Leo, bishop, to Eudocia Augusta.
Chapter I: Leo Explains the Perverse Misreading of His Letter to Flavian and the Catholic Middle Path
How great is my solicitude — which I owe to the universal Church and to all her sons — how much I must care for the relationship of your dilection: it has become clear that the minds of some there have received a certain offense, as either ignorant interpreters or malicious ones have caused them to understand things somewhat differently from what I have preached — making them think that what I wrote to Flavian of blessed memory disagrees with them. Neither the one who does not know Greek eloquence and cannot properly transfer subtle and difficult matters into Latin, nor the one who in his own language seeks only what suffices for his quarrel, is of any use. Though my letter to the holy bishop Flavian should be sufficient for its own manifestation — needing nothing further for its defense in terms of purgation or exposition — other writings of mine agree with the same preaching, which similarly and openly set forth my meaning. For anyone who has necessity against heretics must hold the Catholic faith, which damns Nestorius — who in one Lord Jesus Christ would preach two persons for the divinity and the humanity — and equally damns Eutyches, who by Dioscorus confused the natures in Christ which Nestorius divided.
Chapter II: Those Who Wish to Be Numbered Among the Members of Christ’s Body Must Hold the Two Natures; Their Chalcedonian Subscriptions Are Cited
If therefore those we speak of venerate the name “Catholic” and are devoted to it, and wish to be numbered among the members of the Lord’s body — they must abhor the wicked errors they have dared to embrace and do penance for the impious acts committed through blasphemous outrage. They should be aided by the synodal constitutions confirmed in the city of Chalcedon, which are also confirmed by their own subscriptions — if they wish to be seen as Catholics. For the Catholic faith, even as it damns Nestorius who in the Virgin’s conception separates the nature of the Word from the flesh, declaring one Christ divided into two persons; so also it curses Eutyches who denies true human flesh in Jesus Christ — claiming the Word was so made flesh as to take on not a true servile form but its mere figure, ascribing birth, growth, suffering, death, burial, and resurrection to the divine nature alone, not to true manhood. Whoever denies that Christ participates in our nature has no participation in the body of the one whose truth he denies.
If your exhortation to their conversion has profited them — which I pray God to grant — it will provide glory to you for eternity. I beseech your clemency to indicate this to me through your letters, and that you and the good works of your faith may bear fruit; and that those whom I have named may have ceased from their madness. Dated the seventeenth day before the Kalends of July, in the consulship of Opilio, most illustrious man.
Footnotes
- ↩ Eudocia (c. 401–460) — widow of Emperor Theodosius II, mother-in-law of Valentinian III, resident in Jerusalem since 443. As noted in Letter CXVII, Marcian had secretly asked Leo to admonish her about the Palestinian monks whose violence and Eutychian sympathies she was patronizing. This letter is the formal result of that admonition — addressed to Eudocia directly, through her son the emperor as Marcian had arranged.
- ↩ The opening phrase Sollicitudini meae, quam universali Ecclesiae omnibusque ejus filiis debeo — “my solicitude, which I owe to the universal Church and to all her sons” — applies the defining formula of Leo’s universal pastoral responsibility (sollicitudo) to his reason for writing to a former empress about monks in Palestine. The solicitude extends everywhere and to everyone — including those in distant holy places whose Eutychian sympathies threaten the peace of the Church. The phrase also makes the pastoral obligation explicit: Leo owes this solicitude; it is not optional engagement. Compare the same formula in Letters V, VI, X, XCIX, CXIII, and throughout the post-Chalcedon correspondence.
- ↩ Leo appeals to the Palestinian monks’ own Chalcedonian subscriptions as the ground of their obligation. The monks subscribed; the subscriptions bind them. The argument is characteristic of Leo’s post-Chalcedon approach: the council’s authority is not external to those who signed its definition — it is their own commitment, which Leo is calling them to honor.
- ↩ The phrase naming those who deny Christ’s human nature as having no part in the body of Christ — non esse participem — echoes the excommunication formula Leo had used in Letter CXIV to the assembled bishops of Chalcedon: “Let him be cut off from Catholic communion, having no share in the body whose truth he denies.” The formula is applied here to the Palestinian monks: by denying the true humanity of Christ, they have effectively excluded themselves from the body they claim to inhabit.
- ↩ June 15, 453 — same date as Letters CXXI (to Marcian on the Paschal controversy) and CXXII (to Julian on the same). The three letters of June 15 cover two entirely different situations simultaneously — the Paschal calculation question (CXXI, CXXII) and the Palestinian monks through Eudocia (CXXIII) — illustrating Leo’s sustained engagement with multiple Eastern crises in parallel.
Historical Commentary