A is God, full, proceeding from the Father and the Son. And the Spirit indeed proceeds from the Son immediately, but from the Father, through the Son acting as mediator. Now, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son, this the Son has from the Father. Wherefore, he who does not believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son is on the path of perdition. Whence holy Athanasius, while he was in exile in the Western regions, in the profession of faith which he set forth in Latin words, said thus: “The Father is made of no one, nor created, nor begotten; the Son is from the Father alone, not made, nor created, but begotten; the Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son, not made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.” And the same holy Athanasius, in the profession of faith which he set forth in Greek words, says verbatim: “The Holy Spirit, however, is the procession of the Father, of the Son who bears Him, through whom He fulfilled all things.” Whence also the blessed Gregory, to whom the title of Thaumaturgus is justly attributed, bishop of Neocaesarea, in the profession of faith which he received through a revelation from the blessed John the Evangelist, the Mother of God interceding, cried out clearly, saying: “One God, Father of the living Word, of the subsisting Wisdom and Power and eternal Image; perfect parent of the perfect; Father of the only-begotten Son. One Lord, sole from sole, God from God, Image and likeness of the divinity; the efficacious Word,” and what follows. Now, regarding what he says of the Son, that He is “sole from sole,” it does not therefore follow that the Holy Spirit is “sole from sole”; thus, He is from the Father and another, since He is from something. But when we say “from the Father and another,” we do not say “from another” according to substance (or essence), but according to hypostasis and person.
C That the Holy Spirit is from the Son immediately, but from the Father through the Son as mediator, the blessed Gregory of Nyssa testifies, saying thus: “Confessing the perfection of nature and its variationless likeness, we do not deny the distinction that exists regarding cause and what is from cause, in which alone we understand one to be distinguished from the other, that we believe one to be the cause (or author), but the other to be from the cause (or author). Also, of that which is from the cause (or author) we understand another difference, namely, that what is from the first immediately must belong either to the Son alone or to the Holy Spirit alone.” Now the saints say that between the Father and the Son there is nothing intermediate. The Son, therefore, is alone from the Father immediately. Therefore the Holy Spirit is not from the Father immediately. Furthermore, it is a common understanding that whatever is from something is from something immediately. But He is not from the Father immediately, as has already been proved; therefore, He is from the Son immediately. These most holy Fathers, therefore, and indeed the blessed
A Ambrose, bishop of Milan, and the blessed Augustine, bishop of the city of Hippo, as well as the most holy Jerome, that most powerful combatant against heretical depravity—following them, the blessed Cyril, and with him the whole holy third ecumenical synod, left us a manifest writing stating that the Spirit is from the Son. Hence, he is not orthodox, but rather departs from the faith, who contends against his words. For he says B most clearly in his *Prosphoneticus* to the Emperor Theodosius concerning the orthodox faith, that the Spirit is from the Son, in these words: “But when he speaks of the man who was already about to be present and seen by the eyes, he said that he himself baptizes in fire and the Holy Spirit; not that he would send into those being baptized a Spirit not his own, in a servile and ministerial manner, but as God by nature, with supreme authority, the Spirit who is from him and is his own.” What could be clearer than this testimony? For here he says most clearly regarding the Son, that he sends the Holy Spirit into those being baptized, the Spirit who is from him and is his own. And this same thing the blessed Cyril himself writes to Hermias in his explanation of the ninth C anathema, saying this very thing. For in the ninth anathema, having said that the Spirit is the Son’s own, explaining that same anathema to show in what sense the Spirit is his own, he opened it up, saying: “The Only-begotten Word of God having become man, remained nonetheless God; being everything that the Father is, with this one exception, that he is not the Father; and having his own Spirit, who is from him and substantially exists in him by nature, the Holy Spirit, etc.” Here again, the holy Father says most clearly that the Holy Spirit is from the Son. And it ought to be doubtful to no one that the holy man here opened up the same D mind that he had when he set forth the anathema. That anathema, moreover, together with all the other anathemas, the holy and ecumenical third synod received in the same sense in which the holy man had set it forth. For it is manifest that the holy Fathers gathered in that holy synod received without any hesitation or questioning the entire third epistle of the aforementioned Father, written against the impious Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople. And we know that the final part of the aforementioned epistle contains the twelve aforementioned anathemas. But if anyone should attempt to defend as lawful the most impious words of Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus, which he shamelessly vomited forth against the twelve chapters of the aforementioned Father, he should know that the fifth holy and ecumenical synod devoted to curses the trifles of the said Theodoret: since he is entirely occupied with criticizing the words of the blessed Cyril, in which he also answered him. For the fifth holy and universal synod says, in the eighth action: “We condemn and anathematize, along with all the other heretics already condemned and struck by anathema by the four aforementioned holy synods and by the holy and catholic Church, also Theodore, who was bishop of Mopsuestia, and his impious monuments, and likewise the impious writings of Theodoret against the right faith and the twelve chapters of the holy Cyril and the holy third synod of Ephesus. And whatever has been written by him in defense of Theodore and Nestorius.”
one among the saints, Cyril, and the holy third synod of Ephesus; and whatever has been A written by him in defense of Theodore and Nestorius. From these things it is most clear that those things which Theodoret wrote against the twelve chapters of the holy Cyril are illicit and full of impiety, and he who defends such things as true and acts as their advocate is an enemy of the faith. For the blessed Cyril writes to Acacius, bishop of Melitene, after the union of the Churches, saying thus: "As regards what we have written rightly against the blasphemies of Nestorius, no argument will persuade us that they were not well said." And likewise he writes to Donatus the bishop, saying: "We have written aright what we have written, defending the right and immaculate faith, and we do not deny anything at all of our own. For I have not said anything, as they themselves whisper, carelessly or without investigation, but everywhere things that were right and followed the power of the truth." From these things it is most manifest that the blessed Cyril did not deny anything of those things which he had said; but that in the same sense in which he himself spoke, it held its force without any annotation or correction. Nor was it possible for him alone to correct even that which he might have wished, which the holy synod received confidently without any doubt of retraction. And he received it in that sense in which he himself set it forth, with the holy synod, and he also requires it to be B received. For all the holy Fathers who were in the subsequent synods honor and revere this synod, and believe the same things as it does. But also the holy Fathers who preceded it held the same views as it did. We hold this faith, and thus we confess and think and believe.
Subscriptions of the apocrisiarii.
I, from the order of the brothers the Heralds, apocrisiarius of the lord Pope Gregory, bishop of elder Rome, subscribe this faith, and thus I believe. I, Ammonius, subscribe this faith, and so forth. I, Radulphus, from the order, etc., subscribe this faith, and thus I believe.
C To this dogmatic epistle of Pope Gregory have been prefixed those arguments of Photius which exist in his epistle to Michael, prince of the Bulgarians, or king and emperor; for so the Greeks had agreed that he should be called, with the elder Roman emperor reigning at the time when the marriage alliances of the Greek emperors were contracted with that nation: in which matter Montacutius showed himself less experienced in Byzantine history, since he criticizes the interpreter of Baronius on the faith of his own codex, as if he himself necessarily had to have an *archon* [ruler], and preferred to render *king* [rex] rather than *prince* [princeps]. I would prefer that he [Photius] had used *king*, and had thus rather prefaced it, so as not to offend the man with a more common title, whom he was endeavoring with such efforts to draw away from the cult of the Roman Church and enslave to his own see. Nor does Montacutius conjecture badly that the title is that of an antiquarian rather than of Photius himself. He does not poorly dispel the arguments: and they are certainly most slight, as are those which he has in the epistle to the bishop of Aquileia, brought forth by me for the first time in Greek in my most recent *Auctuarium*. Germanus also, in his reply appended to this epistle of Gregory, ineptly exults, and as if Gregory's anathema strikes Christ the Lord himself, and all those who have said or written that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, without any other greater expression of his and the Son's procession. Which disparagement is the condemnation of all the ecumenical synods of old. For there is none in which something is not expressed which the faith of the elders had held as if wrapped in mystery. Nay, the Gospel itself, as if it conflicts with the Law, while it hands down so many things distinctly, yet [conflicts] with legal figures most obscurely adumbrated, or even consultedly left silent, and scarcely insinuated to the great men in it, and taught so that they might grasp them in any way possible, but not teach the common people. The authorities are to be brought forth for the Greeks, by which the Spirit is said to proceed from the Father alone, and that the Spirit does not otherwise stand in relation to the Son than the Son does to Him, which they never accomplish and which openly conflicts with Scripture and theology. Metochites reports some one thing brought by them as a plagiarism, the fraud having been immediately convicted from the codex itself. I had earnestly wished for the five books of Metochites to have a place in L. Allatius's *Graecia orthodoxa*,
and I had sent them to Rome to reach that end; yet, although I was destined in my more advanced age to complete that task, being most deserving in literary and ecclesiastical matters, it was not permitted; just as I was not permitted, after his death, to receive back what I had murmured into deaf ears: even if the loss of those texts is not without its remedy, for me or for the public, if only milder times were to shine forth, and if there were more support for recovering Greek letters and Greek ecclesiastical monuments from moths and decay. For the royal treasury preserves its wealth—from which I had transcribed [my copies]—and Rome has been enriched: the world could not be. One man, at least, seemed to me supreme in this regard, who defended with such spirit the faith declared at Lyons, and could not be moved from his constancy by the prison of so many years, but, as if enduring in it, drew his stylus more forcefully against the hearts of his erring kin, and demonstrated the faith of the Latins resting upon certain tradition: which is the only efficacious method for establishing the faith. For the faith is not new to us, even if it has become more explicit through time on account of the occasion of various errors and the harassment of heretics. Nor would this question be so vexed if the Greeks, holding to their own measure and the faith once delivered, recognized the one Father as the cause, or author, of the Son and the Spirit, as Maximus [does] in his epistle to Marinus; nor would they, with Photius as their prelate, and then Cerularius—the vainest of men—have condemned the Latins of monstrous heresy: for the fact that the Son is from the Father as cause, means that [the Father] is, along with Him, one cause and author: the Father is as the original fount of the entire Trinity, and it is in Him that its monarchy consists. The Son [is] from the Father, with essence, having also received the procession, and as truly emanating from Him *essentialiter* (as the more subtle Greeks prefer to say, *προσέχως*); hence is the Spirit truly His, just as He is also the Spirit of the Father, not merely through the outpouring or distribution of the gifts of the Spirit—which is the rotten subterfuge of certain modern schismatics—or as if the Spirit were understood as the cause from Himself and without the Father, although with power received from Him, but as if [He were] distinct and separate, in which sense the Greeks, or the Gentiles, generally placed creative intelligences beneath the primary Author of things; which would be both to detract from the dignity of the Spirit and to tear down the whole of theology: nor does Photius ill-infer this, even though he calumniates it so lightly, for it never came into the mind of Catholics.
Gregory himself rightly urges the tradition, and especially the matter decided in the ninth anathema received by Cyril in the third synod, and in its explanation and sense, in which he stayed most consistently, as one which the synod itself had embraced, from which it would not be free to backtrack after its judgment. The pontiff does not seem to have omitted the authorities of the Latins, which he says Cyril followed—Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome—even though these lack the Greek, which perhaps the crude interpreter dared not attempt. By these same [authorities] our Calecas excellently pressures his Greeks, because the approved authority of these Fathers was received by the judgment of the sixth synod. Because Cyril followed this, perhaps the pontiff had no other source than his utmost agreement with the Latins in matters of faith, and the fact that he fully acknowledged his primacy in the Roman Church, and had excellently defended it against Nestorius; with that [heresy] being suppressed not so much in his own name as in the name of Celestine, and by his own vicar, and by the sentence passed by him—executing it by his own suffrage and that of the synod. Moreover, there are no more certain heralds of the Roman faith than its own most approved teachers.
The subscriptions are jumbled, and I believe [this is true of] the subscription of Radulphus, which is inscribed in the first and third place, as if the antiquary wished to supply the name of Radulphus which had fallen out the first time. He was a famous man, whose *Polemiká* against the Greeks still exist, and who alone was suitable to fulfill the duty of an *apocrisiarius*, and he alone had Ammonius as a companion of the embassy; who does not seem to have been a religious, otherwise the antiquary would have expressed the name of the brother and his order, as he did once and again in the other [instance]. Therefore, Brother Radulphus, of the order of the Friars Preachers, *ἀπὸ τῆς τάξεως τῶν ἀδελφῶν τῶν Κηρύκων*. Nor do I see how the following response of Germanus to the said epistle of Gregory is to be thus prefaced: *To the most holy Patriarch of Constantinople, Germanus, and the synod with him, a reply to such a confession of the Pope, and to those sent by him, the Friars Minors, and the rest, concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit.* Here I have expressed only the Friars Minors sent by the pontiff, with no mention of the Preachers: when in the subscriptions one Radulphus the Preacher is heard as the pope's *apocrisiarius*, and no Friar Minor, at least in the second [instance], has a name.
Up to this point, the writings of St. Maximus from the edition of the Rev. Father Franc. Combefis.
OF OUR HOLY FATHER MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR ON THE VARIOUS DIFFICULTIES OF THE HOLY DIONYSIUS AND GREGORY TO THOMAS THE SANCTIFIED
THE MOST HOLY FATHER MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR ON THE VARIOUS DIFFICULT LOCI OF THE HOLY FATHERS DIONYSIUS AND GREGORY TO THOMAS, A MAN OF SANCTITY. A WORK TRANSCRIBED FROM A MANUSCRIPT GUDIAN CODEX AND INTERPRETED INTO THE LATIN TONGUE, FOLLOWING THE ATTEMPTS OF J. SCOTUS AND TH. GALE, NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME PUBLISHED IN ITS ENTIRETY BY FRANC. OEHLER. (Halle, C. E. M. Pfeffer, MDCCCLVII.) PREFACE.
When, almost ten years ago, civil disturbances were raging through my homeland and the neighboring regions, and all things were full of fury and madness—with some openly threatening iron and fire and every kind of ferocity, and others pulling the republic apart through various factions and societies, each of which imagined it knew the true medicine for a suffering people—I can scarcely say with what joy, amid the terror and weariness of these things, I always betook myself to those arts which, long cultivated, seemed especially suited in those times to console the soul and to lift it up from the common sadness of all good men. It happened by chance that I was led from the books of Gregory of Nyssa, whose study occupied me greatly, to certain writings of Maximus the Confessor, a most serious philosopher. I do not deny that I was not infrequently wearied by his difficult and encumbered style; yet, I rejoice today that I was marvelously raised up and strengthened by the sublimity of his thoughts and the truth of his doctrines, tempered by the limpid fountain of a pious and sincere soul. For what Photius felt about another work of Maximus (Myriob. cod. CXCII, col. 501, ed. Hoesch)—that his oration, stuffed with hyperbata, circumlocutions, and linguistic inversions, often produced obscurity and difficulty for the reader, but that if anyone took pleasure in involving his mind in anagoges and contemplations, he would never find anything more varied or more diligently elaborated than those, and that especially the piety of the man and his pure and sincere desire for Christ shone forth everywhere—that judgment may well seem applicable to the greater part of the works of Maximus. But, to return to the matter: at that very time, I was informed by Schoemann, then prefect of the Wolfenbüttel Library—a man worthy of being held forever in the most grateful and pious memory—of the most excellent Greek Gudian codex 39, which, besides other works of Maximus, preserved much more accurately...
A than those published by Combefis, that remarkable and unpublished work, *On the Various Doubts of the Holy Dionysius and Gregory to Thomas the Hallowed*. I humanely acceded to the desire to have a copy of this book, and the codex was transmitted. I found the work "thick and arduous," as Montfaucon calls it (Catal. Bibl. Coisl., p. 311). The labor of transcribing it was not small, nor free from weariness, but it was fruitful, as I trusted. Many things were therein debated very subtly, many were treated excellently, very many were helpfully set forth—not a few of which carry away the soul and suffuse it with a most pure and gentle fire, and by which we are kindled to institute a holier way of life.
Yet I grieved that a work so varied and so copious, so surpassing in the gravity and sublimity of its commentaries, should lie unknown for so long, and I determined, if ever there were leisure, to edit it immediately. Nor is its fame something of yesterday, since John Scotus once set out, by the order of Charles the Bald, to make it Latin. The remains of this version—which was once received from the Cluny library by Jean Mabillon and communicated with Thomas Gale (for it is clear, both from his own preface and from the place in the work *De divisione naturae*, p. 210 ed. Gal., where he cites the forty-first chapter on the *Ambiguities* in the oration of Gregory Nazianzen on Pascha, that John Scotus translated more than has remained, and it seems Combefis also had more, if I interpret his words correctly, as posited in his *Bibliotheca concionatoria* tom. I, and thence repeated in Fabricius, *Biblioth. Gr.* tom. IX, p. 673, ed. Harl.)—were edited by that man most flourishing in the praise of letters, Thomas Gale, at the end of the five books of John Scotus’s *De divisione naturae*, Oxford, 1681, pp. 1-45, to which he conjoined a second part of the work *On Various Doubts* together with a Latin interpretation, pp. 46-70. B Since, therefore, I have taken up the intention of editing the whole and entire body of the *Various Doubts*, I have not hesitated, for the sake of both antiquity and the pious memory of great names, to retain the versions of both men—both John Scotus and Thomas Gale—unchanged, although the one abounds not in the faults of the work but of its author, and the other certainly is not free of errors, especially since John Scotus could not be corrected without becoming plainly unlike himself. Thomas Gale in the Preface to the five books of John Scotus’s *De divisione naturae* says: "Saint Maximus wrote an exposition of certain ambiguous passages which occur in the books of St. Dionysius and Gregory Nazianzen. These *Ambiguities* John Erigena translated into Latin. I do not know if he translated the whole work of Maximus, since I have not yet obtained the complete Greek of St. Maximus."
What you read here at the end, receive and refer to me, partly by the benefit of the distinguished Emericus Bigot, who examined for my use what was transcribed from the library of the King of the Gauls, and partly from my own codex, which contains very many lucubrations of the same Maximus. But to return to Scotus: his translation, which I edit here, was communicated to me by the man celebrated for his humanity and erudition, J. Mabillon, whom I mentioned above. This version, apart from the things that are easily observed in the books of *De divisione naturae*, sufficiently shows that Erigena was plainly a beginner in Greek.
The Gudian codex C which I used was described by Ebert in the *Catalogue of Manuscripts of the Ducal Library of Wolfenbüttel*; it is a parchment from the 13th century, containing one hundred and sixty-four leaves in quarto, and it is so elegantly and accurately written that not only could other books be excellently amended and supplemented from it, but I would not need the help of another book to interpret the work *On Various Doubts* itself. Fabricius mentions other hand-written codices: the Turin Reg. XXIV, the Venetian St. Mark CXXXVI (Morell. Bibl. Msc. Gr. et Lat. I, p. 82), from which you have certain chapters edited in Galland's *Bibliotheca Patrum*, Appendix, p. 153 sqq. (which are found in the codex Gudianus f. 229 sqq.), and the Nanian library codex LXIV. Combefis also knew other codices, and it is certain that he wished to complete the third volume of the corpus of the works of St. Maximus edited by himself, for in his *Bibliotheca concionatoria*, tom. I (cf. Fabricius, *Bibl. Gr.* tom. IX, p. 673 ed. Harl.), he says: "St. Maximus wrote on the difficult passages of many of the orations and some poems of Gregory from a royal codex (DCCCXXXVI, Bibl. Reg. Catal. p. 1, p. 172), collated with another, most humanely sent by the reverend abbot Gerasimus Blacchus at Venice, and the version of John Erigena itself from the Cluny library." The distinguished Raphael du Fresne will provide the colophon of the *του μακαριτου* [of the blessed one] codex, executed on most beautiful membranes and in a scholarly hand, if ever there is opportunity and leisure for comparing it. I suspect that Thomas Gale’s books, which contain both the work of Maximus itself and the version of John Scotus, are listed in the D *Catalogue of the MSS of England and Ireland*.