Leo, bishop, to Julian, bishop.
Leo Requests Julian’s Solicitude Join His Legates’ Efforts; The Ephesine Storm’s Remnants Require Sagacious Moderation
It is always pleasing to receive the letters of your charity, and it is fitting that our writing be sent to you — especially since we do this not only for the sake of common friendship but far more for the state of the universal Church.
Therefore, through our brothers Lucentius, bishop, and Basilius, presbyter — whom we indicated we would send to Constantinople — I render due discourse, urging your diligence’s zeal to join them in all things, so that any remaining remnants of scandal may be sagaciously removed. Though the Catholic faith’s light now shines everywhere and, most powerfully, Christian princes’ hearts serve divine authority, some matters so confused by that Ephesine storm require great moderation — to prevent the evils of the dissensions thence arising from enduring.
What we entrusted and committed to our legates you will learn through their report — extending your affection to me and to them, so that with your charity’s zeal and solicitude, and with the Lord’s aid, what we have mandated may achieve the desired effect.
Given on the fifth day before the Ides of June, in the consulship of Adelfius, most illustrious man.
Footnotes
- ↩ The phrase pro universalis Ecclesiae statu — “for the state of the universal Church” — appears here as it did in Letter LXXXV to Anatolius, identifying the scope of the entire June 9 operation. What Leo is conducting through his legates and his trusted Eastern agents is not a regional Eastern church matter; it is a governance action whose subject is the universal Church. Julian, like Anatolius, is enrolled in the Apostolic See’s solicitude for that universal body.
- ↩ The same enrollment pattern visible in Letter LXXXI: Julian’s diligence is to join itself to the legates’ work, just as in LXXXI his own spirit and the Apostolic See’s authority were named as the two sources of his support. Leo is coordinating a network of agents — legates, Julian, Anatolius — all operating within the framework he has defined, each contributing their local knowledge and personal relationship to an operation directed from Rome.
- ↩ June 9, 451 — the fourth letter in the coordinated June 9 packet. The sequence: LXXXIII to Marcian (institutional framework), LXXXIV to Pulcheria (operational directives about Eutyches), LXXXV to Anatolius (detailed reconciliation procedure), LXXXVI to Julian (personal cover letter for the legates). All four dispatched on the same day, covering every major Eastern channel simultaneously.
Historical Commentary