Leo, bishop, to Marcian Augustus.
Chapter I: Leo Rejoices in the Victory of the Faith and the Utility of Error in the Church
The joys of the entire Catholic Church multiplied beyond telling through God’s great mercy — its most pernicious error extinguished through the holy and glorious zeal of your clemency. With your principate’s faith and power aiding Our labor, the desired outcome was reached swiftly. Though the service of the Apostolic See defended the freedom of the Gospel through the power of the Holy Spirit even amid any discord, God’s grace shone more clearly in this: ensuring that only the violators of the faith perished while truth was victorious, and restoring the Church’s integrity. The war stirred by the enemy of our peace was so happily concluded, with the Lord’s right hand fighting, that with Christ triumphing all the bishops shared one victory, and truth’s radiant light expelled the darkness of error together with its defenders. Just as in the Lord’s Resurrection some of the apostles’ doubt about the bodily truth of Christ — examining the marks of the nails and the wound of the lance — strengthened the beginnings of the faith for all by removing ambiguity (John 20:25–27): so now, the refutation of some’s infidelity has confirmed all hesitating hearts, and what blinded some has enlightened all, most glorious son and most clement Augustus.
Chapter II: Leo Notes the Evils Arising From Anatolius’s Ambition
With these matters — for which so great a gathering of bishops was held — settled at a good and desirable end, I marvel and grieve that the spirit of ambition again disturbs the divinely restored peace of the universal Church. Although our brother Anatolius is seen to have rightly consulted his own interest in abandoning the error of those who ordained him and coming over to assent to the Catholic faith through salutary correction — he should nonetheless have ensured that what he is known to have obtained through your benefit is not disturbed by any corruption of desire. For, having before Us the consideration of your faith and intervention, and since from the outset things wavered because of the authors of his consecration, We chose to be more indulgent toward him than strict — so that by applying remedies We might soothe all the disturbances that the devil had stirred — remedies that ought to have made him modest rather than excessive. For even if he had been legitimately and solemnly ordained with outstanding merits and the best judgment, he could be aided by no supports in acting against the reverence owed to the canons of the Fathers, against the statutes of the Holy Spirit, against the examples of antiquity. Speaking before a Christian, truly religious, and orthodox prince, Anatolius the bishop greatly diminishes his own merit if he desires to grow by illicit increase.
Chapter III: Constantinople’s Royal See Cannot Be Made Apostolic; The Nicene Privileges Cannot Be Overturned; Leo Is Bound by the Stewardship Entrusted to Him
Let the city of Constantinople, as We desire, hold its own glory and, protected by the right hand of God, long enjoy the rule of your clemency. But the reckoning of secular things differs from that of divine things; and no structure will stand firm except on that rock which the Lord placed as the foundation (Matt. 16:18). One loses what is proper by coveting what is not owed. Let it suffice for the aforesaid that, with your piety’s aid and my favor’s assent, he obtained the episcopate of so great a city. Let him not disdain a royal city — which he cannot make an Apostolic See — nor hope in any way to advance through the injuries done to others.
For the privileges of the churches, established by the canons of the holy Fathers and fixed by the decrees of the venerable Nicene synod, can be shaken by no audacity and altered by no novelty. In faithfully carrying out this work with Christ’s aid, it is necessary for me to persevere in the service entrusted to me: because the stewardship committed to me holds me accountable, and turns to my guilt, if the rules of the paternal sanctions — which were established in the Nicene synod for the governance of the entire Church under the Spirit of God — are violated, God forbid, through my connivance; and if the will of one brother should weigh more with me than the common good of the entire house of the Lord.
Chapter IV: Leo Urges Marcian to Restrain Anatolius’s Ambition
Knowing therefore that your glorious clemency cherishes ecclesiastical concord and grants most pious assent to what is consonant with peaceful unity, I pray and earnestly beseech you, by diligent suggestion, to reject from the support of your piety the audacious attempts contrary to Christian unity and peace — and to salutarily restrain the ambition of our brother Anatolius, which will harm him if he persists — lest, desiring what is hostile to your glory and your times, he wish to be greater than his predecessors. Free and open to him is whatever splendor he can earn through virtues; but he will share in them only if he chooses to be adorned more by charity than distended by ambition. This conception of depraved desire he ought never to have admitted into the secret of his heart; but when my brothers and fellow bishops, who were present in My stead, opposed it, he should have at least ceased from the illicit desire at the salutary contradiction of theirs. For both the writings of your piety and his own records declare that the legates of the Apostolic See, as was fitting, restrained it with most just contradiction — so that the presumption that did not restrain itself even when reproved would be all the more inexcusable.
Chapter V: Anatolius Drew Boldness From Past Excesses; Leo Exhorts Marcian to Subdue All Ambition as He Subdued Heresy
Wherefore, since it is consonant with your faith and glory that, just as heresy was destroyed through you by God’s action, so all ambition be brought low — act as befits both Christian uprightness and royal dignity: ensuring that the said bishop obey the Fathers, serve peace, and not deem it permissible — as he presumed, without any precedent, against the canonical institutes — to ordain a bishop for the Church of Antioch. This We forbore to challenge for the love of restoring the faith and for our zeal for peace. Let him therefore abstain from injuring the ecclesiastical rules and decline from illicit excesses — lest, attempting what is hostile to peace, he cut himself off from the universal Church. I prefer to love him acting blamelessly than to allow him to persist in this presumption, which could separate him from all. Our brother and fellow bishop Lucianus, together with my son the deacon Basilius, carried your clemency’s letter to me with all devotion, fulfilling every part of the legation they had undertaken; and he should not be considered to have failed in the matter, since it was the cause that failed him, not he the cause.
Dated the eleventh day before the Kalends of June, in the consulship of Herculanus, most illustrious man.
Footnotes
- ↩ The invocation of the rock of Matthew 16:18 as the governing principle of ecclesiastical order here is pointed: Leo is using the Petrine foundation — the very passage on which the Roman bishop’s primacy rests — as the argument against Canon 28. A structure not built on Peter’s rock cannot stand. Constantinople’s claim to second place derived not from apostolic foundation but from imperial geography, and Leo’s response names the architectural principle that makes the distinction decisive.
- ↩ The phrase quam apostolicam non potest facere sedem — “which he cannot make an Apostolic See” — is Leo’s definitive statement of the Constantinople problem. The city is royal; it cannot be apostolic. The distinction is categorical: apostolic standing derives from the apostles who founded a see, not from the emperors who reside there. No council, no number of bishops, no imperial favor can supply what only apostolic foundation provides. In Letter CVI to Anatolius, Leo applies the same argument directly: Constantinople’s case rested entirely on the New Rome analogy, and Leo names that as a claim that cannot generate apostolic dignity.
- ↩ The phrase nulla possunt improbitate convelli, nulla novitate mutari — “can be shaken by no audacity and altered by no novelty” — is Leo’s canonical principle stated at its most absolute. The Nicene settlement is not a baseline that later councils can revise by accumulated weight of numbers or by imperial pressure. In Letter CVI to Anatolius, Leo extends this principle explicitly: no assembly of bishops, however large, can compare itself to Nicaea’s three hundred eighteen, “so divinely privileged that any ecclesiastical judgments, by fewer or more, contrary to their constitutions, are wholly void.”
- ↩ The phrase dispensatio mihi credita est, et ad meum tendit reatum — “the stewardship committed to me holds me accountable” — frames Leo’s rejection of Canon 28 not as a preference or a policy choice but as an obligation of the apostolic office. He cannot grant what Marcian asks because the stewardship of Peter’s see forbids it: to connive at the violation of the Nicene canons would be to incur guilt before God. This is the most direct statement in the Canon 28 correspondence of why Leo is immovable on this point. He is not choosing to refuse; he is bound to refuse.
- ↩ Leo validates his legates’ opposition in explicit terms: they acted “as was fitting,” opposing Canon 28 “with most just contradiction.” In Letter CI, Anatolius had complained that the legates opposed the canon out of ignorance of Leo’s intentions. Leo’s reply here makes clear the reverse: the legates were acting precisely in accordance with Leo’s mind — and their opposition is commended, not corrected.
- ↩ May 22, 452. Letter CIV belongs to a simultaneous four-letter dispatch — all dated May 22, 452 — in which Leo addresses the Canon 28 question to its three main principals and to the Empress Pulcheria (Letter CV). The four letters are: CIV to Marcian (the ecclesiological and stewardship argument), CV to Pulcheria (the formal apostolic nullification), CVI to Anatolius (the canonical argument and the validation of the legates), and CVII to the Synod of Chalcedon itself. Writing all four on the same day makes Leo’s comprehensive response to the Canon 28 appeal a single coordinated act rather than a series of individual replies.
Historical Commentary