Leo, bishop, to Leo, Augustus.
Chapter I: Leo Sends His Legates to Petition for the Church’s Liberty and Insists That the Chalcedonian Definition Not Be Reopened
Rejoicing that it has been made clear by many plain proofs how deeply you care for the welfare of the universal Church, I have complied, as soon as I was able, with the precepts of your piety — sending my brothers and fellow bishops Domitianus and Geminianus to follow up my own urgent appeals before you — to pray on your behalf for the peace of evangelical teaching and the freedom of the faith, in the strength of the Holy Spirit which you have made so brilliantly your own, that the enemies of Christ may be driven away. Those enemies, even if they had wished to hide their fury, could not have done so for long — for the holy simplicity of the Lord’s flock is one thing, but the masquerade of ravening wolves in sheep’s clothing is quite another. Recognize, then, most august and venerable emperor, how great a support divine Providence has prepared for the protection of the whole world, and what you owe to your mother the Church, who rightly glories in you as her son. Let those extinct battles not be allowed to rise again in new forms of agitation — particularly since the condemned have long forfeited any right to do so. This is the fruit that pious labors deserve: that the entire fullness of the Church may rest secure in the solidity of its unity, and nothing be taken back from what has been rightly settled. To wish to fight again after lawful and divinely inspired constitutions have been established is not the spirit of a peaceable man but of a rebel, as the Apostle says: Word-battles are useful for nothing except the subversion of those who hear (2 Tim. 2:14).
Chapter II: The Mysteries of God Cannot Be Measured by Human Argument, but Only by the Light of the Gospel — for Whom Is Taught Is Enough
For whenever human argument is free to dispute without limit, there will never be a shortage of those who dare to resist the truth and trust in the cleverness of their worldly eloquence. How far a Christian must keep from that poisonous vanity is plain from the very instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ himself: for when he was about to call all nations to the light of faith, he did not choose philosophers or orators as its ministers, but humble fishermen — so that the doctrine of heaven, which is itself full of power, would not appear to need the support of human words. Hence the Apostle protests and says: Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the Gospel — not with wisdom of speech, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. It is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will cast aside. Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? (1 Cor. 1:17–20). Rhetorical arguments and the debating techniques invented by clever men thrive especially when the subject is uncertain and the audience is confused by a welter of competing opinions — drawing people toward whatever the speaker has chosen to assert, so that the more fluently a position is defended, the truer it appears. But the Gospel of Christ has no need of this art: its teaching shines by its own light, and one need not ask what pleases the ear when it is enough to know who teaches.
Chapter III: The Eutychian Heresy, Condemned by a Council of the Whole World, Is Utterly Hostile to the Gospel and to Human Salvation
What most separates those who are deceived by their own inventions from the light of the Gospel is this: they refuse to acknowledge that the truth of the Lord’s Incarnation touches our human, that is to say our own, nature — as though it were unworthy of the glory of God that the majesty of the impassible Word should take on the reality of mortal flesh. Yet the salvation of humanity could not have been repaired in any other way than by the One who is in the form of God also taking the form of a servant. The holy Council of Chalcedon — celebrated with the unanimous consent of all the provinces of the Roman world and wholly united with the decrees of the most sacred Council of Nicaea — has cut away the entire impiety of the Eutychian teaching from the body of Catholic communion. How, then, can any of the fallen find their way back to the peace of the Church without full and proper satisfaction? For what license of debate can be given to those who have deserved condemnation by a just and holy judgment? They should receive most fittingly the sentence of the blessed Apostle John, which struck down the enemies of the cross of Christ at the very birth of the Church: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God; every spirit that dissolves Jesus from God is not of God — and this is Antichrist (1 John 4:2–3). Since these things have been divinely defined and divine authority is at stake, to admit debate is to erode authority — and no one who tears himself from the fellowship of our unity can rightly call himself a Christian. As the Apostle says: A heretical man, after a first and second correction, avoid — knowing that such a person is perverse and sins, being self-condemned (Tit. 3:10–11).
Chapter IV: The Alexandrian Parricides Are Beyond Human Pardon, but the Door of Mercy Remains Open to Those Who Genuinely Repent
What the impious parricide has committed in seizing the Church and in the savage murder of its bishop cannot be expiated by any human pardon — only by the One who alone can justly punish such things, and who alone can release them through his ineffable mercy. We ourselves desire no vengeance; but we cannot associate with the servants of the devil in any way. If we learn that they have turned from their perversity, repented of their error, and come with the lament of penance to lay down the weapons of discord, then even we can pray for them, that they may not perish forever — following the Lord’s own example, who prayed for his persecutors from the wood of the cross: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do (Luke 23:34). That the charity of Christians may do this fruitfully for their enemies, the impious must stop their relentless harassment of the Church of God, and stop daring to throw the souls of simple people into confusion with heretical lies — so that where the most sincere faith has flourished through all previous ages, the evangelical and apostolic teaching may now flourish as well. We ourselves, imitating divine mercy as far as we can, desire not that anyone be condemned by justice, but that all be freed by mercy.
Chapter V: Leo Commends His Legates, Issues a Formal Anathema, and Calls for the Restoration of the Alexandrian Church
I beg your clemency to make good use of the suggestions of these my brothers: whom, as I told you in my previous letter, I have sent not to dispute with the condemned but only to pray before you for the stability of the Catholic Faith alone. Ask especially that your faith and contemplation of the divine majesty lead you to grant this: that the contentions of the heretics be set entirely aside, and that your merciful care be extended to those who have fallen into misfortune — and that, with the liberty of the Alexandrian Church restored to its former state, a bishop be ordained there who upholds the statutes of the Chalcedonian synod, is in harmony with evangelical discipline, and is capable of pacifying the troubled flock. Let also the bishops and clergy whom the impious parricide drove from their churches be recalled by your command; and let all others whom a similar malice drove out of their own homes be likewise restored — so that we may rejoice fully and perfectly in the grace of God and the merit of your faith, free at last from the noise of all disputes. As for any who are so far gone from Christian hope and their own salvation as to presume to assail by any disputation the evangelical and apostolic decree of the most sacred Nicene Council and the holy Council of Chalcedon — these, together with all the heretics who have held impious and detestable views on the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, we condemn with the same anathema and the same curse: so that those who are corrected with proper satisfaction are not denied the remedy of penance, while those who persist in rebellion remain under the standing sentence of the synod, which is full of truth.
Given on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of September, in the consulship of Leo and Majorian, most august Emperors.
Footnotes
- ↩ Domitianus and Geminianus were Western bishops chosen by Leo as his personal legates to the imperial court at Constantinople — two senior clergy whose episcopal standing would give them the authority to represent Leo’s person before the emperor. They carry, as Leo specifies, the petitions of his sollicitudo — his universal pastoral solicitude — which they are to prosecute before the emperor on the Church’s behalf. They are sent not to debate but to petition: a distinction Leo will develop fully in Chapter III.
- ↩ The image of the Church as the emperor’s mother — quæ te filio maxime gloriatur, “who rightly glories in you as her son” — places the emperor in a defined filial relationship to the Church. The son owes the mother; the relationship is not one of equals. The Church does not serve the emperor’s purposes; the emperor serves his mother’s welfare. This framing governs everything that follows in the letter: the emperor’s obligations to the Church are filial obligations, not political calculations, and the definition of those obligations belongs to the Church — which is to say, to Leo, who speaks for her.
- ↩ The phrase ubi veræ fidei sufficit scire quis doceat — “where it is enough to know who teaches” — is the theoretical heart of the chapter’s argument against reopening debate. The Gospel’s authority does not rest on the persuasiveness of arguments in its favor; it rests on the identity of the teacher. For the true faith, knowing the teacher is sufficient — and the teacher is identified by apostolic succession. This is the authority argument in its most concentrated form: a definition’s binding force does not derive from the cogency of the arguments that support it, but from the office of the one who has made it. Applied to the demand for a new council, the implication is precise: no amount of Eutychian eloquence can add to or subtract from what the Apostolic See has defined and confirmed, because the question of authority is settled by the identity of the teacher, not by the quality of the debate.
- ↩ The formula simili anathemate parique exsecratione damnamus — “we condemn with the same anathema and the same curse” — is a formal juridical act: a papal sentence issued in a letter to the emperor, condemning a defined class of persons. This is not a pastoral warning or a doctrinal observation; it is a binding ecclesial ruling that carries the weight of the Apostolic See’s authority. Leo is not describing what the Church has decided elsewhere; he is issuing the condemnation in this letter, in his own name, as the act of his office. The qualifier “we condemn” — damnamus, first person plural — is the language of sovereign judgment. The anathema covers two overlapping classes: those who assail Nicaea or Chalcedon by disputation, and all who hold Eutychian views on the Incarnation. The breadth of the sentence leaves no evasion available through claiming orthodoxy on one point while attacking the other.
- ↩ August 17, 458 — confirmed by the apparatus note Scripta 17 August. an. 458. This is the last major letter in the Alexandrian correspondence, dispatched five months after the March 21 cluster (Letters CLIX–CLXIII). The gap reflects a period of waiting for the emperor’s response to the March cluster; this letter accompanies the physical dispatch of the legates Domitianus and Geminianus, whose mission Leo had announced in Letter CLXII.
Historical Commentary