Leo, bishop, to Bishop Flavian.
Leo’s Solicitude Grows at Flavian’s Silence; He Urges an Immediate Full Report
Your prolonged silence increases our solicitude. We have long received no letters from your beloved, though, solicitous for the defense of the faith, we have frequently sent letters to you through suitable opportunities, to support you with the comfort of our exhortations — so that you would not yield to the provocations of adversaries — proving that you have us as partners in your labor.
We believe our brothers have reached your brotherhood, through whom you retain fuller knowledge from our written mandates. We have sent Basilius back to you, as you wished. Now, lest you think any opportunity has been missed, we have directed this letter to you through our son the honorable and beloved Eupsychius, urging you to reply to our letters with all possible speed.
We ask you to inform us promptly of your actions, those of our representatives, and the full disposition of the entire cause — so that we, bearing solicitude for the defense of the faith, may relieve our desire with fuller and more favorable news.
Given on the third day before the Ides of August, in the consulship of Asturius and Protogenes, most illustrious men.
Footnotes
- ↩ The letter opens with the sollicitudo formula in its most direct form: Auget sollicitudinem nostram diutina dilectionis tuae silentio — “Your prolonged silence increases our solicitude.” This is the same term — sollicitudo — that Leo uses throughout the corpus to describe the Roman bishop’s universal pastoral responsibility. Here it appears in the personal and urgent register: the solicitude that belongs to Leo’s office by divine institution is intensified by Flavian’s silence, because what the Roman see is responsible for is happening beyond Leo’s sight. The letter is dated August 11, 449 — ten days after Ephesus II opened on August 1. Flavian’s silence is not negligence; by this date, the council had already taken catastrophic turns, and Flavian may have been unable or prevented from communicating freely.
- ↩ Per quos pleniorem ex scriptis nostris mandatorum nostrorum notitiam retenere credibilis es — “through whom you retain fuller knowledge from our written mandates.” “Scripta nostra” and “mandata nostra” together designate Leo’s authoritative written instructions — principally the Tome (Letter XXVIII) and the accompanying letters of the June 13 cluster. The legates carry not just a document but the governing authority of Leo’s written judgment. This is the same posture as Letters XXXI and XXXIII: the council is to act in light of what Leo has already written, because what he has written constitutes the authoritative statement of the faith.
- ↩ August 11, 449 — “the third day before the Ides of August.” Ephesus II had opened ten days earlier, on August 1. On the same day Leo writes this anxious letter to Flavian, he also writes Letter XL confirming the election of Ravennius as Bishop of Arles — routine Gallic business conducted in the middle of the Eastern crisis. The contrast between the two letters of August 11 shows the scope of Leo’s universal solicitude: one eye on the theological emergency unfolding in Ephesus, the other on the normal institutional life of the Western church.
Historical Commentary