FATHERS
FATHERS
Jerome; the popes condeinned the innovators and the
emperor legislated against them. If St. Augustine has
the unique fame of having prostrated three heresies,
it is because he was as anxious to persuade as to refute.
He was perhaps the greatest controversialist the
world has ever seen. Besides this he w-as not merely
the greatest philosopher among the Fathers, but he
was the only great philosopher. His purely theolo-
gical works, especially his " De Trinitate", are unsur-
passed for depth, grasp, and clearness, among early
ecclesiastical writers, whether Eastern or Western.
As a philosophical theologian he has no superior,
except his own son and disciple, St. Thomas Aquinas.
It is probably correct to say that no one, e.xcept Aris-
totle, has exercised so vast, so profound, and so benefi-
cial an influence on European thought.
Augustine was himself a Platonist through and through. As a commentator he cared little for the letter, and everything for the spirit, but his harmony of the Gospels shows that he could attend to history and detail. The allegorizing tendencies he inherited from his spiritual father, Ambrose, carry him now and then into extravagances, but more often he rather soars than commentates, and his " In Genesini ad lit- teram", and his treatises on the Psalms and on St. John, are works of extraordinary power and interest, and quite worthy, in a totally different style, to rank with Chrysostom on Matthew. St. Augustine was a professor of rhetoric before his wonderful conversion; but like St. Cyprian, and even more than St. Cyprian, he put aside, as a Christian, all the artifices of oratorj' which he knew so well. He retained correctness of grammar and perfect good taste, together with the power of speaking and writing with ease in a style of masterly simplicity and of dignified though almost colloquial plainness.
Nothing could be more individual than this style of St. Augustine's, in which he talks to the reader or to God with perfect openness and with an astonishing, often almost exasperating, subtlety of thought. He had the power of seeing all round a subject and through and through it, and he was too conscientious not to use this gift to the uttermost. Large-minded and far-seemg, he was also very learned. He mastered Greek only m later life, in order to make himself familiar with the works of the Eastern Fathers. His "De Civitate Dei" shows vast stores of reading; still more, it puts him in the first place among apologists. Before his death (431) he was the object of extraor- dinary veneration. He had founded a monastery at Tagaste, which supplied Africa with bishops, and he lived at Hippo with his clergy in a common life, to which the Regular Canons of later days have always looked as their model. The great Dominican Order, the Augustinians, and nimiberless congregations of nuns still look to him as their father and legisla- tor. His devotional works have had a vogue second only to that of another of his spiritual sons, Thomas a Kempis. He had in his lifetime a reputation for miracles, and his sanctity is felt in all his writings, and breathes in the story of his life. It has been remarked that there is about this many-sided bishop a certain symmetry which makes him an almost faultless model of a holy, wise, and active man. It is well to remem- ber that he was essentially a penitent.
(9) In Spain, the great poet Prudentius surpassed all his predecessors, of whom the best had been Juven- cus and the almost pagan rhetorician Ausonius. The curious treatises of the Spanish heretic Priscillian were discovered only in 1SS9. In Gaul Rufinus of Aquileia must be mentioned as the very free transla- tor of Origen, etc., and of Eusebius's "Historj'", which he continued up to his own date. In South Italy his friend Paulinus of Nola has left us pious poems and elaliorate letters.
D. (1) The fragments of Nestorius's writings have been collected by Loofs. Some of them were pre-
served by a disciple of St. Augustine, Marius Mercator,
who made two collections of documents, concerning
Nestorianism and Pelagianism respectively. The
great adversary of Nestorius, St. Cyril of Alexandria,
was opposed by a yet greater writer, Theodoret, Bishop
of Cyrus. Cyril is a very voluminous writer, and his
long commentaries in the mystical Alexandrian vein
do not much interest modern readers. But his princi-
pal letters and treatises on the Nestorian question
show him as a theologian who has a deep spiritual
insight into the meaning of the Incarnation and its
effect upon the human race — the lifting up of man
to union with God. We see here the influence of
Egyptian asceticism, from Anthony the Great (whose
life St. Athanasius wrote), and the Macarii (one of
whom left some valuable works in Greek), and Pa-
chomius, to his own time. In their ascetical systems,
the union with God by contemplation was naturally
the end in view, but one Ls surprised how little is made
by them of meditation on the life and Passion of Christ.
It is not omitted, but the tendency as with St. Cyril
and with the Monophysites who believed they follow-ed
him, is to think rather of the Godhead than of the
Manhood. The Antiochene school had exaggerated
the contrary tendency, out of opposition to ApoUin-
arianism, which made Christ's Manhood incom-
plete, and they thought more of man united to God
than of God made man. Theodoret undoubtedly
avoided the excesses of Theodore and Nestorius, and
his doctrine was accepted at last by St. Leo as ortho-
dox, in spite of his earlier persistent defence of
Nestorius. His history of the monks is less valuable
than the earlier writings of eyewitnesses — Palladius
in the East, and Rufinus and afterwards Cassian in
the West. But Theodoret's "History" in continua-
tion of Eusebius contains valuable information. His
apologetic and controversial writings are the works of
a good theologian. His masterpieces are his exegeti-
cal works, which are neither oratorj- like those of
Chrysostom, nor exaggeratctlly literal like those of
Theodore. With him the great Antiochene school
worthily closes, as the Alexandrian does with St Cyril.
Together with these great men may be mentioned St.
Cyril's spiritual adviser, St. Isidore of Pelusium,
whose 2000 letters deal chiefly with allegorical exe-
gesis, the commentary on St. Mark by Victor of
Antioch, and the introduction to the interpretation
of Scripture by the monk Hadrian, a manual of the
Antiochene method.
(2) The Eutychian controversy produced no great works in the East. Such works of the Monophysites as have survived are in Syriac or Coptic versions. (3) The two Constantinopolitan historians, Socrates and Sozomen, in spite of errors, contain some data which are precious, since many of the sources which they used are lost to us. With Theodoret, their con- temporary, they form a triad just in the middle of the century. St. Nilus of Sinai is the chief among many ascetical writers. (4) St. Sulpicius Severus, a Ciallic noble, disciple and biographer of the great St. Martin of Tours, was a classical scholar, and showed himself an elegant writer in his " Ecclesiastical History". The school of Lcrins produced many writers besides St. Vincent. We may mention Eucherius, Faustus, and the great St. Caesarius of Aries (543) . Other Gallic writers are Salvian, St. Sidonius Apollinaris, Genna- dius, St. Avitus of Vienne, and Julianus Pomerius. (5) In the West, the series of papal decretals begins with Pope Siricius (3S4-9S). Of the more important popes large numbers of letters have been preserved. Those of the wise St. Innocent I (401-17), the hot- headed St. Zosimus (417-8), and the severe St. Celes- tine are perhaps the most important in the first half of the century; in the second half those of Hilarus, Sim- plicius, and above all the learned St. Gelasius (492-6). Midway in the century stands St. Leo, the greatest of the early popes, whose steadfastness and sanctity
