Libellus sent by Pope Felix with the Decree of the Council to the Emperor Zeno.
Chapter I: Zeno’s Earlier Orthodox Acts Against Peter Mongus and the Basiliscan Encyclion
When peace had been restored to the universal Church — the heretics (who were supposed to be exalted) having been put down through you — and when the empire of your piety had borne off victory even over its enemies, and throughout the whole world the prayer of all was praying to the Lord of priests for the safety of your serenity; and when your piety, guardian of the faith and defender of orthodoxy, was reigning under the favor of the eternal King: then your venerable summits, and the authority running next to God frequently [proceeding] from your sacred breast, in the midst of the joys of the recovered empire, cast down by a decree most acceptable to God Peter, who consorted with heretics and adhered to that parricide Timothy — ordained by profane [men] (because he could not be [ordained] by any others), bishop of the Alexandrian Church, as he had reckoned himself [to be]; and rendered void the letters of the tyrant — which his insane mind had dictated for the overthrow of the definitions of the sacrosanct Council of Chalcedon, against what is right and sacred — for the commendation of his own reign. Thus then did [your piety] make void his unlawful ordinations, or even Timothy’s, as being those of heretics; and [your piety] declared how much they had been outside the Church.
Chapter II: Peter Mongus Now Presides at Alexandria; The Injury to God Must Be Expiated
But now, with all rejoicings changed into mourning, We have learned that [Peter Mongus] presides over the Church of Alexandria. Which, if it be true (as a thing to be set forth faithfully before God to a most Christian prince), We suggest in the divine judgment that it is not to be weighed lightly, unless — with certain remedies — what is said to have been done as an insult to God shall have been expiated.
Chapter III: The Libellus Against Acacius and the Canonical Summons to Peter the Apostle
And because (as it is written) “one member suffering, the whole body suffers its sufferings” (1 Cor. 12:26), in [Peter Mongus’s] person the Churches of the East are convulsed. Which [matter] affects my brother and co-bishop the bishop of Constantinople, against whom a libellus was filed at Us, in the assembly, by him whose see the aforesaid [Acacius] is reported to hold — [a libellus] which I have attached to the laments of my humility; so that the same brother and co-bishop of mine, Acacius (as it is ecclesiastically necessary, and as is fitting to be done even by your laws), may obediently take care to clear himself before the most blessed Apostle Peter, concerning those things which he sees intimated about himself, and let him in no way suppose it is to be delayed.
Chapter IV: Acacius’s Duty to Submit and the Emperor’s Duty to Support the Canonical Process
Who — if (as We trust) he is well conscious [of his innocence] — ought not to cast off the apostolic judgment with his fellow bishops, nor the moderation [of that judgment]; so that, approved by priestly acts and by faithful proof, he may first [be approved by] Christ Our Lord and by all the priests, and then gloriously enjoy the grace of your piety.
Footnotes
- ↩ The Libellus is the transmittal document that accompanied the decree of the Roman council on the case of Acacius when the dossier was sent east. The internal evidence dates it to late 483 or early 484, during the first legation of Vitalis and Misenus to Constantinople: Peter Mongus is described as now presiding at Alexandria, Zeno’s earlier orthodox acts are recalled approvingly, a libellus against Acacius has been filed at a Roman council, but Acacius is still addressed as “my brother and co-bishop” — not yet excommunicated. The document therefore records the Roman position at the stage of formal canonical summons, before any sentence of excommunication. That canonical approach would soon fail: the legates were compromised into communion with Acacius, and the Roman synod of July 28, 484 (Letter VI) both deposed them and excommunicated Acacius.
- ↩ The Latin Deo proxima currens de sacro pectore frequenter auctoritas — “the authority running next to God, frequently [issuing] from [your] sacred breast” — is a courtly formula of praise for the imperial office as one that acts under and next to divine authority. It should not be read as flattering imperial authority above priestly; the whole point of the document (and of the Decretum it effectively introduces) is that in divine matters the royal will is to be subjected to the priests of Christ. The formula acknowledges the real dignity of the imperial office while preserving the priority of priestly authority in sacred things.
- ↩ The “decree most acceptable to God” is Zeno’s overthrow and condemnation of Peter Mongus at his initial attempt on the Alexandrian see after the death of Timothy Aelurus (477). At that moment Zeno sided with the Chalcedonian Timothy Salofaciolus, and Peter Mongus was expelled. This is the earlier orthodox act Felix is praising, in sharp contrast to the current situation in which Peter Mongus has again invaded Alexandria and Zeno has accepted the outcome.
- ↩ “That parricide Timothy” is Timothy Aelurus (“the Weasel”), Monophysite patriarch of Alexandria (457–460, 475–477), whose seizure of the see in 457 was achieved through the murder of the Chalcedonian patriarch Proterius. The epithet parricida — “parricide” — names the foundational crime of the Monophysite Alexandrian succession: Timothy Aelurus’s supporters killed Proterius during the Easter liturgy in 457. Peter Mongus had been Timothy Aelurus’s deacon and successor in the Monophysite line; by describing Peter Mongus as “adhering to that parricide Timothy,” Felix is linking Peter Mongus to the founding murder of the whole Monophysite patriarchate.
- ↩ The “letters of the tyrant” is Basiliscus’s Encyclion of 475/476, the anti-Chalcedonian imperial letter that Basiliscus had issued during his brief usurpation of the throne (January 475 – August 476). The Encyclion was signed by some 500 Eastern bishops under imperial pressure and represented the most serious doctrinal challenge to Chalcedon in the mid-fifth century. When Zeno returned to the throne in August 476, he annulled the Encyclion — the act Felix here recalls. That this annulment is presented as a commendation of Zeno’s reign (“pro regni sui commendatione”) reinforces the rhetorical structure of the whole paragraph: Zeno’s past orthodox acts prove him capable of, and obligated to, further orthodox acts in the present case.
- ↩ The phrase in contumeliam Dei factum — “done as an insult to God” — is the characteristic Roman description of the Peter Mongus situation. Peter Mongus’s occupancy of Alexandria is not merely a canonical irregularity but a direct insult to God, because it restores to the Alexandrian see a man whom God’s own orthodox emperor had previously cast down. What Zeno had rightly undone is now redone; what God had been praised for removing is restored; the good act is annulled by the subsequent bad act. Hence “expiation” (expiatum) — restoration requires active remedies, not merely continuance in the new state of affairs.
- ↩ The PL cites this passage as II Cor. III, but the actual reference is 1 Cor. 12:26, from Paul’s discourse on the Church as one body. The citation error is editorial; the Pauline reference Felix clearly has in mind is the one-body theology of 1 Corinthians 12. The theological point is foundational: the whole Church suffers when one member suffers, so Alexandria’s crisis is the universal Church’s crisis, and Constantinople’s complicity is therefore a universal-Church matter, not merely an Eastern question.
- ↩ “Him whose see the aforesaid [Acacius] is reported to hold” is a circuitous Latin formula meaning John Talaia, the canonically elected patriarch of Alexandria whom Peter Mongus displaced in 482. Talaia fled to Rome and there filed his libellus against Acacius — charging Acacius with having been party to the displacement of the canonically elected bishop. The Latin phrasing is careful: Talaia’s own see is Alexandria, but he is described as the one “whose see [Acacius] is reported to hold” — meaning that Acacius, by his role in placing Peter Mongus at Alexandria, has effectively occupied Talaia’s own proper jurisdiction. The accusation is of jurisdictional overreach as much as of doctrinal corruption.
- ↩ The phrase apud beatissimum Petrum apostolum diluere obedienter procuret — “let him obediently take care to clear himself before the most blessed Apostle Peter” — identifies Rome with Peter himself as the locus where Acacius must answer the charges. To answer at Rome is to answer before Peter. This is the same theology operative throughout the Felix corpus (the Petrine legation of Letter IX, the in meis of the Edict of Sentence, the whole Vicar-of-Peter theology of Letter XII), here in compressed canonical form: the Roman Council is the Apostle Peter’s own tribunal, before which a bishop charged with canonical offenses must appear.
- ↩ The sequence specified here is theologically precise: Acacius is to be approved first by priestly acts (sacerdotalibus actibus) and by the faithful proof (comprobatione fideli) of the canonical process, and then — following from that priestly approval — by Christ and by all the priests, and finally to enjoy the emperor’s favor. The ordering is deliberate. Priestly approval comes before imperial favor; approval by Christ and by all the priests is prior to the grace of the emperor. This is the two-powers theology of Letter IX in operational form, here at the canonical-procedural level: the priestly judgment establishes the bishop’s standing before the Church, and imperial favor rightly follows, but does not substitute for, what priestly judgment has established.
Historical Commentary