Bishop Anastasius to the Most Glorious and Most Clement Son Anastasius Augustus.
Exordium: The See of the Most Blessed Peter Holds in the Universal Church the Primacy Assigned to It by the Lord God
At the beginning of my pontificate I bear, as my first announcement, the peace offered to the peoples. I therefore come forward, a humble suppliant before Your Piety, on behalf of the Catholic faith: in which I trust that divine favor has first drawn near to me, since the consonance of your most august name with mine without doubt supplies aid — that just as the most exalted name of Your Piety shines forth through all nations throughout the whole world, so through the ministry of my humility, the See of the most blessed Peter — as it ever does — holds in the universal Church the primacy assigned to it by the Lord God. Nor on account of one dead man let that tunic of the Savior, woven from above through the whole, longer suffer the uncertainty of an evil lot — that tunic which alone could not, for the sake of its own firmness, come into division — Your Serenity especially governing the commonwealth, who, even in private life, had so much zeal toward the study of sincere religion that, as most certain report has celebrated, no one is said to have observed more diligently than Your Serenity, even among the foremost priests, the rules of the Church established by the holy fathers. We trust that this holy zeal has grown together with the majesty of the empire.
Chapter I: The Legation Is Discharged for Christ; The Deceased Are Not to Be Publicly Named on Account of Offense or Scandal
We discharge our legation for Christ, that you not allow them to be publicly named on account of offense or scandal — those whose merits or acts cannot be hidden from that Judge in whose judgment they are now established. Nor can rash presumption, still in mortal body, intrude itself there, where not only confession reveals the open merits of each, but even the secret of silence itself cannot lie hidden. For both our predecessor Pope Felix and Acacius are without doubt in that place where each one cannot, under so great a Judge, lose the quality of his own merit.
Chapter II: The Apostolic Admonition: We Live and Die to the Lord; God Alone Searches the Heart
Therefore, with the most blessed Apostle Paul admonishing us that there be no offense in the Church when we attempt to do what we cannot — to judge those who have already passed beyond — let Your Tranquillity recognize what is to be observed. For he says of those who presume to judge concerning matters belonging to God alone: For none of us lives to himself, and none dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord; or if we die, we die to the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ rose from the dead, that He might be Lord of both the living and the dead. But why dost thou judge thy brother? Or why dost thou despise thy brother? For we shall all stand before the tribunal of Christ. For it is written: I live, says the Lord, that to Me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess to God. Therefore each of us shall give account for himself to God. Let us no longer therefore judge one another, but judge this rather, that you put no offense or scandal in the way of a brother (Rom. 14:7–13).
The blessed Apostle therefore admonishes that no one usurp rash daring in this matter — by presuming to judge those whom no one can judge better or more truly than God — and that, on this account, the peace and unity of the Church not be dissipated. For also in the Book of Kingdoms it is said: Not as man sees, does God see: for man looks on the face, but God looks on the heart (1 Sam. 16:7). Likewise in the First Book of Paralipomenon: And now, Solomon, know the God of thy fathers, and serve Him with a perfect heart and a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and knows every thought (1 Chron. 28:9). Likewise in Ezekiel: Thus says the Lord God: So you have spoken, O house of Israel, and the thoughts of your spirit, I know them (Ezek. 11:5). Whence also of the Lord as Judge it is said in the Gospel: But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said: Why think you evil things in your hearts?
Chapter III: That the Name of Acacius Be Specifically Passed Over in Silence; The Roman Sentence Did Not Proceed from Pride but from Zeal for Divinity
We therefore beseech Your Clemency that specifically the name of Acacius be passed over in silence — that he who from many causes has stirred up scandal or offense for the Church may, by a special designation, be passed over, since, as we have said, in the generality of priests the merit of each one cannot be hidden from that Judge who knows what is to be assigned to each according to a calculated dispensation of merits, to whom alone even thoughts are manifest. But how many transgressions and presumptions Acacius committed — lest it perhaps seem burdensome to suggest in detail to Your Clemency — to my brothers and fellow-bishops Cresconius and also Germanus, whom we have sent to Your Serenity, we have given the fullest instruction concerning the individual matters of Acacius, of what kind he was — to be more specifically reviewed by Your Clemency, if it shall please Your Piety to investigate more curiously, lest in any matter the truth seem lacking from our suggestion: that, by Your Divine Wisdom, you may clearly see that no such sentence proceeded against Acacius from pride or elevation of the Apostolic See, but was extorted, as we estimate apart from that judgment which alone cannot be deceived, by certain crimes — by zeal rather for divinity.
Chapter IV: Contention Is Greatly to Be Avoided; Apostolic Exhortations to Unity
But we, humbly supplicating, do not wish controversy to remain in the Church, since contention is rather to be avoided, as is said in Proverbs: Hatred stirs up contention; but friendship protects all who do not contend (Prov. 10:12). For also the Apostle to the Corinthians: For while there are envyings and contentions among you, are you not carnal and walk according to man? (1 Cor. 3:3). Likewise to the Philippians: If therefore there be any consolation in Christ, if any solace of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any compassion and mercies, fulfill my joy, that you may all say the same thing, having the same love, doing nothing through contention, nor by vainglory, but in humility of mind esteeming each other better than themselves, looking each not to their own things, but to those of others (Phil. 2:1–4).
Chapter V: Your Serenity Is to Bring the Alexandrians Back to Sincere and Catholic Faith
This, however, I especially impress upon Your Serenity, most glorious and most clement son Augustus: that when the matters of the Alexandrians have been laid open to your most pious ears, you cause them by your authority, wisdom, and divine admonitions to return to the sincere and Catholic faith. For what is to be held in the Catholic religion, according to the definitions of the fathers and the preaching of all the priests who have flourished in the Church, if Your Serenity should command this also, we shall renew it for those who know — by transmitting it to memory — and offer it for learning to those who are ignorant, by the duty of our instruction; that no boasting or perversity of intellects beyond these may be heard.
Chapter VI: Your Serenity Is Admonished to Obey the Constitutions of the Apostolic See
This more particularly we proclaim, by reason of love for Your Empire and of the blessedness which the kingdom may attain, by the apostolic office: that, as is fitting and as the Holy Spirit dictates, obedience be granted to our admonitions, that all good things may follow Your Commonwealth, as is promised in Exodus: If thou wilt hear the voice of the Lord thy God and do what is pleasing before Him and obey His precepts and keep all His justice, every infirmity which I imposed on the Egyptians, I will not impose on thee: for I am the Lord, who saves thee (Exod. 15:26). And there again the most powerful trumpet sounds: And now, Israel, what does the Lord thy God ask of thee, but that thou fear the Lord thy God and walk in all His ways and love Him and serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul, to keep the precepts of the Lord thy God and His justices, which I command thee? (Deut. 10:12–13). Let Your Piety not despise me when I more frequently suggest these things, having before your eyes the words of the Lord in the Gospel: He who hears you, hears Me; and he who despises you, despises Me; and he who despises Me, despises Him who sent Me (Luke 10:16). For also the Apostle, in concord with our Savior, so speaks: Wherefore, he who despises these things does not despise man, but God, who has given His Holy Spirit in us (1 Thess. 4:8). The breast of Your Clemency is the sanctuary of public happiness — that, by your urgent attention (which God commanded, as a vicar, to preside on earth) — the evangelical and apostolic precepts may not be resisted by harsh pride, but rather, through obedience, what is salutary may be fulfilled.
Chapter VII: Those Whom Acacius Baptized or Ordained Suffer No Injury from His Name; The Validity of Sacraments Independent of the Minister’s Worthiness
For let Your Serenity’s most sacred breast acknowledge, according to the custom of the Catholic Church, that no portion of injury reaches by the name of Acacius any of those whom he baptized, or whom he ordained as priests or deacons according to the canons — by which perhaps the grace of the sacrament given through an unjust man might appear less firm. For also baptism (which let it be far from the Church to deny) — whether it has been given by an adulterer or by a thief — comes inviolate to the receiver of the gift: because that voice which sounded through the dove excludes every stain of human pollution, by which it is declared and is said: This is He who baptizes in the Spirit and fire (Luke 3:16). For if the rays of this visible sun, when they pass through the most foul places, are stained by no contact of pollution, much more is the power of Him who made this visible sun not constrained by any unworthiness of the minister.
For also Judas, although he was sacrilegious and a thief, in whatever he did among the apostles by the dignity committed to him, the benefits given through an unworthy man suffered no detriment from this — the Lord himself declaring the same with most manifest voice: The Scribes and Pharisees, He says, sit upon the chair of Moses: do what they say, but do not what they do; for they say and do not (Matt. 23:2–3). Whatever therefore any minister in the Church seems to work for the advancement of men by his office, all this is contained in the fulfilling effect of divinity — even as Paul, through whom Christ speaks, affirms: I planted, Apollo watered, but God gave the increase. Therefore neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase (1 Cor. 3:6–7). It is not asked who or of what sort preaches, but whom he preaches: so that He may confirm even the envious to preach Christ well — by which evil the devil himself is cast down — and yet does not, by this very thing, cease from falling headlong.
Chapter VIII: The Wicked Harm Themselves by Ministering Good Things; The Sacrament Is Inviolable
Therefore he also, whose name we say is to be passed over in silence, by ministering good things wickedly harmed only himself. For the inviolable sacrament given through him obtained for others the perfection of its own power. But if there is among any so far-extended a curious suspicion as to imagine that, after the judgment pronounced by Pope Felix, [Acacius] thereafter acted ineffectually in the sacraments which he usurped, and accordingly that those who received the mysteries delivered to them either in consecrations or in baptism are to fear that the divine benefits might appear void: let them remember that, in this part also, the higher consideration prevails — that, having been adjudged, he so acted not without usurpation of the priesthood; in which mysteries, retaining their own power, in this respect also the guilty person did harm to himself, not to others. For of him pertains what the Davidic trumpet sounds: But God shall break the heads of His enemies, the crown of the hair of those walking in their offenses (Ps. 67:22). For pride always brings ruin to itself, not to others — as the universal authority of heavenly Scriptures testifies, just as also through the Holy Spirit it is said by the prophet: He who works pride shall not dwell in the midst of My house (Ps. 100:7). Whence, when the condemned vindicated for himself the name of priest, in the very crown the swelling of his pride was inflicted: because not the people, who in the mysteries thirsted for the gift itself, was excluded, but the soul alone — the soul that had sinned — was, by just judgment, liable to its own fault; which is everywhere testified by the abundant instruction of the Scriptures.
Whence, with the studies and wiles of men still placed in this present fragility set aside, according to our prayers, by your effort and imperial authority, offer to our God one Catholic and apostolic Church: because this alone is the thing in which Your Serenity may triumph without end, not only on earth, but also in heaven.
Subscription: May Almighty God guard your kingdom and your salvation by perpetual protection, most glorious and most clement, ever Augustus.
Footnotes
- ↩ Both the pope and the emperor bore the name Anastasius — the pope being Anastasius II, the emperor being Anastasius I (reigned 491–518). The Latin consonantia in me augustissimi nominis tui draws on the symbolic resonance: the rhetoric of the exordium leans on the shared name as a sign of providential alignment. The reader should note that, beyond the rhetorical flourish, the same coincidence of names led Dante in Inferno XI to confuse this Pope Anastasius with the Emperor Anastasius (who in some traditions was held to have been “led astray by Photinus into the heresy of Acacius”); modern scholarship treats Dante’s placement of the pope among heretics as a confusion of identity, not a judgment supported by the actual evidence of the corpus.
- ↩ The Latin is sedes beatissimi Petri in universali Ecclesia assignatum sibi a domino Deo teneat principatum. Each clause is load-bearing. Universali Ecclesia — the universal Church — defines the scope of the primacy as the whole Church, not merely the Western or Latin portion. Assignatum sibi a domino Deo — assigned to it by the Lord God — defines the source of the primacy as a divine grant, not a conciliar concession or a development of custom. Principatum is the same governing-political term Leo I had used to Dioscorus of Alexandria in Letter IX (444/445) — that the Roman Church holds the apostolic principatus from the Lord — and that Gelasius’s Roman Synod of 495 had used in synodal acta. The qualifier sicut semper est (“as it ever is”) forecloses any future-possible reading of the subjunctive teneat: Anastasius II is not requesting that the See acquire its primacy under his ministry but affirming the ongoing exercise of a primacy the See has always held by divine grant. The reader should especially note where the claim appears: not in a magisterial denunciation, but in a letter whose entire purpose is conciliation. Anastasius II is making a substantial concession to Eastern sensibilities concerning Acacius’s name, but he frames the concession as the See’s exercise of its own primatial discretion, not as an abandonment of the See’s primacy. The same primacy that Pastor Aeternus would later articulate in canonical form is presented here as the operative basis of a conciliatory diplomatic act.
- ↩ The Latin is quorum merita vel actus illum judicem latere non possunt, in cujus jam sunt judicio constituti. The argument turns on the limit of human ecclesiastical action: those who have died and stand before God’s judgment cannot be reached by further sentences of the Church, since all that is hidden in their conduct is now open to the Judge whose tribunal they have entered. The argument is structurally parallel to the principle Gelasius I articulated in 495 at the Second Roman Council regarding Vitalis: the See’s authority operates among the living. Anastasius II is applying the same principle to the case of Acacius, who had died in 489, seeking to redirect Eastern attention from the public denunciation of a deceased bishop to the present pursuit of unity.
- ↩ Felix III (483–492), who in 484 excommunicated Acacius and deposed the legates Misenus and Vitalis. By naming Felix as praedecessor noster, Anastasius II places his own action in continuity with Felix’s discipline. The substantive concession he proposes — that those ordained by Acacius after his Roman condemnation be received in their grades, on the basis of the Catholic doctrine of sacramental validity (Chapters VII–VIII) — is presented as a development from within the See’s settled discipline, not as a reversal of his predecessors’ canonical sentence against Acacius himself. The continuity claim is structural to the whole letter: Anastasius II’s conciliation is presented as an application of the See’s primacy, not as a reversal of his predecessors.
- ↩ The Latin is specialiter nomen taceatur Acacii. The verb taceatur — that the name “be silent” or “be passed over in silence” — is the diplomatic register Anastasius II uses for the question that had blocked Eastern reconciliation under Felix III and Gelasius I: whether and how Acacius’s name should cease to appear in the Constantinopolitan diptychs. The exact substantive scope of taceatur is genuinely ambiguous. The verb can mean either silent omission of the name from the public liturgical reading (with the name still physically inscribed on the diptychs) or removal from the diptychs so that the name no longer appears at all. The standard secondary accounts of the Acacian Schism (the New Catholic Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia.com, the older scholarly reference works) generally treat Anastasius II as still demanding the substantive removal of the name, with taceatur as the diplomatic Latin formulation of that demand — softer in tone than Gelasius’s aboleri (“to be obliterated”) but not necessarily softer in substance. The reader should not, therefore, read this passage as a clear procedural concession on the diptychs question; the more clearly substantive concession in the letter is the sacramental one in Chapters VII–VIII (that those ordained by Acacius are to be received in their grades), which Thiel’s own Vita of Anastasius II identifies as the principal point that drew Roman criticism. Whatever the precise scope of the taceatur formula, the conciliation it proposed collapsed: the Acacian Schism would not be resolved until 519, and when it was resolved by the Formula of Hormisdas, it was on the stricter terms of formal renunciation and removal.
- ↩ Cresconius is identified by Thiel and the conciliar acta as Cresconius of Tudertum (modern Todi), who later subscribed at Roman synods under Symmachus in 499, 501, and 502. He served as Anastasius II’s principal legate to Constantinople in this 496 mission.
- ↩ Germanus’s see has been variously identified; Thiel reviews the evidence and notes that Capua is sometimes proposed but is complicated by the fact that one Constantinus subscribes for Capua at the Roman synod of 499. Whatever his see, Germanus served alongside Cresconius as Anastasius II’s legate. The two-legate composition follows Roman practice: the legation carried both the formal letter and the fuller documentation concerning Acacius’s offenses — the same dual structure (letter plus supplementary instruction) that Felix III had used for the 484 mission of Misenus and Vitalis.
- ↩ The Latin is non superbia vel elatione sedis apostolicae in Acacium talem processisse sententiam, sed facinoribus certis . . . zelo magis divinitatis extortam. Anastasius II is anticipating the most natural Eastern response to a Roman conciliation: that the original Roman action had been excessive — motivated by pride or by Roman ecclesiastical ambition — and that the present softening is therefore a tacit confession of that excess. He refuses that framing categorically. The action was just; the offenses were real and documented; the sentence stands. The continuity argument with Felix and Gelasius is not rhetorical; it is the structural premise of the whole letter.
- ↩ Anastasius II applies the dominical word to the apostles directly to himself as the apostolic legate addressing the emperor. The implicit primacy claim is that obedience to the Apostolic See’s admonition is, on the Lord’s own testimony, obedience to God Himself. The argument is being made to an emperor who has shown reluctance on the formal demand for Acacius’s removal; Anastasius II is grounding the imperial duty of obedience to the See in the strongest possible scriptural warrant, against the day when the legates Cresconius and Germanus deliver the fuller documentation of Acacius’s offenses.
- ↩ The Latin is per instantiam vestram, quam velut vicarium Deus praesidere jussit in terris. The relative pronoun quam grammatically attaches to instantiam (“your urgent attention”), but the rhetorical sense is that the emperor — through his urgent attention — exercises a vicarial role in temporal governance committed to him by God. The phrase places the imperial office in a vicarial relation to divine governance for civil and political affairs. The reader should note that this is not in itself doctrinally heterodox — Catholic political theology from at least Leo I forward acknowledges that civil rulers hold their authority from God for the temporal sphere (cf. Romans 13). But the rhetorical mode here is markedly softer than Gelasius I’s Duo Sunt (494), which had explicitly subordinated the imperial potestas to the priestly auctoritas: tanto gravius est pondus sacerdotum, quanto etiam pro ipsis regibus Domino sunt rationem reddituri (“the weight of priests is so much the heavier, since they must give account to the Lord even for the kings themselves”). Anastasius II’s letter, written in the conciliatory mode that his diplomatic mission required, opens larger rhetorical space for the imperial role than Gelasius’s magisterial mode had allowed; the next generation of popes (Symmachus, Hormisdas) would return to Gelasius’s framing, and the Formula of Hormisdas (519) would place the imperial role in a different register altogether — protector and executor of Roman discipline, not co-vicar of divine governance.
- ↩ The doctrine Anastasius II articulates here is not an innovation but a restatement of settled Catholic teaching. The Catholic Church distinguishes between the validity of a sacrament — whether it actually confers what it signifies — and its liceity — whether it is performed lawfully under canon law. Validity rests on proper matter, form, and intent; it is not affected by the canonical standing or moral worthiness of the minister. The doctrine was articulated by Augustine against the Donatists in North Africa: a sacrament conferred by a heretic, a schismatic, or a moral reprobate is valid, provided the proper rite is observed, even though it may be illicit. Anastasius II is applying this settled doctrine to the case of Acacius — affirming that those whom Acacius ordained or baptized after his Roman condemnation in 484 received valid (though illicit) sacraments. He addresses himself in Chapter VIII to a curious suspicion held in some quarters that Acacius’s post-condemnation acts were somehow ineffective, and dispatches it directly: the validity rests on the work of Christ, not on the canonical standing of the human minister. The pastoral consequence is that Eastern bishops who had received valid orders through Acacius could be received into Roman communion without re-ordination, and laity baptized through him need not be re-baptized. This is the same doctrine on which Catholic recognition of Eastern Orthodox orders has always rested, and the same that the Donatist controversy had settled centuries earlier.
- ↩ Vulgate numbering. Modern Hebrew/Protestant Bibles number this Psalm 68:21.
- ↩ Vulgate numbering; modern Bibles Psalm 101:7.
Historical Commentary