TO THE REVEREND FATHER AND LORD IN

A large square woodcut initial 'C' featuring several putti or naked infants. One child is seated within the open space of the letter, while others are seen climbing on the top and base of the decorative frame.

THIS age is a restless and inquisitive one original: curiosum, Reverend Father, which is so incapable of settling these long-standing upheavals that it stirs up new ones all the more quickly, and spreads movements that worsen day by day far and wide. Furthermore, those who track the origins of such great evils and strive to scatter their gradually gathered strength (at which your piety is especially aimed), accuse with one voice, as it were, the monstrous madness of self-love original: philautia; a Greek term often used in theological texts to describe excessive self-regard as the root of heresy., and they suggest, not without reason, that this disease is both the head and the cause of all others. From the same fountain, it seems to me, flows the zeal for writing new books, which the Preacher original: Ecclesiastes; likely a reference to the biblical book of Ecclesiastes 12:12, "of making many books there is no end." refutes as a kind of vain curiosity. And from here (which is much more poisonous) comes both the ambitious display of learning and a certain stubborn presumption of wisdom, then that unbridled lust for inventing new dogmas, through which ancient lessons begin to be both loathed and rendered obsolete.

Finally, through these steps, as if through all degrees of impiety, human recklessness has now reached such a point—alas!—that for most people, the dignity and authority of the most holy popes and the most distinguished fathers of the ancient Church are held in contempt, unless perhaps the new teachers find it convenient to misuse this authority to confirm their own errors. For thus far, they find value in Gennadius on communion and transubstantiation, Clement on the reservation of the Eucharist, Hilary on the justification of faith, Epiphanius on the destruction of sacred images, Prosper on confession, Gregory on the naming of the Ecclesiastical primacy, and Bernard on dispensation. But Jerome seems more than rigid—indeed, intolerable—no doubt because he cannot help but be unpleasant to the followers of Jovinian and Vigilantius Jovinian and Vigilantius were 4th-century figures whom Jerome vigorously attacked in his writings for opposing monasticism and the veneration of relics.. Cyprian is disliked everywhere. And no wonder, since he—being entirely "Evangelical" not just in name but in reality—diligently commends the merits of works and the practice of satisfaction to these boasters of faith. They claim that Augustine ignores the corrupt morals of his own time, simply because he gladly insists on the received discipline of the Church to these despisers. Now, for those who with equal modesty despise so many and such venerable decrees, laws, and institutions of our ancestors, I ask: will they listen to this Leo A reference to Pope Leo the Great, whose writings Canisius is likely introducing., even though he thunders everywhere with a rare majesty of speech that is clearly apostolic? Will they look up to a Pope who is otherwise to be looked up to for so many reasons—for his dignity, gravity, wisdom, and eloquence?