Leo, bishop of the city of Rome, to Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem.1

Chapter I: Leo Congratulates Juvenal’s Return but Names His Prior Tergiversation; the Holy Places Themselves Are a Rebuke to Eutychian Error

Having received the letters of your dilection — brought to me by our sons Andrew the presbyter and Peter the deacon — I was indeed glad that you had been permitted to return to the see of your episcopate. But with all the causes that had made you labor through certain lapses flooding back into memory, I grieved that you yourself had been the material of your own adversities, and that you had lost the constancy of resisting heretics — since they now reckon that you have no freedom to dare rebuke those whom you confessed to have pleased you in their error. For what was the condemnation of Flavian of blessed memory and the reception of the most impious Eutyches but a denial of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh? — which He Himself, through His great mercy, caused to be undone: when He destroyed through the authority of the holy Chalcedonian council that detestable judgment of the Ephesine synod,2 so as to bar none of those corrupted from the remedy of correction. Since therefore in the time of indulgence you chose repentance rather than stubbornness, I rejoice that you have sought heavenly medicine — so that you may at last be able to be a defender of the faith assailed by heretics.

For while no priest may be ignorant of what he preaches, a Christian living in Jerusalem is still more inexcusable than all the uninstructed — since for understanding the power of the Gospel, he is instructed not only by the eloquence of the pages but by the testimony of the places themselves. What elsewhere it is not permitted not to believe, there cannot not be seen. What does the intellect labor over, where sight itself is the teacher? And why should things read or heard remain doubtful, where the entire mysteries of human salvation press themselves on the very sight and touch? As though the Lord were still using His bodily voice toward each of those who hesitate, saying: Why are you troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see me to have (Luke 24:38–39).

Chapter II: Juvenal Must Use the Holy Places as Testimony to the Catholic Faith Against the Heretics

Use therefore, most beloved brother, the unconquerable proofs of the Catholic faith — and defend the preaching of the evangelists by the testimony of the holy places in which you dwell. With you is Bethlehem, in which the saving birth of the Davidic Virgin shone forth — the child wrapped in swaddling cloths received in a manger amid the constraints of an inn. With you is the infancy of the Savior, declared by angels, adored by magi, and sought by Herod through the deaths of many children. With you is the place where his boyhood grew, where his youth matured, and where through the bodily increments of growth the nature of a true man advanced to perfect manhood — not without hunger’s need for food, not without weariness’ need for sleep, not without compassion’s tears, not without fear’s trembling: for one and the same is he who in the form of God worked great miracles of power, and in the form of a servant underwent the cruelty of the Passion. The very cross speaks to you of this without ceasing; the stone of the sepulcher cries it aloud — in which the Lord lay by human condition, and from which he rose by divine power. And when you approach the Mount of Olives, to venerate the place of the Ascension, does not that angelic voice resound in your hearing, spoken to those who stood amazed at the Lord’s elevation: Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him going into heaven (Acts 1:11)?

Chapter III: The True Cross Confirms the True Birth; the Redemption Requires the Truth of Christ’s Flesh

The true cross therefore confirms the true birth of Christ: for the one who is crucified in our flesh is the one who was born in our flesh — which, with no intervening sin, could not have been mortal unless it had been of our race. In order to restore the life of all, he took on the cause of all — and by paying for all what he alone among all did not owe, he emptied the force of the ancient debt (Col. 2:14): so that just as through the guilt of one all had been made sinners, so through the innocence of one all might be made innocent (Rom. 5:18) — righteousness flowing into humanity from the place where human nature was assumed. For in no way is he outside the truth of our bodily nature — he of whom the evangelist, beginning his account of the proclamation, says: The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham (Matt. 1:1); with the consonant teaching of the blessed apostle Paul, who says: Whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed for ever (Rom. 9:5); and likewise to Timothy: Remember that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, of the seed of David (2 Tim. 2:8).

Chapter IV: Leo’s Writings to Flavian, Confirmed by the Universal Synod, Suffice; Juvenal Must Ensure No One Murmurs Against the Faith

How greatly this truth is declared by the authorities of both the New and Old Testament, you recognize clearly from the antiquity of your priesthood — since the faith of the Fathers and my writings addressed to Flavian of holy memory, which you yourself mentioned, together with the confirmation of the universal synod, suffice.3 Therefore your dilection must take care that no one murmur against the ineffable mystery of our redemption and hope. But if there are those who are still darkened by ignorance or disagree through perversity, let them be instructed by the authorities of those whose doctrine in the Church of God was apostolic and clear — so that they may recognize that we believe about the Incarnation of the Word of God what those believed; and let them not place themselves outside the body of Christ, in whom we have died together and risen together, by their own stubbornness: since neither the piety of faith nor the reason of the mystery allows that the Divinity should have been passible in its own essence, or that truth should have been falsified in the assumption of our nature.

Dated the day before the Nones of September, in the consulship of the most illustrious Aetius and Studius.4