Sermons & Letters 247 part 2/6

These words certainly are employed by judges among the jurisconsults to indicate a definitive sentence, which is given last and concludes the whole matter, as is read in the Code 'On Sentences.' Whence it could be lawful for no one any longer either to institute a new judgment, or to interpret the pontifical definition otherwise; which, since it was general, affected each and every person of whatever order, rank, and quality, and to it, under the penalty of schism, all were bound to submit. 10. Nor truly can it be objected to me that the praised canon conflicted with the Nicene sanctions, lest a wound be inflicted on which St. Leo, as guardian and executor of the canons, could by no means permit. For I will ask Quesnel whether the Fathers of Chalcedon were ignorant of this.

That they were not ignorant is plain. For the Nicene canons, and the sixth in particular, at the urging of Paschasinus, was read clearly and again in the synod, and was heard by all. Therefore those Fathers either indicated that that sixth Nicene canon could thenceforth no longer support the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch on account of various and diverse circumstances of affairs and times, or they judged that they had authority to make obsolete and to antiquate the old canons and to establish new ones, which would pertain to the better and safer administration and tranquility of the Churches, in those things that refer to discipline and economy. But whatever their judgment was, Leo abolished it, annulled it, made it void.

Since therefore he did this not as a particular but as a universal bishop, reforming, annulling, and abolishing the judgment of a general synod, he has now most evidently made plain that he himself is neither subject to the decrees of synods, nor do the decrees of synods have any force or vigor without his suffrage and confirmation. 11. But now we must shake out the trifling interpretations of Launoy, just as long ago we were accustomed to do in the schools of the Urban College of the Propagation of the Faith, treating arguments of this kind. Launoy therefore, undertaking to examine that question which pertains to the pontifical confirmation of universal synods, gravely assails Cardinal Bellarmine, because in book II On Councils, chapter 17, he wrote that the Roman

pontiff is simply and absolutely above the universal Church and the general council, so that he acknowledges no judgment above himself. Now among the other arguments brought forward by Bellarmine in defense of this cause, that one holds a place which is gathered from this letter of Leo to Pulcheria. But Launoy denies that the proposition can be proved. Indeed he accuses Bellarmine of fraud, because he mutilated the testimony of the holy Pontiff, those words being removed, 'united with us in the piety of your faith,' which pertain to Pulcheria, and then, those things being subtracted from the middle of the oration which follow, 'by a wholly general definition we annul,' he was entirely silent. 'Therefore, proceeding to reason (he says), Bellarmine

removed the former words, lest what was Leo's should seem to be common with Pulcheria, and lest Pulcheria should be believed to have come into a share of the abrogated canon by which the prerogative of the Church of Constantinople was sanctioned; and, these things being thus established, he might more easily conclude that the pope is above the council.' And below, Launoy assigns the reason why the holy Pontiff, in abrogating the canon, wished to have the piety of Pulcheria's faith united to himself, adding: 'But the pontiff added those words for this reason, that he knew the care of guarding the canons fell upon the princes. For this he writes in letter 74 to Leo Augustus.' Finally our critic, inquiring why Bellarmine cut off the latter words, concludes:

'Lest he should see, and set before his reader, the pontiff as obedient to the ecclesiastical laws, lest it should be established that what the pontiff was doing, he was doing by the authority of the Nicene synod. Wherefore that author mutilated Leo not indeed in conformity with the truth of the matter, but to the aim of the work he had undertaken.' But in the end, as though fleeing he wished to excuse Bellarmine, he says that the latter wrote this at Rome, not indeed for the reproach of the apostolic see, but in such a way that he incurred no slight censure of the curia, and would be assigned to the prohibitory index. Thus far Launoy, as in the letter to Jacobus Bevilaqua, subjoining certain other things which may be seen in part II, letter 4, page (in my copy) 53. 12. That this censure against Bellarmine is grave, all understand;

yet I do not know whether they would condemn it as unjust. This latter point, however, we shall easily attain, by noting that Bellarmine's aim was not to transcribe the whole and entire letter of St. Leo and turn it to his own use, but only to report those words which pertained to the question instituted and proposed to himself. And chiefly those which indicated ecclesiastical authority and jurisdiction. Who therefore among the theologians, even of the lowest note, has hitherto fabricated that women of whatever condition and rank, endowed with whatever supreme power of the age, obtained jurisdiction in the Church and exercised it by right?

Nor have the heterodox (if we except the Montanists and Cataphrygians) even in a dream thought that women could use the authority of the apostle Peter in protecting, establishing, and abolishing ecclesiastical laws. By the piety of faith indeed they can obey and submit to the laws of the Church, and expend their own labor that they may be committed to execution, restrain by penalties the wicked attempts of rebels, and afford to ecclesiastical judges those aids which are ordained for the conservation of the canons.

For the rest, who in a dream could suppose, or even think, that any woman could have exercised even the slightest authority and jurisdiction, judging concerning the prerogatives, rights, canons, ordinations, and other things of that kind of the Church, about which the question was then being raised? Certainly all this would follow, if, as Launoy trifles, 'what was Leo's had been common with Pulcheria, and Pulcheria were believed to have come into a share of the abrogated canon by which the rights of the Church of Constantinople were sanctioned.' Therefore, if women must by divine law be wholly devoid of rights of this kind, the passage of Bellarmine, that most learned and Catholic man, would make common to the empress that authority and jurisdiction on account of which the supreme pontiff writes:

'United with us in the piety of your faith, we render it void, and by the authority of the blessed...'—therefore Launoy wished to reason thus; but let him attend that St. Leo asked Pulcheria to come into a share of the abrogated canon on only a twofold ground, neither of which supports his own system. For the first ground was the piety of the empress's faith, by which in many and diverse ways she had always lent her effort that Leo's wishes might be fulfilled, both in those things which regarded the causes of Flavian and all the orthodox, and in the rest which were ordained for the destruction and condemnation of the Eutychians.

But the other ground was that of preserving ecclesiastical peace and tranquility, which without doubt would have been wholly wounded and disrupted if the sixth Nicene canon, which had been issued for the pacification of all priests, had at length remained wrongfully abolished. Wishing to indicate this, the holy pontiff immediately subjoined: 'Obedient in all ecclesiastical laws, which the Holy Spirit established for the pacification of all priests through three hundred and eighteen bishops.'

And so he appeals to Pulcheria that, the cause of Anatolius being abandoned—whose cause she had begun with much zeal to favor—and the wonted piety of faith being preserved by which she was joined to the apostolic see, she should not take it amiss if he rendered void the agreements of the bishops of Chalcedon that conflicted with the rules of the holy canons established at Nicaea, and annulled them by the authority of the blessed apostle Peter through a wholly general definition. 13. That this indeed is the genuine sense of Leo's words, no one will deny who notes that Pulcheria and Marcian had been made arbiters and mediators between Anatolius and the Roman pontiff, that that canon 28 might be ratified and confirmed.

For that Marcian and Pulcheria had been prepossessed in Anatolius's favor, Leo himself had very well learned from their letters: but trusting most of all in the piety of Pulcheria's faith, by which she was united to the apostolic see, he did not fear most humanely to deny what she herself was asking; nay, utterly to beat back and frustrate the importunate ambition of Anatolius, by withdrawing from him the supports by which he had sought to plead his own cause. That St. Leo had the greatest confidence in the piety of the empress Pulcheria is known from this, that he entrusted to her to restrain and repress the ambition of Anatolius, closing his letter with these words:

And because it is your custom to labor for the peace and unity of the Church, may my brother Anatolius the bishop—dear to me from your recommendation—just as he is magnified in those things which concern the faith restored, so be proclaimed concerning the ambition repressed. The other things that could be deduced from these words, for the more and more overturning of Launoy's system, we ourselves pass over in silence, since any one of our readers may clearly understand how and in what matters the apostolic see was ever united to the piety of Pulcheria's faith. 14. That the attempts of Anatolius of Constantinople remained wholly frustrated—by which he flattered himself that he had obtained most effective supports from the powers of the age that would profit his ambition—we have already amply explained in the preceding.

Of which matter indeed he was made more certain not only from the reports of the emperor Marcian, the empress Pulcheria, and Julian, bishop of Cos, but also from the letters of the holy pontiff himself, who wrote back to him in a somewhat sharp style, that he might curb and repress his ambition. For then Anatolius ought thoroughly to have recognized the strength and fortitude of St. Leo's spirit, who was by no means moved to infringe and abrogate those ecclesiastical laws which were most conformable to justice and equity, and which the Fathers, led by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wholesomely established at Nicaea for the good of the whole Church. First therefore the holy pontiff calls back to Anatolius's mind that ecclesiastical admonition (Ecclus. 18):

'Go not after your concupiscences, and turn away from your own will'—which words present a grave kind of rebuke. Then with a gentle arm he gradually approaches him, on the one side casting up to him his preceding misdeeds into which he had fallen, and on the other side commemorating the mildness and indulgence shown toward him, by which he tolerated the defects of his ordination and the fault he had incurred by wrongfully claiming for himself the ordination of the bishop of Antioch. But these faults he says he tolerated out of zeal for repairing the faith and love of concord.

Yet he affirms that he could not so patiently endure a new fault, by which he attempted to infringe the most holy constitutions of the Nicene canons, seizing the occasion from the opportuneness of the time when the see of Alexandria had lost the privilege of the second honor, and the Church of Antioch had lost the property of the third dignity; so that, by subjecting these places to your right, all the metropolitan bishops should be deprived of their proper honor. Hence therefore he reproaches Anatolius as guilty of a new schism;

namely because, having awaited a favorable time, when the see of Alexandria was vacant of a pastor on account of the deposition of Dioscorus, and when he held the bishop of Antioch joined to himself on account of the sacred ordination recently conferred on the latter, he had attempted things utterly unheard of and unwonted, drawing into an occasion for ambition a synod gathered only for the extinguishing of heresy and the confirmation of the Catholic faith.

Wherefore, to forestall those excuses which he brought forward—contending that the synod of Chalcedon was twice as numerous as that of Nicaea—he affirms that the former is neither to be compared nor preferred to the latter, since the synod of Nicaea is consecrated by so great a divine privilege that, whether ecclesiastical judgments are celebrated by fewer or by more, whatever has been different from their constitution is utterly void of all authority. He does not, moreover, dissemble to indicate how he had impelled that multitude of the Chalcedonian Fathers into his own opinion, gained over by a certain connivance, blandishments, and services—which were a proof that the Fathers

had been seduced by arts to assent to the exceedingly depraved and wicked attempts of that same Anatolius. Whence the holy pontiff says: 'Into the perturbation of the whole Church this proud elation tends, which wished so to abuse the council of the synod that the brethren, convoked only in the business of the faith and having discharged the definition of that cause which was to be attended to, it might lead away to consenting to itself, either by corrupting through depravity or by compelling through terror.'

But meanwhile, when he cast all these things up to Anatolius, in order to proscribe that canon as void of all force, inasmuch as it had been effected by those who lacked authority, and by those who, either seduced by evil arts or deterred by threats, by no means enjoyed perfect liberty, he wished to indicate to us that bishops, even when gathered in general synods, can treat and define no other causes than those which the apostolic see of Peter had proposed for discussion. For led by this reason, the pontifical legates used protestations and reclamations, that they might guard themselves; this was wholly repugnant to their commonitorium and instructions. Concerning whose protestations, when Anatolius himself, in a letter to St. ...

had wished to complain to the pontiff, he repelled the complaint by replying: 'In this indeed you commend them greatly to me by writing these things; but you accuse your own self, in that you were unwilling to obey them while you contrive unlawful designs, superfluously coveting things that ought not to be granted and things contrary and unprofitable to yourself, which can never obtain any consent of ours.' 2. But now it is needful for me to dwell a little upon these matters, that we may grasp the ancient doctrine of those times, and may understand whether to the legates of the pontiff there was conceded in the general synods merely the first place of honour, or also of jurisdiction; and whether it is lawful for synods to enact anything by right while the legates of the Roman pontiffs cry out against it and protest;

and finally whether the general synod itself prevails in power above the Roman pontiff. But who does not see that these three questions, which have sometimes been wont to torment the minds of theologians on account of certain new doctrines wrongly scattered among the common people, are here clearly defined by St. Leo? For to them it is given to preside over the other bishops not merely by a title of honour, but in such wise that the rest of the bishops are bound to obey them; since we are bound to obey no one by private jurisdiction, nor can anything be valid and ratified by right against which the pontifical legates themselves set themselves with protestations and remonstrances.

Nay rather, the more evidently is it explained that the Roman pontiffs prevail in authority above the general councils, the more strongly both Anatolius and the Chalcedonian Fathers strove to adhere to and to insist upon the decree of another general synod drawn up sixty years before, to which the Orientals themselves had assented, for the favour of the elder Augustus Theodosius and the honour of the great Nectarius, for the increasing of the honour, privileges, and prerogatives of the see of Constantinople. Moreover the holy Father asserts that this canon was even then void of all effect, because Leo's predecessors did not approve it, nor did the Fathers of Constantinople transmit it to the Apostolic See in order to obtain its confirmation. 'For to your persuasion' (writes St.

Leo) 'is in nothing whatever supported by the drawing-up made by certain bishops sixty years ago (as you allege), never transmitted by your predecessors to the notice of the Apostolic See; to which, fallen and long since collapsed from its very beginning, you have now wished too late and uselessly to apply props, eliciting from the brethren a semblance of consent which wearied modesty would grant you to its own injury.' All writers laboured, inquiring why this canon of which we speak, drawn up sixty years ago in the Council of Constantinople, had been void of all effect; and they went off into diverse opinions, reasoning in one way and another, especially since our holy pontiff affirms:

'Never transmitted by your predecessors to the notice of the Apostolic See,' and from another source it is made known that the first Council of Constantinople was received by the Apostolic See. Among the others who raised this question was Paschasius Quesnel, but he could have settled it in few words had he attended to the holy Father's manner of speaking. For he says that the canon, when drawn up, had fallen from its very beginning and had long since collapsed; namely so as to indicate that the chief bishops of the East, whose rights were being violated, had been unwilling to support this sanction or enactment.

Nay, perhaps we might suppose that they had protested with remonstrances, although at some time they gave their assent, which at length, wearied by the long-lasting and most grievous goadings of Anatolius, they granted in the Chalcedonian synod, with injury to their own sees. 3. This indeed, and no other, I judge to be the genuine interpretation of the words of St. Leo, which will easily be able to loose all the knots into which the preceding writers fell. For it cannot be affirmed that the Roman pontiffs did not have notice of the first general Council of Constantinople, since there still survives the synodical letter of those one hundred and fifty Fathers,

written to Pope Damasus, to Ambrose of Milan, to Britto of Trier, and to the other Western bishops, in which they make mention only of the heresies condemned in that synod; but they have not a single word about that third canon which they had drawn up for the favour and honour of the archbishops of Constantinople. Who then will reckon that they wished, or were able, to keep silent the decree of this canon from the Apostolic See and the other Western bishops, to whom the said synodical letter was addressed, if they had drawn it up by unanimous consent, without the noise of protestations and remonstrances?

Therefore if, on the authority of Leo, they held that canon from its very beginning as fallen and collapsed, then even among the Orientals it was utterly void of all effect; nor did the Alexandrians and Antiochenes suffer the rights of their Churches to be infringed and violated, nor did they then grant a semblance of consent. But this our interpretation utterly overturns the opinion of Quesnel, who reasons otherwise, and who preferred to imagine that they had not made even a single word in the said synodical letter about the canon concerning the rights and privileges of the see of Constantinople, which they knew would by no means please the Westerners:

'Either persuaded that, when the Eastern bishops decreed anything concerning the ordination of the Eastern Churches, the consent of the Westerners was by no means necessary, and that it sufficed moreover (he adds) if they took care that whatever concerned the symbol of faith against heretics should come to their notice; because, since the cause of faith is common to all, not only to bishops but also to catholic laymen, and is the proper matter of an ecumenical council, it is necessary that all things which pertain to it be made known to all, and first of all to the head of all the bishops, whose office it especially is, from the watchtower of the Apostolic See, to keep watch over the custody and sincerity of the faith.' But with how many and what manner of fallacies this reasoning of Quesnel is stuffed, there is no one who does not perceive.

To refute these one by one we deem superfluous at present; since we have everywhere in these our writings proved that the decrees even of general synods, whatsoever they be, are void of force if they are not approved and confirmed by the consent of the Apostolic See; that the Apostolic See alone can dispense above the ancient canons established by the Church; and finally that the same Apostolic See, even in those things which pertain to discipline and ecclesiastical government, has a special care and diligence for all the Churches of the East, as is most evidently made manifest from the six hundred examples set forth in these our Exercitations, and likewise from others yet to be added. 4. Indeed, observing St.

that Anatolius, besides the second place which he had usurped to the injury of the bishops of Alexandria and Antioch, had wished also to tear down the rights of the provincial primacies, and had defrauded the metropolitan bishops of privileges anciently instituted, to the disturbance of the universal Church; and therefore he commands that this part of ecclesiastical discipline and government be restored to its entirety and preserved, ordering: 'Let not the rights of the provincial primates be torn down, nor let the metropolitan bishops be defrauded of the privileges anciently instituted. Let nothing perish of the dignity of the Alexandrian see, which it deserved through St. Mark the Evangelist, the disciple of blessed Peter;'

'nor, while Dioscorus falls by the obstinacy of his impiety, let the splendour of so great a Church be obscured by another man's darkness.' And straightway discoursing about the rights of the see of Antioch, he prescribes: 'Let the Church of Antioch also, in which first, by the preaching of the blessed apostle Peter, the Christian name arose, persevere in the order of the paternal constitution, and, placed in the third rank, let it never make itself inferior.' Let the reader now, I pray, compare these things which we have transcribed from Leo with those which Quesnel feigned, and let him judge whether the synodal decrees of the Orientals, pertaining to the discipline and government of those Churches, were subject to the approbation, annulment, and judgment of the Roman pontiffs. Let him see what and how great trust is to be placed in Quesnel's fabrications.

Especially since he, labouring under inconstancy, was compelled to confess that the rights of the provincial primates remained utterly abolished: 'Unless St. Leo had strongly resisted the undertakings, whereby he at least achieved this, that the unbridled ambition of that bishop should reach no further.' 5. But now other most evident arguments of this authority of the Roman pontiffs over the discipline and administration of the Churches of the East have been supplied to us from the epistles of our holy Father Leo, written in the following year in the case of Aetius and Andrew, deacons of the Church of Constantinople. Anatolius himself, then, was overmuch eager for novelties, not only by usurping for himself the rights of others, but also by casting down most approved orthodox men from their offices.

For under the colour of honour he degraded Aetius, the archdeacon of the Church of Constantinople, and transferred the dispensation of the whole charge and ecclesiastical care to Andrew, a Eutychianist. For that Aetius had been one of those Constantinopolitan clerics who had constantly contended against the Nestorians and the Eutychians, and who always adhered to St. Flavian, the same St. Leo testified in his epistle to Marcian and Pulcheria. Moreover, the piety of Aetius himself in matters of faith, and his industry in conducting affairs, had long since become known to the whole world, from the offices not only of archdeacon but also of primicerius of the notaries of the city of Constantinople, which he had discharged, as the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon testify.

Therefore under the show of honour he ordained this man a priest; and not finding (says the holy Father) what he might accuse in his faith, nor what he might reprove in his morals, he deputed him to perform the sacred mysteries in a cemetery set far from the city, that he might undergo a kind of penalty of exile. This man therefore St. Leo commended to the imperial piety, that he might not be further burdened with harmful snares, 'whom the Lord, as I have learned,' he says, 'has placed under your defence.' Moreover, that the ordination of Andrew had been altogether irregular, not only on account of the Eutychian heresy to which he had adhered, but also on account of the false accusations framed against St. Flavian, no one could deny.

On this account it was not lawful for Anatolius to promote him to higher grades and to set him over the other catholic clerics. Wherefore the holy Father beseeches the emperor Marcian that 'you would deign to rebuke Anatolius, dissonant from his own profession, and too forgetful, as he says, of your testimony and of your favour. Let him cease (he adds) to persecute catholics; let him cease to crush those who pleased Flavian of holy memory, and to choose the fellowship of those (understand the Eutychians) whom he had condemned.'

Finally, lest he should seem in the remaining matters which might arise in course of time to dismiss the care of Eastern affairs, as though it did not pertain to himself to fulfil the part of a watchman, both in causes of faith and in others pertaining to the tranquillity and to the discipline of the Churches, he appointed Julian the bishop as vicar of the Apostolic See, whom he desires to be held in the affection of the emperor Marcian and of the empress Pulcheria, 'by whose services the image of my presence may be rendered to you. For, confiding in the sincerity of his faith, I have delegated to him my place against the heretics of our time; and, for the custody of the Churches and of peace, I have required that he be not absent from your court.' The holy pontiff is wholly consistent with himself,

the pontiff [is consistent] in the two subsequent epistles written on the same day, one of which he directed to the empress Pulcheria, the other to Julian of Cos. In this latter he added only two things, of which he makes no mention in the preceding ones: the one pertained to the Egyptian and Palestinian monks who were rioting, of whom he did not know whether they were serving at the instigation of the Eutychians, or whether they grieved implacably that their bishop could have been led into that impiety, by which they had learned that he had fallen away from the truth of the Lord's incarnation. 'But in a matter of so great moment (he says) I desire to be more fully instructed, that the correction of such men also may be fittingly attended to.'