CHAPTER I. — The letter of your Love, which you sent through my son the illustrious man Hesychius, I received at the time when I had already replied to your more recent letters on a fresh occasion. Hence, because in these your addresses too you have complained with just grief concerning the most impious heretics, it was fitting, since the opportunity of writing has arisen, not to be silent. In the cause of the faith, therefore, whatever could and can be done according to our office, with the Lord's help we carry it out both carefully and gladly: so that we may serve the Gospel of Christ blamelessly, lest through our sloth any part of the Catholic Church seem to be neglected.
On which account, as is known to all, I have not ceased to labour, that, the truth of the Lord's incarnation being made manifest and defended, the whole brotherhood might recognize what everywhere was to be held and taught according to the apostolic teaching — with the addition of the zeal of the most glorious princes, divinely inspired, so that, a synod being gathered in the city of Chalcedon, heretical impiety might be condemned: that neither any follower of Nestorius nor any disciple of Eutyches might be able to have free fellowship with Catholics — since, as regards the authority of the holy council, no discord anywhere has remained.
But if any, blinded by hardness of heart, have so passed over into the madness of a reprobate mind that they prefer to rage rather than to be healed, it pertains to the imperial power that these disturbers of ecclesiastical peace and of the commonwealth — which rightly glories in Christian princes — should as enemies be more diligently suppressed. CHAPTER II. — But as it belongs, as we have said, to the imperial power to coerce more severely public tumults and sacrilegious seditions, so it belongs also to priestly authority not to grant to monks any licence of preaching against the faith, and to resist with all strength, lest they dare to claim for themselves those things which pertain to priests.
Hence we marvel at our brother Thalassius the bishop, that he permitted a certain George — I know not who — who by presuming unlawful things lost both the purpose and the name of a monk, some faculty of writing or preaching. To which bishop, if it seem good to your Love, we will send fitting writings on this matter. Let therefore your Fraternity act, with opportune suggestions, that the most clement prince may command those things which will be pleasing to the Lord, and may bid the instigators of bloody seditions to be fittingly coerced, so that neither those may be unpunished whose hands perpetrated the crimes, nor those who make use of such men's madness.
But if the judicial inquiry and the confession of the guilty reaches those persons by whose counsel or instigation such great evils were committed, no comfort of any favour is to be granted to them. For the better things that were believed concerning them, the more are they to be detested, whose impiety, which had been veiled under hypocrisy, is now uncovered. And therefore let the most Christian and most pious emperor do what he understands will profit ecclesiastical peace. Him I trust to be so instructed by heavenly inspiration that he may command both the restless to be recalled by discipline, and that abstinence be kept from their blood: although they deserve to undergo nothing but every penalty, who have dared to fight against both divine and human constitutions.