Concilium Romanum I Decreta

The Roman Council, or Decree Concerning the books to be received and not received, issued by Pope Gelasius together with the bishops, held around the year [date]. ADMONITION (From the Supplement of Giovanni Domenico Mansi.) That celebrated decree concerning books to be approved and disapproved, published in a certain Roman council, has long and greatly exercised scholars. The chief point of disagreement is concerning its author. All collectors of councils have attributed it to Pope Gelasius, and their credibility is supported by Burchard of Worms, Gratian, and most manuscript codices. However, in a very ancient codex of the collection of Dionysius Exiguus, which Dacherius communicated to Baluze, this same decree bears the name of Pope Damasus. Finally, in a very ancient codex from Urgell, Baluze found the name of Pope Hormisdas prefixed. Chiffletius, in a nine-hundred-year-old codex from Jura, came upon this decree; and since he judged it the most correct of all that had appeared up to that time, he undertook to have it transcribed and published in his notes on the works of Vigilius of Thapsus. In that codex it is inscribed to Pope Hormisdas; from this, the authority of Hormisdas as the author of that decree gained the highest support. With matters thus settled, it happened that not many years ago the learned Fontaninus came upon a nine-hundred-year-old Vatican codex which presents this same decree, and since it cuts away many things that are concealed in the published versions, he judged that this, above all others, vindicates its authenticity.

For it is customary with such compositions that those which are very brief are considered genuine; for it happens that they are reformed from time to time with new and further additions over the course of time, so that they are adapted to the discipline of later times. Therefore, this decree, as it is read in that Vatican codex, he produced in his Commentary on the Antiquities of Hortus; and he judged that by this sole authority the controversy concerning the author of the little work was decided, since it is inscribed with the Gelasian name. I consider that all experts in sounder criticism will agree with the opinion of this most distinguished man, both as to the author of the work and also as to the broad judgment concerning its authenticity, especially in those matters which it presents as excised and plainly revised. For if we are dealing with those things which it has in common with the others, it certainly yields in many respects to the Chiffletian Jurensi, in which the reading is more approved, as will be evident to one who compares them. Therefore, it would remain desirable that some third codex of equal antiquity be produced, in which both the Vatican deletions appear and those approved Chiffletian readings are offered; and if ever fortune should bring this about, I do not doubt that scholars will receive it with open hands. But good fortune! at last, when I was examining the ancient Luccan codex of nine hundred years, it came to me. Behold for you, reader, from it the decree concerning books to be approved and disapproved, in which all those things that are missing in the Vatican are excised. In other respects it approaches the Chiffletian reading rather than the Vatican.

It is inscribed with the name of Gelasius, and finally it is of such a quality as you would have desired. Nor does it excel the others hitherto published only on that account; but it will be commended all the more because it is adorned with a preface nowhere to be read in the published editions; although I grieve that it has been dislocated by the carelessness of the copyist, and not easily to be healed. It is entirely Gelasian, as far as one may judge from the similarity of style. This is my judgment concerning this new edition of the Gelasian decree: that I may approve it to the learned, I present a threefold schema of the same decree: the Vatican, the Jurense or Chiffletian, and the Lucense. After these writings, I came upon the Gelasian decree published from a very ancient Florentine codex by the Reverend Father Joseph Blanchini of the Roman Oratory of St. Philip Neri, a most distinguished priest, in the prolegomena to the first volume of the Roman edition of Anastasius the Librarian. From that codex, that learned man judged that he was representing the genuine decree of Gelasius. Nor indeed would I deny that its reading is better than the Vatican one. But when that same most learned man says that that catalogue of sacred books which is not extant in the Fontanini Vatican, and is read in his Florentine, was removed from the Vatican either by the carelessness of a writer in the curia or by someone's fraud, this is futile and empty, since it is likewise absent from my Lucense, which no one would persuade himself was copied from that Vatican, or that both were derived from some third other, since they not infrequently disagree.

If you omit this catalogue of sacred books, in the rest that Florentine agrees almost entirely with ours, with few exceptions, which I have carefully noted at the bottom of the page. The Florentine of Blanchinius is indeed mutilated at the end, for after “Faustus of Hegium, etc.” the rest is missing, which however are read in all the other manuscript codices. I had written this in my former edition; but now something has been added by which this new edition is adorned, namely variants from the very ancient codex of Freising, of about 1000 years, which, with the kindness that is his, the most learned man, Father Frobenius Forster, prior and librarian of Saint Emmeram of Regensburg, supplied to me. In that codex, that decree of the Council of Damasus is subjoined, for after that council is concluded, it is immediately added: “It was also said: Now we must treat of the divine Scriptures, what the universal Catholic Church receives, and what it ought to avoid. Here begins the order of the Old Testament, etc.”; then the entire decree concerning the books to be read follows continuously.

OBSERVATION OF FATHER ANTONIUS PAGI. (On the year of Christ 494, number and following.) The Decree on the Divine Scriptures and the works of the holy Fathers which are received in the Catholic Church greatly presses the heterodox, who reject tradition and mutilate the number of canonical books according to the convenience of their own sects. For Job, Tobit, Judith, the books of the Maccabees, the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Apocalypse of John, the two of Peter, the three of John the apostle, the one of Jude, are mentioned in it. Pearson in his Vindication of Ignatius undertakes a more lengthy discussion about its author and the time when it was established, and on page [x] says that he believes this decree was promulgated after the synod celebrated in the fifth year. Nor do Catholics agree among themselves about the author of this sanction and the year in which it was issued, because manuscript codices ascribe it to three different pontiffs. The most ancient codex of the collection of Dionysius Exiguus, which Baluze testifies was communicated to him by Dacherius, attributes this decree to Pope Damasus, and Baronius in year 69, number 4, reports that the Cresconian collection contains a Roman council under Damasus in which the matter of apocryphal books is treated, whose decrees Baronius believes were repeated by Gelasius in the decree of the bishops, about which he speaks with the collectors of the Councils. But the most ancient codex read by Pearson, and brought from the Beccian monastery into England by Lanfranc, bears this title: "Decrees of Pope Gelasius on books to be received and not to be received.

Those things which were written by him with the seventy most learned bishops. Pope Nicholas I, in his letter to the bishops of Gaul, given around that year; Lupus, abbot of Ferrières, at the end of his letter to Charles the Bald, and at the end of his Questions on the Blood of Christ; Gratian, Distinction 15, chapter Sancta Romana; Burchard, bishop of Worms; various manuscript codices and all printed editions, reveal Gelasius as the author of this decree. Finally, Baluze and Chifflet attest that it is ascribed to Pope Hormisdas in the very ancient Vercelli codex, and in the Jura codex. Hence Chifflet, at the end of his notes on Vigilius of Thapsus, considered that this decree was first sanctioned by Gelasius in the Roman council of this year: yet in such a way that it came forth not as a pontifical decree, but as a kind of canon of the whole council; and that it was then published by Hormisdas in the form of a pontifical decretal, and divided into five parts for the sake of method, and perhaps restored in some places.

I will demonstrate that Gelasius is the author of this most celebrated decree, and that it was only through error that it was attributed to Hormisdas, and I will settle the dispute, unless I am greatly mistaken. In it, when the list of condemned volumes is drawn up, among those books the works of Cassian and Faustus of Riez are numbered, with this sentence prefixed: "The rest, which have been written or preached by heretics or schismatics, the Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church in no way receives, from which we believe a few, which have come to memory and are to be avoided by Catholics, should be subjoined." And when the Fathers of the Roman synod had condemned many books of heretics and other uncertain authors, they placed among these the volumes of Cassian and Faustus under this title: "The little works of Cassian, priest of the Gauls, apocryphal; the little works of Faustus of Riez, of the Gauls, apocryphal." In the following century, when controversies concerning divine grace arose, especially from the books of Faustus, not only in the West but also in the East, some defended Faustus, while others most sharply refuted him, particularly the Scythian monks, who, bursting forth from Asia, stirred up Europe and Africa against him, as we will explain in the year.

In this state of affairs, Possessor, an African bishop, having been consulted, was sent into exile by Trasamund, king of Africa, and while he was staying at Constantinople, where the books of Faustus were defended by many as Catholic, but were condemned as heretical by Maxentius and the Scythian monks, he himself consulted Pope Hormisdas as to what was to be thought concerning these same books; and for this purpose he sent his deacon Justinus to him. His Relation to Hormisdas exists in the previous volume of the Councils, and is said to have been received on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of August, in the consulship of Rusticus, a man of consular rank, that is, in the year 520. These are the words of Possessor in it: "I think that your Beatitude is not unaware of how many snares the Church in the city of Constantinople labors under, and that, after the manner of an old disease, the wound seeks to break out again into a sore, which is believed to be closed by a scar. Hence, when the mind of some brothers was moved to scandal concerning the book of a certain Faustus, a Gaul by nation, bishop of the city of Reginae, who seemed to have discoursed eloquently on various matters and more frequently on the grace of God, while others (as human studies are wont) resisted to the contrary, they believed that I should be consulted about this ambiguity." Later Possessor adds: "I ask that those who consult may learn, from the authority of the apostolic response, what is to be thought of the sayings of the aforementioned author; especially since the sons also, the masters of the soldiers Vitalian and Justinian, especially desire to be similarly informed on this matter by a rescript of your Beatitude.

Hormisda received Possessor's letter in the month of July of the year, and in the month of August he wrote back to him a letter in order 70, in which among other things he says: "But those whom you have indicated in your letters that you consulted concerning the sayings of a certain Faustus, a Gallic bishop, let them have this response: that neither he is to be received, nor anyone whom the examination of the Catholic faith or of ecclesiastical discipline does not receive in the authority of the Fathers, can generate ambiguity or create prejudice for the religious. The institutions which the faithful ought to follow have been fixed by the Fathers: whether interpretation, preaching, or a word composed for the edification of the people, if it agrees with right faith and sound doctrine, it is admitted; if it disagrees, it is abolished." Where the cardinals Baronius in the year 520, number 21, and Cardinal Norisius in Cenot. Pis. page 445, rightly observed that Hormisda speaks of the decree of Gelasius. But what the same pontiff adds a little later manifestly insinuates that not he himself, but the same Gelasius was the framer of that decree: "The venerable sentence of the Fathers not improvidently defined for faithful posterity what the Catholic dogmas were, fixing, with the Holy Spirit instructing, even certain ancient books to be received into authority, lest a reader, indulging his own opinion, should assert not what would be suitable for ecclesiastical edification, but what his own pleasure had conceived.

Therefore, the Decree concerning books to be received and not received was not issued by Hormisdas, but by one of his successors in some Roman synod, certainly not by Anastasius and Symmachus, who followed Gelasius and preceded Hormisdas; since no one has ever asserted this, and neither bears the name of the other, but it is by Gelasius, to whom countless manuscripts attribute it. Nor can it be said that it was written by Damasus, whose name the error of scribes bears in the Cresconian collection; since most of the works mentioned in it were written by authors who lived and wrote after Damasus. Moreover, nothing was changed by Hormisdas, as Chifflet believed; since Hormisdas, in his cited letter to Possessor, refers him to what had already been fixed by the Fathers, and wished to decide nothing new concerning Faustus, about whom he had been consulted. It therefore appears that Hormisdas sent the decree of Pope Gelasius both to Possessor and to his legates, who were then acting in Constantinople, and ordered that it be religiously observed by all. In this way he sufficiently satisfied Possessor's petition. It happened, however, that this decree, then transcribed into various copies and disseminated throughout Europe, Africa, and the East, especially by the adversaries of Faustus, and because it had been sent by Pope Hormisdas and published everywhere under his name, was, in the course of time, imprudently ascribed to him by some. This is undoubtedly the origin of that false inscription.

Baronius and the collectors of councils write that the decree of Gelasius was given in the consulship of Asterius and Praesidius, that is, in this year; but the manuscript codices in which that temporal notation is not found refute them. I read in the royal library a copy written in the most ancient script, but without any note of the consulship, and another in the library of Saint Victor of Paris, from which that notation is also absent; nor do I doubt that it is lacking in the remaining manuscripts, since the Roman council of seventy bishops, in which that decree was issued, was not celebrated before that year. For in the aforementioned decree these words concerning Sedulius are covered: "Likewise, the Paschal work of the venerable man Sedulius, which he described in heroic verses, we set forth as worthy of praise." At the end of the book of the Bucolics of the very ancient Medicean codex of Virgil, these words are found: "Turcius Rufus Apronianus Asterius, vir clarissimus et illustris, ex comite domesticorum, protectore, ex comite privatarum largitionum, ex praefecto Urbi, patricius et consul ordinarius, read and punctuated the codex of his brother Macharius, vir clarissimus, not relying on my own judgment but on that of him to whose will I am in all things devoted, on the eleventh day before the Kalends of May at Rome. Publi Vergili Maronis: Having punctuated and corrected, a welcome gift to me from a friend, I diligently applied myself to the work. The book of the Bucolics ends.

The esteemed Cardinal Norisius, who produced that clause, observes that in the ancient Vatican codex number 165, after the Paschal work of Sedulius, the following is read: "This work Sedulius left scattered among his papers, which was collected and united, and published with all elegance by Turcius Rufius Asterius, five times vir clarissimus, ex-consul ordinarius and patrician." Cuspinianus also saw a similar codex, who says that the poem of Sedulius was written in the consulship of Asterius and Praesidius by Turcius Rufius Asterius, five times vir clarissimus, ex-consul ordinarius and patrician. The same annotation was also in the codex which the elder Aldus Manutius used, since he notes that that work was published not by Sedulius, but by Turcius Rufius Asterius, five times vir clarissimus, ex-consul ordinarius and patrician. It is true that Sirmondus, in his notes to the letters of Ennodius, writes that in the Reims codex of Sedulius's Paschal poem the following is found: "This work Sedulius left scattered among his papers, which was collected, adorned to all elegance, and published by Turcius Rufius, vir clarissimus, consul ordinarius and patrician." But from the cited manuscripts it is clear that, in place of ex-consul ordinarius, the copyist erroneously placed consul ordinarius; and since Asterius could not be called ex-consul before the following year, he neither collected nor published Sedulius's poems before that year, and therefore the Roman synod, in whose decree mention is made of Sedulius, was not celebrated before that time, as Usserius rightly saw in his book.

III. On the Beginnings of the British Church, ch. 16. Pearson in his Vindication of the Epistles of St. Ignatius, p. 46, and the esteemed Cardinal Norisius, who has more on Sedulius and his work. Since another Roman synod was held in the month of March, the one in question pertains to the year 496, and was the Second Roman synod under Gelasius, not the First, as it has hitherto been wrongly called by the collectors of councils, and by others following their example.