Leo to Anatolius, bishop.
Chapter I: Leo Commends Anatolius’s Diligence and Urges Continued Vigilance, Having Again Addressed the Emperor on the Church’s Behalf
We approve the diligence of the necessary solicitude which your brotherhood employs in directing letters to us, and from the pages received through our son Olympius we perceive that a priestly care is alive in you — in which we ourselves, as much as the Lord grants it possible, do not fail, entreating your charity that, since we are in a time of labor, you persevere in holy vigilance until the right hand of the Lord make strength (Ps. 117:16) and tread down the tempter under the feet of His Church. Our confidence is strengthened in all things by the faith of the most merciful prince, prepared by divine Providence — whom I have again, as was fitting, addressed with my own exhortation, that with sterner resolve he make provision against the impious attacks of those most wicked plunderers: whom it is unlawful to presume so greatly upon his favor as even to dare their madness at Constantinople itself. But this is permitted them by reason of divine Providence, that it may more and more appear what spirit drives them — lest there be any doubt of what audacity they would have broken out, had they received, after the condemnation of their most impious heresy, the power to dispute against the faith — for insofar as it lay in them, they would have raged with this fury yet more widely, as our brothers and fellow bishops who recently fled to you from the parts of Egypt deplore having endured. To these I have no doubt that both the most Christian prince and your brotherhood, beloved of God, are providing consolation, even if you do not write to me about it. I have also thought it opportune to direct writings to those same ones, which may strengthen them in the purpose of the common faith and lead them to recognize what heavenly recompense awaits their patience — as the blessed Apostle teaches, saying: Receive them therefore with all joy in the Lord, and hold such in honor, because for the faith of Christ they went even unto death (Phil. 2:29–30).
Chapter II: Leo Rebukes the Connivance of Anatolius’s Clergy with the Eutychians and Commands Pastoral Correction or Expulsion
I wish to make known that it greatly displeases me that certain persons among your charity’s clergy are said to connive with the wickedness of the adversary, and that vessels of mercy are being mixed with vessels of wrath. Your diligence must vigilantly insist on investigating these persons and coercing them with fitting severity: so that those whom correction has not been able to benefit may not be spared excision. For we must remember the evangelical commandment given by Truth itself — that if our eye, or foot, or right hand should scandalize us, it be cut away from the body’s frame, since it is better that these be absent from the Church than that they go with them into eternal punishment (Matt. 18:8; Mark 9:42). For we resist in vain those who are outside the Church if we are wounded from within by those whom they are deceiving. This pestilential patience must be altogether banished from priestly vigilance — which, in sparing others’ sins, does not spare itself. Just as the priest Eli of old, by tolerating the offenses of his sons, merited to undergo the sentence of divine justice together with them (1 Reg. 2:27), because by sluggish indulgence he dissembled the need to punish sinners. Therefore, as the opportunity of office invites, let your charity persist in frequenting the most devout prince, and in imploring with my prayers not only his royal but also his priestly mind, that — mindful of the common faith which we received under the teaching of the Holy Spirit — he may shatter all the machinations of the heretics and suffer them to have no power in the Churches of Christ, lest the divine mysteries, in the house of God, reside in the possession of those who, by reason of the magnitude of their crimes, have neither the right of habitation nor of prayer.
Given on the fifth day before the Ides of October, in the consulship of Constantinus and Rufus.
Footnotes
- ↩ The phrase sicut oportuit — “as was fitting” — is not decorative. It expresses Leo’s settled conviction that addressing the emperor in matters of faith is what befits the occupant of the Roman see — not an extraordinary measure prompted by exceptional circumstances, but the ordinary discharge of the office. Leo has now written to the emperor multiple times across this cluster (Letters CXLV, CXLVIII, and here by report); each time the ground is the same: it is fitting, it is necessary, it is the duty of the office. The Archbishop of Constantinople, residing in the imperial capital, does not fulfill this function. Leo, writing from Rome, does.
- ↩ The image of “vessels of mercy” and “vessels of wrath” is drawn from Romans 9:22–23, where Paul contrasts those whom God has prepared for glory with those fitted for destruction. Leo applies it to the situation within Anatolius’s own clergy: those ordained for mercy — the clergy of a Catholic church — are being compromised by association with those given over to error. The mixing of these two categories within the same clerical body is the scandal Leo is demanding be corrected.
- ↩ Eli was the high priest at Shiloh whose sons Hophni and Phinehas abused the priestly office — taking the best portions of sacrifices by force and committing immorality at the entrance to the tent of meeting. Eli knew of their conduct and rebuked them weakly but did not remove them. God’s judgment fell on Eli together with his sons: both sons were killed on the same day, and Eli himself died upon hearing the news (1 Sam. 2:27–36; 4:11–18). Leo’s application to Anatolius is precise: a bishop who tolerates scandalous clergy in his own church becomes implicated in their guilt, just as Eli bore the consequences of his sons’ offenses. The accountability runs upward — Anatolius is accountable to Leo for the state of his clergy, just as Eli was accountable to God for his sons.
- ↩ The phrase precibus meis — “with my prayers” — defines the authorization under which Anatolius is to approach the emperor. Anatolius is not directed to advocate for the faith on his own authority as Archbishop of Constantinople; he is to carry Leo’s prayers as the instrument through which the Roman see’s intercession reaches the emperor. Without Leo’s authority behind him, Anatolius speaks as one eastern bishop among others; with it, he speaks as the instrument of the Apostolic See. Compare Letter CLI, where Leo similarly directed Anatolius to examine the presbyter Atticus under Leo’s authority — the pattern across both letters is consistent: Anatolius acts; Leo’s authority is what makes his action binding.
- ↩ Leo addresses the emperor as bearing not merely a political but a quasi-sacerdotal responsibility for the faith. The phrase non solum regiam, sed et sacerdotalem ipsius mentem — “not only his royal but also his priestly mind” — reflects the patristic understanding that Christian emperors, by receiving the common faith under the teaching of the Holy Spirit, take on a responsibility for its defense that has a priestly character. Leo is not collapsing the distinction between emperor and bishop; he is appealing to the full depth of the emperor’s obligation to the faith he has received.
Historical Commentary