講道與書信 第 247 章 第 4/6 段

And although it was not hidden from him with what and how great a purity of faith Maximus excelled, nevertheless he recalls to his mind the prerogatives of that see, and how the Christian faith, announced to the whole world by the special teaching authority of St. Peter, had been handed down to the very Churches of Antioch and of Rome. Therefore the holy pontiff, confident that Maximus firmly adhered to the institutions of the divine Peter, its founder, not only stirs his spirit to drive off all Nestorian and Eutychian madness, but moreover commends to him all the Churches of the East subject to him, lest they be undermined and corrupted by depraved and wicked errors:

'Since it befits you' (he says) 'to resist these with sacerdotal authority, and to instruct us more often by reports on what is being done concerning the progress of the Churches.' In like manner he exhorts him to become a partner of the apostolic see, by carefully guarding the privileges of the third see, 'which may never be diminished by any ambition,' adding a little below: 'For although the merits of prelates may sometimes differ, nevertheless the rights of the sees remain; and although rivals may perhaps be able to bring some disturbance upon them, yet they cannot diminish their dignity.'

That he wished to censure here the depraved efforts of Anatolius's ambition, and to persuade Maximus to oppose with all his might whatever could either infringe or diminish the privileges of the Church of Antioch, is also made plain from the words that follow: for he added, 'Whence, when your Charity shall have judged that something must be done for the privileges of the Church of Antioch, take care to set it forth in your own letters, so that we may be able to respond to your consultation absolutely and fittingly.' But it is my opinion that St. Leo perhaps also wished gently to reprove Maximus, bishop of Antioch, and to render him for the future more careful in procuring the observance of the Nicene statutes.

For he, in the year 450, too easily indulged the zealous efforts and ambition of Eustathius of Berytus, to the ruin of the Church of the Tyrians and of its metropolitan Photius. Concerning this matter he was arraigned in the Council of Chalcedon in the fourth session, as we ourselves have seen in chapter 4 of this book, page 468. For St. Leo, in the subsequent chapter of his letter, laying down a certain general rule, says: 'But if anything has been either attempted by anyone against the statutes of the Nicene canons in any synod whatsoever, or seems to have been for a time extorted, it can bring no prejudice to the inviolable decrees, and it will be easier for the pacts of any dissensions to be dissolved than for the rules of the aforesaid canons to be corrupted in any part.'

In reviewing this rule, then, as we have said, it is highly probable that St. Leo wished to censure the excessive easiness or indulgence of Maximus of Antioch, who permitted Eustathius to withdraw himself from the metropolitan right of the Church of the Tyrians, to which the Church of Berytus had from its very origin been subject. Our conjecture is corroborated by the words of Eustathius and Photius described in the fourth session, of which we have already spoken above. 3. A grave controversy concerning the celebration of Easter arose in the same year. In order to settle it, 'mindful' (he says) 'of the stewardship entrusted to me,' he asks to be aided by the efforts of the emperor Marcian, 'so that in that observance, which is always varied by a fixed reckoning, no error may be incurred.'

He asserts that the care of the paschal cycle had once been entrusted to the bishop of Alexandria. But because he adds: 'Theophilus of holy memory, bishop of the Church of Alexandria, when he had collected the years of this observation to the number of one hundred, determined that the paschal feast of the seventy-sixth year must be held far otherwise than others had decreed.' For he reviews the motives of this whole great controversy, and lest the changeable course of the moon should furnish a cause of error, he addresses the emperor in these words:

'I beseech your clemency that you may deign to lend your zeal, so that the Egyptians, or any others who seem to have a sure knowledge of this computation, may resolve the scruple of this anxiety, so that the general observance may be directed to that day which neither departs from the norm of the paternal constitutions nor wanders beyond the fixed bounds.' He asks also that Julian, bishop of Cos, vicar of the apostolic see, should diligently inquire concerning the same question, and write back as soon as possible. The great solicitude indeed of our St.

pontiff's solicitude in defining those rites which pertained to the solemnity of the paschal feast — namely, that all the faithful might come together into the same observance — is shown not only by the two foregoing letters, but it is also indicated to us by the paschal canon diligently composed for this reason by Victorius of Aquitaine, who, by the mandate of the same holy pontiff, was approached by Hilarus, archdeacon of the Roman Church, that he should reduce the paschal cycle into tables, and, the causes of the discordance having been explained which occurred in the diverse manner of computing, might at last make plain what was more in accord with the truth.

Victorius of Aquitaine, then — or, as others would have it, Victorinus — was a man endowed with the highest piety and exceedingly practiced in mathematical calculations; he undertook the work imposed by Hilarus and brought it perfectly to completion. And the renowned Aegidius Bucherius of the Society of Jesus first of all made it public, adorned indeed with most learned commentaries; and we ourselves have again emended it according to the readings of the Vatican codices, that it may obtain its due place among the Works of Leo. I do not think indeed that this our plan can be disapproved by those who from time to time examine the praised canon.

For besides the fact that Victorius composed it desiring to obey the pontifical mandates, he also at length resolves the most grave question concerning Easter, which in the ancient cycles is designated by a double notation, writing: 'That nothing is defined by my judgment, but is reserved, for the peace of the Churches, to the choice of the apostolic pontiff. So that I might neither pass over what pertained to my office, and it might be established in the judgment of him who presides over the universal Church, which day especially in such a condition should be chiefly assigned to the solemnity.'

To settle this most grave question, Proterius of Alexandria also expended his labor by the mandate of the emperor Marcian, scarcely having been taken up to govern that Church; he, writing to our holy pontiff, affirms that the hundred-year table of Theophilus was corrupted by the fault of a copyist or of a faulty codex, and that therefore one must in no way depart from the hundred-year course of the same most blessed father and our bishop Theophilus, which is entirely in agreement with the pages of the ancients. 4. But now I perceive that, my mind estranged from my proposed purpose, I have wandered off beyond the bounds of the Eutychian heresy;

and, as if heedlessly following the order and number of Leo's letters, I have fallen into that most grave question which long and greatly tormented the pontiff's mind, and which contains within itself most grievous knots, not easily to be untied even by those who diligently occupy themselves in making mathematical calculations and computations. But that this question gravely agitated the pontiff's mind is gathered from various other of his letters. As regards therefore the affairs of Anatolius, and the surviving remnants of the Eutychians, and their wicked arts, it remains at last for us to describe them. Anatolius, first of all, having been most gravely rebuked by the emperor Marcian, was brought back to better fruit, whom St.

Leo promises that he will receive back into his favor, provided that he satisfy the canons and not tear apart the rights of the priests. When he had been made certain of this promise, the same Anatolius did not delay to write his letters to the holy pontiff, in which he most humbly complains of the interrupted commerce of letters; which indeed had brought him an increase of great anxiety and grief, since he had desired more frequently to enjoy the pontiff's addresses. He protests that he is ready 'by obeying to fulfill what seemed pleasing to your in every way most perfect judgments.' Offering indeed at present many testimonies of this matter, he says first that Aetius, cast down from the ministry of the archdeacon, had now been restored to his former place and ecclesiastical honor;

but Andrew, who had been honored with the dignity of archdeacon, had now been separated from the Church and cast down from his rank, because he had contended against St. Flavian for the cause of Eutyches: although by very many excuses and by their own subscriptions, which they had appended to the letters of your Holiness, they now seemed to have given satisfaction for things past. He brings forward, moreover, two other arguments of his repentance in this letter. The one pertains to the peace entered upon and the supreme conjunction which he desires to have henceforth with the Roman pontiff Leo and to preserve by an inviolable bond. The other regards the preceding fault of his ambition, which he removes from himself, and casts back upon the zeal of the bishops of his clergy and of the Easterners.

Adding this one thing, which most of all overturns the inventions of Quesnel and Launoy, by affirming that all the force and confirmation of the Acts of Chalcedon had been reserved to the authority of the apostolic see. 'Since even thus' (lest I seem to fabricate ineptly, I append Anatolius's words) 'since even thus all the force and confirmation of the Acts had been reserved to the authority of your Beatitude.' 5. These letters therefore having been received, St. Leo did not delay to give an answer to Anatolius, and, diminishing nothing of the pontifical majesty, he recalls to his mind a firm and unchangeable resolve, by which he ought to have been zealous for the care of the common grace, lest he should bring upon himself any anxiety.

He adds that he had wished to have in his ecclesiastical cares such a partner as very many of his predecessors showed themselves to be toward the apostolic see, among whom he expressly names John Chrysostom, Atticus, Proclus, and Flavian. He praises him moreover, because he had corrected certain things wrongly done in the offices of the clergy, and had recalled the presbyter Aetius into favor and affection, and had removed Andrew from the action of the archdeacon. Nevertheless, desiring that a certain indulgence be applied toward those who had once been infected with the Nestorian and Eutychian heresy and had contended against Flavian, he charges the same Anatolius to grant pardon, if they condemn the execrable dogmas and exhibit proofs of their correction. For he says:

'Andrew indeed, who has reasonably been deprived of the office of archdeacon, and Euphrata, who, as I have learned, proved to be a wicked accuser of Flavian of holy memory — if by professions most fully written they condemn the Eutychian no less than the Nestorian execrable dogma, of whom pardon is to be granted when they are corrected, you shall consecrate them as presbyters.' And a little below, speaking of the rest who are stained with a like error, he adds: 'If they ask pardon with a like profession and satisfaction, let them be reformed to their orders, only those being admitted to the primacy of offices who shall be established to have been free from all error.' 6.

Preserving also the majesty of pontifical authority, he makes a transition to discussing the interrupted commerce of letters, which the cause of ambition had broken off, since by the authority of St. Peter he had utterly annulled and abolished the praised canon 28. And desiring indeed in Anatolius a greater sincerity in acknowledging the fault, and a greater efficacy in detesting it, he openly acknowledges that the aforesaid fault ought not to be transferred to the assemblies of the Constantinopolitan clergy alone, 'because without your will' (he says) 'it could not have been attempted. Since just as one offends in evil persuasion, so also one sins in evil confession.' He then adds that it was not displeasing to him that what could no longer please should now displease him.

Following this persuasion, he promises him the old favor, especially with the attestation of the Christian prince lending its support. The holy pontiff likewise agrees with himself in another letter written on the same day to the emperor Marcian, expressly affirming that he had received Anatolius into his favor 'because it delights me in all things to obey your Clemency.' He adds moreover: 'Let him show himself lovable and faithful, and let him by no fickleness henceforth dissociate himself from that charity which I pledge to him, joining to himself with sincere affection those whom we have proved to be defenders of the catholic faith.'

Meanwhile, however, providing for the greater good and tranquility of the Church of Constantinople, he asks the emperor that the monk Carosus — too unskilled and too perverse, who, as I have learned (he says), had subverted the hearts of many — by the benefit of your piety might no longer exercise his poisons; who too boldly sought to make the extinguished efforts of the heretics revive, by defending the Eutychian perfidy and violating the synodal authority. And indeed the holy pontiff's entreaty was neither useless nor void of the desired effect,

for in the following year 456, on the third before the Ides of February, he rendered due thanks to the same emperor Marcian, because he had expelled Carosus and his associate Dorotheus — who by heretical depravity defended condemned errors to the ruin of many — from their ancient monasteries, commanding them to dwell where they could not do harm, 'which, as I hope, will be a remedy to many whom you have freed from perverse teachers.' But the holy Father believed, from a report received from Julian of Cos, that Carosus had at last cast out the poison of heresy by a sincere confession of the faith. But that he was still deprived of ecclesiastical communion, on account of certain discords with Anatolius, was indicated to us in the same letter.

The origin of which discords I do not think it pertains to our undertaking either to inquire into or to relate, since we intend only to bring to a conclusion those Exercises on the Works of St. Leo which we have recognized as pertaining to the Eutychian heresy and its history. 7. I should indeed incur a very great wrong if anyone, attending to this present method of my writing, should wish to charge it as a fault that I have wholly passed over in narrating that most grievous calamity inflicted upon the Roman Western empire, on account of which the City itself was captured by the Vandals, burned, and plundered. This disaster, then, afflicted the soul of the holy pontiff with such great sadness and mourning that for a time he could not be at leisure for the affairs of the Easterners.

Indeed, even by Quesnel's own testimony, with all commerce of letters interrupted, he was wholly engaged in repairing the ruin of the city and of the churches, and had to give nearly a whole year to succor the necessities of his afflicted homeland. Yet St. Leo makes no mention in his letters of this calamity inflicted upon the City by the Vandals. He described it only in a few words in the orations delivered to the Roman people. Nevertheless, that he had feared it, and had already foretold it five years before by a kind of prophetic spirit, we have already observed in the foregoing pages from his letters to the emperor Marcian and to the Augusta Pulcheria, when the Council of Chalcedon was being approached. Nor indeed did this plundering of the City by the Barbarians alone torment the pontiff's mind;

but this man's mourning was most of all increased by the death of the emperor Marcian, that best of princes, who, as long as he lived, depended entirely upon the holy pontiff's suggestions, admonitions, and counsels, never recoiling from his nods. He, then, having spent six years in the empire, and as many months, two or three days, departed from this light. To him Leo, a tribune, by decree of the senate succeeded in the empire by common reckoning. The death of Marcian, however, gave occasion to the Eutychians lurking in Egypt and in the other provinces of the East to rush upon the catholic bishops, and to contend most boldly that the Acts of Chalcedon must be revised, and a new council held, that the cause of the faith might be re-examined.

Above the rest the Alexandrians were made more audacious, who clung ever to Dioscorus even after he had departed this life; and to them the holy Proterius, the catholic bishop, adorned with every kind of virtue, was especially odious. Against him, therefore, they did not shrink from rushing, sacrilegiously inflicting murder upon him; and, when the greatest commotions had been stirred up both throughout all Egypt and even in the Church of Constantinople, they flattered themselves, as it were, that they could attain their intended end, if they should obtain some support from the new emperor and his ministers. But they were deceived by a depraved hope.

For Leo, having received the report that Leo the tribune had been raised to the empire of the East, congratulates him by his letters, adding his own supplications upon the page, that he might furnish the protection of rulers to the cause of the catholic faith, lest above all the Alexandrian Church, harassed and assailed by the fury of heretics, be brought to utter destruction. 'Which work,' he says, 'befitting your virtues and your glory, shall have a swift effect pleasing to God, if you permit the holy Synod of Chalcedon, established concerning the incarnation of the Lord Christ, to be assailed by no retraction.' Nor indeed were all the endeavours of the Eutychians hidden from Leo the august;

for when these men, already after the death of Marcian, had busied themselves to circumvent the new emperor by many and various contrivances, that he might come to the opinion of abolishing the Synod of Chalcedon, he, by the supreme prudence and religion in which he was strong, had rendered their wicked attempts utterly vain, even before he was entreated by the holy pontiff. But of this deed the holy Leo had received knowledge by the report of many. And therefore he now beseeches him not to be moved from so great a constancy of mind, but to persist in it more firmly, adding:

'Wherefore what you saw should of your own accord be denied to them, grant gloriously to me, as I supplicate on behalf of the universal Church, and bestow it unchangeably and perpetually, so that those things which, according to the Gospel of Christ and the truth of the apostolic preaching, have throughout all past ages been strengthened by one faith and one understanding, may henceforth by no action be torn apart.' He at length closes this letter by suggesting to the emperor the necessity of providing for the restoration of the peace of the Alexandrian Church, and of commanding that there be provided, through catholic priests, such a pontiff in whom, both in uprightness of conduct and in profession of faith, nothing reprehensible can be found. 8.

That the foregoing letter written to the new emperor was written at the persuasion of Anatolius, bishop of Constantinople, the holy pontiff clearly indicates by writing back to that same Anatolius. For from him he had received a full account of those things which had befallen at Alexandria to the reproach of the Christian religion, and of what the wicked Eutychians were contriving, that the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon might be abolished, but that their snares had been vigorously repelled by the emperor himself.

Now therefore he praises Anatolius for the care which he bestowed upon the good of the Churches, requesting that by the pontiff's prayers the imperial aid might be sought, for the applying of those remedies which seemed necessary both for healing the wounds and for breaking the audacity of the heretics. He further admonishes him concerning the letters already written for this cause to the emperor. And at length he adds: 'It remains that your fraternity, taking advantage of the presence of the most faithful emperor, strive earnestly to entreat his mind that the decrees of the Synod of Chalcedon be preserved without any retraction.' 9. But it behoves us to relate the cause and authors of such great disturbances, that we may understand the rest which pertains to the Eutychian history, and in which the apostolic

care of Leo was occupied — let us unfold it. The deacon Liberatus narrated the whole series of events, saying that after the Council of Chalcedon Dioscorus was compelled to go into exile in the city of Gangra, and that the Alexandrian bishops and clergy, by the authority of the Council of Chalcedon and the imperial command of Marcian, were to elect a new bishop, as we ourselves have noted also from the Acts of Chalcedon. 'The nobles therefore were gathered,' says Liberatus, 'to elect him who should be in life and speech worthy of the pontificate....'

When much hesitation had arisen over this, the citizens being unwilling to ordain anyone at all, lest they should seem adulterers (since Dioscorus was indeed still living), at length the opinion of all inclined to Proterius, to whom Dioscorus also had entrusted the Church, and who had made him archpriest. The election therefore of Proterius to be bishop of Alexandria, and the ordination that followed, was the cause of a very great schism, whose authors strove to conceal their secret machinations by dissimulations, so long as Marcian survived in the empire. But, when he had departed this life, the Egyptians believed that the faith could easily be overthrown, stirring up a sedition long conceived in their minds.

For Timothy Aelurus, and Peter Mongus the deacon, both ordained by Dioscorus, going about the city, began to win over to themselves the populace greedy for novelties; and, having gathered the crowds of heretics which followed Dioscorus, and having brought in two bishops already deprived of the priesthood for open heresy, Timothy Aelurus, the leader of the sedition, is ordained bishop, invades the see of Proterius, the lawful pastor being expelled. But Proterius, desiring to escape the fury of the Eutychians, withdrew into the baptistery. Into which place the satellites of Timothy did not shrink from breaking, slaying Proterius himself, dragging his corpse with a hook through the streets, which is torn to pieces, is cast out, and his body is burned, his ashes scattered to the winds.

The deacon Liberatus narrates the whole matter in chapter 15, adding: 'From this Timothy, therefore, there began to be two bishops of Alexandria.' And so the people and the clergy, divided into two opposing factions, some defended the Council of Chalcedon, but others more grievously pressed upon the emperor Leo that the Synod of Chalcedon should be abolished. But the emperor (Liberatus adds), reading the supplications of both parties, and considering it too grievous that priests should be wearied by so great a journey (for the Eutychians were demanding a new council), whose age, or infirmity, or poverty forbade them to undergo this labour, judged it impossible for them to be assembled. But he wrote to the bishops of the several cities concerning both matters;

namely, concerning the ordination of Timothy Aelurus, and concerning the supplications made to him for abolishing the Synod of Chalcedon. But by divine disposition it came to pass that all the bishops who had convened at the Synod of Chalcedon at once, without any hesitation whatever, wrote back: that the Synod of Chalcedon was to be vindicated even unto blood, because it held no other faith than that which the Synod of Nicaea had established; but that Timothy was not only not to be reckoned among the bishops, but even to be deprived of the Christian appellation. I do not know, however, whether Liberatus, faithfully describing this foregoing series of events, has entirely omitted to relate the things which by the holy

Leo were done for the inviolable observance of the Chalcedonian decrees, and for the removing of Timothy Aelurus from the Alexandrian see, and for the abolishing of that dreadful schism which was afflicting that Church and leading it to the destruction of the catholic faith. For the deeds of our pontiff could not be hidden from Liberatus. 10. For meanwhile, while the Alexandrian Church was tossed about on the deep by the tempests of heretics and seditions, the holy

pontiff Leo was busy to rouse the constancy of the catholics, sending for this cause new letters, whether to Julian bishop of Cos, or to Basil lately raised to the bishopric of Antioch, or to Euxitheus of Thessalonica, or to Juvenal of Jerusalem, or to all the metropolitans of the Eastern Churches, exhorting all and each that with holy and strenuous constancy they oppose themselves to the attempts of the wicked, lest in any one of us the common faith be found either trembling or lukewarm;

assuring himself with certainty that, if the episcopal constancy did not recede from the definitions of the Synod of Chalcedon, then the most clement and most Christian prince (he says) will willingly defend his own sentence, and what he has already of his own accord furnished, he will much more, when asked, accomplish, that things well finished and settled may not be violated by any novelty. Nor was it only the ardour of defending the catholic faith and the zeal of utterly extinguishing the evils which were oppressing the Alexandrian Church that roused the pontiff's mind to write encyclical letters, and to ask the emperor not to lend his ears to the nefarious petitions of the Eutychians;

but besides this he urges Julian of Cos and the presbyter Aetius, that as quickly as possible they cause the pontifical writings to reach each one of the metropolitan bishops, that with all their effort they might resist the novelties. He then adds that he marvels at the audacity of certain calumniators, who, seeking a knot in a bulrush, were accusing the pontifical letter written to Flavian — accepted by all as a rule of faith — as though obscure in meaning, or ambiguous in expression, as if the assertions of that letter were not derived from the evangelical and apostolic doctrine. 'I truly marvel' (he says) 'that to the vanity of calumniators anything still in my letter, which has pleased the whole world, should seem obscure, so that they think it should be more fitly expounded;

since the assertion of that preaching is so full and solid that it admits nothing of novelty either in meaning or in expression. For whatever was then written by us is proved to have been taken from the evangelical and apostolic doctrine.' Wishing to refute this vanity of the calumniators, and most evidently to prove that there could be no room for new expositions — which the Eutychians were demanding, in order at least to wound the authority of the Synod of Chalcedon — he sent to Aetius his vicar copies of the letters which the Gauls and Italians had written to him, in order to show that all the bishops even of the West confessed the same doctrine with the highest agreement.