Leo, bishop, to Faustus, Martinus, Petrus, Manueli, Job, Antiochus, Abrahamius, Theodorus, Pientius, Eusebius, Helpidius, Paulus, Asterius, and Charosus, presbyters and archimandrites, and Jacobus, deacon and archimandrite.
Leo Complains of Anatolius’s Silence on Renouncing Errors; Legates Dispatched; The Archimandrites Called to Collaborate
The cause of the faith — on which Christian salvation rests — compels me to labor with much solicitude, fearing that the wickedness that should have been cut off at its roots may, with time’s passage, become more stubborn and widespread.
For although the most clement emperor sent us letters showing his solicitude for the peace of the universal Church, the Constantinopolitan bishop himself, and those who consecrated him, have indicated nothing to us about suppressing or renouncing errors — beyond what pertained to the new bishop’s ordination: as if no scandal, no offense had existed in that Church, or as if the ordained man’s merit need not chiefly be demonstrated by showing himself free from the notions adverse to Catholic teaching.
Lest the examination of truth be drawn out into excessive delays — as tends to happen across distant regions — We have sent our brothers and fellow bishops Abundius and Asterius, and the most proven presbyters Basilius and Senator, to the most pious prince with sufficient instruction of the paternal authorities.
We desire your diligence and solicitude to aid them in all things, most beloved brothers, so that the impiety which with blind audacity has rushed into ruinous precipices may no longer have the power to deceive the simple — since we also desire, through corrective remedies, to aid those who erred through ignorance or were led astray by fear. Therefore you, who are justified by faith — because you cherish Catholic truth and have been taught by the Holy Spirit concerning the singular mystery of human salvation — collaborate with us, and strive with all possible devotion so that, with falsehood destroyed and the solidity of the faith defended, we may securely enjoy the peace of God throughout the whole world.
Given on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of August, in the seventh consulship of Valentinian Augustus and in the consulship of Avienus, most illustrious men.
Footnotes
- ↩ Multa me sollicitudine laborare compellit — the solicitude formula in its personal form. As in Letter LXI (“I am mindful that I preside over the Church under the name of him whose confession was glorified”), Leo frames his engagement with the Constantinople crisis not as political maneuvering but as the necessary expression of his office. The causa fidei — the cause of the faith — is what drives him. The Roman bishop’s solicitude for the distant churches is not optional; it is the defining obligation of the office he holds.
- ↩ The silence of Anatolius and his ordainers is itself the complaint. The new bishop of Constantinople, installed in the see vacated by Flavian’s violent deposition, has sent Leo his self-presentation (Letter LIII) but nothing concerning the Eutychian controversy — no doctrinal declaration, no repudiation of the error his own sponsors had championed at Ephesus II. Leo’s complaint here connects directly to Letter LXX’s assertion that Anatolius “ought to have sent us writings” demonstrating his orthodoxy: the obligation existed, the obligation was not met, and Leo is now making that default explicit to the Constantinople monastic community.
- ↩ “The paternal authorities” — paternarum auctoritatum instructio — refers to the collected testimonies of the holy Fathers on the Incarnation that Leo had assembled and was sending with his legates. These are the same patristic dossiers that Leo’s Tome had drawn on and that he had been accumulating as evidence of the received tradition. The legates carry not only Leo’s personal doctrinal position but the weight of the patristic tradition behind it — a deliberate counter to the claim that Leo was imposing a novel Western standard on the East.
- ↩ July 17, 450 — one day after Letters LXIX and LXX (July 16). The three letters constitute a single coordinated dispatch: Leo writing simultaneously to Theodosius, to Pulcheria, and to the Constantinople archimandrites within the space of two days. Eleven days later, on July 28, Theodosius II was dead. The Eutychian court that had obstructed Leo for nearly a year collapsed with him, and Marcian’s succession opened the path to Chalcedon.
Historical Commentary