Chapter I: Leo Directs Julian to Ensure the Metropolitan Letters Reach Each Bishop, and Urges Unwavering Steadfastness
Taking occasion of the return of our son Gerontius to Constantinople, it was fitting to direct writings to your charity, by which we encourage your zeal in ecclesiastical matters and in those things which pertain to the faith: that you resist the attempts of the heretics with constant steadfastness, confident that God’s mercy will render what is worthy of their criminal impudence even in this present time. Let your charity know that we have sent letters to several of our brothers and fellow bishops the metropolitans, which ought to reach each one without delay through your diligence or that of our son the presbyter Aetius — so that episcopal steadfastness may retreat in nothing from the definitions of the holy Council of Chalcedon. For if episcopal steadfastness does not retreat from the definitions of the holy Council of Chalcedon, I am certain that the most clement and most Christian emperor will gladly uphold his own judgment, and that what he has already provided of his own accord he will much more readily bring about when asked, lest things well concluded and settled be violated by any novelty.
Chapter II: Leo Defends His Own Letter as Containing Nothing Novel, Being Drawn Wholly from Apostolic and Evangelical Doctrine
I am frankly astonished at the vanity of the slanderers, who still find something obscure in my letter — which has found acceptance throughout the whole world — and think it needs to be explained more plainly. Its assertion of that preaching is so clear and solid that it admits of nothing novel either in sense or in expression: because whatever was then written by us is proved to be drawn from apostolic and evangelical doctrine.
Given on the Kalends of September, in the consulship of Constantinus and Rufus.
Footnotes
- ↩ Julian of Cos was Leo’s permanent representative (apocrisiarius) at the imperial court in Constantinople and one of his most trusted agents in the East. He had served as a papal legate at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 and appears throughout this cluster of letters — most recently in Letter CXLVII — as Leo’s primary instrument for coordinating the eastern response to the Alexandrian crisis. The presbyter Aetius, named below, served alongside him in this role.
- ↩ Leo’s reference to letters sent to “several of the metropolitans” confirms that the September 1 cluster extends beyond the letters that survive. The confirmed letters of that date are CXLVIII to Emperor Leo I, CXLIX to Basil of Antioch, CL to Euxitheus of Thessalonica and the Illyrian bishops, and CLI to Anatolius of Constantinople — with CLII itself making five. Leo’s mention of additional metropolitan recipients, to be reached through Julian and Aetius, indicates a coordinated campaign of broader scope than the surviving record captures. The direction of the entire campaign is Roman: Leo composes the letters; his agents ensure delivery; the metropolitans receive Roman directives.
- ↩ The letter Leo calls “my letter which has found acceptance throughout the whole world” (epistola mea, quae universo mundo placuit) is the Tome of Leo — Letter XXVIII, addressed to Flavian of Constantinople in 449 and read aloud at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. At its reading the assembled bishops acclaimed: Petrus per Leonem locutus est — “Peter has spoken through Leo.” The Tome was formally received by the council as the doctrinal standard against which the Eutychian and Nestorian positions were measured. But the manner in which Leo refers to it here is telling: it is my letter, not “the council’s doctrinal standard.” The authority he claims for it is apostolic and immediate — rooted in Peter’s succession — and the council’s reception demonstrates that authority to the world. The direction runs from Leo to the council, not from the council to Leo: Chalcedon received the Tome because it recognized the apostolic authority from which it came. What the whole world has received is Leo’s letter precisely as such — the transmission of Peter’s faith through Peter’s successor.
- ↩ The phrase nihil novi — “nothing novel” — is not merely a rebuttal of the charge of obscurity. It states the ground of the Tome’s authority and, by extension, of every doctrinal pronouncement the Roman pontiff issues: the teaching is irreformable precisely because it contains nothing novel. It faithfully transmits what Peter received from the Lord and what the Roman See has kept in his succession. This is the same principle Leo applies throughout the corpus — his rulings and definitions are not inventions but transmissions. Under the Pastor Aeternus framework, this is exactly the basis of irreformability: the Roman pontiff’s definitions of faith are irreformable not because he has creative doctrinal authority but because they articulate what has always been held. To charge the Tome with novelty is therefore to misunderstand what the Tome claims to be; Leo’s refusal to engage the charge on its own terms is itself a jurisdictional act — the Roman pontiff declaring his own doctrinal letter closed to further dispute.
Historical Commentary