Letter CXCIV. Rescript of Pope Innocent Against -the Heresies of Peter Abaelard

(A.D. 1140.)

INNOCENT, Bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his venerable brothers, HENRY, Archbishop of Sens, SAMSON, Archbishop of Rheims, and their suffragans, and to his beloved brother in Christ, BERNARD, Abbot of Clairvauxs health and Apostolic benediction.

1. On the testimony of the Apostle, as one Lord, so one faith is to be known (Eph. iv. 5), on which the inviolate firmness of the Catholic Church is built, as on an immovable foundation, beside which no man can lay another. Thence it was that Blessed Peter, the chief of the Apostles, merited, through his noble confession of faith, to hear from our Lord and Saviour the words, Thou art Peter, and on this rock I iv ill build my Church (S. Matt. xvi. 18), manifestly meaning by the rock the firmness of his faith and the solidity of Catholic unity. This is the seamless robe of our Redeemer for which the soldiers cast lots, but which they could not divide. Against it in the beginning the heathen raged, and the nations imagined vain things. The kings of the earth stood up and their rulers were gathered together (Ps. ii. i, 2). But the Apostles, as leaders of the Lord's flock, and the Apostolic men, their successors, inflamed with the ardour of charity and zeal for righteousness, did not hesitate to de fend the faith, and to implant it in the hearts of others by shedding their own blood. At length the Lord gave com mands to the winds; the violence of the persecutors ceased, and there was a great calm in the Church.

2. But since the enemy of the human race is ever going about seeking whom he may devour, he now stealthily uses the deceitful fallacies of heretics in order to undermine the sincerity of the faith. Against these heretics the pastors of the churches have boldly risen and condemned their evil teachings, writh their authors. For in the great Council of Nicaea Arius was condemned as a heretic; the Synod at Constantinople condemned Manes as a heretic by a fitting sentence; at the Ephesine Synod Nestorius received the condemnation of his error, which he deserved. The Council of Chalcedon also justly condemned the Nestorian heresy, and the Eutychian, with Dioscorus and his accomplices. Moreover, Marcian, though a layman, yet a Christian emperor, being inflamed with love of the Catholic faith, says, among other things, when writing to our predecessor, Pope John, against those who were endeavouring to profane the sacred mysteries: " Let none of the clerical order, or of the military, or of any other rank, endeavour for the future to discourse publicly about the Christian faith. For, for anyone to take on himself to explain and again dispute of matters once determined on and rightly settled, is an injury to the decision of the most holy Council; " and he adds, as a penalty to any who should break this law, that if any clerk should dare to treat of religion in public, he should be removed from the fellowship of clerks as if guilty of sacrilege.'

3. We lament, therefore, that, as we gather irom your letters, and from the heads of the errors sent us by your Fraternity, in these last days when perilous times are approaching, the heresies of the aforenamed, and other per verse doctrines contrary to the Catholic faith, have begun to show their heads in the pernicious teaching of Peter Abaelard. But by one thing we are specially consoled, and we give thanks to Almighty God for it, viz., that He has raised up in your parts such worthy successors of the Fathers, and in the time of our Apostolate has granted to us such noble pastors, who study to meet the calumnies of the new heretic, and to present His spotless Bride as a chaste virgin to one Husband, even Christ. And, therefore, we who sit in the seat of Blessed Peter (to whom it was said by the Lord: And when thou art converted strengthen thy brethren] (S. Luke xxii. 32), however unworthily we seem to occupy it, have, by the common advice of our brethren, the Bishops and Cardinals, condemned, with their author, all the articles sent us in the exercise of your discretion, and all the perverse doctrines of Peter himself, by the authority¹ of the sacred canons, and we have imposed perpetual silence on him as a heretic. We decree, also, that all the followers and supporters of his error be cut off from the fellowship of the faithful, and be bound with the chain of •excommunication.

Given at the Lateran xvii. a.d. Kal., August.

Footnotes

1. A double mistake seems to have crept in here, one of the inscription, the other of the name of the existing Pope. This letter or decree of Marcian's is extant among the acts of the Council of Chalcedon, held in the time of Leo the Great, A.D. 451, but addressed to the citizens of Constantinople, not to Leo, much less to John, who succeeded to the Roman See more than 80 years after the death of Marcian. Perhaps the passage should be restored by reading the name of the Pope as an Ablative Absolute, in this way, " the most holy Leo, our predecessor, being Pope," etc. ↩