講道與書信 第 93 章

CHAPTER I.—The religious faith of the most clement prince, knowing that it pertains chiefly to his glory if within the Catholic Church no seed of any error should spring up, has paid this reverence to the divine institutions, that for the effect of holy disposition he should bring to bear the authority of the Apostolic See: as though he desired to have declared by the most blessed Peter himself what was praised in his confession, when, at the Lord's saying, 'Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?' (Matthew 16:13) The disciples related the various opinions of divers persons; but when it was asked of them what they themselves believed, the prince of the apostles, embracing the fullness of the faith in a brief discourse, said,

'Thou art,' he says, 'the Christ, the Son of the living God'; that is, Thou who art truly the Son of Man art likewise truly the Son of the living God; Thou, I say, true in Deity, true in flesh, and the two one, with the property of the twofold nature preserved. If Eutyches believed this intelligently and vigorously, he would in no way deviate from the path of this faith. On account of which it is answered him by the Lord: 'Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say to thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it' (Matthew 16:17-18). But he is exceedingly a stranger to the framework of this building who both

does not grasp Peter's confession, and contradicts the Gospel of Christ; showing that he never had any zeal for knowing the truth, and was seen to be honorable to no purpose, since he adorned the gray hairs of old age with no maturity of heart. CHAPTER II.—But since the care even of such men is not to be neglected, and the most Christian emperor piously and religiously willed an episcopal council to be held, that by a fuller judgment all error might be abolished, I have sent our brethren Julius the bishop, Renatus the presbyter, and my son Hilary the deacon, and with them Dulcitius the notary, of faith approved by us; who in my stead may attend the holy assembly of your fraternity, and by common counsel with you may establish the things which shall be pleasing to the Lord.

That is, that, the pestilent error being first condemned, there be treated also of the restoration of the very man who imprudently erred; if, however, embracing the doctrine of truth, he shall fully and openly, by his own voice and subscription, have condemned the heretical opinions with which his unskillfulness had been ensnared: which he also professed in the little book which he had sent to us, promising that in all things he would follow our judgment. But having received the letters of our brother and fellow-bishop Flavian, we have written back to him more fully concerning those things which he seems to have referred to us:

that, this error which appeared to have been born being abolished, to the praise and glory of God throughout the whole world there may be one faith and one and the same confession, and in the name of Jesus every knee may bow, of things heavenly, earthly, and infernal, and every tongue may confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:10-11). Given on the Ides of June, in the consulship of Asturius and Protogenes, most illustrious men. CHAPTER I.—The letters of your love, which were lately delivered to me, demonstrate with how spiritual a love of the Catholic faith you flourish; and they make me greatly rejoice that pious hearts concur in the same opinion, so that, according to the teaching of the Holy Spirit, that may be fulfilled in us which the Apostle says:

'I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all say the same thing, and that there be no schisms among you; but that you be perfect in the same mind and in the same judgment' (1 Corinthians 1:10). Of which unity Eutyches truly made himself a stranger, if he grows old in his perversity, and does not yet understand by what bonds he is bound by the devil: and thinks that any of the priests of the Lord is to be found who would consent to his unskillfulness and madness. Long was it uncertain among us what displeased Catholics in him:

and since we received no letters from our brother Flavian, but he himself in his writings complained that the Nestorian heresy was sprouting up again, we could not fully learn whence such a deceitful pretext proceeded, or whither it tended. But after the documents of the episcopal acts were brought to us, all those things which were covered by the veil of fallacious complaints became plain, how detestable they were. CHAPTER II.

—And since the most clement emperor, out of the benevolence and piety of his mind, willed that the state of this man, who before seemed honorable, be more diligently judged, and on this account believed that an episcopal council ought to be announced, through our brethren Julius the bishop and Renatus the presbyter, but also my son the deacon Hilary, whom from my side I have sent in my stead, I have directed to our brother Flavian writings sufficient for the quality of the case, by which both your love and the Church universal may know, concerning the ancient and singular faith which the untaught assailant has attacked, what we hold as divinely handed down, and what we immutably preach.

Since, however, we ought not to omit the offices of compassion, we have believed it to accord with the moderation of priests that, if the condemned presbyter is corrected by full satisfaction, the sentence by which he is bound may be relaxed; but if he shall have chosen to lie in the same mire of his folly, let the decrees remain in force; and let him have his lot with those whose error he has followed. Given on the Ides of June, in the consulship of Asturius and Protogenes, most illustrious men. 1. The words of chapters 1 and 4, 'we have directed and sent,' by which the legates directed from the City, and the letter given to Flavian on the Ides of June, are said to have been delivered, seem to indicate that the following letter was written after the aforesaid letters to Flavian, and indeed even after the departure of the legates, who are said to have set out in letter

letter 38, given on the 23rd of July, and even in letter 36, given on the 20th of June, as we shall more probably show in note 3 on that very letter (col. 842, n.); which, however, is of no consequence to the present matter. In the same letter 38, mention is made of the arrival of Basil the deacon, who, the legates having already set out, had brought Flavian's letter to Leo. If this were the same Basil who is reported also to have brought Julian's letters, this letter would have to be said much more evidently to have been written after the Ides of June, when the legates had not yet set out from the City. Thus, of the two letters to Julian, which it seems difficult to believe were written on the same day concerning the same matter, only the preceding letter would have been given on the Ides of June, while the following would have to be pushed forward to a later time.

But all the manuscripts resist this, and although several and various collections contain the letter that follows, in all of them nevertheless it is noted as given on the Ides of June. Quesnel, in order to reconcile this, observes in note 8 that in certain letters, which now bear the date of the Ides of June, no mention is made of the Ephesine synod already convoked. He conjectured that Leo, upon receiving Flavian's first letters together with the acts of the synod of Constantinople, had formed the plan of sending four legates to the East, who would settle the whole matter at Constantinople. He believes that for this sole purpose several letters were first written, which are now read as given on the 13th of June. But he names only two, namely the letter

the 28th to Flavian, and the 32nd to the archimandrites of Constantinople, in which indeed nothing is contained concerning the synod, but only concerning the cause of the faith to be handled through legates. He adds further: But before the legates had set out, letters of Theodosius were received by Leo, by which he was informed of the synod that had been convoked; and at once those same legates, who had been appointed to treat the business of the faith together with Flavian, were directed to the synod, and their departure was delayed so that time might be given for writing new letters, or for enlarging the earlier ones; and in these mention is made of the council. And for this reason he suggests that upon both the earlier and the last letters the same chronological notation was affixed, namely the Ides of June. 3.

Yet these arguments will be able to satisfy no one. For, in the first place, he presumes—not only without any foundation, but even against the testimony of the documents—that Flavian's letters, together with the acts of the synod of Constantinople, were received by Leo before the letter of Theodosius concerning the convoked council was delivered. For Leo signified that he had received Flavian's earlier letters together with the acts of Constantinople against Eutyches only in letter 27, given on the 21st of May, since he testifies in letter 31 that Theodosius's letter had been handed to him on the 13th of the same month. Moreover, before the 13th of May the celebrated letter 28 to Flavian is presumed to have been written, and the legates already appointed. But on the 21st of the same month, on which letter 27 was given, he professes to be devoting his effort to writing that same letter

28, and that he had not yet thought of handing it to the legates; for he says: Concerning this matter we will write back more fully by him who has brought us the letter of your charity. But letter 31 affirms that, after Theodosius's letters had been received, little time remained for arranging the departure of the legates: For, he says, since from the third day before the Ides of May, on which we received the writings of his serenity, the greater part of the remaining time must be taken up, so that the departure of the priests who are equal to the business may be able to be arranged.

In the second place, even if these things could in some way be reconciled in Quesnel's view, yet another difficulty is still not resolved, by which the day of the Ides of June is marked in this letter, since—if it must be said to have been written when the legates had already set out, as we noted at the beginning. 4. What then? We deem it unlawful to abandon the authority of so many and both ancient and most excellent collections, which without any variation consistently bear the Ides of June; and therefore we judge that Leo, on the same day, gave two letters to the same Julian of Cos, one brief, to be carried by the legates, the other longer, to be carried by the deacon Basil, a different man, who, when the legates had already set out, brought Flavian's letters. But the words

of past tense, 'we directed' and 'we sent,' will cause no trouble, if one considers what we observed in note 17 (Col. 727, note) on letter 22, where we cited similar examples of the past tense used by Leo himself concerning a present or soon-to-be-future matter. And that two letters were given on the same day to the same persons is not foreign to Leo's custom, as is clear from the examples praised in the note on letter 17. 5. One thing remains to be pointed out concerning the Greek version of this letter, which—since in the editions of the Councils it in places shows dots indicating lacunae—led us at first to suspect a corrupted exemplar of the Roman editors. But comparing the Greek text with the manuscript Vat. 1455, of a different origin from that which the Roman editors used, and moreover with two codices

of Venice, St. Mark's 164 and 555, we discovered that there were no dots in them, nor any dislocation, but that everything was written distinctly in a single continuous text; and yet that the things lacking in the Greek editions were not supplied. Hence we conjecture, not improbably, that the ancient Greek translator deliberately omitted in his Greek version those things that are wanting. Perhaps Julian, who seems to have translated Leo's letter 93 to the Nicene synod into Greek—as we shall note in the unpublished session of the Council of Chalcedon, which we shall publish in the appendix—rendered this one also into Greek immediately when it was sent to him; and since great tumults were then boiling over, he thought that the things lacking in the Greek should be deliberately passed over.

That there was among the Greeks a liberty of suppressing certain matters, this same Julian had indicated to Leo concerning another letter of Leo to the synod of Chalcedon, as is gathered from letter 127, chapter 3. But in order that the things which were omitted in the Greek version may be indicated, we shall exhibit them enclosed in brackets in the Latin text.