To Our most beloved brother Avitus, Symmachus.
Chapter I: The Annulment Did Not Prejudice Avitus’s Right; He May Present His Case
1. Your charity ought not to have been offended by the fact that We recently wrote in response to Our brother and fellow bishop Aeonius. No prejudice was made to Your right, most beloved brother, when We responded that We cannot judge with one party unheard and without competent instruction. Whence it remains safe for Your fraternity to allege what You may have judged to need to be alleged, and to propose what You may see needs to be proposed.
Chapter II: The Substance of the Letter III Annulment; The Principle of Just Cause
2. For although We have said that the confusion of the province, brought about by Our predecessor of holy memory the bishop Anastasius beyond the custom of the Church and against the ancient statutes of Our predecessors, was so brought about and is not to be tolerated — nevertheless, if Your fraternity shall have shown that those things which he did, he did reasonably, We shall rejoice that nothing has been attempted by him against the canons. For what is done beyond the rule — provided it be from a just cause — does not violate the rule, which only obstinacy and contempt for antiquity injures. For though the statutes of the fathers are to be kept with diligent observance and observing diligence, nevertheless on account of some good, something is relaxed from the rigor of the law — which the law itself would have provided for, had it foreseen [the case]. And it would often be cruel to insist on the law, when its observance is seen to be prejudicial to the Church — since laws have been enacted with the intention that they may profit, not that they may harm.
Chapter III: The Invitation to Send Representatives; The Hope of a Favorable Resolution
3. Wherefore let Your beloved proceed: to direct to Us the reasons that compelled Our predecessor to attempt this confusion that We have spoken of — that We may know what is to be established, and that We may rejoice in the Lord that nothing of blessed memory Anastasius is to be retracted. May God preserve You safe, dearest brother!
Given on the third day before the Ides of October, with Avienus and Pompeius consuls.
Footnotes
- ↩ Avitus of Vienne (c. 470–c. 519/523) was one of the most prominent Gallic bishops of the period — a major theological writer, the correspondent of King Gundobad of Burgundy on Christological questions, and the bishop who would later receive King Sigismund into the Catholic faith. His see at Vienne had been favored by Anastasius II’s ruling that Symmachus annulled in Letter III; this letter is Symmachus’s diplomatic response to Avitus, written approximately two weeks after the Rescissis letter to Aeonius. Avitus’s careful and respectful reception of Symmachus’s judgment is attested in his subsequent letter to the Roman senators Faustus and Symmachus (Avitus, Epistola 31), where he records his intention to abide by the Roman ruling.
- ↩ The principle invoked here — that a judge cannot rule with one party unheard (inaudita parte) — is the canonical-juridical maxim audi alteram partem (“hear the other side”). Symmachus had invoked the same principle in Letter II as the procedural ground for ordering the case reheard. Here he is reassuring Avitus that the procedural ground itself protects Avitus’s right: precisely because a ruling cannot be made with one party unheard, the Letter III annulment of the Anastasian grant did not constitute a final substantive ruling against Avitus. The annulment voided what was done per subreptionem; it did not preempt Avitus’s substantive case if he could establish it on its merits.
- ↩ The reader should observe how carefully Symmachus is preserving multiple things at once. The substance of the Letter III ruling stands: Anastasius II’s grant departed from older Apostolic discipline, and that departure was unjustified by what had been alleged in evidence so far. But the ruling does not preclude a different finding if Avitus can supply evidence of just cause — a reasonable ground that, under the principle articulated in the next sentences, would retroactively justify what was done. Symmachus is offering Avitus the opportunity to vindicate Anastasius II’s grant on its merits, even while having voided the procedural grant for lack of demonstrated justification. The continuity principle remains intact: Symmachus is not ruling against his predecessor’s office, but inviting demonstration that his predecessor’s particular act had a basis the present pope can recognize.
- ↩ This is one of the foundational maxims of the canonical-juridical tradition. The principle that quod fit praeter regulam, modo sit ex justa causa, non infringit regulam — “what is done beyond the rule, provided it be from a just cause, does not violate the rule” — is the canonical articulation of epieikeia (Aristotle’s term for equitable correction of strict justice) and aequitas (the Roman-law term). The principle distinguishes between the strict letter of the rule (regula) and its substantive purpose (ratio): an act that departs from the letter for the sake of the substantive purpose does not injure the rule, because the rule was made to serve that purpose. The principle would be developed extensively in medieval canon law (Gratian’s Decretum, Hostiensis, Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae II-II q. 120 on epieikeia) and remains foundational to Catholic moral and canonical reasoning. Its appearance here in 501 is among the earliest formal articulations in papal correspondence.
- ↩ The closing maxim — leges ea intentione latae sunt, ut proficiant, non ut noceant, “laws are enacted with the intention that they may profit, not that they may harm” — is the substantive principle on which the whole framework rests. The reader should observe what this presupposes about the See’s exercise of canonical judgment. The See is not a strict legalist applying rules without regard to their purpose; nor is it a free legislator suspending rules at pleasure. The See is the custodian of the rules and the interpreter of their substantive purpose, with authority to recognize when departure from the letter serves that purpose and when it does not. The Letter III annulment of Anastasius II’s grant rested on the finding that the grant served no demonstrable just cause; this letter holds open the possibility that, if such a cause exists and can be shown, the annulment can itself be reconsidered. The principle of aequitas is in this way an instrument of the See’s continuing authority over its own discipline.
- ↩ 13 October 501. The consulship of Rufius Magnus Faustus Avienus (in the West) and Flavius Pompeius (in the East) for 501 — the first West-East consular pairing recorded in the document since the calendrical irregularities of 499–500. The letter is therefore from one year after the Rescissis letter to Aeonius (29 September 500) and approximately two weeks after the Quarta Synodus at Rome (Letter 5 in the Thiel sequence, 23 October 501) at which Symmachus’s case in the Laurentian schism was resolved.
Historical Commentary