Leo, bishop, to Marcian Augustus.
Leo Explains His Suspended Correspondence With Anatolius and Sets the Conditions for His Full Restoration to Communion
If the bishop of Constantinople were as devoted to upholding ecclesiastical rules as your clemency is vigilant in safeguarding the integrity of the evangelical faith, everything would have returned to its proper state by now. All scandals of dissension would be suppressed, and the depravity of those who oppose the Catholic faith would find no foothold in an empire where you defend justice and resist errors. But this palm of victory is reserved for your mildness: you are owed the spiritual health of all who are recalled or return to Christ through the Catholic faith. As we glory in you, we grieve for those consumed by carnal rivalries. We see you — with a spirit both Christian and royal — so deeply concerned for the state of the churches and the peace of all bishops that you offer interventions for those you know have strayed.
In your letters you urge me to restore the grace of brotherly charity to my fellow bishop Anatolius — a grace I extended amicably, as you recall, and one I always desire to offer, provided he abandons the ambition that burdens him and ceases to associate with those who obscure his judgment. Yet to the letters I sent him with pious affection, he has not deigned to respond thus far. And with the matters concerning Aetius or Andrew — who was substituted for him — deserving disapproval, it is not without reason that silence persists on what should chiefly be addressed. I wished to obey your piety’s precept and send letters to the aforesaid bishop — but only if my prior ones had shown some progress through his actions or writings. Since he has expressed no repentance for his ambition and has not bothered to reply to what I wrote, I have suspended my communications with him — though I have not changed my heart’s desire for his correction and improvement.
Therefore, if it pleases your clemency — and indeed I know it does — let him satisfy the canons. Let him write that he will preserve the grace of all bishops with peaceful humility, signifying that he has rejected his culpable ambition. I promise to receive him into such grace that I will embrace his fellowship in all things pleasing to the Lord. For that will be the true peace, and that the firm charity, where we together strive to uphold the Catholic faith and the decrees of the Nicene canons.
Dated the seventh day before the Ides of March, in the consulship of the most illustrious Aetius and Studius.
Footnotes
- ↩ Leo identifies the two unresolved matters that Anatolius’s silence has left hanging: the unjust demotion of Aetius the archdeacon, and the reinstatement of Andrew the Eutychian in his place — the same situation Leo had directed Marcian and Pulcheria to correct in Letters CXI and CXII. Anatolius has neither rectified the administrative injustice nor replied to Leo’s previous letters. His silence on the very matters Leo most requires him to address is itself a refusal — and Leo names it as such.
- ↩ These are Leo’s formal conditions for Anatolius’s restoration to full communion: (1) satisfaction of the canons — meaning the Nicene canons whose violation Leo has nullified throughout the Canon 28 sequence; (2) a written commitment to preserve the rights of all bishops with peaceful humility — meaning the prerogatives of Alexandria, Antioch, and the other sees that Canon 28 had threatened; (3) a written renunciation of the culpable ambition — Anatolius’s own act naming his Canon 28 campaign as what it was. Leo sets these conditions and promises full restoration on those terms. The conditions are precise, the promise is generous, and the authority to set the terms is entirely Leo’s. Letter CXXXII will confirm that Anatolius complied — reporting to Leo that Andrew has been expelled and Aetius restored, and framing his compliance explicitly as obedience to Leo’s directives.
- ↩ March 9, 454 — two months after Letters CXXVI and CXXVII (January 9, 454). This letter responds directly to Marcian’s intercession for Anatolius reported in Letter CXXVII’s Chapter III. Leo neither grants the request immediately nor refuses it: he sets conditions. The conditions themselves are the clearest statement in the corpus of what compliance with apostolic authority looks like: not a vague reconciliation but specific canonical satisfaction, a written humility-profession, and a named renunciation of the specific ambition. Between this letter and CXXXII lies the verification of whether Anatolius will meet those conditions.
Historical Commentary