Chapter I. — When, by the Lord's favor, our brethren had returned whom your provident Blessedness had carefully sent to the East for the cause of the faith, and when the letters had been read through which your Holiness sent by them, I was raised up with all exultation in Christ, because your page declared that they had brought back the same disposition of the legation committed to them. Nor is it a wonder that our Lord Jesus Christ should have bestowed upon the catholic faith which we hold the grace and guardianship of His majesty, since He set you, fit champions of His worship, as prelate in the see of His apostle — you who are able both to think rightly concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation, and more rightly to guard the same. Chapter II.
Having therefore admonished my brethren and fellow-bishops, and having held an assembly, we kept to the form of your letters. For when the epistle of your Blessedness had been reviewed in the council of the Lord's priests — the epistle which our holy brother and fellow-bishop Abundantius, and my fellow-presbyter Senator, had brought — and when their narrative had been acknowledged, just as your writings had signified, the order of things done was straightway inquired into, and there was recited that epistle which, fully composed with the affirmation of the faith, your Holiness had some time before transmitted to the East, and which came to us at your admonition, our holy brother and fellow-bishop Ceretius lending it.
It became clear that it shone with the full simplicity of the faith, and that by the affirmations of the prophets, the evangelical authorities, and the testimonies of apostolic doctrine, it radiated with a certain brightness of light and splendor of truth, and that it agreed in every sense with what the blessed Ambrose, stirred by the Holy Spirit, inserted in his books concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation. Chapter.
III. — And because all things agree in complete purity with the faith of our forefathers handed down from ancient times, holy lord and most blessed father, it has pleased all whose subscription the names appended below will be able to declare, that those who think impiously concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation, though by the perversity of their own understanding they depart from the truth of the catholic faith and have made themselves worthy of rejection, should also by our consent — with the sentence of your authority going before — be pursued with fitting condemnation.
Following therefore the form of your letters, we have shown, by these things sent through our brother and fellow-bishop Cyriacus, that we have observed the manner of the prescribed procedure. It remains that, when by the Lord's assent these matters are perfected, retaining in perpetual quiet the palm of the faith and the crown of the completed contest, you may leave this to be remembered by future ages: that for this cause the contumacy of the impious sect has arisen at the present time, that, with you as its assailants, it might lie forever prostrate in defeat. And in another hand: May the supreme Divinity protect and guard your Blessedness unharmed, holy and most blessed lord and father. I, Eusebius, bishop of the Church of Milan, have consented and subscribed to all things written above:
pronouncing anathema upon those who have thought impiously concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation. I, Faventius, bishop of the Church of Reggio, have consented and subscribed to all things written above: pronouncing anathema upon those who have thought impiously concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation. I, Majorianus, bishop of the Church of Piacenza, have consented and subscribed to all their writings: pronouncing anathema upon those who have thought impiously concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation. I, Cyprianus, bishop of the Church of Brescello, have consented and subscribed to all things written above: pronouncing anathema upon those who have thought impiously concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation. I, Quintus, bishop of the Church of Tortona, have consented and subscribed to all things written above:
pronouncing anathema upon those who have thought impiously concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation. I, Crispinus, bishop of the Church of Pavia, have consented and subscribed to all things written above: pronouncing anathema upon those who have thought impiously concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation. I, Floreius, presbyter, being bidden by the holy Eulogius here present, my bishop of the Church of Ivrea — because he himself cannot subscribe on account of infirmity — have subscribed to all things written above, he consenting and pronouncing anathema upon those who have thought impiously concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation. I, Maximus, bishop of the Church of Turin, have consented and subscribed to all things written above:
pronouncing anathema upon those who have thought impiously concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation. I, Gratus, presbyter, sent by my bishop Euthasius of the Church of Aosta, in his stead have consented and subscribed to all things written above: pronouncing anathema upon those who have thought impiously concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation. I, Cyriacus, bishop of the Church of Lodi, have consented and subscribed to all things written above: pronouncing anathema upon those who have thought impiously concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation. I, Abundantius, bishop of the Church of Como, have consented to all things written above, and have subscribed both for myself and for my absent holy brother Asinio, bishop of the Church of Chur in the first Raetia:
pronouncing anathema upon those who have thought impiously concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation. I, Paschasius, bishop of the Church of Genoa, have consented and subscribed to all things written above: pronouncing anathema upon those who have thought impiously concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation. I, Pastor, bishop of the Church of Este, have consented and subscribed to all things written above: pronouncing anathema upon those who have thought impiously concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation. I, Simplicianus, bishop of the Church of Novara, have consented and subscribed to all things written above: pronouncing anathema upon those who have thought impiously concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation.
I, Joannes, bishop of the Church of Cremona, have consented and subscribed to all things written above: pronouncing anathema upon those who have thought impiously concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation. I, Optatianus, bishop of the Church of Brescia, have consented and subscribed to all things written above: pronouncing anathema upon those who have thought impiously concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation. I, Justianus, bishop of the Church of Vercelli, have consented and subscribed to all things written above: pronouncing anathema upon those who have thought impiously concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation. I, Quintius, bishop of the Church of Albenga, have consented and subscribed to all things written above: pronouncing anathema upon those who have thought impiously concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation.
I, Praestantius, bishop of the Church of Bergamo, have consented and subscribed to all things written above: pronouncing anathema upon those who have thought impiously concerning the mystery of the Lord's incarnation. 1. Quesnel inserted among the Works of Leo the most excellent epistle, or relation, of the Council of Chalcedon addressed to St. Leo, in both Greek and Latin, as it is displayed in the editions of the Councils; yet he made use of no manuscript, whether Greek or Latin. We have reviewed the Greek text, which is the original, together with two Venetian manuscripts of St. Mark, 164 and 555. As for the Latin, there is a twofold Latin version of this relation. Quesnel gave only that one which, first published by Crabbe, passed into the rest of the editions of the Councils.
But there exists another, more ancient interpretation, which was drawn up a little after the Chalcedonian Council itself, and from which Pope Vigilius alleged a testimony in his Constitutum. This Baluze first edited. It has hitherto been found in only three codices, namely in the Parisian, in the Vatican codex of the Queen of the Swedes, and in another, Vatican 1322. This last codex, however, which once belonged to Verona, is the more excellent because it has preserved for us very many subscriptions of the Fathers which are wanting in the Greek original itself. For us indeed, who judged that this version ought by no means to be omitted, it was not useless to peruse that codex more accurately. 2. The other, more recent version has as its author Rusticus, deacon of the Roman Church.
For he prefixed this annotation, which is read in the pure copies of Rusticus and in Crabbe's edition: 'The relations of the holy synod I myself translated from the Greek Acoemetite codex into Latin.' And at the end of the relation itself this annotation of his is subjoined: 'I wrote on the day before the Kalends of April, on the third day of the week, in the thirteenth indiction' — which indiction, likewise steadily marked in his other annotations, if it is to be referred to that time when Rusticus was staying in the East, agrees with the year 550 alone, whatever be the case regarding the day or weekday, in which no fewer difficulties occur here than elsewhere. The Roman editors of the Councils removed these annotations published by Crabbe, for the reason that they were ignorant that they belonged to Rusticus.
In which they are to be excused, since they found no pure and complete codex of Rusticus which exhibits Rusticus's own annotations. For we, who diligently searched out at Rome the Latin codices of the Chalcedonian collection, out of the five Vatican codices 1321, 1322, 1323, 4166, and 5405, which the Roman editors were able to examine, found none pure of Rusticus. But the Chigi codex 483 alone is pure and complete, which however was acquired after the Roman edition, under Pope Alexander VII. In emending the version of Rusticus itself, Baluze used two manuscripts of Rusticus, the Corbie and the Dijon. Three other exemplars we did not employ: the aforesaid Chigi, Vatican 1323, and the most ancient one of the Verona chapter, marked with the number 57.
This interpretation, as cohering more closely with the Greek, we shall give opposite the Greek original; then we shall subjoin the more ancient one with its subscriptions. 3. Here, moreover, it must be premised that the Roman editors, and from them Quesnel, affixed in the margin of Rusticus's interpretation certain readings rendered more accurately from the Greek, which will not be omitted by us in the annotations; and that besides they sometimes added other readings, which, since we detected them to be taken from the more ancient version of the Vatican codex 1322, we judged should be passed over: for enough will be able to be gathered from that ancient version itself, which will be subjoined. 4. As to the date of this relation, which is wanting in all the codices, both Greek and Latin, a few words.
Since the last session of the council was held on the Kalends of November in the year 451, on this same day or a little after, this relation to Leo was written, before the Fathers of the synod were dismissed.