Letters 90.1–96.3

The Lord, who said to the prophet, 'Behold, I have set you today over nations and kingdoms, to root out and to dig up and to destroy, and again to build and to plant,' grants the same grace to his church at every time, so that its body may be kept whole through patience and the poisons of heretical doctrines may prevail in nothing. This we now see fulfilled. For the church of Christ, which has no spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind, has cut off with the sword of the gospel the serpents of Origen coming out of their caves, and has freed the holy company of the monks of Nitria from a pestilent contagion.

So I have included a few of the things that were done, as far as the shortness of time allowed, in the general letter which I addressed to all in common. It is for your Worthiness, who has often fought in contests of this kind before us, both to console those engaged in the battle and to gather the bishops of the whole island and send synodal letters both to us and to the holy bishop of the city of Constantinople, and to any others you think fit, so that by the agreement of all Origen himself may be condemned by name, together with his wicked heresy.

For I have learned that the slanderers of the true faith, Ammonius, Eusebius, and Euthymius, raving with fresh fury for their heresy, have sailed to Constantinople, to deceive any new people they can and to join the old associates of their impiety. Let it be your care, then, to set out the course of events to all the bishops throughout Isauria and Pamphylia and the other neighbouring provinces, and to attach our letter, if you think fit, so that, all gathered in spirit with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, we may deliver them to Satan for the destruction of the impiety that possesses them.

And so that your letters may reach Constantinople more quickly, send an energetic man, one of the clergy, just as we too have sent fathers of monks from the very monasteries of Nitria, with other holy and most continent men, who can inform everyone in person of what has been done. Above all we ask you to pour out earnest prayers to the Lord, that we may gain the victory in this contest too. For no small joy has filled the hearts of the people in Alexandria and throughout Egypt since a few men were cast out so that the body of the church might remain pure. I greet the brothers who are with you; the people who are with us greet you in the Lord.

The general letter written to all catholics belongs especially to you, who, having zeal for the faith against all heresies, turn away particularly from the disciples of Origen and Apollinaris. Almighty God has dragged their poisonous roots and deeply planted impiety into the open, so that, exposed at Alexandria, they might wither throughout the whole world.

For know, dearest son, that Amalek has been destroyed to the root, and the trophy of the cross set up on the mountain of Rephidim. And as Israel prevailed when Moses' hands were stretched on high, so the Lord has strengthened his servant Theophilus to set up a standard against Origen above the altar of the church of Alexandria, and so that in him might be fulfilled what is said: 'Write this sign, for I will utterly blot out the heresy of Origen from the face of the earth, along with Amalek himself.'

So as not to seem to repeat the same things and weave a longer letter, I have sent you the writings themselves, so that you may know what he wrote to us and how much good the Lord has granted to my old age, that what I was always crying out should be proved by the testimony of so great a bishop. And I think you have by now published some work and, following my earlier letter in which I urged you on this matter, polished books for men of your own language to read. For I hear that the shipwrecks of certain men have reached the West too, who, not content with their own ruin, want to have more sharers in death, as though the multitude of sinners lessened the crime, and the flame of hell did not grow greater with the number of logs. We greet warmly, with you and through you, the holy brothers who serve the Lord with you in the monastery.

I think that swift report will have brought you, before our letter, the news that certain men in the monasteries of Nitria have tried to sow the heresy of Origen and to offer the purest company of monks a muddy drink. So we were compelled to go to those places, fearing, at the prayers of the saints and especially of the fathers and presbyters who are over the monasteries, that, if we failed to go, those who flatter itching ears might pervert the hearts of the simple. Their nobility lies in crime, and they have so rabid a fury for every deed that ignorance and pride suggest, that they rush headlong and do not understand their own measure, but, wise in their own eyes, which is the source of error, think themselves very great, which they are not. At last they broke out into such madness that they turned their hands against themselves and cut their own limbs with iron, thinking in their foolish judgement that they would prove themselves religious and humble if they went about with mutilated faces and cut ears. One of them even bit off part of his tongue, to show the ignorant how fearfully he kept the laws of God, and to show by the very weakness of his impeded speech with what fury his breast was boiling. I found that, with certain foreigners who live for a while in Egypt, they had moved to your province, and that poor men, who ought to have earned their living by the labour of their hands, had been enticed by favours and money; so that in them is fulfilled what is written, 'The wicked walk round about,' and, like the Jews, they would rather be consumed by fire than see the writings of Origen condemned, crying out as it were, 'We have made falsehood our hope, and by falsehood let us be protected.' Lest they disturb the minds of the people and the monks in those parts too, and, when they ought, having been rebuked for their crime, to do penance, turn against us and undermine the truth with tunnels of lies, I thought it most just to write to your Holiness and report briefly that, the bishops from the neighbourhood having been gathered to make up the number of a synod, they went to Nitria; and in the presence of many fathers of monks, who had flocked together from almost all Egypt, the books of Origen, in which he toiled with impious labour, were read and condemned by the agreement of all.

For when the volume Peri Archon was read, which we may call 'On First Principles', in which it is written that the Son compared with us is truth, but compared with the Father is a lie; and again, 'As much as Paul and Peter differ from the Saviour, so much is the Saviour less than the Father'; and again, 'The kingdom of Christ will one day end, and the devil, freed from all the filth of sins, will be adorned with equal honour and be subjected with Christ'; and in another book, written On Prayer, 'We must not pray to the Son, but only to the Father, nor to the Father with the Son': we stopped our ears and condemned both Origen and his disciples with one voice, lest a little leaven should corrupt the whole lump. What shall I say of the resurrection of the dead, on which he plainly blasphemes, saying that after many cycles of ages our bodies will gradually be reduced to nothing and dissolved into thin air; and, lest we think this little, he added, 'The risen body will be not only corruptible but mortal'? So that, of course, the Lord and Saviour destroyed in vain the devil, who had the power of death, if even after the resurrection corruption and mortality rule over human bodies, dissolved into nothing! About the angels too he invented rash things: that all the ministries of God's service in heaven were not created in heaven, but received their various names of office through various lapses and falls, and that old causes went before, by which they increased or decreased. And amid this, as though impatient of pain, while the people cry, 'The Jerusalem above is free,' he maintains that nothing in it is pure, nothing free from vices and secure in lasting virtue. His profane discussion of angels did not stop there, but advancing in wickedness he says: 'As demons, sitting by the altars of the Gentiles, fed on the smell of victims, so the angels too, delighted by the blood of the victims which Israel sacrificed as a type of spiritual things, and by the smoke of the incense, hovered near the altars and were nourished by such foods.' Who would not think that he could find nothing further into which his mad mind might fall? He also attributes foreknowledge of the future, which is known to the Lord alone, to the movements of the stars, so that from their course and the variety of their configurations the demons know the future and either do some things or command that they be done by others. From this it is clear that he approves idolatry, astrology, and the various tricks of the Gentiles' deceitful divination.

Certain men holding and teaching these and similar things were living in the monasteries under the name of monks; and when they were indignant that the author of so great an evil should be condemned with his error, they attached to their company some poor men and slaves, enticed by hope of food, and, forming a wedge, tried to use violence against me as I sat at Alexandria. They wanted to bring into the open the case of Isidore, which, out of modesty and for the discipline of the church, we were reserving for the judgement of bishops, and to thrust shameful things into the ears of the heathen, so that sedition and tumult might be stirred up against the church. God brought their plans to nothing, as he did those of Ahithophel. Their whole effort was this, to defend heresy under the name of Isidore, who had been separated from the communion of the saints by many bishops for various reasons. Meanwhile a woman and her young son were brought forward by them and placed in a very busy place in the city which, if I am not mistaken, they call the Genium. They shout whatever they believed would stir up odium against us, haranguing the Gentile populace against us with what the ears of unbelievers would gladly hear. Among other things they also cried out, as if reminding them of the destruction of the Serapeum and of other idols, and inciting them. They did all this thinking that crowds of unbelievers would join them and that Isidore would be snatched from the judgement of the bishops, lest he be heard with the mother and the boy, and so that they might stir up odium against us, who wished him to be heard patiently in the church in the presence of the clergy and the faithful people, and the church's rule to be kept in his case with all fear of God and gentleness. For we are not his enemies, nor have we harmed him in anything, nor the few slaves and runaways who are his partners in business; but we put the fear of God and the rule of gospel strictness before our old friendship and intimacy. When he was summoned to an inquiry before the bishops, to state the matter to all the clergy, and was called repeatedly to the hearing, he began to evade and put off from day to day, in the hope, as many reported, of gradually buying the woman's silence. By doing this he wounded the minds of the holy brothers. For who doubts that a good conscience brings confidence, while flight and evasion (to speak more gently, yet say openly what I think) are judged by most people a kind of confession? Especially when the woman had brought a grave charge against him in a written complaint, and it was being spread among the people that he was doing everything he could to have the matter settled in any way rather than by the judgement of bishops. Without my knowledge, through the efforts of his friends, the woman was even entered on the roll of widows, so that she might be consoled for the pain of her wound by the relief of alms. When I learned this from a deacon, who reported fearlessly that the woman had been put on the roll of widows so that she would keep silent about her accusation, I at once informed Isidore through many people and warned him to prepare himself for the judgement of the bishops, the woman meanwhile being separated from the company of the other widows until we saw the outcome of the case. For it was not right that she should be supported by the church's resources who had either made so grave a charge rashly or kept silent about it. This is the standard-bearer of the heretical faction; this is the leader, a very rich one, whom those described at the beginning of the letter use, able to provide food and support the hardships of their wanderings. Where fury and bloodshed are needed, they need no one else's help; where expenses and various costs are needed, nothing is more useful than this benefactor.

They rage and storm against me because I did not allow the solitudes and dwellings of the monks, where holy life is lived, to be polluted by the impious doctrines of Origen. To pass over the rest: in the books On the Resurrection, which he wrote to Ambrose imitating the dialectical method of discussion by question and answer, he proclaims the art of magic in these words: 'The art of magic does not seem to me the name of anything that really exists; but even if it does, it is by no means a work of evil nor something that can be held in contempt.' In saying this he plainly contradicts the Lord, who says through the prophet: 'Stand now in your enchantments, in your many sorceries which you have learned from your youth, if they can profit you. You have laboured in your counsels; let the astrologers of heaven stand and save you, who gaze at the stars, let them tell you what will come upon you.' Further, in the books Peri Archon he tries to persuade us of this too, that the living Word of God did not assume a human body; and, going against the apostle's statement, he wrote that he who was in the form of God, equal to God, was not the Word of God but a soul, descending from the heavenly region and emptying itself of the form of eternal majesty, which assumed a human body. In saying this he most plainly contradicts John, who writes, 'And the Word was made flesh.' Nor can the soul of the Saviour be believed to have had, rather than God the Word, the form and equality of the Father's majesty. He runs riot in other impieties too, wanting our Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered once at the consummation of the ages and for the destruction of sin, to suffer the cross at some time for demons and spiritual wickedness as well. He does not remember Paul, who writes: 'It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift and become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and have fallen away, to be renewed again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God and hold him up to contempt.' If he had wished to know this, or rather if he had not despised what he knows, he would never, contradicting the apostle, say that Christ will suffer for demons too, and expose him to contempt, passing by with closed ear what we read: 'Christ, rising from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died, he died to sin once; but the life he lives, he lives to God.' For the word 'once' admits neither a second time nor a third; so the apostle, knowing that he was crucified once, affirms with all boldness to the Hebrews: 'For this he did once, offering himself.'

For these and very many other things, which the limits of a letter do not allow us to write about, they were condemned and cast out of the church. And, with pride joined to folly, they contradict the judgements of the bishops, trying to defend their fellow heretic by sedition, and, wandering through other provinces, the condemned have a condemned man as their leader and are puffed up by this work. So I beg you, dearest brothers, if they come there, to move them to tears by the precepts of the gospel. It is our wish that they and others should correct their error by repentance and live worthily of their name, so that those who are called monks, if indeed they wish to be what they are called, may love silence and the catholic faith, to which nothing at all is to be preferred. But, as I hear, imitating the devil, they run about here and there seeking whom to devour by their impieties. For they think madness is faith, and recklessness courage; and so, raised up in pride, they put the teaching of Origen, which is mixed with idolatry, before the preaching of the church. If anywhere, then, they try to disturb the brothers and the people entrusted to you, guard the Lord's flock and check their mad onslaughts. We have done them no harm, taken nothing from them; the one cause of their hatred against us is that we are ready to defend the faith even to death.

I pass over the rest: how they tried to kill us, and with what plots they contrived it, when, after they had been condemned, they even seized the church in the monastery of Nitria, to keep out of it us and very many bishops with us, and fathers of monks venerable in life and age, having hired freedmen and slaves who, for the sake of gluttony and the belly, are armed for any crime. And when they held the most advantageous places of the church, as in the siege of a city, they hid clubs and staves under palm branches, to disguise under the emblems of peace minds ready for slaughter. And to make the faction firmer and the wedge readier for daring, they distributed money to many free men, who accepted it, not to consent to the crime, but to betray their attempts to us and reveal the plots prepared, so that we might be on guard. When the countless throng of monks saw this, they all began to cry out and to frighten the fury of the few with one voice, so that at least from fear they might allow the service to be held and the rights of the church to be kept. And had not the grace of God restrained the multitude's onslaught, something would have happened such as usually happens in riots; for the wicked men had burst out into such recklessness, or rather madness, that even monks of holy life, always most gentle, could not endure their fury. All this we bore patiently and humbly in the hearing of God, providing for the salvation of those who were fighting against us as enemies, but only so far that we did not sacrifice the rules of the church and the right faith to anyone's friendship; for the Lord is able to grant to us and to all his servants alike that we put the truth of the faith before human ties. At the same time we ask you too, each with the people entrusted to you, to pray more earnestly and to beseech God's mercy, so that, resisting the diabolical plots of the heretics, we may have peace with those who have always fought for the truth, and all await together the crown of righteousness. The brothers who are with you, the people who are with me, greet you in the Lord.

You know, lord and father in all things praiseworthy, even before our letter, that almost all Palestine, by the grace of Christ, is free from the scandal of heretics, except a few who, accepting the errors of Apollinaris, study the harmful writings of their master. And would that, by the prayers of the saints, we were not troubled by the Jewish serpents, by the incredible folly of the Samaritans, and by the most open impieties of the Gentiles! Their crowd is very large, and, stopping their ears altogether to the truth of preaching, they circle round the flock of Christ like wolves and impose on us no small vigils and labour, as we wish to guard the Lord's sheep from being torn apart by them.

And since your Holiness wrote to us that certain men have been found in Egypt who wish to introduce into the churches some pestilent teachings from the doctrines of Origen and to deceive the hearts of the simple, we thought it necessary to inform your Holiness that preaching of this kind is foreign to our ears. For we have never heard any teaching that the kingdom of Christ will one day come to an end (God forbid that the faithful should hear this, since the angel Gabriel said to Mary of the Christ who was to be born, 'He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end!'), nor that the devil, freed from all the vices of sins, will obtain the dignity he had before he fell, so that he and Christ are brought under the one rule of God the Father. For those who believe thus will go into the darkness prepared for the devil and his angels.

And if there are any who have taught in their treatises that the Son compared with us is truth, but compared with the Father a lie, and that as Peter and Paul are to the Saviour, so is the only-begotten Son and Word of God compared with the Father; and (to declare our judgement briefly, since there is no need to repeat the same things again) whoever preaches the things your Blessedness declares must be condemned, and which are at variance with the faith that our fathers wrote with pious understanding in the city of Nicaea, let both them and their doctrines be anathema to the church, together with Apollinaris, who, going against the holy Scriptures, says that an incomplete man was assumed by our Lord Jesus Christ, and that salvation was not given by his full assumption of both soul and body.

For we, following in the footsteps of the fathers and taught by the words of the Scriptures, teach and preach in the churches and confess the Trinity uncreated, eternal, of one [substance] in three subsistences, and in one deity ... adoring. If your Reverence separates any from communion, whether for perversity of doctrine or for other causes, as you have been good enough to inform us, know that they are not to be received in our churches until you have granted pardon to their repentance, if indeed they are willing to condemn their perverse views. Greet all who are with you in the priestly rank.

Our good God, who is glorified in the councils of the saints and prepares for himself friends and prophets in each age, has, if you look at the course of our generation, raised you up too, most blessed lord and brother, as a zealot for the right faith, so that with apostolic firmness you might overthrow the heretical superstition flowing from the spring of the Gentiles, and bring back to its shepherd the human race, drawn by many errors, and the scattered flock of Christ, who at the time of his passion gave his life for all, so that we believers may now say, 'Truly God is in us.' For who is so foolish or impious as not to confess that you have given the world a very great gift by casting out the most wicked disciples of the blasphemous Origen, lest the church of Christ be polluted by them, whose cancer and incurable leprosy has so spread through the hearts of many that even those who feign repentance join perjury to heresy, and, because they are forced to be silent, do not cease to hate us?

Be strong, then, and act manfully, servant of God, and pursue the fictions of Origen to the end, lest the minds of the simple be caught by his flattering allurements under the shadow of knowledge, and a division of schism arise in the body of Christ. For all who set their minds on things above eagerly profess you their father, their hope, and the crown of the faith, because you have pierced with the sword of the gospel the master of Arius and his disciple. The brothers of my little cell warmly greet you and the brothers who are with you.

A careful shepherd is shown to keep great watch and vigil over his flock; likewise, for the city's sake, a cautious watchman observes day and night from a high tower; an attentive ship's master in the hour of storm suffers great tossing of mind from care and danger, lest the ship be dashed on the rocks by gales and the roughest waves. With the same mind the holy and honourable man Theophilus, our brother and fellow bishop, does not cease to keep watch over what concerns salvation, lest God's people in the various churches, by reading Origen, fall into great blasphemies.

Summoned by the letter of the man mentioned, I summon your Holiness ... that, as we, placed in the city of Rome, which the glorious Peter, prince of the apostles, established and confirmed by his faith, have condemned what we have spoken of, lest anyone read it against the precept, and have asked with great prayers that the institutions of the gospels (may be safe), which the judgement of God and Christ taught from his own mouth; that we must not depart from it at all, but must call to mind what Paul, the venerable apostle, foretold and warned: 'If anyone preaches to you a gospel other than what was preached to you, let him be anathema.' Holding, then, to this precept, we have declared that whatever was once written by Origen contrary to our faith is foreign to us and condemned.

We have written this to your Holiness through the presbyter Eusebius, who, carrying the warmth of faith and having love toward God, presented certain blasphemous chapters, which we not only shuddered at and judged, but, know that if there are any other things set out by Origen, they too have been condemned by us together with their author. May the Lord keep you safe, lord brother deservedly honourable.

Dearest brothers, let us once more with one voice praise Christ Jesus, the Lord of glory, and, eagerly fulfilling the words of the prophet who urges us, 'Sing to the Lord a new hymn,' let all of us who share in the faith that leads to the kingdom of heaven welcome the coming of the holy feast and celebrate the approaching holy days with the festivity of the whole world, as one of the wise cries out: 'Come, eat your bread with gladness, and drink your wine with a good heart, for your works have pleased God.' For those who are of good works, and, having left the milk of infancy, take the nourishment of more solid food, look more deeply into the divine meanings, and, filled with spiritual food, have God as the praiser and witness of their life. To guests of this kind Ecclesiastes says: 'At all times let your garments be white, and let oil not be lacking from your head'; so that, clothed with the garment of the virtues, they may imitate the splendour of the sun, and by the daily reading of the holy Scriptures pour oil on their understanding and prepare the lamp of the mind, which, according to the precept of the gospel, may give light to all who are in the house.

So, emulating such guests and those who thus celebrate the feast of the Lord's passion, let us say with the saint: 'I will praise the Lord in my life; I will sing to my God as long as I am'; and let us hasten to the metropolis of the angels, which is free and stained by no filth of malice, in which there are no dissensions or falls or migration from one state to another; and, trampling every pleasure and crushing the waves of luxury that often swell against us, let us join the heavenly choirs, so that, carried there even now in mind and seeing more august places, we may be what we shall be. Of this blessedness the Jews made themselves unworthy, who, abandoning the riches of holy Scripture and, poor in understanding, following their teachers, hear to this day: 'They always go astray in heart'; and who will not say to Christ present, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,' especially since his works, clearer than any voice, testify that he is God, and since he never said, 'Thus says the Lord,' but, 'But I say to you,' by which he showed himself the giver of laws, Lord, and true God, and not just any one of the prophets.

For the assumption of the form of a slave could not obscure his divinity, which is circumscribed by no spaces of place, nor could the narrowness of a human body limit the ineffable power of his majesty; the greatness of his works proves him the Son of God. When he had restored to sudden calm the high billows of the raging sea, swelling like mountains, and the apostles' little boat had been freed from shipwreck, and the depths of the waters had felt the command of the Lord present, and when, at the Saviour's order, such dangers had ceased, with the winds wrestling and the waves roused on every side, those who were sailing with him, as if inspired by a divine spirit, said, 'Truly he is the Son of God,' not doubting his divinity, whose greatness his works proclaimed. For of him is the prophetic word: 'You rule the strength of the sea, and you calm the motion of its waves.' And the prophet himself marks it as a song, so that the one who was seen might be believed true God not only in word but in power, showing by the excellence of his works what was hidden. Perfect God, by his own will taking on whatever belonged to human nature and condition, except only sin and malice, which has no substance, he is born an infant; he is adored as Emmanuel; magi come from the East and, kneeling, confess God the Son of God. At the time of his passion, hanging on the cross, he darkens the rays of the sun, showing the greatness of his divinity by a new and unheard-of miracle; undivided and inseparable, not split into two Saviours, as some wrongly hold. So he said to his disciples: 'Do not call anyone master on earth; for one is your master, Christ.' For when he said this to the apostles, he did not separate the excellence of his divinity from the body that was open to sight; nor, when he testified that he was the one Christ, the Son of God, did he divide soul and flesh; not one and another, but one and the same subsisting as both, God and man, while the servant is seen and the Lord adored; since he hid the ineffable God in the lowliness of a human body, and again surpassed the frailty of the flesh by divine works, so that he should not be believed to be just any one of the saints, as many have thought, but the one whom Paul too, wishing to show him, describes: 'One God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,' and again, 'Now a mediator is not of one, but God is one'; because the one Son, mediator between the Father and us, neither lost his equality with the Father nor was separated from our fellowship: invisible God and visible man, hidden in the form of a slave, and proved Lord of glory by the confession of believers.