Anastasius, bishop, to Laurentius of Lychnidos.
Chapter I: The Eastern Reception of Felix III’s Letter on Acacius; The Roman Custom of Sending the Formula of Faith
1. In the lengthy letter of your charity you have filled Us with great joy in the part where you say that, when the letter of Our predecessor concerning the offenses of Acacius was read in the church of Thessalonica, and similarly in others, all together pronounced anathema upon him, and not one mixed himself in the communion of the prevaricator. Wherefore, since you admonish Us in fraternal love that We ought to administer, as it were, a certain medicine of faith to the bishops throughout Illyricum and others — although this has been done most copiously by Our predecessor of blessed memory — and since it is the custom of the Roman Church that a priest newly constituted send forth the form of his faith to the holy churches, I have endeavored to renew these same matters in this overly compressed brevity, so that the reader may, in this Our letter, on account of brevity recognize without weariness under what faith one ought to live, according to the statutes of the fathers.
Chapter II: The Formula of Faith — Two Perfect Natures, One Christ; The Anathema of the Catholic and Apostolic Church
2. We confess therefore that Our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, was born of the Father before all ages without beginning according to the Godhead, and in the last days from the holy Virgin Mary the same was incarnated and made a perfect man by the assumption of a rational soul and a body — homoousion with the Father according to the Godhead, and homoousion with us according to the humanity. For the unity of the two perfect natures has been made ineffably, on account of which We confess one Christ, the same only-begotten Son of God and of man from the Father, and firstborn from the dead — knowing that He is coeternal with His Father according to the divinity, according to which He is the artificer of all things, and that He deigned, after the consent of the holy Virgin, when she said to the angel: Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to thy word (Luke 1:38), ineffably to build for Himself a temple from her, and at once united it to Himself: which body He did not bring down coeternal from His own substance from heaven, but [took] from the mass of our substance, that is, from the Virgin. Receiving this and uniting it to Himself, the Word God was not turned into flesh, nor appeared as a phantasm, but inconvertibly and immutably preserved His own essence, and taking the first-fruits of our nature He united them to Himself. For God the Word, in the beginning, deigned to unite these first-fruits of our nature [to Himself] through His great goodness — because not commingled, but seen as one and the same in both substances, according to what is written: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up (John 2:19). For Christ Jesus is destroyed according to that substance which He assumed, and the destroyed He raises as His own temple — this He does according to the divine substance, according to which He is also the artificer of all. But never, through the resurrection of our union, did He depart from His own temple, nor can He depart, on account of His ineffable benignity. The same Lord Jesus Christ is both passible and impassible: passible according to the humanity, impassible according to the divinity. Therefore God the Word raised up His temple, and in Himself wrought the resurrection and renewal of our nature.
And this Christ our Lord and our God, after He arose from the dead, showed to His disciples, saying: Handle Me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see Me to have (Luke 24:39). He did not say as you say Me to be, but to have — that, considering both the One who has and that which is had, you may regard not commingling, not conversion, not change, but a unity that has been made. For this reason He showed the marks of the nails and the wound of the spear, and ate with His disciples — to teach the resurrection of our nature in Himself renewed in all respects: and because, according to the blessed substance of His divinity, He is inconvertible, immutable, impassible, immortal, in need of nothing, perfecting all things, He Himself permitted the sufferings to be brought upon His own temple, which He raised up by His own power, and through the perfection proper to that temple wrought the renewal of our nature.
But those who say Christ was an attenuated man, or a passible God, or that He was turned into flesh, or had a body not co-united, or that He brought it down from heaven, or that He is a phantasm, or saying that the mortal Word God needed to be raised by the Father, or that He assumed a body without a soul, or a man without intellect, or that the two substances of Christ, confused by commingling, were made one substance — and not confessing Our Lord Jesus Christ to be two unconfused natures and one person, according to which He is one Christ, one and the same Son: these the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes.
Chapter III: The Roman Synod and the Legation; Imperial Assistance for the Discipline of Illyricum
3. These therefore are the things, dearest brother, which you have urged that We ought to send as an antidote, since no bitterness nor harmful sweetness has frightened you off from looking [at it]. For We had arranged also from Our synod to dispatch certain persons, if the reason of the time had permitted: which We believe will be done at the appropriate time, when the correction of those parts has been announced to Us, the Lord helping, by the fullest legation, as We trust. Hoping also, in Our God’s mercy, that to this Our preaching the most clement and most Christian emperor may conjoin his own unanimity and assistance: that, on behalf of the faith in which he prevails, he may restrain in those regions those who, by their petty disputes and according to the elements of the world (as the vessel of election foretold), spin out superfluous and vain things, unwilling to be contained by the salutary disciplines. But you, as the same Apostle says, have not so learned Christ — if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, as the truth is in Jesus (Eph. 4:20–21) — which truth he certainly may apprehend who, as has often been said, observes the institutions of the orthodox fathers. May God preserve you safe, dearest brother!
Footnotes
- ↩ Lignidum = Lychnidos, modern Ohrid in North Macedonia — a metropolitan see in eastern Illyricum, the same ecclesiastical region addressed by Leo I in his vicariate letters to Anastasius of Thessalonica (Letters V–VI). Footnote 1 in Thiel records that manuscripts G¹ and G² omit the word episcopum from the salutation and attribute the letter to Gelasius rather than Anastasius II. Thiel’s attribution to Anastasius II is the better reading: the letter contains two distinct predecessor references — praedecessoris nostri who wrote on Acacius’s offenses (Felix III, 484), and beatae recordationis praedecessore nostro who supplied medicina fidei copiously to Illyricum (Gelasius I, whose Eastern correspondence is unusually prolific) — a structure that fits Anastasius II naturally and would be redundant under Gelasian authorship.
- ↩ The reference is to Felix III’s synodal sentence of 28 July 484, which excommunicated Acacius and required Eastern bishops, as the condition of restored communion with Rome, to dissociate themselves from him. What Laurentius reports, and Anastasius II receives with joy, is the substantive Eastern reception of that sentence in the Illyrican churches: the public reading of the Roman letter, the universal pronouncement of anathema, and the refusal of communion with anyone who remained in Acacius’s communion. The pattern documents what the Roman discipline of the period required and what at least the Illyrican metropolitan churches were willing to give: full canonical reception of a Roman sentence on an Eastern patriarch.
- ↩ Almost certainly Gelasius I (492–496), Anastasius II’s immediate predecessor and the most prolific author of doctrinal correspondence to the Eastern bishops in the corpus. The phrase copiosissime factum (“done most copiously”) fits Gelasius’s pontificate exactly: his letters to the bishops of Dardania (Letter XLII), to the bishops of Picenum (Letter L), to the Eastern bishops, and the doctrinal tracts De duabus in Christo naturis and others amount to a sustained Roman supply of medicina fidei to the wider Church. Anastasius II is presenting his own letter not as innovation but as the customary continuation of what Gelasius had already done copiously.
- ↩ The Latin is mos est Romanae ecclesiae sacerdoti noviter constituto formam fidei suae ad sanctas ecclesias praerogare. The claim is significant for the primacy question: it is the Roman bishop, on accession, whose formula of faith is sent to the holy churches — not the other way round. The verb praerogare (“to send forth,” “to send in advance”) carries the sense of a normative communication: the Roman pontiff’s profession is presented as the standard the wider Church receives. The custom Anastasius II invokes here is the same one that the Eastern patriarchs had violated when Acacius failed to send his synodal letters to Rome, and is the same custom that the Formula of Hormisdas (519) would codify as the requirement for any Eastern bishop wishing to be in communion with the Apostolic See.
- ↩ The Greek homoousion (consubstantial) is preserved in the Latin transliteration. The double application of the term — to the Father according to the Godhead, and to us according to the humanity — is the precise structure of the Chalcedonian formula (451) and of Leo I’s Tome (449). Anastasius II is professing the doctrine of the Council of Chalcedon as the standard of his communion, in unbroken continuity with Leo, Hilarus, Simplicius, Felix III, and Gelasius I — and against the Henoticon of Zeno-Acacius, which had attempted to set Chalcedon aside by silence.
- ↩ The list of anathemas that follows is comprehensive. Subtilem hominem (“an attenuated man”) targets Apollinarianism — the position that Christ lacked a full human soul or intellect, with the Word taking the place of the rational principle in Him. The phrase sine sensu hominem (“a man without intellect”) later in the list reinforces the Apollinarian target. Passibilem Deum targets patripassianism (modalism). In carne versum targets the position that the Word was transformed into flesh, losing its divinity. De coelo hoc detulisse targets the doctrine of a heavenly body brought down by the Word. Phantasma targets Docetism. Mortalem dicentes Deum Verbum indiguisse targets any position in which the divine Word required external help to rise. Sine anima corpus targets a body without a soul (a different version of the Apollinarian error). And the climactic clause — duas substantias Christi, secundum permixtionem confusas, unam factam fuisse substantiam — targets Eutychianism (monophysitism): the doctrine that the two natures of Christ became one through commingling. The formula’s positive content is the strict Chalcedonian formula: two unconfused natures, one person, one Christ, one and the same Son.
- ↩ The Latin of this clause is corrupt; Thiel’s apparatus notes the variant readings (refugite in G¹, bibere ne refugite in Baronius’s emendation, with Thiel’s preferred reading being refugit te). The sense — that Laurentius is willing to take both bitter medicines and sweet but harmful poisons under examination — is clear in the broad strokes even where the precise grammar is uncertain.
- ↩ The Roman synod (conventus) Anastasius II refers to has not been independently identified in the conciliar record, but the natural reading is that he had convened a synod at the beginning of his pontificate to address the Eastern question and the legation to Constantinople. The legation he refers to in the next clause is the same legation that brought Letter I to the Emperor Anastasius — the legation of Bishops Cresconius and Germanus.
- ↩ Vas electionis — the vessel of election — is Paul, drawing on Acts 9:15. The reference Anastasius II has in mind is Galatians 4:3 (and parallel passages in Colossians) on the elementa mundi — the “elements of the world” — to which the Galatians had been subjected before their conversion. The rhetorical effect is to align the Illyrican opponents with those Paul rebuked: men preoccupied with petty disputations and worldly principles rather than the faith.
Historical Commentary