1. The liberty of catholics, increased by the penitence of the emperor Theodosius, obtained still greater increments when, Chrysaphius being dead and Eudocia removed far from the imperial court, the most holy Pulcheria—whom the emperor had loved beyond his other sisters and had named Augusta—was gradually able to awaken in her brother's mind those institutions of sincere piety with which she had imbued him from boyhood, namely when the most pious sister, elder by birth, had educated her brother almost from infancy up to at least the twentieth year of his age.
And so Theodosius, about to give still greater signs of penitence, built a notable sacred temple to the Mother of God; and when his death drew near, he came to Ephesus to venerate St. John the Evangelist, and, having entered the temple, gave himself to prayer, in which he also besought to be taught by God who should succeed him in the Roman Empire. When God showed him this through a vision, he returned to Constantinople. A little afterward his death followed. For, leading an army against Attila, he went forth from the City, and while riding, falling from his horse, he dislocated a vertebra of his spine.
Wherefore he was carried back into the palace on a litter, and when he felt that he was about to die, having secretly summoned to himself his sister Pulcheria, he was settled concerning Marcian the tribune as his successor to be held in the empire, saying that it was pleasing and acceptable to God that he should after him administer the Roman dominion. These things, almost in the same terms, Baronius described from Nicephorus, who noted that the cause of Theodosius's death is described otherwise by Theodore in his Collectanea, who says: 'Theodosius the younger, having gone out to the hunt and being swept into the river Album, died the following night, and was buried in the sepulchre of his father Arcadius. And the empress Eudocia, having set out for Jerusalem, returned no more.'
Among the other things which pertain to the scope of our Disputations, we judge that the time of this death is by no means to be neglected, so that from it we may understand whether the synod of Constantinople, celebrated by St. Leo's command in the cause of Anatolius, took place while Theodosius still survived, or when Marcian had received the reins of empire. Baronius asserts that Theodosius died on the fourth day before the Kalends of August in the year 450, in the fifty-first year of his age. And a little afterward, by the will of holy Pulcheria, the empire was conferred upon Marcian by decree of the senate.
The counsel of this holy woman writers have greatly praised, in that she willed by the title of marriage to raise to the empire a man mature in age, weighty in counsel, proved in continence, and on every side renowned for military valor; so that, namely, by this choice and by his industry, provision might more easily be made for the affairs of the empire and of religion. And indeed Marcian, clothed in the imperial purple, exhibited every proof of piety toward religion. He first of all brought forth a law against the Eutychians, by which he decreed that they should be punished with the same penalties which were established by earlier laws against heretics. 'We command (he says) that they be held, and driven beyond the very soil of the Roman Empire, just as the statutes of preceding laws ordained concerning the Manichaeans. Given on the Kalends of August, Valentinian'
the seventh time, and Avienus being consuls. Then, turning his eyes toward the Roman pontiff, and resolving in his mind to do all things by his nod, he sent letters to St. Leo, informs him of his own election as emperor, and at length, for the abolition of all impious error and for the composing of Christian affairs in the highest peace, he most willingly professed that he assented to a synod being celebrated, with Leo himself as its author. For he says: 'That, all error being removed through a synod to be celebrated with you as its author, the greatest peace concerning all the bishops of the catholic faith may come to pass, standing pure and inviolate from every crime.' That this letter was written in this year 450, is made known from the consular note.
But that it was not delivered to Leo except in the following year, in which Adelphius was discharging the consulate, is most certain. 2. In this interval of time, Abundius and Asterius and the other two legates, sent to Constantinople in the cause of Anatolius, arrived there, and presented the pontifical letters—directed to Theodosius, now departed from life—to his successor Marcian. These being received, and dealing most honorably with the legates, he ordered satisfaction to be made to all St. Leo's petitions, and without delay a provincial synod is assembled at Constantinople, in which both Anatolius's faith and the receiving of the lapsed who wished to come to penance are treated.
That the Acts of that synod have perished through the injury of time, together with many other monuments pertaining to this cause, is to be gravely lamented. Nevertheless, from a certain fragment of them, and from the letters of the emperor Marcian, of Pulcheria Augusta, and of Anatolius himself the bishop of Constantinople, the most eminent Baronius described as it were the whole series of the things done, hanging suspended thereafter concerning certain other matters which were then treated in that Constantinopolitan synod, which at last he judges can probably be gathered from the actions of the Council of Chalcedon. And so there will be no need for us to linger longer in weighing these things. But we shall merely indicate in a few words whatever was done.
Marcian, therefore, having heard the legates' demands, by his pragmatic sanction ordered that as many of the bishops as, contending for the catholic faith, had adhered to Flavian's side in the robber-synod of Ephesus, should be recalled from exile and at once freely return to their own sees. Then, most desiring to obey the commands of the Roman pontiff, he granted the legates free faculty of convoking the bishops, even the lapsed, from the neighboring places, that they might be admitted into the communion of the catholic Church, the pontifical instructions being observed. Wherefore, that synod of Constantinople, the new Rome, having been convoked, the letter of St.
Pope Leo's letter concerning the confirmation of the catholic faith against the madness of the heretics, which he recited before the sight of all, and which the blessed Abundius had likewise presented to him in the presence of all. Bishop Anatolius therefore, with full devotion, subscribed to this letter of St. Leo containing the truth of the catholic faith, with the testimonies of the Fathers decreed by the same Apostolic See also concurring, pronouncing anathema upon Eutyches and Nestorius, and upon their dogma together with their followers. The same thing did all the bishops who were present, the presbyters, the archimandrites, and the deacons. With the greatest joy indeed were the hearts uplifted, not only of the Augustan princes, but also of the holy Abundius, of Asterius the bishops, of Basil and Senator the presbyters.
For they said: 'Thanks be to almighty God, since we have learned that the professions of the reverend bishops, presbyters, archimandrites, and of the whole clergy profess the right faith and that which was handed down by the Fathers.' So their subscription, inserted in the present acts, declares. The legates moreover add that they had been sent from Rome by Leo to instill the catholic faith into all. Therefore they too pronounce anathema upon Eutyches, or upon everyone who follows his perfidy, and they say that in Christ the Lord there were two natures before the Incarnation and after the Incarnation only one nature. To the absent it was commanded that through these legates they should carry out the same thing. The legates of the Apostolic See then sent to the several metropolitans of the East the renowned letter of St.
Leo's letter sent to Flavian, to the end that all should subscribe to it; as is gathered from the fourth Act of the Council of Chalcedon. At length it was decreed in this synod that the bishops who had fallen in the Robber-Council of Ephesus, if they wished to return to the communion of the Church, should be granted communion only with their own bishop, and not with the whole Church; and it was provided that the names of Dioscorus of Alexandria, Juvenal of Jerusalem, and Eustathius of Berytus should not be recited at the altar, because they were regarded as impenitent and as ringleaders of the schismatics. Here, moreover, we have thought it right to observe that Harduin fell into error, for in his notes on this council he wrongly conjectured that an anathema was then pronounced against Photius of Tyre, since he wrote:
This same synod of bishops is perhaps the one in which Photius, bishop of Tyre, was excommunicated by Anatolius of Constantinople, as is reported in the Council of Chalcedon, in the fourth session. But who could ever believe that a cause so contrary to the Nicene canons, and so injurious to the religion and innocence of Photius, could have been handled in a synod convened by most holy men, the legates of the Roman Pontiff, against the mandate of the Apostolic See? Therefore the excommunication of Photius of Tyre, and the violation of his metropolitan right, attempted by Eustathius of Berytus and reinforced by the pragmatic decree of Theodosius, ought by no means to be referred to this synod, but to another synod of the preceding year, in which Anatolius was raised to the throne of Constantinople.
For on this matter we composed a complete dissertation under the auspices of our most holy lord Benedict XIV, which we delivered in the Academy of Councils, and which we shall make public in the following book, when treating of the sessions of the Council of Chalcedon. Therefore, the affairs of the Church of Constantinople having been settled in peace, the emperor Marcian meanwhile resolved in earnest to remove all the ills of the Easterns and to abolish the schisms. And first he ordered that the body of St. Flavian be conveyed to Constantinople with solemn array and pomp, and that it be buried in the basilica of the Apostles, in which the remains of his predecessor bishops had been laid to rest. Then he wrote new letters to the supreme Pontiff Leo,
in which, having borne witness to the faith of Anatolius, he reverently invites Leo to come to the East and to celebrate a synod, that he might satisfy his own desires and those of his august consort, and might decree what things are profitable for the sacred religion. 'But if' (he adds) 'this is burdensome, namely that you should come to these parts, let your Holiness make this very thing known to us by your own letters, so that into all the East, and into Thrace itself, and Illyricum, our sacred letters may be directed, that wherever it shall please us all the most holy bishops ought to assemble, and may declare by their own arrangement what things profit the religion of Christians and the catholic faith, as your Holiness shall have defined according to the ecclesiastical rules.' Thus far Marcian in the other letter written to St. [Leo],
To Leo; to which letter not dissimilar is the one that his consort Pulcheria likewise wrote on the same occasion, which we reasonably judge were brought to the Roman Pontiff by the clergy of Anatolius sent to Rome with a profession of faith, as we shall say in its proper place. Meanwhile Theodoret exulted with much joy, because, by the pragmatic decree of Marcian and the zeal of the pontifical legates, he himself and others who had contended against Eutyches were recalled from exile, so that they might recover their bishoprics and their own Churches.
Wherefore he did not delay to give a letter to Abundius, the legate of the Roman Pontiff, in which he first testifies that in the Roman Church of the West the true and apostolic faith is piously preserved, and on this account confesses that he gave thanks to Almighty God, chiefly because the religion which was in peril in the East has been renewed through your Holiness and has come into the light. This Roman faith he compares to the ark of Noah, inasmuch as the Western Church, preserved from the deluge of the Eutychian heresy, that from it also the Eastern most sacred Churches might guard the true religion, which the sacrilegious and novel heresy was already attempting utterly to lay waste and devour.
He adds that he learned the full truth of the faith from the letters of the most holy and most religious archbishop, the lord Leo, whom he calls the great advocate and champion of the truth. To these letters he affirms that he gave his assent, and that he subscribed to them together with Ibas of Edessa and Aquilinus, bishop of Byblos, against whom the inventors of the new heresy armed the power of the emperors. Finally he closes his letter with the following words: 'It remains that you, together with the most holy men, bring aid to the most sacred Church, and remove the impious wars that were impending.'
'Forbid therefore the sacrilegious sect which has risen up against piety, and restore to the Churches their former peace, that you may receive the fruit of apostolic labors from the Lord, who has promised that he will render those same fruits.' Many other proofs of Theodoret's submission and reverence toward the Apostolic See we might here subjoin, which most evidently lay open the doctrine of the Eastern bishops of that age concerning the governance of ecclesiastical affairs;
and which intimate that none but heretics and schismatics dared to deny to the Roman Pontiffs those supreme rights which pertain either to judging causes of faith, or to receiving appeals from every part of the world, or to convoking general synods, and to confirming, revising, or abolishing their judgments. Nevertheless, lest I seem to depart from recounting the acts of St. Leo, I shall for the present pass over those things, since many things remain to be said afterward in another Exercise concerning the appeal of that very bishop of Cyrus to the Apostolic See, which Quesnel strove to assail and overthrow.