We have judged that this also is not to be passed over: that certain men, caught by the greed of shameful gain, practise usurious money-lending and wish to grow rich by interest; which—I will not say in those who are established in the clerical office, but even when it falls upon laymen who desire to be called Christians—we grieve over; wherefore we decree that it be more sharply punished in those who shall have been convicted, that every opportunity for sinning may be removed. That a cleric exact interest neither in his own name nor in another's. IV. This too we have judged ought to be warned beforehand: that just as in his own name, so neither in another's name should any of the clerics attempt to practise usury; for it is an unbecoming crime to spend one's own offence upon another's profits.
But this is the only interest we ought to look to and practise: that what we mercifully bestow here, we may be able to receive back from that Lord who will repay it manifoldly and to abide forever. That if any of the priests act against these prohibitions, he is to be removed from his office. V. This therefore our admonition declares: that if any of the brethren shall attempt to come against these established things, and shall have dared to admit what is forbidden, let him know that he is to be removed from his office, nor will he be a partaker of our communion who has refused to be an associate of discipline.
But lest there be anything which might perhaps be thought omitted by us, all the decretal constitutions, both of Innocent of blessed memory and of all our predecessors, which have been promulgated concerning the ecclesiastical orders and the disciplines of the canons, we command must be kept by your charity in such wise, that if anyone shall have transgressed them, he shall know that pardon is henceforth denied to him. Given on the sixth before the Ides of October, in the second consulship of Maximus and of Paternus (in the year of Christ 443). Leo, bishop, to all the bishops established in the Lord throughout the provinces of Italy, greeting. We summon you into the fellowship of our solicitude, that with pastoral vigilance, lest anything be permitted to the cunning of the devil, you may more diligently take counsel for the flocks committed to you:
lest he who, by the revealing mercy of the Lord, has through our care been cast out as a disease from our sheep, while you are not yet forewarned and are still ignorant of what is being done, make his way through the Churches of your see, and find the burrows of his hiding-places by stealth, lest what is extinguished by us in the City be sown by dark roots among you. That very many Manichaeans were detected at Rome by the vigilance of Pope Leo. VI. Our investigation has discovered very many followers and teachers of the Manichaean impiety; our vigilance has divulged them; our authority and censure has restrained them. Those whom we could amend, we have corrected:
and we compelled them, by public profession in the Church and by the subscription of their own hand, to condemn Manichaeus together with his preachings and disciplines; and thus, when they had confessed, by granting penance we lifted them up out of the abyss of their impiety. But some, who had so plunged themselves down that no remedy of any helper could come to their aid, being subjected to the laws according to the constitutions of the Christian emperors, lest they should pollute the holy flock by their contagion, were banished into perpetual exile by the public judges.
And whatever profane or shameful things they hold, both in the Scriptures and in their secret traditions, we have exposed by a sure manifestation to the eyes of the Christian people, that the people might know what to flee or to avoid; so much so that he himself, who was called their bishop, when held by us, betrayed the disgraceful things in their mysteries which he held, as the series of the proceedings will be able to inform you: for we have directed these very things also for your instruction, and when they are read, you will be able to know all that has been censured by us.
And because we have learned that a number of these men, whom—lest they be absolved—a graver guilt had entangled, have fled away, we have sent this letter to your charity, that your holiness, being made more certain, may deign to act more carefully and more cautiously, lest anywhere men of Manichaean perversity find means of harming your peoples and teachers of this sacrilege. For we cannot otherwise govern those committed to us, unless we persecute with the zeal of the Lord's faith those who are destroyers and destroyed, and cut them off from sound minds with what severity we can, lest this plague be more widely spread abroad.
Wherefore I exhort, and adjure, and admonish your charity, that with such solicitude as you owe and are able, you keep watch to track them out, lest they find means of concealing themselves. For just as he will have from God the reward of a worthy recompense who shall have more diligently executed what may avail for the salvation of the people committed to him, so before the tribunal of the Lord he will not be able to excuse himself of the guilt of negligence, whoever shall have refused to guard his people against the authors of sacrilegious persuasion. Given on the third before the Kalends of February, in the consulship of Theodosius for the eighteenth time and of Albinus, men of clarissimate rank (in the year of Christ
444). Leo, bishop, to all the bishops established in the Lord throughout Sicily, greeting. We are urged by divine precepts and apostolic admonitions to watch with tireless affection for the state of all the Churches, and if anywhere anything is found liable to reproach, to recall it with swift solicitude either from the unskilfulness of ignorance or from the usurpation of presumption. For while the command of the Lord's word abides, by which the most blessed Apostle Peter is imbued through the threefold repetition of a mystic sanctioning, that he who loves Christ should feed the sheep of Christ (John
21), we are constrained by reverence for that see over which we preside through the abundance of divine grace, that we may avoid, as far as we can, the peril of sloth, lest the profession of the chief Apostle, by which he testified himself a lover of the Lord, be not found in us; for he who negligently feeds the flock so often commended to him is convicted of not loving the chief Shepherd. That it be forbidden to celebrate baptism on the day of the Epiphany. VII.
Since therefore, being solicitous with brotherly affection for the acts of your charity, it has become known to me by sure indications that in that which is chief among the sacraments of the Church you diverge from the custom of apostolic institution—so that the sacrament of baptism is celebrated more frequently on the day of Epiphany than at the Paschal season—I marvel that you, or your predecessors, could have usurped so unreasonable a novelty, that, confounding the mystery of both seasons, you believed there to be no difference between the day on which Christ was adored by the Magi and the day on which Christ rose from the dead.
Into which fault you could in no way have fallen, if from the source whence you receive the consecration of your honour, you had taken the law of all observance, and the see of the blessed Apostle Peter, which is to you the mother of priestly dignity, were the mistress of ecclesiastical reason; from whose rules your departure could be tolerated with less equanimity, had any rebuke of our admonition gone before. But now, because the correction is not despaired of, the custom must be observed; so that, although an excuse which pleads ignorance is scarcely to be endured in priests, we prefer nonetheless both to temper the necessary censure and to instruct you by the reasoning of the most evident truth.
That all the sacraments of our salvation have been set forth for us, according to the order of things, through the incarnation of our Lord. VIII. Always indeed in the eternal counsel of God there abode the unchangeably foreordained restoration of the human race; but the order of things to be carried out in time through Jesus Christ our Lord took its beginning in the incarnation of the Word: whence there is one time at which, the Angel announcing it, the blessed Virgin Mary believed she was to be made fruitful through the Holy Spirit, and conceived; another, at which, her virginal integrity preserved, the Child being brought forth, is shown to the shepherds with the exulting joy of the heavenly ministers; another, at which the Infant is circumcised; another, at which the legal sacrifice for Him is offered;
another, when the three Magi, stirred by the brightness of a new star, come from the East to Bethlehem, and adore the little Child, and venerate Him with the mystic offering of gifts (Matthew 2). Nor are those the same days on which, by a translation divinely ordained into Egypt, He was withdrawn from the impious Herod, or on which He was called back from Egypt into Galilee, the persecutor having died. But amid these varieties of dispensations bodily increases supervene; the Lord grows, as the Evangelist testifies (Luke
chapter 1), in the advances of age and grace; through the days of the Passover He comes with His parents into the temple of Jerusalem, and when He was absent from the company of those returning, He is found sitting among the elders and disputing among the marvelling teachers, and rendering the reason of His staying: 'What is it,' He says, 'that you sought Me? Did you not know that I must be about the things that are My Father's?' (Luke 2), signifying that He was the Son of Him whose also was the temple. But now, when in His greater years He sought, in order to be more openly declared, the baptism of John His own forerunner, what doubt remained of His deity, when, the Lord Jesus having been baptized, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the likeness of a dove and remained, the voice of the Father being heard from the heavens saying (Matthew
chapter 3): 'Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased,' what doubt then remained of His deity? All these things we have touched upon with what brevity we could, that it may be known to your charity that all the days of Christ were consecrated by countless mighty works, and that in all His actions the mysteries of the sacraments flashed forth; but that whatever He announced by signs is fulfilled otherwise in reality, and that not whatever is reckoned among the works of the Saviour can pertain to the season of baptism. For if those things also which we know to have been done by the Lord after the laving of blessed John we were to honour with undiscriminating honour, all the seasons would have to be assigned to continuous feasts, because all are full of miracles.
But because the Spirit of wisdom and understanding so instructed the Apostles and the teachers of the whole Church, that in Christian observance nothing should be suffered to be disordered, nothing confused, the occasions of the solemnities must be distinguished; and in all the institutions of the Fathers and of our chief men a reasonable distinction must be observed, because we are not otherwise one flock and one shepherd, unless, as the Apostle teaches (1 Corinthians 1), we all say the same thing: 'But let us be perfect in the same mind and in the same wisdom.' That in baptism death comes by the slaying of sin, and the threefold immersion imitates the three days' burial, and the rising from the waters is as a resurrection from the tomb. IX.
Although therefore both those things which pertain to the humility, and those which pertain to the glory of Christ, run together into one and the same person, and the whole of what is in Him both of divine power and of human weakness tends to the effect of our restoration: yet properly in the death of the Crucified and in the resurrection of the Dead the power of baptism founds the new creature out of the old, so that in those reborn both the death of Christ may work, and His life, as the blessed Apostle Paul says: 'Are you ignorant that whosoever of us have been baptized into Christ Jesus, have been baptized into His death (Romans 6)? For we are buried together with Him by baptism into death:
that, as Christ rose from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also of His resurrection,' and the rest, which the teacher of the Gentiles disputed more at large to commend the sacrament of baptism, that it might appear from the spirit of this doctrine that for the sons of men to be regenerated and to be adopted into sons of God, that day and that season was chosen:
in which, through the likeness and form of the mystery, those things which are done in these members might agree with those which were done in Him who is the Head; while in the rule of baptism both death intervenes by the slaying of sin, and the threefold immersion imitates the three days' burial, and the rising from the waters is the image of one rising again from the tomb. The very quality of the work, therefore, teaches that the lawful day for grace to be celebrated generally is that on which both the power of the gift and the very kind of the action arose; for the confirmation of which matter it avails greatly, that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, after He rose from the dead, delivered to His disciples—in whom all the prelates of the Churches were taught—both the form and the power of baptizing, saying:
'Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit' (Matthew 28). Concerning which assuredly He could have instructed them even before His Passion, had He not willed it to be properly understood that the grace of regeneration began from His resurrection. To this observance is rightly added also the solemnity of Pentecost, hallowed by the coming of the Holy Spirit, which depends upon the article of the Paschal feast.
And though other feasts pertain to other days, this one always falls upon that day which is distinguished by the resurrection of the Lord, extending as it were the hand of assisting grace to those whom either the trouble of infirmity, or the length of the journey, or the difficulty of the voyage shut out from the day of the Passover; inviting them, that though hindered by whatever necessities, they may attain the effect of their desire by the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the only-begotten of God Himself, in the faith of believers and in the power of works, willed there to be no distance between Himself and the Holy Spirit, because there is no diversity in nature, saying: 'I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you forever, the Spirit of truth' (John 14). And again:
'But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things whatsoever I have said unto you' (the same place). And again: 'When that Spirit of truth shall come, He shall guide you into all truth' (John 16). Since therefore Christ more truly is (John 14), and the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, and the name of Paraclete is proper to both, the feast is not dissimilar where the sacrament is one. That the blessed Apostle Peter on the day of Pentecost baptized three thousand men. X.
But that we defend this not from our own persuasion but keep it by apostolic authority, we prove by a sufficiently fitting example, following the blessed Apostle Peter, who on that very day on which the promised coming of the Holy Spirit filled the whole number of believers, consecrated by the laver of baptism a people of three thousand converted by his preaching; which the holy Scripture, which contains the Acts of the Apostles, teaches by faithful history, saying: 'When they heard these things, they were pricked in their heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, What shall we do, men and brethren (Acts 2)? But Peter unto them:
'Repent,' he says, 'and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you, and to your children, and to all who are afar off, whomsoever the Lord our God shall call.' And with many other words also he testified, and exhorted them, saying: 'Save yourselves from this crooked generation.' Those then who received his word were baptized, and there were added in that day about three thousand souls. That these two seasons, that is Pascha and Pentecost, are appointed by the Roman Pontiff as the lawful times for baptizing. XI.
Wherefore, because it is most manifestly clear that for the elect who are to be baptized in the Church these two seasons of which we have spoken are lawful, we admonish your charity that you mingle no other days with this observance. That at all times those who are pressed by the necessity of death, that is, of sickness, siege, persecution, and shipwreck, ought to be baptized. XII. For though there are also other feasts at which much reverence is due in honour of God, yet the mystical and reasonable pattern of the chief and greatest sacrament must be kept by us; the liberty is not forbidden by which, in administering baptism at any time, help is given to those in peril.
For thus we defer the free vows of those who are unharmed and who pass their days in the security of peace to these two festivities, connected and akin to one another, in such wise that in the peril of death, in the crisis of a siege, in the straits of persecution, in the fear of shipwreck, we deny to no one at any time this singular safeguard of true salvation.
But if anyone reckons the festival of Epiphany, which in its own order is to be venerated with due honour, to have on that account this privilege of baptism, because some suppose that on that same day the Lord came to the baptism of holy John, let him know that the grace of that baptism was one thing, the reason another, and that it did not pertain to the same power by which men are reborn through the Holy Spirit, of whom it is said: 'Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God' (John 1). For the Lord, needing no remission of sin, nor seeking the remedy of being reborn, willed to be baptized in the same way as He also willed to be circumcised, and to have the sacrifice of purification offered for Himself:
that He who had been made of a woman, as the Apostle says, might also be made under the law, which He had come not to dissolve but to fulfil, and by fulfilling to bring to an end (Romans 10). And as the blessed Apostle proclaims, saying: 'For the end of the law is Christ unto righteousness to everyone that believeth.' But He founded the sacrament of His own baptism in Himself, because, holding the primacy in all things, He taught Himself to be the beginning; and He sanctioned the power of regeneration then, when from His own side flowed forth the blood of redemption and the water of baptism.
As therefore the Old Testament was a testimony of the New, and the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ, so the diverse sacrifices reformed the one victim, and the slaying of many lambs was ended by the immolation of Him of whom it is said: 'Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who taketh away the sin of the world.' So also John was not the Christ, but the forerunner of Christ; not the bridegroom, but the friend of the bridegroom; he was so faithful, and seeking not his own things but the things of Jesus Christ, that he professed himself unworthy to loose the latchets of His feet (John 3; Matthew 3; Luke 3):
since he indeed baptized in water unto repentance, but the Other was to baptize in the Holy Spirit and in fire, who by a twofold power should both restore life and consume sins. To you therefore, dearest brethren, since there exist so many and so great proofs by which, all ambiguity removed, you evidently recognize that in the elect who are to be baptized—who according to the apostolic rule are both to be examined by exorcisms, and sanctified by fastings, and imbued with frequent preachings—only two seasons, that is Pascha and Pentecost, are to be observed.
This we enjoin upon your charity, that henceforth you depart from the apostolic institutions by no excess, because hereafter it cannot be unpunished, if anyone shall have believed the apostolic rules in any respect to be neglected. That from Sicily three of the bishops are always, in single years, to meet without dissimulation at Rome to be associated with the synod by the third day before the Kalends of October. XIII. Of which things we first require this, for the keeping of a most harmonious unity, that—because it was most wholesomely established by the holy Fathers that there ought to be two assemblies in single years—
let three of you always, on the third day before the Kalends of October, meet without dissimulation at Rome, to be associated in fraternal council; because, with the grace of God assisting, it can more easily be provided that in the Churches of Christ no scandals, no errors may arise, since in the presence of the most blessed Apostle Peter it should always be treated in common, that all his constitutions and the decrees of the canons may remain inviolate among all the priests of the Lord. But these things which, by the Lord's inspiration, we have believed should be intimated to you, we wish to come to your knowledge through our brothers and fellow-bishops Vaccilius and Paschasinus, by whose report we may learn how reverently the institutions of the Apostolic See are kept by you. Given on the twelfth before the Kalends of [...].
Given in November, in the consulship of Calopodius and Ardabur (in the year of Christ 447). That every cleric of whatever order, who forsaking the catholic communion has mingled himself with the communion of heretics: if he returns to the Church, he shall remain in that grade in which he was, without promotion. XIV. Leo, bishop of the city of Rome, to Januarius, bishop of Aquileia. — Having read the letter of your fraternity, we have recognized the vigour of your faith, which we had long known: rejoicing with you that you watchfully discharge a pastoral care for the keeping of Christ's flock, lest the wolves, which under the appearance of sheep have crept in, should with bestial savagery tear the simple folk asunder, and not only profit nothing by any correction themselves, but also corrupt what is sound:
and lest the viperous deceit might prevail, we have judged it right to admonish your love, intimating that it pertains to the peril of the soul, if any of those who, after falling away from us into the sect of heretics and schismatics, and having in any way defiled themselves with the contagion of heretical communion, should upon coming to their senses be received into catholic communion without the profession of a lawful satisfaction.
For it is most wholesome, and most full of the profit of spiritual medicine, that whether presbyters, or deacons, or subdeacons, or clerics of any order, who wish to be seen as corrected, and seek to return again to the catholic faith which they had long since lost, should first confess without ambiguity that their errors, and the very authors of error, are condemned by them; so that, the depraved opinions being utterly destroyed, no occasion of hoping may remain, nor may any of such members be defiled by their society, since their own profession has begun in all things to stand against them.
Concerning these we also enjoin that constitution of the canons to be observed, namely that they hold it as a great benefit, if, all hope of promotion being taken from them, they remain in perpetual stability in the order in which they are found: provided however that they have not been defiled by a repeated baptism. He incurs no light guilt before the Lord, who shall have judged such men fit to be promoted to the sacred orders; for if promotion is granted to the blameless only with great examination, much more ought it not to be permitted to the suspect. Therefore let your love, in whose devotion we rejoice, join its own care to our arrangements, and give effort that those things may be circumspectly and swiftly fulfilled, which both have been laudably suggested, and have been wholesomely ordained for the safety of the whole Church.
But let not your love doubt that we — if (which we do not suppose) those things should be neglected which we decree for the guarding of the canons and for the integrity of the faith — shall be very vehemently moved; for the faults of the lower orders are to be referred to none more than to slothful and negligent rulers, who often nourish much pestilence, while they neglect to apply the necessary medicine. Given on the third day before the calends of January, in the consulship of Alypius and Ardabur. Leo to Rusticus, bishop of Narbonne. Replies to questions submitted, and rescripts to his consultations. The letters of your fraternity, which Hermes the archdeacon brought, I gladly received.
Manifold indeed in the connexion of diverse matters, yet not so burdensome to the patience of the reader that any of them should have been passed over amid the anxieties pressing in from every side. Whence, having taken in the allegation of your whole discourse, and having reviewed the proceedings which were drawn up in the examination of the bishops and notables, we understood that confidence was given to Sabinianus and Leo, presbyters of your action, and that no just complaint remains to those who voluntarily withdrew themselves from the disputes once begun. Concerning these, what form, and what measure of justice you ought to keep, I leave to your moderation. Yet counselling you with the exhortation of charity, that you ought to apply spiritual medicine to the healing of the sick, since the Scripture says:
'Be not over-just' (Eccl. VII); deal more mildly with those who, out of zeal for chastity, seem to have exceeded the measure of vengeance! lest the devil, who deceived the adulterers, should exult over the avengers of adultery. But I marvel that your love is so shaken by the adversity of scandals arising on any occasion, that you say you prefer leisure to the labours of the episcopate, and would rather pass your life in silence and ease than remain in those things which have been committed to you — though the Lord truly says, 'Blessed is he who has persevered unto the end' (Matt. X); whence will blessed perseverance come, except from the virtue of patience? For according to the apostolic preaching:
'All who will live godly in Christ shall suffer persecution' (II Tim. III); which is not to be reckoned only in that which is wrought against Christian piety by sword, or by fire, or by any torments: since the savagery of persecutions is also supplied by diversities of morals, and the obstinacy of the disobedient, and the darts of malignant tongues. By which conflicts, since all the members are ever assailed, and no portion of the godly is free from the struggle, so that neither leisure nor labours are without perils. Who will steer the ship amid the waves of the sea, if the helmsman departs? Who will guard the sheep from the ambushes of wolves, if the care of the shepherds does not keep watch (John X)?
Who, finally, will withstand robbers and thieves, if the love of quiet should draw away from the intentness of his vigilance the watchman set on the lookout of his observation (Ezek. III)? Therefore one must persevere in the work entrusted and in the labour undertaken. Justice is to be held constantly, and clemency to be benevolently rendered. Let sins be held in hatred, not men. Let the proud be corrected, the weak be borne with; and what must needs be more severely chastised, let it be punished not in the spirit of one raging, but of one healing.