A letter of Felix, to which the title prefixed in the codex is of this kind: A letter of Pope Gelasius to Succonius, an African bishop established at Constantinople, who — fleeing the persecution of the Arians from Africa to Constantinople — by imprudently communicating, is accused of having fallen into the prevarication of the Chalcedonian synod: that he may correct [it].
Chapter I: Joy at Succonius’s Reputation, Turned to Grief at the Rumor of His Communion with the Adversary of Truth
Since the most widely spread opinion was speaking of your love’s constancy in Christ and most fervent doctrine, it cannot be told with what joys We exulted in the Lord — that divine grace had prepared such an outstanding vessel, most to be of profit in time of war; and, surrounding you with all [Our] prayers and [treating you] as if present at Our side, We accompanied you with the whole affection of Our heart, though absent.
But suddenly struck by a sad rumor, We confess We collapsed with consternated mind; and We hesitated long whether to send your love letters on these matters, for sorrow forbade speaking, [yet] the love of Christ would not allow silence. Amid these fluctuations divine knowledge prevailed — [that] by the whole body of Scriptures we are fully taught to admonish with free charity those thus forestalled by the creeping subtlety of temptations. For rumor first reported that your love was in communication, in the eastern parts, with the adversary of truth; then the report of many, not to be despised, made it clear. So that you may not accuse Us of having believed rashly: if it is false — which We pray — pardon Our solicitous piety concerning you; if true, accept patiently, I beg, the wholesome wounds of friends chastising, you who have submitted to the pernicious kisses of [friends] flattering.
Chapter II: The Scandal of Succonius’s Apostasy After His African Witness
Is it really so, most loving and most beloved one, that you could receive fellowship adversarial to the Catholic rule — and that so great a sacrilege found effect in you, which one would not believe could even creep upon your thoughts? Is it really so, that you chose to bear the pleasantness of the present time, rather than to be afflicted with the people of God?
[Our] spirit is stunned, [Our] wounded mind succumbs, [Our] mourning heart fails; nor yet is any lamentation found equal to so great a sorrow. Are you not that man who, despising the threats of kings, and scorning the deadly laws of raging barbarians, laid down at once fatherland, goods, and privileges of priestly honor — that you might deserve to receive these eternally in Christ? What then are We now doing? You have tarnished [that] glory, violated [your] confession, intercepted [your] victory; and by as much as confidence in your name and favor was growing at the Apostolic See, by so much now does a pitiable confusion come upon [Us].
Chapter III: The Two Horns of Antichrist; Peter Has Denied Communion to Those with Whom You Have Communicated
Had you not perceived that — with two horns, at one and the same time, prefiguring [their attack] no less in the East than in Africa — Antichrists were striving to undo Jesus? For the former so confess God as to deny that [Christ] is God; and the latter so preach the man as to strive to empty him of man. Among such deadly perils, what does it profit to have escaped the precipice, if one falls into the abyss?
Did it not come before your eyes — that not only those who do these things, but also those who consent to those doing them, are judged worthy of equal condemnation? Woe, if such wickedness was hidden from your learning! Woe yet more, if it was not hidden, and was done [nevertheless]! For if nothing else, this one thing could have sufficed your love to keep [you] from these [communions]: that you not mingle yourself with the communion of those to whom you knew blessed Peter had denied his own communion.
Chapter IV: The Lament of Jeremiah; the Roman Grief; the Call to Extricate Himself from the Snares
But when We look upon you — one filled with Scriptures and flourishing in Catholic instruction — We find the end of consolation so much the less, as We judge you to have knowingly sought the covenants of the lost. Who then will give water to Our head, and to Our eyes a fountain of tears (Jer. 9:1)? Now truly is there a departure from the fatherland’s way of life; now is true exile felt. For that [earlier flight] was for the sake of salvation; this [present one] for ruin.
Nor do We cast all these [laments] upon you alone without cause, since according to the Apostle, both in the glory of any one member all the members rejoice together, and in whatever part of the body one is convulsed, the whole joining is shaken (1 Cor. 12:26). And We indeed, by the affection We owe to you, have judged it must be made known to your prudence, the torment of Our inward parts. It will be your conscience’s concern, how you may not refuse to be extricated from these snares. For Our [part], the fruit in either case will not be empty — whether (what with all Our desires We implore) We may rejoice in the restoration of your salvation and reputation; or whether (may it not be) you scorn Our writings, We shall at least appear not to have failed in helping [Our] brother.
Footnotes
- ↩ The attribution of this letter is disputed. The codex from which the PL editor drew the text attributes it to Pope Gelasius (492–496); Scipione Maffei (1675–1755), whose critical note accompanies the PL text, argues for attribution to Felix III (483–492). Maffei’s grounds are: (1) chronology — Succonius of Uzala was among the 28 African bishops who fled Huneric’s persecution in 484, and the letter appears to have been written “not long after” the flight, which places it in Felix’s pontificate; (2) the Jeremiah 9:1 citation (“who will give water to our head”) occurs also in Felix’s Letter III to Peter the Fuller; (3) the “two horns of Antichrist” rhetoric (Arians in Africa and Eutychians in the East) fits Felix’s rhetorical style; and (4) the codex’s heading phrase ut corrigat parallels a Roman council phrase of Felix’s age. Maffei acknowledges a residual possibility that Succonius remained in exile into Gelasius’s time, and thus that the codex’s Gelasian attribution might be correct; but on balance he places the letter with Felix. The present edition follows Maffei.
- ↩ The phrase vas egregium — “outstanding vessel” — echoes the divine description of Paul as vas electionis, “a chosen vessel” (Acts 9:15), given to bear Christ’s name before the nations. Applied to Succonius, the phrase praises him as a man prepared by divine grace for exceptional service, and the “time of war” (belli tempore) refers to the Vandal persecution raging in Africa. The high praise of the opening is deliberate: it sets up the shock of what follows.
- ↩ The PL itself prints amicorum oscula — “the kisses of friends” — with an editorial [lege inimicorum], “read ‘enemies.'” The emendation is almost certainly correct: the context requires a contrast between friends chastising (the Roman rebuke) and enemies flattering (Acacius and his party). The Latin amicorum may be a scribal error for the original inimicorum, or else a sarcastic use of “friends” — those who pretend friendship while flattering one into error. Either way, the meaning is clear: Succonius has fallen under the blandishments of enemies.
- ↩ Succonius had been a bishop in proconsular Africa. The “threats of kings” and “deadly laws of raging barbarians” refer to the Arian Vandal kings — Huneric (477–484) above all, whose edict of February 484 summoned the African Catholic bishops to a conference at Carthage and, when they refused to submit to Arian terms, exiled most and persecuted the rest. Succonius was listed among the first of the proconsular province in Huneric’s catalog. Rather than submit, he fled. The rhetorical force of the chapter is the contrast: the man who stood against Vandal Arians at the cost of all his worldly goods has now, in safety at Constantinople, fallen into communion with the Monophysite East, trading the crown he had won in Africa for the comfort he sought in exile.
- ↩ The image of “two horns of Antichrist” (duobus cornibus… Antichristus) identifies the Arian persecutors in Africa and the Eutychian-Monophysite party in the East as two aspects of a single anti-Christian force. The biblical resonance is the two-horned beast of Revelation 13:11 and the horns of the little horn in Daniel 7, both traditional figures of the Antichrist. Felix’s rhetorical move is to collapse the distinction Succonius would have drawn: Succonius fled the Arian horn and thought himself safe at Constantinople, but he has fallen under the other horn of the same Antichrist. The two heresies differ doctrinally — the Arians deny Christ’s full divinity, the Eutychians deny his full humanity — but both, Felix says, are assaults on the one Christ, and the one who flees the first only to commune with the second has not escaped Antichrist at all.
- ↩ The phrase ne te illorum communioni misceres, quibus communionem suam beatum Petrum noveras denegasse — “that you not mingle yourself with the communion of those to whom you knew blessed Peter had denied his own communion” — is the theological heart of the letter. The Roman excommunication of Acacius is here described not as a decision of the Roman See but as Peter himself denying his communion. The theology is identical to the Petrine-legation formulation of Letter IX (beati apostoli Petri directa legatio), the Vicar-of-Peter theology of Letter XII (beati Petri qualiscunque vicarius), and the “to clear himself before the most blessed Apostle Peter” language of the Libellus: what Rome does, Peter does, because the Roman See is Peter’s own living voice and act. The clause noveras — “you knew” — places the accusation: Succonius did not commune with Acacius in ignorance but in knowledge of the Roman sentence, and therefore in knowledge of the Petrine sentence.
Historical Commentary