Epistola VII Ad Diversos Episcopos Missa Adversus Jovinianum Haereticum

LETTER VII. POPE SIRICIUS TO VARIOUS BISHOPS, SENT AGAINST THE HERETIC JOVINIAN AND HIS ASSOCIATES, TO BE REMOVED FROM THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. He publicly exposes the perverse teaching of Jovinian and his associates, and announces that their principal authors are condemned by name. The teaching of Jovinian, with the devil as its author.—1. I would always wish, most beloved brothers, to announce joys to the sincerity of your love and peace, so that, with letters passing back and forth, the indication of your well-being might be assisted. But in truth, because the ancient enemy, a liar from the beginning, an enemy of truth, a rival of man, whom he deceived after first deceiving himself, does not allow us to be free from his assault in quiet; an adversary of chastity, a teacher of luxury, he feeds on cruelties; to be punished by abstinence, he hates fasts, while his ministers preach, saying they are superfluous, having no hope for the future. Struck by the Apostle’s sentence, saying: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (1 Cor. 15:32).

How destructive it was while it lay hidden. O unhappy audacity! O desperate cunning of mind! Already the unknown speech of heretics was creeping like a cancer within the Church: so that, seizing the breast, it would hurl the whole man into death. And had not the Lord Sabaoth broken the snare which he had prepared, the stage of such great evil and the published hypocrisy would have drawn the hearts of many simple ones into ruin: because the human mind is easily led to the worse part, wishing to flit through spacious ways rather than to traverse the path of the narrow way with labor. Which, once detected and condemned. Priests attend marriages. — For which reason it was sufficiently necessary, my most beloved, to send what was done here to your conscience to be known: lest the ignorance of any priest should violate the Church, by the contagion of the worst men bursting in under a religious name: as it is written, the Lord saying: Many will come to you in sheep's clothing, but within they are ravenous wolves; you will know them by their fruits (Matt. 7:16). These are, evidently, those who subtly boast themselves to be Christians: so that, walking under the veil of a pious name, having entered the house of prayer, they pour forth the speech of serpentine disputation; so that they may shoot in the dark at those upright of heart (Ps. 10:3), and, turning them away from Catholic truth, lead them to the madness of their own teaching in a diabolical manner, and defraud the simplicity of the sheep.

And indeed we have learned of the malice of many heresies from the apostles up to the present, and we have tested and proven them; but never have such dogs wearied the mystery of the Church with their barking as those who now suddenly burst forth as enemies of the faith, with the sprouting doctrine of perfidy, whose disciples they are, they have revealed by the fruits of their words. For while other heretics, by misunderstanding individual kinds of questions, have proposed to tear down and pluck apart the divine institutions, these, not having a wedding garment (Matt. 22:12), wounding Catholics, perverting the continence of the New and Old Testament, as I have said, and interpreting with a diabolical spirit, have already begun to ravage some Christians with seductive and feigned speech, and to unite them to their own madness, containing within themselves the venom of their wickedness. But the chosen ones have publicly revealed their blasphemies in a rash writing, and, driven by the frenzy of a desperate mind, have published them everywhere in favor of the pagans. But from the most faithful Christians, men of the best birth and distinguished in religion, a horrific writing seems to have been suddenly brought to my humility: so that, detected by priestly judgment as contrary to divine law, it might be erased by spiritual sentence. We, of course, do not reject the vows of marriage, in which we participate through the veil; but virgins, whom marriages create, we honor with greater reverence when they are devoted to God.

Therefore, after the presbytery was held, it was established that [this teaching] is contrary to our doctrine, that is, to the Christian law. The instigators of a new heresy are condemned. Hence, following the precept of the Apostle (Galatians 1:9), because they were proclaiming something other than what we had received, know that the judgment of all of us—both presbyters and deacons, as well as the entire clergy—was one and the same: that Jovinianus, Auxentius, Genialis, Germinator, Felix, Plotinus, Martianus, Januarius, and Ingeniosus, who were found to be the instigators of a new heresy and blasphemy, should remain perpetually condemned outside the Church by divine sentence and our judgment. Not doubting that your holiness will observe this, I have sent these writings through my brothers and fellow presbyters Crescens, Leopardus, and Alexander, who can fulfill the religious duty of faith with fervent spirit.