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Some further little questions can still be raised about the Christian Essenes.
The first: since the practical Essenes were earlier than the theoretic Essenes, and the latter were Christians while the former were Jews, why was the old name of the Essenes communicated to these latter? I answer: because very many from the practical Essenes became Christians and theoretic Essenes, as Eusebius, book 2 of the History, chapter 17, and Baronius, volume 1, say. Further, because the theoretic Essenes retained many things from the discipline of the former and adorned them with greater perfection. Finally, because just as the former could be called Hasidaeans because of sanctity, so the latter could be called this much more; and therefore, because of their reputation for the highest sanctity and their not slight likeness in morals, they were also commonly called Essaeans. Something also helped this matter among the less learned:
[margin: Chapter XVIII ends; Chapter XIX opens with why Christians could inherit the Essene name. Source page 343 ends mid-sentence.]
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the likeness of the names Jesse and Jesus, from which the Jesseans arose, as Saint Epiphanius says.
Another question: who is the author of those theoretic Essenes? I would judge their author to be no one other than Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. From him this life was instituted at Jerusalem among Christians, Acts 2, 4, and 21. As I touched upon above, Saint James the Apostle held the chief place among them; to him alone, because of his outstanding reputation for sanctity, entrance to the temple was open, as Hegesippus reports in Eusebius, book 2, chapter 23, while to the other Essenes, although they were Jews, every access to it was closed.
A third little question: were the Essenes coelicolae? The word coelicola has a double meaning. A coelicola is called either one who inhabits the heavens, or one who worships, venerates, and adores the heavens. In the former sense the elder Anchises says in the poet:
If the heavenly dwellers had wished me to prolong my life, they would have preserved these seats for me.
And again in the same author:
The Berecyntian mother, rich in offspring of gods, embracing a hundred descendants, all heavenly dwellers, all holding the stars above.
So too Saint Sola, disciple of Saint Boniface, archbishop of Mainz and our martyr, is called by Ermenold the Deacon “most blessed heavenly dweller.” In the latter sense, above in book 1,
[margin: Chapter XIX continues: authorship of theoretic Essenes; two senses of coelicola.]
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I relegated the coelicolae to the dregs of idolaters, and rightly so. For we know how often, how vehemently, and how justly those are accused in the divine Scriptures who adored the queen of heaven and the host of heaven, that is, the moon, the sun, and the other stars. Some think that in this way the coelicolae should be understood in the Justinian Code, where it is said: “We wish it to be made known to the Jews, the coelicolae, their elders, and their patriarchs, that if, after this law, anyone dares to attack with stones or with any other kind of rage, which we know now happens, someone who has fled their deadly sect and has turned to the worship of God, he is immediately to be given to the flames and burned with all his accomplices.”
And again afterward: “The unheard-of name of the coelicolae has vindicated, as it were, a new crime of superstition. Unless they turn to the worship of God and Christian veneration, they should know that by these laws they too are bound by which we command heretics to be bound. Their buildings, which have the gatherings of some new doctrine whose nature I do not know, are to be claimed for the churches. For it is certain that whatever differs from the faith of Christians is contrary to Christian law.” The same things are read in the Theodosian Code. But the most reverend and most illustrious Baronius judges that they were apostates from the Christians. “Mention of the coelicolae,” he says, “occurs in Saint Augustine, in the letter to Eleusius and others, where the passage near the end reads: ‘For we had already sent to the elder of the coelicolae, whom we had heard had been appointed the founder among them of a new baptism,
[margin: Scriptural star worship; Justinian and Theodosian laws on coelicolae.]
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and had seduced many by that sacrilege, so that we might speak something with him as far as the narrowness of that time permitted.’ So Augustine writes there; whether he treats the same coelicolae elsewhere, I do not remember. I once thought these people were Gentiles in Africa, so called from the worship of the idol Caelestis set up at Carthage, about which much has been said above. But because, according to Saint Augustine’s view, they too were baptized, they seemed to have professed Christianity. And because another sanction of the same emperor wishes them to be compelled to preserve Christianity, this is a plain argument that they were Christians, yet to be counted under the name of apostates rather than heretics. Also, because the coelicolae are placed both in the Theodosian and in the Justinian Code not under the title concerning heretics but under the title concerning Jews, it is clear that they were certainly not Christian heretics but apostates. Therefore, as far as may be gathered from the said sanction of Honorius given to Jovinus the praetorian prefect, it appears that those were called coelicolae who passed from the Christian faith to Judaism, yet in such a way that, since they knew the Jewish name to be hateful to all, they preferred to be called not Jews but coelicolae, and not to live under the patriarchs of the Jews but under other magistrates appointed over themselves, whom they called elders, as appears from Saint Augustine and also from the rescript of Constantine to Evagrius.”
Turning, then, to the question: Joseph Scaliger says that some Essenes were communal and others solitary. But the sect of the latter does not seem to have lasted long. Yet synagogues of the communal ones, or of people not unlike them,
[margin: Baronius’s explanation of coelicolae as Christian apostates to Judaism.]
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existed until the times of Justinian. “For there are those who are called coelicolae. Even the name indicates it. For coelicolae are angels. They wished to be so called because of the holy and heavenly institution of life, as it seemed to them. In a very old Latin-Arabic glossary, coelicola is malach, that is, angel.”
In these words I ask Scaliger himself whether he wishes those coelicolae to have been Christians or not. If Christians, he already grants what he always denies elsewhere and in this very place: that the Essenes were Christians. If he does not wish them to be Christians, he has something to answer to Baronius’s arguments. For those great emperors plainly distinguish these people from the Jews, and, as if initiated by sacred baptism, wish them to be compelled to the Christian Church; and Saint Augustine speaks of them as if they were Christians. Next, Scaliger proves by no reason at all that the Essenes should be placed among the coelicolae. For if he had any argument, it would be this:
All angels are coelicolae.
The Essenes are angels.
Therefore.
Or rather:
Whoever call themselves angels also call themselves coelicolae.
But the Essenes call themselves angels.
Therefore.
Yet in both syllogisms the assumption is denied, and it is not even thinly proved by him. If he said that, because of purity and chastity of life, they were called by some heavenly citizens and inhabitants, I would not deny it, because Philo expressly calls them this.
[margin: Scaliger’s attempted link between Essenes and coelicolae is rejected.]
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But this is neither faulty nor offensive, since the writer of the Fasti sang about astrologers:
Happy the souls whose first care was to know these things and to climb into the high houses of heaven. It is credible that they, with faults and places left behind, lifted their head higher than human things.
Indeed Scaliger placed his own Homer at the front of his own book, to sing about him in heroic verses:
This Scaliger once climbed above the Gentile heavens by a ladder; admitted to the secrets of Jove and to the race of gods, he looked down upon the lights of the great world, the seats above, and kingdoms inaccessible to mortals.
Why, then, could the Essenes not in this way be called coelicolae? But they are not coelicolae of the latter kind, who either offer divine worship to heaven or have deserted from the holy discipline of Christians; nor do they arrogantly and proudly add themselves to the former kind, which alone Scaliger wants. Now, there were indeed ancient heretics who were called Angels. But when Saint Epiphanius gives three causes for that name, he nevertheless says that none was known to him with certainty, and he testifies that after they arose they immediately disappeared; Saint Augustine followed him. But I see what Scaliger was aiming at. Through the side of the Essenes he wished to attack and wound Christian religious, whom, as was said of the Essenes, he sometimes resents being pronounced by the Fathers companions of the angelic life.
[margin: Celestial language is not itself blameworthy; Serarius accuses Scaliger of targeting Christian religious life.]
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For who, says Saint Bernard, would fear to call that celibate life heavenly and angelic? But so that the pride of this man, and of the other innovators as well, their admiration of themselves, and their contempt for the ancients, may appear even in questions which do not strike directly at the throat of faith, I have now decided at last to set out certain Aristarchan judgments of theirs in this investigation of the Essenes.
Therefore Scaliger himself says in the prolegomena to On the Correction of Times: “The things narrated by Philo about the Essenes condemn Eusebius and the rest of the ancients, who followed Eusebius and divined the same thing, of sufficient frivolity.” In the same place: “Eusebius’s statement about the Essenes is a childish delirium.” In book 6: “Eusebius divined from Philo that the Essenes were Christians.” In the same place: “See what happens when authority precedes truth. For whoever read those things did not doubt they were true, because Eusebius was the author.” In the same place: “We answer that those ancient and highest men, when they speak about the beginnings of the Christian, pronounced many things alien from the truth.”
Junius in the cited place is still more shameless, number 26: “In this application of the history of the Essenes, as in many other matters, Eusebius was deceived; those who followed him afterward wandered away from historical truth. Learned men long ago not without reason desired more judgment in Eusebius, and they command that judgment be used by anyone reading his writings.”
[margin: Serarius quotes Scaliger and Junius attacking Eusebius and the ancients.]
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And in number 27: “Indeed Epiphanius, groping in darkness, followed Eusebius as a guide while he wandered away from the thread of truth. And indeed, when I read that passage of Epiphanius, I cannot sufficiently wonder at the man’s ignorance, both in interpretation of language and in historical truth. In that single chapter on the Nazaraeans he errs in very many ways against both. He was a man whose piety I love, whose human weakness I bear, whose error, so help me God, I would have passed over, had truth not forced this duty from me.” Number 28: “Eusebius had not very much judgment.” Number 32: “These good Fathers would easily have noticed this if they had seen fit to consult Philo rather than yield to the authority of Eusebius,” as though Saint Jerome, to say nothing of the others, had not consulted Philo. Again, number 36: “Indeed Epiphanius, who knew something of Syriac, indulged conjectures from the affinity of words, and what he conjectured from that, he affirmed rather too freely.”
See how much arrogance there is in these innovators, how great their haughtiness and pride. Surely this is how they speak, this is how they contemn the ancients and despise the Fathers, as though they had proved them guilty of error most certainly and most clearly, while the things they themselves bring forward and pronounce were pure Sibylline oracles. What pride! But indeed I have now said what I had to say about the three sects of the Jews. Drusius gave the occasion for writing; love of truth and the usefulness of certain readers gave the cause. The same motives bring it about that if anywhere, as belongs to humanity, I have slipped, or have certainly wavered with a less firm step,
[margin: More citations of Junius; Serarius closes the three-sects discussion.]
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I will gladly hear the warnings or rebukes of others, including Drusius himself. One thing remains for me to say about Drusius.