Leo, bishop, to Turribius, bishop, greetings.
How laudably you are moved for the truth of the Catholic faith, and how carefully you expend your pastoral office’s devotion to the Lord’s flock — your brotherhood’s writings, delivered to us by your deacon, have fully shown Us, revealing to Our notice what you have taken care to make known: We marveled how much, in your regions, through the occasion of the disturbed times, or through the presumption of the ambitious, or through popular tumult, it has prevailed that those utterly unworthy and far below any priestly merit have been elevated to the pastoral dignity and governance of the Church. We respond for the solicitude which We owe by divine institution to the universal Church: that the venerable brother Turribius’s care and zeal should be strengthened by Our authority, and that what was usurped illicitly among you be brought more frequently to the Roman pontiff for correction by the report of your watchfulness.
The sewer of Priscillianism has re-heated among you. There is no form of vileness in the minds of any heretics that this doctrine has not gathered into itself, mixing the filth of all earthly opinions so that what others tasted only in part, this sect has drunk in full. If all heresies that arose before Priscillian are carefully examined, scarcely an error will be found from which this impiety has not drawn its contagion — not content with the lies of those who strayed from the Gospel under the name of Christ, it plunged into pagan darkness, placing the faith of religion and the moral reason of life under demonic power and stellar influence through magic arts and the vain deceptions of astrologers. If this were believed, no reward would remain for virtues, no punishment for vices, and all human and divine ordinances would dissolve — since no judgment of good or evil conduct can exist if fatal necessity drives the mind, and human actions proceed from the stars, not from men.
This madness assigns the parts of the human body to the twelve signs of the zodiac, with different powers governing each, subjecting the image of God to the stars as to limbs of the body. When this abominable heresy first arose, Our fathers moved swiftly throughout the world to expel it from the Church. Even the secular princes so detested this sacrilege that they struck down its founder and many of his disciples with the public sword — seeing that it dissolved all care for virtue, subverted marriage, and overturned both divine and human law.
The severity of the Church for a long time aided the leniency that, though content with priestly judgment and shunning bloodshed, is supported by the stern ordinances of Christian princes — since some seek spiritual remedies out of fear of bodily punishment. But since hostile invasions occupied many provinces and the tempests of war interrupted the execution of the laws, the travel of priests became difficult and councils rare — and secret treachery found its freedom in public disorder, stirring up ruin where it should have been corrected. Where, as your beloved indicates, even the hearts of some priests have been corrupted by this lethal disease, the Gospel of Christ is subjected to Priscillianist doctrine through those who were meant to suppress falsehood and defend the truth — twisting the holy volumes under the names of prophets and apostles to teach not what the Holy Spirit revealed, but what the devil’s minister inserted.
Since your beloved has faithfully condensed these condemned opinions into sixteen propositions, We also briefly review all of them, lest any of these blasphemies appear either tolerable or doubtful.
Chapter I: They Confuse the Trinity into One Person
The first proposition reveals their impious view of the divine Trinity: that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one and the same person, called now Father, now Son, now Spirit — not as one who begets, one begotten, and one proceeding, each distinct, but as a single entity in three names, not three persons. This blasphemy derives from Sabellius, whose followers are rightly called Patripassians, since they ascribe to the Father everything that the Son endured in the flesh. The Catholic faith, by contrast, confesses the Trinity as consubstantial, indivisible without confusion, co-eternal and immutable, with the unity fulfilled not by one person but one substance.
Chapter II: They Teach That the Son Is Later Than the Father
The second proposition exposes their fiction that certain powers proceed from God which He did not always have — beginning to possess them as if they were acquired. This supports the Arian error that the Father precedes the Son in time, existing without Him before begetting Him. The Catholic Church condemns both errors equally: no deficiency preceded the Son’s generation from the Father, and God does not progress from what He lacked into what He gains.
Chapter III: They Deny the True Eternal Sonship of Christ
The third proposition holds that Christ is called Only-Begotten because He alone was born of a virgin — borrowing the poison of Paul of Samosata and Photinus, who denied that Jesus Christ existed before His birth from Mary. Whichever way this error turns, it falls into grave impiety: either it denies Christ’s divine sonship, or it implies other sons of the Father alongside the one born of a woman. The Catholic faith confesses that He who was born of the Virgin was already and eternally the Word begotten of the Father before all ages.
Chapter IV: They Fast on the Lord’s Nativity and Mourn the Resurrection Day
The fourth proposition shows they do not truly honor the Lord’s Nativity — which the Church venerates for the Word becoming flesh (John 1:14) — but feign observance by fasting on that day and on Sunday, the day of the Resurrection. In this they follow Cerdon, Marcion, and ultimately the Manichaeans, denying that Christ assumed true human nature. Enemies of the cross and resurrection merit a judgment matching their doctrine.
Chapter V: They Claim the Human Soul Is of Divine Substance
The fifth proposition reports that they assert the human soul is of divine substance, indistinguishable from the Creator’s nature. The Catholic faith condemns this impiety outright: no creature, however sublime, shares in God’s nature. Only the Son and the Holy Spirit are of God Himself; beyond the Trinity, which is consubstantial, eternal, and immutable, all things are made from nothing and receive from God what they do not possess of themselves.
Chapter VI: They Assert the Devil Arose from Chaos, Not from God
The sixth proposition holds that the devil was never good, was not created by God, but emerged from chaos and darkness, having no author but being himself the source and substance of all evil. The Catholic faith confesses that all creatures — spiritual and corporeal — have good substance, and that evil has no nature of its own. The devil was created good and fell through the misuse of his will: he did not abide in the truth (John 8:44). Those who assert otherwise make voluntary wickedness into a quality of nature.
Chapter VII: They Condemn Marriage and Procreation
The seventh proposition follows from the sixth: they condemn marriage and abhor procreation, aligning themselves entirely with Manichaean profanity. They despise conjugal union for lacking the freedom of impurity — where for the Catholic the bond of marriage and the gift of children are themselves the preservers of chastity.
Chapter VIII: They Claim Human Bodies Are Formed by Demons
The eighth proposition holds that human bodies are the devil’s creation, shaped by demons in the womb, and that the body’s resurrection is therefore impossible as unworthy of the soul’s dignity. This falsehood — long condemned by the Catholic faith — does not form human beings in the womb; it forms this very error in the hearts of heretics.
Chapter IX: They Claim Children of Promise Are Conceived by the Holy Spirit in the Womb
The ninth proposition asserts that children of the promise born of women are conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb, not through fleshly seed at all. The Catholic faith confesses that every human being is formed and animated by the Creator in the womb, bearing original sin from the first parent and receiving the new birth only through baptism — where the Holy Spirit makes children of promise, not in the body but through the water of regeneration.
Chapter X: They Assert That Souls Sinned in Heaven and Descend as Punishment
The tenth proposition holds that souls existed bodiless in heaven before bodies, sinned there, and descended to earth as punishment — bound by aerial and stellar powers to bodies with varied fates determined by their prior guilt. The Catholic faith cuts off this impious fable entirely: souls are created by God with the bodies they inhabit; they bear the taint of Adam’s sin and are freed only through Christ’s baptism.
Chapter XI: They Teach That Souls Are Bound by Fatal Stars
The eleventh blasphemy claims that souls and bodies are enslaved to fatal stars, tangling their adherents in the full web of pagan astrological superstition. Those who hold this have entirely departed from Christ’s body and have no place in the Catholic Church.
Chapter XII: They Assign Parts of the Soul and Body to Different Powers
The twelfth proposition assigns parts of the soul to certain powers and parts of the body to others, linking interior qualities to the names of the patriarchs and opposing them to the zodiac signs governing the body — entangling themselves precisely in what the Apostle warned against: Beware lest anyone take you captive through philosophy and empty deceit (Col. 2:8–10, 18–19).
Chapter XIII: They Assign Patriarchs’ Names to Body Parts
The thirteenth proposition holds that the whole corpus of Scripture is to be understood through the patriarchs’ names, which represent twelve virtues reforming the inner man, and without knowledge of which no soul can return to its divine origin. Christian wisdom rejects this impious vanity, knowing that God’s nature is inviolable and the soul, whether in or out of the body, is subject to passion — utterly distinct from the Creator’s essence.
Chapter XIV: They Distribute the Twelve Zodiac Signs Across the Body
The fourteenth proposition holds that the body’s condition is governed by stellar powers, finding in Scripture a conflict between divine and earthly natures and assigning different rulers to soul and body. This fable declares the soul divine and the flesh evil, denying the goodness of God’s creation and violating the divine word with sacrilegious interpretations.
Chapter XV: They Use and Corrupt the Apocryphal Scriptures
The fifteenth proposition reveals that they employ diabolical cunning in disseminating their error: we have found many corrupted codices falsely presented as canonical. They sweeten poisoned cups to ensnare the simple, using apocryphal writings full of falsehoods under the names of the apostles. These must be forbidden, removed, and burned. Even those that appear to contain something pious are never entirely free of poison, ensnaring the unwary through wonder-tales. Any bishop who permits corrupted codices in church readings thereby demonstrates that he himself has erred — for one who does not recall others from error shows himself to be in error.
Chapter XVI: The Writings of Dictinius Are Wrongly Venerated
The final proposition reports that the treatises of Dictinius — composed under Priscillianist influence — are venerated by many, though it is his repentance, not his error, that deserves honor. Those who read his earlier works are following Priscillian, not the corrected Dictinius; they cannot be counted among Catholics. Moreover, We forbid the perverse from concealing themselves under Christian names to evade the imperial decrees directed against them, since Priscillianists and Manichaeans, united in their sacrilege, are converging on the same end through the same corruption and rejection of Scripture.
In their execrable mysteries — the fouler they are, the more carefully hidden — the same obscenity binds them together. Though We blush to speak of it, Our diligent inquiry, and the confessions made by Manichaeans before priests, persons of rank, and the people, have brought their crimes to public notice. This was long known to be the practice of the Priscillianists, equal in impiety to the Manichaeans in every respect.
Chapter XVII: Christ’s Flesh Truly Rested in the Tomb
Regarding the final point raised in your letter, We marvel that any Catholic entertains doubt about whether Christ’s flesh truly rested in the tomb while He descended to the dead — since it truly died, was truly buried, and truly rose on the third day. The Lord Himself declared: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up (John 2:19), and the Evangelist adds: He spoke of the temple of His body (John 2:21). David prophesied: My flesh shall dwell in hope, for you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let your Holy One see corruption (Ps. 15:9–10). Christ’s flesh truly rested in the tomb uncorrupted, and rose swiftly at the soul’s return. To deny this is to align oneself with Manichaean and Priscillianist doctrine, which falsely professes Christ while denying His true incarnation, death, and resurrection.
Those who can patiently hear such things may believe them. As for Us: We have sent letters to Our brothers and fellow bishops throughout Tarraconensis, Carthaginiensis, Lusitania, and Gallicia, and decreed among them the convening of a general synod. It will fall to your solicitude to ensure that the authority of Our ordinance reaches the bishops of the aforesaid provinces. If anything — God forbid — should prevent the holding of a general council, at least let the priests of Gallicia convene in one place, with Our brothers Idatius and Ceponius pressing for their assembly and your own insistence joining theirs, so that the remedy for such great wounds may be provided as swiftly as possible through a provincial council.
Given on the twelfth day before the Kalends of August, in the consulship of Calepius and Ardabur, most illustrious men.
Footnotes
- ↩ The phrase pro sollicitudine quam universis Ecclesiae ex divina institutione dependimus — “for the solicitude which We owe by divine institution to the universal Church” — is the sollicitudo formula that Leo uses throughout the corpus to identify the ground of his universal pastoral obligation. Compare Letters V, VI, X, XII, and XIV. Here, as in Letter XII (addressed to the bishops of Mauretania Caesariensis), it is the explicit reason Leo engages with a problem in a distant province. The Roman bishop’s care for all the Churches is not a matter of policy but of obligation rooted in divine institution: he is not intervening because he chooses to; he is obligated to respond because God has given him responsibility for all.
- ↩ Astorga (Latin Asturica Augusta) is located in the modern province of León in northwestern Spain, near the boundary with the ancient province of Gallicia. By the mid-440s the broader region was politically precarious: the Suevi had established a kingdom in Gallicia from around 409, and the Visigoths dominated much of the rest of the Iberian Peninsula. Leo is writing to a bishop operating in a region where Roman civil authority had effectively collapsed, and doing so without any imperial backing — the emperor in Ravenna had no reach into Suevic or Visigothic territory. His exercise of jurisdiction here rests entirely on ecclesiastical authority.
- ↩ Priscillian of Avila was a Spanish bishop executed at Trier in 385 at the command of the usurper Maximus — the first Christian heretic executed by the state in Western history. His movement blended asceticism, Gnostic cosmology, and astrological fatalism. Despite his condemnation by the Council of Zaragoza (380) and his execution, Priscillianism survived and spread, particularly in northwestern Spain (Gallicia and the surrounding regions). The sect had been formally condemned by multiple councils, but the breakdown of Roman civil order in Spain after the barbarian invasions of 409 gave it room to re-emerge. Leo’s letter is the most comprehensive papal treatment of the heresy.
- ↩ The four provinces Leo names cover essentially the entire Iberian Peninsula. Tarraconensis (capital: Tarraco, modern Tarragona, northeastern Spain) was the largest province. Carthaginiensis (capital: Carthago Nova, modern Cartagena, central and southeastern Spain) included the territory of modern Toledo and much of central Spain. Lusitania (capital: Emerita Augusta, modern Mérida) corresponded roughly to modern Portugal and western Spain. Gallicia (modern Galicia in the extreme northwest) was at this time largely under Suevic rule. The “Gallicos” in the Latin refers to bishops of this Galician province — not to Gaul/France, which might be a natural assumption for a reader who knows Leo’s Gallic correspondence. By 447 none of these territories were under stable Roman imperial authority, making Leo’s exercise of jurisdiction here entirely independent of imperial backing.
- ↩ July 21, 447 AD. The consulship of Flavius Calepius and Ardabur establishes the year as 447. Idatius of Chaves (whose chronicle is our primary source for fifth-century Iberian history) was bishop of Aquae Flaviae, modern Chaves in northern Portugal, near the Galician border. He and Ceponius were the local bishops whom Leo trusted to implement the synodal call on the ground. Idatius records the Priscillianist controversy at several points in his chronicle.
Historical Commentary