The See of Peter

The Early Church and Peter's Primacy

Letter IX, from Pope Leo to Dioscorus, Bishop of Alexandria

Synopsis: Leo writes to Dioscorus, newly elevated to the see of Alexandria, to will that ordinations of priests and deacons be held only at the beginning of Saturday night or on Sunday morning, and that the Eucharistic sacrifice be repeated when a feast draws so great a crowd that the basilica cannot hold all the faithful — grounding both directives in the principle that the Roman Church abides in the institutions of Peter, who received the apostolic primacy from the Lord, and that the Alexandrian Church, founded by Peter’s disciple Mark, must therefore not diverge from Roman practice.

Leo, bishop, to Dioscorus, Bishop of Alexandria, greetings.

The Roman Church Abides in Peter’s Institutions; Alexandria, Founded by Peter’s Disciple, Must Not Diverge

How great an affection of charity in the Lord We bestow upon your beloved person you will be able to judge from this: that We desire to establish your beginnings more firmly, lest anything appear to be wanting to your perfection — since the merits of spiritual grace, as We have confirmed, are already working in your favor. Paternal and fraternal counsel ought therefore to be most welcome to Your Holiness, and to be received by you in the same spirit in which you understand it to proceed from Us. For it is fitting that We think and act as one, so that, as we read, it may be shown that there is likewise among us one heart and one soul (Acts 4:32).

For since the most blessed Peter received the apostolic primacy from the Lord, and the Roman Church abides in his institutions, it would be impious to believe that his holy disciple Mark, who was the first to govern the Church of Alexandria, framed the decrees of his traditions by different rules — since without doubt the same spirit of grace belonged both to the disciple and to the master from the one source, and one who was ordained could hand on nothing other than what he received from the one who ordained him. We do not, therefore, permit that, while we confess ourselves to be of one body and one faith, we should differ in any point; or that the institutions of teacher and disciple should appear to be otherwise than the same.

Chapter I: The Day on Which the Ordination of Priests and Deacons Must Be Celebrated

What We know, therefore, to have been observed with greater care by our fathers, We will also to be kept by you: that the ordination of priests or deacons not be celebrated indiscriminately on every day; but that the beginning of that night be chosen which dawns at the first light after the Sabbath, in which the sacred blessing may be conferred on those to be consecrated — they fasting, and by those who are fasting. The same observance will be maintained if it is celebrated on the morning of the Lord’s Day itself, the Sabbath fast being continued — from which moment the beginning of the preceding night does not recede, which undoubtedly belongs to the day of the Resurrection, as is also made clear in the Lord’s Pascha.

For beyond the authority of custom, which we know comes from apostolic teaching, holy Scripture also reveals (Acts 13:2–3) that when the apostles were sending Paul and Barnabas to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles by the Holy Spirit’s command, they laid hands on them while fasting and praying — so that we may understand how great a devotion is owed by both those who give and those who receive, lest so great a mystery of blessing appear to be fulfilled negligently. You will therefore act piously and in a manner worthy of praise toward apostolic institutions if you yourself observe this form for the ordination of priests throughout the Churches over which the Lord has willed you to preside: so that the blessing for those who are to be consecrated may never be conferred except on the day of the Lord’s Resurrection — to which the beginning is known to be attributed from the eve of the Sabbath — and which has been consecrated by so many mysteries of divine ordering that whatever the Lord has established most notably was accomplished on the dignity of this day. On this day the world received its beginning. On this day, through the Resurrection of Christ, death received its destruction and life its beginning. On this day the apostles receive from the Lord the trumpet of the Gospel to be proclaimed to all nations (Matt. 28:20), and receive the mystery of regeneration to be brought to the whole world. On this day, as the blessed Evangelist John attests, when the disciples had gathered together with the doors shut and the Lord had come in among them, He breathed on them and said: Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained (John 20:22–23). On this day, finally, the Holy Spirit promised by the Lord came upon the apostles (Acts 2:1; John 14:16; 16:7). By this heavenly rule, then, we know it to have been laid down and handed on to us that the mysteries of priestly blessings are to be celebrated on the day on which all the gifts of grace were bestowed.

Chapter II: The Sacrifice Is to Be Repeated When the Faithful Cannot All Be Received at Once

That Our observance may agree in all things, We will also this to be kept: that when any more solemn feast has summoned a larger assembly of the people, and such a multitude of the faithful has gathered as one basilica cannot hold at once, the offering of the sacrifice is undoubtedly to be repeated — lest those who have arrived later, not having been admitted to this act of devotion, be deprived of it. It is entirely in accord with piety and right reason that, as often as the arrival of a new body of people fills the basilica in which the liturgy is celebrated, the subsequent sacrifice be offered in turn. For it would be necessary that some part of the people be deprived of their devotion, if, holding to the practice of a single Mass, only those who had gathered in the first part of the day were able to take part in the offering.

We therefore exhort your beloved person with fraternal concern that what has taken root in Our observance from the form of paternal tradition your care should likewise not neglect, so that we may agree in all things with Us in faith and in practice. For this reason We have given this letter to be delivered to your brotherhood by Our son Possidonius the priest, who is returning to you, and who has frequently been present at Our processions and ordinations, and, having been sent to Us so many times, has come to know what We uphold in all things by the authority of the Apostolic See.

Given on the eleventh day before the Kalends of July.

Source/Reference

PL 54:624

Notes / Historical Commentary

Letter IX is addressed to Dioscorus of Alexandria, who had just succeeded the great Cyril upon his death in June 444. It is one of the earlier documents in the Leo corpus in which Leo writes to a major eastern bishop to establish the terms of their relationship, and its opening paragraph contains what may be the most compressed and logically explicit statement of Roman primacy in the entire collection. The reader who wishes to understand how Leo understood his own authority — and how he communicated that understanding to the great sees of the East — will find Letter IX essential.

The heart of the letter, for the primacy question, is found in the opening section before the disciplinary chapters begin. Leo’s argument runs as follows: Peter received the apostolic primacy from the Lord. The Roman Church abides in Peter’s institutions. Mark was Peter’s disciple, and he founded the Alexandrian Church. Therefore it is nefas — impious, sacrilegious — to suppose that Mark established practices at Alexandria different from what he received from Peter. And since Rome is the living custodian of Peter’s tradition, Alexandria must not diverge from what Rome keeps. The reader should note that this is not an argument from conciliar consensus, from the agreement of multiple sees, or from any imperial endorsement. It is a direct deduction from the Petrine primacy itself: Rome’s practice is normative because Rome holds Peter’s primacy. Whatever Rome keeps, all churches founded in the Petrine tradition must keep. This is the primacy argument in its purest and most direct form, and it is applied here not to a peripheral church but to the see that considered itself second only to Rome in the entire Christian world.

The force of this argument is reinforced by the verb Leo uses when he prohibits divergence: non patimur — “We do not permit” or, more precisely, “We do not tolerate.” This is the language of a jurisdiction being exercised. Leo is not asking Dioscorus to consider a point of view; he is telling him that a certain state of affairs will not be allowed to stand. That this language appears in a letter dealing with liturgical timing might seem disproportionate, but it is not: the specific disciplines (ordination days, repetition of the sacrifice) are the vehicles for a larger claim. By instructing Dioscorus on how things must be done in the Alexandrian churches, Leo is simultaneously establishing the principle that Roman practice governs Alexandrian practice — and that this is not a custom or preference but a consequence of the apostolic structure of the Church.

The closing of the letter deserves as much attention as the opening. Possidonius, the Roman presbyter who carries this letter, is described as one who has frequently attended Leo’s own processions and ordinations — meaning he has direct, embodied knowledge of what Roman liturgical practice looks like — and who, having been sent to Leo many times, has come to know “what We uphold in all things by the authority of the Apostolic See.” The phrase apostolicæ auctoritatis — “of the Apostolic See” — appears here not as an abstract title but as the explicit ground of what Leo holds and what Possidonius has witnessed. The letter begins with the theological basis of Roman authority (the Petrine primacy) and ends with its institutional expression (the Apostolic See’s authority, personally embodied in the pope’s own liturgical practice). Possidonius is, in effect, a living supplement to the text — someone who can show what the letter only describes.

Letter IX carries a particular irony that the reader of the full Leo corpus will not miss. Dioscorus, the recipient of this careful instruction in Petrine ecclesiology, would within a few years become Leo’s most determined ecclesiastical opponent. At the Council of Ephesus II in 449 — the council Leo called a “den of robbers” — it was Dioscorus who presided over the proceedings that condemned Leo’s theology and humiliated his legates. The deference and instruction of Letter IX belongs to a moment before the Eutychian controversy had forced a confrontation. For the historian, this makes the letter more rather than less valuable: it records the terms on which Leo and Alexandria interacted when the relationship was still collegial, and it makes unmistakably clear that even at its most collegial, Leo understood that relationship to be structured by Roman primacy rather than by any parity of equals.