Leo, bishop of the city of Rome, to Anastasius, bishop of Thessalonica.
How great the things entrusted to your brotherhood by the authority of the most blessed Apostle Peter, and how many also committed to you by Our own favor — if you were truly to weigh these with right reason and just judgment, we could greatly rejoice in the devotion of the solicitude enjoined upon you.
Chapter I: The Delegation of Leo’s Place; The Care Owed to All Churches by Divine Institution; Rebuke for the Treatment of Atticus of Old Epirus
Just as my predecessors delegated to yours, so I too, following their prior example, have delegated to your beloved the governance of my place, that you might aid Our solicitude for all the Churches, which We owe principally by divine institution, imitating Our gentleness and extending in some measure the presence of Our visitation to the provinces far from Us. With timely foresight and prudent attention, you are to discern what you may settle through your own zeal and what must be reserved for Our judgment. In major and difficult matters you are at liberty to defer under Our sentence, with no occasion or reason to transgress your measure.
We have often urged you through Our written admonitions to temper all your actions, leading the churches entrusted to you toward wholesome obedience through the exhortation of charity — so that, though brothers who are negligent or idle may require greater authority, correction itself may preserve charity. The blessed Apostle Paul, instructing Timothy for ecclesiastical governance, says: Do not rebuke an older man but exhort him as a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, with all purity (1 Tim. 5:1–2). If such moderation is owed by apostolic institution even to lesser members, how much more must it be shown to Our brother bishops without offense? Though some priests’ conduct may merit reproof, benevolence, exhortation, and charity should prevail over severity, coercion, or force. Yet those who seek their own things and not the things of Jesus Christ (not seeking my own advantage but that of many, Phil. 2:21) easily go astray, swelling with pride through ambition and turning what was given to serve harmony into an instrument of harm.
We speak this with no small sorrow, feeling in some measure answerable ourselves when you transgress so excessively the rules entrusted to you. If you cared little for your own reputation, you should at least have spared Ours — lest what your will did appear to have been done by Our judgment. Search Our letters and those of Our predecessors: you will find nothing We or they ordained that matches your presumption. Our brother Atticus, metropolitan of Old Epirus, came with the bishops of his province, lamenting with tears before your deacons the harsh treatment he had suffered. Your own letters, which his company delivered, stated that Atticus had come to Thessalonica and had there signed a profession of consent — the suggestion being that his presence demonstrated voluntary submission. But the very document exposed the injury: writing was unnecessary for one whose arrival already showed compliance. Your letter’s own words testified to his laments, uncovering what silence had concealed: you invoked the authority of the Illyrian prefecture, raising the supreme secular power against an innocent bishop — one against whom no charges, or only false ones, existed — dragging him from his Church’s sacred precincts by terrifying force, granting no respite for illness or the severity of winter, compelling him through perilous snows in which some of his companions reportedly perished.
I am greatly astonished and grieved, dearest brother, that you could act so harshly against one whose only offense was delay — and who cited bodily infirmity — especially when you ought to have awaited Our response to your consultation. You foresaw well enough what Our measured judgment would say in reply and hastened to act before it arrived, knowing We might not grant you the license you sought. Had some grave crime of the metropolitan come to light, was the guilt new? Your failure to name any charge confirms his innocence. Even if he had committed something grave, you should have awaited Our censure — acting only once you knew Our will. We entrusted Our authority to you to share Our solicitude, not to transfer the fullness of power. While your pious actions gladden Us, your excesses deeply sadden Us. After so many cases, We must more diligently guard against such conduct, removing the occasion of scandal from the Lord’s churches through charity and peace — your episcopal dignity undiminished but every usurpation cut back.
Chapter II: Metropolitan Rights Must Be Preserved Under the Vicariate
According to the canons of the holy Fathers, established by the Spirit of God and revered throughout the world, We decree that the metropolitans of each province entrusted to your care retain inviolate the rights of their ancient dignity — neither transgressing through negligence nor trespassing on another’s through presumption.
Chapter III: Who May and May Not Be Ordained Bishop
In cities where bishops have died, this form must be observed: the one to be ordained, even if of good repute, must not be a layman, a neophyte, one who has been married twice, or the husband of a widow — but one wholly irreproachable, since what constitutes no fault in other members of the Church is unlawful for a priest.
Chapter IV: Subdeacons Are Excluded from Carnal Marriage
While those outside the clergy may freely marry and beget children, subdeacons are denied carnal marriage so as to exhibit perfect continence — that those who have wives may live as though they had none, and those who have no wives remain single: those who have wives as though they had none (1 Cor. 7:29); and those who have none remain so. If this is fitting for the fourth rank, how much more for the first, second, and third? No one is fit for levitical, priestly, or episcopal dignity who has not curbed himself from the pleasure of marriage.
Chapter V: No One May Be Ordained Bishop Unwillingly
When choosing a chief priest, the one unanimously requested by the clergy and people is to be preferred. If their votes are divided, the metropolitan’s judgment should favor the candidate with greater zeal and merit — but no one may be ordained against those who are unwilling or have not requested him, lest the city despise or hate a bishop it did not choose, and become less devout than is fitting.
Chapter VI: The Metropolitan of Epirus Must Refer Ordinations to Anastasius
The metropolitan must report to your brotherhood concerning the bishop to be ordained and the consent of the clergy and people, informing you of the province’s agreement, so that your authority may confirm the ordination that has been rightly carried out. This should cause no delay or difficulty, so that the Lord’s flocks are not long deprived of their shepherd. When a metropolitan dies, the bishops of the province must assemble at the metropolitan city, consult the desires of both clergy and citizens, and choose the best from the priests or deacons of that church — reporting his name to you to fulfill the wishes of those seeking him, once you have approved the choice. We forbid any presumption without your knowledge, and require that just elections face no delay.
Chapter VII: Two Provincial Councils Annually; Unresolved Cases Referred to Rome
Regarding episcopal councils, We decree what the holy Fathers wisely ordained: two assemblies annually to adjudicate disputes among the various ranks of the Church. If more serious matters arise among the leaders, which cannot be settled within the province, the metropolitan must make them known to you with a full account of the case. If, with the parties present, your own judgment cannot resolve it, the matter must be referred to Our judgment.
Chapter VIII: A Bishop Who Abandons His See for a Greater One Loses Both
If a bishop, contemptuous of his city’s humbler station, seeks a greater see through ambition, he shall be removed from the see he coveted and lose his own — presiding neither over those he desired nor those he abandoned. Each must be content within his own limits and not seek to transgress his rights.
Chapter IX: No One May Claim Another’s Cleric Without Consent
No one may receive or solicit another bishop’s cleric without that bishop’s consent — except by mutual agreement in charity. Whoever dares to allure or retain a brother’s valuable cleric commits a grave injury. If the cleric is within the province, the metropolitan must compel his return to his own bishop; if further away, your authority’s precept will recall him — leaving no room for greed or ambition.
Chapter X: Bishops Summoned by the Metropolitan Must Respond Within Fifteen Days
We desire you to be most moderate in summoning bishops, so as not to appear to glory in their difficulty. If a significant matter requires a fraternal council, two bishops per province approved by the metropolitan suffice to attend you — and these must not delay beyond fifteen days from the time appointed for the assembly.
Chapter XI: Disagreements with Anastasius Come to Rome; The Care of the Universal Church Flows to Peter’s One See
If the opinions of the bishops differ from yours in matters to be settled, let everything be referred to Us with documented testimony, so that, resolving all ambiguities, We may decree what is pleasing to God. Our whole purpose is to preserve unity and discipline without dissension and without neglect. I exhort you, and those brothers who are offended by your excesses — though their complaints differ — that these pious and wholesome ordinances remain undisturbed. Let none seek his own things but the things of another, as the Apostle says: Let each look not only to his own interests but also to the interests of others (Phil. 2:4, 21); Let each please his neighbor for his good, to build him up (Rom. 15:2). The bond of unity will not hold unless charity binds us inseparably, since we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another (Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 12:12).
The unity of the body produces one health and one beauty, and requires harmony above all — especially among priests. For though their dignity is common, their order is not: even among the most blessed apostles there was, in the likeness of their honor, a certain distinction of power; and though all were equal in their election, it was given to one to stand before the rest. From this source the distinctions among bishops were also ordered, so that not all might claim all things for themselves; but in each province there is one whose opinion stands first among the brethren; and in the greater cities some have been appointed to a wider solicitude — through whom the care of the universal Church flows together to Peter’s one see, and nothing anywhere departs from its head.
Whoever knows he presides over some must not resent another’s precedence, but render the obedience he himself requires of others — and not lay on those below him burdens too heavy to bear: they bind heavy burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders (Matt. 23:4). We are disciples of the humble and gentle Master, who says: Learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls; for my yoke is easy and my burden is light (Matt. 11:29–30). This We experience if We heed: Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted (Matt. 20:26; Mark 10:43; Luke 22:26; Luke 14:11).
Footnotes
- ↩ The Latin is vices mei moderamine delegavi — “I have delegated the governance of my place/position to you.” The word vices literally means “turns,” “substitutions,” or “place” — Anastasius is acting in Leo’s stead, which is the root of the title vicarius (vicar). Leo is not conferring independent authority on Anastasius; he is lending him the governance of his own authority. The distinction is important and Leo will return to it explicitly later in this chapter: “we have entrusted Our authority to you to share Our solicitude, not to transfer the fullness of power.”
- ↩ The phrase curam quam universis Ecclesiis principaliter ex divina institutione debemus — “the care which We owe principally by divine institution to all the Churches” — brings together two of the most theologically significant terms in the Leo corpus: principaliter (principally, in a governing/originating sense — the same adverb used of Peter’s primacy in Letter X, Ch. I) and ex divina institutione (by divine institution — the same grounding used in Letter XII for the sollicitudo formula). The Roman bishop’s care for all the Churches is not merely an administrative convention; it is an obligation rooted in divine institution and discharged principally — that is, from a governing, originating position — through the see of Peter.
- ↩ Old Epirus (Epirus vetus) was the ancient Roman province occupying the western Balkans coast — roughly corresponding to modern southern Albania and the adjoining northwestern Greece. Thessalonica (modern Thessaloniki, in northern Greece) was the metropolitan city through which Leo exercised his Illyrian vicariate. The province of Old Epirus was thus within the geographic scope of the vicariate, though it lay in the territory of the Eastern Empire. The broader region of Illyricum — comprising modern-day Serbia, North Macedonia, Albania, and parts of Croatia, Bosnia, and Greece — had been assigned by the Council of Constantinople (381) to the patriarchate of Constantinople, making Leo’s exercise of jurisdiction here through the Thessalonian vicariate a matter of live ecclesiological significance in the ongoing relationship between Rome and Constantinople. Leo’s rebuke of Anastasius for using civil force to drag an Epirote bishop to Thessalonica is a rebuke both for pastoral abuse and for conduct that could discredit the Roman presence in the region entirely.
- ↩ Leo’s distinction between dignitas communis (dignity held in common by all bishops) and ordo (order or rank, which is not general but hierarchical) is the theological framework for his entire understanding of the papacy’s relationship to the episcopate. All bishops share in the episcopal dignity; they share in the same character and consecration. But not all exercise the same rank or jurisdiction. The distinction allows Leo to hold simultaneously that the episcopate is one — no bishop is of a different order than another — and that within that single order there is a structured hierarchy of jurisdiction. The one to whom preeminence was given among the apostles is, of course, Peter; and Peter’s preeminence continues in the see of Rome.
Historical Commentary