Letter
XXIV.
To Theodosius Augustus II.
Leo the bishop, to Theodosius Augustus.
I.
He praises the Emperor’s piety
and mentions Eutyches’ appeal.
How much protection the
Lord
has vouchsafed His Church through your clemency and
faith, is shown again by this letter which you have sent me: so
that we rejoice at there being not only a kingly, but also a priestly
mind within you. Seeing that, besides your imperial and public
cares, you have a most devout anxiety for the Christian religion, lest
schisms or heresies or other offences should grow up among
God’s
people. For your realm is then in its
best state when men serve the eternal and unchangeable Trinity by the
confession of one Godhead
234
. What the
disturbance was which occurred in the Church of Constantinople, and
which could have so moved my brother and fellow-bishop Flavian, that he
deprived Eutyches, the presbyter, of communion, I have not yet been
able to understand clearly. For although the aforesaid presbyter
sent in writing a complaint concerning his trouble to the Apostolic
See, yet he only briefly touched on some points, asserting that he kept
the constitutions of the Nicene synod and had been vainly blamed for
difference of faith.
II.
He finds fault with Flavian’s
silence.
But the statement of bishop Eusebius, his accuser,
copies of which the said presbyter has sent us, contained nothing clear
about his objections, and though he charged a presbyter with heresy, he
did not say expressly what opinion he disapproved of in him:
although the bishop himself also professed that he adhered to the
decrees of the Nicene synod: for which reason we had no means of
learning anything more fully. And because the method of our Faith
and the laudable anxiety shown by your piety requires the merits of the
case to be known, there must now be no place allowed for deception, but
we must be informed of the points on which he considers him unsound,
that the right judgment may be passed after full information. I
have sent a letter to the aforesaid bishop, from which he may gather
that I am displeased at his still keeping silence upon what has been
done in so grave a matter, when he ought to have been forward in
disclosing all to us at the outset: and we believe that even
after the reminder he will acquaint us with the whole, in order that,
when what now seems obscure, has been brought into the light, judgment
may be passed agreeably to the teaching of the Gospels and the
Apostles. Dated the 18th of February
235
,
in the consulship of the illustrious Asturius and Protogenes
(449).
234
Is it fanciful to
trace an analogy between these words and the language of the Collect
for Trinity Sunday (out of the Sacramentary of Gregory), “grace
by the confession of a true faith to acknowledge the glory of the
Eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine Majesty to worship the
Unity?”
235
Quesnel reads the 1st
of March as the date.