Hormisda to Justin, Emperor.

Among the matters pertaining to the unity of the Church, for which God has chosen to bestow the empire on your clemency, you, venerable Emperor, have also written concerning these matters, demonstrating in various ways your care for the faith. You have added that some petitions should be brought to the notice of humility, so that I might understand from them what questions have arisen or provide an appropriate response to remove any ambiguity from the consultation.

I have read everything with the proper concern. And although it might have been sufficient for the completeness of a response to only repeat those matters that have been defined by the ancients, I still believed it necessary, in order to reward the devotion of your religious purpose, not to withhold the service of my own discourse. For what has the paternal instruction omitted against the emerging poisons of Nestorius and Eutyches? Almost all impieties, together with the authors of such abominable doctrines, have been condemned by the decrees of the synods. No room remains for such dire seeds of treachery to claim either that Christ, our Lord, lacked true flesh or that He did not come forth as God and man from the immaculate fruitfulness of a mother’s womb.

For one of these men, denying the dispensation by which we were saved, nullifies it as much as possible; the other, with a contrary opinion but equal impiety, tries to separate divine power from true humanity in our Lord Jesus Christ. Neither remembered that Christ showed His flesh to be touched, nor the Gospel which says, “The Word became flesh” (John 1), to which the Lord’s voice ought to resound unceasingly, saying, “No one has ascended into heaven except He who descended from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven” (John 3).

These things have often been included in many sentences of earlier teachings. Yet even though they have already been stated, your clemency, though, will not disdain to hear them again; nor is it a shame for us to repeat what has been declared by our predecessors. Indeed, it is not possible for there to be diversity of teaching where there is one form of truth; nor will it be judged alien if, with those with whom we agree in faith, we also agree in doctrine.

Let the decrees of the synods and the constitutions of blessed Pope Leo, which are in accordance with the holy faith, be recited to your pious ears; you will find the same in them as you find in ours. What, therefore, is left after the foundation of faithful statutes? What more can any overly curious investigator inquire, if he keeps to the limits of faith? Unless, perhaps, someone prefers to doubt rather than believe, to dispute rather than to know, to follow uncertainties rather than to hold to established decrees.

If the Trinity is God, that is, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and if God is uniquely and explicitly described by the lawgiver, saying, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord” (Deut. 6), anyone who has a different view must necessarily either divide the divinity into many parts or attach a special passion to the very essence of the Trinity. This (God forbid!) would either introduce many gods in the profane manner of the Gentiles or transfer a sensible punishment to that nature which is immune from all suffering.

The Trinity is one; the Holy Trinity is not multiplied in number, does not grow in magnitude; nor can it be comprehended by human intelligence, nor can its divine nature be divided by any means. Who, then, would dare to impose a profane division on that secret and impenetrable essence, which neither any visible nor invisible nature could investigate, and reduce the mysteries of the divine to human calculation?

Let us adore the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—distinct without division, incomprehensible, and indescribable in the substance of the Trinity—where, although the concept of persons admits number, the unity does not allow separation of the essence. Let us preserve what is proper to the divine nature, keep what is proper to each person; neither should the singularity of the divinity be denied to the persons, nor should what is proper to the names be transferred to the essence.

Great is the holy and incomprehensible mystery of the Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit—an undivided Trinity. It is known that it is proper to the Father to generate the Son, proper to the Son of God to be born from the Father equal to the Father, and proper to the Holy Spirit to proceed from the Father and the Son under one substance of divinity. It is also proper to the Son of God that, according to what is written: “In the last times, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1), in the womb of the holy Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, the natures of both were united without any confusion, so that He who was the Son of God before all time became the Son of Man; and was born in time, in the manner of men, not opening the womb of His mother and by the power of His divinity not dissolving her virginity.

Indeed, it is a fitting mystery that God, being born, should preserve the birth without corruption, who caused conception without seed, keeping what He was from the Father and showing what He took from the mother. For lying in a manger, He was seen in heaven; wrapped in swaddling clothes, He was adored by the Magi; born among animals, He was announced by the angels. Hardly out of infancy, yet proclaiming mystical teachings without a teacher, while still a child, showing heavenly signs of virtues.

The same is both God and man, not (as unbelievers say) under the introduction of a fourth person; but He Himself, the Son of God, is both God and man—strength and weakness, humility and majesty, Redeemer and sold, placed on the cross and giver of the kingdom of heaven. So much a partaker of our weakness that He could be killed, yet so much the Lord of innate power that He could not be consumed by death. He was buried, according to what a man willed to be born; and according to what He was like the Father, He rose again—suffering wounds and saving the sick, one with the dead, and the life-giver of the dying. He descended into hell and did not depart from the Father’s bosom, from which He immediately took back the soul He had laid down in common condition, by His singular power and admirable patience.

These things must be accepted without any doubt. The same Lord Jesus Christ instructed us with the example of two apostles so that we might not doubt that He was God during His bodily suffering, nor believe that He was only God and not man during the wondrous deeds of His miracles.

If anything more were needed to discuss those who disagree with these things, I could have more extensively discussed matters relating to the deity and humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ and the union of two natures in Him without confusion, according to the definitions of the ancients. However, since both the synodal decrees and the teachings of blessed Pope Leo are in everyone’s hands, it seemed more suitable to briefly touch upon a few things than to go through them all comprehensively.

Now, it is enough to recognize and beware of what must be thought concerning the property and essence so that we may know what we should attribute to the person and what to the substance. Those who do not properly know these matters or who cunningly dissimulate with impiety, while omitting what is proper to the Son, aim at traps against the unity of the Trinity.

But if the things previously mentioned are held firm with strong roots and we do not depart from the tradition of the fathers, we shall stand firmly against these questions. Given on the seventh day before the calends of April, in the consulship of Valerius, the most illustrious man (in the year of our Lord 521).