講道與書信 第 247 章 第 1/6 段

1. A most grave wound having been inflicted upon the Chalcedonian Acts by the ambition of one single man, the Easterns themselves took care to remedy this with all their strength — both in the synodal letter written to St. Leo after the synod, and by seeking out and obtaining for themselves the support of the emperor Marcian and the empress Pulcheria, by which they strove vigorously that the same holy pontiff should by no means abolish the twenty-eighth canon concerning the privileges of the Constantinopolitan Church, but should confirm it together with the other sanctions and hold it ratified. Anatolius, moreover, reckoning with himself the service and honor with which he had assiduously attended St.

Leo and the pontifical legates up to that day, flattered himself that the pontiff's mind could be softened by his letters, if — recalling to mind what he had hitherto displayed in testimony of the Catholic faith and in honor and service of the apostolic see — he should be willing to repay some worthy recompense for so many labors undergone. He believed also that Julian, bishop of Cos, who among the Easterns discharged the office of apostolic vicar, could advance his wishes. And therefore he did not delay to interpose his good offices, so that, mediating parties being assumed, he too might plead before the same holy pontiff that the rights and privileges of the Constantinopolitan episcopate might be enlarged.

When I had attentively considered the manner of acting of all these, I persuaded myself for certain that the bishops especially of the whole East, gathered in general synods, and the emperors themselves, firmly believed that no decrees of councils could hold firm in the Church, nor have the force of a canon, which had not been approved by the Roman pontiff — indeed, that they fall with all their force whenever they are expressly disapproved when defined — as we have plainly explained in the preceding book, and chiefly in chapters 4, 5, 6, and most recently we indicated from what has just been said concerning the eleventh session of this Chalcedonian council. 1. And, that we may discourse truly and solidly, let it first be permitted to note what they wrote in their synodal [letter] to St.

the pontiff concerning that twenty-eighth canon. Besides, let us attend on this occasion that they there called Leo the legitimate interpreter of the voice of blessed Peter, and adjudged to him the primacy of the supreme head by a sincere confession — against whom the Alexandrian prelate Dioscorus had vented his madness, plotting excommunication. Having at length attained a glorious victory after so many and so great disasters, by which for the space of three years the Church of the East especially had remained afflicted, they rejoice, because the holy pontiff had happily hastened to unite the body of the Church. Then they subjoin: 'These are the things which, together with you — who were present in spirit, and resolved to show favor as toward brethren, and by whom, through the wisdom of your vicars, you seemed almost to be among us — we have accomplished.'

As much, then, as they praise the triumph of the faith attained by the supreme felicity of St. Leo's patronage, wisdom, and influence, so much do they endeavor to expend zeal in persuading him that they had been led by desire of peace and quiet to the defining of certain statutes which would provide for the safety of the Churches: 'knowing (they say) that Your Holiness, when informed, will both approve and confirm the same.'

In order more easily to obtain the confirmation of these statutes, they appeal to that custom which has already obtained from a long time, which the holy Church of God of the Constantinopolitans has had for ordaining the metropolitans of the provinces of both Asia, Pontus, and Thrace, 'and which we have now confirmed by synodal decree, not so much granting anything to the see of Constantinople, as providing fitting quiet for the metropolitan cities, because, when bishops frequently end their lives, many disturbances arise, with the clergy and peoples who are throughout those same cities remaining without a ruler and throwing the ecclesiastical order into confusion.'

3. Under this pretext, then, of ecclesiastical tranquillity — from which they affirmed they promised themselves many good things — they tried to vindicate from any censure those bold acts of audacity by which the ancient custom of discipline was being ruined. Wherefore, lest the holy pontiff should take it ill that they had by no means observed in the council the order of judgments established by him, and that, contrary to the legates' instructions, commands, and protestations, they had come to enact those statutes of which they treat, they recall to his mind the past dissensions, rivalries, and quarrels of the Church of the Ephesians, 'whence certain persons were often troublesome to you.'

Then they relate how they confirmed the Constantinopolitan canon, decreeing that 'after your most holy and apostolic see, the Constantinopolitan [see] should hold the honor (which is ordained second).' Wherefore they earnestly entreat St. Leo that he would deign to honor with his pontifical decrees the judgment now made — concerning which supplication, since we have already treated of it in the prior book, chapter 6, there is no reason to discourse again of the same. This synodal letter alone of the Chalcedonian Fathers, when at times I considered it silently with myself, no little did it move my mind against those who dared to adjudge all firmness and force to the canons even of general councils, with any approbation and confirmation of the apostolic see set aside.

Nay rather, I was the more moved when I cast my eyes upon another letter written by the emperor Marcian. For although he was accustomed to give himself to the administration of civil affairs, and labored with excessive zeal to enlarge the honor and prerogatives of the imperial city, nevertheless he judged that this increase of honor could depend neither on himself nor on the decree of the synod, unless it were rendered ratified and firm by the Roman supreme pontiff himself. 4.

Therefore the emperor himself too, after he judged it fitting to congratulate Leo and himself — because, every contention and discord which envy, the enemy of faith, had cast in having been exploded — relates how he too had hastened to be present at the holy synod, 'although,' he says, 'expeditions and public necessities detained us in other places.' Then he proceeds to describe in a few words how in the synod all things had proceeded with the triumph of truth and the glory of faith, 'since, according to the letters (he subjoins) of Your Holiness, all assented to the exposition, as truth demanded.'

Coming at length to the decree of the Constantinopolitan council, renewed again or confirmed in this synod, he appeals to the pontiff, that he too would deign to apply his own consent to this part, 'although the most reverend bishops who, acting in the stead of your religion, came together to the holy synod, had contradicted.' That Pulcheria Augusta too undertook the role of mediator in this cause, the same St. Leo discloses from the letter written back to her.

And although that same letter of Pulcheria on this subject has hitherto been desired by the learned [i.e., is lost], nevertheless from Leo's response it becomes manifest that Anatolius and the Constantinopolitan clergy had placed much confidence in the good offices on which a woman of such virtue and authority expended her labor. No less solicitude for this business did Julian, bishop of Cos, also employ, whose letter, although it has not yet seen the light and has perhaps perished by the injury of the times, nevertheless — since the holy pontiff's letter survives, by which he rebukes him for having loved Anatolius too much and wished to favor him in an unlawful cause against the state of the universal Church — it is therefore now most manifest that this man too undertook the role of mediator. 5.

Anatolius himself at length, by no means despairing that he could move the pontiff's mind to grant what, led by the greatest ambition, he was craving, gave to the supreme pontiff a rather prolix letter, and applied all his zeal to insinuate himself into his patronage, and to persuade him that the prerogatives of the Roman episcopate were augmented by the new honor of the Constantinopolitan see, on this ground: that the honor of children redounds wholly to the glory of their parents. This letter of Anatolius, lacking in the preceding editions, we indicated in chapter 5 of the prior book of the history of the Eutychians, page 32 and following; and, as we said, we transcribed it from a Vatican Greek manuscript codex in the year 1738, and into Latin it was rendered also by

Lord Franciscus Marianus, scribe and interpreter of Greek letters in the Vatican Library. 6. Meanwhile, indeed, in perusing the letters of these men, the mind of the holy pontiff could not even slightly be moved to indulge the ambition of Anatolius — setting aside the Nicene sanctions — and to bend himself to acquiescing in the supplications of the powers of the age and of the whole synod. Wherefore on the eleventh day before the Kalends of June, in the year four hundred and fifty-two, taking up his pen, he replied to the aforesaid indicated letters, using that constancy and fortitude of mind which most became the supreme pastor of the universal Church.

And first indeed we will speak of the letters to Marcian and Pulcheria, which in the Quesnellian edition also obtained the first place. The holy Leo, then, undertaking to address the emperor in his letter, professes that one ought to rejoice over the victory of the faith, redounding to the whole Church by the great gift of divine mercy; and, certain things having been subjoined — borrowed from the testimonies of the Scriptures, which manifest the existence of the two natures in Christ the Lord after the union — immediately, in the other section of the letter, he chides the unjust ambition of Anatolius, since rather he ought to have been counseled that, abandoning the error of his ordainers, he should pass over by a salutary correction into the assent of the Catholic faith.

For St. Leo always reasonably doubted that Anatolius had at some time been stained with the soot of the Eutychian [heresy], inasmuch as he was the apocrisiarius of Dioscorus, and had been raised to the Constantinopolitan see by the Eutychian faction and by the arts of the eunuch Chrysaphius after the murder of Flavian. Whom indeed the supreme pontiff would never have received into communion, nor held his election and ordination ratified, had not Marcian himself and Pulcheria overcome the pontiff's mind by their supplications, and had not Anatolius made a public confession of the faith before the whole clergy and the people of Constantinople, into the hand of the pontifical legates, whom for this cause especially he directed to Constantinople, as we saw in the prior book, chapter 12.

All these things, then, St. Leo now recalls to the emperor's mind, saying: 'He ought nevertheless to have guarded that what is known to be consented to by your (most codices, as Baronius and Quesnel note, have in the margin "our") benefit, he should not disturb by the depravity of any cupidity.' And because the emperor and Pulcheria Augusta had pledged for the faith of Anatolius, that he should be received into the communion of the apostolic see, therefore he subjoins: 'For we, having regard to the intervention of your faith, when his beginnings wavered according to the authors of his consecration, willed to be more benign toward him than just.'

For he intended to judge that Anatolius's ordination — inasmuch as it was made by heretics and schismatics — had been utterly unlawful, and that Anatolius could have been deposed from the episcopal ministry, as one ensnared by those canonical penalties on account of which he ought to have remained perpetually impeded and suspended from undertaking the sacred office. Wherefore, in testimony of the kindness shown toward Anatolius, in order to remove all the perturbations which, by the working of the devil, had been stirred up, (he says) he had made use of those remedies of leniency which ought to have made him modest rather than immoderate.

And because he was pleading his cause with a most Christian, religious, and truly orthodox prince, whose heart he knew was set on zeal for the faith and for the defense of ecclesiastical discipline, he assigns yet loftier foundations for the refusal given. Namely, that even if Anatolius had been sprinkled with no defilements whatever, but had been legitimately and solemnly ordained for his excellent merits and by the best judgment, nevertheless, against the reverence of the paternal canons, against the institutions of the Holy Spirit, against the examples of antiquity, he could be aided by no votes.

Therefore, after he had affirmed that he was willing neither to hold valid nor able to grant assent to the canon about which the question was being raised, he protests that the glory of the city of Constantinople, derived from the authority and power of the emperors, could in no way remain diminished, even if the bishop of that city did not ascend to a higher rank and order. Yet (he says) the reckoning of secular matters is one thing, and that of divine things another: nor, apart from that rock which the Lord wondrously set as a foundation, was that construction stable; but he loses what is his own who covets what is not his due. And drawing a distinction between the royal city and the apostolic see, he indicated whence the privileges of the Churches are derived, adding:

For the privileges of the Churches, established by the canons of the holy Fathers and fixed by the decrees of the venerable Synod of Nicaea, can be overturned by no wickedness, violated by no innovation. In this work (let not our reader neglect to mark the weight of the words that follow), with Christ's help, faithfully carrying it out, I must show myself persevering in my service: for the stewardship entrusted to me tends also to my own guilt, if the rules of the paternal sanctions which in the Synod of Nicaea, by the instruction of the Spirit of God, were established for the governance of the whole Church should be violated through my connivance (which God forbid), and if the will of a single brother should weigh more with me than the common benefit of God's whole house. 7.

But truly, if in composing these matters I were not too much pressed by a zeal for brevity, a most ample field would be opened to me for overturning the whole system of those who fabricate that the Roman pontiffs are subject to the sanctions of councils, as Quesnel too wished to judge, slyly noting in the margin of that passage: 'The Roman pontiff is bound by the canons, and must serve them in dispensations.' For neither is the universal authority of the Roman pontiffs limited, nor are the Roman pontiffs themselves said to be subject to councils, if, in those things that pertain to the universal governance of the Church, they will that the rules of the sanctions established by the instruction of the Spirit of God be kept, and strive that they be faithfully committed to execution.

Yet the Roman pontiffs are able to do in the Church what general councils have been authorized to do. Indeed they are able to abolish, render void, reform, and declare as nothing those decrees of synods that conflict with the ecclesiastical rules, and that have been ordained to subvert the order and economy of discipline; which things assuredly supply no argument that they are subject to general councils, but rather that the councils themselves obtain their force and authority from the Roman pontiffs alone.

And indeed, since the dispensation of the canons, on the authority of Leo himself, has been entrusted to the Roman pontiff alone, and tends to his guilt if, the benefit of the whole Church being set aside, the will of a single brother prevails with him, together with ambition and the lust for domineering over the rest—now the question no longer turns on whether the Roman pontiff holds authority over councils, but on the circumstances and cases in which he ought to use it, lest his dispensations tend to his own guilt; for the rest, in those things that pertain to ecclesiastical governance, he is subject only to the most just judgment of the Lord God, who would never permit without some guilt that the rules inspired by the Holy Spirit should by him be violated and perverted. 8.

Nevertheless let us pass over these matters, which can be more fully expounded by those who are accustomed to treat such arguments in the schools. We add only one further point, which pertains to the keeping and observance of the canons; from which, when Anatolius had departed, despising the mandates of the Fathers, he had displayed fresh proofs of his ambition in the ordination of Maximus, bishop of Antioch, which he had usurped for himself without any precedent. This new crime, as contrary to peace and priestly concord, St. Leo wished to overlook; and he affirms that he did not annul this ordination out of love for repairing the faith and zeal for peace, since otherwise it had by no means been permitted to Anatolius, without any precedent and against the institutions of the canons, to ordain a bishop for the Church of Antioch.

For he affirms that he could without any difficulty have declared this ordination void and null by right. But this he forbore to do solely from zeal for faith and peace. Having therefore brought forward these and other most weighty reasons, he reverently entreats the emperor Marcian not to take such a refusal amiss; and he adjures him that by his diligent prompting he should remove from all assent of your piety (he says) the wicked attempts opposed to Christian unity and peace, and that he should wholesomely restrain the ambition of my brother Anatolius, which will harm him himself if he persists. Finally he testifies that the bishop Lucianus and the deacon Basil, who had brought the imperial writings to him, had fulfilled the duties of the embassy they had undertaken.

For (he says) one ought not to be reckoned to have failed in the business who was rather forsaken by the cause. With these words he closed the letter on the eleventh day before the Kalends of June, as we have said, in the year 452. Quesnel, in the second volume of his edition, adorned this letter with notes and observations. And, having first reviewed the various readings that occur in the printed editions and manuscript codices of others, he raises a question concerning those words of chapter 3, namely: 'He will not disdain the royal city, which he cannot make an apostolic see.' Now sees, or apostolic Churches, are not so called for one reason only, he says.

But that the ancient writers were accustomed to attribute this appellation to Churches chiefly for six reasons, he affirms from Tertullian, Theodoret, and Augustine, without at all indicating the chief reason for which the Roman Church was everywhere called the apostolic see by St. Leo. He says therefore: The Roman see is called apostolic because it was founded by the chiefs of the apostles and consecrated by the blood of both. He adds that this denomination belongs for other and various reasons to the Churches of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Ephesus, and to certain others, according to the diverse formulas of speech of the Fathers, which he there describes. But what he meant to insinuate to his readers out of so incongruous an apparatus of erudition, I am wholly ignorant.

Nay, if I might be permitted to suspect, I would conjecture that he meant thereby to diminish the prerogatives of the Roman pontiffs, since he is silent about the more principal reason on account of which the Roman see is called apostolic. Granted therefore that the Churches of others were called apostolic by the ancients, for various and diverse acceptations, by way of honor, yet none was so called more principally and with full propriety, except the Roman see alone, in which St. Leo himself in countless places confessed that the authority of holy Peter lives and is to endure perpetually, and which the Roman pontiffs, the successors of Peter himself, by hereditary right diffuse into the whole body of the Church, so that there can be absolutely nothing in the other members which does not flow from that head.

This special prerogative neither Alexandria, nor Antioch, nor any other Church whatever—to which according to various acceptations that apostolic name has been attributed—could ever possess, as may be seen from Leo himself, whether in the sermons delivered on the anniversary day of his assumption to the pontificate, or in the letter to Anastasius of Thessalonica, or to the emperor Theodosius, or to the bishops of Gaul, and in the letter to the empress Pulcheria, in the cause of which we are treating, as we shall presently see. 9. Not, therefore, was the Roman Church called the apostolic see merely because it was founded and consecrated by the blood of the apostles;

but because the authority of the holy apostle Peter and his primacy in the universal Church still lives and endures in the Roman pontiffs, as St. Leo himself also affirms in letter 79 to Pulcheria. For in those things that pertain to ecclesiastical governance, the Roman pontiffs do nothing without the authority of holy Peter—a privilege certainly given to no other bishop, since to themselves it was granted by hereditary succession that they should preside over the rest of the bishops. Hence therefore St. Pope Leo, wonderfully consistent with himself in all his writings, willed to use this authority of holy Peter, when he rendered void and utterly annulled that canon concerning the primacy of the bishop of Constantinople, wrongfully usurped by Anatolius for himself.

For indeed, after he had said that that canon could by no means support the see of Constantinople—a canon issued sixty years before in the time of the elder Theodosius, to which Anatolius with much boasting appealed: For (he says) it is boasted that there is now almost the sixtieth year of this connivance, by which the aforesaid bishop deems himself helped, vainly desiring that to profit him which, even if anyone has dared to wish it, none has nevertheless been able to obtain—he proceeds to repress the spirit of arrogance that dominated Anatolius. Therefore he sets before him for imitation the modesty and humility of Flavian: Whose virtues if (he says) he be willing to shine with, he will be praiseworthy, and in every place will acquire very much love, not by courting human things, but by meriting divine ones.

And by this observance I promise that my mind too shall be joined to him, and that the love of the apostolic see, which we have ever shown to the Church of Constantinople, shall be violated by no inconstancy. Hence at last, coming to that canon issued by the consent of the bishops, with the papal legates protesting against it, he renders it utterly void, and (he says) by the authority of the blessed apostle Peter we annul it by a wholly general definition, in all ecclesiastical causes obeying those laws which the Holy Spirit established for the peaceful observance of all priests through three hundred and eighteen bishops. Quesnel foresaw that a grave inconvenience was brought upon him by these words. To diminish and avoid it he employed very much labor.

Wherefore, dissembling and utterly neglecting those former words, 'by the authority of the blessed apostle Peter, by a wholly general definition'—in which the whole most weighty force of this sentence resides, and which manifest without any ambiguity with how great an authority the Roman pontiffs prevail in the administration of ecclesiastical affairs—he judged that attention should be paid only to this word, 'We annul,' saying: 'He uses this same word in the following letter, and also in letter 73, chapter 1, and 99; of which word the meaning is not always the same. For most often it is the same as to make void; but sometimes to be annulled is the same as to be void and empty of all authority;

and sometimes also to annul is the same as to declare void, and to declare empty, and to pronounce empty; and in this way it seems to me to be taken in the present passage by the divine Leo.' But that this assertion of Quesnel is frivolous and fictitious is proved first of all by the whole text of that sentence. That Leo employed that word 'we annul' not in the sense indicated by Quesnel is clearly evident from the manner and mode of acting of the holy pontiff himself, who says he is playing the person of the blessed Peter, and using his authority to proscribe and utterly abolish that canon, already issued by the council and proposed to the holy apostolic see in order that it might confirm and ratify it. Who then does not see that Leo then discharged the true office of supreme judge?

For when it was a matter of preserving the rights of the Churches, it was for him to weaken, abolish, and by all his powers deprive of force that solemn compact celebrated by the mutual consent of the parties in the council, by which the bishop of Constantinople claimed for himself those prerogatives which the bishop of Antioch willingly ceded to them, and those which belonged to the Church of Alexandria—then having no prelate—for which none of the Eastern bishops was seen to plead, either because they coveted the glory, amplitude, and power of the royal city, or because they persuaded themselves that, once the ordinations of the provinces of Pontus, Asia, and Thrace had been adjudged to the bishop of Constantinople, the tranquility and peace of those Churches would be better provided for.

But to that compact, so solemn, none of those Fathers opposed himself, if we except the papal legates. Indeed one of these, namely Julian, bishop of Cos, vicar of the apostolic see among the Easterns, going over to the opinion of the rest, adjudged to the bishop of Constantinople the primacy after the Roman; so that the Fathers of the council were not only solemn witnesses of that entered transaction of rights, but also judges, and ordered it to be entered into the public records of the councils, and willingly, without coercion or fear, subscribed to it. Therefore we judge that it is not to be called merely void of force and authority in the sense employed by Quesnel, who, doing violence to Leo's words, adds:

'But that which is utterly empty of all authority, which without delay is annulled as soon as it is presumed; that which from its very beginning is invalid and long since collapsed, needs by no sentence, by no authority, to be made void and null, but only to be declared and pronounced void and annulled. This is what Leo does here as the guardian and executor of the canons, joined together with the imperial piety in the faith.' But what follows from this weak and merely fictitious reasoning? He ought first to have noted, or not dissembled, the holy Pontiff's formula of speech, who affirms that he is using the aforesaid authority of holy Peter when he pronounces: 'By a wholly general definition we annul it.'