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Against Vigilantius

4.

He certainly well represents his race. Sprung from a set of brigands and persons collected together from all quarters (I mean those whom Cn. Pompey, after the conquest of Spain, when he was hastening to return for his triumph, brought down from the Pyrenees and gathered together into one town, whence the name of the city Convenæ ¹), he has carried on their brigand practices by his attack upon the Church of God. Like his ancestors the Vectones, the Arrabaci, and the Celtiberians, he makes his raids upon the churches of Gaul, not carrying the standard of the cross, but, on the contrary, the ensign of the devil. Pompey did just the same in the East. After overcoming the Cilician and Isaurian pirates and brigands, he founded a city, bearing his own name, between Cilicia and Isauria. That city, however, to this day, observes the ordinances of its ancestors, and no Dormitantius has arisen in it; but Gaul supports a native foe, and sees seated in the Church a man who has lost his head and who ought to be put in the strait-jacket which Hippocrates recommended. Among other blasphemies, he may be heard to say, “What need is there for you not only to pay such honour, not to say adoration, to the thing, whatever it may be, which you carry about in a little vessel and worship?” And again, in the same book, “Why do you kiss and adore a bit of powder wrapped up in a cloth?” And again, in the same book, “Under the cloak of religion we see what is all but a heathen ceremony introduced into the churches: while the sun is still shining, heaps of tapers are lighted, and everywhere a paltry bit of powder, wrapped up in a costly cloth, is kissed and worshipped. Great honour do men of this sort pay to the blessed martyrs, who, they think, are to be made glorious by trumpery tapers, when the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne, with all the brightness of His majesty, gives them light?”

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Contra Vigilantium liber unus

4.

Convenarum urbs et patria Vigilantii. Pompeiopolis fuit dicta. Verba Vigilantii.—Nimirum respondet generi suo, ut qui de latronum et Convenarum natus est semine (quos [Consul Strab. lib. IV]. Cn. Pompeius edomita Hispania, et ad triumphum redire festinans, de Pyrenaei jugis deposuit, et in unum oppidum congregavit: unde et Convenarum urbs nomen accepit) hucusque latrocinetur contra Ecclesiam Dei, et de Vectonibus, Arrebacis, Celtiberisque descendens, incurset Galliarum Ecclesias, portetque nequaquam vexillum [Al. Christi] crucis, sed insigne diaboli. Fecit hoc idem Pompeius, etiam in Orientis partibus: ut Cilicibus et Isauris piratis, latronibusque superatis: sui nominis inter Ciliciam et Isauriam conderet civitatem. Sed haec urbs hodie servat scita majorum, et nullus in ea ortus est Dormitantius. Galliae vernaculum hostem sustinent, et hominem moti capitis, atque Hippocratis vinculis alligandum, sedentem cernunt in Ecclesia: et inter caetera verba blasphemiae, ista quoque dicentem: "Quid necesse est, te tanto honore, non solum honorare; sed etiam adorare illud nescio quid, quod in modico vasculo transferendo colis?" Et rursum in eodem libro: "Quid pulverem linteamine circumdatum, adorando oscularis? Et in consequentibus: Prope ritum gentilium videmus sub praetextu religionis introductum in Ecclesiis, sole adhuc fulgente, moles cereorum accendi, et ubicumque pulvisculum nescio quod, in modico vasculo pretioso linteamine circumdatum osculantes adorant. Magnum honorem praebent hujusmodi homines beatissimis martyribus, quos putant de vilissimis cereolis illustrandos; quos Agnus, qui est in medio throni cum omni fulgore majestatis suae, illustrat."