Saint Vincent of Lérins

The 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia begins plainly: "His work is much better known than his life." ¹ Nearly everything it can say about him comes from Gennadius of Marseilles, who wrote a catalogue of church writers later in the same century. ¹ Gennadius calls him "Vincentius, the Gaul, presbyter in the Monastery on the Island of Lerins, a man learned in the Holy Scriptures and very well informed in matters of ecclesiastical doctrine." ² Saint Eucherius of Lyons, the encyclopedia adds, called him a holy man, conspicuous for eloquence and knowledge. ¹

Lérins is the island now called Saint-Honorat, and Vincent entered the monastery there. ¹ He tells a little of why in the opening of his book. He had once been caught up "in the manifold and deplorable tempests of secular warfare," he writes, and now, avoiding the crowds of cities, he lived "in the seclusion of a Monastery, situated in a remote grange." ³ What that earlier life was he does not say, and the page does not guess.

The Roman Martyrology, as the Italian bishops print it, remembers him in a single sentence, translated here: in the monastery of Lérins in Provence, Saint Vincent, priest and monk, distinguished for Christian doctrine and holiness of life, and devoted to the progress of souls in the faith. ⁴

A commonitorium is a reminder, something to jog the memory. Vincent wrote under the name Peregrinus, "the least of all the servants of God," and said he was setting down what he had received from the holy Fathers so that he could reread it and make up for the weakness of his memory. ³ He meant to write, he says, "with the fidelity of a narrator rather than the presumption of an author." ³

He dates the book himself. He refers to the Council of Ephesus as held "some three years ago," and the encyclopedia accordingly dates the Commonitory to 434. ¹³ There were two parts. Gennadius says that most of the second book was stolen, and that Vincent wrote a short summary of the whole in its place. ² In the text that has come down to us only that closing summary of the second part survives. ¹³

The question the book sets out to answer is practical. Vincent says he had often asked men "eminent for sanctity and learning" how he could tell the truth of the Catholic faith from the falsehood of heresy, and that the answer was nearly always the same: by the authority of Scripture first, and then by the tradition of the Catholic Church. ³ Scripture, he grants, is complete and more than sufficient, but not everyone reads it the same way; Novatian, Arius, Pelagius and Nestorius all expound it, each differently. ³

So he gives his rule: "in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all." ³ It has three tests, which he names universality, antiquity and consent. ³ If a new teaching springs up in one corner of the Church, as Donatism did, hold to the faith of the whole; if a novelty infects nearly the whole, as Arianism did, cling to antiquity; and if error is found even in antiquity, prefer the decrees of a general council, or failing one, the agreement of the many teachers who stayed faithful. ¹

The encyclopedia calls this the canon of Vincent of Lérins and says it has been argued over ever since, especially at the time of the First Vatican Council. ¹ It reports that Newman thought it better fitted to show what is not Catholic doctrine than what is, and that even theologians who usually agreed read it differently. ¹ Vincent himself, it says, meant the three tests to be taken together loosely rather than as one absolute requirement. ¹

He also asks why God lets brilliant teachers fall into error. His answer, drawn from Deuteronomy, is that it is a test: God allows it, Moses says, to know whether we love him with all our heart and soul. ³ Among his examples are Origen and Tertullian. ¹³

The passage most quoted today comes in the twenty-third chapter. "Shall there, then, be no progress in Christ's Church?" Vincent asks, and answers: "Certainly; all possible progress." ³ It must be real progress, he says, and not alteration of the faith: understanding should grow "in the same doctrine, in the same sense, and in the same meaning." ³ He compares doctrine to a human body, which grows from infancy to old age and is still the same person, and to wheat sown in a field, from which the Church should reap wheat and not tares. ³ Christian doctrine, he writes, should be "consolidated by years, enlarged by time, refined by age," and remain whole. ³

His reading of Saint Paul's "keep the deposit" in the first letter to Timothy belongs with it. The deposit, he writes, is "that which has been entrusted to you, not that which you have yourself devised," and the one who guards it is "not an author but a keeper." ³ A teacher may explain the old faith more clearly, but should teach the same truths "so that though you speak after a new fashion, what you speak may not be new." ³

The First Vatican Council took his words into its constitution on faith, Dei Filius, in 1870. Translated here from its Latin, it says that understanding, knowledge and wisdom may grow and advance greatly, in each person and in the whole Church, through the ages, "but only in its own kind, that is, in the same dogma, the same sense and the same meaning," and it names the Commonitory as the source. ⁵

The encyclopedia does not present him as untroubled. It says he lived in a center "deeply imbued with Semipelagianism," that he was himself a Semipelagian and opposed to Augustine's teaching on grace, and that it is now believed he turned his great principle against Augustine. ¹ It adds, following Pope Benedict XIV, that this happened before the Church had decided the controversy. ¹

It also thinks it "likely, if not certain" that he is the Vincent whose objections to Augustine were answered by Augustine's friend Prosper of Aquitaine. ¹ The encyclopedia's article on Prosper says the same, more cautiously: the author was probably Vincent of Lérins, though some writers have contested it. ⁸ Those objections survive only in Prosper's reply. ¹

The Commonitory itself, the encyclopedia says, is the only work certainly his. ¹ A book he promised against Photinus, Apollinaris and Nestorius has never been found, if it was ever written. ¹ It adds that he died before 450, probably soon after 434; Gennadius says only that he died in the reign of Theodosius and Valentinian. ¹²

In a long interview in 2013, Pope Francis took his worn Latin breviary from his desk and read the interviewer a passage from the Commonitory, which the Church reads in the Office of Readings. ⁶ He said that "St. Vincent of Lerins makes a comparison between the biological development of man and the transmission from one era to another of the deposit of faith, which grows and is strengthened with time." ⁶

In 2017, marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Francis quoted him again: "Shall there be no progress of religion in Christ's Church? Certainly; all possible progress." ⁷ He called the phrase "consolidated by years, enlarged by time, refined by age" a happy formulation of the law of progress, and said that it "in no way represents a change in doctrine." ⁷

No source used for this page names a patronage for Saint Vincent of Lérins, and none is claimed here. He is remembered as a writer and a monk: Gennadius praises his learning in the Scriptures, and the Martyrology his doctrine and holiness of life. ²⁴

Saint Vincent of Lérins's feast day is May 24. The Catholic Encyclopedia opens its article "Feast on 24 May," the Roman Martyrology enters him on that day, and Vatican News lists him then as "St. Vincent di Lérins, priest." ¹⁴⁹ The day of his death is not recorded. ¹

He wrote a book to help his own memory, and called himself a pilgrim. ³ The least of the servants of God, he said, wanting to hold on to what he had been given. ³ It is a modest place to start for a book that a council would quote fourteen centuries later. ⁵

His great image is a growing body, the child who becomes an old man and is still himself. ³ He believed the Church could understand more, say it better, and lose nothing; and he was frightened of the opposite, of a faith in which one part after another is quietly given up. ³

The encyclopedia does not hide that he may have been wrong on grace and may have aimed his rule at Augustine. ¹ He wrote before the Church had settled the question, and the Church that later settled it still keeps his day. ¹⁴

What he asks of a believer is to be a keeper rather than an author, and to speak "after a new fashion" without saying something new. ³