The See of Peter

The Early Church and Peter's Primacy

Letter XCV, from Pope Leo to Empress Pulcheria

Synopsis: Leo informs Pulcheria that he has sent legates to the synod to act in his stead, explains that his consistent intention throughout the controversy has been to preserve the faith’s integrity while offering pardon to those who repent, contrasts this with the cruelties of the Ephesine Latrocinium, and reports that nearly all who were led into consent to the heresy have already obtained perpetual absolution and the peace of the Apostolic See by rescinding their acts and condemning what they had written.

Leo, bishop, to Pulcheria Augusta.

Chapter I: Leo Recognizes Pulcheria’s Devotion and Reports the Dispatch of His Legates to the Synod

Your clemency’s religious solicitude, devoted without ceasing to the Catholic faith, I fully recognize; and I give thanks to God for the great care you show for the universal Church, most glorious Augusta. And so I confidently set before you what I judge befits justice and benevolence, so that with Christ’s favor the irreproachable zeal of your piety may be quickly brought to a praiseworthy effect.

Although your clemency commanded a synod at Nicaea, and your gentleness has kept alive my request that it be held in Italy — so that all the bishops of our regions might convene, if the security of the times permitted — I received it nonetheless without disdain; I appointed two from my fellow bishops and two from my fellow presbyters to fulfill the duties of My presence — sending appropriate letters also to the venerable synod, so that the summoned brotherhood might know what form to observe in its deliberations, opposing neither the rules of the faith, nor the statutes of the canons, nor the remedies of benevolence.

Chapter II: Leo Explains His Consistent Moderation — and Contrasts It With the Ephesine Latrocinium

For as I have written most frequently from the very beginning of this affair, I have always wished this moderation to be maintained among discordant opinions and carnal rivalries: that nothing be taken from or added to the integrity of the faith, while yet the remedy of pardon be supplied to those returning to unity and peace. For the works of the devil are then more powerfully destroyed when human hearts are recalled to love of God and neighbor. But how contrary to these counsels and entreaties of mine were the acts of that proceeding at Ephesus — not a judgment but a robbery — it would take much to explain; nor need every outrage that was perpetrated in that affair be gathered into the space of a letter. There the leaders of the synod spared neither those brothers who resisted them nor those who consented: for to undermine the Catholic faith and to strengthen an execrable heresy, they stripped some of the privilege of honor, and infected others with partnership in their impiety — more savage, in truth, against those whom they drew away from innocence by persuasion than against those whom they made blessed confessors by persecution.

Chapter III: Leo Has Never Denied Pardon to the Repentant; Nearly All Have Already Obtained the Peace of the Apostolic See

Yet since such men chiefly harmed themselves by their iniquity — and the greater the wounds, the more diligent the medicine that must be applied — I have never in any letter declared that pardon is to be denied to those who repent. And while we hold immovably in detestation the heresy most hostile to the Christian religion, those who correct themselves without doubt and purify themselves with worthy satisfaction we do not judge to be strangers to the ineffable mercy of God; rather, we groan with those who groan and weep with those who weep, and use in this way the rigor of justice so as not to lose the remedies of charity — as your piety knows, this is not only promised in words but shown in deeds. For indeed nearly all who had been either led or coerced into consent with those who presided, by rescinding what they had decreed and condemning what they had written, have obtained perpetual abolition of guilt and the grace of the Apostolic See’s peace.

Chapter IV: Leo’s Purpose Has Been the Extinction of Heresy, Not the Loss of Any Soul; the Heresiarchs Retain Their Sees Pending Their Decision

If your clemency deigns to consider my intention, you will approve that I have acted throughout on this principle: that without the loss of any soul, the extinction of heresy alone should be secured — and that for this reason I have diminished something of the customary standing of the authors of the most savage disturbances, so that their tardiness might be roused by some compunction to seek indulgence. And although, after that judgment of theirs so impious and so unjust, they are no longer so honorable to the Catholic brotherhood as they once were, they still hold their sees and enjoy the honor of their episcopal office — either to receive the peace of the entire Church through true and necessary satisfaction, or, if they defend heresy — God forbid — to be judged by the merit of their profession.

Dated the thirteenth day before the Kalends of August, in the consulship of Adelfius, most illustrious man.

Source/Reference

PL 54:942

Notes / Historical Commentary

Letter XCV belongs to the July 451 cluster Leo sent to the imperial court as the Council of Chalcedon drew near, and it is the richest of the empress-letters for the question of how Leo understood his penitential authority. Where Letter XCIV to Marcian focused on logistics and the no-disputation principle, XCV gives Pulcheria a theological account of Leo’s entire handling of the Eutychian crisis — a retrospective that makes explicit what the short commission-letters to the legates only implied.

The structural heart of the letter is in Chapter III. Leo reports that nearly all who had been led or coerced into consent with Dioscorus at the Latrocinium of 449 “have obtained perpetual abolition of guilt and the grace of the Apostolic See’s peace” — apostolicæ pacis gratiam. The phrase is precise and deliberate. Restoration is not simply a matter of a bishop retracting his signature or professing orthodoxy before his own synod; it is a reception into the peace that the Apostolic See grants. The Apostolic See’s peace is the standard of Catholic unity, and to obtain it is to be received back into that unity. The reader will find the same structure in Leo’s letters governing Anatolius’s reconciliation of the Eastern episcopate (Letters LXXX–LXXXI): the conditions under which reconciliation occurs are Leo’s to set, and the peace that results is his to grant.

Chapter II’s description of the Latrocinium deserves attention as well. Leo’s phrase — “not a judgment but a robbery,” non judicio sed latrocinio — was already coined in the earlier correspondence; its repetition here to Pulcheria, the empress who had opposed the Latrocinium from the beginning, is a reminder of shared ground. But the specific accusation Leo levels is more precise than the epithet: the leaders of Ephesus II spared “neither those who resisted them nor those who consented.” The cruelty ran in both directions. Those who opposed the heresy were stripped of their privileges; those who went along were “infected with partnership in impiety.” Both groups suffered — one through persecution, the other through spiritual corruption. This double charge is exactly what makes the Latrocinium more than a procedural failure: it was an assault on the Catholic faith mounted from within the episcopate itself, and it required the kind of intervention that only a see with universal jurisdiction could provide.

The letter closes with a passage that clarifies Leo’s strategy toward the heresiarchs — Dioscorus and those of similar stature — who had not yet made a full return. They still hold their sees; Leo has deliberately allowed this. His reasoning: by reducing something of their customary standing without stripping them entirely, he creates an incentive for them to seek pardon. If they correct themselves, the Church loses no soul. If they persist, they will be judged by their own profession. The pastoral architecture is structured toward maximum conversion and minimum loss — but the framework within which that architecture operates is entirely Leo’s to define. He decides the conditions; he grants the peace; he sets the terms under which the heresiarchs either return or face judgment.