Sermons & Letters 84

To his most beloved brother Dorus, Leo the bishop. The judgment which we had hoped concerning you we grieve to have been frustrated, since we perceive that you have committed those things which would defile every rule of ecclesiastical sanction with a blameworthy novelty: whereas you most fully know with how great solicitude we wish the precepts of the eternal canons to be kept in all the Lord's Churches, and that this care especially pertains to the priests of all peoples, that the rules of the holy constitutions be corrupted by no excesses. Whence we marvel that you, whom it had been fitting to be most observant of the authority of the apostolic See, have acted so negligently, or rather so insolently, that you have proved yourself not a guardian but a transgressor of the laws handed down to you.

For from the petition of Paul your presbyter, which is contained among the subjoined documents, we have learned that among you, by a new ambition and a foul collusion, the order of the presbyterate has been thrown into confusion; so that by the hasty and premature advancement of one man, there has been a certain casting-down of some of those whose honor their standing commended and no fault diminished. But if the intention of the ambitious man, or the unskilled zeal of his favorers, demanded that which custom never had, namely that a beginner should be preferred to the deserving, and a novice to the veterans, it had been for your diligence and doctrine to restrain the unjust desires of the petitioners by reasonable authority;

lest one whom you were hastily advancing to priestly honor should begin to do so to the injury of those to whom he was being associated, and should make himself less, while in him not the virtue of humility but the vice of elation was strengthened. For you were not ignorant that the Lord said that he who humbles himself shall be exalted, but he who exalts himself shall be humbled (Luke 14:11; and 18:14): and that the same one said: But you seek to grow from the little, and to be lesser from the greater. For each is disordered, each is preposterous; and all the fruit of labors is taken away, all the measure of merits is emptied, if one attains only so much of dignity as he has obtained of flattery; so that the greed of eminence not only diminishes the proud man, but also the one who connives at it.

But if, as is asserted, the first and second presbyters showed such flattering deference toward Epicarpius in the matter of setting him above themselves, that they demanded he be honored to their own disgrace, not even so ought that to have been granted to them which they wished, since they were casting themselves down by no rightful judgment of their own; for it would have been more worthy of you to oppose so wretched a will than to yield to it. Yet a deformed and cowardly submission could not prejudice those who are well aware in their own conscience and who do not render the grace of God void, so that, by transferring their primacies from one to another in whatever transaction, they should diminish the dignity of those who came after them; nor, because they had set the last man before themselves, should he thereby take precedence over the rest.

II. Therefore the aforesaid presbyters, who professed themselves unworthy of the rank of their own honor, although they might even have deserved to be deprived of the priesthood, nevertheless—that they may be spared out of the loving-kindness of the Apostolic See—shall be reckoned last among all the presbyters of the Church; and, that they may bear the verdict of their own judgment, they shall be even lower than the one whom by their own sentence they set above themselves: while all the other presbyters remain in that order which the time of each one's ordination assigned to him. Nor shall anyone besides the aforesaid two suffer the injury of diminished dignity, but let this reproach fall back only upon the standing of those who chose to be inferior to one newly and prematurely ordained.

So that they may perceive that Gospel saying to apply to themselves, which declares: 'With what judgment you have judged, you shall be judged; and with what measure you have measured, the same shall be measured back to you' (Matt. 7:2; Mark 4:24; Luke 6:38). But let Paul the presbyter retain his rank, from which by praiseworthy steadfastness he did not withdraw; and let nothing further be presumed to anyone's injury; so that your Charity—whom the ill-will of this whole affair not undeservedly assails—may hasten to remedy it at least by this measure, that without delay these things which we decree be carried into effect; lest, if a just appeal should again take refuge with us, it become necessary to be more severely stirred, since, when the things wrongly done have been corrected, we would rather restore discipline than increase punishment.

But you shall know that we have committed the execution of our injunctions to our brother and fellow-bishop Julius, so that everything may forthwith be confirmed just as we have determined. Given on the eighth day before the Ides of March, in the consulship of the most illustrious Posthumianus.