The See of Peter

The Early Church and Peter's Primacy

Letter XXII, from Flavian to Pope Leo

Synopsis: Flavian writes to Leo to report the deposition and excommunication of Eutyches at the Constantinople synod of November 448, describing the heresy Eutyches professed — the denial of Christ’s two natures and the rejection of the consubstantiality of His flesh with ours — and appealing to Leo as the authority who must make this impiety known to all the God-loving bishops under his reverence, lest they unknowingly treat Eutyches as a faithful member of the Church.

Flavian, to the most holy and God-loving father and fellow priest, Leo.

Chapter I: The Devil’s Schemes Are Resisted by Adherence to the Holy Fathers’ Doctrine

Nothing restrains the wickedness of the devil — that uncontainable evil, full of deadly poison — as he roams about seeking whom to strike, disturb, or swallow up (Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour, 1 Pet. 5:8). Hence we have learned from holy Scripture to be sober, to draw near to God, to be vigilant in prayer, to reject foolish questions, to follow the Fathers, and not to transgress their eternal boundaries.

Laying aside the abundance of sighs and tears, I grieve that one under my charge and pastoral care was ensnared, and that I could neither save him nor snatch him from the wolf’s jaws, though I was ready to lay down my own soul for him. Rushing to his own perdition, hating the voice of one calling him back, shunning the teaching of his fathers and abhorring their paths, he has compelled me to this discourse.

Chapter II: Heretics’ Cunning Deceives the Unwary

Some appear in sheep’s clothing yet are ravenous wolves within (Matt. 7:15), known by their fruits. They seem to be of us but are not: if they had been of us, they would have remained with us (1 John 2:19). When they spew out their impiety, the deceit that was hidden erupts, seizing souls that are weaker or untrained in the divine words and dragging them to ruin — overturning and injuring the doctrines of the Fathers and the holy Scriptures, to their own destruction. Foreknowing this, we must be on our guard, lest their malice seduce some and sever them from the firmness of the faith. They have sharpened their tongues like serpents; the venom of asps is under their lips, as the prophet cried (Ps. 139:3).

Chapter III: Eutyches Revives the Dogmas of Valentinus and Apollinaris

Such is Eutyches, formerly presbyter and archimandrite — seeming to uphold the right faith and to stand against the impiety of Nestorius, yet seeking to overturn the exposition of the three hundred and eighteen holy Fathers at Nicaea, and the letter of Cyril to Nestorius, and his letter to the Orientals — all of which had been affirmed by universal consent — reviving the ancient evil dogmas of Valentinus and Apollinaris. He feared not the true King’s precept: Whoever causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for a millstone to be hung around his neck (Matt. 18:6).

Casting off his guise without shame, he declared openly before our holy synod that our Lord Jesus Christ ought not to be acknowledged after the Incarnation as subsisting in two natures, in one substance and one person, nor His flesh as consubstantial with us — taken from us and assumed into union with the Word according to substance. He said that the Virgin who bore Him is indeed consubstantial with us in her flesh, but that the Lord’s body is not a human body, though it appeared in human form from the Virgin — resisting the expositions of all the holy Fathers.

Chapter IV: Eutyches Has Been Deposed and Excommunicated; Leo Must Notify the Western Bishops

To avoid excessive length, We have sent to Your Holiness the acts of his case, in which we deprived him of the priesthood, the governance of his monastery, and our communion on account of such errors. We ask that Your Holiness, now informed of his deeds, make his impiety known to all the God-loving bishops under your reverence — lest, not knowing his views, they treat him as one in the faith and receive him through letters or confessions. All with me salute the fellowship of Your Beatitude in Christ. May you remain safe in the Lord, praying for us, most God-loving father.

Source/Reference

PL 54:723

Notes / Historical Commentary

Letter XXII is the first document in the Eutychian controversy to come from the Patriarch of Constantinople — and the first document in the Leo corpus in which the Patriarch of that see addresses Leo in terms that acknowledge him as a higher authority whose notification of other bishops carries a force beyond that of any other single see. Flavian of Constantinople (patriarch from 446 until his death at Ephesus II in 449) was a man of orthodox convictions and genuine pastoral integrity, but his position was politically precarious: the court of Theodosius II was under the influence of the eunuch Chrysaphius, who was Eutyches’s godfather and patron. By writing to Leo, Flavian was reaching to the one authority capable of lending the condemnation of Eutyches a standing that the imperial court could not easily overturn.

The primacy dimension of the letter is concentrated in Chapter IV. Flavian does not merely inform Leo of what has happened; he asks Leo to communicate the condemnation to “all the God-loving bishops under your reverence,” so that none of them unknowingly receive Eutyches as a man in good standing. The reader should note precisely what this request assumes: that Leo’s notification to bishops throughout the Church carries the force of authoritative governance — not merely the sharing of information between colleagues. Flavian has already condemned Eutyches locally. What he cannot do locally is establish the condemnation’s standing throughout the universal Church. That capacity belongs to Rome. The appeal to Leo is not an Eastern patriarch writing to a Western counterpart about bishops in the West; it is the Patriarch of Constantinople recognizing that the resolution of a major doctrinal case requires the authority of Peter’s see to be fully effective.

The honorifics Flavian uses reinforce this reading. He opens by addressing Leo as “the most holy and God-loving father and fellow priest” — collegial language between bishops — but in the operative chapter shifts to “Your Holiness” and “Your Beatitude,” formal titles of deference, and closes with “most God-loving father.” The shift from collegial to deferential language in the very paragraph where Flavian makes his request is not incidental. Leo is being addressed as the father to whom a case is referred for its universal resolution, not as a peer being kept informed.

There is a separate older Latin version of this letter preserved in a Spanish canonical collection, labeled in the PL as alia versio antiquior (“an older alternative version”) and printed at columns 727–732. It derives from a different manuscript tradition and is somewhat fuller in Chapters II and III, with variant readings in the Latin. The differences are primarily matters of phrasing rather than substance. The text here follows the standard Greek-Latin bilingual version at columns 723–726, which is the version preserved in the main conciliar collections and cited in the subsequent correspondence between Leo and Constantinople.