Leo, bishop, to Pulcheria Augusta.
Leo Awaits Anatolius’s Profession of Faith; The Tome or Cyril’s Letter Required; The Italian Council Sought
I rejoice in the faith of your clemency, which you worthily devote to renewing the ecclesiastical peace that has been seen to be disturbed by the dissensions of certain persons. It especially pertains to your glory that, with all the scandals the enemy has stirred up against the Catholic faith removed, one and the same confession of truth may reign throughout the whole world — restored more easily and surely if no seeds and no traces of perverse opinions remain.
Yet what is my part I must not neglect: to ascertain, namely, what the bishop of Constantinople holds concerning the Incarnation of the Son of God — especially since harsh things preceded his ordination, and he ought to have sent us writings that would clearly demonstrate him to be free from the contagion of this error that has newly emerged. Desiring therefore to have secure concord with him and to extend to him the favor of brotherly charity, I deferred writing to him for a time — not denying affection, but awaiting the manifestation of Catholic truth.
What I require is simple and absolute: that, setting aside the labor of lengthy disputations, he assent to the letter of Cyril of holy memory, bishop of Alexandria — which he sent to Nestorius, in which he both refutes Nestorius’s error and expounds the faith of the Nicene definition — or to my letter directed to Flavian of holy memory, bishop. Having diligently reviewed these, let the Constantinopolitan bishop unhesitatingly acknowledge what he must repudiate — what ignorant folly dared define against the pure and singular faith — for my confession and that of the holy Fathers on the Lord’s Incarnation is in all things concordant and one. Whoever judges it not to be followed cuts himself off from the bond of Catholic unity — though we desire that all be restored intact.
To achieve the salutary measures more swiftly, I sent my brothers and fellow bishops Abundius and Asterius, and the most proven presbyters Basilius and Senator, to offer your clemency the form of faith we preach according to the doctrine of the venerable Fathers — and, with the circumlocutions by which truth is usually obscured removed, to show what the approved bishops of the whole world have defended concerning the Incarnation of the Son of God. After divine grace, it is fitting that they be aided by your holy piety, lest an imprudent purpose proceed to the disturbance of the whole Church — since with correction applied, all must return to the concord of one confession.
If from it some perhaps deviate, let a universal council of bishops be held within Italy, with your clemency’s support, so that with the art of deception removed, it may at last be clear what deeper deliberation must restrain or heal. This will profit both the universal Church and your empire, if one God, one faith, and one mystery of human salvation is held by the confession of the whole world.
Given on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of August, in the seventh consulship of Valentinian Augustus and in the consulship of Avienus, most illustrious men.
Footnotes
- ↩ Ordinationem ipsius dura praecesserint — “harsh things preceded his ordination.” This is Leo’s diplomatic formulation for the Latrocinium: the violent proceedings at Ephesus II in which Flavian was deposed, physically assaulted by Dioscorus’s supporters, and died from his injuries shortly afterward. Anatolius was installed in the see thus violently vacated. Leo cannot simply ignore the circumstances of the vacancy his interlocutor now fills. The phrase is diplomatic but precise: “harsh things” is deliberately understated, and its restraint is itself a form of pressure — Pulcheria, who knew exactly what had happened to Flavian, would have felt the full weight of it.
- ↩ Ad nos debuerit scripta dirigere — “he ought to have sent writings to us.” The phrase establishes an obligation running to the Apostolic See specifically. It is not that Anatolius ought to have published his orthodoxy generally, or sent writings to his own synod, or demonstrated his faith to the Eastern churches: he ought to have sent them to Rome. This is the same jurisdictional structure as the requirement later in the letter that his profession be “published to the Apostolic See and all the Lord’s bishops” — the Apostolic See is the institution to which the new bishop of Constantinople owes an account of his faith as a matter of duty.
- ↩ Leo offers Anatolius a choice: accept either Cyril’s letter to Nestorius (the standard anti-Nestorian text of the Ephesus I tradition) or the Tome (Letter XXVIII, Leo’s own letter to Flavian of June 449). The offer is generous in form but exacting in substance: both documents teach the same Christology, and either subscription commits Anatolius to the full two-natures doctrine that Eutyches and Dioscorus had been fighting to suppress. The Cyrillian alternative is offered so that Anatolius cannot claim Leo is imposing a purely Western standard on the East; Cyril is the East’s own great Christological authority. But assent to Cyril’s letter to Nestorius is assent to the Chalcedonian formula before Chalcedon has met.
- ↩ July 16, 450 — the same date as Letter LXIX to Theodosius. Both letters were dispatched simultaneously: Leo addressing the obstacle (Theodosius) and the ally (Pulcheria) on the same day with parallel content. The dual-track strategy visible throughout the post-Latrocinium correspondence — Leo always writing to both the emperor and his sister — reaches its final expression here. Theodosius would be dead twelve days later. The letter he never answered was answered instead by his successor Marcian, who shared Pulcheria’s convictions, authorized Chalcedon, and brought Leo’s year-long campaign to its vindication.
Historical Commentary