(Updated July 13, 2025)
This Quote Archive collects pertinent quotes from the Church Father, St. Pope Innocent I.
Next to each quote are the topic-based Quote Archives in which they are included.
This Quote Archive is being continuously updated as research continues.
Letters
St. Pope Innocent I, Letter “Consulenti tibi”: To Bishop Exsuperius of Toulouse (February 20, 405)
(§7)1
A brief addition shows what books really are received in the canon. These are the desiderata of which you wished to be informed verbally:
Of Moses, five books, that is, of Genesis, of Exodus, of Leviticus, of Numbers, of Deuteronomy, and of Joshua one book, of Judges one book, of Kings four books [two books of Samuel, two books of Kings], and also Ruth, of the prophets sixteen books, of Solomon five books [Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom, Sirach], the Psalms.
Likewise of the histories: Job one book, of Tobit one book, Esther one, Judith one, of the Maccabees two, of Esdras two [Ezra one, Nehemiah one], of Chronicles two books.
St. Pope Innocent I, Letter to Decentius, Bishop of Gubbio (March 19, 416)
Since your love prompts you to seek advice on this as on other matters, my son Celestine the deacon also mentioned in his letter that Your Excellency had put up for discussion the text in the epistle of St. James the Apostle: “If anyone among you is sick, let him call the presbyters, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will restore him, and if he has sinned, He will forgive him” (Jas. 5:14). There is no doubt that this ought 322 | 323 to be understood of the faithful who are sick and who can be anointed with the holy oil of chrism which is prepared by a bishop. It is not just priests but all as Christians who may be anointed with this oil when it is necessary for themselves or their families. However, it seems to Us that an idle point is raised when doubt is expressed in the case of a bishop about something that is certainly permitted to priests. For the very reason that it was assigned to priests is that bishops are burdened with other business and are not able to go to all the sick. However, if a bishop is able or thinks someone worthy of a visit from him, then he, whose duty it is to prepare the chrism, can without any hesitation bless and anoint the sick with chrism. But the chrism cannot be poured on those doing penance because this is one of the sacraments. How is it conceivable that one sacrament can be granted to a person to whom the rest of the sacraments are denied?
St. Pope Innocent I, Letter 29 (181 in St. Augustine): To St. Augustine and the Bishops of the Council of Carthage (January 27, 417)3
In your inquiries into the things of God, which require to be treated by priests with great care, especially when there is question of a true, just, and Catholic council, you have kept the precedents of ancient tradition, being mindful of ecclesiastical discipline, and you have added strength to our religion, not only now in your council, but before it when you made your pronouncement according to right reason, and when you voted to submit the matter to our judgment, knowing well what is owing to the Apostolic See, since all of us who are placed in this position desire to follow the Apostle himself, from whom the very episcopate and the whole authority of its name are derived [St. Peter]. Following in his footsteps, we know equally how to condemn what is evil and to approve what is praiseworthy, as for example, the fact that you keep the customs of the fathers with priestly zeal, that you do not think they should be trampled underfoot. Because it has been decreed by a divine, not a human, authority that whenever action is taken in any of the provinces, however distant or remote, it should not be brought to a conclusion before it comes to the knowledge of this See [Rome], so that every just decision may be affirmed by our complete authority. Thus, just as all waters come forth from their natural source and flow through all parts of the world, keeping the purity of their source, so all the other Churches may draw from this source knowledge of what they are to teach, whom they are to absolve, and 121 | 122 from whom the waters, intended only for pure bodies, should be withheld as being soiled with indelible filth.
Therefore, I thank you, dearest brothers, for sending us letters by our brother and fellow priest, Julius, in which you show that while administering the Churches of the whole world, in union with all, you ask a decree that may be for the good of all. Thus, a Church, supported by its own rules and strengthened by the decretals of a legitimate pronouncement, may not have to be exposed to those against whom it should be on guard: men instructed or, rather, destroyed by the perverse subtleties of words, who pretend to argue for the Catholic faith yet breathe out deadly poison so as to corrupt the hearts of right-thinking men and drag them down, seeking to overthrow the whole system of true dogma…
Therefore, this poison is to be cut out, which, like a sore, has crept into a clean and wholly sound body, let if it is removed too late it may settle in the very vitals from which it may not be possible for the corruption of this evil to be drawn off… 122 | 125
Therefore, whoever appears to be in agreement with this statement which declares that we have no need of divine help [Pelagianism] shows himself an enemy of the Catholic faith, and an ingrate to the goodness of God. They are unworthy of our communion, which they have polluted by such preaching. They have voluntarily fled from the true religion by following those who make these statements. Since this whole matter rests on our avowal, and we accomplish nothing by our daily prayer except in so far as we receive the grace of God, how can we tolerate such boasting?…They must be plucked out and removed far 125 | 126 from the bosom of the Church, lest their error, gaining ground for a long time, should afterwards grow in to something incurable. If they were to remain long unpunished they must needs draw many into their perverted state of mind, and deceive the innocent or, rather, the unwary who now follow the Catholic faith, who will think the deceivers must be right since they see them remaining in the Church…
Therefore, let the diseased sore be cut off from the sound body, and the miasma of the cruel malady be carefully removed, that thus the healthy parts may continue to live, that the flock, being cleansed, may be clear of this contagion of an infected flock. Let there be an unspotted perfection of the whole body, such as we know, from your pronouncement against them, that you follow and hold, and which we, together with you, uphold with equal assent…
But this answer, furnished with abundant examples of our law, is sufficient to meet your warning, and we think that nothing remains for us to say.
Footnotes
- John F. Clarkson, SJ, John H. Edwards, SJ, William J. Kelly, SJ, John J. Welch, SJ, trans., The Church Teaches: Documents of the Church in English Translation (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1960), 322-23. ↩︎
- DS, 213; Heinrich Denzinger, Peter Hünermann, ed., Robert Fastiggi and Anne Englund Nash, eds., Heinrich Denzinger: Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, 43rd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), 78. ↩︎
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