De locis theologicis

ARGUMENTS USED BY HERETICS TO UNDERMINE THE AUTHORITY OF THIS LOCUS

After the authority of the Church comes the authority of councils, which heretics attack with many arguments. Argument 1. First, the Church is the pillar and foundation of truth. But only cardinals and bishops come to a synod, and they are fewer in number and no weightier in authority—that is, neither more virtuous nor wiser. Therefore, a synod is not the rule of belief for the Church; rather, the Church is the rule for a synod. Argument 2. Next, the pontiffs and Pharisees assembled a council whose decision was impious, as is read in Ioann. 11 cap. Therefore, the judgment of a priestly synod is not always to be approved. For just as the chief priests and the whole council sought false testimony against Jesus, as in Matth. 26, and all the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus, Matth. 27, so our bishops and pontiffs can also pass a judgment contrary to Jesus Christ. Argument 3. Further, if the bishops hold the truth and cannot be deceived, this must result from some divine covenant. But this covenant is nowhere evident. And, even if it were evident, it must be interpreted differently from the covenant that the Lord once made with Levi and his descendants. “My covenant,” he says, “was with Levi: the law of truth was in his mouth, and no iniquity was found on his lips; he walked with me in peace and equity, and turned many away from iniquity. For the lips of the priest will guard knowledge, and they will seek the law from his mouth, because he is the angel of the Lord of hosts. But you have departed from the way and caused many to stumble in the law; you have made void the covenant with Levi, says the Lord of hosts.” ¹

Again: “I beg you, Lord, who keep the covenant with those who keep your commandments.” On these words Jerome says: “What the Lord promises will not happen immediately; he fulfills his promises to those who keep his commandments.” From this it is clear that the covenant to preserve the truth, once made with the priestly tribe, was annulled by the sins of its descendants. It follows that in the same way, if Christ promised truth to the apostles and all the pontiffs who succeed them, they will preserve that truth only so long as they have not acted through their own sins in such a way that they deserve to be deprived of it. Otherwise, as Jerome says on this passage of Malachias, it is indeed the priests’ duty to answer when questioned about the Law, but if they claim diligence in other matters while showing negligence in the Holy Scriptures, they boast in vain of a dignity whose work they do not perform. Jerome also writes that priests falsely boast of the saying, “The law will not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor speech from the prophet,” since Scripture says, “Wisdom will not enter into a perverse soul.” And through Ezechiel the Lord says: “They will seek a vision from the prophet, the law will perish from the priest, and counsel from the elders.” On these words Jerome himself says: “These things were sought not only at that time, when the Babylonian army came against Jerusalem, from prophets, priests, and elders, but they are sought daily in the Churches. If they have lost vision, law, and counsel, they boast in vain of being prophets, priests, and elders.” Add the testimony of Hieremias: “The priests did not say, ‘Where is the Lord?’ Those who hold my law did not know me; the shepherds transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal.” Jerome says in his commentaries that these words should be used against the teachers of our order. Add this too: “All its watchmen are blind; they all lack knowledge. They are mute dogs, unable to bark, seeing vain things, sleeping and loving dreams … The shepherds themselves did not understand; they all turned aside to their own way.” From these things it is readily understood that we must not trust the judgments of pastors and priests, especially if the Lord is angry with them. If only they are summoned to a council, then, a council can certainly err. Argument 4. Further, the authority of councils is usually proved chiefly by this testimony: “If two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father who is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” But this testimony would prove that the judgments of provincial synods are equally certain—a conclusion foreign to the true faith, as is clear from other examples and especially from concilio Carthaginense sub Cypriano, in which eighty bishops, not merely two or three, erred against orthodox doctrine about the one baptism. The truth of synods, therefore, rests on a weak—or rather, no—foundation. Moreover, Christ promised in that testimony to assist only those councils that convene in his name. First, then, let them prove that they assemble in Christ’s name, for wicked bishops may conspire against Christ. Next, let them add nothing to or take nothing away from the word of God, since this law was prescribed to them. Argument 5. In addition, concilium Arimenense, with six hundred bishops, erred with Arius; concilium Ephesinum secundum, though very numerous, erred with Dioscorus; and concilium Constantinopolitanum, with three hundred pontiffs, erred with Emperor Leo. Therefore, even general councils of any kind provide theologians with no firm argument. ^{2 3}

Argument 6. Further, the Synod held at Trullo committed not one but many errors, as can be seen in canons 2, 3, 13, 55, and 67. Councils, then, can err in faith and morals. Argument 7. Moreover, Albert Pighius, a learned and devout man, shows by many arguments that the acts circulated under the names of the Sixth and Seventh Councils contain various errors. Therefore, the faith of councils, even general ones, is not so certain that it cannot be called into question. Argument 8. Furthermore, the Council of Constance defines that a council is above the Pope; but the Council of Florence under Eugenius IV and the Lateran Council under Leo X settled the contrary doctrine. The authority of councils is therefore weak. Argument 9. Again, the Council of Basel defines that a person is a heretic if he denies that a council is above the Pope, or asserts that the Pope can transfer a council to another place or prorogue it to another time. Yet after that period no one was so insane as to consider the authors of the contrary opinion heretics. The judgments of councils are therefore too uncertain to establish certain faith. Argument 10. Further, Augustine, lib. 2 de baptismo contra Donatistas, ch. 3, says: “Often full councils are corrected by later ones.” This certainly would not happen if they always attained the truth. Isidore too, 50 dist. cap. Domino, says: “Whenever a discordant judgment is found in the acts of councils, the judgment of that council is to be preferred whose authority is older and greater.” The decrees of councils, then, are not all certain; sometimes they vary and even conflict with one another. Argument 11. Further, when a council is said to be unable to err, this means either that it is mutilated, without its head, or that it is complete, with the authority of its head also present. If mutilated, it has sometimes erred, as Catholics themselves freely admit. If complete, it is pointless to convene it to settle a question of faith, since the Roman Pontiff can rightly pronounce on faith without a general council, as we shall show in the next chapter. Either, then, the doctrines of councils are uncertain, or councils are convened to no purpose. Gregory Nazianzen plainly attests this in his letter to Procopius, numbered 102, in these words: “I avoid every gathering of bishops, because until now I have seen no synod whose end was attended by any benefit, or from which troubles were not more aggravated than healed.” Argument 12. Finally, Oecolampadius argues from the Roman Council under Nicholas, where, as he says, Berengarius was compelled to swear to wholly false words, which neither Roffensis, libro tertio contra Oecolampadium, ch. 12, nor Cajetan in his libello de Coena Domini could free from error. Heretics are accustomed to fight against the authority of this locus with these and other arguments. Luther, however, as is his custom, settles the matter not by any argument but by mere assertion, saying: “Councils have often erred, especially the Council of Constance, which erred most impiously of all.” And in a sermon to the people he says that the first council, attended by the apostles and their disciples, erred because they thought the law and works necessary for salvation. But we must always confirm and defend this locus, and not be moved by any false reasoning away from the true judgment of the Church.

IT EXPLAINS WHAT THE NAME “SYNOD” OR “COUNCIL” MEANS HERE

There was no doubt that by the name “synod” or “council”—for they mean the same thing—our forebears always understood priests, especially bishops, gathered in one place to settle matters concerning the faith or morals of the Church. But the Lutherans want a new kind of council, unheard of throughout all past ages, in which questions of faith are judged not by bishops and priests but by rhetoricians and a crowd of laypeople, prevailing not by reason and method but by words and shouting. It is very easy to remove this error. The whole Church of the faithful cannot assemble; and even if it could, it would not be expedient to refer disputes in our discipline to an undisciplined mob. If it would be foolish to seek the counsel of an agitated and uneducated crowd for keeping a state in peace or at war, it is foolish—and much more so—to want the consent and judgment of the people in the most serious questions of faith. If in temporal matters the people safely and prudently entrust themselves to the care, diligence, and counsel of magistrates, and claim no counsel or authority for themselves in making laws, why do these men incite the Christian people not to entrust themselves to their rulers, but to insist on admission to a gathering where public matters are to be settled not by private persons but by the Church’s public ministers? “We are not so ignorant and slow,” they say, “as to want the whole people called into a council, which would be madness, or questions of doctrine referred to an uneducated crowd, which would be folly. We want only what we rightly and justly want: that unlearned priests not enter a council; and that laypeople skilled in Sacred Scripture—of whom there are very many—be summoned to a synod; and that prudent and wise men, whether priests or laypeople, be chosen to direct all the Church’s affairs and public business by their counsel. For in matters of religion it is not fitting that an irreligious bishop be preferred to a devout layman, or that an unlearned priest surpass a learned layman in matters of doctrine.” We shall explain in refuting the arguments their slander about ignorant bishops; this was already raised among the other objections in the first chapter. But in saying that selected men from among the people should be called into a synod, they are grossly mistaken and do not understand the form and character of the Christian commonwealth instituted by Christ. Albert Pighius and other Catholics have discussed this sufficiently in many volumes. I am not now disputing with the Lutherans over whether all the faithful are priests, or whether Christ admitted women to the duties of the Church and the administration of sacred things; such questions do not belong to the present work and undertaking. I say only that not women and not laypeople, but priests and bishops alone, ought to be called into a council. “I will come to you,” says the Lord to Moses, “in a thick cloud, so that the people may hear me speaking with you and believe you forever.… Go down and warn the people, lest they wish to cross the boundaries to see the Lord, and a great multitude of them perish. The priests also who approach the Lord shall be sanctified.… And you and Aaron shall go up with you,” etc. In this way, then, Christ, through bishops and priests, established the Christian people;

The laity, however, must not ascend to deliberate with priests, but must remain within the boundaries laid down. But someone objects: “Moses was not a priest, and yet he taught the people and settled questions of religion.” First, I deny that Moses was not a priest. “Moses and Aaron among his priests,” says the Psalm (Psalm. 98). Further, he not only offered gifts to God and made sacrifices, but also consecrated Aaron and his sons. Moses was therefore a priest. This is set out clearly in Leviticus 8. Next, give me another lawgiver, another leader and prophet appointed by God, give me a man to whose words God granted such authority, and then perhaps I will say that such a man, even if a layman, may deliberate with priests. But this was granted to Moses alone, and must not be transferred indiscriminately to others. For what the lawgiver himself prescribed for settling controversies is clear and explicit in the Law. “If,” it says, “you see that a judgment among you is difficult and ambiguous … you shall come to the priests of the tribe of Levi,” etc., “and you shall follow their judgment, and you shall not turn aside to the right or to the left.” In ambiguous questions, then, the people must go to the priests and rest in their judgment. Add the words of Haggai: “Ask the priests about the law.” Add also those of Malachi: “The lips of a priest shall guard knowledge, and they shall seek the law from his mouth, because he is the angel of the Lord of hosts.” This prescribed form for settling controversies and teaching doctrine was not given only in the Old Testament; it is also kept in the New, so that in both matters the people depend on the words and judgment of bishops and priests. That the teaching of the Gospel is to be received from bishops is witnessed by Paul in Ephes. 4, where he says: “He gave some as apostles, some as prophets, others as evangelists, and others as pastors and teachers,” etc. There Paul divided apostles, prophets, and evangelists into three classes; but he carefully, wisely, and rightly distinguished pastors and teachers in thought alone, though in reality they were joined, so that we might understand that those in the Church who feed the flock are also those who teach. Yet loose custom has twisted these words from their course and gradually led to the view that some are pastors and others teachers. No greater harm could have been brought to the Christian way. For the Apostle wanted bishops to have authority not only to govern but also to feed and teach. “Pay attention,” he says, “to yourselves and to the whole flock, in which the Holy Spirit has appointed you bishops to govern the Church of God.” And again, in his letters to Timothy and Titus, he prescribed not separate bishops and teachers but the same man as bishop and teacher. Through Jeremiah the Lord also says: “I will give you shepherds who will feed you with knowledge and doctrine.” The doctrine of the Gospel, then, is to be expected from the shepherds of the Church, whom Paul taught to be both bishops and teachers. That bishops and priests also have the right to decide disputes of faith is taught by Luke in Acts 15. When Paul and Barnabas and some others came to Jerusalem, the Church there received them; but when the question was raised, they assembled, he says—not women, not young men, not laypeople, but “the apostles and elders to consider this matter.” Since Peter thought that, in order to strengthen the minds of the Antiochenes who doubted, not all the faithful but only the elders should be gathered with the apostles under the authority of a synod, why should we wish to admit into the most serious assembly of the Church women, butchers, cooks, and tailors,

since we know that among the Lutherans many such people claim knowledge of Sacred Scripture? Further, when it is in question which pastures should be allowed for sheep and which forbidden, it is the shepherds, not the sheep, who deliberate. The Lord therefore entrusted such matters to the shepherds of the Church. Moreover, Christ granted the keys of the heavenly kingdom not indiscriminately to the common people but to the apostles and their successors, as is said in cap. Firmiter, de summa Trinitate. For we need not now prove points belonging to another place and time; but the power of the keys consists in opening and loosing, shutting and binding, as Christ himself explained in Matth. 16. To resolve questions that arise concerning faith and, once judgment has been completed, to bind the faithful to belief is therefore not for just anyone, but only for those who have authority both to shut and open and to bind and loose. This is especially confirmed by the fact that removing the obstacles that shut the door of the kingdom of heaven is the particular office of the keys. Ignorance of the faith, which is without doubt one of these obstacles, will therefore be removed properly by those to whom the keys were entrusted. In addition, the Apostle understood the heavens in Rom. 10 to be the apostles, applying to them the words, “Their sound has gone out into all the earth,” etc. It will therefore belong to the apostles and their successors to enlighten others and hold the people together by their power. If you remove the illuminations of heaven, by which all that the earth brings forth ripens and grows, it must remain barren, truly dry by its name. And if darkness covers the earth and gloom the peoples, no one will disperse it except those to whom Christ said, “You are the light of the world.” Those who assign to inferiors in the Church what belongs to their superiors are like people who place the power of illumination in the earth or the power of sight in the feet. Since others have discussed these matters more fully and carefully, it is enough for us to have touched briefly on these few points. There is certainly no reason to desire a greater light on this matter than reason alone and the Church’s constant practice have made clear. For within living memory only bishops and priests have been called to a council—and not all of them, but those who are shepherds and rulers of the Church. Bishops whom our age calls titular bishops have sometimes been admitted into a synod without reason. But that is no wonder: they are in the Church without reason too. However, that is for another time. Now I shall briefly summarize what I proposed. Unless I am mistaken, titular bishops ought no more to be called into a synod than simple priests. For the whole business of an ecclesiastical council is conducted by the power of jurisdiction, not by order. No one can pass judgment, loose, or bind without jurisdiction. It is clear that the fathers in a synod either give the people laws on morals or judge questions of faith; a priest does neither without the right to bind and loose. However this may be, the Lutherans are plainly mistaken in broad daylight when they define a synod as anything other than an assembly of bishops and priests. Bucer is also shamefully and childishly mistaken when he says that only children of God should be called into a synod of the Church. First, if only children of God make up a Church synod, I ask whether they ought to assemble on their own without being summoned, or whether there will be someone by whose authority they are called. If they come to the council when summoned, who, I ask, will recognize the true children of God? If they come of their own accord, then everyone will judge himself and, trusting his opinion of his own goodness, push himself into the council. But even if someone can form an estimate of himself, how will he know that the others are just and holy?

To expose the madness of such men more clearly, imagine citizens in some commonwealth gathering of their own accord and on their own authority to judge laws, magistrates, and religion, each doing so with greater boldness the more he trusts in his own virtue and learning. Would any sensible person approve such a form and condition of a commonwealth—not Solon or Lycurgus, but anyone at all? We must not therefore introduce into a Church synod the confusion and disorder that no sane person would allow even in villages and small towns. Unless, perhaps, we fall into the madness of thinking that as soon as a person ceases to be a child of God, he is also deprived of the power to govern, feed, judge, bind, and loose. It is not this work’s purpose to show what that would mean, but it can be seen in a secular commonwealth, where the honesty or dishonesty of citizens is not so obscure that it cannot sometimes be recognized easily. It is not nearly so easy in the Christian commonwealth, whose chief virtue—by which people are both called and are children of God—is most deeply hidden. For the true Jew is not the one who is so outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; rather, the true Jew is the one who is so inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart, in the spirit and not the letter, whose praise comes not from people but from God. If public authority were also lost when charity was lost, no one could say how deeply darkness would cover the Church. We discussed this argument in the previous book, as have many others at much greater length. We have mentioned it in passing so that readers may understand what is enough for the present point: bad bishops are to be called into a synod because they have not lost the power to feed, judge, bind, and loose. Let us therefore set the Lutherans aside in this discussion; we should understand that the name “ecclesiastical synod” includes not just anyone, but the pastors and prelates of the Church gathered in one place to pronounce on ecclesiastical matters, that is, morals, faith, and religion.

HERE THE VARIOUS KINDS OF SYNODS ARE SET OUT

I think I have explained sufficiently in the previous chapter what kind of gathering an ecclesiastical synod represents. Now the term must be divided so that we may see what truth and authority belong to each kind of council. Gratian, 3 dist. cap. Regula, divides synods into general and provincial. But in this division one most important kind has been omitted, and omitting anything is a serious fault in a division. Synods are not only general and provincial but also episcopal. If it pleases you, let us name and coin these terms as needed: as Cicero tells us, new things call for new names. Although this usage is recent, it has nevertheless been adopted by our people, and not only by barbarians but by Latins as well. I call those councils general that are held by summoning all Christian prelates. There has often been dispute among many people whether a general summons is enough, or whether a general gathering is also necessary. For if the Supreme Pontiff called a general council, yet only ten bishops from Italy assembled,

such a synod would not deserve to be called general. On the other hand, if all the bishops must assemble, perhaps no such council has yet existed in the Church, one to which all the bishops came. Further, any thoroughly bad bishop, if he scorned to attend a synod not merely through negligence but out of malice, would claim that it was not general. And any prince in a commonwealth could easily disrupt a synod if it displeased him, alleging that his bishops could not attend the council because of illness or disturbances. Since it is not the purpose of this work to pursue all such controversies, we answer this question briefly. A general summons is not enough for a general council if so few assemble that the greater and better part of the provinces seems to have been left out, especially if the bishops had a legitimate reason for not attending the synod. But if one or another province is absent because of the malice of very wicked men, the council does not for that reason lose the name “general.” Nor will a general council lose its name if some bishops are absent through negligence or any other cause, unless we question whether those four councils—the Councils of Nicaea, Ephesus, Constantinople, and Chalcedon—were general. Therefore, as the faithful do, we speak here in a way that defines a general synod by the lawful summons of all the bishops, even if not all of them assemble. For when we speak about the things and words of the Church, we must follow the common understanding of all the faithful. The wise have done the same. Still, a general summons is not enough for a general council unless there is also a general gathering. But a general gathering does not require all the bishops to assemble. We define here only what is common in the Church. We know that general councils can sometimes be held without a summons, but that is very rare and irregular. We shall discuss this more carefully later. Now let us return to the other parts of the proposed division. Provincial councils are those in which the Metropolitan or Primate summons all the prelates of one province or even of a region. Episcopal synods are gatherings of priests, which each bishop now usually holds in his own diocese for the particular needs of the individual churches. Such synods were formerly not in use, especially in Spain, except for the reason stated in 18 dist., capite postremo. With this division laid down and approved by everyone, another is introduced: some councils—whether general, provincial, or episcopal—are convened by the authority of the Roman Pontiff, and others are not; again, some are confirmed by that same Roman Pontiff, and others are not. For the Second Council of Ephesus was indeed convened under Leo’s authority, but was not approved by Leo or any other Supreme Pontiff. Eugenius IV also called the Council of Basel but did not confirm it. Martin V, however, confirmed the Council of Constance, although at the beginning it had been convened under the authority of no Roman bishop. The Council of Milevis, which both Innocent and Celestine approved, was also convened without the authority of the Supreme Pontiff. Since what Gratian thought was a twofold division is found to need division into three parts, and each of the three is then divided in two, we must first discuss the general council in its two forms, then the provincial council in the same way, and finally the episcopal council.

HERE CONCLUSIONS ARE SET OUT THAT CONTAIN THE AUTHORITY OF THIS LOCUS

Conclusion 1. On these grounds, let the first conclusion be this: A general council that has neither been convened nor confirmed by the authority of the Roman Pontiff can err in faith. This conclusion is clearly proved by the error of the councils of Rimini and Constantinople under the Emperor Leo, which we brought against the authority of this locus in the fifth argument of the first chapter. Gratian also shows the same in 17 dist. cap. Regula and cap. Multis, with the clear testimony of Julius and Pelagius. Damasus defines the same in his letter to Archbishop Stephen, as do the three African councils, which acknowledged this very point in their letter to Damasus. For a council lacking the authority of the Roman bishop is not truly a valid council, as not only the pontiffs but the councils themselves have taught. The Seventh Council taught it in act. 6, tom. I; the Eighth Council in act. I and 7; the Roman Synod under Symmachus in 96 dist. cap. Bene; the synod of ninety bishops under Damasus in histor. trip. libr. 5, cap. 29; and the Lateran Council under Leo X in sess. 11, where the same matter is said to have been defined at the Synod of Alexandria. Socrates, lib. 4 histor. trip. cap. 9, likewise reports that ecclesiastical rule requires councils of this kind not to be held without the judgment of the Roman Pontiff. Julius said this had been established by the Council of Nicaea in his letter to the Eastern bishops, and Marcellus said in his letter to the Antiochenes that the apostles had decreed it. Clearly, councils of this kind have not only always lacked the force to establish the truth of faith in the Church; they have almost been gatherings of iniquity and have had sad, indeed deadly, outcomes. Bucer says that those who claim it is not lawful to convene a council without the consent of the Roman Pontiff are lying. First he confirms this with the testimony of Eusebius and the Historia tripartita. Next, he says, there is the canon of the Council of Nicaea concerning the holding of synods. There are also Apostolic Canons prescribing two synods each year in every province. He claims, however, that whatever is decreed in councils of this kind is firm and valid as truth against falsehood, so that not even the Supreme Pontiff can rescind it. How can anyone answer this man’s shamelessness without indignation? First, how shameless of him to cite Eusebius’s history and the Historia tripartita, which report nothing against us and much in our favor! And what of his next point? He invokes the Council of Nicaea and the Apostolic Canons, which speak of provincial synods, prescribed by the Supreme Pontiffs for the proper organization and administration of the churches. We are not speaking of provincial synods. To say that general councils cannot be convened without the consent of the Supreme Pontiff is no different from saying that the chief councils of a kingdom cannot be convened without the prince’s consent, especially when he opposes them. And what of his claim that whatever is decided in these synods is firm? “As truth,” he says, “against falsehood.” So if something is for the truth, it must be accepted wherever it is established; but who will assure us that whatever provincial synods decree is for the truth? Enough of this for now. These matters will be explained more fully in the fourth conclusion. Conclusion 2. A general council, even when convened by the authority of the Roman Pontiff, can err in faith. ¹

This is plainly demonstrated by the example of the Second Council of Ephesus, where nearly all the bishops subscribed to the heresy of Dioscorus despite the opposition of Leo’s legates. Pope Leo confirms this even more clearly in the letters cited above, in response to the fifth argument; so too does the Eighth Council in act. 7, Nicholas in his letter to the Emperor Michael, and Eugenius IV in the decree on the union of the Jacobites. After condemning the Second Synod of Ephesus, convened under Leo and agreeing, as it did, with the error of Eutyches, Eugenius says: “The holy Roman Church accepts all universal synods lawfully convened, held, and confirmed by the authority of the Roman Pontiff.” He did not say merely “convened,” but “held and confirmed.” The same point is shown by the example of the Council of Basel, whose error we brought against this view in the ninth argument of the first chapter. But we shall discuss this matter more fully in our answer to that argument. Further, no council is or has been valid unless it was supported by the authority of the Roman Pontiff, as Julius, Damasus, Pelagius, and the other fathers cited in support of the first conclusion taught plainly. But even if a council is convened at the command of the Supreme Pontiff, if its doctrines are not confirmed by him—and he or his legates have instead opposed them—the synod is certainly not supported by apostolic authority. It will therefore not be valid and firm, and consequently will not be sufficient to establish our faith. This conclusion will be explained more fully in the next chapter. Conclusion 3. A general council confirmed by the authority of the Roman Pontiff establishes the Catholic doctrines as certain articles of faith. We must hold this conclusion so firmly established that we regard its opposite as heretical. First, otherwise all the heresies condemned by the authority of general councils would return, and the Nicene Creed too would become uncertain if the authority of a general council were set aside. Further, if a council of this kind could err in faith, no certain way would remain to ascertain Catholic doctrine in disputes about faith. Whoever rejects the judgment of the Supreme Pontiff and all the other pastors of the Church will find no living judge whose tribunal he cannot leave. The Lutherans want Scripture to be the judge in a council, although it neither senses nor understands nor can itself pronounce judgment. Luther himself cries out that the words “This is my body” must be taken literally, while Zwingli says they are figurative. Who will decide between them? Scripture itself? Or rather the supreme judge of the Church, together with a council of priests, as is written in Deuteron. 17? If someone in human courts rejected the living judges established in the commonwealth and fled to mute, lifeless writings, he would be rejected by everyone. We have spoken much about this and shall often do so again. Let us return to the point. If we reject the faith of councils, we shall also lose a good part of Scripture. For if someone, with Luther, removes the Epistle of James from the canonical writings, this question certainly cannot be settled by Scripture. Living judges must therefore be established. If, after rejecting the judgment of the pastors, you appeal to another tribunal, you do nothing but evade the judges of Christ and the Church and substitute human judges for divine ones. Whoever you choose apart from the pastors of the Church will have only human and uncertain authority. Further, the faithful people must either stand by the council’s definition or may oppose it. If they must, then when a council errs the people will share its error. If they may oppose it, where is the saying, “He who hears you hears me”? Where again is, “The scribes and Pharisees sit upon Moses’ seat; whatever they tell you, observe and do”? ^{2 3}

They object that if we must do whatever the authorities tell us, why did Christ elsewhere warn us against the leaven of the Pharisees? Matthew explains that this means the doctrine of the Pharisees. Why, again, did Christ teach us by his own example to despise their traditions? They can therefore mix something of their own doctrine into the purity of the Gospel, in which case they are not only not to be heard but also must be refuted. Christ guarded against this, lest the people be led by the evil examples of teachers to despise true doctrine. Christ therefore commands us to do what the Pharisees say when they sit on Moses’ seat—that is, when they expound, teach, and set forth God’s law. If they teach their own doctrines, however, we not only may but must disregard them, as Augustine plainly interpreted in in Ioannem. The pastors gain nothing, then, from that saying of the Gospel. Indeed, since they can speak on their own authority, we may even despise them. Hence Jerome, commenting on those words in Matthaei, 17 cap., “Not everyone who says to me,” etc., says: “Just as above he said that those who wear the garment of a good life are not to be received because of the wickedness of their doctrines, so now, conversely, he asserts that we are not to place our faith even in those who, though strong in the integrity of faith, live shamefully and destroy the integrity of their teaching by their evil works.” But these men deceitfully and maliciously apply to true pastors of the Church what Augustine says about hirelings. They do not understand that the Church has always had true pastors among its hirelings, whose voices the sheep must hear, especially if all speak with one voice. For then the voice of the pastors is also the voice of the Church, and therefore of Christ. Otherwise, what does this mean: “I beg you all to say the same thing, and let there be no schisms among you”? “Is Christ divided?” Far from it. “God is not the author of dissension but of peace.” In truth, to put this argument briefly: if the sheep follow the same doctrine of all the pastors, there will be no fault in the sheep. Let us suppose that they do so; if all the pastors err, then all the sheep will err too. We proved in the previous book that this cannot happen. Jerome immediately explains what he means: both things are necessary in God’s servants if we are to trust them—their deeds must be confirmed by their words and their words by their deeds. Further, Martin V, in the Council of Constance, included among the questions by which those suspected in faith were to be examined whether they believed that every general council represents the universal Church. If a general council therefore has the authority of the universal Church, whoever removes that council’s authority dissolves the authority of the whole Church by the same act. Augustine’s statement in libro primo de Baptismo contra Donatistas, ch. 18, is therefore excellent: the judgment of a full council is the agreement of the whole Church. Moreover, Paul saw no more fitting way to investigate the truth in a question that had arisen than to refer the dispute to the Council of Jerusalem. We must therefore follow the course that Paul considered most suitable for settling a question of faith, and imitate the moderation described by Luke in Acts 15, both among Jews and among Gentiles. The Gentiles could have protested against the Council of Jerusalem for taking away the liberty Christ had given them and imposing on the disciples’ shoulders certain ceremonies as necessary, although they seemed less necessary because faith in Christ was sufficient for salvation. Yet even the Jews did not resist, though they could have opposed the council’s decision with Scripture, which says, “The man whose flesh is uncircumcised,” etc. They therefore paid such honor to the council and offered an example to be followed in future ages, so that synods confirmed by the authority of Peter and his successors

might be held as establishing certain faith. “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us,” they said. The council’s judgment, then, is the very judgment of the Holy Spirit. Another reason is that the Catholic Church has always accepted the decrees of general councils and has certainly considered those whom they called heretics to be heretics. If we wish to hold the faith of the Church, we must therefore hold the faith of councils. This was also confirmed by strong arguments in the previous book. Conclusion 4. A provincial council not confirmed by the Supreme Pontiff can err in faith. An example is the Council of Milan, lib. 10. hist. ecclesiast. cap. 20; the Council of Antioch of ninety bishops, lib. 4 histor. trip. cap. 9; the Council of Seleucia, lib. 1. trip. cap. 34; and the Council of Carthage, which we mentioned while arguing. This conclusion is confirmed not only by examples but also by Symmachus, who says: “Councils of priests prescribed by ecclesiastical laws for the provinces have lost their validity because they do not have the Pope’s presence.” It must therefore be admitted that provincial councils have sometimes issued laws that are too harsh and scarcely reasonable, such as perhaps that of Aachen, cited in 36 quaest. 2. cap. Placuit. The Council of Elvira also issued its decree against images not only unwisely but impiously. If a general council lacking the authority of the Roman bishop can err in faith, then a provincial synod can sometimes err, and all the more so. Conclusion 5. A provincial council confirmed by the authority of the Supreme Pontiff cannot err in faith. The condemnation of many heretics would be uncertain if this conclusion were not certain. For most heretics were condemned not by general but by provincial councils: Priscillian by the First Council of Toledo; Helvidius by the Council of Telensis; Pelagius by the Councils of Milevis and Carthage. Gregory also reports that Pelagius was condemned by the Council of Ephesus, de haeret. cap. Fraternitatis. But this judgment does not now appear in the Council of Ephesus. Further, it is neither expedient nor tolerable to convene a separate general synod for each heretic to be condemned. Since God has provided what is necessary for his Church, provincial councils must surely suffice for refuting local heresies, provided they are strengthened by the authority of the Supreme Pontiff. Moreover, the Church has always rejected all those condemned as heretics by such councils; therefore they cannot err in faith. If they could, at least one example would be produced, but there is none. Oecolampadius cites the Roman Synod under Gelasius, where, he says, it was defined that the substance of bread remains in the sacrament of the Eucharist. We shall show in the next chapter that this is fabricated, for this judgment belongs to no synod, not even to Gelasius. Further, Pope Symmachus says that provincial councils decreed by the Church’s laws each year have lost their validity because they lack the Pope’s presence. It follows that they are valid if they have his presence. In the Seventh Council, act. 3, after Theodorus had accepted the general councils, he immediately adds: “We do not reject local synods; rather, we love,

“We embrace and accept them. We honor with the greatest reverence their canonical constitutions, corrections, and legislation, divinely inspired as they are.” The Seventh Synod itself approves this letter of Theodorus and the Eastern bishops. The Eighth Synod likewise says in its final session, Canone 1: “We profess that we preserve and keep the rules handed down to the holy Church both by the holy apostles and by universal councils of the orthodox, as well as by local councils. We also decree that all who bear the name Christian are canonically subject to the condemnations and approvals issued by them.” So far the Eighth Synod. Its words are to be understood as applying especially to councils confirmed by the Supreme Pontiff. For, as will be shown in the next passage, the Supreme Pontiff cannot err in a judgment of faith. The decrees of provincial councils concerning faith are therefore firm and certain if confirmed by the Roman Pontiff. This was explained in Actorum 15 cap. The gathering reported there was not a general but a provincial council. Yet the faith placed in it, with Peter presiding, was no less than if it had been a general synod. This refutes Erasmus’s slander. In annot. super epistolam ad Rom. cap. 5 he said that he was not so bound by the Synod of Milevis and other similar provincial councils. He added: “Otherwise, if someone insists that whatever was decreed in them must be observed, I shall produce from them certain doctrines that the Church now condemns as heretical.” So far Erasmus. But, as we said, the Council of Milevis was confirmed, and for that reason a Christian is bound by it. The councils from which heretical doctrines may be produced were not confirmed. We add another conclusion. Conclusion 6. Although provincial councils lack the authority of the Roman bishop, a probable argument may be drawn from them to support doctrines of faith. A very strong argument for this is that, among countless councils of this kind, scarcely five or six are found to have departed from the proper way and method of defining. If such councils generally hold the right faith and only rarely define matters, an argument drawn from councils of this kind is without doubt highly probable. Unless they have been specifically rejected, they are commended by the Church’s common silence or even its tacit consent, if they have come to the Church’s general notice. It is not at all plausible that the Church would have long concealed a heresy spread throughout the world by a provincial council. For an error that is not opposed is approved, 83 dist. cap. Error. Do not object to the Council of Elvira: in the matter in which it erred, Catholics have always rejected it. This is the chief reason why the ancient Councils of Toledo, Arles, Seville, and similar councils seem to have been approved by the Church, if not explicitly, then tacitly. The Councils of Ancyra, Neo-Caesarea, Gangra, Sardica, Africa, and Carthage were confirmed by Leo IV, 20 dist. cap. De libellis. The Synod of Trullo also approved certain provincial councils, but we shall discuss later at length how much this approval of Trullo is worth. For now, we assert only that councils not approved by the Supreme Pontiff do not supply a certain argument, but a probable one, to strengthen a doctrine of faith. This is inferred from Innocent, 20 dist. cap. De quibus.

Conclusion 7. Provincial councils, if confirmed by the Roman Pontiff in their decrees of faith, provide a certain argument for the truth. For if the Synod of Toledo errs in faith while the successor of Peter presides and confirms it, there seems to be no reason why the Roman Synod could not err. Further, a provincial council confirmed by the Supreme Pontiff has certain authority; therefore an episcopal synod does too. But I cannot recall any other episcopal synod on a judgment of faith confirmed by the Roman bishop, apart from that of Complutum under Alfonso Carrillo, Archbishop of Toledo, where a certain master of Osma was condemned for holding false opinions about the keys of the Church and the Sacrament of Penance. Final conclusion. An episcopal synod by itself can establish probable belief in a case of heresy, but not certain belief. We must first resolve the former point, for the latter is clear enough. The former is shown by cap. Ad abolendam, de haereticis, where Lucius III binds with the perpetual ban of anathema those whom either the Roman Church or individual bishops in their dioceses, with the counsel of their clergy or, if necessary, of neighboring bishops, have judged to be heretics. The judgments of synods of this kind are therefore no light presumption: Lucius valued them so highly that he decreed that those whom these synods judged heretics were to be treated as excommunicated. I am not unaware that some learned men interpret this decretal of Lucius as referring to people caught in manifest heresy. Otherwise, they deny that an episcopal, and even a provincial, council has the right to judge heresy. They prove this by saying that faith is a matter common to all, and therefore the power to judge faith and the heresy opposed to it belongs not to particular churches but to the universal Church. They also support their view from cap. Maiores, de baptism. and cap. Quoties, 24 quaest. 1, where such cases are said to be referred to the Apostolic See alone, since they have been reserved to it by a special privilege from the Lord. After the words quoted, Lucius himself seems to confirm this when he says: “We nevertheless decree by this ordinance that whoever is found manifestly in heresy …” The Pope is therefore speaking of a case in which the heresy is manifest. Yet the opinion of those who think that by this decretal of Lucius all those whom either the Roman Church, a provincial synod, or even an episcopal synod judges to be heretics are plainly and simply bound by the ban of anathema has always seemed far more probable to me, even if the heresy is not manifest to everyone. First, the text does not say “those whom they have declared heretics,” but “judged.” If that declaration concerned something manifest, it would not be a true judgment in a case of faith. Why, then, did Lucius refer the matter to a bishop with the counsel of the clergy rather than to theologians, so that those whom learned theologians declared heretics might be struck with anathema? Second, if Lucius did not use the word “judged” properly, but improperly to mean “explain something manifest,” then since exactly the same word is applied to both the Roman Church and the bishop with his clergy, it would follow that we should understand Lucius to excommunicate people declared—not judged—to be heretics by the Roman Church as well. But it is clear that the word is understood properly and simply of the Roman Church; when it refers to a bishop’s synod, it must not therefore be twisted into another sense. Add that there were many reasons why the case of a person accused of heresy could be referred to synods of this kind. First, it might be done by a special commission from the Apostolic See, as the Council of Toledo I heard the case of Priscillian, and the Synod of Complutum under Alfonso Carrillo, Archbishop of Toledo, heard the case

of a certain master of Osma. Next, it might be done without a special commission from the Pope, as inquisitors do now, in a case where the heresy was manifest but it was not clear that the accused was a heretic—either because it had not been proved or made known that he asserted a heretical proposition, or because, even if he had asserted it, his pertinacity had not yet been established, without which no one is a heretic. Finally, it might concern a heresy not so manifest that everyone knew of it, but still such that there was no need to refer it either to a general council or to the Apostolic Church, since learned theologians agreed that it was heresy. In all these cases, synods once had the right, and those now entrusted with knowledge of faith still have the right, to pronounce and judge a case of faith. Their judgments are not so certain, however, that they cannot be false—not only in a doubtful matter disputed among learned men, a case in which local synods have no right to pronounce on heresy, but even in a matter that seems manifest to all the province’s theologians, a case in which they pronounce on a case of faith without the crime of usurping judgment. In these three cases, then, although such judgments are not certain and firm in the Church, they are nevertheless highly probable and ought to be held in the greatest regard by the faithful. It would not be a small harm to the Church if people did not meanwhile avoid those whom not only the Roman Church but also a provincial or episcopal synod had judged heretics, as they would avoid excommunicated people. Let us consider the first objection. “The matter of faith,” they say, “is common to all; therefore private judges are not permitted to pass judgment on it.” But the crime of treason against majesty and betrayal of the commonwealth also concerns all citizens, and private judges nevertheless commonly decide such cases. The chapters they cite are to be understood as applying when a matter is disputed among bishops and theologians themselves, as Pelagius explained, 17 dist. cap. Multis. The same sense is stated more clearly in Deuter. 17, 8: “If,” it says, “you see that a judgment among you is difficult and ambiguous, and you see conflicting words in a judgment within your gates, rise and go up to the place that the Lord will choose,” etc. What Lucius adds does not work against us. He did not say, “whoever is caught in manifest heresy,” but “whoever is manifestly caught in heresy.” As is clear from the context, he wants no one delivered to the secular arm unless it has been established that he is a heretic. Punishments of this sort require proofs as clear as broad daylight before they can be carried out. Enough has now been said about the authority of councils.

WHERE CERTAIN KNOTS ARE UNTIED, IN WHICH EVEN LEARNED MEN SOMETIMES BECOME ENTANGLED

With these matters explained, it seemed that nothing remained but to refute the arguments set out at the beginning. But as I prepared to answer those objections, several scruples arose. We should resolve them before going further, lest they impede theologians on the path we opened in the previous chapter. Question 1. First, we must examine this doubt: does a council held through the legates of the Supreme Pontiff have firm and certain authority, or must we await the Roman bishop’s confirmation before the council’s decrees can be considered certain? Cajetan, who without dispute has discussed the authority of the Pope and of a council with the greatest care, and whom we have followed above all others, with some correction, says here many things that seem unrelated to the present undertaking. But he finally affirms what concerns our present point and question: a council conducted by the Pope’s legates can err in faith. For he still remains—the one for whose faith Christ prayed. I mean the one to whom the supreme responsibility for faith is ultimately referred. Therefore, unless the Supreme Pontiffs approve and confirm a council’s definitions, they should not be considered certain and firm. Cardinal Torquemada held the same view in book 3, chapters 6, 8, and 38, where he shows at great length that all the ancient councils of the past sought confirmation of their doctrines from the Supreme Pontiffs. They would not have done so if they had not considered it necessary. That the Pontiff’s confirmation also concerns doctrines of faith is clear from the letter of the Council of Nicaea to Pope Sylvester: “Whatever we have established, we ask that it be confirmed by the assent of your voice.” Sylvester, replying to the same council, says: “I confirm and affix my seal to your teaching against those who oppose the unity of the Trinity.” A little later he says: “I approve that the things which flowed into our common mystery were true,” etc. The fathers of the Council of Chalcedon also say in their letter to Leo: “We have made known to you the whole force of our proceedings, both to prove our sincerity and to secure the firmness and agreement of the things we have done.” Pope Leo, in his letter to the Council of Chalcedon, numbered 59, says: “So that it may not seem doubtful whether I approve what you have decreed unanimously concerning the faith,” etc. Later he says that he sends his approval of the synodal proceedings only in the matter of faith, for which, of course, the council was convened. The same point is clear from the letter of Leo III, in which he confirms the Sixth General Council. Add that before the Pontiff himself confirmed it, the Church never held as firm and valid what the legates presiding over a council had defined. For this reason, Emperor Marcian pressed Leo to approve the Council of Chalcedon’s judgment on faith. Leo also urged Marcian to send the council’s confirmation and approval to all the churches, as is recorded in letter 57 to the same Marcian. Further, a council can err without legates; but the Supreme Pontiff does not transfer to his legates the solidity of his own faith, which he claims for himself alone because he is Christ’s vicar, the pastor of the universal Church, and the rock on which Christ founded his Church. The legates, then, can err together with the council. For Christ prayed not for Peter’s legates but for Peter. Moreover, a provincial council attended by the Supreme Pontiff’s legates can err in faith, whereas one confirmed by the Supreme Pontiff cannot. The legates therefore do not have the same authority in doctrines of faith as the Supreme Pontiff himself.

Accordingly, the council’s decrees will still be weak, even if they have been confirmed by the judgment of the legates. Further, the Second Council of Ephesus erred with Dioscorus, yet it had been lawfully convened under Leo’s authority. A council’s decree is therefore not firm and valid unless confirmed by the Supreme Pontiff. It is no answer to say that the Pope’s legates and a few others opposed it. Not all the fathers have to subscribe to a synodal judgment for it to count as the judgment of a general council, since not all the bishops subscribed to the judgment of the Council of Nicaea either. And if the legates themselves, as all learned men agree, can err, nothing would have prevented them from agreeing with the other erring bishops. A legate of the Pontiff was present when a grave error was committed in the second and third sessions of the Council of Basel; the legate himself subscribed to the error of the others. It is therefore not enough that a council be convened by the Pontiff’s authority and that his legates approve its judgment for it to be considered firm and certain in the Church. On the other hand, some very learned men think that a general council lawfully convened has solid and certain authority even when the Pope is absent and before it is confirmed by the Supreme Pontiff. They can offer two chief reasons for this view. First, a council of this kind, conducted by the legates of the Roman bishop, represents the universal Church because it is a general council of the Church. It therefore cannot err in faith, just as the universal Church cannot. Martin V defined at the end of the Council of Constance that every general council represents the universal Church. Their second reason is that a general council lawfully convened has been convened in the Holy Spirit and therefore has the Spirit present to assist it. Relying on his presence, the fathers may certainly say when they define something, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.” This is especially confirmed by the testimony of Julius to the Eastern bishops: “Your decree has no force, because the legate of the Roman Church was not present, and the canons prescribe that councils are not to be held without its authority; no council is valid unless it is supported by that authority.” So far Julius. He therefore plainly thinks that a council has force, is valid, and rests on the authority of the Roman Church if the Roman Church’s legate was present. In explaining this difficult question, we lay down what experience of events establishes: the Supreme Pontiff’s legates do not usually attend a council where a question of faith is to be discussed unless they have first been instructed and informed about the Roman Church’s faith on the matters to be settled there. I say that this is usual, not that it is required. The legates could not conveniently be instructed in advance about the questions to be discussed at the Council of Trent, since they were almost innumerable. But nearly all other councils were convened to treat one or another question of faith, and so the legates attended after first being instructed in the faith of the Apostolic Church. I therefore first lay down that a council can oppose the teaching and instruction of the legates, and conversely that the legates can oppose the council. In that case the council’s decrees will not be supported by apostolic authority but will instead have been rejected. For just as a council convened against the protest of the Church’s true and recognized Pontiff is vain and invalid, so teaching opposed either by the present Pontiff in person or by an absent Pontiff through his legates is uncertain

and weak. The reason is precisely the same: neither has the authority of the Roman bishop, without which neither a council nor its decrees are valid. If anyone thinks that a council, once duly and lawfully convened, still cannot err even when the Pope’s legates oppose it, I ask him to answer the argument by which we proved the second conclusion in chapter 4, citing the example of the Second Council of Ephesus, where nearly all the bishops erred. “It was not a free council,” they say, “but Dioscorus extorted the judgment by his craft, threats, and terrors.” I see that; but if someone is broken by fear, speaking of human nature, he must also be capable of being broken by desire. If heretics can therefore say that a true and lawful synod errs through fear, they will claim that all the other councils served the desires of pontiffs and emperors. Then no synod will have an authority that can be considered certain. We, however, assert something far weightier: a council supported by apostolic authority cannot depart from the true faith because of any human passion. The Church too, though rain falls, rivers come, and winds blow against it, cannot yield or abandon its position in faith. But the rest of a council, however large, can be weakened by passion if the Pontiff and his legates oppose it. This is the point of the words, “You, Peter, strengthen your brothers.” What if a legate abandons the teaching received from the Pontiff and embraces the view of the majority? First, no such example will be produced, except perhaps from the council under the Emperor Michael, where Rodoaldus and Zacharias agreed with Michael and Photius against the instructions and commands of Nicholas, as can be seen in Nicholas’s letter to the patriarchs, metropolitans, and other bishops. Second, if a legate acts against his instructions, he is not considered to act under delegated authority; there is therefore no reason to think that his acts are approved by the authority of his superior. For this reason Pope Agatho says, as is clear from actione 4 sextae synodi: “We gave them authority”—that is, to the legates—“only to the extent that they were instructed, so that they presume to add, subtract, or change nothing, but faithfully relate the tradition of this Apostolic See.” Leo says likewise in epist. 43 ad Pulcheriam Augustam: “I have prepared to send Bishop Lucentius and the priest Basilius, so that they may carry out my instructions according to the rules they have received.” Decrees approved by a legate against the tradition of the Apostolic See therefore do not have the authority of the Roman Church; they are no different from decrees issued by a council without legates. But what if legates attend a synod without instructions from the Apostolic See? Will the synod’s judgment be firm and certain before it is approved by the Supreme Pontiff? Certainly, in matters that do not concern faith but ecclesiastical government, decrees of synods of this kind need not come from the Holy Spirit. They are therefore not valid at all unless they are confirmed by the agreement of the Roman bishop, as can be seen in Leo’s letters 51 to Anatolius, 52 to Marcian, 53 to Pulcheria, and 59 to the Council of Chalcedon. Even in matters of faith, however, their authority is not so certain that someone who calls it into question is a heretic. First, the most distinguished authorities I named earlier, Cajetan and Torquemada, agree—not only without the charge of heresy but also with probability—that no firm doctrine proceeds from synods of this kind until they have been approved by Christ’s vicar. Second, as was said earlier, Peter cannot transfer to his legates the solid authority he has to confirm both his brothers and doctrines. Third, if legates who have received instructions from the Apostolic See can depart from them, those who attend a council without instructions may also depart from the doctrine of the Apostolic See

They can therefore fight against the doctrine of the Apostolic See, so their confirmation is still weak. What of this: the legate Julian agreed with the teaching of the Council of Basel, which no theologian considers so solid and certain that those who dissent from it should be considered heretics? The contrary arguments prove nothing. The first is refuted as follows. I admit that every general council represents the universal Church, just as all the leading men and representatives of cities represent the whole kingdom when they gather to discuss public affairs. But when you insist that the Church cannot err, this is true in the sense in which the faithful accept it: we understand that the whole Church together, that is, all the faithful, does not err. Yet nothing prevents the greater part of the Church from erring. I therefore do not grant that the whole council together with the legates can err. But the greater part of a council can err, and the legates can subscribe to the error. This is precisely what we are now saying: the judgment of the greater part is not certain, even if the legates follow it. It would be certain if the Supreme Pontiff confirmed it. For, as we taught just above, not all the fathers together need to approve the council’s judgment. To the second argument, take this answer. Certainly a general council presided over by legates is assembled in the Holy Spirit, since it is convened by the authority of Christ’s Vicar, who is also the Church’s lawful head. But the Church too is one body, whose spirit is God, who is always present to assist it. Therefore, what seemed good to the whole Church together also seemed good to the Holy Spirit; but it does not follow that what the greater part of the Church judged is the judgment of the Holy Spirit. Thus, if all the bishops have judged something, it has certainly been judged by God’s Spirit; but it should not immediately be believed that a decision is the Holy Spirit’s judgment merely because most of a council’s fathers agreed on it, unless it is confirmed by the Supreme Pontiff. For it belongs to him to settle the disputes and disagreements of the fathers. Julius’s testimony is now very easy to explain. He leaves unstated what was obvious: that the council had lacked the presence of the Supreme Pontiff; he says, however, that even the legates of the Roman Church were absent. From these two points, one unstated and the other expressed, he concludes that the authority of the Roman Church was entirely absent from the council. It was therefore invalid and vain. Otherwise, if anyone presses us with that testimony in a crude way, he is easily refuted. The inference that a council’s judgment was weak because it lacked legates does not hold: therefore, if it had legates, its judgment was firm. Enough has now been said about the first question. Question 2. The next question is whether the fathers of a council are truly judges or rather counselors. There are some authors, and not the worst, who would have the authority of councils lie not in judging and settling a case of faith but in seeking and investigating the truth. They refer the whole force of judgment to one head of the Church, Christ’s Vicar, who brings more or fewer people into counsel when a case of faith must be decided, depending on whether the case is more serious or easier. The first argument for this is that in the sex libris Decretalium and the Clementinae, judgment is ascribed not to the fathers but to the Supreme Pontiff, with the sacred council approving. Thus Clement V, presiding at the Council of Vienne, says: “Turning the attention of our apostolic consideration—which alone has the right to declare these matters—to so distinguished a testimony and the common judgment of the holy fathers, with the sacred council approving, we declare,” etc. Judgment therefore belongs to the Apostolic See alone; the fathers offer not a judgment but counsel.

Further, when the Pontiff of the Roman Church calls priests together to judge a case of faith, he says, “with the counsel of our brothers,” etc. They therefore advise; they do not judge. Moreover, Deut. 17 says: “If it is difficult and ambiguous … you shall go,” it says, “to the priests of the tribe of Levi, and to the judge who is there at that time,” etc. It continues: “But whoever acts arrogantly, refusing to obey the command of the priest who serves the Lord your God at that time, that man shall die by decree of the judge.” See: authority is assigned not to all but to the high priest, and the decree is said to belong not to the judges but to the judge. The other priests, then, are counselors, not judges. The contrary view is supported by the fact that at the first Council of Jerusalem not only Peter but also the other apostles and elders are said to be judges. “Therefore I judge,” says James, “that those who turn from the Gentiles … should not be troubled.” Later, in the same chapter, Paul calls the council’s commands the commands of the apostles; and in ch. 16 he says that these doctrines were decreed by the apostles and elders. The answer to this question is very easy and straightforward: the bishops of a council are not merely counselors in a case of faith but also judges. Otherwise, not only bishops but also learned theologians and prudent churchmen would be called in to deliver a synodal judgment. This is unheard of and contrary to the form prescribed in Acts 15, where only the apostles together with the elders judged the question of faith. Since, then, by the Church’s constant practice only pastors sit in a council, it follows that they are judges, not merely advisers. If they were called in only to give advice, bishops who were inexperienced and untrained in theology would have no place at all in a council when a theological question arose. Further, not only the Roman bishop but also the other bishops hold the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and therefore have the power to bind and loose in a case of faith. “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us,” they say, “to impose no further burden on you than these necessary things,” etc. All the bishops impose the burden and command, and all together are authors of the synodal judgment. But counselors who are not also judges do not usually subscribe to a judgment and sentence. Yet in a synodal sentence we find the subscriptions not only of the Pontiff but also of the other bishops. They are therefore undoubtedly judges. But a scruple now arises that troubles some people: if all the bishops are judges, the Supreme Pontiff will surely be bound to follow the opinion of the majority when passing judgment and approve their teaching. For in every rightly and properly constituted tribunal, the presiding judge must confirm the judgment of the majority and disregard that of the few. To resolve this question, Cardinal Torquemada, following the jurists, says many things in lib. 3 Summae Ecclesiae, chs. 64 and 65, not all of which I approve. I do not intend to follow each point and refute every opinion. As Cicero says, the mark of a keen debater is to consider not what each person says but what each ought to say. We cannot and must not deny the assumption, then, that the fathers of a council are not merely counselors but also judges. For the fathers of the Council of Nicaea ask Sylvester to confirm whatever they have established. Leo says that he approves what the Council of Chalcedon decreed concerning the faith. The council itself says to Leo: “Honor our judgment with your decrees.” And the Sixth Synod says in actione 18: “We anathematize Theodorus, Sergius, Cyrus,” etc. A little later it says: “With all these matters established by this holy council and confirmed by the subscription of our strength,”

“we decree that no one undertake anything further concerning the faith,” etc. Are these the words of a counselor, or rather of a judge? In the other matters too the fathers speak as judges, not counselors. I easily remove the scruple now raised. I deny that, when the matter concerns faith, the judgment of the majority must be followed. Here we do not measure a decision by the number of votes, as we do in human elections or trials. We know that it often happens that the majority defeats the better side; we know that what pleases the many is not always best; we know that in matters of doctrine the judgment of the wise must be preferred. The wise are very few, while the number of fools is infinite. Four hundred prophets lied to Ahab, but the truth came from the mouth of Micaiah alone, a man who was despised. Divine judgments must therefore not be governed by human calculations. Sometimes the Lord saves more quickly through a few than through many. For the greater part of the Second Council of Ephesus adopted the view of Dioscorus, yet the legates did not subscribe to the judgment of the majority. The Supreme Pontiff, then, is not bound to embrace the opinion of the greater part. Indeed, whether a few or many have turned toward error, it is the duty of the Apostolic prelate to bring them back to the true faith, in keeping with what Christ said to Peter: “I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, strengthen your brothers”—not just one or another, but whether few or many. Thus Damasus, writing to the bishops in Illyricum, freely disregarded the number of the Council of Rimini and set Vincent and a few others against that great multitude, since they had spoken against the council’s judgment. And when Anatolius appealed to the agreement of 630 fathers in support of the Council of Chalcedon’s decree on the primacy of the Church of Constantinople, Leo said: “As though what the multitude wished unlawfully could not be refuted. Councils do not flatter themselves on account of the size of their gathering, nor should a larger number of priests dare to compare or prefer themselves to those 318, since the Synod of Nicaea was consecrated with so great a privilege from God that, whether ecclesiastical judgments are held by fewer or more, whatever differs from its decree is entirely without authority.” So far Leo. The opinion of the majority therefore does not prevail among us as it does in human assemblies. If we once reduce a case of faith to human conjecture and prudence, we must fear that we shall turn the Church’s business from divine to human. Indeed, it is certain that those who rely on the probable judgment of the many undermine the firmness of our faith. The Second General Council consisted of 150 fathers, while the Fourth had 630; nevertheless, the Church received both with equal reverence. These matters are judged not by number but by weight. The weight of councils is supplied by the dignity and authority of the Supreme Pontiff. If he is present, a hundred fathers are enough; if he is absent, none are enough, however many there may be. Nor will the Supreme Pontiff oppose the fathers of a council if the majority truly hold the truth. It belongs, and has always belonged, to Christ’s particular providence to prevent the Church from being split into factions. Nor has the Roman bishop ever spoken against fathers of a council who held the truth, if an example is wanted. We need add nothing about the second question: the arguments on the contrary side are easily resolved from what we have said.

Question 3. There is another question, which is not easy to explain. If a council supported by the authority of the Supreme Pontiff is guided by the Holy Spirit in judging cases of faith, then its definitions will belong to Sacred Scripture. For what is called Sacred Scripture is written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. A very learned man, so advanced in theology that he could be compared with eminent theologians, did not hesitate to grant this conclusion of the argument in my presence. Gratian too seems to have accepted this view, supported by the testimony of St. Augustine in 19 dist. cap. In canonicis, where he says that the decretal letters of the Supreme Pontiffs are canonical Scriptures. By the same reasoning, then, the decrees of councils would be counted among the canonical Scriptures. Innocent seems to embrace the same view in de celebr. Missae, cap. Cum Marthae. For he says that Sacred Scripture asserts that the person who prays for a martyr wrongs that martyr. This testimony must surely belong to some Pontiff or council. Reason also agrees with these testimonies. The Catholic faith believes nothing except what has been revealed by God; if we are bound to hold the decrees of councils as certain according to faith, then they have surely been revealed by God and consequently are canonical Scripture. But, reader, even without my instruction you will understand how thoughtless this opinion is. If the Athanasian Creed or the Nicene Creed is counted among sacred writings, why is it not entered into the book of Sacred Scripture or numbered among the canonical books? It is absurd to count among the sacred and canonical books the books that contain papal decretal letters or the judgments of synods. For there are two differences between sacred authors on the one hand and the Supreme Pontiff and the fathers of a council on the other. First, sacred authors write Catholic doctrines from an immediate revelation or inspiration of God. They do not need an external stimulus to write, nor do they reason from other Scriptures, investigate, or draw conclusions through human reasoning. But a council and a Pontiff proceed by human powers, follow reason, and distinguish truth from falsehood by argument. We must not think that the Supreme Pontiff has the power possessed by the apostles, prophets, and evangelists, by which he could immediately recognize which side of a question of faith was true or false whenever any such question was put before him. He must first take counsel and weigh the arguments on both sides; only then does God’s help follow, which is necessary to keep the Supreme Pontiff in the true faith. In councils too, the fathers cannot pronounce judgment at once, as though by authority alone and without discussion. Rather, after the matter has first been treated in meetings and disputations, and prayers have first been poured out to God, the question is finally settled by the council without error, through the combined help and favor of God and the diligence and effort of human beings. When the apostles and elders had gathered in the synod at Jerusalem, it was not immediately revealed what they should decide in the case of faith. Rather, as Luke says, there was first a great inquiry. At the Council of Nicaea too, as Rufinus reports, the meeting was held each day; the fathers did not decide so great a matter easily or rashly. Arius was frequently summoned before the council, and his claims were examined in sustained discussion; what should be held or decided against them was considered with the greatest care. Thus, after a long and thorough discussion, Arius was condemned by the firmest judgment of all. From this ^{1 2}

it is clear that the Holy Spirit assists the fathers not when they are asleep and drowsy, but when they diligently seek the truth of the matter under discussion by human means and reasoning. The second difference is that, as we explained at greater length in the first place, the Spirit of God is present to sacred writers in every matter. Even in the smallest matters? Yes. But the Spirit of truth is not present to the fathers of a synod in everything, only in matters necessary for salvation. What is said in the synod of Athanasius—that soul and body together make one human being—need not be true, even though the Council of Nicaea agreed with Athanasius. For whether those parts together constitute a human being is a question of philosophy, not of faith; it is therefore a question for philosophers, not for the faithful. A provincial synod under Stephen VII mistakenly decreed that all the ordinations performed by Bonosus were invalid; this was rejected at the Roman synod under John IX. That was a judgment about historical events, not a decree of religion and faith. Such are the matters dealt with in Clement. Pastoralis, de sent. et re iudic. They do not concern faith and religion. Therefore, even if Clement had erred, as Bucer contends, the authority of the council would not thereby have been weakened. Although that Clementine belongs to Clement, it does not belong to the council. The case is the same for Pontiffs and councils. Sixtus IV taught that St. Catherine of Siena did not bear the stigmata, but someone was not lacking who judged otherwise. Neither Pontiff’s judgment concerns the Church of Christ; we can approve or disapprove of either without endangering the faith. But let fools go, who quarrel over trifles. We offer these examples so that the reader may understand that sacred authors are to be treated differently from the fathers of councils: the former speak the truth in every matter, whereas the latter can err in small matters. What Christ promised his Church—that the Spirit would teach it all truth—is to be referred to the truth of faith. Augustine teaches this explicitly both in his commentariis super Ioannem and in the actis contra Foelicem, book 2. Christ did not pray that Peter would not lack knowledge and truth in philosophy or in historical matters, but that he would not lack faith. Perhaps someone will say: “Are not the decrees of the Council of Jerusalem therefore Sacred Scripture? For there was a great inquiry, yet it has been said that it is not fitting for the authors of Sacred Scripture to investigate and reason as human beings do.” Someone may also say: “If the Supreme Pontiff and councils can err when they fail to be diligent, but we do not know whether the Supreme Pontiff and the council fathers took the care and pains needed for the inquiry to proceed by a proper method, then we will not know whether they erred. Thus whatever they define will be uncertain.” The first scruple is more easily removed. Pilate’s words belong to the Canon not because Pilate spoke them but because the Evangelist wrote them. In the same way, the definition of the Council of Jerusalem is Sacred Scripture because Luke joined it to the other parts of his history. Conversely, Peter’s words reported by Clement are not part of the Canon, because Clement was not a sacred writer. This is a sound reason why the Apostolic Canons, said to have been written by Clement, are not included among the canonical books—even though Damascenus, lib. 4, cap. 18, seems to include them in his catalogue of sacred books, and Epiphanius calls the Apostolic Constitutions divine Scripture in the final heresy he refutes. He is undoubtedly speaking of constitutions that are not written in the sacred books. It is one thing when truth itself is refined in a disputation and another when speech is adapted casually and in passing to some common opinion. ³

Therefore, like wise men, we use ecclesiastical language here and call only those books sacred and canonical that were written at the Spirit’s prompting. The other scruple took such deep root in Sylvester’s mind that he could scarcely drive it out. He would have done better to conceal it than to spur others with the scruple that troubled him. Some also say openly that whenever the Roman Pontiff has erred in a definition of faith, this could have happened because he did not exercise as much diligence as he ought before delivering his judgment: either he did not examine the matter fully or did not consult the people he should have. If you object that the Apostolic See cannot err in faith, they admit this but say that the name “Apostolic See” signifies not only the Supreme Pontiff but also the Pontiff acting in matters that pertain to his office—that is, proceeding not on his own but with the counsel of good and learned men. On this view, the judgments of the Apostolic See are not those issued secretly, maliciously, and without due consideration by the Roman bishop alone, or even with a few supporters, but those he issues after the matter has first been fully examined on the counsel of many wise men. The same reasons apply, as I said just above, when speaking about councils. We must not think that only the Supreme Pontiff errs when he is asleep and speaks the truth when awake, while the fathers always walk rightly whether asleep or awake, seeing in the dark with their eyes shut, as the saying goes. Believe me, it is common to all judges of the Church that if they issue decrees rashly and without judgment, as if driven by a sudden gust of wind, they produce nothing that can be considered solid, weighty, or certain. Only what is issued with judgment, deliberation, and constancy ought to be held in the Church as weighty and certain. Therefore, those who call into question the diligence of Pontiffs or councils when settling a case of faith must undermine all judgments of Pontiffs and councils. We shall uproot that later scruple from the mind in another way. God orders all things gently, and at the same time provides both the end and the means needed to attain the end. If he promised someone eternal life, he would at once also grant him the grace of good works by which he would attain that life. As it is said in Romans, chapter 8: “Those whom he glorified, he also justified and called.” In the same way, when he promised the Church firmness in faith, he cannot fail to grant it prayers and the other helps by which that firmness is preserved. Nor can we doubt that what happens in natural things also happens in supernatural things: whoever gives the end also gives what leads to the end. Since this is a maxim of philosophers and is also often repeated by theologians, I beg those more fluent in Latin to allow me sometimes to speak in our own words along with them. Although we usually discuss matters more elegantly than they do, we sometimes wish to express in the same words the opinions we have received from the scholastics, lest we seem to have departed from the school by entirely changing our manner of speaking. Thus, when the Pontiff and council pronounce on faith, each does what lies within its power, and the case is settled if anyone among us thinks otherwise. For if Christ had said to Peter, “I have prayed for you, that your charity may not fail,” we would certainly understand that he had obtained for him the diligence, care, vigilance, prayers, and other suitable helps necessary to preserve charity. So when he said, “I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail,” we undoubtedly understand that he obtained this from his Father: that all the things

should be present to Peter for a sound judgment on a question of faith, whether they were to be expected from God or from human beings. If God promised an abundant harvest in the coming year, what could be more foolish than to doubt whether people would sow seed in the earth? If they sow, they will surely reap; if they do not sow, they will not reap. From God’s promise we infer not only favorable changes in the weather, by which all that the earth produces grows more abundantly, but also the farmers’ care, labor, and diligence. For the promised abundance of crops will not come unless people plow, sow, and work. From these points it is easy to understand that, when Christ promised the apostles and their successors the Spirit of truth for judgments of faith, nothing necessary for settling disputes of faith would be lacking to them. If we once allow heretics the freedom to question whether the Church’s judges showed the diligence and care needed for the question to be settled by a proper method, who could be so blind as not to see that all judgments of Pontiffs and councils would immediately be undermined? Further, even if that matter were called into question and could not be supported by certain arguments, theologians have nevertheless established and defined that councils, whatever their condition, cannot err in faith if they have been confirmed by the Supreme Pontiff. In my judgment, however, it is absurd to reach any end except by suitable means. I will therefore never admit that either a Pontiff or a council omitted any diligence necessary for deciding questions of faith. Any other private individual can fail to make the diligent effort needed to investigate the truth; even if he has made the effort and conducted himself with integrity in the matter, he may still err, although his error is without fault. But even a blameless error is far removed from the Church of God, as we established in the previous book. This is very strong evidence that neither the Pontiff nor councils have omitted anything necessary in deliberation. Suppose, then, that something necessary was omitted. I ask whether the faithful must obey those who judged a question of faith until their negligence becomes known to the Church. “They must obey,” they say. Then while the judges err, the Church too will err. “The Church will err at that time without fault of its own,” you say. I agree. But, as was said, we must not admit even this kind of error in the Church of God. Moreover, if we once doubt the diligence of the judges, a new examination and judgment will always be demanded to assess whether due diligence was exercised. Let us therefore grant that the judges appointed by God in the Church cannot lack any of the things necessary for a right and true judgment. With these matters explained, it is easy to return to the head of this third question and see that neither the decrees of Pontiffs nor those of councils are parts of Sacred Scripture, contrary to what was objected in the first argument. Let us now address what was said in the second argument, where Gratian did not understand Augustine’s meaning. Perhaps some corrupt manuscript gave rise to his error. Augustine’s true reading is this: “In the canonical Scriptures, let him follow as much as possible the authority of the Catholic churches. Among these churches, of course, are those that merited being apostolic sees or receiving letters from the apostles.” The meaning is this: in judging canonical books, we must first see what the Catholic churches think. Among the Catholic churches, however, the testimony of those that either were apostolic sees, such as Jerusalem, or received a letter from the apostles, such as Corinth and Galatia, must be preferred.

Augustine was therefore not speaking about the decretal letters of Pontiffs, as Gratian wrongly supposed. Some other very diligent men before us noticed this as well. The third argument can be answered as follows. Papal laws are sometimes called sacred to distinguish them from the laws of princes. It was in this sense that Innocent called them Sacred Scripture. Perhaps the canon law is called sacred, while civil law is human, as the jurists Hostien., Andreas, Siculus, Cardinal, Barba, and others noted in de iurament. calum., cap. I, as did the Gloss on cap. Ex diligenti, de Simonia. Indeed, Innocent IV in cap. Cum de diversis, de privil. In 6 plainly calls canon law divine and civil law human. Justinian also calls canon law sacred and divine in Authen. ut clerici apud proprios episcopos, cap. Si vero. Perhaps some half-learned person who did not understand this replaced the final word “canonical” with “Greek” in 20 dist. cap. De quibus, where the correct reading was “turn to the divine canonical writings.” Nothing could have been further from Innocent’s purpose in that chapter than to direct judges to Greek copies of the Bible when judging ecclesiastical cases. Why not Hebrew copies as well? Nor is it true that Innocent omitted canonical writings when deciding cases in the Church. Indeed, after divine Scripture he placed them in second place, even before the writings of the saints. This was Gratian’s particular purpose in that distinction. It is therefore no wonder if the canons are sometimes called sacred and divine Scripture. But we speak of Sacred Scripture in a different sense. The testimony cited by Innocent is in fact Augustine’s, concerning the Apostle’s words: “It is an injury to pray for a martyr, whose prayers we ought to commend ourselves to.” The final argument is refuted very easily. Two kinds of conclusions can be defined in a council. One kind belongs properly to the theological discipline, because the conclusions are drawn either from two principles accepted by faith or from one principle accepted by faith and another known by the light of nature. The second kind consists of conclusions that the Holy Spirit himself revealed to the apostles, evangelists, or prophets, but which a synod declares because their meaning was not equally clear. Conclusions of the first kind concern faith secondarily and, so to speak, mediately. Therefore, as we shall explain at length in its proper place, whoever denies them is a heretic because by consequence he denies the principle from which they are derived. Conclusions of the second kind, however, concern faith properly and in themselves; we must not expect new ones from Pontiffs or councils. We assert again and again that the Church has now, and will have in the future, no other Scriptures than those of the peoples and leaders who were in it. They are not, I say, to come in the future; they already existed. For everything that the Father entrusted to his only-begotten Son to reveal to the Church was first revealed by the Son himself to the apostles, and then he commanded them to make it known. “I have called you friends,” he says, “because I have made known to you everything I heard from my Father.” Ioannis 15. Again: “He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance everything I have said to you.” Ioann. 14. And again: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will teach you all truth.” Ioann. 16. These were the ministers of the New Testament who contemplated the Lord’s glory with unveiled face, as Secunda ad Corinthios tertio says. They were ministers of the word, as Luke testifies in the first chapter of his Gospel. They were also told: “Teach all nations to observe everything that I have commanded you,” Matthaei ultimo.

The apostles therefore received the whole truth of faith either from Christ while he lived on earth or later from the Holy Spirit, and according to the prescribed rule they handed it on to the Church either in writing or by word of mouth. This is why Irenaeus, Jerome, and Augustine, when arguing against heretics, always try to see whether their new doctrines agree with ancient tradition and faith. If heretics produce new Scriptures or pretend to be apostles or prophets, they are immediately rejected because of their novelty. We therefore recognize no sacred authors after the apostles and those approved by the apostles. But whether it is the Supreme Pontiff or councils, they first judge the true meaning and interpretation of Scripture, as at the Council of Trent, sess. tertia. It would surely be absurd for the Church to have authority to distinguish God’s words from human words but not to distinguish God’s meaning from human meaning. Let us grant this to councils above all. Next, councils investigate the true and legitimate traditions of Christ and the apostles by method and reason. They also determine through a clear sequence and connection which conclusions agree with these traditions and which conflict with them. In settling such matters, they consult not only Sacred Scripture but also the practices of the apostles, earlier councils, the decrees of Supreme Pontiffs, the writings of the ancient saints, the doctrines of scholastic theologians, and sound philosophical reasoning. In short, they bring the matter under discussion to bear on those loci with which this book of ours is concerned. For they cannot draw arguments from other sources to resolve questions of faith or theology. To seek new revelations and sacred Scriptures is characteristic of the Jews, who still await new prophets. Question 4. Another very difficult question arises from what we have said: If not everything in councils is certain—for the Holy Spirit is not present at each council—by what method and means shall we discover which decrees of councils are certain in faith? First, in Clement. unic. De summa Trinitate, et fide catholica, the opinion that grace and virtues are infused in baptism is chosen as more probable. By the same reasoning, then, we could say of other decrees of councils that probable opinions are chosen, not established facts. Further, in cap. Firmiter, de summa Trinitate et fide catholica, the fathers of the Lateran Council say: “We firmly believe and simply confess that there is one sole and true God, creator of all things visible and invisible, spiritual and bodily, who at the beginning of time created both creatures from nothing: the spiritual and the bodily, that is, the angelic and the earthly.” But it is not contrary to faith that angels were created before the bodily world. Gregory Nazianzen asserts this in his first oration on the Nativity of the Lord; so do Basil (exam. congressione prima), Damascenus (2 lib. cap. 3), Ambrose (exam. lib. 1, cap. 5), Jerome (in commentariis super primum caput epistolae ad Titum), and Cassian (Collatione 8. cap. 7). Hence neither Augustine (lib. De Civit. Dei, 11, cap. 32) nor St. Thomas (I p. q. 61, art. 3) thought this opinion contrary to faith. Thomas had seen that Lateran Council and had even written a commentary on that very chapter. Therefore neither the definitions nor confessions of faith of councils are certain; even when the fathers say they firmly profess and believe something, they define nothing that the faithful are bound to follow. First, we must answer this question by saying that it is not enough for the judgments of councils and Pontiffs to be believed firm merely because the whole Church publicly celebrates them in the divine office. For the histories that recount the deeds of martyrs and confessors, although they are read by the Supreme

have been approved by the Supreme Pontiff or a council, they are decrees of faith, just as even the little works of ecclesiastical teachers approved by the synod of Pope Gelasius, 15 dist., cap. Sancta Romana, are not. We also grant this, and willingly: it is not immediately to be believed as a dogma of faith merely because something is contained in the volume of Canon Law. For, as we will show more clearly in libro huic proximo, some things are found in decretal epistles that are not decrees of the Catholic faith. I was just demonstrating this explicitly from the one Clementina, De summa Trinitate. We should not think this happened only in this Clementina; rather, we are warned that something similar may happen in other places too. This is especially so when judges use words of opinion, or when their answers concern not the whole universal Church but particular Churches and bishops. For they are to be understood as pronouncing on faith only when the judgment concerns all the faithful of Christ and binds everyone. The certainty of faith was established and granted by God’s judges not for particular Churches, each of which can err, but for the universal Church, which cannot err. Thus, when the teaching of Supreme Pontiffs and councils is proposed to the whole Church and proposed with an obligation to believe it, then the judgment concerns a matter of faith. But we must examine more carefully both the nature of the matters judged and the propriety and force of the words. Ecclesiastical teaching, which we are also bound to embrace, does not have one uniform degree, and not all decrees of judgments are to be held in the same place. Since we will discuss this at length in libro duodecimo, it is not worth our while to speak of it now. We say that not everything contained in the volumes of law or councils is a judgment of Christian teaching; nor, in turn, are all judgments of teaching censures of faith. Many things concern the sound discipline of the Church but are not decrees of faith. “Is there, then,” someone may say, “some mark by which judgments of councils on faith can be recognized?” Certainly. The first and most evident is when those who assert the contrary are judged heretics. You have examples of this in cap. Damnamus, De summa Trinitate, and cap. unico, De summa Trinitate, in 6; and in Clement. unic. De summa Trinitate, cap. 2. A second mark is when a synod prescribes its decrees in this form: “If anyone holds this or that, let him be anathema.” There are many such decrees in concilio Toletano primo and in synodo Tridentino. A third is when a sentence of excommunication is imposed by the law itself on those who speak against them. An example is De haereticis, cap. Cum Christus, and cap. Ad abolendam. In concilio tamen Tridentino, sess. habita 11 Octobris, anni 1551, it was defined concerning the sacrament of the Eucharist that sacramental confession must precede the Eucharist if the conscience is burdened by mortal sin. Immediately afterward the synod says: “If anyone presumes to teach, preach, or stubbornly assert the contrary, or even publicly defend it in disputation, let him thereby be excommunicated.” But this provision was made because of the danger; for the contrary opinion was harmful. Therefore, that excommunication chiefly concerns public teaching. For the opinion of Cajetan was not condemned as heretical, and we are witnesses, having been present at the council, while the very context shows it. For canon 11, the last one, reads as follows: “If anyone says that faith alone is sufficient preparation for receiving the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist, let him be anathema.” Immediately, in a changed form of speech, these words are added: “And lest so great a sacrament …” Here you see ⁴

that no anathema is pronounced against Cajetan’s opinion, but that it is rejected because it was not only false but also harmful; and, because of the danger, public preaching and disputation in particular are forbidden. A fourth mark is when something is said, expressly and properly, to be firmly believed by the faithful or accepted as a dogma of the Catholic faith, or when something is said in similar terms to be contrary to the Gospel or the teaching of the apostles. I say “said,” not on the basis of opinion, but by a certain and firm decree. For the opinion of Durandus is indeed reproved in cap. Gaudeamus, De divortiis. But the one who said, “This seems truly absurd and hostile to the Christian faith,” did not wish to condemn him as a heretic. For the word “seems” weakens the certainty of the judgment. Moreover, those things introduced in the decrees of councils or pontiffs to explain something, answer an objection, or merely by the way and in passing, apart from the principal purpose—the matter chiefly at issue—do not pertain to faith; that is, they are not judgments of the Catholic faith. Let us give an example of something stated about one matter that can be applied to many. What is said in cap. Firmiter, De summa Trinitate, that angels are incorporeal is not a decree of faith, since after that decretal some philosophers and theologians falsely asserted the contrary without the mark of heresy. But the synod added “corporeal and incorporeal” to explain what the Catholic faith holds, namely, that God is the creator of all visible and invisible things. It is clear that these words were added to explain, not define. And just as the council took as true and highly probable that, since angels are invisible, they are also incorporeal, so perhaps it also accepted the claim that angels and the world were created at the same time. For this was not the occasion to condemn the opinion of Gregory Nazianzen and those who follow him. I am not, however, the one who wishes to defend that opinion at present. For I do not doubt that at this time it is defended rashly and inconsiderately—to say nothing further. But my point, which I think worth doing for theologians, is that not everything asserted absolutely and simply in councils is a decree of faith. If necessary, I could readily produce many examples of this, but I do not want to be long in explaining each one. That is enough about the fourth question. Question 5. The final question troubles the mind: can councils err in morals? If someone says that they can, he has first of all this argument: the Lord prayed only for Peter, that his faith might not fail; therefore the Church can err in other matters that do not concern faith but morals. Second, Catholics believe with certain faith nothing that has not been revealed by God to the Church; therefore whatever a synod defines, if it concerns morals rather than faith, need not be believed with certain faith. Further, we can deny the Church’s faith in the canonization of saints, as our people call it, without danger to the faith. It is established, however, that this matter concerns morals; therefore the Church can err in a judgment of morals. This is confirmed by the testimony of Thomas and Antoninus, who do not say that the Church cannot err in this kind of matter with certainty and firmness, but that it is to be believed piously. The reason confirms that it can err absolutely: in these kinds of judgments the Church relies on the testimonies of people who can both deceive and be deceived. Finally, if a council, when judging a dogma of theology, relied not on certain and established arguments but on probable ones, it certainly would not make the faith

of that dogma indubitable. Therefore the Supreme Pontiff will have an ambiguous faith, since, when he enrolls any person among the saints, he relies on uncertain means and arguments. Finally, the approval of religious orders, in which various kinds of people are said to serve Christ under different institutions and rules, undoubtedly concerns morals. But it is not in doubt that some orders have been approved not only uselessly but even harmfully. For in so many orders and institutions religion has suffered such great harm that, among the other remedies for evils, devout men rightly and deservedly expected even this from a general synod: that, once a few select orders had been retained, all the rest should be abolished. Therefore, sometimes the Church’s judges make a false and imprudent judgment about morals, since at times the Church approves what it ought not to have approved. Some authors proceed by these arguments to weaken ecclesiastical authority only in judgments of morals, for they agree with us that it is firm in decrees of faith. But since some judgments of the Church about morals are undoubtedly certain, we must examine more deeply which ones they are. Every question about theological matters is of two kinds. One concerns contemplation and knowledge of things. The other concerns precepts of morals, by which the conduct of life in every respect can be regulated. There is also another division of a theological question. One kind concerns matters whose knowledge and explanation are necessary for salvation; another concerns matters whose ignorance can occur without loss of piety and salvation. For theology does not always deal with necessities; sometimes it also deals with things that seem useful, although they are not so necessary. Many things have been argued both in the preceding books and in this one against those who thought wrongly about the Church’s authority in judgments of faith; and some will also be argued in the next book. By the Church’s authority I now mean that which belongs also to general councils and the Supreme Pontiff. For this is altogether one thing, so that the judgments of the Church, councils, and the Apostolic See do not differ much, because they are connected and joined together, as we see in the human body and its head. Thus whatever was distinctive of ecclesiastical authority in decrees of faith has either been said or will be said in its proper place. What pertains to judgment about morals, which we have been discussing for some time, must now be said. First conclusion. Let the first conclusion, then, be this: the Church cannot err in the teaching of morals whose observance is necessary for salvation. Let an example be given that makes the point more broadly. Whether the faithful laity ought to receive the sacrament of the Eucharist under both species, or whether the species of bread alone suffices, is a question about matters without which salvation is impossible. Therefore, on this and other controversies of the same kind, the Church’s decree is certain. Thus, if the Church defines by a firm judgment something that must necessarily be done or avoided, it cannot err in this, just as it cannot err in faith. For God does not fail in necessities, as has often been said already; therefore, in the teaching of morals that are necessary for salvation, the Church’s judges and teachers, given by God, cannot err. This is confirmed especially by the Lord’s words to Peter: “Feed my sheep.” And Paul says that God gave pastors and teachers “for the completion of the saints, so that we may not be carried about by every wind of doctrine.” But if they could err in such morals, they would not feed

Christ’s sheep in a healthful way. For moral teaching is no less required for the saving nourishment of Christ’s sheep than the discipline of faith. The Church’s pastors, then, cannot err in these matters. Add that the Lord promised through Ioannes that the Spirit would teach the Church all truth, namely, what is necessary for attaining eternal life. But both kinds of truth are necessary, that which concerns contemplation and that which concerns action; therefore, in defining both, the Spirit teaches the Church. Further, in his first epistle ad Timotheum, cap. 3, the Apostle says: “I write these things to you so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth.” It is clear that what Paul wrote there concerns in large part the truth of morals. The Church, therefore, is the foundation not only of the truth that is seen in contemplation but also of the truth that directs action. It tells us, namely, how we ought to conduct ourselves in the house of God. Moreover, if the Church’s pastors, especially when gathered in a council, interpreted the laws and precepts of life perversely—saying, for instance, that what is necessary for salvation is unnecessary, or defining as necessary what is by no means necessary—then, since Christ said, “The scribes and Pharisees sit upon the chair of Moses; whatever they tell you, do,” and again, “He who hears you hears me,” the Church, in following its erring pastors according to what was prescribed to it, would have Christ himself as the chief author of this error. Further, if the evangelical law was not imperfect and incomplete, as indeed it was not, it fully prescribed the morals that are necessary for salvation. For a lawgiver is imperfect unless he prescribes those things without which the end of the commonwealth cannot be maintained. But the Spirit of truth suggests to the apostles and their successors whatever Christ told us; therefore, they cannot err in the precepts of life that are necessary. Again, in Matthaei 16, the Lord says to Peter: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” The kingdom of heaven is shut by ignorance of both kinds, in faith and in morals; therefore, by Christ’s authority the Church can open both questions and loosen both knots, whether they concern faith or morals. For we must believe this too: “Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” But you will say that this is understood of a key that does not err. I agree. But it is one thing to discuss the private judgments of pastors, which we may sometimes disregard; it is another to discuss the public judgments of the Church, which we embrace just as we do the Church’s decrees. Indeed, when a pontiff, whoever he may be, privately does something and loosens or binds, he can err through ignorance or even malice and abuse the power of the keys. But when the judgments are public and common to the whole Church, and concern matters necessary for salvation, the common judges of the whole Church, such as the fathers of a council, cannot err, lest through such an error all the Christian people be left ignorant of the truth necessary for ordering their lives. Further, Concilium Constantiense, sess. 13, condemns as heretics those who say that the Church errs in its custom of administering the Eucharist to the people under only one species. And Martinus quintus, in the letters by which he approved the council, defines that those who condemn this institution of the Church are to be restrained as heretics or as favoring heresy. Therefore, the Church does not err in judgments of this kind about morals, and consequently neither do councils confirmed by the authority of the Supreme Pontiff.

Second conclusion. A further consequence of this conclusion seems to be that, when the Church gives laws to the whole people on a serious matter that is especially conducive to forming Christian conduct, it cannot command anything contrary either to the Gospel or to natural reason. I therefore do not approve all the Church’s laws here, nor commend every penalty, censure, excommunication, suspension, irregularity, or interdict. I know that some such laws are wanting, if nothing else, in prudence and measure. What I say, then, is that the commands, decrees, and sanctions of the Supreme Pontiffs and councils will be approved by us all if they are necessary for forming the conduct of the faithful. For if, as we asserted just now from the Council of Constance, the Church’s custom cannot oppose the Gospel, neither can the Church’s law oppose it. Further, the Church cannot define as a vice what is honorable, or say that what is shameful is honorable; therefore neither can it approve by a law of its own anything hostile to the Gospel or to reason. For if the Church, either by an express judgment or by a law enacted, approved shameful things or condemned honorable ones, this error would bring pestilence and ruin not only to the faithful but would also in a certain way oppose the faith, which approves every virtue and condemns all vices. These sayings also apply: “Whatever they tell you, do,” and “He who hears you hears me.” By them we are commanded to obey the Church’s laws. Thus, if she errs, Christ is the author of our error. Anyone who sees this would act not merely ignorantly but impiously by claiming that the Church errs in teaching morals, especially if the conduct and precepts of life are necessary for salvation. The same reasoning that establishes this about the Church establishes it about a council, in which the authority of the universal Church resides. Accordingly, just as a council cannot propose falsehoods for the people to believe, so it cannot propose evils for them to do. I mean a proposal made by a firm and certain decree, obliging all to believe and act under eternal punishment. But I would not dare to decide whether it is heretical to assert that some custom of the Church is bad or one of her laws unjust. For although the Council of Constance, sess. 13, decreed that those were to be condemned as heretics who asserted that the Church erred in the custom of communicating the people under one species alone, it made this decree at a time when it was without a head. Caietanus, in opusculo de auctoritate Pap. et constit. and in apolog. cap. 20 et 21, and Turrecremata likewise, 3 lib. cap. 32, contend that a council without a head has no certain authority in issuing decrees of faith. Though they try to persuade us with many arguments, this one carries the greatest weight with me: just as God does not fail in what is necessary, so he does not abound in what is superfluous. Since the Church needs authority to depose a heretical Pontiff, elect one, or decide who is Catholic in cases where it may lawfully convene a council without a head, there is no reason to grant an imperfect council greater power. The remaining matters can be settled by a full council, either once a Catholic Pontiff who was lacking has been elected, or once it has been determined with certainty who the true Pontiff is when there was doubt among several. Add that, as said above, the council’s dogmas are not firm unless confirmed by the Roman Pontiff. When, therefore, a council is without a head, it does not have certainty in its dogmas. Moreover, Martinus quintus, in the letters by which he approves the council, does not approve that article without qualification, but only defines that those who taught that the Church errs in this custom

were either heretics or to be condemned as people who favor heresy. What Martinus, presiding over the council, did not dare condemn in the name of heresy, I do not dare, nor ought I, to accuse under a harsher censure. If such restraint was shown regarding a custom necessary for salvation, as that one seems to have been in the controversy at the Council of Constance, how much more restrained should we be in condemning other errors that oppose no Church custom necessary for salvation? Lutherans reject the custom of carrying the Sacrament of the Eucharist through public streets in a solemn procession. If you look to the origin and starting point of their error, it will seem heretical to you. For they mock this custom of carrying the Sacrament because they deny Christ’s true presence in the Sacrament. But if you consider the error in itself, it has the flavor of heresy; it is rash and impudent (for this error deserves censure on many counts), yet it is not heresy, since even if the Church were mistaken in this custom, her authority in more serious matters would not thereby be endangered. This was why the Council of Trent cautiously framed Canon 6 on the Sacrament of the Eucharist in these words: “If anyone says that Christ in the holy Sacrament of the Eucharist is not to be adored with the worship of latria, even outwardly, and therefore is neither to be venerated with a special festive celebration nor solemnly carried in processions according to the Church’s praiseworthy custom, let him be anathema.” The synod does not simply strike with anathema those who criticize that rite of the Church, but those who do so for this reason: they do not admit Christ’s bodily presence in the Eucharist and consequently do not admit his adoration and worship at all. Perhaps this same reason moved Martinus quintus to condemn those who criticized the Church’s custom of giving the Eucharist to the people under one species, not as heretics but as people who favor heresy. Since in former times the people received the Sacrament of the Eucharist under both species, and this was confirmed by apostolic authority and practice, it was not heretical to question whether that true custom of the Church ought to be preferred to the new one. But because the Wicleffistae asserted that the Church erred on the ground that they considered it necessary for the people’s salvation to receive both species of the Sacrament, twisting the Lord’s words, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood…” in that direction, Martinus quintus very wisely said that criticizing the Church’s new custom did not constitute heresy, but favored heresy. There is also this weighty argument for not branding errors of this sort as heresy: as we shall say later, it is not heretical to believe that the Church can err in enrolling people among the saints. Yet the Church sometimes commands that saints whom it honors in this way be worshiped with a special feast day and cult. It is therefore not heresy to assert that the Church errs in a law and custom concerning the worship of one saint or another. We must understand, however, that some customs of the Church were handed down to it by Christ and the Apostles; anyone who said that the Church errs in these would make Christ and the Apostles the authors of its error. For this reason he is judged a heretic, as were the Iconomachi, who asserted that the Church erred in the veneration and worship of images. Other customs, however, were introduced after the Apostles; even if the Church erred in these, the faith would not thereby be endangered. One can therefore hold without risk of heresy that the Church can err in some law and custom. So much for the second conclusion. Let there be a third conclusion. Third conclusion. In matters of conduct that are not common to the whole Church but concern private persons or churches, the Church can err through ignorance—not only, I say, in judging events that have occurred, but also in private precepts and laws themselves.

For when someone who has secretly taken one wife publicly marries another, the Church commands him to leave the first and take the second. In this matter it is undoubtedly mistaken and commands a man to do what is contrary to reason and the Gospel. Innocentius tertius gave the true and adequate reason for this conclusion in cap. A nobis, de sentent. excom., in these words: “The judgment of God always rests on truth, which neither deceives nor is deceived; the judgment of the Church, however, sometimes follows an opinion that often deceives and is deceived. Hence it sometimes happens that one who is bound before God is released before the Church, and one who is free before God is bound by an ecclesiastical sentence.” Thus far Innocentius. These matters seem clear and should be judged briefly and without dispute. We do not set them out in order to raise questions but to explain them. At this point, therefore, it is not so much the conclusion as its reason that must be considered. From this it is clear—and this deserves the closest attention—that the Church’s decrees cannot be certain and firm unless they rest on certain and firm principles and foundations. Accordingly, if even one of the things on which the Church’s judgment depends is uncertain, the Church’s decree cannot be certain, whether the question is speculative or practical, as our writers customarily say. For, as the proverb of the dialecticians has it, a conclusion follows the weaker part; if any one of its principles is unsound, it must also be weakened on that side. From this it is easy to understand that the Church’s judgments which proceed from uncertain human testimony are too weak to establish a certain and verified belief. Such is the judgment by which it decides that someone should be inscribed in the catalogue of saints. Yet it is not permitted to call such decrees into question with impunity. Indeed, it is rash and irreligious to withhold credence from the Church in consecrating saints. As Innocentius teaches in cap. Cum Marthae, de celeb. Miss., “He does an injury to a martyr who prays for a martyr”; therefore he does an injury, and much more so, who rejects someone inscribed in the catalogue of martyrs and numbered among the saints. Since he will do this rashly and thoughtlessly, he will rightly be punished by the Church. Moreover, if even one decree of this kind is called into question, we could question without blame the holiness of Hieronymus, Ambrosius, Augustinus, and the rest, and even assert that they were condemned with the demons. In this way you could tear them down with curses and harass them with insults, all of which faithful ears recoil from. If the Church errs in placing just men in the catalogue of saints, it would surely not be very absurd for those who do so to reject the worship of all saints whom the Church consecrated after Clemens. What could be said that is more foolish or impudent? It also matters greatly to the Church’s common conduct to know whom you ought to worship religiously. Therefore, if the Church erred about them, it would also be seriously mistaken in matters of conduct. And if the Church were to enact a law of abstinence contrary either to reason or to the Gospel, it would certainly err shamefully; so it would also err shamefully in its teaching on conduct if it enacted a law about worshiping a saint whom, if he is not a saint, it is contrary to both reason and the Gospel to worship. To prevent such a great error in the Church, we must believe that God provides in a special way that the Church, whatever human testimony it follows, does not err in the canonization of saints. Ample evidence of this very special providence is that belief based on human witnesses, once accepted in such judgments, has never been undermined—something that often happens in civil cases.

Even if these points individually perhaps do not move us, all of them connected and joined together must surely do so, so that we regard those who detract from the Church’s credibility in these matters as not indeed heretics, but rash, imprudent, and irreligious. Once these matters have been set out, the first, second, and third arguments are easily refuted. The questions that can be disputed concerning the last one will be explained at another time and for another purpose, if we have the opportunity. For now, it can be said briefly that those who rashly and indiscriminately defend every judgment of the Supreme Pontiff on any matter weaken the authority of the Apostolic See rather than support it; they overthrow it rather than strengthen it. To pass over what was explained a little earlier in this chapter, what, then, will a man accomplish in arguing against heretics if they see that he takes up the defense of pontifical authority not by judgment but by inclination, and does not act so that the force of his reasoning may bring truth and light to bear, but instead turns himself toward another’s opinion and will? Peter does not need our falsehood or our flattery. Whether to approve or refute religious orders depends not only on knowledge but also on prudence, and therefore does not belong among the matters in which the Supreme Pontiff cannot err. Even at the Lateran Council it was already observed that the excessive number of religious orders, which we now see, greatly harms the Church of Christ. The Council of Lyon also acknowledges that the importunate eagerness of petitioners extorted confirmation of certain orders contrary to the synod’s decree. It therefore decreed that some orders, even though approved by the Apostolic See, should be abolished as harmful or useless to the Church, and that no one thereafter should be admitted to profess them. Celestinus quintus confirmed the state and way of life of the fratricelli by his privilege; but Ioannes 22 explicitly declared that this privilege of confirmation was invalid, because Bonifacius, for certain rational reasons, had entirely deprived of force what Celestinus had granted. Paulus tertius is likewise said to have approved by his letters the order founded in Italy by frater Baptista Cremensis; but recently that order was rejected by a public edict of the Venetians, and the teaching of Baptista, to which the members of that order adhered, was condemned at Rome. The argument of those who infer from privileges of this kind—readily granted, or rather extorted, in these times—that new religious orders should be welcomed as if they had fallen from heaven is therefore weak, including orders that have no rule among those approved and profess none of their own. Privileges of this kind are not certain judgments of the Apostolic See that bind all the faithful. It is enough if they have the authority of decretal letters. Some of these, as is known, were later rejected with better judgment, since they arose not from a firm decree but from the opinions of Pontiffs. Before the time of divus Thomas, new orders were admitted so restrictively and with such difficulty that this grave and august judgment could be taken as probable evidence of prudent counsel. In our own age, however, so many religious orders have been confirmed by Pontiffs that anyone who tries to defend them all as useful or necessary to the Church may rightly and on the strongest grounds be charged with imprudence, not to say folly. But now the book on the authority of councils must be brought to a close, after first refuting the effort of those who have tried to attack and assail the firmest stronghold of this question.

IN WHICH THE ARGUMENTS OF THE FIRST CHAPTER ARE REFUTED

The first argument of the adversaries, then, is very readily refuted by what was said in the preceding book. For we showed that the name “Church” is commonly applied to its leaders and chief men, and that authority in the commonwealth resides in those whom the Holy Spirit has appointed as bishops to govern the Church of God. If the Church is the pillar and foundation of truth, the Apostles too are the Church’s foundations, as Ephes. cap. 2 and Apoc. 21 say. The strength and stability of a body also depend on its head; if you remove it, the body must fall. Bishops, however, are the heads of their peoples. Peter is the head of the Church, as we shall demonstrate in the following book. But some bishops are unlearned. Valentinus once, along with other uninformed men, criticized the ignorance of holy presbyters, failing to consider how much more valuable a devout unlearned man is than a blasphemous and shameless sophist, as Irenaeus says, lib. 5, Adversus haereses. Sabinus also made the same objection to the Council of Nicaea, as is recorded in lib. 2 hist. trip. cap. 8. The Apostles too were unlearned, yet through them God confounded the wise of this world. “Consider your calling, brothers,” he says: “not many are wise … but God chose what is foolish in the world to confound the wise.” The Church’s pastors are firm in faith and teaching not because of greater learning but because of Christ’s special care, so that the people will not waver when pastors and teachers waver, and be carried about by every wind of doctrine. But what if the holy bishops are not saints? Do they lose the power to bind and loose? Do they lack the authority to feed the flock? “The scribes and Pharisees,” he says, “have sat on Moses’ seat: whatever they tell you, do; but do not act according to their works.” Since this has been shown and made clear by many others, and especially by Augustinus—that Christ’s rays shine into the Church even through evil ministers—it would be superfluous to answer at length an argument to which we have already replied sufficiently. The next point is not difficult to answer either. The deeds of the ancient priests were indeed opposed to Christ, but the judgment of men otherwise most wicked was not only perfectly true, but also very useful to the commonwealth. Indeed, the evangelist Ioannes testifies that it was a divine oracle. After the council’s long and varied deliberation, Caiphas, who presided over it as Supreme Pontiff, gave the judgment to which almost all agreed: “It is expedient for us that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation not perish.” The evangelist immediately added: “He did not say this of himself; but, being Pontiff that year, he prophesied.” It follows that although the lives and deeds of our Pontiffs may perhaps be contrary to the Lord Iesus, their judgments, when approved by the Supreme Pontiff, will be true and useful to Christians, since they are divinely instituted for the people’s salvation. Indeed, for the reason we learned from the evangelist, they will be so through the Holy Spirit: namely, because they are Pontiffs of Christ’s Church. Enough about the second argument. The third is refuted as follows. I deny that there is no covenant of Christ with the Church’s priests. There is one first with Peter and the others who succeed him in the pontificate, as can be seen in Matth. 16 and Lucae 22. Christ also promised the Apostles, and consequently their successors,

the Spirit of truth, Ioannis 14, 15 et 16. The covenant of truth made with the Church must ultimately be referred to the Church’s pastors and teachers. God does not govern his Church differently from the world, where lower things are administered through the middle by the highest, as Dionysius cautioned. The old covenants and agreements, however, were quite unlike ours. They were temporary, as were the law and priesthood. The kingdom was taken from the Jews, the law removed, and the priesthood transferred. Priestly truth and authority began to falter shortly before Christ’s coming. For what grows old and approaches its end must weaken and become infirm. The Prophets, especially those who lived nearest to Christ’s coming, repeatedly announced to the Jewish people the ruin of the law, truth, authority, priesthood, and scepter. Anyone who refuses to refer their oracles on this matter to Christ’s Church, even in part, plainly does not understand them: “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech”; “This is our God forever and ever; he will rule us forever”; “In everlasting mercy I have had compassion on you. The Lord your Redeemer has said: As I did in the days of Noe, when I swore that the waters would no longer cover the earth, so I have sworn not to be angry with you or rebuke you. For the mountains will move and the hills tremble, but my mercy will not depart from you, and my covenant of peace will not be moved”; “I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Iuda, not according to the covenant I made with your fathers … which they broke,” and so on. A little later: “Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day … If these laws fail before me, then the seed of Israel too will cease to be a nation before me forever.” Again: “I will make with them an everlasting covenant, and I will put my fear in their hearts, so that they will not depart from me.” Again: “I will strike a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant for them.” The New Testament has similar passages: “He will reign over the house of Iacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end”; “Behold, I am with you all days, until the consummation of the age”; “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, who will remain with you forever, the Spirit of truth”; “Upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it”; “This is the blood of the new and eternal covenant.” The Prophets’ general rebukes and threats should therefore be referred above all to the time of the Lord’s Passion; Hieronymus himself attests this more than once. What, then, is the point of taking everything said against the ancient priests and turning it against ours? Those things happened to them as figures, but were written for our benefit. Thus the things the Prophets criticized in that people also concern us, while preserving the distinction between synagogue and Church: the former was temporary, the latter is perpetual. It is established that the Church cannot exist in any way without law and teaching, without a priest and teacher, without Christ and the Spirit of truth. Since this has been sufficiently explained elsewhere, it need not be repeated here. To compare the priests of the new law with those of the old is also ignorance of Scripture, Hierem. 3 et 23; Ezech. 34; 2 ad Corinthios 3 et 4. To which of the priests of old was it ever said, “Upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell…”? And again, “I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail”? To which priests and pastors of the synagogue was the Spirit of truth promised, to remain with them forever and teach them all truth? Hieronymus therefore speaks neither of a council of priests nor of all the Church’s pastors together. He refers the Prophets’ words to individual churches and their particular Pontiffs and priests. ¹

He says nothing about the Catholic Church or its priesthood or truth. Yet someone may be troubled by what is written in Esai. 22 cap.: “I will expel you from your station and remove you from your ministry … I will call my servant Eliakim son of Helcias, clothe him in your tunic, strengthen him with your belt, and place your authority in his hands; he will be like a father to the inhabitants of Hierusalem and to the house of Iuda. I will place the key of the house of David on his shoulder; he will open and no one will shut, and he will shut and no one will open. I will fix him like a peg in a secure place, and he will become a seat of glory for his father’s house,” and so on. That this prophesies the transfer of the priesthood of the old law to the new priesthood of Christ cannot be doubted. But what follows seems contrary to our position: “The peg fixed in a secure place will be removed; it will be broken and fall, and what hung upon it will perish, for the Lord has spoken.” If Christ the Lord, fixed in the Church like a peg, is removed, and those who had previously hung upon him by faith afterward perish and fall, how can we promise the Church perpetual stability in faith? How can we also assert that Christ will always be with the Church’s pastors? Hieronymus resolves this in his commentaries by referring it to the last days, when the charity of many will grow cold and the saying will apply: “When the Son of Man comes, do you think he will find faith on earth?” As we said in the preceding book, this is not to be understood as if then there will be no Church, no faith in Christ, no mystical body of the faithful, or no spirit of truth in that body; all of these would contradict Scripture itself. Rather, in Scriptural usage, what is least in comparison with other things is said to be nothing. The number of the faithful will therefore diminish so much in those days that Christ will seem to have been removed from the midst of the Church. Yet their teacher will not fly away from the few who remain; at that time too Christ will provide pastors and teachers, “until we all meet in the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, as a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” For we who live and remain until the coming of the Lord will meet him, and we shall be with the Lord together. The Church, then, and its form and visible character will remain until the end of the age; with it Christ and the Spirit of truth will remain, without whom it cannot exist. Hieronymus refers that prophecy of Esaias to Christ in the anagogical sense, since he had explained the historical and literal sense in the fifth book of his Commentaries. No certain argument is drawn from the anagogical sense. We should also consider that the Prophets’ rebukes are not to be applied to all the pastors and priests of their time as if none were excepted. Preachers are permitted to speak of what affects most as though it affected everyone. Thus the whole people is sometimes rebuked by Esaias as if no soundness were found in it from the sole of the foot to the top of the head. Yet the same Prophet admits that some just men were left, saying: “Unless the Lord of hosts had left us a seed,” and so on. Helias likewise attacks everyone as though he alone were left, but the divine response says to him: “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” Enough has been said about the third argument. It could also have been refuted sufficiently from the answers given in the preceding book.

To the fourth argument I answer first that the authority of councils does not rest on that testimony. In that passage Christ seems to establish nothing about Church councils, but to commend agreement in unity, which has great power in obtaining what is asked. If, because of Innocentius (20 dist. cap. De quibus), synodus 6 (actione 17), and the Council of Chalcedon in its letter to Leo, the passage is understood to concern synods, we can answer differently: just as a council is assembled in the name of a ruler when it is convened by his authority, so an ecclesiastical synod is convened in Christ’s name when it is called by Christ or his vicar. Councils held without the authority of the Roman Pontiff therefore need not have Christ in their midst. Such was the synod of Cyprian. Yet not even all just men gathered in Christ’s name, though they have Christ in their midst, always have the effect of being able to decide and uphold the truth of the question before them. But if the matter is necessary for salvation, the heavenly Father will enable them either to be approved by the one in whose name and authority they were assembled, if they speak the truth, or to be taught if they do not. That is enough for their prayers to be said to have been heard, according to the wording of the testimony in Matthaeus. Calvinus’s following calumnies are frivolous and not worth answering. I believe I have now answered the first; we answered the second in the third question of the preceding chapter, on the last argument, and the fourth in the final chapter of the third book. So much for the fourth argument. The answer to the fifth is plain from what has been said. The Council of Ariminum was assembled through the efforts of heretics against the will of Liberius Papa, as reported in historia ecclesiastica, in the letter of Damasus to the African bishops, and in 15 dist. cap. Sancta Romana, from Gelasius. The second Council of Ephesus, though convened at Leo’s initiative, was corrupted by Dioscorus through threats and favors, while the Pontiff’s legates and certain other good men opposed him. It was never confirmed anywhere; rather, it was condemned by Leo and the Council of Chalcedon. Finally, that Council of Constantinople was convened against the opposition of the Church’s Pontiff and later rejected at the seventh general synod by the 367 Fathers who assembled at Nicaea. This passage plainly refutes those who retain the council’s authority but think the Supreme Pontiff’s authority need not be retained. Why should the first Council of Constantinople, of 150 Fathers, be regarded like one of the Gospels, while the other Council of Constantinople, where there were many more bishops, is treated as nothing? The strength of councils comes from the one for whom Christ prayed that his faith might not fail, so that he could strengthen his brothers in the faith. We shall discuss these matters more carefully in the following book. Now let us dissolve the sixth argument. This raises a substantial question: whether the canons of Trullo have ecclesiastical authority. The following arguments are offered to show that they do. First, Gratianus repeatedly cited these canons under the name of the sixth synod, as is clear from 16 dist. cap. Placuit and cap. Quoniam; De consecr. dist. 1 cap. Iacobus; De consecr. dist. 2 cap. Didicimus; and 27 quaest. 1 cap. Si quis episcopus. There is no doubt that the sixth synod has the Church’s authority, as we shall show shortly. We ought therefore to approve the canons of Trullo as Catholics. This may also be supported by Innocentius III, De aetate et qualitate ordin. cap. A multis, who says that the sixth synod established this: if anyone among those who enter the clergy by right of marriage

wishes to be joined to a woman, he should do this before the order of subdiaconate. It is clear that this is canon 6 among the Trullani. Moreover, Adrianus Papa approves and receives these canons and the synod by which they were issued, as can be seen in 16 dist. cap. Sextam and De cons. dist. 3, cap. Sextam. A Catholic may not, therefore, doubt the canons of Trullo. The same point is demonstrated fourthly from the seventh synod, act. 3, where Tharasius says: “I rightly and devoutly receive the decrees issued and canons handed down by that same sixth synod.” In action. 4 Petrus episcopus said: “I have a book containing the canons of the sixth holy synod.” The most holy patriarch Tarasius added: “What is this ignorance from which so many suffer concerning these canons? It is scandalous to doubt whether they belong to a synod.” And in act. 6 Epiphanius, answering the Iconomachi on behalf of the synod, said: “After the holy sixth synod had pronounced its judgment under Constantinus on the one will of Christ, all its members later assembled unanimously, by God’s will, after four or five years and issued 102 canons.” If those canons were issued unanimously by the Fathers through God’s will, they were surely approved by the testimony of the seventh synod as well. The same seventh synod also says: “The holy Fathers of the sixth synod decreed that a meeting be held in each province once every year. We renew this canon.” Those Fathers therefore had authority to decide these matters; and if they were holy, as is said here, they usurped nothing against the Church’s rules. But if that council was convened without the Roman Pontiff’s judgment, it is clear it was convened against ecclesiastical rules. This Trullan synod therefore has solid authority, if we believe the seventh synod. In addition, the seventh synod, actione 5 et 6, Nicolaus in his letter to the Emperor Michael, and the Council of Florence, sess. 5, make use of these canons. Yet, on closer consideration, the contrary opinion has usually seemed to me more probable and weightier. I have as authorities for this view Anastasius, librarian of the Apostolic See, in the preface to the eighth synod, to which he came at the command of Adrianus secundus; he was highly proficient in both Greek and Latin, as 63 dist. cap. 2 says. The Greek historian Theofanes and Humbertus, bishop of Silva Candida and apocrisiarius of Leo IX, are of the same opinion in his booklet against the letter of Michael, patriarch of Constantinople. Gratianus cites that book as Leo IX’s book against the letter of the abbot Nicetas. Theodorus Balsamon and Mattheus monachus, both severe critics of the Latins, also report that the Latins do not receive these canons: one in his interpretation of the same canons, the other in his history of councils and illustrious men. The arguments confirming this opinion are unanswerable. First, the sixth synod, convened against the Monothelites by Agatho under the Emperor Constantinus and approved by Leo secundus, issued no canons. There is no reason why the synod convened later under the Emperor Iustinianus should be called the sixth synod. I will not quibble over the name. I assert only that neither the Roman Pontiff nor his legates attended that council. Let the bishops’ subscriptions be examined and the matter will be clear. Iustinianus subscribed first, followed by bishops who had attended the sixth synod, but they were neither equal in number nor entirely the same in name, as Theofanes and Anastasius proved; there is no subscription by the Roman Pontiff or his legates. The second argument is that Iustinianus is reported to have convened a synod at Constantinople twice, first under Sergius, Roman Pontiff, and later under Ioannes 7,

also Roman bishop. Of the first, Beda says in De natura rerum cap. 67: “Iustinianus ordered Sergius, Pontiff of the Roman Church, to be taken to Constantinople because he refused to support and sign his errant synod, which he had held at Constantinople; but later, deprived of imperial glory for the fault of his perfidy, he withdrew into exile in Pontus.” Thus far Beda. Platina likewise writes in the life of Sergius: “Iustinianus held a synod at which some things were approved that were by no means consonant with orthodox faith. Sergius’s apocrisiarius, who was then at Constantinople, foolishly confirmed the same things with his signature. But when Sergius later rejected them after they were brought to Rome, Iustinianus, enraged, sent Zacharias to drag Sergius to him in chains.” Thus far Platina. Of the later synod, the same Platina writes in the life of Ioannes 7: “Iustinianus, afflicted by the same madness as before the loss of his empire, sent two metropolitans to Rome to Pope Sergius, urging Ioannes to hold a synod so that the Westerners would affirm what the Easterners believed about homusio, with documents placed before him for signature. The Pontiff, however, sent the men back to the emperor without accomplishing their business.” So he writes. If anyone examines the words of the Council of Trullo, he will immediately recognize what sort of council it was. It says: “Since the fifth and sixth holy ecumenical synods, after fully discussing the mystery of faith, made no canons, we have therefore assembled in this imperial city and written sacred canons. For it was fitting that an ecumenical synod promulgate ecclesiastical canons.” So says the council. To begin with, since you assembled in Constantinople, tell me who summoned you. Did some Roman bishop call you to council? Certainly not. The Roman Pontiff at that time was legitimate, Catholic, and, I add, upright. To convene the Church’s primates without the will of its ecclesiastical ruler, who is true Catholic and pious, is not to seek to hold a synod but to conspire against the ruler of the Church. Just as if the leading men of a kingdom met to transact public business without the king’s permission, that would be considered a conspiracy rather than an assembly. “Iustinianus,” you say, “made them assemble.” That is a fine account, for it is recorded that he was a wicked man and an enemy of the Roman Church. What sort of synod should we expect from such a man? But let us hear the reason for the assembly: “Since the fifth and sixth holy ecumenical synods made no canons, we assembled in this imperial city and wrote sacred canons. For it was fitting that an ecumenical synod promulgate ecclesiastical canons.” This Trullan synod is thus said to supplement the two earlier ones, adding what the fifth and sixth lacked. That is why, they say, it is not properly counted as the sixth, but called πενθεκτη, that is, “Quinisext.” At first it wanted to pass itself off under the name of the sixth synod; now it is neither the sixth, nor the fifth, nor the seventh, but a certain monster, the Quinisext. Who can tolerate the charge these Fathers make against two most weighty councils, as if they were mutilated and incomplete, so that a reason for their own assembly might appear necessary? Indeed, the Church never held even one ecumenical council without a cause of heresy or schism. This Trullan synod alone was convened not to crush heresy or remove schism but to issue canons. Was there any need to summon pastors from all the Churches so that, after nearly innumerable canons—the Apostolic, Nicene, Ancyrene, Neocaesarean, Antiochene, and those of many other martyrs and confessors, which canon 2 of Trullo approves—these Fathers might issue 102 more?

How much more seriously the sixth synod acted: after completing the matter of faith for which it had assembled, it did not want the Church to leave burdened with canons. It was therefore not necessary to make canons. If you wish to tell the truth, Iustinianus had another reason for your assembly: namely, to persecute the Latins and especially the Apostolic See, and, as Platina says, to approve by your authority certain things by no means consonant with orthodox faith. For if, as you yourselves say, you assembled at Constantinople under Iustinianus, son of Constantinus, four or five years after the sixth synod had ended (calculate the dates), this is the errant synod to which Sergius refused to subscribe, according to Beda. Let us now set aside what is not extant and see why Sergius neither wished nor ought to subscribe to these 102 canons. In canon 2 you receive and confirm 85 Apostolic canons; the Apostolic See did not receive them, as Isidorus attests in 16 dist. cap. Canones. This can be shown from Leo IX, cap. Clementis, in the same distinction, and still more from Gelasius, 15 dist. cap. Sancta Romana. Why should the Apostolic See approve canon 84, which you approve, when it admits three books of Machabaeorum against the consensus of all the Churches? In the same canon 2 you approve the synod of Cyprianus on baptizing heretics, as if that rule had been established according to the custom handed down to the Africans, rather than standing in greater opposition to all God’s Churches. For Cyprianus’s decree cannot be explained in accordance with canon 95 of Trullo and canon 19 of Nicaea. Cyprianus’s canon was prescribed for all heretics in general, especially the Donatistae, who are known to have baptized in the name of the Trinity. The universal Church therefore rejected Cyprianus’s decree outright; Sergius ought not to have approved it, as the Trullan synod did. In canon 3 you call the Roman Church’s law against ordaining bigamists “the strictest right” and severe in its rigor, while you call the mildness and laxity of the See of Constantinople “kindness.” You seem to compose a middle course from the two, but it is one the Latin Church has always rejected. Sergius was therefore right to reject your synod. Canon 13 orders that subdeacons, deacons, and presbyters not be separated from their lawful wives. This custom has indeed become established among the Greeks, but the general synod wrongly prescribed it for the whole Church, contrary to Latin usage. Sergius was right, then, to reject your canons. In canon 36 you decree that the throne of Constantinople should have privileges equal to the Apostolic See and take precedence over Alexandria, Antioch, and Hierusalem. You know that holy Pope Leo once fought against this canon. Although he argued on grounds of reason, later Roman Pontiffs did not wish to oppose this ambition and vanity of Constantinople. In canon 62 you command that throughout all the days of Lent, except Saturdays and Sundays, no new offerings be consecrated, but that the sacrifice of the preconsecrated be celebrated, as among us on Good Friday. Prescribe this to your Greeks, if you wish; the Roman bishop would not approve this decree for the whole Church. Canon 55 needs no refutation from us; it is absurd in itself and plainly insults the Roman Church. Let us hear it: “Since we have learned that in the city of the Romans, during the holy days of Lent, people fast on Saturdays contrary to the ecclesiastical custom handed down, the holy synod has judged that if anyone is found fasting in the Roman

Church, if anyone is found fasting on Saturday in the Roman Church, a cleric is to be deposed and a layman separated.” Do you think any Roman Pontiff would approve this canon? Absolutely not. What of canon 67? See whether it should be approved: “Sacred Scripture commands us to abstain from blood and from what is strangled. We therefore rightly condemn those who prepare the blood of any animal by some art and then eat it.” What could be a greater ignorance of Scripture than to think that apostolic precept lasted until our own time? How much more truly did the Latins interpret the decree of Hierusalem concerning blood and strangled meat as remaining only briefly, until the customs of Jews and Gentiles blended and the Church could bury the synagogue with a measure of honor. Let Gratianus now go and attribute the Trullan canons to the sixth synod. Innocentius, however, cited Gratianus’s decree under the same name Gratianus had used; this has sometimes happened to D. Thomas and other learned men as well, who, trusting Gratianus’s diligence, cite passages in the decree under fictitious authors and titles. The same happened to Gregorius IX, who, under the title De Constitut., attributed commentaries on Proverbs to Hieronymus, though it is certain they are not Hieronymus’s. The chapter Innocentius cites is found at 32 dist. cap. Si quis eorum under the name of the sixth synod. So far is it from the truth that Adrianus received the Trullan canons that nothing could be more contrary to the truth. Those words occur in Tharasius’s letter to Adrianus, not, as Gratianus mistakenly thought, in Adrianus’s letter to Tharasius. It was Tharasius, then, who received them, not Adrianus, as is clear in actiones 2 et 3 of the seventh synod. Adrianus quotes Tharasius’s words in order to strike the Constantinopolitans with their own weapon: “If you admit,” he says, “that those canons are divine and lawful, and in canon 82 allow that the image of Christ is to be venerated, why are you now fighting against sacred images?” If the seventh synod uses one canon to prove, by the testimony of the Greeks themselves, that images are to be venerated, what argument does that provide for its approval of the remaining canons? It would be like saying Paulus approved all of Menander, Aratus, or Epimenides because he once used their testimony. Nor are the words we cited from the seventh synod the synod’s own, but those of Tharasius, Petrus episcopus, and Epiphanius. It was not the synod’s time or purpose to examine this question. The issue then was not whether the Trullan synod should be approved, but whether images should be venerated. The Fathers wisely passed over statements made in passing and outside the purpose of the council by private individuals, so that no new disputes would arise—especially since, in the principal question then under dispute, they freely used the authority of the Trullan synod. To show that we are not inventing this, Nicolaus must be cited. In a letter to the Emperor Michael, when he wished to use a certain canon of this Trullan synod to support an argument, he reasoned as follows: “The Constantinopolitan synod is known to prohibit this prudently in canon 6 of its canons. This, however, is not found among us, but is said to be held among you. Yet we, instructed by Apostolic teaching, know that we may use even sayings of pagans, much more those of Christians, even against the very people whose life we do not follow and whose erroneous thought we do not imitate. The Apostle Paulus, after all, included certain things from pagan books in his writings; does that mean we must accept everything said alongside them?” Thus far Nicolaus.

Therefore, if Innocentius, the seventh synod, Nicolaus, or the Council of Florence makes use of the authority of these canons, by approving one or another they have not approved the rest. I am entirely unaware, however, of the Fathers of the Council of Florence citing these 102 canons. For what is reported in action. 5 was drawn not from the synod held at Trullo under Iustinianus, where these canons were issued, but from the sixth ecumenical council under his father Constantinus, as is clear in action. 17 of that same sixth council. Since this synod was also held at Trullo, namely the royal palace, what is said of the latter was mistakenly believed to concern the Trullan canons. We have weakened their authority so that no one deceived by a false error might set them against true and legitimate councils. I see, however, that someone may ask why, among the other canons contrary to the Roman Church, we did not also mark canon 82, which forbade depicting Christ henceforth under the figure of a lamb. I did not wish to attack these Trullan rules with hostility. I therefore deny that canon 82, according to its true reading, forbids anything of that sort. On the contrary, it receives and commands that the venerable image in which the lamb is shown by the finger of the Forerunner be preserved in the Church from then on. This can be gathered from Adrianus’s letter to Tharasius, 7 synodo action. 2, and actione 4 of that same seventh synod. So much for the canons of Trullo and, consequently, the sixth argument. In the seventh argument we must expose Pighius’s obstinate contention: to defend an opinion he had once adopted, he continued with vain conjectures to undermine synods received by decree of the Church. Such is the power of the desire to contend, once it has flared up, and of stubborn persistence. I have no need here to fight on behalf of the sixth synod, from which the dispute arose: Agatho convened it and Leo secundus confirmed it; Beda, lib. De temp. rat. cap. 65, and the other Catholics after him approved it; the Council of Florence, sess. 5, receives it, and Eugenius quartus venerates it in the decree on the union of the Iacobini. Let others write an apology for the sixth and seventh synods, if the diligence of Franciscus Turensis has not yet satisfied them. We assert the authority of councils in doctrines of faith and decrees necessary for the faithful’s salvation; we do not assert it in judgments about historical events and their order. Nor do we spend time and effort on matters that concern us little or not at all. To the eighth argument, then, Caietanus replies in his booklet de auctoritate Papae et concil. cap. 8 that the Council of Constance was not universal and complete when it issued that decree. At the time, there was a schism in the Church under three Pontiffs: Ioannes 23, Gregorius 12, and Benedictus 13. To claim that the council was general at that time is therefore simply to revive the old schism and condemn those who followed Benedictus and Gregorius, which was and remains uncertain. If you object that Martinus quintus, in the final session, approved each and every decree on matters of faith previously issued by the Council of Constance, Caietanus replies that what properly pertains to faith, and what Martinus approved as a decree of faith, is what had been defined against heretics, as was done in sessions 8, 15, and 21. That Martinus approved only these matters is clear, first, because this approval was made at the request of the ambassador of the King of Poland, who required only that the acts of the council against heretics be confirmed. It is also clear because Martinus says that he approves all these matters as conciliariter done, and not otherwise or in any other way. For he assumed that certain things had not been done conciliariter. For, as the same Caietanus points out, in sessions 4 and 5 neither disputation nor any investigation had taken place,

nor had learned men yet been selected to discuss and treat the matters of doctrine that were to be established; the council provided for this later in sess. 6. Thus, anyone who carefully considers what was handed down in session 4 will find that it does not have the form of a decree by which the faithful are obliged or dissenters rejected. This is finally clear from the letters of Martinus quintus, which explicitly condemn the errors of Ioannes Wicleff, Ioannes Huss, and Hieronymus Pragensis, without mentioning the question of whether a council is above the Pope. Since what is commonly called into question about the Council of Constance is explained so admirably by the disciples of D. Thomas, especially Caietanus, a man of great distinction in our order, we shall say nothing about it beyond what we have already said. So much, then, for the eighth argument. As for the ninth, I am amazed at the blindness of those who wish to defend the Council of Basel, when it is clear that although it was initially assembled with Eugenius IV’s consent, it was later transferred by him first to Ferrara and then to Florence, where the Basilians’ efforts were suppressed by the Church’s public authority. The union of the Armenian and Greek peoples with the Christian community was approved not at the Council of Basel but at Florence. Even after the Basilians’ sentence of deposition, the Church regarded Eugenius as the true Pontiff and scorned Felix, whom they elected at the synod. Why, then, cling so stubbornly to the Council of Basel? Why favor heretics who claim that councils’ judgments against heretics are invalid, when the Council of Basel condemned as heretics men who are still judged Catholic? Anyone who does not understand this seems incapable of understanding anything at all. I therefore do not doubt that it is now a grave offense to take the side of the Council of Basel, since nothing could more readily revive that extinguished schism. Nicolaus V plainly holds that Felix was not the true shepherd of the Church but only a named one. He does not call it a true general council, but says it was assembled under the name of a general council. He speaks of Eugenius, however, as his predecessor of blessed memory, with greater honor. In his letters he approves only the appointments to benefices, as is customary in such language, and similar matters, which, if declared invalid, would greatly inconvenience the people whenever pastors or officials changed. Leo X also clearly defined in the Lateran Council, sess. 11, that the Council of Basel was not lawfully held. Later, when a certain sanction issued by the Council of Basel was under discussion, he said: “Just as Leo caused the things rashly done against justice and the Catholic faith at the second synod of Ephesus to be revoked afterward at the Council of Chalcedon, so we cannot in good conscience and with honor to the Church be held back from revoking so wicked a sanction. For all these things were done after the transfer of that Council of Basel by our predecessor, Pope Eugenius IV of blessed memory, by the Basel assembly—or rather, gathering—and therefore could have no force. It is also manifest, not only from the testimony of sacred Scripture, the statements of the holy Fathers, and the decrees of other Roman Pontiffs, but by the councils’ own confession, that the Roman Pontiff alone, as having authority over all councils, has full right and power to summon, transfer, and dissolve councils.” Thus far the Lateran Council. It supports what it said with many testimonies and examples, which we omit so as not to make this too long.

But the doctors of Paris appealed from the Lateran Council, and an appeal is circulated in the name of the university. I will not discuss whose it was; I assert that circulating it is not without scandal and danger to the Church. There is an anathema of Pius II against those who appeal to a future council. Even apart from the reasons Pius gave at length in his letters, it is clear that this is the greatest support for all heretics and opens an enormous door to the loss of ecclesiastical obedience and the destruction of true piety. But this is not the place or time to discuss these matters. You object that the decrees made in sess. 2 of the Council of Basel were decrees of a legitimate council, as is clear from Eugenius’s letters read in sess. 16 of the same council. We answer briefly that Eugenius did not approve the issued decrees, but only that the general Council of Basel had been lawfully continued from the time it began. Further, the council was not full in its second session, since most of the bishops were absent and very few were present. It was general in its initial convocation, then, but was not yet truly and fully general in fact. Moreover, the legate proceeded to issue those decrees without a commission, as can be gathered from Eugenius’s letter to Iulianus. Add that, since Catholics had always had a serious and difficult dispute over whether the Pope is above the council or the council above the Pope, the ambiguous point was asserted without inquiry or prior examination. It was therefore not a decree of faith, but a simple recollection of the teaching handed down at the Council of Constance. Seeing this, the parties at this synod treated the same matter differently again in sess. 33, defining that those points should henceforth be accepted as decrees of faith. But by then all the legates’ authority had been abolished and the synod transferred to Florence. It is therefore no wonder that it erred shamefully and childishly by condemning as heretics men who are now without dispute held to be faithful. The answer to the tenth argument is very easy: plenary councils not confirmed by the Supreme Pontiff can be corrected by other legitimate and approved councils. But no example at all can be produced of a plenary council confirmed by the Supreme Pontiff being corrected by a later one. Augustinus does not weaken such councils but defends them in the same book, cap. 4. Although Augustinus seems to speak not of correcting matters of faith but of laws relating to past or future events. “Plenary councils themselves,” he says, “are corrected by later ones when experience of events reveals what was hidden.” This can hardly refer to the truth of faith, which does not become known through experience of events. Thus nothing prevents some laws, in which councils can err through imprudence, from being corrected by later councils. Isidorus can also be answered from these points. We need not explain every detail. On the eleventh argument, we have often said that we defend complete councils made perfect by the authority of their head against error. Nor, if the Supreme Pontiff is a firm judge in matters of faith, are councils convened in vain. First, as we observed in the preceding chapter, the Roman Pontiff considers controversies of faith not rashly or foolishly but carefully and wisely, calling advisers, more or fewer according to the seriousness of the matter under discussion. The Fathers of a council help the Supreme Pontiff’s faith and teaching. Thus at the Council of Hierusalem, after a great inquiry, Petrus gave his judgment without supporting it with any testimony from sacred Scripture, and Iacobus approved it by adding

testimonies from the Prophets. He also added, as if on his own initiative, a most necessary law about abstaining from things sacrificed to idols, fornication, things strangled, and blood. Divine providence thus extends through the Church in such a way that the chief members, although they depend on the head, nevertheless protect and assist it. A council also makes the faith more persuasive to the people through the widely accepted testimony and judgment of many. For people accept laws proposed and enacted by the common consent of the leading men more willingly than those issued by the king alone. Beda therefore wisely observed in lib. retr. in actus apostolorum that Paulus discussed with the other Apostles the Gospel he preached to the Gentiles, carefully inquiring in council whether he rightly taught that the observance of the law had ceased: “Not because he himself,” he says, “had any doubt about this, but so that the minds of those who doubted might be strengthened by the authority of the Apostolic synod.” Gregorius, however, spoke of provincial synods, which could accomplish little in matters of faith unless strengthened by the authority of the Supreme Pontiff. Gregorius had experience of those; he had not experienced these. Although even at that time the usefulness of the Council of Nicaea had not yet been sufficiently established. The last argument is difficult to discuss. I see what theologians generally think. Yet I can truly say that the Roman council of Nicolaus spoke in a way much better suited to the understanding of the faithful. Let us first hear the council’s words, then consider whether they are true or false. “I profess,” said Berengarius, “that not only the sacrament but also the true body of Christ is handled by the priests’ hands, broken, and ground by the faithful’s teeth.” This is the form of confession prescribed to Berengarius by the synod. One part may raise a question: whether Christ’s body can truly be said to be handled and broken by reason of the sacramental species. The other part admits no doubt: Christ himself is neither handled nor broken in himself by the priests. Others may each speak according to their own judgment; at this time and in this question, however, we will follow above all Thomas Waldensis, who teaches in lib. sacramental. tit. 4, cap. 42 that such expressions are entirely true and were also used of old by the Fathers. He cites Dionysius in cap. 3, lib. de eccles. Hier., and Chrysostomus in Matth. Homil. 83. In the preceding chapter he also cited Paschasius in lib. de corpore et sanguine Christi. When the faithful see the sacramental species, they testify that they have seen Christ; when they touch them, they testify that they have touched him. This is surely a strong reason for believing it so. “You take this,” you say, “from the common people of the faithful.” I feared you would say it came from pimps. “Unlearned Christians speak this way.” That is a fine point. In a question of faith, the common understanding of the faithful does carry considerable weight. I ask you: when we dispute among ourselves about Christian faith, not philosophical doctrines, should we inquire instead what philosophers and pagans think, or what people formed by Christian teaching and faith think? Especially since even the ancient Fathers agreed with this view, as was shown just above. Further, when the sacramental species are moved—and most learned people generally agree on this—Christ too is moved, accidentally indeed, but moved nonetheless. There is therefore no obstacle to the body of Christ being seen and touched when the species are seen and touched. For even sensible substance cannot be perceived except through accidents. The Church also acknowledges that the body and blood of the Lord are mingled when the species of bread and wine are mixed; therefore when the species are seen and touched, the body of Christ is seen and touched. Why say more? I am persuaded of this and hold that Christ’s body has succeeded to the place of bread in such a way that, except for what

conflicts with the faith of this sacrament, it claims everything that bread formerly claimed by reason of its accidents. Otherwise, someone who ate the species of bread would not eat Christ’s body, and someone who drank under the species of wine would not drink his blood. Yet it is written: “Take and eat; this is my body.” Again: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood…” And again: “He who eats unworthily eats judgment upon himself, not discerning the body of the Lord.” If Christ’s flesh is eaten in the sacrament, it is certainly broken and ground by the faithful’s teeth. Both features belong to and are proper to the food we eat. What is more, if we consider the Greek wording, the Lord says through Lucas: “Take; this is my body, which is broken for you.” Nor should Divus Thomas in 4 sentent. be brought against us, since in 3 part. quaest. 77, part 7, ad tertium argumentum, he was one of the principal authorities for our view. Who would not prefer him to six hundred Oecolampadii? Enough, then, about the last argument, and consequently enough about the fourth place. Let us proceed to the next.

ON THE AUTHORITY OF THE ROMAN CHURCH, WHICH IS CONTAINED IN THE FIFTH PLACE