To the most glorious and most serene son, Zeno Augustus: Felix, bishop, greetings in the Lord.
Chapter I: Rome Conveys Peter the Apostle’s Confession to the Emperor
It is fitting to announce to your clemency the order of things done for the tranquility of the empire of your serenity; and I pray that you receive my petition — as though I myself were present — with your gracious ears, as a most Christian emperor. And let your piety in no way judge that those love us with a pure heart who do not wish you to have peace with God. But since you have believed with a faithful mind, and do not doubt that both the power of the temporal throne and the reward of eternal life hang by a moment’s decision upon the One on high, deign to receive — through our littleness — also the venerable and divine confession of the most blessed Peter: that is, of the Prince of the apostles, to whom also the keys of the kingdom were handed down by the Savior, who himself will prepare for your most Christian empire a place in heaven with the holy angels; and who, being the first to set forth the unchanging and undefiled faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, only-begotten Son of God, was called blessed by the Savior himself. For when he [Peter] had said to the Lord, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt. 16:16), he deserved to hear from him: Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven; and upon this confession I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Matt. 16:17–18).
Chapter II: The Apostolic Peter and the Heretical Peter; the See of Ignatius and Eustathius Polluted
When, therefore, the Savior said that the gates of hell shall not prevail against his Church — so that they should not take from her his name (that by which she is called Christ Jesus and Son of God omnipotent) — Peter [the Fuller], first-born son of the devil, who thrust himself most unworthily into the holy Antiochene Church and polluted the holy see of the pontificate of Ignatius the martyr (ordained bishop by Peter’s own right hand) and of Eustathius the confessor, president of the three hundred and eighteen Fathers who gathered at Nicaea, dared to say that it is not fitting to name Christ as Son of God according to the divine Savior’s sanction and the tradition of the divine Scriptures and the exposition of the Fathers — but [he said] that one of the Trinity endured the passion for us in the substance of deity, according to the blasphemy of Arius, Apollinaris, and Eunomius, wishing by this formula to empty the salvific incarnation of the Lord, according to which Christ also underwent the passion. But [Christ] is called also one of us, as one who has taken hold of the seed of Abraham (Heb. 2:16).
[Peter] strives also to increase the plurality of gods: for his meaning introduces three gods — one dead, and two living. He dissolves also the name of the consubstantial, and casts away the sacred synods: Nicene, Constantinopolitan, and Chalcedonian. And he is found in no way to admit the holy Virgin Mary. For if the incarnate Word was not made man from her, what need of the Virgin? And why would Gabriel have said to her: That which is born of you, [being] holy, shall be called the Son of God; and the Lord God shall give to him the throne of David his father (Luke 1:32, 35)?
Chapter III: The Trisagion Corrupted; Peter Refuses Admonitions from Rome, the East, and Constantinople
After all these impious presumptions of his blasphemy — and the corruption of the Trisagion supplication, when he wished to add to it Who was crucified for us — he has brought about many unfitting things. And much admonished by us, and by our beloved brothers in Christ who are in the East, and by the venerable Acacius, archbishop of your royal and God-beloved city, he was unwilling to be converted.
Chapter IV: The Holy Church Speaks to the Emperor — Preserve the Angelic Hymn, Expel the Heretic
Wherefore now the holy Church of God, with maternal voice, does not cease to address you as her excellent son:
“O emperor beloved by Christ, do not permit the bond of my veneration — in which multitudes of the faithful are bound together — to be dissolved; do not permit the praise of the Lord Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, to be transgressed — [that praise] which saved your [imperiled] city — but preserve it, as an angelic tradition, undefiled. Expel Peter, follower of the Arian superstition, from the Antiochene Church. By what right does Peter rend my garment, woven from above (John 19:23)? God the Father commanded the Prince of the apostles what they should call the Son. His only-begotten Son founded me on the confession of the first of the apostles. The Holy Spirit daily bears witness to me, saying: I judged to know nothing [among you] except Jesus Christ, and him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2). If, then, enemies, unbelievers, plotters who are outside the vine — who slew, stoned the only-begotten Son of God — did not divide his garment: shall Peter tear the garment of my faith? The gates of hell shall not prevail against me (Matt. 16:18) — and Peter attempts to demolish my walls?
Chapter V: The Church Recalls Her Aid to Zeno; Emulate Marcian, Guard Chalcedon
I, most pious emperor, led you back [to the throne] when you had been driven from the empire; and, in place of your own burial, I consigned the malignant and those disobedient to my divine doctrines [to death]; I opened before you the way of power; I struck down your enemies together with their iniquitous doctrine; I sought out for you an ancient power from God reigning on high, from whom you also received the right to reign. Look back to your most pious predecessor, the emperor Marcian, and willingly embrace his faith. Root out the heretical tyranny of Peter as swiftly as possible: expel the disciple of Valentinus and Eutyches from the city and from ecclesiastical governance at once, and sanction that he be cast down from hierarchical dignity. Behold, most holy son and most invincible emperor, what an undoubted defense was made at the Chalcedonian synod, and by what [means] it overthrew Eutyches — and expedite the dispersal of the propagations of Peter’s heretical doctrine.”
Chapter VI: Let the Church Read These Things; The Emperor Is Not to Receive One Deposed by Rome
Let the holy apostolic and catholic Church of God read these things, so that you may not receive into communion one deposed by her for the aforesaid causes; but through the divine rescripts of your serenity, drive [him] from the territory of Antioch. In his place, appoint a man who adorns the priesthood by his works — a diligent guardian of the holy Chalcedonian synod and of those things which in it were confirmed.
May almighty God keep your power in peace always.
Footnotes
- ↩ The Vulgate reads super hanc petram (“upon this rock”); here the Matt. 16:18 citation reads super ista confessione (“upon this confession”), reflecting an ancient Greek patristic tradition identifying “the rock” with the confession Peter had just made. This reading is sometimes invoked — by both Orthodox and Protestant interpreters — to argue that the rock is the confession in abstraction rather than Peter himself, with the inference that anyone making the same confession shares equally in the foundation and Peter holds no unique role. Neither the Gospel text nor Felix’s letter supports that separation. In Matt. 16, Christ gives Peter his new name precisely in response to the confession, and the keys of the kingdom are handed in the same breath not to “whoever confesses” but to this one man: the confession and the confessor are joined in the text, not held apart. Felix’s own formulation puts the point directly later in the letter — the Son founded the Church “on the confession of the first of the apostles” — a genitive binding the confession to the specific apostle who made it. The whole letter rests on this joining: its rhetorical contrast is between Peter the Prince of the Apostles and Peter the Fuller, two persons bearing the same name, one faithful to the confession and one departed from it. If the rock were the confession apart from the confessor, the contrast would collapse. The “confession” reading does not remove Peter — it grounds the Church on the confession Peter made, and therefore on Peter as the one who made it.
- ↩ The letter ties Antioch to two pillars of apostolic and conciliar dignity. Ignatius, early-second-century bishop of Antioch, was in tradition ordained by Peter himself — the phrase qui Petri dextra episcopus ordinatus est (“who was ordained bishop by Peter’s right hand”) places Antioch in the line of Peter’s own laying-on of hands. Eustathius of Antioch (d. c. 337) was a leading Nicene figure; the tradition that he presided at Nicaea I (325) is attested in fifth-century Antiochene and Syrian sources, though modern scholarship often identifies Hosius of Córdoba as the council’s chief president. By naming both figures, Felix frames Peter the Fuller’s tenure as the pollution of a see defined jointly by apostolic origin (Peter → Ignatius) and Nicene orthodoxy (Eustathius → 318 Fathers).
- ↩ The naming of Acacius of Constantinople as a co-admonisher places this letter before Felix’s excommunication of Acacius on July 28, 484. It therefore belongs to the same window as Letter IV (the formal deposition of Peter the Fuller), probably 483 or the first half of 484 — a period in which Felix was still treating Acacius as a collaborating partner in Eastern affairs. The language implies a coordinated admonition issued from Rome, from the Eastern bishops, and from Constantinople: three ecclesiastical authorities speaking with one voice, to which Peter the Fuller refused to listen. Within months, Acacius’s entry into communion with Peter Mongus of Alexandria would rupture that collaboration and precipitate the Acacian Schism.
- ↩ Zeno was emperor from 474 but was driven from Constantinople in January 475 by the usurper Basiliscus, brother-in-law of the late Leo I, and fled to his native Isauria. Basiliscus issued an Encyclical in 475 repudiating Chalcedon and favoring the Monophysites; Rome — under Pope Simplicius — pressed publicly for Zeno’s restoration and for Chalcedon’s reaffirmation. Zeno returned to Constantinople in August 476, and Basiliscus’s Encyclical was withdrawn. The Church’s claim here (“I led you back”) refers to this intervention: Rome’s weight on the side of Chalcedon and Zeno against Basiliscus contributed materially to Zeno’s return. The subject of the claim is the Church, not Felix personally — Simplicius made the intervention a decade earlier, but the Church is a continuing subject, and her aid to Zeno has been given through successive Roman bishops.
- ↩ The Latin has Æschinum, which is almost certainly a scribal corruption: no figure named Aeschinus is associated with the Council of Chalcedon. The PL preserves a Greek variant reading, quæ vindicta in hostem tuum facta fuit (“what vengeance was taken on your enemy”), indicating that the Greek original named a specific enemy of the emperor whom Chalcedon had condemned. The most likely candidate is Eutyches, condemned at Chalcedon in 451 and whose Monophysite doctrine is precisely what Peter the Fuller is renewing; the variant “your enemy” may also point to Dioscorus of Alexandria, likewise condemned at the council, whom Peter the Fuller’s party regarded as an exemplar. The translation silently restores the probable name, flagging the corruption in this note.
Historical Commentary