Leo, pope, to his most beloved brothers: Constantinus, Armentarius, Audientius, Severianus, Valerianus, Ursus, Stephanus, Nectarius, Constantius, Maximus, Asclepius, Theodorus, Justus Ingenuus, Augustalis, Superventor, Ynantius, Fonteius, Palladius.
Chapter I: Both Petitions Heard; Justice Must Preserve the Privileges of Both Churches
From reading the letters of your beloved, delivered by our sons the presbyter Petronius and the deacon Regulus, we clearly recognized the benevolent affection you extend to our brother and fellow bishop Ravennius — requesting that what his predecessor lost through excessive presumption be restored to him. But the bishop of Vienne, through letters and legates, had anticipated your brotherhood’s petition with his own complaint: that the bishop of Arles had usurped for himself the ordination of the bishop of Vaison. Since therefore both the reverence of the paternal canons and the favor of all of you must be preserved by us — so that in the privileges of the churches nothing may be overturned, nothing may we allow to be cut away — it followed that, in order to preserve peace within the Viennensis province, the moderation of justice should be applied: which would neglect neither the use of antiquity nor your desires.
Chapter II: Leo’s Sentence — Vienne Receives Five Cities; Arles Holds Authority Over the Remaining Province
Having considered the allegations of both parties’ present clerics, we find that both the Viennensis and Arelatensian cities have always been distinguished within your province — at times by one excelling in ecclesiastical privileges, at times the other, for various reasons, though they once shared common rights derived from their peoples. We therefore do not tolerate that the city of Vienne be entirely dishonored with respect to ecclesiastical justice — especially since it already benefits from our dispositive authority in the reception of its privilege.
The power taken from Bishop Hilary we have judged should be assigned to the Viennensis bishop. So that he not appear suddenly diminished, he shall preside over four neighboring cities — Valence, Tarantaise, Geneva, and Grenoble — with Vienne itself as the fifth, so that the solicitude of all those forenamed churches pertains to its bishop.
The remaining cities of the same province shall remain under the authority and ordination of the Arelatensian bishop — whom we trust, in the moderation of his temperance, to be so devoted to charity and peace that he will by no means consider lost what he sees granted to his brother.
Given on the third day before the Nones of May, in the seventh consulship of Valentinian Augustus and in the consulship of Avienus, most illustrious men.
Footnotes
- ↩ The Vaison dispute is the immediate occasion of the letter. Ravennius had apparently performed an ordination in the Viennensis province — specifically at Vaison (Vasio, modern Vaison-la-Romelle in Provence) — which the bishop of Vienne contested as an encroachment on his metropolitan territory. Leo hears both the Arelatensian petition (restore Ravennius’s broader privileges, stripped in the Hilary affair) and the Viennensis counter-petition (Arles has now usurped an ordination within our province) simultaneously and rules on both. The form is explicitly judicial: both parties’ representatives are present before Leo in Rome, he considers their allegations, and he delivers a binding sentence assigning limits to each.
- ↩ Non patimur — “We do not tolerate” — is Leo’s characteristic jurisdiction formula, appearing also in Letter IX (“we do not permit that we should differ in any point”) and Letter XXVII. The formula is not a request or a recommendation; it is the language of a governing authority declaring that a certain state of affairs will not be allowed to stand. Here Leo uses it in favor of Vienne — the counter-petitioner — against Arles, demonstrating that his judicial role is not simply to confirm what the Arelatensian bishops have requested but to render a just sentence to both parties.
- ↩ The four cities assigned to Vienne are: Valentia (Valence, on the Rhône), Tarantasia (Tarantaise, in the Alps), Genava (Geneva), and Gratianopolis (Grenoble). With Vienne itself as the fifth, the Viennensis bishop receives a coherent territorial bloc in the Alpine and Rhône corridor. The assignment is carefully calibrated: enough to give Vienne real metropolitan substance without conceding the broader Gallic primacy that Arles holds.
- ↩ This sentence is Leo’s formal confirmation of Arles’s metropolitan authority over the bulk of the Gallic province. “Under the authority and ordination” — sub auctoritate et ordinatione — assigns both jurisdictional governance and the specific episcopal function of performing ordinations. The Arelatensian bishop does not merely preside honorifically; he holds the operative metropolitan power. This is the confirmation the comprovincial bishops had petitioned for in Letter LXV, now issued as a formal judicial sentence of the Apostolic See. The continuity with Letter X is complete: what Hilary had seized by usurpation, and what Leo had stripped from him, is now formally re-constituted in Ravennius as a properly delegated authority confirmed by Rome.
- ↩ May 5, 450. The consulship of Valentinian VII and Avienus places this letter in the same year as Letters LX and LXI (April 16, 450). The manuscript tradition of Arles and Vallicella appends a note to this letter: “This decree of the lord Leo was confirmed by the Apostolic See, under Pope Symmachus presiding, in the consulship of Probus, most illustrious man” — i.e., reconfirmed under Pope Symmachus (498–514) in 489. The later reconfirmation is itself testimony to the ongoing force of Leo’s sentence: six decades after it was issued, it was still the operative jurisdictional instrument governing the Gallic church, requiring reaffirmation when its terms were again disputed.
Historical Commentary