VINCENT
787
VINCENT
I?eneLHctiiies. A piEclagogical work from the pen of Vincent, entitled l)e Inslitutlune FUiorum Rcfjioruin sen Nobiliuin, lias likewise become famous. It was pub- lished at Basle in 14S1 by Amerbacli, in a volume con- taining also the Tructatus de G rutin Dti ; the Liber de Laudibus Vir<)iiiis Gloriosce ; Liber de iSI. Juh. Ecan(]e- lista ; Kpist. Consolat. ad Reyem Francorum Ludovicum, etc. Several other works were written by Vincent, which are extant only in manuscript form. See Schlos- ser, Vincent von Beaiauiis, etc. (Frankf. 1819); Biblio- (/ntphie Unicerselle (Paris, 1827), xlix, 119. — Herzog, J'e(il-Fnc///d(>p. s. V.
Vincent of Leuixs, a monk and priest, holds an important jilace in the dogmatics of the Church of IJome through his little book Cuminuuiluria JJuo pro CathoUcce Fidei Aniiquitate et Universitute ado. Pro- J'anas Oinniiim fhereticoruin Noritales ; but history has jireserved very little respecting the circumstances of his life, and that little is drawn simply from the preface of the Coiwnoiiitorinm and from a few scattered notices in (Jennadius, De Viris Illustribus, ch. Ixiv. He was a native of Gaul, became monk and priest at Lerins, lived un<ier Theodosius II, and died in the reign of Valen- tinian I. according to the Roman martyrology, May 23, A.U. 450. The Commvnituriinn was composed about three years subsequent to the Svnod of Epliesus {Comm. ch. xlii), or in 434, and shows, despite its quiet argu- mentative tone and the absence of any polemical refer- ence, that it grew out of the conditions of the time in which the author lived. The draft of the greater part of the second book was stolen from the author, and its substance was consequently incorporated by him in the lirst. There are also still in existence sixteen Obser- vdtiones Vincent iunw against Augustine's predestination- ism, to which Prosper of A(initania responded (Augus- tine, 0pp. X, App. p. 1843 sq.), and which may have been written by his pen.
The questi<in which engaged the thought of the Church in the time of Vincent was the contest between Semi- Pelagianism and strict Augustinism, and this fact furnishes the key to the interpretatidu of the C'o»j- monitoriuin (comp. ch. xxxvii, '• Magna et specialis ac plane personalis qiuedam sit Dei gratia, adeo nt sine uUo labore, sine ullo studio, sine ulla indnstria, etiamsi nee petant, nee quterant, nee pulsent, quicunque illi ad nu- merum suimi pertinent — nunquam possint offendere ad lapidem pedem suum, id est nimquain scandalizari ;" and also ch. xiv, "Quia magna pars ilia Christianorum Catholicorum tidelium atque sanctorum, qu:B ad ruinani et ])erditionein prajdestinata est, etiamsi petat a Deo sanctitatis perseverentiam, non impetrabit"). A furtlier ke\' to the motive of the book is found in the fact that monasticism did not take kindly to Augustinism, and that in Southern Gaid especially it was penetrated with the views and spirit of the Eastern Church, of which statements Hilary of Aries (q. v.), who came forlli from Lerins, and Faustus of Keji, who was perhaps the abbot of Lerins when Vincent wrote his book, are in proof.
The Commonitorium begins with demanding an ob- jective guarantee for the truth, and finds the required criterion in Scripture and the tradition of the Catholic Church, the latter being necessary because of diversities of interpretation of the former, 'i'liis position marked the result of the conflicts by which the Church had progressed thus far in shaping its own constitution and in forming the New-Test, canon. But then comes the question. Does tradition itself require a criterion by which it may be tested? How determine what is and what is not Catholic? Is there a completed canon of tradition as there is a canon of Scripture? Vincent re- sponds with the rule, now famous, that we must be chiefly concerned "ut id teneamus quod ubiciue, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est." He is, how- ever, disposed to overrate the worth of anti(iuily, and to search rather for that which was held by the ancients tlian for that which is true; antl he fails to remember
that antiquity, within the pale of the Catholic Church itself, was divided upnn many questions, though he gives tiie definition that what a majority vi sacerdote.i and maijistri have deteruiined is Catiiolic. He requires even councils to legitimate themselves by the tests of unioersitas and antiquitus, and argues that the Catholic body of doctrine is an organism wliieli grows, but affords place to nothing that is absolutely new; and tlien he applies the principles he has labored to establish to de- stroy the infallibility of certain great ones who have made use of the confidence with which they were re- garded to introduce novel teachings into the Church — the object of Ids attack being assuredU' none other than tiie great bishop of Hippo, whose reputation excelled even that of the Roman bishop. In a word, Vincent endeavors to find in antiquity a protection against the arbitrary' spirit of the ecclesiastical powers of the pres- ent. The wealiuess in the scheme of Vincent is the disregard of the fact that the consent of antiquity can- not be established unless the factor of interpretation be applied to tradition itself. He accordingly failed to take the step in atlvance, which logical consistency re- quired, of making the Church itself the court of last ap- peal. The Jesuitism of our day has satisfied tliis de- mand of logic, but at the cost of sacrificing the ride of Vincent, as may be seen in the doctrine of the Immacu- late Conception, etc. Vincent marks a turning-ijoint in the dogmatic spirit of the Church. No previous teacher had so explicitly insisted on a purely outward guarantee for the truth. The fathers had, even in their strongest utterances, manifested confidence in the abid- ing presence of the Sjiirit with the Church. The feel- ing that the Spirit has departed from the Church finds its first pronounced expressii^n here, and this specifical- ly Romish doctrine is ihus shown to have had its origin in the Semi- Pelagianism of our monk's attack on Augus- tinism.