Commonitory

A pilgrim on Lérins

The author calls himself only "I, Peregrinus, who am the least of all the servants of God" 1.1; Peregrinus means a pilgrim or stranger. Gennadius of Marseille, writing late in the fifth century, names him: Vincent, a Gaul, a presbyter of the monastery on the island of Lérins, learned in Scripture, who died before 450. Lérins lies off what is now Cannes; its monastery, founded early in that century by Honoratus, gave southern Gaul many of its bishops.

Once tossed by "the manifold and deplorable tempests of secular warfare" 1.2, perhaps as a soldier, Vincent has found harbour in a monastery far from the cities, where he can heed the psalm, "Be still and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10). He writes because judgment draws near and "the subtle craftiness of new heretics calls for no ordinary care and attention" 1.2.

He dates himself. The council that deposed Nestorius in 431 met "some three years ago" 29.78, so he wrote around 434. Nestorius was news of "the other day" 11.29, the quarrel over Pelagius was still warm, and Augustine, dead since 430, had left a late teaching on grace and predestination that the monks of Marseille and Lérins were questioning. The road to Ephesus is told in Chalcedon: one person, two natures.

A notebook in two books

A commonitorium is a memorandum. Vincent writes for himself, to "aid my memory, or rather, provide against my forgetfulness" 1.3, in plain words, and promises to amend it "by little and little, day by day" 1.3. It reads like a notebook rather than a treatise, and it repeats itself on purpose.

There were two books. The first is chapters 1 to 28; the second is lost but for its closing summary, chapters 29 to 33. Gennadius says most of it was stolen from the author's papers and that Vincent summed it up in a few words. The library holds all that survives.

Chapters 1 to 16 set out the rule (chapter 2), show it at work in the church's history and in Moses' warning about false prophets, and end with a digression on the Trinity and the incarnation. Chapters 17 to 28 begin with Origen and Tertullian, expound Paul's charge to Timothy (chapter 22) and the growth of doctrine (chapter 23), and end with how heretics use Scripture. Chapters 29 to 33 recall how the Council of Ephesus judged Nestorius by the testimony of the Fathers (chapter 30).

Everywhere, always, by all

Vincent asked many holy and learned men how to "distinguish the truth of Catholic faith from the falsehood of heretical pravity" 2.4 (pravity is corruption), and was told: by the authority of Scripture first, then by the tradition of the church. But if "the canon of Scripture is complete, and sufficient of itself for everything, and more than sufficient" 2.5, why add the church's interpretation? Because people read so deep a book so differently that it "seems to be capable of as many interpretations as there are interpreters" 2.5, from Novatian and Arius to Pelagius and Nestorius.

So "we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all" 2.6, the book's most quoted sentence (in Latin, quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est). Its marks are "universality, antiquity, consent" 2.6: what the whole church confesses, what the holy fathers plainly held, and what all or nearly all the ancient teachers agreed. By ‘Catholic’ Vincent means the one universal church, not one communion among others; see also The sources of theology.

The rule works in steps: the whole body before a part cut off, and antiquity before a novelty that would infect the whole 3.7; then "an ancient General Council" 3.8; and where there is none, what approved teachers held "by all, equally, with one consent, openly, frequently, persistently" 3.8. So the Africans who refused the Donatist schism kept the faith 4.9, and so did those who, "preferring the ancient belief to the novel misbelief" 4.10, withstood Arianism. When Africa took up the repeating of baptism, first taught by Agrippinus of Carthage, Pope Stephen ruled, "Let there be no innovation—nothing but what has been handed down" 6.16; yet Cyprian, who had held that view, "will reign with Christ" 6.18.

The most searching pages are about danger from within: why God lets eminent teachers bring in new doctrines. Vincent answers from Moses 10.28:

you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. For the LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love Him with all your heart and with all your soul.

Deuteronomy 13:3

His examples are gifted men: Nestorius, who expounded Scripture daily 11.29; Photinus and Apollinaris, eloquent and learned 11.31; above all Origen, whom he praises at length, for "no teacher ever used more proofs drawn from Scripture" 17.43, and whose books, he allows, were corrupted 17.45. The danger was that people would rather "be wrong with Origen, than be right with others" 17.44. The lesson: "it behoves them with the Church to receive Teachers, not with Teachers to desert the faith of the Church" 17.42. As Paul says, "there must be differences among you to show which of you are approved" (1 Corinthians 11:19).

Heretics, too, come armed with Scripture. Like nurses with a bitter draught, they "smear the edge of the cup all round with honey" 25.65; they come, as Christ warned, "in sheep’s clothing" (Matthew 7:15); and the devil himself said to the Lord, "throw Yourself down. For it is written" (Matthew 4:6). Hence the rule again: Scripture is to be read "according to the traditions of the Universal Church and in keeping with the rules of Catholic doctrine" 27.70.

Progress, not alteration

At the heart of the first book stands Paul's charge to Timothy:

O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid irreverent, empty chatter and the opposing arguments of so-called “knowledge,” which some have professed and thus swerved away from the faith.

1 Timothy 6:20-21

Timothy today, Vincent says, is the whole church, and especially its bishops. The deposit is "That which has been intrusted to thee, not that which thou hast thyself devised" 22.53, and its keeper is "not an author but a keeper, not a teacher but a disciple, not a leader but a follower" 22.53. Yet keeping is not burying. Like Bezalel at the tabernacle, the teacher is to polish the gems of doctrine, so that later ages understand what antiquity "venerated without understanding" 22.53; only, "though thou speakest after a new fashion, what thou speakest may not be new" 22.53.

Then chapter 23 asks, "Shall there, then, be no progress in Christ’s Church? Certainly; all possible progress" 23.54. But it must be "real progress, not alteration of the faith" 23.54 (profectus, not permutatio): a thing growing within itself, not turning into something else, "in the same doctrine, in the same sense, and in the same meaning" 23.54. "An infant’s limbs are small, a young man’s large, yet the infant and the young man are the same" 23.55; wheat sown must be reaped as wheat, not as tares 23.57.

Councils, roused by heresy, have made what was believed simply to be believed intelligently, and sometimes named an old article of the faith "by the characteristic of a new name" 23.59; Nicaea's homoousios is often given as an example (see Historical and practical theology). Vincent does the same in chapters 12 to 16: "In God there is one substance, but three Persons; in Christ two substances, but one Person" 13.37, and so Mary is Theotokos 15.40. Written seventeen years before Chalcedon, these lines come close to its definition, and their likeness to the Athanasian Creed has led some to name Vincent its author, though no one has proved it.

Christians have received him in different ways. The Catholic Church honours him as a saint, and the First Vatican Council (1870) closed its teaching on faith and reason with his words on growth in the same doctrine, sense and meaning First Vatican Council, Dei Filius. The Orthodox also keep his memory and prize his appeal to the common mind of the Fathers. Anglicans long appealed to the consent of the early centuries; John Henry Newman leaned on the rule as an Anglican, then judged it true but too hard to apply on its own in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845), written as he became a Catholic. The Reformers accepted Vincent's first premise, that the canon suffices, and turned his test on late medieval novelties; Calvin defended the Reformation as a return to the faith of the ancient church Calvin, Reply to Sadoleto. Evangelicals prize the church's common confession as a guide to Scripture, and leave the last word to Scripture itself (the sufficiency of Scripture).

Whom was Vincent aiming at? He condemns Pelagius and Celestius by name 24.62 but never names Augustine. Many scholars think his novelties included Augustine's teaching on predestination, pointing to heretics who promise "a certain great and special and altogether personal grace of God" 26.69 to those who neither ask, seek nor knock; some identify him with the Vincent whose objections to Augustine were answered by Prosper of Aquitaine. Others find the evidence thin, and note that the letter of Celestine he quotes in chapter 32 was written to rebuke the bishops of Gaul for letting Augustine's critics go unchecked. In Gaul the question was settled when the Council of Orange (529) confessed that even the beginning of faith is grace Council of Orange; see Semi-Pelagianism.

Reading it well

Begin with chapters 2 and 23; the rest works them out. Places are given by chapter and section, the sections numbered straight through the book, so 23.55 is chapter 23, section 55. The English is C. A. Heurtley's, from the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (1894): a doctor is a teacher, consentient means agreeing, conversation is a way of life, the Apostolic See is the church of Rome, and Theotocos is the Greek Theotokos.

Mind the limits Vincent sets himself. The Fathers' consent is to be sought not on "every minor question of the Divine Law" 28.71 but on the rule of faith, against new heresies; old ones are answered "by the sole authority of the Scriptures" 28.71 or by past councils, and one teacher's view against all, however holy, is "a private fancy of his own" 28.72. The rule is a fence around the common faith, not a machine, and readers in many traditions note that to use it one must first decide whose voices count as all.

His language is often harsh: heretics are "rabid dogs" 13.36, the Pelagians "frogs, fleas, and flies" 9.26. He echoes Paul's curse on another gospel (Galatians 1:8), but also the polemic of his age, and his portraits are not always fair: whether Nestorius truly divided Christ, scholars still debate.

The book leaves its readers humility and hope: we keep a faith we did not make, and within it we may grow. Vincent's phrase "the faith once for all delivered" 8.22 comes from Jude:

I felt it necessary to write and urge you to contend earnestly for the faith entrusted once for all to the saints.

Jude 1:3

Kept faith is not frozen faith. Like a body that grows and stays itself, the church is called to grow: "speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Christ Himself, who is the head" (Ephesians 4:15).