Sermons & Letters 234 part 2/2

He also recalled to the mind of the Roman Pontiff the name of Nectarius the Great, of Timothy of Alexandria, and of others who had cast their votes in that synod. This same Anatolius attests that this cause was thoroughly treated in the council by the Fathers, who were led by the confidence that it would be approved by the Roman Pontiff: 'Being confident that he will ratify the honor of the See of Constantinople, inasmuch as it already before this has had care of, and concord with, the throne of your apostolic See, and in all things has shared in common its resources with whatever matters it stood in need of.' But in the passages that follow, concerning the preeminence which Rome...

...which the See of Rome exercised toward the Church of Constantinople—among many other things which the bishop Anatolius himself judged should be suggested to Leo, so that his mind might be moved willingly to confirm and ratify that canon pertaining to the honor and prerogatives of his See—he has these words which, beyond all doubt, clearly disclose the doctrine of those times concerning the governance of the Churches of the East, and which, so to speak, are most aptly opposed to the new doctrines and utterly overturn the Quesnellian fallacies. 'And we (he says) beseech that whatever we can obtain of approbation and stability may also be brought about for us by you, most holy ones.' Let the reader, I beg, give heed to the other things that immediately follow.

'For the See of Constantinople has as its father your apostolic throne, joining itself to you in a certain special manner, so that, on account of your care toward it, all are persuaded that you have formerly sincerely deliberated for it, and that even now you hold the same mind and care for it without interruption, and that it will be altogether useful to the ecclesiastical state that you deign to confirm in writing what has been enacted in the most holy and ecumenical synod. And we have taken care to send that same aforesaid constitution concerning the See of Constantinople to your holiness, that you may be able to recognize that all things have been divinely ordered according to your wishes.' Finally, as a suppliant, S.

...he entreats Leo to make a fitting response to each of the propositions, having sent for this purpose the bishop Lucian as legate, who would set forth everything and render service in his ministry—a man who was perfect, and beforehand dear even to the emperors themselves, whom Leo himself had earlier sent to the synod.

'And we beseech that each proposition may receive a fitting response, since Lucian, the bishop most beloved of God, will set forth all things to you—he who was himself present at the holy synod, and, prudently bringing forward what he could on behalf of the zeal of our faith, was chosen by us to serve you happily in this ministry, being a perfect man, and already beforehand dear to our most august and most Christian emperors, whom you deigned, to his enjoyment and rejoicing, to send back to us by your goodness.' 11. And lest anyone be able to doubt that all these things by no means overturn the new doctrine and fallacy of Quesnel, let him observe, I beg, for what reason and in what sense these can stand together. Quesnel denies that Flavian sent to S.

...that it might be approved, or, if it vanished, be reproved; 'he denies that he sent to him the sequence of the Acts, in order to discharge the debt of the necessary report; he contends that the sentence of the Council of Constantinople, over which Flavian had presided, was decisive, and that there was no need of a laborious inquiry. He affirms likewise that the shifty Eutyches would shortly bring lying complaints to other Sees, and especially to the Roman one, and would seize the ears of the Pontiffs.' And besides, since a rumor was being spread that the emperor was thinking of convening a universal synod, in which the whole affair would be recalled to examination, it was fitting that Flavian should inform the primatial See and the Fathers of this council,

...and that the Acts of Constantinople, through the care of the Roman Pontiff, should become known to the other bishops of the Western region as well. But while he denies such things and affirms the things just recounted, that testimony of the Fathers of Chalcedon would altogether totter and collapse—the testimony by which they confessed that the ray of the Apostolic See, by its accustomed governing, had often been scattered and extended even to the Church of Constantinople, and that it had been accustomed to enrich the Constantinopolitans, as it were as members of the household, by a sharing of its goods. Secondly, it would by no means stand that the Fathers of Chalcedon...

...had begged the Roman Pontiff that he might honor their judgment with his decrees, would by no means stand. For if already, as Quesnel wishes, the Acts of some metropolitan council do not need the confirmation of the Roman Pontiff, much less would the proceedings of a general synod have needed such confirmation, inasmuch as they were sanctioned by the authority of the whole Church. Thirdly, it would smack of fabrication that, in order to remove the dissensions which had earlier arisen in the Church of Constantinople on account of the fickleness of dispositions and the circumstances of the times, whether by reason of the tumult of the Ephesians, or by reason of the ordinations of the metropolitans of those three provinces, namely the Asian, the Pontic, and the Thracian, the Roman Pontiffs had exercised all right and authority, that the prelates of Constantinople...

...might in a special way become partakers of the privileges of the Apostolic See; whom, regarding them as sons subject to a father, they embraced with the utmost zeal, even in those matters which pertained to the administration of ecclesiastical governance. Fourthly and finally, in what manner could Anatolius have confessed that the Church of Constantinople had been attached to the Roman Church not merely by some general economy, but was joined to it in a certain special manner on account of the care of the Roman Pontiffs toward it—a care which in past times they had exercised without interruption,

...disposing all things useful for the ecclesiastical state? These four points, I say, which we have not fabricated out of our own brain, but have drawn from genuine sources—how could they cohere with those supposititious rights and privileges, of which Quesnel contends that Flavian was the champion, lest the cause of Eutyches be referred, reexamined, and judged by the Roman Pontiff? 12. Nor is it an obstacle that Flavian strove to persuade the Roman Pontiff that Eutyches had already been judged according to the rules of the canons, and that a new examination and judgment of the matter, for which he was preparing himself upon learning of Eutyches's appeal, was superfluous, as Quesnel himself affirms. For in the first place, Flavian...

...nowhere indicated that the examination and judgment of S. Leo was superfluous. On the contrary, he sought this out, judging only that a general council would be superfluous, lest the disputes and contentions of the parties should grow. He also asked that the sentence pronounced against Eutyches be confirmed by pontifical writings, without which confirmation the judgment of the Eastern bishops would certainly have had no effect, Eutyches himself protesting, and, protestatory memorials having been posted concerning this matter in the public places of the city of Constantinople, by which he protested that he had been deprived of communion and of the prefecture of his monastery through injury and through the malice, or the envy, of his adversaries.

Wherefore Quesnel is by no means to be heeded, who, in order to prepare some defense for his lost cause, had recourse to certain distorted interpretations, confidently and as though in sport, interpreting Flavian's words thus: 'Flavian requests of Leo not a judgment but a consolation; not a sentence but a letter; a defense, not a confirmation; his own writings, not synodal decrees; who, the anathema having once been hurled against Eutyches by episcopal judgment, considered the cause finished, unless a universal council should wish to draw the cognizance of this matter to itself, or unless it were of its own accord referred to the West:'

'which the bishop of Constantinople most rightly judged should be removed on this occasion, lest everywhere (he said) the most holy Churches should be thrown into confusion on account of the error and malice of one restless and seditious monk.' He is not therefore to be heeded. If indeed in the appendix of his letter, as it is circulated, Flavian requests that the Roman Pontiff make the cause of the faith his own common cause; and at the same time asks him to decree in the condemnation regularly made against him, and to deign to confirm it by his own writings. Could the Roman Pontiff have done these things which Flavian requests without an examination of the preceding proceedings, and without knowledge of Eutyches's bad faith and wickedness?

Would he have decreed that the condemnation against Eutyches had been regularly made, without assuming the role of judge, and without becoming acquainted with the authentic synodal Acts of the preceding sentence pronounced, the defenses of the condemned party having been set aside and neglected? What more? If, upon a preceding examination of all these matters, in writing and not merely by word, he could have brought consolation to the ordinary judge, by decreeing that in the inquiry already held the canonical laws had been fulfilled, and by declaring that Flavian himself had preserved the very heights of justice—could he do so without holding as ratified and firm whatever had been pronounced against Eutyches?

If these forms of speech do not intimate that Flavian requested of Leo an examination, a judgment, a decree, I do not know what more proper and more apt words he ought to have devised, so that the sentence passed might remain more firm. And surely it is a great consolation, and a great defense, that lower judges have, when their judgments are referred to higher tribunals and are approved by the judges of these. Hence it is no wonder that Flavian, greatly disturbed in mind—and indeed by injury, through the Eutychian tumults—confesses that the judgment of the Roman Pontiff would bring him consolation and defense. Nor was a synodal decree necessary, since the Roman Pontiff...

...could have furnished all these things from his own writings, and therefore Flavian asserted that these alone could there suffice. 13. But now it grieves Quesnel that the version of the earlier letter of Flavian to S. Leo seems to him but little accurate: 'Which (he says), if it had been permitted to emend it against the Greek text, which through the injury of the times has perished, we should perhaps have found something clearer, which would favor our opinion.' Notwithstanding this accustomed refrain about falsified ancient codices, and about versions ill digested, already borrowed from more ancient heretics, he confidently closes that chapter of his dissertation with these words:

'From this version, however, although perhaps made by a Western and Roman man, to the sincere reader who is not seeking a knot in a bulrush, there appears light more than enough for eliciting the truth.' But a pretty fable! After employing every art of reasoning in interpreting and distorting Flavian's sayings, which a little before he had exaggerated as clearer than the sun, behold, now understanding that among learned men his cause could fall, he judged that an escape and at the same time a defense must be procured for himself, by taxing and rebuking the ancient interpreter of that letter. Yet Quesnel would have found nothing clearer, had the Greek text of that letter been extant, which might indulge his own studies, since already the manner of acting and mode of speaking of the Fathers of Chalcedon...

...and of Anatolius—their manner of acting and mode of speaking—make plain the doctrine of those times and the administration of ecclesiastical affairs which the Easterners preserved. We meanwhile have judged that the reader here should be admonished that the praised letter of Anatolius has hitherto been longed for in vain by the learned. For we, the very first of all, in the year of the Lord 1738, dug it out and transcribed it from the Vatican Greek manuscript Codices; which afterward the most illustrious lord Franciscus Mariani, writer of the Vatican Library and interpreter of Greek letters, rendered into Latin with the utmost erudition and kindness in which he excels; and we shall, with God's help, set it forth entire in Greek and Latin in a public edition. 14.

But since Quesnel had in many ways meditated with himself to bring forward into the open all those things which he thought could in some way support his false opinions, hence it arose that, the name being suppressed, he recounts the opinion of a certain man of remarkable erudition, who wrote: 'Namely, that the Acts of the Council of Constantinople against Eutyches having been read, all had been so approved and confirmed by S. Leo, that both Flavian and S. Leo judged that one ought to abstain from proclaiming a general synod.' Since this turn of phrase displeased Quesnel, he subjoined: 'With the leave of that excellent man let me say it, he is very far from the truth.' And, seizing the occasion, he gently describes S.

...Leo as angered against Flavian, for the reason that he had, as he supposed, struck Eutyches with too severe a sentence—Eutyches, who seemed to adhere to the statutes of the Nicene synod. But whence, pray, would Quesnel have Leo's anger derive its origin, unless from the fact that there had not yet come to the pontifical hands, as was fitting, both Flavian's letters and the synodal proceedings—as the order of ecclesiastical administration or moderation, as S. Leo himself says, required—as we have more clearly observed for him; concerning which matter it is now superfluous to treat again. But Quesnel added still further: 'Of the confirmation, therefore, of the proceedings held by him against Eutyches, Flavian did not think even in a dream.' This?

And do those preceding words and Flavian's phrases, which we have noted above, perhaps intimate that Flavian did not think in a dream about the confirmation of the proceedings—which he was expressly requesting? He strove admirably to impose upon the reader; but truth refutes and overturns lies. But from here, if we wished to pursue a considered method of writing, noting down step by step all the things which Quesnel wrote to abolish the appeal of Eutyches, we should now be compelled to wander off the stage. For he mixed into his dissertation one thing after another which the adversary believed favored himself, which scarcely pertain to the present question. Such as those things about convening or not convening a general synod;

...which authority he pretends does not depend on the apostolic See of divine Peter, but on the emperor and on the consent of all the bishops, which he fancies must first be sought out. Or those other things about the Acts of the Eastern synods drawn up by the metropolitans of the provinces, or by the diocesans, which were not transmitted to the West to be examined, but were then only transmitted thither when either a particular controversy or accusation had passed into a public cause of the faith; or when someone, having been condemned in a synod, appealed to the other bishops; or when, heretics abusing the favor of the emperor, the bishop of the primatial See—who might plead before the prince—needed to be approached, and his solicitude to be prepared for warding off the evil arts of the obstinate heretics.

He believes that some testimonies to this matter are supplied to him from the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon. Wherefore, establishing an engagement with Christian Lupus, he says: 'Who would believe that the Acts of the synods of Antioch and of Berytus, held not long before that of Constantinople in the cause of Ibas, were directed to Rome? Who would say that the Acts of the other Antiochene synod, in the cause of Athanasius of Perrha, were? Who would say that the proceedings of six hundred other synods were carried to the Western parts down to that time?'

'But rather Flavian would have acted contrary to custom, if he had thought of sending those, before the obstinacy of Eutyches, the publication of the protestatory memorials, the letter sent to Leo, the fear of the imperial power, the rumor of a council to be convoked by Theodosius, or one already proclaimed, and other things of this kind, had imposed upon Flavian the necessity of instructing the primatial See about a cause now made common.' These are the things which Quesnel, that he might throw dust, arranged in the matter of the appeal made to the Apostolic See. Of which some, since they pertain to the subsequent proclamation and convocation of the general council; and others, since they ought to be referred to the causes treated and defined both in the Ephesine and in the Chalcedonian ecumenical synods;

...and others finally which regard the affair of Eutyches and Flavian—since these have been abundantly discussed and unfolded by us—therefore, lest we break the thread of historical matters, we defer to treat of these same things more opportunely elsewhere. But meanwhile, we specially and particularly undertake a discussion of the Eutychian memorial of appeal, which Quesnel judged should be eliminated from the collection of Leonine Works.