Leo, bishop, to all the bishops established throughout Sicily.
A Perpetual Decree Forbidding Bishops to Alienate Church Property; Violators to Lose Rank and Communion
Specific complaints provoke Our general and provident care, moving Us to forbid by a perpetual decree what was done unjustly and wrongfully in two churches of your province. The clergy of Tauromenium came to us lamenting the destitution of their church, because their bishop had stripped it of all its resources by selling, donating, or alienating them by various means. Likewise, the clergy of Panormus raised a similar complaint in the holy synod over which We presided, concerning what had been usurped by a bishop recently appointed over them.
Though We have already decreed what must be done in each of those particular cases, lest this pernicious example of sacrilegious plundering become something that henceforth anyone dares to imitate, We establish this perpetual precept for your beloved: that no bishop may presume to donate, exchange, or sell anything belonging to his church — unless what is done is seen to be clearly beneficial to the church and has been decided through the deliberation and with the consent of the entire clergy.
Let presbyters, deacons, or any of the clergy who connive in the losses of the church know that they will be stripped of their rank and barred from communion. It is entirely just, dearest brothers, that We ensure — through the diligence of all the clergy — that the resources of the church grow and remain inviolate, preserving the offerings of those who have devoted their substance to the salvation of their souls.
Given on the twelfth day before the Kalends of November, in the consulship of Calepius, vir clarissimus.
Footnotes
- ↩ Tauromenium is modern Taormina, a city on the eastern coast of Sicily. Panormus (mentioned below) is modern Palermo, on the northwestern coast. The two cities are on opposite ends of the island, suggesting that the problem of episcopal property alienation was not a local anomaly but a province-wide pattern that Leo is addressing through these cases as a general occasion.
- ↩ The single-consul dating here — Calepius alone, without his co-consul Ardabur — is unusual. Letters XV and XVI from the same year (447) name both consuls. Some manuscript traditions and the PL apparatus note the single-consul form without resolving it definitively. The content, the Sicilian addressees, and the connection to the Roman synod at which the Panormus case was heard all point firmly to the same year as Letter XVI (447). The PL apparatus also notes that this same synod — convened on October 3 — was the occasion at which Leo issued the particular decrees for the Tauromenium and Panormus churches, with Letter XVII serving as the general ordinance that followed.
Historical Commentary