Leo, bishop, to Paschasinus, bishop of Lilybaeum.
Chapter I: The Tome Sent to Instruct Paschasinus as Legate; The Eutychian Error Refuted
Though I do not doubt that your brotherhood fully knows the origins of all the scandals stirred in the Eastern churches concerning the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, lest anything escape your solicitude, I sent for your diligent review and knowledge our most comprehensive letter to Flavian of holy memory — which the universal Church embraces — so that, understanding how with God’s aid the entire impiety of this error was destroyed, you too may adopt this spirit for your love of God: knowing that those who, following Eutyches’s impiety and madness, dared to say there are not two natures — perfect Divinity and perfect humanity — in our Lord, the only-begotten Son of God, are utterly detestable.
They think they can deceive our diligence, claiming to believe in one nature of the Word incarnate — though the Word of God, in the Divinity of the Father, Himself, and the Holy Spirit, has one nature, while the truth of our flesh, assumed by that unchangeable substance, is also united in nature. For it could not be called Incarnation unless flesh were assumed by the Word: a union so great that no division of Divinity is credible in the Virgin’s conception or birth, as Divinity and humanity met in the unity of the person.
Chapter II: The Error’s Abominability; Both Natures Remain in One Person
The impiety of Eutyches — long condemned and destroyed by the Fathers in prior heretics — is abominable, and should have given pause to this most foolish man. Unable to grasp it by sense, he might have avoided their example, lest by denying the truth of human flesh in our Lord Christ he render void the singular mystery of our salvation. For if there is no true and perfect human nature in Him, our assumption is null, and all we believe and teach — according to his impiety — is vanity and falsehood. But since truth does not lie nor Divinity suffer, both substances remain in one person in the Word of God, and the Church confesses her Savior as impassible in Divinity and passible in flesh, as the Apostle says: Though crucified through our weakness, He lives by God’s power (2 Cor. 13:4).
Chapter III: Patristic Testimonies Sent; Eastern Bishops’ Subscription to the Tome
That your charity be more fully instructed, I sent writings of our holy Fathers — on what they believed and preached about the mystery of the Lord’s Incarnation — for clear recognition: these our legates at Constantinople alleged together with my letter.
You should know the entire Constantinopolitan church, with all its monasteries and many bishops, expressed their accord and with their subscriptions anathematized Nestorius and Eutyches with their doctrines. You should also know I recently received the Constantinopolitan bishop’s letter, reporting that the bishop of Antioch, through circulars sent to his provinces, brought all bishops into accord with my letter — condemning Nestorius and Eutyches with like subscription.
Chapter IV: The Paschal Date for 455 to Be Investigated
We deem it necessary to entrust to your care that, as you are not unaware of the Paschal feast’s calculation, you diligently investigate and discuss with those skilled in this rule what we found in Theophilus’s annotation — which concerns us: how the day of the Lord’s Resurrection in the fourth year should be observed. For while the coming Pascha, God willing, is to be held on the tenth day before the Kalends of April, the next on the day before the Ides of April, the third on the day before the Nones of April — Theophilus of holy memory set the fourth on the Kalends of May, which we find wholly alien to ecclesiastical rule. In our Paschal cycles, which you rightly know, the Pascha of that year is written as the fifteenth day before the Kalends of May. Therefore, to remove all ambiguity for us, let your solicitude carefully discuss this with skilled experts, so we may avoid such error in the future.
Given on the eighth day before the Kalends of July, in the consulship of Adelfius, most illustrious man.
Footnotes
- ↩ Quam universalis Ecclesia amplectitur — “which the universal Church embraces.” Leo describes the Tome not as his personal theological letter but as the document the universal Church has accepted. By June 451 this is demonstrably true: the Constantinople church and monasteries, the bishop of Antioch, the Gallic bishops through Ravennius — all have subscribed. The Tome is not a Roman position paper; it is the articulation of the faith that the Church has recognized as its own. This is the formulation that Chalcedon would ratify four months later when the assembled bishops declared “Peter has spoken through Leo.”
- ↩ The patristic dossier Leo sends with this letter is the same collection of Fathers’ testimonies on the Incarnation that his legates had deployed at Constantinople in the pre-Chalcedon negotiations. Leo is arming Paschasinus with the same apparatus — Tome plus patristic testimony — that had already been used to demonstrate the continuity of his position with the tradition. At Chalcedon, this patristic case would be decisive: when the bishops heard the Fathers’ testimonies read alongside Leo’s Tome and declared them in agreement, the council’s verdict was theologically grounded in the full tradition, not merely in Leo’s personal authority.
- ↩ Consensum praebuisse — “expressed their accord,” “gave their agreement.” The word does not imply that their accord was necessary to validate what Leo had declared, or that the Tome required their ratification to be authoritative. The direction of the subscription is from them toward the standard Leo has established: they are conforming themselves to what Rome has determined, not authorizing it. The same distinction applies throughout the pre-Chalcedon subscription reports: Constantinople, Antioch, the Gallic bishops, and the Eastern monasteries are all aligning themselves with the Apostolic See’s position — confirming from their side what Rome had already declared from its own.
- ↩ The alignment of both Constantinople and Antioch — the second and third of the ancient patriarchal sees — with Leo’s letter is reported here as an accomplished fact four months before Chalcedon. The Alexandrian see under Dioscorus was the holdout; Jerusalem under Juvenal had sided with Dioscorus at Ephesus II. But Constantinople and Antioch have aligned themselves with the standard the Apostolic See has established. The cumulative reception of the Tome across the whole Church, documented in Letters LXVII–LXXXVIII, is the institutional preparation for Chalcedon’s reception of it as the doctrinal standard — a reception that confirms what Rome has declared, not one that brings it into being.
- ↩ The Paschal date dispute for 455 would occupy a significant portion of Leo’s subsequent correspondence — nine more letters survive on the subject alone. The Roman and Alexandrian Easter cycles disagreed by eight days for 455: the Alexandrian cycle (Theophilus’s table) placed it on April 24, the Latin 84-year cycle on April 17. The disagreement arose from different methods of calculating the lunar leap. Leo ultimately deferred to the Alexandrian reckoning for the sake of unity, though he was not persuaded by their technical arguments. The appointment of Paschasinus — bishop of Lilybaeum in Sicily, thus closer to North Africa and the Alexandrian world — as the investigator is appropriate: he would have access to both traditions.
- ↩ June 24, 451 — the same day as Letter LXXXIX to Marcian. This is Leo’s final major pre-Chalcedon dispatch: Paschasinus is being commissioned as lead legate, armed with the Tome, the patristic testimonies, and full knowledge of the subscription situation in the East. Four months later, at Chalcedon, Paschasinus will preside in Leo’s name, refuse to sit until Dioscorus is removed from the assembly, and oversee the reading of the Tome that produces the council’s declaration “Peter has spoken through Leo.”
Historical Commentary