Letter CLXIX, from Pope Leo to Emperor Leo

Leo, bishop, to Leo, Augustus.

Chapter I: Leo Rejoices Over the Expulsion of Aelurus and Urges That a Worthy Catholic Bishop Be Elected Without Delay

If we wished to pursue the honor of your glory’s proposal in the defense of the faith with praise as great as the magnitude of the events themselves demands, we would find ourselves falling short in thanksgiving — since the rejoicings of the universal Church exceed the power of our voice alone. But its more fitting reward will be stored up in God himself, in whose cause you have excelled with such singular courage and achieved the triumph you hoped for. Let your clemency therefore know that all the Churches of God exult and rejoice together with your praise — that the impious parricide has been thrown off the yoke of the Alexandrian Church, and the people of God, on whom that criminal predator preyed, can now be led back to the ancient liberty of the faith through priestly preaching — seeing that the whole seedbed of his poison has been uprooted in its very author. Since you have accomplished this with constant purpose and great determination, now add to this completed work of the faith its completion: decree what is pleasing to God concerning the Catholic presiding bishop of that city — one who has been tainted by none of the so many times condemned impiety, lest perhaps a wound concealed beneath a false skin grow and fester, and the Christian people who have been openly liberated from heretical perversity by your action become once again exposed to deadly poison.

Chapter II: Faith Alone Is Not Sufficient for a Bishop; Integrity of Life and Moral Character Are Equally Required

You see clearly, venerable emperor, that in the case of the man whose removal is at issue, it is not only integrity of faith that must be considered. Even if his faith could be purged by every kind of correction and profession, and its standing restored under any conditions, the deeds so wickedly and bloodily perpetrated cannot be wiped away by the protestations of fine words. For in a pontiff of God, and above all in the priest of so great a Church, not only the sound of his voice and the eloquence of his labors suffice — it profits nothing if God is proclaimed in word while his mind is convicted of impiety in deed. Of such the Holy Spirit speaks through the Apostle: Having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power (2 Tim. 3:5); and again elsewhere: They profess to know God, but in their deeds they deny it (Tit. 1:16). Since both the truth of faith and the fullness of good works are sought in every member of the Church, how much more must both excel in the highest pontiff — since the one cannot be joined to Christ’s body without the other!

Chapter III: Aelurus Cannot Be Restored Even If He Were to Profess the Faith, on Account of His Crimes Against an Innocent Bishop

It is unnecessary now to recount all that makes Timothy execrable — since what was done by him and on account of him has come most fully and manifestly to the knowledge of the whole world. And if anything perpetrated by the disorderly mob seems to run against justice, it all flows back to him at whose desire the hands of the frenzied served. Therefore even if in the profession of the faith he neglects nothing and falsifies nothing, it is most fitting for your glory to exclude him from seeking to return — so that the true peace of the Lord may be made known not only in the preaching of the faith but also in the example of character.

Given on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of July, in the consulship of Magnus and Apollonius. Through Philoxenus, agent in affairs.

Source/Reference

PL 54:1212

Notes / Historical Commentary

Letter CLXIX, dated June 17, 460, is the culmination of the longest sustained governance campaign in the entire Leonine corpus. The campaign began on July 11, 457 with Letter CXLV — Leo’s first approach to Emperor Leo I on the Alexandrian crisis, written just months after the murder of Proterius during Holy Week of that year. From that opening letter through the coordinated September 1 cluster (CXLVIII–CLIII), the October 11 letters (CLIV, CLV), the December 1 letters (CLVI–CLVIII), the March 21–28 cluster of 458 (CLIX–CLXIII), and the final major dispatches of August and September 458 (CLXIV, CLXV), Leo directed a campaign that simultaneously engaged the emperor, the patriarch of Constantinople, the patriarchs of Antioch and Jerusalem, the Illyrian vicariate, his own apocrisiarii at the imperial court, the exiled Egyptian bishops, and the clergy of Constantinople — all without ever yielding on the two substantive points: Timothy Aelurus must be expelled, and a Catholic bishop approved by the Apostolic See must succeed him. Letter CLXIX records that the first of these objectives has been achieved.

The structural significance of the campaign — now visible as a whole — is that it demonstrates what ordinary and immediate jurisdiction looks like when exercised over a crisis of this duration and complexity. Leo did not convene a council, seek a synodal consensus, or wait for the eastern patriarchs to act. He directed the campaign from Rome through multiple simultaneous channels, each activated at the appropriate moment, each calibrated to its specific audience. Emperors received petitions framed as the universal Church’s supplication through Leo. Patriarchs received directives framed as the exercise of the solicitude Leo owed to all the Churches. Apocrisiarii received operational instructions. The exiled bishops received pastoral consolation ordered to reinforce the campaign. The Constantinople clergy received a direct bypassing of their own archbishop when he failed to act. All of this from a single source, over three years, without interruption and without concession.

Chapter II contains the letter’s most significant jurisdictional statement. Leo declares that in a bishop — especially of so great a church — both orthodox faith and integrity of conduct are required, and that the two cannot be separated. This is not merely a pastoral observation: it is a canonical ruling. Leo deploys two Pauline texts not as homiletic illustration but as the grounds for his determination that Aelurus’s crimes disqualify him independently of his doctrinal state. The determination is Leo’s; the emperor is directed to implement it. The language is diplomatic — “it befits your glory to exclude him” — but the structure is the same as every other directive Leo has issued to the emperor throughout this correspondence: Leo determines the terms; the emperor gives them effect.

Chapter III closes the case with characteristic precision. Even hypothetically granting that Aelurus might profess the Catholic faith in full — which Leo plainly does not expect — this would not be sufficient for restoration. The crime of seizing the episcopal throne of Alexandria while the legitimate bishop Proterius still lived, and the murder that followed, are juridically disqualifying regardless of subsequent doctrinal posture. Leo is establishing, from Rome, the principle that episcopal standing in a major see cannot be restored by doctrinal profession alone when the manner of acquiring the see was itself criminal. This is not a pastoral judgment about Aelurus’s soul; it is a jurisdictional ruling about who may occupy the see of Alexandria — a ruling issued from the Apostolic See to the emperor who holds the power of enforcement.

The letter closes without the elaborate coordinated machinery of the 457–458 campaigns — no simultaneous letters to patriarchs, no activation of apocrisiarii, no pastoral letters to the exiled bishops. The crisis is over; the instrument is simple. A single letter, through a single imperial carrier, from the bishop of Rome to the emperor: rejoicing in what has been accomplished, specifying what remains to be done, and ruling out the one outcome that would undo the work. The brevity and directness of the letter after three years of sustained complexity is itself a kind of eloquence.

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