The See of Peter

The Early Church and Peter's Primacy

Letter VII, from Pope Leo to the Bishops Throughout Italy

Synopsis: Many followers and teachers of the Manichaean sect have been discovered in Rome through Leo’s investigation; he describes the measures taken against them; and he admonishes all the bishops of Italy to pursue them with equal diligence so that no hidden cell may escape correction.

Leo, to all bishops established throughout the provinces of Italy, greeting in the Lord.

I. Leo Discovers and Suppresses a Manichaean Community in Rome, and Reports His Actions to the Italian Episcopate

We call you into the fellowship of Our solicitude, urging you to exercise vigilant pastoral care over the flocks entrusted to you, so that no diabolical cunning may make headway. Through the Lord’s mercy and Our own watchfulness, a disease is being driven from Our sheep in Rome — but it must not spread to your churches while you remain unwarned and ignorant of what is happening here. What We are extinguishing in the City must not secretly find hidden passages to sow its dark roots among you.

Our investigation in Rome has uncovered many followers and teachers of the Manichaean impiety. Our vigilance exposed them; Our authority and censure restrained them. Those whom we were able to correct, we have corrected — compelling them to publicly condemn Manichaeus with his teachings and disciplines before the Church, in signed written professions, lifting them from the depths of their impiety by the grant of penance. Those, however, so deeply immersed that no remedy could reach them, we have subjected to the laws of the Christian rulers, so that they are exiled in perpetuity by the sentence of the public judges, lest their contagion pollute the holy flock further.

We have publicly set before the Christian people the profane and shameful elements contained in their scriptures and hidden traditions, so that they may know what to shun and avoid. Even their so-called bishop — held by Us — has disclosed the disgraceful secrets of their mysteries, as the record of the proceedings will inform you. We have sent these records to your beloved so that you may be fully instructed in all that We have uncovered.

II. Leo Admonishes All the Bishops of Italy to Pursue the Manichaeans With Equal Vigilance

Since We know that some — burdened by graver guilt and unable to clear themselves — have fled, We have sent this letter to your beloved through Our acolyte, so that you, being informed, dearest brothers, may act with all the greater diligence and watchfulness. Ensure that men of this Manichaean perversity find no opportunity to harm your people or spread their sacrilegious doctrines. We cannot properly govern those entrusted to Us unless We pursue these destroyers — and those they have destroyed — with the zeal of the Lord’s faith, cutting them off from sound minds with every means available, so that this pestilence spreads no further.

Therefore We exhort, beseech, and admonish your beloved: pursue them with vigilant care, so that they find no place to hide. The one who diligently pursues what benefits the salvation of the flock entrusted to him will receive a worthy reward from God — but the one who fails to guard his people against the authors of this sacrilegious persuasion will not be able to excuse himself before the Lord’s tribunal on grounds of ignorance.

Source/Reference

PL 54:620

Notes / Historical Commentary

Letter VII, dated around 444 (the precise consulship is not preserved in this letter), is addressed to all the bishops of the Italian provinces and deals with an unexpected subject: the discovery of a functioning Manichaean community in Rome itself. It is one of only two surviving letters of Leo specifically addressed to the bishops “throughout Italy” as a class (Letter IV, addressed to specific regions, is the other), and it shows Leo exercising what amounts to a supervisory and judicial function not merely within Rome but over the entire peninsula.

The Manichaean sect — founded by the third-century Persian teacher Mani — had been condemned repeatedly by Roman emperors and Church councils throughout the fourth century, but communities persisted in hidden form, particularly in the western Mediterranean. Leo’s discovery of such a community in Rome, his investigation of it, his public exposure of its doctrines, and his use of both ecclesiastical penance and imperial exile as corrective mechanisms constitute a significant episode in the history of fifth-century Church-state relations.

For readers interested in the question of papal primacy, the opening phrase is the key: In consortium vos nostrae sollicitudinis advocamus — “We call you into the fellowship of Our solicitude.” This is the same formula, in essence, that appears throughout the letters to Illyricum: Leo’s solicitude for all the Churches is the originating concern; the other bishops are called into it as participants. They are not independently discovering and suppressing Manichaeans in their own territories as a parallel operation. They are being enrolled by Leo into an action that Leo has already taken in Rome and that now needs to extend outward. The direction of authority runs consistently: from Rome to the bishops, from Leo to the pastoral task.

The two-stage procedure Leo describes — ecclesiastical correction for those who can be reached, civil exile for those who cannot — is also worth noting. Leo acts as the primary judge: he examines, he requires signed professions, he grants penance, he determines who is beyond correction. Only then does he refer the incorrigible to the civil courts. The Church comes first; the imperial machinery is invoked as a second resort. This ordering will be visible again in the Alexandrian crisis, where Leo similarly prescribes what the Church must do before asking the Emperor to act.