Felix to Flavitas, bishop of Constantinople.
Chapter I: The Signs of Hope Attending Flavitas’s Ordination
There are many things which afford Us joy at your love’s ordination, and urge Us to hope, by the divine benefit, for the effect of ecclesiastical peace. First indeed, that heavenly grace has chosen you such as one whose life is testified worthy from boyhood, and of whom the intent toward the Catholic faith — which We desire above all things — is proclaimed. Next, that among these gifts the Lord has also conferred on your charity the will and favor of Our son the most glorious prince as well, so that, sustained — with God bestowing — by the support of [imperial] power, you may more easily be able to pursue those things which you have wisely aimed at according to truth.
Finally, that almost all the things which follow the beginning of your honor as much show to Us the benevolence of princely clemency as they reveal the appearance of your own will. Namely, when [the announcement] is regularly directed to the Apostolic See, through which — by Christ’s bestowing — the dignity of all priests is made firm. For your love’s own letter confesses the blessed apostle Peter to be the foremost of the apostles, the rock of the faith, and the heavenly dispenser of the mystery with the keys entrusted to him. Finally, [your letter testifies] that your love wishes to have agreement of the orthodox faith with Us, so that We may more amply be one mind.
Chapter II: The Legates’ Failure; The Apostolic Communion Deferred
Since these are not slight indications from which We may believe that what We desire is coming forth in your mind, a greater testimony was added: that Our religious sons the monks, abounding in the confession of right faith, came hither equally [with the clerics]. Seeing them, We reckoned that [these legates] had been dispatched only on the assumption that the names of the condemned — from whose communion these [monks] stood apart — had already been driven out from the Constantinopolitan Church.
And so We perceived that nothing remained except that those who bore your love’s synodical [letters] should enjoy the participation of Apostolic communion. But when it was pressed on them with more care — that if they preferred to receive the communion of the Blessed apostle Peter with faithful heart, they should answer that either they themselves, or your love, would thereafter in every way be separated from the recitation of Peter the Alexandrian and Acacius — they, saying that no such command had been given them, refused to consent to the grace healthfully offered them by Us.
Troubled by their hesitation, when the letters coming [from you], or the very arrangement of things, seemed to promise one thing, but the report of the aforesaid [legates] carried something far other than had been hoped, We deferred Our communion — saddened — which, with doubts removed, We were wishing to [give] in fullness of the Catholic faith; and this [communion], as regards the agreement with Us in the orthodox faith which [your love] has promised to hold, We judge is to come.
Chapter III: If Alexandrian Peter Is Preferred to Roman Peter, the Fault Is Not Ours
Otherwise nothing can be imputed to Us, if to those embracing the covenants of charity, the society of Peter the Alexandrian is preferred to the fellowship of the blessed apostle Peter. For it will be manifest before God and men that those perpetrating such things are separated not by Our fault but by their own judgment entirely — and the same is to be judged in every respect terribly before the tribunal of Christ.
We are not obstinate, but defend paternal doctrines: just as your love’s page itself designated, We ought to show zeal for the orthodox.
Chapter IV: The Chalcedon Syllogism; Acacius Bound by the Council’s Own Sentence
Are not Eutyches and Dioscorus proved to have been condemned by the Council of Chalcedon, which the universal Church has sanctioned and guards? Are their accomplices Timothy and Peter not taught [to be such] by very many fitting pieces of instruction, as those also whom your love sent have thoroughly seen? Did not Acacius — We frequently and in accord with the rules having forbidden it — follow the communion of those whom he himself in his own letters had called heretics and long since condemned; and, ill building again what he himself before had well destroyed, did he not appear a prevaricator, according to the Apostle (Gal. 2:18)?
And thus, according to the path of the aforesaid synod, all those who preferred to be partakers of this [condemnation] deservedly underwent a penalty equal to that of the perfidy condemned there — just as a synod constituted against any heresy binds also all those similar to the overthrown depravity: lest that should have to be restored in successors which in the authors is justly shown to have been laid low.
Chapter V: The Apostolic See Which Bound Did Not Absolve Peter Mongus
But Peter could in no way be absolved without the consent of the Apostolic See — by whose command he had been shut out — as the form of the ancient prelates testifies concerning the receiving of such persons. And this Peter, even if he had been healed by lawful cure, ought to be received for indulgence, not for priestly dignity — he who, instituted by condemned men and heretics, could by no reasoning be set over Catholic congregations.
Chapter VI: Flavitas Himself Has Seen the Salutary Things; The Dispersed Are to Be Gathered
You yourself have seen with Us that the things We say are salutary. Whence in your own letter, when you speak of the faith of blessed Peter — which We read with total gladness — you laid down with Catholic mind: “And that we may be able to gather the dispersed, with those who with him believe as you do, glorying with harmonious voice.”
I ask, then, what are those dispersed [things], and by what disturbance of affairs [were they dispersed]? Nothing else now at all comes to mind, except what has been devised through the madness of the Eutychian pest and its followers. Let your love give effort with Us, so that what — by your own confession — is dispersed may be gathered.
Chapter VII: The Apostle’s Appeal; The Shepherd’s Conscience for the Sheep
I use the Apostle’s voice: “I beseech you, you have not wronged me at all” (Gal. 4:12). I do not impose this as one commanding, but so that I may suitably acquit My conscience. I exhort: let not the rational sheep committed to you by divine [disposition] — not without your peril, God forbid — be allowed to perish.
Think together, all you who are reckoned in the pastoral dignity, that for the Christian faith — which is then the faith of Christ if it is true — both to live and, if it be required, to die is to us for the love of the most sacred religion. Weigh, therefore, that the time of that very life is always uncertain; lest, snatched away suddenly, we be dragged to the examination of that fearsome recognition.
Chapter VIII: The Fate of Acacius, Who Went to His Own Place; Press the Emperor and His Consort
Whence, as if to your love in person by the right of charity, We strenuously bind [you]: that shuddering at the lot of unhappy Acacius — who, as it is written, that he might go to his own place (Acts 1:25), was not permitted to be absolved, even with Our trying — with such vigor as you can, you crush [the threat of that same lot], that you may rather be shown to be an imitator of the Catholic bishops of that city. And [that you] not cease, suppliantly entreating [by] My prayer joined with yours, Our son the most glorious prince, and his consort, to make suit: that, as devoted sons of the Church, they may both clemently admit Our entreaties, and, for the sake of their own reign and perpetual salvation, resolve to bring these things to fulfillment.
Let not your love complain of any delay in Apostolic communion. We would not wish to be suspended by any difficulty, were it not that the regard for Catholic truth stood in the way — to which truth I either hope or admonish your love to cleave with uttermost strength.
Chapter IX: The Names Must Be Removed; The New Lump and the Pauline Separation
Therefore let the name of Peter and of Acacius be removed from the midst, nor let us be mixed with the apocrisiarii or letters of the condemned Peter. And, as the Apostle says: “Let them who trouble us be cut off” (Gal. 5:12). And again, as he himself pronounces: “Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump” (1 Cor. 5:7) — with the cause of the past, and its persons, blotted out with their names.
With Us being about to provide rationally, with God inspiring, as We have written, if all things agree: that nothing of those whom Acacius ordained or baptized — with the Catholic confession preserved — may perish, for the reintegration of the Church’s charity: so that the peace may come forth which made both one (Eph. 2:14); not that which the prophet condemns, “Peace, peace, and there was no peace” (Ezek. 13:10); and that charity may follow pure, of which it is said, “Charity from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned” (1 Tim. 1:5), which your love in its letters has often petitioned of itself.
Chapter X: Light and Darkness Have Nothing in Common; One Flock, One Shepherd
Let there be nothing common between light and darkness; since we neither can nor ought to partake of the Lord’s table and the table of demons (1 Cor. 10:21). So that, with the cleansing of past [things] gathered together, to the sheep entrusted to you there may be one flock and one shepherd (John 10:16).
You remember it is written: “If you rightly offer, and rightly divide not, you have sinned” (Gen. 4:7); and the prophet cries out: “Between clean and unclean you have not distinguished” (Ezek. 22:26). All these things We touch upon summarily with that circumspection, that — with hearts salutarily purged — We may be able to hold a concord as firm, without doubt, as [it is] true, as perpetual as [it is] united.
Chapter XI: Let Your Love Swiftly Reassure Us, That We May Consent in Full Reconciliation
As swiftly as possible, then, let your love render Us more certain concerning these things, that — with Our God perfecting what He has begun — We may be able in the frame of the body of Christ to consent in full reconciliation.
Footnotes
- ↩ The letter is the companion piece to Letter XII (addressed to the emperor Zeno) on the same episode: the legation Flavitas sent to Rome in 490 upon his ordination as bishop of Constantinople in succession to Acacius. Where Letter XII treats the diplomatic and constitutional questions raised by the legation’s arrival, Letter XIII addresses Flavitas bishop-to-bishop: more explicit about the specific diptych requirement (the removal of the names of Acacius and Peter Mongus), more densely Scriptural in its argument, and more personal in its pastoral appeal. The letter’s opening praises the good auspices of Flavitas’s elevation (a life of blameless character attested from youth, the Catholic profession in his own letter, the emperor’s goodwill). Its middle sets out the Roman terms with exceptional clarity. Its close presses on Flavitas himself the responsibility for a shepherd’s conscience before the Lord of the sheep. The dating is the same as Letter XII: early to mid 490, in the months before Peter Mongus’s death (October 490). The transmission in some codices names Flavitas as “Flavitan” or “Fravitas”; the form “Flavitas” is adopted here as the most widely received.
- ↩ The phrase per quam largiente Christo omnium solidatur dignitas sacerdotum — “through which, by Christ’s bestowing, the dignity of all priests is made firm” — repeats in substance the claim of Letter XII that Flavitas traces the exordium of his own dignity to the Apostolic See. The solidity (solidatur) language echoes the soliditas Petri formula familiar from the broader Roman tradition: the priestly dignity of all bishops is made firm through its connection to the firmness of the Petrine See. The claim is not simply about communion but about the source of priestly standing as such: it is from Christ, conveyed through the See of Peter, that the dignity of all priests derives its stability.
- ↩ This passage directly quotes Flavitas’s own letter to Felix. The threefold profession — Peter as summum apostolorum (foremost of the apostles), Peter as petra fidei (rock of the faith), and Peter as cœlestis dispensator mysterii creditis sibi clavibus (heavenly dispenser of the mystery with the keys entrusted to him) — is the formal acknowledgment Flavitas had sent to Rome upon his ordination. The third element (dispensator mysterii, “dispenser of the mystery”) adds to the rock/keys language a strong ministerial claim: Peter is the one who dispenses the heavenly mystery, with the keys as the instrument of dispensation. For Felix, the Flavitas profession strengthens, rather than relativizes, the condition that Peter Mongus (still holding Alexandria) cannot be restored to communion except through the same See that bound him. A bishop who professes Peter’s primacy cannot in logic remain in communion with those whom Peter’s See has condemned.
- ↩ The refusal is the same one described in Letter XII, but the specifications are sharper here. Felix had asked the legates to commit to one of two things: either that they themselves (personally) would withdraw from the recitation, or that Flavitas (their principal) would. The recitatio — the reading of the names of the condemned in the diptychs of the Constantinopolitan liturgy — is the particular practice Felix is demanding that Constantinople end. The diptychs were the liturgical lists of bishops, living and dead, whose names were recited at the Eucharistic canon. To have a bishop’s name on the diptychs was to claim him in the communion of the local Church; to remove it was to declare him outside communion. The demand that Acacius’s and Peter Mongus’s names be removed from the Constantinopolitan diptychs became the central condition of Roman-Constantinopolitan reconciliation for the next three decades, and is what the Formula of Hormisdas (519) finally secured.
- ↩ Gal. 2:18 in the Vulgate reads si enim quæ destruxi, hæc iterum ædificem, prævaricatorem me constituo — “for if I build up again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a prevaricator.” Paul’s self-examination in Galatians becomes Felix’s charge against Acacius: Acacius had destroyed the communion of Peter Mongus by his own letters, declaring him a heretic; then he built up again what he had destroyed, by receiving Peter Mongus into communion. The Scripture and the charge fit with unusual precision. The rhetorical question form intensifies the indictment: every clause invites the answer “yes,” and at the end the accused is self-convicted by Paul’s own words.
- ↩ The parallel to Letter XII is close but the emphasis here is stronger. Where Letter XII said non secundum morem veterum apostolica sedes, quæ ligavit, absolvit (“the Apostolic See which bound, did not absolve him according to the custom of the ancients”), Letter XIII says that Peter Mongus’s absolution could in no way (nulla ratione) have occurred without the consent of the Apostolic See. The principle is not that the Apostolic See must be consulted out of courtesy, nor that the Apostolic See’s consent is one factor among several, but that without the Apostolic See’s consent the absolution cannot happen at all. The forma veterum antistitum — “the form of the ancient prelates” — grounds the principle in the standing canonical practice of the Roman See in receiving those previously shut out: nothing novel is being claimed; the custom of the ancients is what is being invoked.
- ↩ The allusion is unmistakable. Ut iret in locum suum — “that he might go to his own place” — is the phrase Peter applies to Judas in Acts 1:25, in the speech by which Matthias is elected to replace the betrayer. The phrase describes Judas going to the place to which his choices had destined him — his own place, the place of his own choosing. Felix’s application to Acacius carries the full weight of the Scripture: Acacius too has gone to his own place, the place he himself chose. The striking additional claim is that Rome’s attempt to absolve Acacius was itself refused by divine judgment: etiam nobis conantibus, non est permissus absolvi — “he was not permitted to be absolved, even though We tried.” This is a claim about the limits of ecclesial authority before divine determination: Rome had the authority to absolve him, and even attempted to, but the divine judgment had already fixed his place, and no Roman act could undo what his own free choices and the divine judgment together had sealed. The reader who understands this passage understands Rome’s position on the Acacius case in its fullest form: the condemnation is not merely canonical; it is ratified by divine judgment and proved in Acacius’s own death.
- ↩ Felix layers three Pauline texts in rapid succession: Gal. 5:12 on cutting off those who trouble, 1 Cor. 5:7 on the new lump, and in the following chapter the Johannine one flock and one shepherd (John 10:16). The effect is to make removal of the names not merely a diplomatic condition but a Scriptural requirement: what Rome demands is what Paul’s letters prescribe. The cum nominibus personisque suis præterita causa deleatur formula — “with the cause of the past, with its names and persons, blotted out” — makes explicit that the removal is not merely of the living but of the dead: Acacius is dead, Peter Mongus will die within months, but their names must be removed because the causa (the cause, the case, the standing as condemned) does not die with the person. Removing the names removes the ongoing claim of their communion.
- ↩ The Johannine image of one flock and one shepherd (unus grex et unus pastor) is the figure that governs the whole letter’s pastoral appeal. Flavitas is a shepherd; his flock must be one; and its unity depends on cleansing what has divided it. The combined force of the three final images — light/darkness not shared (2 Cor. 6:14 implied), Lord’s table not shared with demons (1 Cor. 10:21), and one flock and one shepherd (John 10:16) — is to make the removal of the names indistinguishable from the unity of the flock. To keep the names is to keep the division; to remove them is to restore the unity Christ wills for His own.
Historical Commentary