Letter LXIII is Theodosius’s parallel response to Galla Placidia, corresponding to his Letter LXII to Valentinian. Its content is substantively the same — the Ephesine council was sound, Flavian rightly expelled, the paternal faith fully preserved — but its closing clause adds something not present in the Valentinian letter: “whatever some may say.” Theodosius is aware that his conduct is being criticized, and he is preemptively rebutting the charge. The “some” who are saying otherwise are, of course, Leo and the Western ecclesiastical and imperial coalition whose letters Galla Placidia has been transmitting.

The reader should be cautious about reading these Theodosian counter-letters as a principled Eastern counter-position to Roman authority. Theodosius is not opposing the Apostolic See; he is defending a council he believes was sound. But the question of what he actually believed — and how freely he was able to form that belief — is complicated by his court environment. The dominant figure at the Constantinople court in this period was Chrysaphius, the imperial chamberlain who had been the personal godson of Eutyches and who had been the primary architect of the Latrocinium. Chrysaphius had everything to lose from a reversal of Ephesus II and controlled much of what reached the emperor. Leo understood this, which is why he worked so persistently through Pulcheria as an alternative channel — she was orthodox, she had influence with her brother, and she was outside Chrysaphius’s orbit. What Theodosius was being told about the council’s proceedings, about Flavian’s guilt, and about Leo’s objections was being filtered through people with a strong interest in the Ephesine settlement standing. His letters are better read as the product of that environment than as a considered theological counter-claim. Chrysaphius, notably, was disgraced and executed shortly after Theodosius’s death, and the court environment that had sustained the Ephesine settlement collapsed with him — though the structural conditions that had made his influence possible would persist and deepen as Constantinople’s position as the center of imperial and commercial power grew.

The Nicaea-and-Ephesus framing is worth noting. Theodosius places the two councils in direct parallel: the Fathers gathered at Nicaea under Constantine, and the Fathers gathered at Ephesus by his own command. By this framing, Ephesus II stands on the same footing as Nicaea — both are gatherings whose definitions constitute the authoritative articulation of the paternal faith. Leo’s position, by contrast, is that Ephesus II cannot stand alongside Nicaea precisely because its outcome contradicts what Nicaea’s faith requires. The dispute is not only about Flavian; it is about which institution — a properly convened council, or the Apostolic See’s judgment — has the final word when a council’s acts are contested. That question Chalcedon would answer, and it would do so in a way that vindicated Leo’s position — though the manner of that vindication is itself instructive: Leo ratified Chalcedon’s doctrinal definitions while nullifying its Canon 28 on Constantinople’s privileges, demonstrating that the Apostolic See’s ratification was a substantive act of judgment, not a ceremonial endorsement, and that a properly convened council and a properly ratified one are not automatically the same thing. Ephesus II lacked both. Chrysaphius, notably, was disgraced and executed shortly after Theodosius’s death, and the court environment that had sustained the Ephesine settlement collapsed with him.