Leo, bishop, to all the bishops established throughout Sicily, greetings in the Lord.
Divine precepts and apostolic admonitions urge Us to watch over the state of all the Churches with tireless zeal, and where anything merits reproof, to apply the necessary correction and instruct you with the clearest truth. For since the command of the Lord’s voice remains — by which the most blessed Apostle Peter was imbued with the mystic sanction, repeated three times, to feed Christ’s sheep if he loves Him — We are constrained by reverence for that very See which We preside over by the abundance of divine grace to avoid the peril of negligence as far as We can: lest the profession of the chief Apostle himself, by which he declared his love for the Lord, be found wanting in Us — since one who negligently feeds the flock so often entrusted to him is shown not to love the supreme Shepherd (Feed my sheep, John 21:17).
Chapter I: Baptism Is Not to Be Administered on the Epiphany; The Apostolic See Is the Teacher of Ecclesiastical Reason and the Source of Priestly Dignity
Through the concern of fraternal affection, I have learned with some anxiety that in what is the chief among the sacraments of the Church, you are departing from the custom of apostolic institution — administering the sacrament of baptism more numerously on the day of Epiphany than at the Paschal season. I marvel that you, or your predecessors, could have adopted so irrational a novelty, believing there to be no difference between the day on which Christ was adored by the Magi and the day on which He rose from the dead — as if the mysteries of both were interchangeable.
You could never have fallen into this fault if, from where you received the consecration of your honor, you had also taken the law of all your observance: namely, the See of the blessed Apostle Peter, which is without doubt both the teacher of ecclesiastical reason and the source of your priestly dignity. Your departure from its rules would have been less tolerable had Our admonition come before it. Now, hoping for correction, We exercise gentleness. Though priests can hardly be excused by the claim of ignorance, We temper the necessary censure and instruct you with the truth.
Chapter II: All the Sacraments of Salvation Are Ordered by Their Own Times Through the Dispensations of Christ’s Incarnation
The restoration of mankind was eternally preordained in the counsel of God — but the temporal order of that restoration began with the Incarnation of the Word. One time marks the angel’s announcement to the blessed Virgin Mary, who conceived by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:26); another marks the birth of the child, with the virginity of His mother intact, announced to the shepherds by the voice of a heavenly host (Luke 2:7–14); another His circumcision on the eighth day (Luke 2:21); another the legal offering made for Him; another when the three Magi, led by a new star from the East, adored Him in Bethlehem (Matt. 2:11). Different again are the days of His flight into Egypt to escape Herod’s malice (Matt. 2:15), and of His return to Galilee after the persecutor’s death (Matt. 2:20). Through all these dispensations the Lord grew in age and grace (Luke 2:52); He went up to Jerusalem at Pascha with His parents (Luke 2:41); He was found debating with the elders in the Temple and said: Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house? (Luke 2:49). When, in mature years, He submitted to John’s baptism, the Spirit descended on Him in the form of a dove and the Father’s voice declared: You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased (Matt. 3:17; Luke 3:22).
We briefly review these things to show that Christ’s days are all consecrated by His works and virtues, with sacramental mysteries shining in His every action. Yet each is distinctly signified or fulfilled, and they do not all pertain equally to the proper time of baptism. If the miracles performed after His baptism were to be honored without distinction, every day would be a feast, since all days are full of wonders. But the Spirit of wisdom and understanding ensured that the apostles and teachers of the Church would maintain proper order — so that we, as one flock and one shepherd, might speak the same things and hold the same mind, as the Apostle teaches: Be united in the same mind and the same judgment (1 Cor. 1:10).
Chapter III: Baptism Signifies Death to Sin; Trinal Immersion Imitates the Three-Day Burial
Though the humility and glory of Christ converge in one person, and His divine power working through human weakness brings about the whole of our restoration, it is baptism’s gift uniquely that creates a new creature from the old — through the death of His crucifixion and the life of His resurrection. The Apostle says: Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death (Rom. 6:3–5). In baptism, death to sin takes place; the trinal immersion imitates the three-day burial; and the rising from the water mirrors the resurrection from the tomb.
The very nature of the act teaches us that the legitimate day for this universal grace is the day on which its virtue and its form first came to be. After the Resurrection, Christ gave to His disciples — and through them to all the teachers of the Church — the form and power of baptizing: Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19). He could have given this commission before His passion; but He chose to bind the grace of regeneration to His resurrection. Pentecost, sanctified by the coming of the Holy Spirit, is joined to Pascha as an extension of the same mystery — offering to those who were prevented by infirmity, distance, or the dangers of sea travel the fulfilment of their desire through the gift of the Spirit.
Chapter IV: Peter Baptized by Apostolic Example on Pentecost
We defend this not from Our own persuasion but from apostolic authority, following the blessed Apostle Peter himself — who, on the day the promised Holy Spirit came upon the assembled believers, baptized three thousand of those converted by his preaching. Scripture attests: They were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles: What shall we do? Peter said to them: Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins (Acts 2:37–41).
Chapter V: Only Pascha and Pentecost Are the Times Set for Baptism by the Roman Pontiffs
Since these two times are clearly and unmistakably legitimate for the baptism of the Church’s elect, We admonish your beloved to mix no other days with this observance. Though other feasts merit fitting reverence, We must guard the mystical and rational exception for this chief sacrament — while not withholding its grace from any who need it in mortal danger.
Chapter VI: Those Under Necessity May Be Baptized at Any Time
While We reserve the freely made vows of the safe and peaceful for these two joined feasts, We decree that this singular aid of salvation be denied to no one who faces mortal danger — whether from siege, persecution, or shipwreck — at whatever time they present themselves.
Chapter VII: Three Sicilian Bishops Are to Attend the Annual Roman Synod; The Institutes of the Apostolic See Must Be Observed
We also require, for the sake of preserving the closest unity, that — just as the holy Fathers wholesome ordained that two episcopal councils be held each year — three of you unfailingly attend the fraternal synod at Rome on the third day before the Kalends of October. For with God’s grace it will more easily be provided that no scandals arise and no errors take root in the churches of Christ, when all is continually treated in common before the most blessed Apostle Peter, so that all his constitutions and the decrees of the canons may remain inviolate among all the Lord’s priests.
We trust that these instructions, delivered with the Lord’s inspiration, will reach you through Our brothers and fellow bishops Bacilius and Paschasinus, whose report will show Us how reverently the institutes of the Apostolic See are being kept among you.
Given on the twelfth day before the Kalends of November, in the consulship of Calepius and Ardabur, most illustrious men.
Footnotes
- ↩ The Latin is beati Petri apostoli sedes, quae vobis sacerdotalis dignitatis esset ecclesiasticae magistra rationis — “the See of the blessed Apostle Peter, which should be for you the teacher of ecclesiastical reason and the origin of your priestly dignity.” This statement goes further than simply asserting Rome’s authority over Sicilian practice: it claims that the Sicilian bishops received their priestly dignity from Peter’s see, and that the standard of their ecclesiastical observance is accordingly to be drawn from the same source. Sicily was geographically close to Rome and historically within its direct ecclesiastical sphere. The argument is structurally parallel to Letter IX’s claim about Alexandria: as Mark received from Peter and Rome preserves Peter’s tradition, so too must the churches in proximity to Rome draw their rule from the same source.
- ↩ The phrase coram beatissimo apostolo Petro — “before the most blessed Apostle Peter” — frames the annual Roman synod not merely as a meeting of the Bishop of Rome with Sicilian delegates but as an assembly conducted in Peter’s presence. The theological logic is the same as in Letter X, Chapter IX: Peter is the present co-agent of what the Roman bishop decrees. To meet at Rome is to meet before Peter. The annual synod is the institutional form in which the Sicilian bishops regularly encounter and submit to Petrine authority in its living embodiment.
- ↩ Paschasinus here is the same Paschasinus of Lilybaeum who wrote Letter III to Leo — the bishop of modern Marsala in western Sicily. He appears several times in the Leo corpus as a trusted local representative; Leo later appointed him as his personal legate to the Council of Chalcedon (451), where Paschasinus presided on Leo’s behalf and delivered the famous declaration opening the proceedings. That the same bishop entrusted with carrying this liturgical correction to the Sicilian churches would go on to represent Leo at Chalcedon is a reminder of how closely these administrative and doctrinal threads were woven together.
- ↩ October 21, 447 AD — the same consular year as Letter XV (July 21, 447), showing that Letters XV and XVI belong to a cluster of major pastoral interventions in the second half of 447: the Spanish Priscillianist crisis (Letter XV) and the Sicilian baptismal practice (Letter XVI) addressed in the same year.
Historical Commentary