Sermons & Letters 232 part 1/3

I. When the first Synod of Constantinople had now been concluded, in which, the errors of Eutyches being condemned and their author being deprived of his priestly office and of the prefecture of the archimandrite, the sum of the sentence passed against him was promulgated in various public places of the city of Constantinople; namely, that it might be made known to the monks and other Catholic men by a written admonition, that henceforth they should in no wise communicate with the heretical and contumacious man. But because the cause of the faith was at issue, Flavian, that he might not be wanting in his own duty, with no delay at all interposed, gave letters to the supreme Pontiff Leo, and at the same time directed to him the whole series of the things transacted.

Of this matter the most faithful witness is, above all, the deacon Liberatus, who, having recounted the condemnation of Eutyches, soon subjoined: To these acts the venerable Flavian, joining his own letter, directed it to Pope Leo, and faithfully set forth what had been transacted in the council. Which words, and then the letters of the same Flavian, Baronius, running through them, without any hesitation rightly wrote that Flavian in so acting followed the custom of his forebears. Yet Quesnel disagrees at every turn, and especially, in describing the affairs conducted by St. Leo the Great in the year of Christ 449, when he says: St. Leo, being admonished by Flavian of none of these things which were being done at Constantinople

(having, namely, received letters from Eutyches), that he should neither condemn the innocent nor absolve the guilty, wrote to Theodosius and Flavian. But why Flavian did not write to Leo, he says: It is not difficult to state, whether he believed that Eutyches was fixed by the judgment, or that the cause had been conducted according to the canon of the Church in the council, and that a monk of his own parish, being lawfully condemned, was not to be heard elsewhere. Baronius believes that the letters of Flavian were either intercepted or delayed by Eutyches. But that nothing at all was then written by Flavian is established from Flavian's own letter, whose beginning is: 'Pietate,' etc.

Who does not see that Quesnel wished, too boldly and as if from the tripod, to solve by a few and indeed weak conjectures, according to his own opinion, a question involved in the gravest difficulties? Assuredly too, if we diligently survey those two letters of Flavian to Leo alone, which Quesnel himself committed to print in Greek and Latin, we shall not easily be able to judge to which the first place is due. Nay rather, we shall come to this persuasion, that the other is to be set in the first place in order, as, led by the gravest conjectures, we shall declare a little below. Moreover, who revealed to Quesnel that Flavian gave only two letters to Pope Leo?

For from the Vatican codices we have thus far unearthed a third, written to the same Leo on the occasion of the Eutychian heresy, concerning which two clerics of the same Church of Constantinople, namely Gregory and John, were being demanded. As therefore he wrote this third one, why could he not write a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, and many others, which Eutyches could either intercept or delay, as Baronius reasonably suspects? But that Flavian ought to have written other and yet other letters to the holy Pontiff must be persuasive to me and to all judicious men, especially because the condemned heresy was growing worse day by day, and because a new synod, at the instigation of Dioscorus and by the

instigation of Eutyches, was being demanded to be held with great loss of truth and faith—which Flavian himself sincerely confessed to be by no means necessary, even from those two of his letters which have hitherto seen the light, since by the pontifical authority alone both the heresy which had arisen and the disturbances which were caused on its account would most easily be destroyed. Let Quesnel say, I pray, does he think that Flavian was utterly struck dumb, and gave no other letters to Leo, when it became known to him that the emperor, at the instigation of the eunuch Chrysaphius and of Dioscorus, was now demanding a synod, in order to abolish the things which had already been defined at Constantinople against the risen heresy?

That it is a fiction, those letters of Flavian in the cause of those two clerics of Constantinople prove, as we have already indicated above, which, with the Lord God helping, we shall make public. 2. But whatever be the case concerning the other letters of Flavian, which either perished through the injury of the times, or are even now kept obscure in the more hidden cabinets of libraries or archives, of which Quesnel made not even the least mention in the list which he compiled—led by this persuasion, that Flavian had given only those two published letters to Leo—it is therefore by no means to be doubted that he, that Synod of Constantinople being now concluded and Eutyches condemned, wrote to the Roman Pontiff,

sending the series of all that had been transacted; and therefore that Baronius's conjecture does not falter, by which he affirms that letters of this kind were either intercepted or delayed by the effort of Eutyches. To this conjecture indeed Quesnel himself ought to have subscribed, if he had attended to Leo's letters and to their chronological note. This we do not neglect to do at present, that we may more fully overthrow Quesnel's arguments. For we find the first letter of Leo written to bishop Flavian on the Kalends of March, Asterius and Protogenes holding the consulate, which falls in the year 449. That Count Pansophius carried this letter from the city of Rome to Constantinople, Flavian indicated in writing back to Leo.

But that Flavian gave no letters to Leo before he received the letters of the holy Pontiff from Count Pansophius, I can never be persuaded, being led by the following considerations. For if first we consider the time which Count Pansophius, departing from the City and about to set out for Constantinople, must have expended; if we likewise attend both to certain affairs which the noble man perhaps had to transact with the emperor and the ministers of his court, and to the making of a new journey, that he might come again to Rome—certainly the space of three months could scarcely suffice. Although we ought to believe that the course of navigations was then easier, on account of the abundance of vessels going from Rome toward Brundisium and advancing from Brundisium to Constantinople;

nevertheless that journey was rendered still more difficult in the first, that is in the month of March and April, in which, although the sea is by its own nature tranquil, it is wont to be more and more agitated and disturbed by the force of the winds with immoderate storms. But let us at length grant that Count Pansophius had a prosperous journey, and that his return to the City was not delayed beyond three months, as might be conjectured from another letter of St. Leo written to the same Flavian; what then? Did Flavian defer to write to Leo about the Eutychian heresy so long, until, being urged on by Leo himself, he received the letters? This no one will affirm without a mark of rashness, especially if he attends to the subsequent letters of St. Leo the Great. For St. Leo, in his letter

written on the twenty-second (letter), on the Kalends of June, confesses that he had received Flavian's letters with the synodal acts in the cause of Eutyches. He says that he seizes the occasion of writing from the opportune journey which the honorable man Undantis was first about to undertake toward Constantinople. For he then made very brief letters. But (he promises) about this matter we shall write back more fully through him who carried the letters of your love to us, that we may instruct your fraternity what ought to be determined about the whole cause. Here I could wish that Quesnel and anyone else who indulges in his studies would consider whether the honorable man Count Pansophius carried Flavian's letters with the synodal acts, received from Leo, or another? Not Pansophius indeed.

For those words: 'About this matter we shall write back more fully through him who carried the letters of your love to us,' indicate some particular cleric perhaps of the Church of Constantinople, as was then the custom, sent by Flavian, who should convey the letters and the synodal Acts to the supreme Pontiff. For Leo was to send him back with more prolix letters. Therefore, who would believe that an honorable man, a count of the imperial court, was to be sent back, as though indeed the office of a courier had been entrusted to him? Rather then it must be concluded that the first letters of Flavian with the synodal acts had another bearer besides Count Pansophius, as the two most weighty considerations most evidently demonstrate, which we at once subjoin.

The other is that, a few days having elapsed, being about to send more prolix letters to Flavian, as he had promised in the preceding, he begins them with these words: 'Having read the letters of your love, which we marvel to have been so late, and the order of the episcopal acts having been reviewed.' Why then, in what sense, for what reason would he have called Flavian's letters so late, or if Pansophius had brought them, who had expended the space of three months in going from the City to Constantinople, and again in returning from Constantinople to Rome? If Pansophius had brought these letters with the synodal acts, with the greatest speed, not late, they would have reached the pontifical hands, as clearly appears from the preceding reckoning of the times.

It must therefore be inferred that some other was the bearer of these letters, who, hindered either by the arts of Eutyches, or by the vicissitudes of the times, or by the storms of the sea, tarried long on the journey, and whom the holy Pontiff sent back to Constantinople to Flavian himself with another letter, namely the twenty-fourth. We add that those words, 'so late,' indicate not any delay whatsoever, but a long lapse of time, on account of which Leo's mind was carried into astonishment, as if on account of a thing constituted beyond all order and unusual.

When I had attended diligently to these words a second and a third time, and had on the other hand learned that that provincial Synod of Constantinople concerning the condemnation of Eutyches had been concluded in the month of November of the preceding year now waning, I judged that it could be inferred that Flavian, immediately in the subsequent tenth month of the same year, or at least at the beginning of January of the immediately following year 449, wrote to Leo with the synodal Acts upon the Eutychian affair, by no means having awaited Leo's letters, which he affirms that he received through the honorable man Count Pansophius.

But if Quesnel should object to me that Flavian, in that earlier letter which he caused to be printed in his edition, openly confesses that Eutyches was accused by the most religious bishop Eusebius, coming to the holy council and by his own voice disclosing to the Fathers of the synod what he himself held, so that as one alien to the right faith 'we deposed him, as all the Acts drawn up concerning him will teach your holiness, which we have also sent with these our letters'; as though he wished to indicate that he had not written to Leo before he sent the Acts drawn up with these letters; I shall at once counter by answering from the rest of that letter:

from the context it is gathered that Flavian had already earlier sent this very same part of this letter to Leo with the Acts transacted concerning Eutyches, and was compelled to write the same again, when, having heard Leo's complaints, he understood that he had not yet received both the letters and the drawn-up Acts. This those words plainly uttered seem to intimate: 'as all the Acts drawn up concerning him will teach your holiness, which we have also sent with these our letters.' But that here he speaks of a matter already carried into execution in past time, and of these letters written at another occasion, the third subsequent part of these letters, which he last added and subjoined to the earlier, ought to seem so to judicious men.

For, having narrated the disturbances that had arisen on this account in the Church of Constantinople, and the deed done, then concerning the placards publicly posted by Eutyches—full, namely, of insults and lies—and then concerning the petitions offered to the emperor, filled with arrogance and petulance, he makes his advance to Leo's letters, which he had recently received. 'But (he says) these things having thus been transacted in due sequence, the letters of your holiness were delivered by the count Pansophius, worthy of all admiration.' Let Quesnel say when Leo's letters were delivered to Flavian by Pansophius. Was it not after Flavian inserted the synodal Acts with the preceding part of these letters into the letter to Leo, whom he asserts to have received too late the holy

Pontiff? If those words, even considering the order of the discourse, can bear another true sense without any distortion, learned men will be able to affirm it. But now another consideration, which we draw from the Works of the same Leo, will indicate that they can bear no other sense. Once and again the holy Pontiff, in his two letters, namely the twenty-second and the twenty-fourth, made the Constantinopolitan bishop himself more certain that Flavian's letters with the synodal acts had been delivered to him (but too late); of which letters the one was written on the Kalends of June, but the other on the Ides of the same month, when, namely, he sent back Flavian's legate to Constantinople with fuller instruction.

It was therefore not necessary that he should make further mention of these letters with the synodal Acts as received, unless, upon the return of Count Pansophius, he had repeated the same letters with copies of the Acts. But that Flavian repeated both, Leo's thirty-second letter reveals, which was given on the Kalends of July of the same year. Since indeed the beginning of this letter is this: 'I have received the letters of your love, with the acts which have been drawn up among you concerning the question of the faith,' I easily came into this opinion, that then only was that letter delivered to Leo with all its parts, and with the new appendix, as it holds the first place in the Quesnellian edition. And indeed this was indicated to us from the text of that letter.

For Pope Leo, having admonished Flavian concerning the more recent letters and synodal acts received, makes no further mention of Eutyches, of his errors and of his appeal to the Apostolic See, concerning which matters he had sufficiently discoursed in the preceding letters; but only meets that new appendix of the repeated letter, saying: 'Although it evidently appears that the matter of which we treat by no means requires a synodal treatment; nevertheless, dearest brother, I signify that those things have followed which it pleased me to appoint in this part.' That these words ought to be referred to that which the aforesaid Flavian had most recently written to Leo in the appendix of his letter, no one will go so far as to deny. For when Flavian said that he had received the Roman Pontiff's

letters, after he had directed the synodal acts of the Eutychian condemnation with his own letters, and matters having been thus transacted and dispatched, he affirms that the letters of his holiness were given to him by Count Pansophius, by which he was informed that Eutyches had written documents full of all deceit and cunning, saying that at the time of judgment he had appealed to your holiness, and therefore he was spreading a rumor that on that account a general synod was to be held. Yet at present we have judged that nothing is to be discussed concerning this Eutychian appeal, for we shall treat of it in its own place. 4.

In the meantime, however, we rather adduce other arguments by which it is clearly understood that Flavian, once Eutyches had been condemned and deposed, reasoned otherwise than Quesnel and the innovators have imagined; and that therefore he not only thought of writing, but in fact did write to Leo the pontiff concerning the judgment held at Constantinople. Indeed he acknowledged that the supreme summit and authority of the priesthood was established in Leo himself, since he plainly appealed to him as the lawful guarantor of the Catholic religion, to whom it belongs to vindicate the common cause and the settlement of the holy Churches. Secondly, he asks the same pontiff that by his own writing he would be pleased to have held as ratified and valid the canonical deposition against him, namely against Eutyches, which he had carried out.

Thirdly, keeping in mind that saying which Christ had spoken to Peter concerning the confirming of the faith of the brethren, he adds: 'Confirm the imperial faith of our most Christian and Christ-loving emperor. For the matter needs only an impulse and support from you, which through your prudence will straightway bring all things to tranquillity and peace.' If therefore the matter, on Quesnel's authority, had been transacted and concluded in the provincial synod of Constantinople; if likewise all rights concerning that kind of judgment resided in the bishop of Constantinople, why does Flavian appeal to Leo, saying that the matter needs the impulse and support of the Apostolic See, that all things may at once be brought to tranquillity and peace?

Unless indeed my opinion deceives me, the condemnation of that heresy would have been ratified by Leo; and unless the tumults that had been stirred up had been quieted by pontifical authority, the true doctrine concerning the incarnation of Christ the Lord would never have become sufficiently and surely known to the faithful of Christ; nor would the contumacious and rebellious have acquiesced, except, as Flavian says, 'God cooperating, through your sacred letters.' Finally, the same Flavian, not concealing it, asserts that the letters of Leo alone could have prevented the future general synod of which there was rumor, saying: 'The synod which is reported to be about to take place will also be prevented, lest the Churches of the whole world be thrown into confusion.'

From this appendix, then, to this first letter of Flavian, we clearly gather whatever the ancient Eastern bishops thought and judged concerning the authority of the Roman pontiffs, whether in crushing heresies, or in confirming and convoking councils, or finally in receiving the appeals of those condemned. Although some, too boldly and as it were stupidly, under the pretext of defending and vindicating episcopal dignity, resist all these things, nevertheless Flavian's letter, and his manner of writing and acting, most solidly prove and make manifest the discipline and dogma of the Church regarding the Apostolic See, the mother and mistress of the other Churches.

But now let us hasten to make another step, that we may more clearly perceive Quesnel's mind, too much estranged from the reverence and authority of the Apostolic See. He therefore, in order to lend credence to his preceding assertions, and at the same time to show that Flavian never wrote to St. Leo except after receiving that pontiff's complaints, appealed to various other Leonine letters, either written to Flavian himself or to the emperor Theodosius. However, concerning that letter which Quesnel placed as the twentieth in his edition, and which was written on the Kalends of March—the chronological note of which he neglected to observe—lest we should do again what has already been done, here we say nothing.

We merely observe that in this cause the office of supreme judge was due to St. Leo; and that Flavian could not violate the rights of the Apostolic See in a cause of faith. This the holy pontiff clearly asserts, not only in discussing the appeal of Eutyches, but in looking back to the cause of the condemnation: he wishes to know what things had been done by Flavian in the synod of Constantinople. 'But looking back to the cause,' he says, 'we wish the account of your action to be made known to us.'

Nor was Flavian compelled by any injury to render an account of his deeds, since the order of the supreme ecclesiastical governance demanded it, and the will of the emperor was rousing the pontifical solicitude, namely that—all dissensions which had arisen in the Church of Constantinople being removed—the Catholic faith might be fortified by the authority of the Apostolic See. For these reasons, in another chapter of that twentieth letter, Leo asks that it be signified to him by Flavian through a suitable person what novelty had arisen against the ancient faith, which had deserved to be punished by a sterner sentence. 'For,' adds St. Leo…

'…both ecclesiastical moderation and the religious faith of the most pious prince indicate to us much solicitude for Christian peace.' If, therefore, these two things—namely the principle of ecclesiastical governance, to which Quesnel ought to have attended, and the earnest insistence of the emperor—were indicating so great a solicitude to Leo, I do not know with what brazen effrontery Quesnel could have contended that Flavian did not think of writing to Leo about this matter before he learned that the pontiff, deceived by the wicked deeds of Eutyches, had conceived a false opinion of the judgment at Constantinople. Leo the Great, in the first place, by no means wrote to Flavian scarcely having heard of Eutyches, or having received his appeal.

But only then, when he had been informed by the emperor that the Church of Constantinople was shaken by the uproar of many disturbances, and that contentions were engaged over matters of faith. For that twentieth letter, on which Quesnel too insisted, Leo the Great began with these words: 'When the most Christian and most clement emperor, solicitous with holy and praiseworthy faith for the peace of the Catholic Churches, had transmitted to us writings concerning those things which stirred up the uproar of disturbance among you.' Two things, therefore, Quesnel ought to have distinguished here, and to have omitted neither. The one pertained to the imperial writings, the other to the appeal of Eutyches.

He says he wonders that he was informed of the uproar of such great disturbances only by the emperor himself, and that Flavian had not first taken care that (as he says) 'the notice of your report should inform us.' The unity, disposition, and form of the ecclesiastical hierarchy therefore required that concerning the newly arisen heresy and the most grave disturbances stirred up among the clergy of Constantinople, the supreme pontiff should be informed by Flavian the bishop. This very manner of speaking utterly overturns that other Quesnellian fabrication, whereby it is claimed: 'As long as that stain confined itself within the limits of the Church of Constantinople, there was no need for Flavian to implore the aid of his colleagues.'

For, he claims, all the bishops were not ignorant that the whole Catholic truth had been entrusted in its entirety by Christ the Lord, which each was bound to defend to the best of his ability, and to suppress the errors rising up against it, as an ordinary judge, in that portion of the Church which he had received by lot. But when, warned by Leo, he learned that the heresiarch had invaded the West with his letters, spreading his poison, and that ambushes were being prepared against Catholic doctrine by the powers of the world, then he thought it his duty to approach the Roman pontiff:

'…namely that he might both be instructed concerning the whole matter, which was owed to the head of the Church, and might diligently use the favor which he enjoyed with the Augustus, lest the arts of the heretics should spread widely, and the Churches be disturbed by the convocation of a council, in which it was rightly to be feared that wicked men would prevail by their power.' 7. Quesnel's droll reasoning. But who does not understand that it not only conflicts with ecclesiastical rules, but with the words of Leo and Flavian, and utterly perverts the sacred order of the hierarchy? Therefore, on Quesnel's authority, if the bishop of some Church, either by rash judgment, or with the rules of law by no means observed, should condemn someone as a heretic;

if he should cast him down from the presbyterate and his rank, while the stain of that heresy confines itself within the limits of his own diocese, there is no need to implore the aid of his colleagues. But what does he understand by the name of 'colleagues'? If the bishops of particular Churches, whose faith can fail, and has at times been undermined by heresies, I will readily grant it. But if he should contend that the term 'colleague' is to be extended even to the Roman pontiff, the guardian and judge of the Catholic faith, then he overturns and cuts to pieces the disposition and form of unity and true charity, that same power being taken away from him whereby he has the care and the entrusted pastoral office to extend throughout the whole world.

Plainly the Leonine manner of acting and the force of his words indicate that the holy pontiff regarded himself not as a colleague, but as the supreme judge of the transactions and controversies. For by that principle he summoned Flavian to bring to his knowledge the cause and manner of the whole affair, so that he might discharge the office of a judge, not of a colleague. 'Since we,' he adds, 'who wish the judgments of the Lord's priests to be mature, can define nothing in prejudice to any party while matters are unknown, before we truly hear all the things that have been done.' Do we suppose that a colleague addressing a colleague could speak these and those other words, 'we wish to know the account of your action'? All laws assert that an equal has no authority over an equal.

But that Leo, by the authority which he enjoyed, gave command to Flavian, both the whole context of that twentieth letter, and the words of the subsequent letter written to the emperor Theodosius, clearly make manifest. For the emperor, having regard to the order of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, in which Christ the Lord set one as bishop and pastor over the other priests, did not merely implore the aid of the Roman pontiff to abolish those scandals which were spreading more widely among the clergy of Constantinople; but he demanded his judgment, so that both the dogma of faith might be confirmed; that the decrees of Nicaea might be observed; and that he might learn whether rightly or wrongly Eutyches—whom the ministers of the imperial court were patronizing—had been deposed from the rank of the priesthood and from the prefecture of his monastery.

Such a letter of Theodosius to Leo has either perished through the injury of time, or lies obsolete in the coffer of some library. Yet there remains a letter of Leo to the same emperor Theodosius, from which the supreme pontifical rights are clearly gathered, and it is plainly made known whatever the bishops of particular Churches ought to observe when some cause of faith is handled in that portion of the Church which they themselves have received by lot. 8. In this letter, then, St. Leo confesses that he was utterly ignorant of what had been done in so great a cause.