Leo, to the most beloved brothers Senecio, Carosus, Theodulus, Lucus, Antiochus, and Vigilantius, metropolitans established throughout the provinces of Illyricum.
Chapter I: Leo’s Solicitude for the Churches; The Illyrian Churches Belong to the Care of Anastasius
We receive with a grateful heart the testimony of your letters that Our writings — sent out of solicitude for the state and peace of the churches, lest any novel presumption bring error — were received with acceptance by your beloved. We desire that the Lord’s priests uphold what the authority of the Apostolic See has frequently established: that the churches constituted throughout Illyricum should come under the care of Our brother and fellow bishop Anastasius, bishop of Thessalonica’s city.
If more important cases among the bishops cannot be settled within your provinces, let them be referred to his notice and resolved under his judgment with the fear of divine justice. This order, which promotes the harmony of the priests, ensures the Lord’s churches are built in the concordant counsel We desire, leaving no opening for discord — which the devil’s scheming might exploit to scatter what We strive with great care to bind together in unity.
Chapter II: Bishops Must Not Refuse Summons to Anastasius’s Council
Brothers invited to settle more important cases that cannot be resolved within their own provinces must not refuse this fraternal duty for the benefit of the Church — unless detained by genuine necessity of body or pressing obligation. Our moderation has taken care that councils be infrequent and not summoned for trivial matters, and that two or three bishops per province suffice, so that what would be burdensome for the many is made light for the few. Through the zeal of charity, priestly deliberations led by the Holy Spirit should settle matters of ecclesiastical discipline. Let your beloved know that We have decreed to correct the disobedience of any who, without bodily infirmity or necessary cause, repeatedly avoid fraternal councils — knowing that they will meet with a judgment to match their obstinacy.
Chapter III: No Bishop May Be Ordained Without the Consent of the Clergy and People
From the diligent report of Our brother Anastasius We have learned that the metropolitan of Achaia has frequently performed ordinations prohibited by the authority of Our predecessors and by Ours — going so far as to ordain a bishop unknown to the Thespians against their will and open resistance. We forbid entirely any metropolitan to ordain a priest by his own sole judgment, without the consent of the clergy and people, and require that one chosen by the agreement of the whole city be appointed. As We are not idle in setting out what must be observed and what avoided, so We allow no one to be negligent in executing and maintaining these rules. Those who keep them earn worthy praise and, as We hope, the Lord’s abundant reward; those who stray and abandon the apostolic constitutions will face ecclesiastical and divine censure.
Chapter IV: No Bishop May Claim Another’s Cleric Without Written Permission
We decree that all preserve with equal observance, for the sake of priestly harmony, that no bishop claim for himself a cleric of another bishop against that bishop’s will — but only with his clear consent attested by written permission. This is defined by the authority of the canons and by the principle of preserving unity, lest ecclesiastical order become disordered through license of this kind. Let these decrees, made with pious intention, sink deep into your hearts, so that We, who eagerly seek to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, may reap the fruit of Our precept and rejoice in the works of your beloved. We desire that what is established through the grace of charity remain unviolated by the devil’s scheming.
Your brotherhood must fully observe what We have written to Our brother and fellow bishop Anastasius, which his own letters will convey to you — and from which We shall not have your brotherhood depart, preserving the Lord’s charity through the sanctions of the Fathers. Given on the eighth day before the Ides of January, in the third consulship of Aetius and the consulship of Symmachus, most illustrious men.
Footnotes
- ↩ The phrase nos pro Ecclesiarum statu et pace solliciti — “We, solicitous for the state and peace of the churches” — is another instance of the sollicitudo formula that Leo uses throughout the corpus to identify the Roman bishop’s universal pastoral obligation. Compare Letter V, where Leo calls his Illyrian correspondents into the “fellowship of Our solicitude,” and Letters VI and XII, where the same formula grounds his intervention. Here the formula is applied specifically to the letters Leo had previously sent to these same metropolitans: his solicitude is what generated those letters, and the metropolitans’ acceptance of them is what he is now acknowledging and reinforcing.
- ↩ This letter is part of a sustained series of Illyrian correspondence. Letters V and VI had established Anastasius as Leo’s vicar for Illyricum, entrusting him with Leo’s own authority in the region and directing the metropolitans to refer to him on major questions. Letter XIII follows a response from the metropolitans confirming their acceptance. The vicariate of Illyricum itself was not Leo’s invention: it had been established by his predecessors, notably Damasus and Siricius, as the established form of Roman oversight over the Illyrian churches, which occupied a territory straddling the boundary between the Eastern and Western empires.
- ↩ Thespiae was a city in Boeotia, in the province of Achaia (Roman Greece). The offense Leo describes — a metropolitan ordaining a bishop for a city without consulting its clergy or people — is precisely the abuse the Illyrian vicariate was intended to prevent. By routing the complaint through Anastasius, whose report is the source of Leo’s information, the letter demonstrates the vicariate working as intended: local abuses come to Anastasius, Anastasius reports to Leo, and Leo issues a ruling with authority over the whole region.
- ↩ January 6, 446 AD. The consulship of Aetius here is his third — Aetio III in the manuscripts — not his second. Aetius held his three consulships in 432, 437, and 446. This dating places Letter XIII just over a year after the great cluster of 445 documents — Letters VIII, X, and XI — that settled the Gallic affair and issued the Novella. The Illyrian correspondence thus follows the Gallic settlement in the historical sequence of Leo’s primacy interventions.
Historical Commentary