Victors Valentinianus and Marcianus, glorious triumphators, ever Augusti, to the most holy and truly venerable Leo, Archbishop.
Marcian Reports Doubt About Leo’s Confirmation of Chalcedon and Requests a Definitive Public Statement
We earnestly pray with the serenity of our words that Your Beatitude prospers, requesting that you impart the favor of your prayers’ intercession for the mercy and peace of Almighty God — that His magnificent clemency may grant our realm all prosperous and desirable blessings. We marvel exceedingly that, after the Chalcedon synod and the letters of the venerable bishops sent to Your Holiness containing a full account of all its proceedings, no response has been received from your clemency — a response that ought to have been read in the most holy churches and brought to the notice of all.
This has cast great doubt in the minds of some who are still clinging to the perverse opinion and depravity of Eutyches: whether Your Beatitude has confirmed the decrees of the synod. Therefore, may your piety deign to send letters by which it may be made manifest to all the churches and all the peoples that the acts of the holy synod are held valid by Your Beatitude. Indeed, as befits the bishop of the Apostolic See, Your Holiness has excellently ensured — by guarding ecclesiastical canons and curbing every novelty — that nothing of the ancient custom or established order, inviolably observed until now, be altered.
What and how much some have done on account of Your Beatitude’s letters, others can inform Your Holiness more clearly. We did not oppose them — since Your Charity in God has not yet affirmed that the Chalcedon synod, with all bishops agreeing, upheld the Catholic and truly orthodox faith. Therefore, may Your Venerable Dignity swiftly issue a decree making clearly manifest your confirmation of the Chalcedon synod — so that those who seek errant diversions may have no ground for suspicion of Your Holiness’s judgment, and the sanctity of your holiness may be shown to be confirmed by that most holy council in the most manifest way.
Dated the fifteenth day before the Kalends of March, at Constantinople.
Footnotes
- ↩ The address archiepiscopo — “Archbishop” — is the same title used in the Chalcedonian synod’s formal address to Leo in Letter XCVIII. Its use here in an imperial letter reflects the court’s acknowledgment of Leo’s unique episcopal dignity, distinct from the ordinary honorific of bishop or patriarch.
- ↩ The doubt Marcian describes — whether Leo has confirmed the synod — reveals with particular clarity how the architecture of authority was understood at the imperial court. The Council of Chalcedon had concluded its sessions, its definition had been proclaimed and subscribed by hundreds of bishops, and the emperor himself had endorsed it. Yet doubt remained about whether it was fully authoritative — and that doubt centered specifically on whether Leo had confirmed it. This is the confirmatory authority in its most direct expression: not an abstract ecclesiological claim but a practical reality that the emperor of the Roman world acknowledges as operative. The PL apparatus notes that a rumor had spread that Leo had in fact written *against* the Chalcedonian council — because his letters nullifying Canon 28 were being misrepresented as opposition to the council as a whole. Marcian’s request for a clear public statement is designed to correct this misrepresentation and to obtain the unambiguous confirmation that would settle the matter definitively.
- ↩ The phrase a tua beatitudine rata haberi — “held valid by Your Beatitude” — is the emperor’s formulation of what Leo’s confirmation accomplishes. The synod’s acts are not automatically valid by virtue of the council having been held; they require to be “held valid” by Leo. The verb rata haberi is a legal term: to ratify, to hold as binding. Marcian is asking Leo to perform a ratification that the emperor himself cannot perform.
- ↩ This sentence is Marcian’s praise of the Canon 28 nullification — stated in terms that constitute an imperial acknowledgment of it. The emperor had pressed for Leo’s confirmation of Canon 28 in Letter C; Leo nullified it in Letters CIV, CV, CVI, and CVII; and here Marcian commends him for doing so. “Guarding ecclesiastical canons and curbing every novelty” describes precisely what Leo did: he maintained the Nicene canons against a novel disciplinary claim. “Nothing of the ancient custom or established order… be altered” is the outcome Leo achieved by his nullification. The reader should note that this acknowledgment comes from the same imperial authority that had previously urged the opposite course. Marcian’s praise is not merely diplomatic; it is a retrospective endorsement of Leo’s exercise of apostolic jurisdiction over a conciliar act — the emperor recognizing that the stability of the Chalcedonian settlement depended on Leo’s willingness to distinguish what the council rightly defined from what it improperly attempted.
- ↩ This sentence is one of the most explicit statements in the entire corpus of what Leo’s confirmation means in practice. Marcian acknowledges that he withheld his own imperial action against those who were exploiting the ambiguity — because Leo had not yet formally affirmed the synod. The emperor’s capacity to enforce the conciliar settlement was held in abeyance pending the papal confirmation. Imperial and conciliar authority are present; what is awaited is the Apostolic See’s ratification to make the settlement operative and beyond dispute.
- ↩ February 15, 453, by the standard dateline calculation (some manuscripts read March 10 — the PL apparatus notes the discrepancy). Leo’s reply to this letter is Letter CXI, dated the preceding March 21 according to some manuscripts; the PL apparatus suggests the letter was written in the spring of 453. Leo’s response confirmed Chalcedon’s doctrinal definitions — the response Marcian was requesting. The distinction Leo had already drawn — confirming the faith defined at Chalcedon, nullifying Canon 28 as contrary to Nicaea — is exactly the distinction this letter’s context makes necessary: Marcian needed Leo’s public confirmation that the whole council was not being opposed, only its disciplinary overreach.
Historical Commentary