To the most blessed lord, Pope Leo: the prayers sent by all the comprovincial bishops of the metropolis of Arles.
Chapter I: The Bishops Report Ravennius’s Election and Request the Restoration of Arles’s Ancient Privileges
Mindful of how much honor and reverence is always due to the most blessed Apostolic See, over which our Lord Jesus Christ willed you to preside for your sanctity’s merits, we took care to inform your apostolate through letters immediately dispatched about the ordination by which our holy brother and fellow bishop Ravennius was — with all votes concurring and the Lord favoring — raised to the highest pontificate in the city of Arles, after the passing of Bishop Hilary of blessed memory.
We give immense thanks that your beatitude responded to these letters with such condescension and charity — though we cannot repay as much as we owe. Though we already knew our aforementioned holy brother and fellow bishop earned your crown’s favor through his gentle morals and sanctity, your beatitude’s letters now clearly show how much charity you embrace him with. Thus, with the duties rightly owed to your apostolate, we do not doubt that your crown will hear our petition, which serves justice — for it seeks not to establish new things but to restore through you the ancient and original privileges. It is not just that the honor of one you dearly love should be diminished by what another offended your piety. Clearly, divine grace’s favor attends the Church of Arles, which rejoiced to have such a bishop through whom the privileges of ancient dignity — which it grieved to see temporarily diminished — are restored forever by the more recent authorities of the Apostolic See.
Chapter II: Through the Blessed Peter, the Roman Church Holds the Primacy of All the Churches of the Whole World; Arles Holds the Primacy in Gaul Through Trophimus
It is not unknown to all the Gallic regions, nor to the sacrosanct Roman Church, that the city of Arles, first within the Gauls, merited the holy Trophimus — sent by the most blessed Apostle Peter — as its bishop; from him the good of faith and religion was gradually infused into the other regions of Gaul. By right and merit, that city always held the apex of holy dignity which first received the first fruits of our religion through holy Trophimus and afterward spread within Gaul what it gained by divine gift through zealous salutary teaching. By this honor, all our predecessors revered the Church of Arles as a mother with due honor, and following tradition, all our cities’ sees sought bishops from this see. Both our predecessors and we were consecrated to the highest episcopal office by the bishop of Arles, the Lord granting.
Following this antiquity, the predecessors of your beatitude confirmed with their promulgated authorities what ancient tradition had granted to Arles’s privileges — believing it full of reason and justice that, just as through the most blessed Peter the prince of the Apostles the sacrosanct Roman Church holds the primacy of all the churches of the whole world, so also the Church of Arles — which merited from the apostles the holy Trophimus as its bishop — should claim for itself the right of ordinations. The aforementioned church enjoys these privileges according to religion.
Chapter III: The Civil Honors Bestowed on Arles by the Emperors; The Apostolic See’s Mandate Extends Its Governance Throughout All the Gauls
Moreover, many things commend Arles over all cities in our regions by princely decrees. It was so singularly honored by the most glorious memory of Constantine that, beyond its own name by which it is called Arles, it received the name Constantina from his title. The most clement princes Valentinian and Honorius adorned it with special privileges, calling it — in their words — the “Mother of all Gaul.” In this city, whoever in Gaul wished to display the insignia of dignity from the time of these princes took and bestowed consulships. The highest prefecture and other powers inhabit it as a common homeland for all, to which people flock from all cities for many benefits. And divine dispensation, we believe, has so aligned all things that, as the Church of Arles holds the primacy in the priesthood within Gaul by antiquity’s merit, so also the city itself should possess the primacy of opportunity in the rank of secular administration.
It came about that not only the ordination of the Viennensis province, but also of three provinces — in contemplation of holy Trophimus, as the authority of your holy predecessors made known to them also testifies — the priest of the Arelatensian church always recalled to his own solicitude and care; and it was conferred upon him as honor and dignity that he not only govern these provinces with his own power, but also hold all the Gauls subject to him by mandate of the Apostolic See, under every ecclesiastical rule.
Chapter IV: The Bishops Beseech Leo by the Name of Christ and of the Blessed Apostle Peter to Confirm Arles’s Privileges in Perpetuity
Having conveyed all this and brought it to your beatitude’s notice with faithful assertion, we beseech and implore your holy crown — through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has chosen in you justice, patience, tranquility, and all the goods of sanctity and perfection; and through the most blessed Apostle Peter, whom we believe your life and conduct restore to us by divine gift — to command that all the privileges which the Church of Arles received from antiquity, or claimed by the authority of the Apostolic See, as we have indicated, be restored to the bishop of this church in perpetuity by the enduring authority of your beatitude.
We would have presented ourselves to your holiness’s sight for these duties or this legation’s purpose — but some were hindered by infirmity, others by this year’s scarcity. Yet we trust in our Lord Jesus Christ, who has given effect to our prayers and desires through the most prompt piety of your beatitude: that though we are now deprived of this legation’s office, we will afterward render thanks through our own actions.
Footnotes
- ↩ The opening address establishes the entire letter’s premise: the bishops come to Leo because Christ himself willed him to preside over the Apostolic See. The authority they are about to invoke for their petition — the Roman primacy — is here acknowledged as divinely constituted, not humanly negotiated. The petition for Arles’s privileges rests on that foundation: the Apostolic See that confirms or strips metropolitan privileges does so by Christ’s appointment.
- ↩ The derivation argument the bishops employ is structurally identical to Leo’s own in Letter IX (the Mark-Alexandria letter): a local church’s apostolic dignity is derived from the specific apostolic figure who founded it, who in turn derived his authority from Peter. As Mark was Peter’s disciple who founded Alexandria, Trophimus was Peter’s missionary who evangelized Arles. The bishops are not merely flattering Rome; they are invoking a structural principle that grounds their own claim in the same source as Rome’s — and doing so in a petition addressed to the bishop who holds that source.
- ↩ Sicut per beatissimum Petrum principem apostolorum sacrosancta Ecclesia Romana tenet principatum omnis totius mundi Ecclesiarum — “just as through the most blessed Peter the prince of the Apostles the sacrosanct Roman Church holds the primacy of all the churches of the whole world.” This is among the most explicit statements of Roman universal primacy by external witnesses anywhere in the fifth-century record — and it comes not from Leo but from the bishops of southern Gaul, who are grounding their own petition in the structural fact of Roman primacy over the whole world. The phrase does not admit of a merely honorific reading: principatum omnis totius mundi Ecclesiarum is “the primacy of all the churches of the whole world” — universal in scope, not a precedence of honor within a deliberative body of equals. The argument is that Arles’s primacy in Gaul participates structurally in Rome’s primacy over the whole world, both being grounded in the Petrine mission. To acknowledge the Arelatensian claim is therefore to rest on the Roman claim that underlies it. The bishops are not arguing for Roman primacy; they are assuming it as the premise from which their own petition follows.
- ↩ The phrase apostolicae sedis vice mandata — “by mandate of the Apostolic See” — is the key jurisdictional statement of Chapter III. The Arelatensian bishop’s governance of the broader Gallic provinces is not an inherent metropolitan right but an explicit delegation from the Apostolic See. This is exactly the structure Leo confirmed in Letter LXVI: Arles holds its authority over the Gallic churches under the Apostolic See’s authority, not independent of it. What Rome delegates, Rome can also define and limit — as Leo demonstrated with the Hilary affair in Letter X.
- ↩ The closing petition makes explicit the appellate-and-confirmatory structure underlying the entire letter. The bishops are not asking each other to confirm Arles’s privileges; they are asking Leo. The Apostolic See is the institution with the authority to vindicate metropolitan privilege — and what it vindicates “remains in perpetuity.” This is the Roman bishop’s universal solicitude operating in the Gallic context, precisely as Leo articulated it in Letter X and as his predecessors had exercised it through the correspondence the bishops allude to. Note also the closing invocation: “through the most blessed Apostle Peter, whom we believe your life and conduct restore to us by divine gift.” The bishops of Arles are expressing, in their own words addressed to Leo, the same theology of Petrine succession that Leo articulates in Letter LXI: the bishop of Rome governs the Church under Peter’s name, and in him Peter is present and accessible to those who appeal to his See.
Historical Commentary