—CHAPTER I.— Since the most Christian and most clement Emperor, with a holy and laudable faith, being solicitous for the peace of the Catholic Church, has transmitted writings to us concerning those things which have stirred up the din of disturbance among you, we marvel that your fraternity could keep silent to us about whatever that scandal was, and did not rather see to it that the disclosure of your report should first instruct us, lest we should be in doubt about the truth of the things that were done. For we have received the petition of the presbyter Eutyches, who complains that, on the accusation of Bishop Eusebius, he was undeservedly deprived of communion, especially since he testifies that, having been summoned, he was present and did not refuse his own attendance; so much so that he asserts he offered in the very trial a document of appeal, which nevertheless was not received:
for which reason he was compelled to post up protesting documents in the city of Constantinople. With these matters intervening, we do not yet recognize by what justice he was separated from the communion of the Church. But looking to the cause, we wish to know the reason of your action, and that all things be brought to our notice: since we, who wish the judgments concerning the Lord's priests to be mature, can decide nothing—can render no judgment—in matters unknown, to the prejudice of any party, before we truthfully hear all the things that were done. CHAPTER II.
— And therefore let your fraternity signify to us, by a most suitable and fitting person, in a most complete report, what has emerged of novelty against the ancient faith, which is worthy to be avenged by a more severe sentence. For both ecclesiastical moderation and the religious faith of the most pious prince impose on us much solicitude for Christian peace: that, dissensions being cut off, the Catholic faith may be preserved inviolate, and that those who defend perverse things, being recalled from error, may be fortified by our authority—those, that is, whose faith has been approved.
Nor can any difficulty be brought on this side, since the aforementioned presbyter has professed in his own petition that he is ready to correct himself, if anything be found in him worthy of reproof. For it becomes us in such causes to provide above all for this, that without the din of contentions both charity be guarded and truth be defended. And therefore, since your love sees that we are of necessity solicitous concerning so great a cause, let it hasten to indicate to us as fully and clearly as possible all things—which it ought to have done before:
lest, amid the assertions of the parties, we be deceived by some ambiguity, and the dissension, which ought to be abolished in its very beginnings, be nourished: while by God's inspiration this observance abides in our heart, that the constitutions of the venerable Fathers, divinely strengthened and pertaining to the solidity of the faith, be not violated by anyone's perverse interpretation. May God keep you unharmed, most beloved brother. Given on the twelfth day before the Kalends of March, in the consulship of the most illustrious men Asturius and Protogenes. CHAPTER I.
— How great a safeguard the Lord has prepared for His Church in the faith of your clemency, is shown even by these letters which you have sent to me: so that we rejoice that there is in you not only a royal but also a priestly mind. For indeed, besides the imperial and public cares, you have a most pious solicitude for the Christian religion, namely that neither schisms, nor heresies, nor any scandals should grow strong among the people of God:
for then the state of your reign is best, when the eternal and unchangeable Trinity is served in the confession of one Godhead. But what disturbance has occurred in the Church of Constantinople, which could so move my brother and fellow-bishop Flavian that he deprived the presbyter Eutyches of communion, I have not yet been able clearly to ascertain. For although the aforesaid presbyter has sent to the Apostolic See, by a petition, the complaint of his grief, yet he has touched briefly on only a few things, asserting that, while observing the constitutions of the Council of Nicaea, he was blamed in vain for a diversity in the faith. CHAPTER
II.— But the petition of Bishop Eusebius, his accuser, copies of which the aforesaid presbyter sent to us, had nothing of evidence in its objections, and, while it laid the charge of heresy against the presbyter, yet did not clearly express in what sense it accused him; although the bishop himself professed that he adhered to the decrees of the Council of Nicaea: on which account we had no means of learning anything more fully. And since the merit of the cause, the reason of the faith, and the laudable solicitude of your piety demand it, it is now necessary that no room be left for surreptitious dealings, but that we first be instructed concerning those things of which he judges him to be accused:
so that judgment may fittingly be made on things well understood. And I have given letters to the aforesaid bishop, by which he may know that it displeases me that even now he keeps in silence the things which had been done in so great a cause, when he ought to have taken pains first to disclose all things to us; and we trust that he, even after admonition, will relate everything to our notice; so that, when these things which still seem hidden have been brought into the light, that which accords with the evangelical and apostolic doctrine may be judged. Given on the second day before the Kalends of March, in the consulship of the most illustrious men Asturius and Protogenes. [Editorial note:] Two Latin editions of the letters of St. Peter Chrysologus to Eutyches have appeared: one which exhibits only a single or first chapter; the other which comprises two chapters.
Quesnel, since he held this longer letter and the genuine edition, professed in his notes that he could not grasp by what chance the former came to be abridged, and this fuller one was not rather inserted intact into the Vulgate editions of St. Leo. Moreover, from the manuscripts which present it in a largely abridged form, there arose among the learned a great doubt as to whether the second chapter is authentic or spurious. But all difficulty will vanish, if we uncover the origin of each edition. This has become known to us from the examination of very many manuscripts and from the distinction of the collections which we have diligently weighed. 2. The abridged edition, which alone is found in the manuscripts of Leo and in most collections, proceeds from the Spanish collection:
for from the Spanish collection this mutilated edition, which ends in the words 'To all these things I have replied, brother, to your letters,' flowed into the Isidorian collection; and from the Isidorian, which was more frequent and more readily met with, it passed into collections 11, 12, 21, and 23, whose authors, when they had transcribed as many of Leo's letters as they found in the Isidorian collection, transcribed also the letter of St. Peter Chrysologus, inasmuch as it had been inserted among the Leonine letters in that same collection, just as also in the Spanish. Although, therefore, there be many manuscripts, and many collections, which present the abridged edition of this letter, yet of all there is one single origin,
namely the author of the Spanish collection, into whose hands only the first chapter of the letter had come—as will become clear when we show the origin of the complete edition to be of greater antiquity and authority. 3. Undoubtedly older than the Spanish collection and of greater authority is the collection of letters in the case of Eutyches, which are read as prefixed or inserted to the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, both in the Latin and in the Greek copies. This collection of letters, namely, which in our preface we have called the seventeenth,
was compiled in Latin at least before the middle of the sixth century, at which time Rusticus, deacon of the Roman Church, expended a special labor upon it by collating select Greek manuscripts. But much older was the same collection written in Greek among the Greeks, who had compacted into one body the Latin letters in the case of Eutyches, rendered into the Greek tongue, together with other Greek letters pertaining to the same cause. And indeed we have demonstrated in the preface prefixed to the letters, number 34, that this Greek collection of letters was put together between the years 453 and 455. But how much this adds to the authority of this Greek collection, and thence also to the Latin collection which draws its origin from the Greek;
and how much on that account this collection surpasses the Spanish collection, no one fails to see. And among the letters of the said Chalcedonian collection, both in the Latin and in the Greek manuscripts, that letter of St. Peter Chrysologus to Eutyches is transcribed entire, inserted by a collector who was assuredly of the same age; and therefore, from the antiquity and excellence of this collection, received both among the Greeks and among the Latins, it is not permitted to doubt the integrity of his entire letter. Since Agnellus of Ravenna, edited by Bacchini and by Muratori, gave the substance of the last chapter of that letter in the
Life of St. Peter Chrysologus, if he did not find the entire letter in the ancient records of the Church of Ravenna, he certainly had before his eyes some ancient copy of this kind of Chalcedonian collection. But since these copies were rather rare, and did not bring forth from Leo so many things as are exhibited in the more frequent Isidorian collection, it is no wonder if the later collectors of the Leonine letters gave this letter not entire, but mutilated, as it was found in Isidore, who derived his collection from the Spanish. Here, however, it must not be omitted that two Vatican manuscripts of the letters of Leo, mentioned by Vossius, which he presumed to contain this letter entire,
Quesnel presumed to contain this letter entire, while the same Vossius, in a note, warns that they exhibit it mutilated; for they are manuscripts of the later collections which flow from the Isidorian. 4. One thing can be doubted: whether this letter, which we have entire in the aforesaid manuscripts of the Latin collection, is original, or was rendered into Latin from an ancient Greek version. In the aforesaid preface we have proved sufficiently manifestly that that ancient author, who added to the early version of the Council of Chalcedon the letters of the Latins contained in the Greek collection, set down the original Latin whenever he could find the original:
but sometimes, when no copy of the Latin original was at hand, he was compelled to render into Latin from the Greek version whatever documents there were of the Latins, as happened with certain letters of Valentinian, Placidia, and Eudoxia, and also with the letter of Hilary the deacon, and even with the letters of St. Leo, as we shall note in the proper places. As an indication of this version, and as it were a general rule, we set down in the said preface this: when the chronological notation, universally issued in the Greek manuscripts of the same collection, is perceived to be lacking also in the Latin. For when a Latin original was found by the Latin interpreter, upon its being inserted into the collection, the chronological notation is found supplied.
A difference of style also, where it can be detected by comparing other original works of the same author, is another argument of a version. Hence we seem to ourselves to see something of translation in the entire Latin letter of Peter Chrysologus. For the chronological notation is lacking, and between the first and the second chapter a certain dissimilarity of style shines forth. The first chapter, which is exhibited also in the Spanish collection, is quite polished and coherent, and similar in style to the other works of Peter Chrysologus, so much so that nearly some words of that same chapter are found repeated in Sermon 145 of the same Chrysologus.
For indeed, since the author of the Spanish collection did not take this letter from the Chalcedonian collection, he doubtless used a copy of Latin origin. But the other chapter, being very intricate and dissimilar to the former, smacks of a version from the Greek. If you compare the very Latin text of each chapter with the Greek, in the former you will detect the original, in the latter the translation. Hence in the first chapter all the sentences are fittingly explained, but in the Greek they are recognized as less exactly rendered: in which—to omit other things which anyone can observe for himself—the original of Chrysologus is that in the Latin, 'Origen, the scrutinizer of first principles,' which refers to his work On First Principles;
but in the Greek the word 'of first principles' (principiorum), which should have been rendered, was rendered 'of the ancients' (antiquorum), which shows that the translator less attained the mind of Chrysologus. On the contrary, in the second chapter, although the Greek version somewhere throws in a difficulty, yet it is much plainer than the Latin text, so much so that the latter appears rendered from a Greek wrongly written or read; and it must sometimes be explained from the Greek, as will be observed in the annotations: which is assuredly an indication not of a Latin original, but of a translation. 5. This second chapter indeed, in which the letter of Eutyches is directly answered, is the most important;
so that it is incredible that Chrysologus, when Eutyches was raising a complaint about the judgment of Flavian and imploring his aid, replied with only the former chapter containing generalities, which also lacks any final formula. But it is probable to us that a manuscript copy of the more carefully elaborated first chapter survived with Chrysologus, as happens with those things which we write with more diligent care; and that from this copy others were subsequently transcribed, which came into the hands of the Latin interpreter of the Council of Chalcedon and of the author of the Spanish collection.
But the second chapter, peculiar to Eutyches and drawn up less carefully—as is wont to happen in familiar letters—may seem to have been added only to the autograph letter sent to Eutyches by Chrysologus, so that no copy of this survived with the author himself and among the Latins, and it could be endowed with Latinity only from the Greek translation, which was made at once in the East. But whatever may seem more probable in this matter, certainly this second chapter of the letter, which is the most important and necessary in the case of Eutyches, and which is attested by so ancient a version both Greek and Latin, cannot be brought under suspicion of forgery. 6. It remains that we determine concerning the time.
Now nearly all after Quesnel judge this letter to have been written after the month of May in the year 449, since by these words of chapter 2, 'that you may obediently attend to those things which have been written by the most blessed pope of the city of Rome,' they suppose to be indicated the celebrated Letter 28 of Leo, given to Flavian on the Ides of June of that same year, by which the whole case of Eutyches was decided. Into the same opinion we likewise passed over in Book II of the Observations on the Works of Cardinal Noris, chapter 7, number 2. Now we are compelled to introduce another opinion. For all, on the one hand, agree, and
that St. Peter Chrysologus answered by these letters the letter of Eutyches, and that Eutyches, at the same time as he wrote to Leo, also gave letters to Chrysologus, by which he might most speedily prepossess him too against the sentence of Flavian. On the other hand, it is certain that Leo received the letter of Eutyches in the month of February of the year 449, and for this cause in the same month wrote back Letters 23 and 24. There is no need to search out many conjectures with Quesnel, in order to bring forward causes of a longer delay in Chrysologus's response. For that he wrote back at the first opportunity is made sufficiently credible from the very context, in which Chrysologus reveals himself to be instructed about the case from no other source than from the letters of Eutyches;
and that so meagerly, that he seems to have feared Nestorianism rather than Eutychianism, and in the first chapter he obtrudes those things which in Sermon 145 he most manifestly discusses against the Nestorian heresy, contrary to the Eutychian. But this would not have happened, if, deferring his response, he had first wished to be more exactly informed about the whole matter, as Quesnel conjectured in his notes. For indeed, if St. Peter had not written the letter until after the acts of the Council of Constantinople had been brought to Rome—in which the Eutychian error was so manifestly detected, and Eutyches himself condemned as obstinate—and until after Leo's letter, by which the Constantinopolitan judgment was confirmed, had become known to him;
how could he have affirmed that he was ignorant of the mind of the Fathers of Constantinople: 'What they understood, we know not from their silence'? How could he have dealt so indifferently with Eutyches, that he judged him neither innocent nor guilty? How, after so solemn a condemnation, confirmed also by the Roman pontiff, could he have called him 'most beloved son, most honored, and a deservedly honorable presbyter'? These things disclose a man answering at once, while he was not instructed in the matter. Nor do the words gainsay this: 'that you may obediently attend to those things which have been written by the most blessed pope of the city of Rome.' For Eutyches, in his own letters, seems to have made mention of the letter which, with certain documents, he had given to Leo the pontiff.
But by these words Chrysologus meant to indicate those letters which he presumed had rendered Leo better instructed, or would shortly render him so. For indeed, if he had read these dogmatic letters of Leo, he would not seem likely to have written: 'Apart from the consent of the bishop of the city of Rome, we cannot hear (or, from the Greek, take cognizance of, or adjudicate) causes of the faith'; which words declare the sentence of the Roman bishop as not yet known to him. Therefore this letter of Chrysologus seems to have been given about the same time at which Leo wrote Letters 23 and 24, that is, around February of the year 449. Perhaps that same man, who brought the letters of Theodosius and Eutyches to St.
Leo, also passed through Ravenna with the letters of the same Theodosius to Valentinian, and on this occasion delivered the letter of Eutyches to Chrysologus. And to this man, when he was returning to Constantinople and carrying back Valentinian's replies, Chrysologus handed over this letter to Eutyches, that it might be delivered more speedily and more safely. But certainly he did not write it after knowledge of the acts against Eutyches, or of the definitive letter of Leo, as must be presumed in Quesnel's opinion.