Leo, bishop, to Julian, Bishop of Cos.
Chapter I: Leo Affirms That Nothing Has Been Omitted in Defending the Faith and the Universal Church
I received your letters, sent through our son the illustrious Esychius, when I had already replied to the renewed occasion of your recent letters. Since you rightly lament these most impious heretics in those words, it was fitting — with the opportunity of writing — not to remain silent. In the cause of the faith, whatever our duty can and must do, with the Lord’s aid, We pursue zealously and gladly, to serve Christ’s Gospel blamelessly — lest any part of the Catholic Church appear neglected through Our sloth. As is widely known, I have not ceased laboring to make manifest and defend the truth of the Lord’s Incarnation — so that all the brotherhood might know what to hold and teach according to apostolic doctrine — with the divinely inspired zeal of the most glorious princes. In the synod of Chalcedon, heretical impiety was condemned, so that no follower of Nestorius or disciple of Eutyches may freely associate with Catholics — since where the authority of the holy council holds, no discord remains.
Chapter II: Priestly Authority Must Deny Monks Any Preaching License; The Emperor Must Punish the Alexandrian Parricides
As it is the duty of imperial power to repress more severely the public tumults and sacrilegious seditions, so it is the authority of the priesthood to deny monks any license to preach against the faith, and to resist with all strength their claiming what pertains to bishops. I marvel that our brother Bishop Thalassius allowed some George — who, by presuming illicitly, has lost both the purpose and the name of a monk — any faculty to write or to preach. If your charity judges it fitting, We will send appropriate letters to that bishop on this matter.
Let your brotherhood act with timely suggestions — urging the most clement prince to command what is pleasing to the Lord, ordering stricter restraint of the instigators of bloody sedition. Neither those whose hands committed crimes nor those who used such madness should go unpunished. If judicial inquiry and the confession of the guilty should reach those whose counsel or impulse drove such evils, no solace of favor should be granted to them. The more that was believed of them, the more detestable is the impiety now revealed — once hidden by hypocrisy. Let the most Christian and most pious emperor act as he knows profits ecclesiastical peace — confident that divine inspiration will guide him both to recall the restless by discipline and to abstain from their blood, though they merit all vengeance for opposing the constitutions both divine and human.
Dated the fourth day before the Nones of April, in the consulship of Opilio, most illustrious man.
Footnotes
- ↩ The phrase lest any part of the Catholic Church appear neglected through Our sloth is an application of the sollicitudo principle — the Roman bishop’s universal pastoral responsibility for all the Churches — to Leo’s own accountability. No part of the Church may suffer neglect; if any does, the sloth is Leo’s. This is the personal accountability dimension of the universal solicitude that runs throughout the corpus from the earliest Illyrian letters onward.
- ↩ This sentence states the two-authority principle with unusual precision: imperial power represses public disorder; priestly authority governs doctrinal preaching and the boundaries of clerical office. The two spheres are distinct but complementary — the emperor does not define doctrine, the priest does not command armies. Yet they cooperate: the priest identifies the disorder, the emperor enforces the correction. This is the model Leo has deployed throughout the post-Chalcedon correspondence: Leo identifies the problem, directs Julian to press the case, and the emperor acts. Neither authority absorbs the other.
- ↩ Thalassius was bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia — the metropolitan see of the province of Cappadocia in central Asia Minor, modern Kayseri in Turkey. His tolerance of the monk George’s unauthorized preaching draws Leo’s reproof: a metropolitan is responsible for ensuring that preaching in his province conforms to apostolic doctrine and that the boundaries between episcopal and monastic roles are maintained.
- ↩ Leo is calling for the full judicial process to be applied to the instigators of the Alexandrian violence — which the PL apparatus identifies as those responsible for the murders connected with the installation of the Eutychian Timothy Aelurus in Alexandria and the violence against Proterius’s clergy. The phrase “no solace of favor should be granted” is a deliberate counter to any appeal for imperial clemency on behalf of those whose heresy had been covered by monastic respectability. Leo had tolerated much; this is not a case for tolerance.
- ↩ April 2, 453 — twelve days after the quadruple March 21 dispatch (Letters CXIV–CXVII). This is a stand-alone operational letter to Julian responding to his latest reports from the East, distinct from the coordinated multi-addressee correspondence of March 21. The dateline confirms that Leo was in continuous correspondence with Julian throughout this period, receiving and responding to intelligence from Constantinople and Alexandria on an almost weekly basis.
Historical Commentary