ABSTRACT
Homily 16 was delivered on 12 December 443, during the December fast. This places it in the middle of Leo’s campaign against the Manichees in Rome, which lasted for eighteen months, from 443 to 444. The Manichees posed a particular threat to the Christian community in Rome because they challenged it from within, by claiming to be Christians and participating in mainstream worship. Their ascetic regime was a variant on normal Christian practices: instead of fasting only on Wednesdays and Fridays, as Leo recommends (serm. 16.5), they fasted also on Sundays and Mondays (serm. 42.5; CCSL 138a: 247). They abstained from meat andwine at all times and even refused to accept the cup in Eucharist. Most significantly, perhaps, they proscribed procreation. In a climate of social instability the violent suppression of dissenters or heretics served the important social functions of group delineation and reinforcement of the leader’s authority, helping ‘to reaffirm and reinforce the commitment of group members to the ideals of the community’ (Maier 1996: 447-8). Rome in the 440s was certainly in a state of social flux, with external threats to urban stability pressing on all sides. The North African settlement of the Vandals was uncomfortably close, allowing Geiseric to continue his attacks on Sicily, and it was only a matter of time before Attila turned his attention from the Balkans westwards. Using state laws that had been instituted to deal with the threat in
425 during the pontificate of Celestine,1 Leo convoked a commission, over which he presided in the presence of bishops, members of the Senate and other aristocracy, to bring to trial several members of the highest echelon in the sect, the ‘Elect’ or ‘Chosen Ones’ (serm. 16.4).
On the basis of the findings of these trials, he presents a horrifying picture of the Manichees as insidious perverts, preying on the innocent and unwary, with his allusion to the confession of several of the Elect concerning a religious ritual of sexual intercourse with a 10-year-old girl who had been raised for this sole purpose (serm. 16.4). Given that such ‘confessions’ may well have been extracted under torture, as they were later, in the reign of Hormisdas (514-23) (LP Hormisdas ch. 9, LP 1: 270), it is impossible to assess the truth of this allegation. It should be noted, however, that such an act would contradict the Manichees’ alleged distaste for the body and the act of procreation. Allegations of immoral sexual acts are also made against Manichees in North Africa, where a similar trial was staged under the tribune Ursus between 421 and 428 (Lieu 1992: 199), although Augustine was forced to admit that he witnessed no such thing as a Hearer of the sect (Contra Fortunatum 1.3, Zycha 1891: 84-5). Leo also claims that Manichees had infiltrated the private houses of unsuspecting Christian women with their fanciful stories (serm.16.5). This was not the only occasion when he sought to influence household religious practices (Maier 1995: 53, 58), as we see in relation to Leo’s condemnation of Pelagianists in northern Italy and Priscillianists in Spain.2
