Page 242 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

the other groups he named were still active in areas which influenced
Italy. 149
John’s opposition to rebaptism was in accord with the usual policy of
the Catholic church for the reception of proselytes since the early fourth
century. 150 His reason, however, is somewhatunusual. Earlier arguments
for the validity of baptism performed by heretics proceed from the propo-
sition that the condition of the priest performing the ceremony does not
affect the sacrament itself. John does not use this argument, but considers
only the necessity for a Trinitarian baptismal formula. His thought was
possibly influenced by Augustine, who was much studied in the circle
of Boethius in Rome. 151 The focus of John’s statement is on correct
baptismal liturgy, rather than the theology of baptism.
A restatement of the prohibition of rebaptism in the early sixth cen-
tury was obviously relevant to relations between the Catholic and Arian
churches then coexisting in Italy. There is evidence of Arians converting
to the Catholic church during the reign of Theoderic. 152 The creeds
labelled ‘Arian’ from the time of the Council of Nicaea onwards varied
greatly. Not all may have used Trinitarian baptismal formulae, though
the little evidence available suggests that most did. 153 The liturgy of

149 Pelagianism in Provence, the Christological heresies in the Monophysite controversies of the
East.
150 E.g. Pope Siricius, Ep. i, 2 (on Arians), in Victor Saxer, Les Rites de l’initiation chr´ etienne du IIe
au VIe si` ecle: esquisse historique et signification d’apr` es leurs principaux t´ emoins (Spoleto, 1988), 574–5;
Pope Gelasius, Ep. xii, 10 (on Macedonians and Nestorians) in Thiel, Epistola, 357–8; Pope
Anastasius II, Ep. i, 7 (on Acacian schismatics), ibid., 620–2 (preserved in the papal decretalia of
Dionysius Exiguus); Pope Vigilius, Ep. i (ii), 3 (PL 69, 18). Cf. Jedin and Dolan, 709–10.
151 Condition of priest: references as previous note. John Chrysostom argued that while the con-
dition of the priest did not affect the validity of baptism, an orthodox Trinitarian baptismal
formula was necessary; Arian baptism was therefore invalid. This belief was not followed in
the West; Thomas M. Finn, Early Christian Baptism and the Catechumenate: West and East Syria
(Collegeville, MN, 1992), 13–14. Augustine: Chadwick, Boethius, 175. John mentions consulting
maiorum volumina in preparing his reply to Senarius’ questions; Ep. 1. Augustine specified that a
Trinitarian formula was needed, but implicitly accepted Arian baptism; Maria Andrelita Cenzon
Santos, Baptismal Ecclesiology of St. Augustine: A Theological Study of His Antidonatist Letters (Rome,
1990), 278–314.
Later in the sixth century, Pope Vigilius also was concerned over improper Trinitarian for-
mulae in baptism; Vigilius, Ep. i, 6 (c. 538) in Saxer, Les Rites de l’initiation chr´ etienne, 581–2.
152
Moorhead, Theoderic, 95–6; Brown, ‘Everyday Life’, 86, 94; though evidence based solely on
individuals with Germanic names who are attested as Catholic, but not expressly attested as
formerly Arian, is invalid; cf. Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 263–74.
The belief that Theoderic forbade Catholics from proselytising to Arianism (Brown, ‘Everyday
Life’, 94 n. 74;Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 258), based on Theodore Lectore,
Kirchengeschichte ii, 18, reads too much into this eastern source.
153
Late fourth-century ‘Arian’ groups such as the Eunomians and Macedonians used Trinitarian
baptismal formulae; R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian
Controversy,318–381 (Edinburgh, 1988), 636 n. 170; 769.
216