Leo, bishop of the city of Rome, to Ravennium, Rusticus, Venerius, Constantianus, Maximus, Armentarius, Florus, Sabinus, Valerianus, Constantius, Maximus, Asclepius, Nectarius, Maximus, Ursus, Ingenuus, Justus, Valerius, Superventor, Chrysaphius, Fonteius, Petronius, Idatius, Ætherius, Eulalius, Eustathius, Fraternus, Victurus, Eugenius, Hilarus, Verus, Amandus, Gerontius, Proculeianus, Julianus, Helladius, Armentarius, Honoratus, Eparchius, Anemius, Dynamius, Maximinus, Ynantius, and Palladius, bishops throughout Gaul.
Chapter I: Leo Receives the Gallic Bishops’ Letter and Gives Thanks for Their Steadfast Faith
We had wished indeed to receive the letters of your brotherhood at the time you had promised — so that when our brothers, whom We directed to the holy synod in the East in Our stead to defend the Catholic faith, were setting out, the profession of your faith might be joined to theirs. But since many unforeseen obstacles brought you unexpected delay, We received with gratitude through our brother and fellow bishop Ingenuus the letters We had so long awaited — however late — and, reviewing them with joy, confirmed what We already trusted: that the heavenly doctrine inspired by the Holy Spirit flourishes in you; the doctrine which the cunning of the ancient enemy, through those it found as followers of its falsehood, labored to assail in the Eastern churches. For the Catholic faith, which is in no part mutable, is made ever stronger and clearer through the very attacks of its adversaries, by God’s grace — so that those who were perhaps less instructed and less vigilant against the enemy’s subtle darts, having received the weapons of truth, become more resolute against the lies of the impious. That you have therefore, as the situation demanded, faithfully and obediently confirmed the confidence We hold in you in the Lord — this gives us the greatest exultation.
Chapter II: The Faith Is One and Indiscrete; No Art of Reasoning Avails Against It
Rightly, then, have We made known to our brothers and fellow bishops in the East that, according to the evangelical and apostolic tradition concerning the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, the confession of all of us is one and undivided — nor can any disputations of heretics cause us to think otherwise of the truth of this supreme and saving mystery than what we have learned and teach from the preaching of the holy Fathers and from the authority of the immutable Creed, with Eutyches now, as Nestorius before, condemned by the universal Church. Whoever chooses to cling to their intolerable impieties thereby cuts himself off from the body of Christian unity. Nor is there any further refuge for anyone in the pretense of ignorance or the difficulty of understanding — since the synod of nearly six hundred of our brothers and fellow bishops, assembled for this very purpose, permitted neither any art of reasoning nor any eloquence to breathe against the divinely founded faith: since, with the brothers and Our vicars lending their aid — whose devotion was most complete in every action — not only to the priests of Christ but also to the Christian princes and powers and to all the orders of clergy and people, it appeared fully and clearly that this is truly the apostolic and Catholic faith, flowing from the fountain of divine piety, which We preach as received — sincere and purged of all dross of error — and which the whole world now consenting defends; with the dogmas which either a preceding heretic dared to advance or a following one propounded — differing in the manner of the lie, though not in the impiety — extinguished throughout the whole world.
Chapter III: Nestorius and Eutyches Are Equally to Be Avoided
For just as Nestorius was execrable in his teaching — asserting that the blessed Mary was merely the mother of a man, subsequently assumed by the Divinity of the Word, with two persons distinct and divided, so that the Son of Man would not be the Son of God, nor one Christ in both natures, but one eternal from the Father, another temporal from the mother — since the evangelical authority proclaims that the Word was made flesh (John 1:14), revealing in the one Lord Jesus Christ the truth of both God and man, so that neither the properties of each substance — the saving and the saved — can be confused, nor the person doubled: so too was Eutyches, following a once-condemned error and blaspheming with a different profanity, cut off from the cohesion of Catholic solidity — because he tried to persuade certain ignorant and overly simple persons that the Word was so made flesh as not to have taken true flesh from the mother, nor to have possessed a body of our kind, and thus declared that our Lord Jesus Christ was a false man and a passible God, claiming one nature of Divinity and flesh. Neither the piety of the faith nor the reason of the mystery accepts this: for the Divinity cannot be passible in its nature, nor can the truth have been deceptive in the assumption of humanity.
Chapter IV: The Holy Synod, Strengthened by the Authority of the Most Blessed Apostle Peter, Has Cut Off This Disgrace From God’s Church
These monstrous designs of diabolical minds, the holy synod — strengthened by the writings of Our humility and by the authority and merit of my lord the most blessed Apostle Peter — has, with religious unanimity, cut off as an abomination from the Church of God: condemning also the Alexandrian in his impiety — so that that Church, which among the very first beginnings of the Gospel had as its founder the blessed Mark, disciple of the most blessed Apostle Peter, in all things consonant with his teacher’s instruction, and which in subsequent times closer to our own had the most approved pastors Athanasius, Theophilus, and recently Cyril, might not endure an unworthy captivity under the domination of a heretic. Thus, according to the great mercy of God, know that all the efforts of the devil by which he labored to trouble the Church of God have been destroyed.
Chapter V: Leo Directs the Gallic Bishops to Share the Good News With Spain
With thanks therefore duly rendered to God, most beloved brothers, let your charity pray with Us that our brothers, whom Our expectation eagerly awaits, may return safely as soon as possible — so that We may rejoice and instruct you more fully on all that has been accomplished with the Lord’s aid. We did not wish to delay our brother Ingenuus with this expectation, as he ought to return all the more quickly lest the substance of our common joys remain unknown to you any longer — and We wish this to come through the care of your charity also to our brother bishops in Spain, so that what God has accomplished may be hidden from no one.
Dated the sixth day before the Kalends of February, in the consulship of Herculanus, most illustrious man.
Footnotes
- ↩ The phrase nullam artem ratiocinandi, nullum eloquium disserendi contra fundatam divinitus fidem spirare permiserit — “permitted neither any art of reasoning nor any eloquence to breathe against the divinely founded faith” — states the no-disputation principle Leo directed to Marcian in Letter XCIV and to the synod in Letter XCIII. The council did not deliberate on whether the faith was true; it confirmed what was true. Leo’s consistent position throughout the Chalcedonian correspondence is that the faith is not subject to renewed debate, and this letter communicates that principle to the Gallic bishops as the accomplished result of the council.
- ↩ The phrase humilitatis nostrae scriptis, auctoritate Domini mei beatissimi Petri apostoli et merito roborata — “strengthened by the writings of Our humility and by the authority and merit of my lord the most blessed Apostle Peter” — is one of Leo’s most explicit statements of how the Petrine authority operates through the Roman bishop’s acts. The synod’s condemnation of Eutyches did not rest on the assembled bishops’ common judgment alone; it rested on Leo’s writings and on the authority of Peter himself. The phrase Domini mei beatissimi Petri apostoli — “my lord the most blessed Apostle Peter” — is striking: Peter is named as Lord, as the one whose authority the Roman bishop mediates and through whom the council’s act is grounded. Compare the formula in Letter X, Ch. IX — “with God inspiring and the most blessed Apostle Peter” — where Peter is named as co-agent of papal decrees. The structure is identical: the council acts, but it acts under the authority of Peter, channeled through the Roman bishop’s writings.
- ↩ January 27, 452. Letter CII belongs to the cluster of letters Leo sent following the return of his legates from Chalcedon, reporting the council’s outcome to the Western churches. Letter XCIX (from the Gallic bishops to Leo) had been written in approximately December 451; this reply is dated January 27, 452 — a relatively prompt response. The mention of waiting for the legates to return (“whom our expectation eagerly awaits”) and directing them to inform the Spanish bishops suggests that at this point the full acts of Chalcedon had not yet arrived in Rome, though the broad outlines of the outcome were known through Lucianu’s and Basilius’s preliminary report.
Historical Commentary