Leo, bishop, to Pulcheria Augusta.
Chapter I: Leo Sends Legates to Act With Prudence Among the Lapsed; The Apostolic See’s Legates to Execute Leo’s Dispositions
I presume to urge your pious solicitude — which, inspired by God, consoles the whole world — with more frequent letters, so that the progress of your works may attain its necessary perfection, most glorious Augusta. We rejoice in the state of the Constantinopolitan Church, whose bishop and people are now known to hold the purity of the Catholic faith — and so too may others’ confession of the Incarnation of the Word be concordant with us. As I indicated in other letters, I hastened to send my brothers Lucentius, bishop, and Basilius, presbyter, to execute my dispositions with the devotion of my brother Anatolius, according to the rules they received.
As the aforementioned bishop’s writings and his clerics’ reports revealed, many matters require more lenient care, others stricter restraint — so that in the cause of this great disturbance, neither may severity be too harsh nor leniency too careless, as the repentant deserve one treatment and the obstinate another.
Chapter II: Eutychian Blasphemy Must Be Eliminated From Catholics’ Fellowship; Those Who Deny It Are Outside Christian Unity
Your piety is offered a worthy opportunity to exercise the care of a holy heart pleasing to God, multiplying the crowns of prior merits by the abolition of the present error. Just as Nestorian impiety, so too Eutychian blasphemy must be eliminated from the fellowship of all Catholics. For it is equally impious to deny the coeternal and consubstantial Deity of the Son born bodily from the womb of the Virgin Mother, as to affirm one nature in the Son of God after the mystery of the Incarnation — thereby denying either His humanity or His Deity. In the union of both essences, neither is transformed into the other, nor is what was assumed consumed in the One who assumed; rather, the unchangeability of the Word and the truth of flesh and soul remain inseparably in the unity of the person.
Those who — despite the testimony of the Law, the belief of the Patriarchs, the proclamation of the Prophets, the preaching of the Gospel, the teaching of the Apostles, and the confession of the whole world — do not believe this are outside the mystery of the body of Christ and outside the unity of the Christian name.
Chapter III: Pulcheria Directed to Support the Apostolic See’s Legates; Eutyches to Be Exiled; A Catholic Abbot for His Monastery
While we grieve their ruin, we detest their perfidy. To ensure pure judgment concerning such persons everywhere — with one treatment for the corrected and another for the obstinate — let your piety deign to support our legates sent by the Apostolic See, aiding all their actions, so that with the Lord’s help what benefits your glory and the entire Church’s peace may be more swiftly and easily accomplished.
Concerning Eutyches — the author of all scandal and depravity — let your clemency command his transfer to a place far from Constantinople, lest he use the frequent consolations of those he drew into his impiety. For his monastery — which he governed perniciously and unworthily — command a Catholic abbot to be appointed, to free that congregation of God’s servants from perverse doctrine and imbue them with the teachings of truth.
Given on the fifth day before the Ides of June, in the consulship of Adelfius, most illustrious man.
Footnotes
- ↩ The phrase “according to the rules they received” — secundum regulas quas acceperunt — is Leo’s formulaic description of the written instructions he gives his legates before dispatch. The legates do not improvise; they execute a defined framework established by the Apostolic See. Anatolius cooperates within that framework. The same structure was visible in Letter LXXXIII: those directed from the Apostolic See were instructed to include Anatolius in their deliberation — not as the governing authority but as the local participant in an operation directed from Rome.
- ↩ The formal equivalence of Nestorianism and Eutychianism as twin heresies to be eliminated from Catholic fellowship — stated here as it was in Letter LIV to Theodosius and Letter LXXV to Faustus and Martinus — is one of Leo’s most consistent theological positions. The symmetry matters: both errors are anathematized by the same rule of Catholic faith, and both require exclusion from communion. This is the doctrinal basis for rejecting the Ephesus II framing, which had presented Eutyches as the defender of orthodoxy against Nestorian resurgence. Leo’s equivalence demolishes that framing.
- ↩ The exclusion formula here is doctrinal rather than disciplinary. Leo is stating that those who deny the two-nature doctrine are outside the mystery of Christ’s body and outside the unity of the Christian name — and he states this before Chalcedon has met. No council has rendered this verdict. Rome has spoken, and those who reject what Rome has declared are already outside the Church. The council will confirm what the Apostolic See has determined; it will not be the source of the determination.
- ↩ Legatis nostris ab apostolica sede missis — “our legates sent by the Apostolic See.” As in Letter LXXXIII, the institutional commission is named explicitly. Pulcheria is being asked to support not Leo’s personal representatives but the persons whom the Apostolic See has sent — agents of the governing institution, not merely of the man. The practical request that follows (Eutyches’s exile, a Catholic abbot for his monastery) is presented as within the scope of what the Apostolic See’s legates are working to accomplish, and Pulcheria’s support is enlisted as part of that work.
- ↩ Leo is directing Pulcheria to issue a specific imperial command about a specific person. This is not a suggestion or a theological opinion; it is a pastoral directive specifying the concrete administrative action the empress should take. The “frequent consolations” Leo wants to prevent are visits by Eutyches’s supporters — if Eutyches remains near Constantinople he can continue to encourage the Eutychian network. The directive shows Leo thinking operationally about the post-Ephesus settlement, not merely doctrinally.
- ↩ June 9, 451 — the same date as Letter LXXXIII to Marcian. The paired dispatch continues Leo’s established pattern of writing to emperor and empress simultaneously. Letter LXXXIII to Marcian addressed the synod question and the legate commission in institutional terms; Letter LXXXIV to Pulcheria addresses the same legate commission in personal terms and adds the specific directives about Eutyches and his monastery. Pulcheria, as Leo’s most trusted Eastern ally and as someone with direct imperial authority over Constantinople’s ecclesiastical environment, is the natural recipient of the operational directives.
Historical Commentary