Monday, February 24, 2020

F.W. Puller on the Libellus of Hormisdas


In AD 519, Pope Hormisdas issued a libellus and required the signatures of the eastern bishops. Part of the libellus stated:

The first condition of salvation is to keep the rule of the true faith, and not to deviate in any way from the tradition of the Fathers. And because the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot be overlooked, which says: ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I shall build my Church,' these things that have been said have been proven by the events, because in this Apostolic See the Catholic religion has always been preserved inviolate.

Such has been appealed to in support of evidence for the infallibility of the Roman See and Bishop thereof in the sixth century. Commenting on this, F.W. Puller wrote:

This was a dangerous argument to use. It may be doubted whether Hormisdas would have inserted this clause if he could have foreseen that one of his successors, S. Leo II, would in the year 683 write to the Emperor Constantine Pogonatus concerning Pope Honorius as follows, “We anathematize Honorius, who, instead of labouring to keep the apostolic Church pure by the teaching of apostolic tradition, suffered it, the immaculate, to be polluted through is profane betrayal,” or, as the last words run in the Latin form of the epistle, “attempted to subvert the immaculate faith by a profane betrayal” (Coleti, vii. 1156). The same Pope S. Leo II., having included his predecessor Honorius in a list of heretics, says, “All these, preaching one will and one operation in the Godhead and Manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ, imprudently attempted to defend heretical doctrine” (Ep., Leonis Papae II., ad Ervigium regem Hispaniae, ap. Coleti, vii. 1462). It is important to remember that, according to the teaching of the popes, they themselves are liable “to defend heretical doctrine in an impudent manner.” This teaching was faithfully handed down in the Roman see; so we find that Pope Adrian VI. in his Quaestiones de Sacramntis in quartum Sententiarum librum (fol. xxvi. coll. iii., iv.), when treating of the minister of Confirmation, discusses the question, “Utrum papa possit errare in his quae tangent fidem”? He replies, “Dico primo quod si per ecclesiam Romanam intelligat caput ejus, fidem, haeresim per suam determinationem aut decretalem asserendo. Plures enim fuerunt potifices Romani haeretici.” I quote from the edition published by Pope Adrian in 1522 during his pontificate, under his own eye at Rome. It must be remembered that Acacius had never explicitly “defended heretical doctrine,” as Honorius did, nor asserted heresy in a decretal, as other popes did. (F.W. Puller, The Primitive Saints and The See of Rome [London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1893], 307-8 n. 1)