lord Bishop Joannes, have consented and subscribed. Leontius, a presbyter, sent by my lord Bishop Constantius, have subscribed. I, Emcterius [ms., Emerius. HARD.], sent by my lord Bishop Gallicanus, have consented and subscribed. IOANNES CHRISTOPHORUS AMADUTIUS TO THE DISTINGUISHED MAN ANGELUS M. BANDINIUS, CANON OF THE BASILICA OF SAINT LAWRENCE AT FLORENCE, AND PREFECT OF THE ROYAL MEDICEAN-LAURENTIAN LIBRARY, PREFACE TO THE FOLLOWING SERMON. I have always thought within myself, most friendly and learned Bandinius, that the duties of a grateful mind so befit an ingenuous and honorable man, that if anyone either knowingly omits them or shrinks from them, he falls little short of being reckoned among the beasts. For human society is nourished especially by mutual aids, pursuits, and good wills; which indeed, if they are removed, humanity itself seems to me to be removed, which, how proper it is to man, even the name itself indicates. Therefore, let him have for himself, if he wishes, the tenets of the opposite opinion, on which a new and wholly wild philosophy, unworthy of a civilized man, rests. You understand, best of friends, that I say these things so that you, who have heaped me with many benefits and signs of affection, may recognize me as grateful for your merits and generosities towards me, and also judge that I will be perpetually mindful of all of them.

Since it now falls to me to entrust to the press this sermon on preserving widowhood, which I report as especially welcome to you, to whom else more fittingly should these things, which it is now proper for me to preface, be inscribed than to you, so that from this at least some return of my devotion toward you may arise? I see that it is indeed slight and unequal to your kindness and merits, but, since it proceeds from a mind desiring to give generously and from innate disposition, it is worthy that you receive it with fairness and goodwill. After the author of the benefaction, from whom these things have flowed to us, has become known to our readers, it is fitting that the rest be revealed, which more directly pertain to the monument now first appearing, and which you, who know them very well, must now endure to have repeated. Therefore, the codex of the Medicean-Laurentian Library, over which you rightly preside, contains this sermon, which you judge to have been written in the eleventh century, and which you yourself have described in volume I of the Catalog of Latin Codices of the Laurentian Library, which is soon to be published, I promise. The aforementioned codex contains various homilies of St. Caesarius of Arles, and among them this one is also found, which, however, is attributed to Augustine, the most holy Father of the Church, although at its end these words are subjoined, albeit awkwardly: "Here ends St. Augustine's On the Consolation of the Dead." Moreover, it is more clearly inscribed to Augustine in another codex of the ninth century, mutilated at the end, of the library of St.

At Florence of Saint Mark, which the Friars Preachers hold, where after several homilies of the same Caesarius of Arles which it contains, there follow three sermons, of which the first is of Saint Augustine the bishop, and begins: "Blessed is the man whom God will pity," etc., the second is under the same name and is also prefixed, and is on preserving widowhood, and the third finally is designated of Saint Ambrose, and is on performing penance. This codex is described by a man most renowned among his own, Franciscus Antonius Zaccherius, in his Journey through Italy, and he reviews each of its chapters individually. The second sermon on preserving widowhood, copied from this codex, was communicated to us with the greatest kindness by a most distinguished man, Philippus Angelicus Becchettius, a member of the Dominican Family and a most excellent continuator of Ursian Ecclesiastical History, just as also, by your generous and courteous favor, I obtained a copy excerpted from the Laurentian codex through his care. The text which I present, however, is from the Laurentian codex, to which, however, in the lower margin I have subjoined variant readings which the codex of Saint Mark, which is two centuries older than the other, contains.

The greater antiquity of this manuscript seemed to demand that its text be presented in place of the copy; but since I discovered that about the middle of the sermon a certain fragment of another sermon on Penance had been inserted into it, perhaps through the carelessness of a scribe—a fragment which clearly has nothing in common with widowhood—so that one would hardly perceive that something discordant with the original argument had been introduced into the text itself, as the codex’s witness required, I adopted the plan that the Laurentian exemplar, though more recent, should now serve as the text, to which, among other variant readings of the older codex, this very fragment would also be appended. And it certainly seemed that it could not be passed over, that nowhere in the investigations I had undertaken among the sermons of Augustine, Ambrose, and Caesarius had I found that sermon among the published works. Zaccherius, in the cited passage, indicates that after the sermon on preserving widowhood there follows another sermon of Saint Ambrose on performing penance, or, as he says, homily 44, which the published books attribute to Augustine.

I therefore examined, based on its indication, the celebrated number 44, which is assigned to this homily, in the works of Augustine and Ambrose in both old and recent editions (for Zaccherius does not clearly indicate which of the two Fathers he intends to designate there), and I discovered that the homilies or sermons of these authors which bear this number, whether among their genuine works or among the spurious and suspect ones, are entirely different and touch upon nothing concerning Penance. Indeed, there are two sermons by Augustine on the Usefulness of Performing Penance, and several others on the same subject occur in the appendix rejected by the most learned monks of St. Maur in Paris; but in none of them did I find anything that agrees with the aforementioned fragment, which you may also consider said regarding the Ambrosian and Caesarian sermons that I consulted on purpose. But now I must come to the point of expressing my opinion on the author of this sermon, which I wished to communicate, along with the distinguished Augustine Antonio Georgio, procurator general of the Augustinian Hermits, a man most dear to me, most adorned with every kind of learning, and a most vigorous and excellent defender of Augustinian doctrine. Indeed, the style, if compared with the genuine, utterly golden and divine works of the most holy Father, will not seem entirely to correspond to that in which our sermon is composed, but rather to differ greatly.

In addition to this, the most holy Father adheres to the Greek text in presenting scriptural testimonies, which has also been observed by the monks of old. Specifically, the very passage of the Apostle Paul to Timothy, which first occurs in this sermon of ours on preserving widowhood, is cited by Augustine in his little work *On the Good of Widowhood*, which in the Vatican Palatine codex of the 6th or 7th century, marked with the number 210, is entitled: *The Book or Letter of St. Augustine to Juliana on Preserving Widowhood*, and it corresponds entirely to the Greek text, not to the Vulgate version. For it reads thus: "But she who is truly a widow and desolate has hoped in the Lord and persists in prayers night and day. But she who lives in luxury is dead while living." Now take the Greek text, so that you may compare it with both versions without difficulty; in our text, according to the authority of the Vulgate edition, although not entirely accurately, this passage is cited differently from how it was done by Augustine; which you should understand to be said of the other New Testament passages cited here. In the little work *On the Christian Life*, to which the Maurist monks gave a place in the appendix of Volume V, this same Pauline passage is seen cited according to the Vulgate. But the Maurists themselves deny this little work to Augustine and attribute it rather to a certain bishop Fastidius, a compatriot of Pelagius. Therefore, I judge this sermon of St.

It should rather be attributed to Caesarius of Arles, since it is found in the codices of his homilies, and since many other sermons of his were previously attributed to Augustine, which the most learned monks of St. Maur rejected in the appendix to volume V of the Augustinian Works. These, most learned Bandini, are the matters I have now chosen to discuss with you, with whom it has seemed to me almost to hold an erudite conversation. You, who excel in such great learning, and who daily undertake greater things for the benefit and increase of the republic of letters, do not disdain these somewhat learned addresses of mine, nor these little works; for they are at least suited to your genius and strive to approach the model of your own works. Moreover, do not measure the measure of my grateful heart and respect by this one, however small, service; for you may expect from me even greater things, if they are available, or other things, whatever they may be, from day to day. Farewell for now, most learned Bandini, and live for your country and the Muses, in tranquil leisure.

Given at Rome on the Nones of January in the year 1773 from the birth of Christ.