Symmachus to the most beloved brothers, all the bishops, presbyters, deacons, archimandrites, and the whole order and people throughout Illyricum, Dardania, and the two Dacias.
Chapter I: The Time for Speech, Not Silence; The Bishops Are Reminded of What They Themselves Teach
We desire that this be done in full, if what We write is fulfilled. Let no one wonder that We have now broken the silence preserved hitherto, since the most wise Solomon’s voice resounds: A time to speak, and a time to be silent (Eccles. 3:7). For the present time vanquishes silence: amid the things which are now occurring, to keep silent and not to be stirred up by the goads of faith is recognized as a great offense. Indeed, where the reverence and the very summit of religion is shaken, it is fitting, according to the divine Scripture, to say that those who are meek must become combative (Luke 22:36). For there is also a certain spiritual contest pleasing to God, by which all things are borne with credit, lest anyone be separated from divine charity. To teach you what you yourselves teach is a heavy burden of shame, but it is necessary on grounds of utility. For it is not fitting to bring the dogmas of religious discipline to those from whom the perfection of that very instruction is expected. But We will briefly summarize the clear matters.
Chapter II: The Catalog of Eastern Heresy — Nestorius, Eutyches, Dioscorus, Timothy the Patricidal, Peter Mongus, Peter the Fuller, and Acacius
To whom is it unknown with what contagion of Nestorius the Constantinopolitan church has labored? Nestorius, We say, who as a putrid member of the body has been cut off from the society of Catholic communion. In what land is the assembly of the holy Council of Chalcedon not proclaimed, which condemned Eutyches and Dioscorus, two infamous names of great perfidy, in a single, undivided sentence — accomplices of iniquity, struggling with one spirit against the divine dogmas? Who has not known Peter and Timothy, the home-born servants of these men, champions of a perverse purpose, surpassing their own authors and masters in continual error? We speak of that Timothy the patricide, who, while Proterius of holy memory was still alive, not only seized the church with the support of impious men, but added to the crime of usurpation the shedding of pious blood. The voice of the universal Church indeed pronounced his condemnation, stripping him also of the very name of Christian honor. The many sufferings of the orthodox made known Peter [Mongus] as his follower, in which sufferings he gloried in displaying the temper of his own soul. Ephesus knew him with the whole company of Dioscorus, where with the aforesaid author of sin he was made known to have brought about the end of holy Flavian. The evils of Antioch must be passed over in silence, where through the unspeakable mockeries of the other Peter the reverend name of priesthood was mocked. What groans of Apamea and Tyre, comparable to tragic crimes, can be lamented worthily, even were one’s whole day given to the lamentation? What of Acacius? Who, as if weighed down by the spell of his own [prior] good, was caught — by a new example of punishment — pronouncing sentence against himself, against those things which he had previously sent forth under Emperor Basiliscus: with changed mind defending those whom he previously thought it glorious to condemn, and laboring to associate with the faithful those whom he had long since shown to be heretics by manifest prevarication; on whose account he is most to be shunned, and to be equated with the company of the condemned designated above, dissolving those things by which he was proven to be faithful, and mixing himself in with those things by which the general harm of the Church came about.
Chapter III: The Fathers’ Dogmas Trampled If the Sentences Against Heretics Are Not Strenuously Upheld
Against these [men], if reason persuades that the dogmas of the fathers must be kept, consider whether they can be trampled by a greater transgression than now [is committed] through those who in your parts revive the recurring dogmas of Eutyches. But if, as though the sentences had been weakly established, they are neglected without danger, the sum of our faith stands without any strength, since new ones constantly succeed and dissolve the old establishments. For when what the paternal rules have established is despised, and the firmness of those things which are well established is not vindicated, an impiety of this kind must always come upon the faith. For where there is easy dissolution of a reasonable establishment, there every form of holiness is corrupted, Christ is attacked, and (which of the faithful would patiently bear this?) the reverend institutions of the fathers are trampled.
Chapter IV: The Time of Witness — Exile and Suffering for the Faith
And who would not prefer death to life by a just choice? Where is the venerable reverence of the Catholic faith? Where the dogmas established by so much blood of the saints? Where the faithful authority of the ancient teachers? Where that astonishing patience of religious minds, content to be stripped of their own goods lest they fall away from the hope of the eternal inheritance, embracing whatever sufferings lest the soul be judged unworthy of that incorruptible good? For there are no greater proofs of faith than where the demands of the time persuade [a man] to subject his life to suffering: and therefore he who has merited to undergo the danger of persecution for [the faith] shows himself worthy of the heavenly soldiery. Christ purchased us by the pious price of His blood, granting the liberty of grace, while human works could offer nothing worthy of so great a reward. And therefore where there is injury to religion, the love of faith ought to surpass every other affection. Let each one, then, regard exiles and pilgrimages as home and homeland, lest, held back by human desires, he be deprived of the company of Christ. Behold the time when faith calls back her soldiers and summons to her defense those who have attained the fervor of grace! Let us imagine faith herself saying: Behold the desirable time, behold the longed-for gathering of the fruits of the faithful — let small sufferings be repaid with great gifts!
Chapter V: Bishops Must Speak; Silence Is Dangerous to the Faithful
We would have wished to exhort your charity at greater length on account of the dispensation entrusted to Us: but what need is there of the goads of speech, where we are taught by apostolic and patristic examples to bear sufferings for Christ with magnanimity — they who through the losses of human things have shown us the heavenly increases of the virtues? Therefore let us boldly proclaim the clear disciplines of the Church with great confidence. Far be from us the prophet’s saying: And the priests have hidden the truth (Lam. 2:10). For who fails to know that the disciples’ knowledge must be required from the teachers, and that what is not pronounced harms the followers, and that this very silence is dangerous to those who keep silent? For truth must labor among those for whom falsehood, not made manifest, lies hidden under the appearance of truth; and a great strength accrues to those attacking the faith, so long as the sentences pronounced against them are not strenuously asserted.
Chapter VI: Avoid Communion with the Eutychians and Those Trained by Them; The Body Suffers When Members Dissent
But concerning you We desire to say better things: that those things which have been confused by the wicked may, through you, obtain the remedy of correction. It is not so hard to be deceived as it is to persist deceived in error. This evil is graver than all evils, when members dissent from their own body. For although weakness does not occupy all the limbs individually, nevertheless according to the apostolic voice the whole body must be partially weighed down (cf. 1 Cor. 12:26). Whence the communion of those given over [to condemnation] is to be shunned, according to the blessed Apostle: Let no one blush at the pronouncement of the faith; for it is the power [of God] for everyone who believes (Rom. 1:16). Let us turn away from the sacrilegious error of Eutyches, agreeing as it does with Manichaean malice; let us with equal resolution avoid the communion also of those who have been trained by such men — [an error] which now, as if by the contagion of disease, attempts to creep into the churches of your regions. For let no one, fearing to be separated together with the aforesaid [condemned ones], pretend that the storm can be endured [in unity with them], until — separated from their communion — he enter the harbor of the true faith.
Chapter VII: Unity of the Church; Macedonius’s Deposition as the Just Consequence of Neglecting the Admonition of the Apostolic See
These things I admonish in love, not accuse in hateful persecution. For he who blames what is to be blamed and supplies nothing useful, has rather the zeal of one reproaching than the affection of one loving: and he who exhorts to profitable things, more vehemently sets forth the image of a good purpose, more ardently inviting his hearers to seek what is useful. For which reason, brothers, desiring that good unity of the Church, and anticipating the blessed beauty of holy concord, let us say with holy David: How good and how pleasant for brothers to dwell as one (Ps. 132:1 [133:1]); and so that the Apostle Paul may say of you: You all are brothers in one Christ (cf. Gal. 3:28). For until unity returns, let no one doubt that the same things will nonetheless come to pass which have lately happened in the Constantinopolitan church — concerning which I must both groan and stay silent. For those who believed that the admonition of the Apostolic See was to be neglected, deservedly fell into those things which are wont to befall those destitute of consolation.
Chapter VIII: The Terms of Roman Communion — Separation from Eutyches, Dioscorus, Timothy, Peter, and Acacius; No Pretext or Cleverness Can Substitute for It
If therefore anyone, mindful of his own salvation, desires to keep the apostolic judgments — when he has separated himself from the stain of the aforesaid [men] — let him without doubt know himself to be a sharer of Our communion: for if he has not removed himself from the society of those whom the Apostolic See has condemned, let him know that by no pretext, by no fiction, and by no cleverness can he creep into ecclesiastical custody: because just as We gladly embrace those who dissociate themselves from the poisons of the aforementioned — that is, of Eutyches, Dioscorus, Timothy, Peter, and Acacius — so Our care and solicitude is ever vigilant concerning their followers, that they may not creep in. And in another hand: May God keep you safe, dearest brothers!
Given on the eighth day before the Ides of October, after the consulship of Felix, the most illustrious man.
Footnotes
- ↩ The address is significant. Despite Thiel’s editorial heading ad Orientales (“to the Easterns”), Symmachus is writing not generically to “the East” but to the bishops, clergy, monks, and laity of Illyricum, Dardania, and the two Dacias (Dacia Mediterranea and Dacia Ripensis) — the territory of the Roman vicariate in Eastern Illyricum, under direct Roman jurisdiction since the time of Pope Damasus and most prominently exercised by Leo through Anastasius of Thessalonica (Leo Letters V–VI). Thiel’s footnote 2 records that Hormisdas’s later Letter 22 to Avitus links Illyrians and Dardanians with Thracians as “departing from the schism together.” Symmachus is exercising direct jurisdictional authority over a territory answerable to Rome, addressing not only the bishops but the entire order and people. The address itself is a primacy fact, the framework of Roman jurisdiction in the East presupposed throughout.
- ↩ The Latin is eos qui sunt mites, debere esse pugnaces — “that those who are meek must be combative.” The marginal reference in Thiel is to Luke 22:36, where Christ tells the disciples to take a sword. The existing site translation cited Luke 21:19 (“In your patience possess your souls”), which inverts the sense: Symmachus is exhorting militancy in defense of the faith, not patience under affliction. The reference is corrected here.
- ↩ The Latin is grave onus pudoris — “a heavy burden of shame,” not “of honor” as the existing site translation rendered it. The point is rhetorical self-deprecation: Symmachus, addressing a Catholic episcopate that already knows what should be taught, says he is embarrassed to find himself teaching teachers — but the present circumstances make the embarrassing necessity unavoidable. The existing rendering reversed the meaning entirely.
- ↩ Timothy Aelurus (“the Cat”), Monophysite usurper of the see of Alexandria. Symmachus calls him patricidam — “patricide” — because he was implicated in the murder of Proterius of Alexandria, the Catholic patriarch installed after Dioscorus’s deposition at Chalcedon. Proterius was killed in the Alexandrian baptistery in March 457 by partisans of Timothy. The “patricide” epithet treats the murder of an ecclesiastical father with the gravity of murdering a natural father.
- ↩ Peter Mongus (“the Stammerer”), Monophysite usurper of Alexandria after Timothy Aelurus. He is here distinguished from Peter the Fuller of Antioch, mentioned in the next sentence. The two Peters are the chief Eastern Monophysite leaders of the late fifth century, both condemned by Pope Felix III: Peter Mongus together with Acacius on July 28, 484; Peter the Fuller separately in 488. Symmachus is upholding both Felician condemnations.
- ↩ Peter the Fuller (Petrus Fullo, also called Gnapheus), Monophysite usurper of Antioch, condemned by Pope Felix III in 488. He is best known for the Theopaschite addition to the Trisagion (“who was crucified for us”), which became a flashpoint of the Christological controversies. The “unspeakable mockeries of the other Peter” refers both to his liturgical innovations and to his repeated seizures and losses of the Antiochene see by political maneuvering.
- ↩ Acacius of Constantinople had famously taken a strong anti-Monophysite stance during the brief reign of the usurper Emperor Basiliscus (475–476). Basiliscus had issued an Encyclical (the Encyclion) condemning the Council of Chalcedon and the Tome of Leo; Acacius led the resistance against it, organizing opposition in Constantinople so effectively that Basiliscus was forced to issue an Anti-Encyclical before his fall. This earlier orthodoxy is the “good” by which Symmachus says Acacius was “weighed down” — that is, his earlier good reputation became the very measure by which his later behavior condemned him. Under Zeno (482), Acacius supported the Henoticon, which compromised the Chalcedonian definition and reconciled with Peter Mongus, contradicting his own earlier stand. Symmachus’s point is that Acacius “pronounced sentence against himself” — by his later acts, against his own earlier acts under Basiliscus — and so was caught by “a new example of punishment,” self-condemnation through self-contradiction.
- ↩ The Latin is difficult: Nemo enim separari cum praedictis, ferre tempestatem dissimulet, donec portum verae fidei ab eorum communione separatus introeat. Thiel (footnote 27) proposes supplying timens (“fearing”): “let no one, fearing to be separated [from communion] together with the aforesaid heretics, dissimulate [his complicity] [as though he were] enduring the storm” — that is, let no one pretend to merely tolerate the situation while actually remaining in communion with the condemned. The sense is: do not weather the storm by remaining in their communion under any face-saving pretext; separation must come first, then the harbor of true faith. The reading followed here is Thiel’s.
- ↩ The reference is to the deposition of Macedonius II, Patriarch of Constantinople, in August 511, by Emperor Anastasius. Macedonius had refused to subscribe to a Monophysite-favoring confession demanded by the imperial party and was driven from his see. Thiel’s footnote 29 explicitly identifies this passage as referring to Macedonius’s expulsion (cf. Evagrius, Historia Ecclesiastica III.32; Theodore Lector, p. 563; Marcellinus Comes, who places the expulsion in 511 to the consulship of Felix). The same fate befell Flavian II of Antioch in 512 — the very year of this letter. Symmachus reads these depositions as the just consequence of Eastern neglect of Roman admonition: where Rome’s warnings were ignored, the wolves came in. The interpretive frame is striking: imperial-political ecclesiastical disasters are read as divine vindication of Roman discipline.
- ↩ The Latin is Et alia manu — “And in another hand.” This indicates that the closing greeting was written by Symmachus’s own hand, while the body of the letter was dictated to a scribe. The practice follows the Pauline precedent (cf. Gal. 6:11 — “See with what large letters I have written to you with my own hand”; 1 Cor. 16:21; Col. 4:18; 2 Thess. 3:17 — “the salutation by my own hand”), in which the apostolic author personally authenticates the letter at the close. The papal continuation of this practice is one of the small but unmistakable signs that the Roman pontiffs understood themselves as exercising apostolic authorship in the strict sense.
- ↩ October 8, 512. The dating formula post consulatum Felicis viri clarissimi (“after the consulship of Felix v.c.”) is post-consular: Felix was the Western consul of 511, and 512 was a year without a Western consul, so dates were marked as “after the consulship of Felix.” The honorific vir clarissimus (V.C.) is the standard senatorial title. The letter is thus dated October 8, 512 — only months after the deposition of Flavian II at Antioch and amid the deepening crisis that produced the Eastern Catholic petition (Letter 12) to which this letter is the formal Roman reply.
Historical Commentary