Hugo Eterianus, Contra Patarenos, 2-5

Hugo Eterianus, Contra Patarenos, 2-5

A treatise against the Patarenes, written between 1165 - 1180 CE by Hugo Eterianus, a Latin Christian from Pisa, living in Constantinople. The Paterenes were Latin Christian heretics, (likely dualists, possibly Cathars, text unclear) living in Constantinople in the late twelfth century.

Source: Hugo Eterianus, Janet Hamilton, Sarah Hamilton, and Bernard Hamilton. 2004. Contra Patarenos, p. 179 - 183. BRILL.

Again, they speak clearly and openly against Christ and the truth itself when they remove oaths from the church, failing to understand what Christ commanded in the gospel and James in his epistle, as he imitates his master. They never forbid swearing by God but only by his creatures, saying ‘Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth for it is his footstool’ nor by any other creature, and this for the reason that there should be no room for idolatry, for they deified heaven and earth and the other created things by which they swore. God alone, who is subject to no-one, swears by himself but we who have no power of our own, how could we swear by our head— for it belongs to another— if your head belongs to you change, if you can, the natural colour of a single hair. An oath is not to be forbidden, nor to be desired as if it were something good. To swear freely and without compulsion or to swear a false oath is a serious sin, but to swear from necessity, to confirm our own innocence or to ratify a peace agreement or to persuade the hearers of what is to their advantage is good and necessary. For this reason, all the church of the Greek and Latin saints, which these wicked and evil men contradict (for which alone they deserve death) holds and preaches that oaths should be employed when need be, when men are reluctant to believe what is good and useful. So oaths are not against the commandment of God. The Lord and his disciple James should be understood to have forbidden swearing in these terms, that as far as he is able nobody should swear because it is part of the evil, not of the person who takes the oath but the evil of the reluctance to believe of the person who forces him to swear. Yet it is not evil, because it is necessary. But to swear from greed, or through pleasure in swearing as many do who take pleasure in oaths as if they were something great and attractive is a great sin. If it were wrong to swear as these most wretched men claim God himself would not have sworn an oath saying ‘By myself have I sworn, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will bless you and I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven’. The Lord swore, and did not repent of it. Abraham was old and advanced in years, and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. And Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his house, ‘Put your hand under my thigh and I will make you swear by the Lord of heaven and earth that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites. The Lord, the god of heaven, who took me from my father’s house... spoke to me and swore to me ‘To your descendants I will give this land’.... So the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham... and swore to him concerning this matter.’ Abraham himself also swore, for so it is said ‘Abymelech and Ochozath his son-in-law and Phicol the commander of his army said to Abraham ‘God is with you... so swear... by God that you will not deal falsely with me (V.‘harm’) or my offspring’. Abraham swore and therefore that place was called Beersheba because there both of them swore an oath. Similarly Jacob swore an oath to Laban his father-in-law and Joseph was bound by an oath to Jacob his father, saying ‘If I have found favour in your sight put your hand under my thigh... that you will not bury me in Egypt. So swear to me, he said, and so swearing Israel adored God (in V, not in RSV).’ Moses too, that friend of God, swore an oath to Raguel, priest of Midian, for thus it is written Moses swore that he would live with him. Why should I repeat at length? Without oaths the world did not and cannot stand. We are forbidden to take God’s name falsely, but to swear by the name of God in case of need is not forbidden in the Old Testament or in the New. See, if swearing were a sin the evangelist John would not have introduced an angel swearing, for he says The angel whom I saw standing on sea and land lifted up his right hand to heaven and swore by him who lives for ever and ever... that there should be no more delay. The apostle knows the Lord’s commands and yet he says As God is my witness which is the same as saying ‘By God it is so’, which is more serious than to swear on the gospel, because the scriptures are holy because of God, not God because of the scriptures. So too creatures are holy through God. Nevertheless today through an ecclesiastical enactment oaths are sworn in necessary cases by touching the gospels. To swear by God is to call God to witness. To swear an oath is to give God the legal power of truth and not of falsehood. Anyone who removes oaths in necessary matters from the church launches lasting hostility against the church and between princes who are at odds. The church has no other tie with which to fasten them and bring them to peace and unity. Those who totally remove oaths from the church destroy the law of the church which it had from the beginning. And so for this reason alone (to say nothing of their other most wicked crimes) they should be taken away and removed as fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted to be cut off from truth and thrown into the wise in their own eyes against the precepts of the apostles, wandering stars for whom the nether gloom of darkness has been reserved for ever. 

Moreover the most pious emperor Constantine, Justinian and all the most Christian emperors promulgated this law to the whole world, believers and unbelievers alike, that in the absence of proof a lawsuit should be decided by swearing an oath, sometimes for the plaintiff, sometimes for the accused, and again that the judge should swear that he would judge in individual cases in accordance with truth, observing the law as should seem just. We ought to believe the emperors, especially the most Christian ones, and anyone who does not obey them but obstinately gainsays them should be condemned to death. More important than any of these is God’s commandment, who said in Exodus through Moses that oaths ought to exist, ‘If a man delivers to his neighbour an ass or an ox or a sheep or any beast to keep and it dies or is hurt or driven away without anyone seeing it, an oath shall be between them both to see whether he has not put his hand to his neighbour’s property and the owner shall accept the oath and he shall not make restitution.’ Since then God himself, and the holy church of the Latins and Greeks has from the beginning allowed the swearing of oaths in necessary cases and the most holy and Christian emperors have confirmed this the Patarenes should not abolish it completely. Although Christ ordered preaching to be open the Patarenes preach in secret against the command of Christ, and although Christ told us to observe everything which priests do in their capacity as priests and they administer oaths in accordance with their priestly status the Patarenes say that we should not observe them and abolish oath-swearing. So it is clear that they are false apostles, heretics, antichrists, excommunicate, divided and separated from holy church, and nothing remains but that the most Christian emperor Manuel should devoutly intervene, ordering them and their followers to be sent to the furnace so that they may begin to burn here who will be burnt in the everlasting fires of Hell. Amen, Amen.

But if by any chance these wretched and deluded men should respond to the scriptural examples listed above that they are not to be trusted because they are taken from the old law the mouths of those who say this should be closed and stopped with these arguments. First they should be told that the Old Testament is the basis of the new law, and that anyone who rejects the old is evilly disposed to the new, for just as the stone cut out from a mountain by no human hand, that is Christ, was born in accordance with the patriarchs and the prophets and without coition, so the New Testament concerning him is derived from the Old and depends on it. That is what Matthew means when he says ‘The book of the genealogy... of the son of David, the son of Abraham.’ Luke confirms the same when he says ‘And Jesus himself was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph the son of Hely the son of Mathan the son of Levi...’ and what follows. Mark too gives testimony about the beginning of his gospel, saying ‘Behold I send my messenger before thy face who shall prepare thy way’ and John too is in agreement with them when he says ‘The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.’ That is why our saviour when he defeated the devil quoted the evidence of the old law, this ‘Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’, and again ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’ In many other places of the gospel he acts in the same way. Peter the apostle too calls women to chaste living through the example of Sarah, saying ‘You wives, be submissive to your husbands... as Sarah obeyed Abraham calling him Lord. And you are now her children if you do right and let nothing terrify you.’ Jude the apostle says the same ‘Those who walk in the way of Cain and abandon themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error and perish in Chorah’s rebellion.’ Moreover James the apostle takes pleasure in Old Testament examples and says ‘Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness and he was called the friend of God,’ and similarly he cites Rahab the harlot among his examples. We should listen to what Paul, the chosen vessel and doctor of the Gentiles, thinks of the old law. He says ‘The law is holy and the commandment is holy and just and good’ and again ‘I delight in the law of God in my inmost self’ and clearly he silences the Manichean Patarenes and all those who attack the old law. For this reason the holy fourth ecumenical council anathematises all those who have such beliefs, rightly, for it is written that it is like the sin of soothsaying to oppose the tradition that the church holds and like the wickedness of idolatry to refuse to accept it. Since the aforesaid Patarenes have rejected the tradition of the holy churches in Greek and Latin the Lord has rejected them from his kingdom as dissemblers and hypocrites.