|
The Lérins Islands (in French les Îles de Lérins) are a group of four Mediterranean islands off the French Riviera, near Cannes, where Saint Honoratus founded a monastery around the year 410 and where Saint Patrick is said to have studied in the fifth century. A Cistercian community today lives in a monastery built during the nineteenth century. St Vincent was a monk there at the start of the fourth century and is the author of a work called the "Commonitorium". Patrick Duffy writes a brief note on him and his work.
The Commonitorium
Vincent is best known for his authorship of the Commonitorium (dated 434), a word that means an "aide-memoir". In fact, the work is a practical handbook for deciding what is true and false in Catholic doctrine. Vincent's object is to provide himself, as he states, with a general rule whereby he can distinguish Catholic truth from heresy; and he commits what he has learnt, he adds, to writing, that he may have it by him for reference as a "commonitory", or "remembrancer", to refresh his memory.
Monk at Lérins
Little is known of his life apart from his being a monk of the Lérins monastery. He refers to himself as a stranger and a pilgrim who had fled the world to serve Christ in the quiet of the monastery of Lérins.
His guiding principle for sound doctrine
Vincent's work develops practical guidelines for distinguishing heresy from true doctrine. The first criterion is Scripture, and if this does not suffice, then the tradition of the Catholic Church. Vincent's famous principle was the source of much discussion at the time of Vatican I: id teneatur quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est ( = "what all men have at all times and everywhere believed... "). His work is referenced in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith of Vatican I.
Critique
Newman, however, considered this more as a negative or exclusive criterion than as a positive determination for the development of Catholic doctrine. Vincent probably used it in a Semipelagian sense reacting to some exaggerations of Augustine's teaching on predestination. His disjunctive view of Scripture and Tradition has largely been overtaken by the Vatican II Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum: Scripture and Tradition are now seen in their unity and reciprocity. |
