Letter 35: (Another letter to Eusebius on the same subject.) To Eusebius, My Excellent Lord and Brother, Worthy of Affection and Esteem, Augustine Sends Greeting. 1. I did not impose upon you, by importunate exhortation or entreaty in spite of your reluctance, the duty, as you call it, of arbitrating between bishops.

Augustine to Eusebius, my excellent lord and brother, greetings. I did not impose on you — by nagging or pleading against your reluctance — the duty of arbitrating between bishops, as you call it. Even if I had wanted to, I could easily have shown how qualified you are to judge between us in a case so clear and simple. In fact, I might show that you are already doing so — since you, who are afraid of playing the judge, do not hesitate to pronounce a verdict in favor of one side before hearing both. But I will leave that point aside for now. All I asked of your good nature — and I beg you to notice this in my present letter, if you missed it in the last — was that you put a question to Proculeianus: did he actually say to his presbyter Victor what the public records officially attribute to him? Or did the officials who were sent write down a falsehood in the public records rather than what they actually heard? And further: what does he think about the two of us meeting to discuss the whole question? A man is not being made a judge between parties simply by being asked to pass along a question and report the answer. That is what I am asking of you — nothing more. I know from experience that Proculeianus does not wish to receive a letter directly from me. Otherwise I would not need your mediation. Since he will not accept my letters, what could I do that is less likely to give offense than to approach him through you — a good man and a friend of his — for an answer on a matter about which my responsibilities will not allow me to stay silent? You say — and I appreciate the soundness of your judgment — that if Proculeianus had known about the young man beating his mother, he would have barred him from communion. I answer in a single sentence: he knows now. Let him bar him now. Let me mention another matter. A man named Primus, formerly a subdeacon at the church of Spana, was stripped of his clerical rank for maintaining improper relations with nuns in violation of church regulations. Provoked by the discipline, he crossed over to the Donatists and was rebaptized. This pattern keeps repeating itself: men flee discipline and find a party willing to receive them without questions. I am not writing to accuse. I am writing because I believe you are fair-minded enough to see what is happening and wise enough to see what it means.

Letter 35 (A.D. 396) (Another letter to Eusebius on the same subject.) To Eusebius, My Excellent Lord and Brother, Worthy of Affection and Esteem, Augustine Sends Greeting. 1. I did not impose upon you, by importunate exhortation or entreaty in spite of your reluctance, the duty, as you call it, of arbitrating between bishops. Even if I had desired to move you to this, I might perhaps have easily shown how competent you are to judge between us in a cause so clear and simple; nay, I might show how you are already doing this, inasmuch as you, who are afraid of the office of judge, do not hesitate to pronounce sentence in favour of one of the parties before you have heard both. But of this, as I have said, I do not meanwhile say anything. For I had asked nothing else from your honourable good-nature — and I beseech you to be pleased to remark it in this letter, if you did not in the former — than that you should ask Proculeianus whether he himself said to his presbyter Victor that which the public registers have by official report ascribed to him, or whether those who were sent have written in the public registers not what they heard from Victor, but a falsehood; and further, what his opinion is as to our discussing the whole question between us. I think that he is not constituted judge between parties, who is only requested by the one to put a question to the other, and condescend to write what reply he has received. This also I now again ask you not to refuse to do, because, as I know by experiment, he does not wish to receive a letter from me, otherwise I would not employ your Excellency's mediation. Since, therefore, he does not wish this, what could I do less likely to give offense, than to apply through you, so good a man and such a friend of his, for an answer concerning a matter about which the burden of my responsibility forbids me to hold my peace? Moreover, you say (because the son's beating of his mother is disapproved by your sound judgment), If Proculeianus had known this, he would have debarred that man from communion with his party. I answer in a sentence, He knows it now, let him now debar him. 2. Let me mention another thing. A man who was formerly a subdeacon of the church at Spana, Primus by name, when, having been forbidden such intercourse with nuns as contravened the laws of the Church, he treated with contempt the established and wise regulations, was deprived of his clerical office — this man also, being provoked by the divinely warranted discipline, went over to the other party, and was by them rebaptized. Two nuns also, who were settled in the same lands of the Catholic Church with him, either taken by him to the other party, or following him, were likewise rebaptized: and now, among bands of Circumcelliones and troops of homeless women, who have declined matrimony that they may avoid restraint, he proudly boasts himself in excesses of detestable revelry, rejoicing that he now has without hindrance the utmost freedom in that misconduct from which in the Catholic Church he was restrained. Perhaps Proculeianus knows nothing about this case either. Let it therefore through you, as a man of grave and dispassionate spirit, be made known to him; and let him order that man to be dismissed from his communion, who has chosen it for no other reason than that he had, on account of insubordination and dissolute habits, forfeited his clerical office in the Catholic Church. 3. For my own part, if it please the Lord, I purpose to adhere to this rule, that whoever, after being deposed among them by a sentence of discipline, shall express a desire to pass over into the Catholic Church, must be received on condition of submitting to give the same proofs of penitence as those which, perhaps, they would have constrained him to give if he had remained among them. But consider, I beseech you, how worthy of abhorrence is their procedure in regard to those whom we check by ecclesiastical censures for unholy living, persuading them first to come to a second baptism, in order to their being qualified for which they declare themselves to be pagans (and how much blood of martyrs has been poured out rather than that such a declaration should proceed from the mouth of a Christian!); and thereafter, as if renewed and sanctified, but in truth more hardened in sin, to defy with the impiety of new madness, under the guise of new grace, that discipline to which they could not submit. If, however, I am wrong in attempting to obtain the correction of these abuses through your benevolent interposition, let no one find fault with my causing them to be made known to Proculeianus by the public registers — a means of notification which in this Roman city cannot, I believe, be refused to me. For, since the Lord commands us to speak and proclaim the truth, and in teaching to rebuke what is wrong, and to labour in season and out of season, as I can prove by the words of the Lord and of the apostles, let no man think that I am to be persuaded to be silent concerning these things. If they meditate any bold measures of violence or outrage, the Lord, who has subdued under His yoke all earthly kingdoms in the bosom of His Church spread abroad through the whole world, will not fail to defend her from wrong. 4. The daughter of one of the cultivators of the property of the Church here, who had been one of our catechumens, had been, against the will of her parents, drawn away by the other party, and after being baptized among them, had assumed the profession of a nun. Now her father wished to compel her by severe treatment to return to the Catholic Church; but I was unwilling that this woman, whose mind was so perverted, should be received by us unless with her own will, and choosing, in the free exercise of judgment, that which is better: and when the countryman began to attempt to compel his daughter by blows to submit to his authority, I immediately forbade his using any such means. Notwithstanding, after all, when I was passing through the Spanian district, a presbyter of Proculeianus, standing in a field belonging to an excellent Catholic woman, shouted after me with a most insolent voice that I was a Traditor and a persecutor; and he hurled the same reproach against that woman, belonging to our communion, on whose property he was standing. But when I heard his words, I not only refrained from pursuing the quarrel, but also held back the numerous company which surrounded me. Yet if I say, Let us inquire and ascertain who are or have been indeed Traditors and persecutors, they reply, We will not debate, but we will rebaptize. Leave us to prey upon your flocks with crafty cruelty, like wolves; and if you are good shepherds, bear it in silence. For what else has Proculeianus commanded but this, if indeed the order is justly ascribed to him: If you are a Christian, said he, leave this to the judgment of God; whatever we do, hold your peace. The same presbyter, moreover, dared to utter a threat against a countryman who is overseer of one of the farms belonging to the Church. 5. I pray you to inform Proculeianus of all these things. Let him repress the madness of his clergy, which, honoured Eusebius, I have felt constrained to report to you. Be pleased to write to me, not your own opinion concerning them all, lest you should think that the responsibility of a judge is laid upon you by me, but the answer which they give to my questions. May the mercy of God preserve you from harm, my excellent lord and brother, most worthy of affection and esteem.

EPISTOLA 35 Scripta paulo post superiorem. Rursus interpellat Eusebium, ut Primum diaconum a sua communione depellat (n. 1-2) utque Clericorum Donatistarum licentiam coercendam curet per Proculianum episcopum: alioquin ut de se nemo queratur, si hanc illi perferri in notitiam per publicos codices fecerit (n. 3-4), illum ut respondeat enixe rogans (n. 5).   Domino eximio meritoque suscipiendo atque honorabili fratri Eusebio, Augustinus Ambigua Eusebi agendi ratio. 1. Non ego recusanti voluntati tuae iudicium, sicut dicis, inter episcopos subeundum molestus exhortator aut deprecator imposui. Quod quidem etiamsi suadere voluissem, possem fortasse facile estendere quam valeas iudicare inter nos in tam manifesta atque aperta causa, et quale sit illud quod facis, ut, non auditis partibus, iam ferre non dubites pro una parte sententiam, qui iudicium reformidas; sed hoc, ut dixi, interim omitto. Nihil autem rogaveram aliud honorabilem benignitatem tuam, quod quaeso tandem in hac saltem epistola digneris advertere, nisi ut quaereres a Proculeiano, utrum hoc ipse dixerit Victori presbytero suo, quod ab eo sibi dictum publicum officium renuntiavit; an forte qui missi sunt, non quod a Victore audierunt, sed falsum Gestis persecuti sint; deinde quid illi de tota ipsa quaestione inter nos discutienda videretur. Arbitror autem non iudicem fieri eum, qui rogatur ut interroget aliquem, et quod ei responsum fuerit rescribere dignetur. Hoc ergo etiam nunc rogo ut facere non graveris, quia litteras meas, sicut etiam expertus sum, non vult accipere: quod si voluisset, non utique per tuam Eximietatem id agerem. Cum autem id non vult, quid possum mitius agere, quam ut per te talem virum, et qui eum diligis, interrogetur aliquid, unde me tacere mea sarcina prohibet? Quod autem mater a filio caesa, tuae gravitati displicuit; sed ille, dixisti, si sciret, a communione sua tam nefarium iuvenem prohibiturus esset; breviter respondeo: modo cognovit, modo prohibeat. Primi cuiusdam, diaconi, exsecrandi mores. 2. Addo etiam aliud: Subdiaconus quondam Spaniensis Ecclesiae, vocabulo Primus, cum ab accessu indisciplinato sanctimonialium prohiberetur, atque ordinata et sana praecepta contemneret, a clericatu remotus est, et ipse irritatus adversus disciplinam Dei transtulit se ad illos, et rebaptizatus est. Duas etiam sanctimoniales concolonas suas de fundo catholicorum Christianorum, sive idem transtulit, sive illum secutae, etiam ipsae tamen rebaptizatae sunt; et nunc cum gregibus Circumcellionum inter vagabundos greges feminarum, quae propterea maritos habere noluerunt ne habeant disciplinam, in detestabilis vinolentiae bacchationibus superbus exsultat, gaudens latissimam sibi apertam esse licentiam malae conversationis, unde in Catholica prohibebatur. Et hoc fortasse Proculeianus ignorat. Ergo per tuam gravitatem atque modestiam eidem in notitiam perferatur; iubeat eum, qui non ob aliud illam communionem delegit, nisi quia in Catholica clericatum amiserat, propter inobedientiam et perditos mores, a sua communione removeri. A. omnibus rationibus utetur ut scandala amoveantur. 3. Etenim ego, si Domino placet, istum modum servo, ut quisquis apud eos propter disciplinam degradatus ad Catholicam transire voluerit, in humiliatione poenitentiae recipiatur, quo et ipsi eum forsitan cogerent, si apud eos manere voluisset. Ab eis vero considera, quaeso te, quam exsecrabiliter fiat, ut quos male viventes ecclesiastica disciplina corripimus, persuadeatur eius ut ad lavacrum alterum veniant, atque ut id accipere mereantur, Paganos se esse respondeant; quae vox ne procederet de ore christiano, tantus sanguis martyrum fusus est: deinde quasi renovati et quasi sanctificati, disciplinae quam ferre non potuerunt, deteriores facti, sub specie novae gratiae, sacrilegio novi furoris insultent. Aut si male facio, per tuam benevolentiam ista corrigenda curare, de me nullus queratur si haec illi perferri in notitiam per codices publicos fecero, qui mihi negari, ut arbitror, in Romana civitate non possunt. Nam cum Deus imperet ut loquamur et praedicemus verbum, et docentes quae non oportet refellamus, et instemus opportune atque importune, sicut dominicis et apostolicis Litteris probo 1, nullus hominum mihi silentium de his rebus persuadendum arbitretur. Violenter autem vel latrocinanter si quid audendum putaverint, non deerit Dominus ad tuendam Ecclesiam suam, qui iugo suo in gremio eius toto orbe diffuso omnia terrena regna subiecit. A. absolutam suae cuiusque religionis colendae facultatem tuetur. 4. Nam cum ecclesiae quidam colonus filiam suam, quae apud nos fuerat catechumena, et ad illos seducta est invitis parentibus, ut ubi baptizata etiam sanctimonialis formam susciperet, ad communionem catholicam paterna vellet severitate revocare, et ego feminam corruptae mentis nisi volentem, et libero arbitrio meliora diligentem suscipi noluissem; ille rusticus etiam plagis instare coepit, ut sibi filia consentiret; quod statim omnimodo fieri prohibui: tamen per Spanianum transeuntibus nobis, presbyter ipsius stans in medio fundo catholicae ac laudabilis feminae, voce impudentissima post nos clamavit, quod traditores et persecutores essemus; quod convicium etiam in illam feminam iaculatus est, quae communionis est nostrae, in cuius medio fundo stabat; quibus vocibus auditis, non solum meipsum a lite refrenavi, sed etiam multitudinem, quae me comitabatur, compescui. Et tamen si dicam: Quaeratur qui sint vel fuerint traditores vel persecutores; respondetur mihi: Disputare nolumus, et rebaptizare volumus. Nos oves vestras insidiantibus morsibus luporum more depraedemur; vos, si boni pastores estis, tacete. Quid enim aliud mandavit Proculeianus, si vere ipse mandavit? Si Christianus es, serva hoc iudicio Dei, nisi nos faciamus, tu tace. Ausus est etiam idem presbyter homini rusticano conductori fundi ecclesiae comminari. Eusebius rescribat quid illi respondeant. 5. Haec quoque omnia per te, quaeso, noverit Proculeianus; coerceat insaniam clericorum suorum, unde, honorabilis Eusebi, non apud te tacui. Dignaberis itaque non quid tu de his omnibus sentias, ne tibi arbitreris a me iudicis onus imponi, sed quid illi respondeant mihi rescribere. Misericordia Dei te incolumem tueatur, domine eximie et merito suscipiende ac dilectissime frater.