Chapter I: The Religious Care of Zeno’s Piety; Thanks to God for the Emperor’s Devotion
The human mind confesses itself insufficient to render worthy thanks to Our God, that the divine mercy has placed such care for religion in the feelings of your piety, as that you judge it by a truly Christian and august judgment both to be set before all other concerns and to be contained within the solidity of the commonwealth — since indeed the universe of affairs subsists by heavenly propitiation. And I recognize that from this wonderful devotion of your clemency has proceeded whatever the celebrated discourse of your tranquility set forth for the reverence of divine worship.
Chapter II: Praise for the Ordination of a Worthy Bishop at Constantinople
Namely, that desiring to strengthen the unity of the Catholic faith, and earnestly to fortify the peace of the Churches, you took care that such a bishop should be set over the Constantinopolitans as would, with heavenly gift attending him, shine both in the integrity of his character and above all things abound in love of orthodox truth. Great joy therefore, distinguished prince, do I receive on both accounts: both because your serenity’s mind — as established at the summit of the age, so also has received with God as Creator a principal son of the Church — and because he himself of whose pontificate you glory, in referring the beginning of his own dignity to the See of the blessed apostle Peter, has already given an indication of his moderation, as I rejoice to say.
Here too your magnanimity shines forth, when you desire the Church’s cause to be settled, as is divinely instituted, by the ordering of pontiffs; and when he who is presented for promotion to the priestly office wishes to be supported from that source from which, by Christ’s willing, the full grace of all pontiffs flows.
Chapter III: Flavitas’s Profession of Peter as Rock and Holder of the Keys
The intent of his letter also cheers Me, in which — as becomes one striving to please Christ — he did not keep silent that the blessed Peter, foremost of the apostles, is also the rock of the faith (Matt. 16:18), and prudently established that to the same one [Peter] the keys of the heavenly mysteries were entrusted; and he sought that he might have [Our] consent concurring with Us in the orthodox faith, so that he might be rendered more fully one in mind [with Us].
Chapter IV: The Legates Arrived, but Professed They Had No Mandate to Separate from the Condemned
When therefore the most welcome professions of this man, and his wishes, had been disclosed by a copious reading, as soon as I saw that My sons the monks of holy purpose had also come together [with the clerics], I believed all the difficulties which at first stood as obstacles to have been removed by this arrangement; and for this reason I believed that those persons who would seem not to have communicated with Peter [Mongus] or with Acacius had been joined, contrary to custom, to the clerics who had come — so that, with the names of those through whom the scandal had befallen the Churches having been sequestered, sincere charity might thereafter come forth.
With these things duly weighed, nothing else remained to Me as I rejoiced, except that the communion of the Apostolic See should be delivered to those who had been sent. But when I cautiously admonished, on behalf of the Catholic faith, that those who were to receive it should withdraw themselves from the fellowship of the condemned, they said outright that this had not been commanded to them.
I confess that I stood anxious, disturbed by the diversity of matters, when the letter and the very reason of things showed one thing, and the assertion of the aforementioned [legates] at that time contained another.
Chapter V: The Names of the Condemned Must Not Be Revived in Their Successors
And wishing to enter into pure concord with him who is asserted to have been created pontiff, I hastened to suggest to your glory, that you would not permit anything to remain through which any dissension might again be able to arise. For since, by the Council of Chalcedon — which your clemency has long since by letters designated that it venerates — it is established that Eutyches and Dioscorus have been condemned; and since Timothy and Peter [Mongus] are shown by very many documents from those parts to have been followers of [Eutyches and Dioscorus], and Acacius having followed their communion — though it had been forbidden — whom he himself had said in his own letters to have been condemned as heretics: they are convicted of being bound by the sentence of that council, and of having deservedly fallen into the penalty of those whose fellowship they had chosen. Just as in other heresies, a synod once made against any discarded error consequently involves all who follow it.
I beseech therefore, most glorious [emperor], that We not be judged to cherish in the successors what is manifest to have been condemned in the authors; nor let it be thought that a lawful purgation has come forth for Peter, whom the Apostolic See which bound did not absolve according to the custom of the ancients. For your Christian mind, venerable emperor, knows that the heavenly dispensation has given the power of remitting the offenses of mortals according to conscience, in suitable order, to His pontiffs alone. And this Peter, even if he were truly received [back into communion], ought to deserve pardon, not honor — he who, receiving a false name of priesthood from condemned men and heretics, could not preside over the Catholic Church.
Chapter VI: Felix Speaks as Peter’s Unworthy Vicar and Solicitous Father
These things, most reverend prince, I — however unworthy a vicar of blessed Peter — do not wrest out by the authority, as it were, of apostolic power; but as a solicitous father, desiring that the safety and prosperity of [My] most clement son should remain long-lasting, I faithfully implore.
Behold, We desire, We wish, We press that the Constantinopolitan Church be, as always, joined [to Us]. Let them be drawn back, I beseech, from those who are not Ours, and We too wish them to be with Us.
Chapter VII: The Unity of Rome; Petitions of Barbarians Heeded, How Much More the Apostolic See
You, venerable emperor, kindly hear in public the petitions of the barbarian nations for the quiet of the earthly kingdom. How much more preferably, I ask, will you admit, when propitiated, the prayers of the Apostolic See for the tranquility of sacred affairs? For this is what is fitting: that if each city is called Rome for a mutual pledge, let there be in both that one faith of the Romans which the blessed apostle Paul testifies (Rom. 1:8) to be preached throughout the whole world, as among our elders it flourished undivided; and [that they] who are in harmony by race and by name may not be divided by religion — [the religion] through which even things at variance are bound together.
Do you think, venerable emperor, that I do not pour these things out with tears, as though present at the footsteps of your piety? For I am not ashamed to bend in such a cause especially before imperial offices, since the Apostle says (1 Cor. 4:13) that he was made the peripsema — the offscouring — of all. I was silent on these things too long, lest, with others suggesting the contrary, I should rather stir up irreverence by My letters. But now, having received the opportunity, I intimate how strongly the love of your piety flourishes in My heart; since I desire the successes of the power given to you by God to stand firm by propitiation.
Do not, venerable son, refuse Me as suppliant, nor wish to dismiss My person. For in Me, however unworthy a vicar, the blessed apostle Peter, and through him the One who does not permit His Church to be torn asunder, Christ Himself, beseeches you. Far be it that your Christian mind could or ought to prefer anyone to Him, whom you desire to be entreated for yourself with all your wishes.
Chapter VIII: Zeno’s Catholic Record; Acacius’s Alone the Poison
Especially since such are those things, and of such a kind, which, after a tyranny defeated, you have done and are doing for the Catholic faith, that We hold full testimonies from God of the conscience of your [piety]. If perhaps anything has been omitted among these, [this is] not to be ascribed to anyone but to the poison of the faithless Acacius, who — while he strove to grow by unlawful additions — ceased to convey to you, occupied among public cares, those things which suited right religion. For how would your piety have judged it not rather to be followed, what you saw a priest had done? Whence by divine judgment he could by no means, even had We preferred it, be absolved. Wherefore I do not cease more and more to supplicate, that that fatal cause may pass away with its names and persons; so that we, with Our Lord’s approval, may be able to be bound together by certain and perfected joy with the bishop now created, the blessed Apostle saying: “If then there is any new creature in Christ, old things have passed away; all things have been made new” (2 Cor. 5:17).
Chapter IX: Zeno’s Letter Praises Catholic Unity; The Alexandrian Necessity
Your letters surely proclaim the unity of the Catholic faith and announce the peace of the Churches with royal piety. When they were read with due honor, how the whole order of the Roman presbytery with Me, eagerly praying life and continuous prosperity for you, in repeated voices without ceasing cried out in acclamation — both those who were sent heard it, and everywhere the swift legation of so distinguished a herald was thought to meet [the gathered faithful].
It is to be more particularly provided for, in that same part, for the necessity of the people of the city of Alexandria, that they be drawn back from the snares of a pestiferous ruler. Let all things come together, let all pray, that, as the Apostle teaches (Gal. 5:12), the one who troubles Us may be taken away from our midst; and that — that peace of the Churches which Leo of august memory, your father and instructor, continually guarded, and which you too magnanimously determine to preserve — may be true unity. Since to any person whatsoever, the paternal faith and the communion of blessed Peter ought to be preferred.
And let it be taught to pertain to your glory, as the felicity of your empire, so also — after God — the integrity of the heavenly kingdom; so that, with the laws of His Church preserved, Christ, receiving the benevolence of your tranquility, may both multiply your temporal gifts and grant the eternal ones.
Footnotes
- ↩ The letter follows the death of Acacius in November 489 and the ordination of his successor Flavitas (also transmitted as Fravitas or Flavian) as bishop of Constantinople. Flavitas sent legates to Rome announcing his ordination, with an accompanying letter to Felix professing that Peter is the rock of the faith, that the keys of the heavenly kingdom were entrusted to him, and seeking Rome’s communion; Zeno also sent his own letter urging reconciliation, the tone of which Felix warmly praises here. The legation that brought these letters included both clerics and monks of the Chalcedonian party. At the moment of Letter XII, Peter Mongus was still patriarch of Alexandria; he would die in October 490. The dating of the letter is therefore early to mid 490. Its tone is notably more conciliatory than Letters IX, X, or XI — reflecting the changed situation after Acacius’s death — but its substance is no less firm: the names of Acacius and Peter Mongus must be removed from the diptychs of Constantinople before full communion can be restored, and this is a condition, not a negotiating position. When the legates professed they had no mandate to agree to this removal, the reconciliation stalled, and the Acacian Schism continued.
- ↩ Flavitas’s letter to Felix, referred to here, professed in explicit terms that Peter is the rock of the faith and that the keys of the heavenly kingdom were entrusted to him. The letter represented a significant gesture from the new Constantinopolitan bishop: acknowledgment, at his installation, that his own pontifical dignity derives its exordium — its beginning, its origin — from the See of Peter. Felix’s reading is that this acknowledgment must bear its proper consequence: the bishop who traces his dignity to Peter’s See cannot continue in communion with those whom Peter’s See has condemned. The logic is explicit in the Latin: suæ refert dignitatis exordium, “he refers the beginning of his own dignity [to Peter’s See].” Where the exordium is acknowledged, the consequentia is binding.
- ↩ The Latin is summum apostolorum beatum Petrum, et petram fidei esse non tacuit — “he did not keep silent that the blessed Peter, foremost of the apostles, is also the rock of the faith.” Flavitas’s profession makes both claims: that Peter is summum apostolorum (foremost of the apostles) and that he is petra fidei (the rock of the faith). The “confession” reading that Felix had developed in Letter V (super ista confessione, “upon this confession”) and tied to Peter in Letter IX is here received back from Constantinople: the new bishop acknowledges what the Roman reading had maintained. For Felix, this acknowledgment strengthens, rather than weakens, the case that communion cannot be restored while Acacius and Peter Mongus remain on the diptychs — because acknowledgment of Peter’s primacy entails acknowledgment of what Peter’s See has bound.
- ↩ “Timothy” here is Timothy Aelurus (“the Weasel”), the Monophysite patriarch of Alexandria (d. 477), successor to Peter Mongus in the Monophysite line. Together with Peter Mongus and the other named heretics, he is counted among those whom the Acacian communion had embraced.
- ↩ The phrase non secundum morem veterum apostolica sedes, quæ ligavit, absolvit — “the Apostolic See which bound, did not absolve [him] according to the custom of the ancients” — is one of the clearest primacy formulae in the Felix corpus. It applies Matt. 16:19 (the keys of binding and loosing) to the concrete case of Peter Mongus: the Apostolic See bound him, the Apostolic See has not loosed him, and until the Apostolic See looses him, bound he remains. The phrase secundum morem veterum — “according to the custom of the ancients” — grounds the principle in received tradition rather than in any novel Roman claim: it is what “the ancients” have always practiced, and what Rome is now applying in this instance. Any restoration of Peter Mongus that bypasses the Apostolic See’s loosing is, on this view, not a restoration at all but a pretense of one.
- ↩ Beati Petri qualiscunque vicarius — “however unworthy a vicar of blessed Peter.” The term vicarius means “one acting in the place of” — the delegate or stand-in of the principal. Felix uses the formula twice in this letter (again in Chapter VII, where he elaborates it): the pope is Peter’s vicar; in the pope’s voice Peter himself speaks; and in Peter’s voice, Christ Himself, “who does not permit His Church to be torn asunder.” The humility formula qualiscunque (“however unworthy”) does not weaken the identification but personalizes it: it is not by Felix’s own worth but by the office he holds that Peter is present. The vicariate theology here is identical in substance to the meque in meis of the Edict and the legatio Petri of Letter IX, but expressed in the formal language that will become standard in later Roman usage.
- ↩ The Latin is si utraque Roma pro mutuo pignore nuncupatur, fiat utraque una fides illa Romanorum, quam per universum mundum prædicari beatus Paulus testatur apostolus, sicut apud nostros floruit indiscreta majores — “if each city is called Rome for a mutual pledge, let there be one faith of the Romans in both, which the blessed apostle Paul testifies to be preached throughout the whole world, just as among our elders it flourished undivided.” Felix accepts the Constantinopolitan designation “New Rome” — dignitaries had used the formula since the Council of Constantinople (381) and it was strengthened by Chalcedon Canon 28 (which Rome rejected as a canon but not as a terminological fact of imperial usage). His rhetorical move is to turn the shared name into an argument for shared faith: if the two cities share the name of Rome, they must share the one faith of Rome — the faith Paul praised (Rom. 1:8), the faith that flourished among the Fathers indiscreta, “undivided.” The word indiscreta is load-bearing: it is not that the faith was merely present in both cities but that it was undivided between them. Felix is not granting parity of authority to the two sees; he is granting parity of faith-identity, which is precisely what the Acacian Schism has disturbed.
- ↩ “Poison” (virus) is Felix’s term for what the Acacian communion introduced into the imperial counsels. The metaphor is medical-theological: a foreign agent that distorts judgment and must be purged. Felix presents Zeno as personally sound (his Catholic acts since the defeat of Basiliscus are praised) but compromised in this one area by Acacius’s misguidance. The claim shifts blame decisively onto the dead bishop while preserving the emperor’s standing — diplomatically shrewd but also a genuine statement of the Roman view: the schism was Acacius’s doing, not Zeno’s.
- ↩ “The pestiferous ruler” of Alexandria is Peter Mongus, still alive and in possession of the see at the time of this letter. He would die in October 490. Felix’s insistence that Zeno act for the Alexandrian situation parallel to his action at Constantinople shows that the Roman program of reconciliation was not merely about one city: the Acacian communion had constituted a broader Eastern realignment, and correcting it required addressing both Constantinople (where Flavitas had been ordained) and Alexandria (where Peter Mongus still reigned). Full communion with the East required the withdrawal of both.
Historical Commentary