From: Unknown correspondent
To: Pope Hormisdas, Rome (unknown)
Date: ~515-523 AD
Context: Part of the papal correspondence surrounding the Acacian Schism (484-519), the major breach between Rome and Constantinople over the condemnation of the Monophysite patriarch Acacius. Pope Hormisdas (514-523) worked tirelessly to resolve this schism, which was finally healed in 519 under Emperor Justin I.
[This letter is part of the extensive diplomatic correspondence generated by the resolution of the Acacian Schism. The schism had divided the Eastern and Western churches for thirty-five years over the condemnation of Patriarch Acacius of Constantinople, who had promoted a compromise formula (the Henotikon) that Rome rejected as insufficiently orthodox. Hormisdas conducted negotiations through multiple embassies to Constantinople, exchanging letters with emperors, patriarchs, imperial officials, and powerful aristocratic women at court. The correspondence reveals the machinery of late antique ecclesiastical diplomacy: formal theological demands, careful diplomatic language, networks of lay and clerical allies, and the constant anxiety of a pope trying to manage events happening months away by letter.]
a- 519 a. Hormisdae papac ad eosdem.
29April. *^ *^
(jeslil doceri de iis, quae perfecerinU nc Stephnnum negotiatorem eis commendat,
Hormisda legatis nostris quibus supra.
Necesse est, ut vel de injunctae actionis statu vel de vestrae
dilectionis cogitemus absentia, et pro his rebus sollicitudo nostra
uon patitur scribendi quaslibet occasiones omittere. Antehac per
magistrianum , qui iii Symmachi patricii remeavit obsequium, litie-
ras caritati vestrfie direximus, hortantes, ut nos de universis, quae
in causa ecclesiastica gesta sunt vel geruntur, non omitteretis in-
struere; quod et facere pro nostrae cogitationis relevatione debetis,
Nostri enim voti est, ut labori vestro Deus omnipotens desideratum
concedere dignetur eflFectum. Stephanum negotiatorem, per quem
• vobis nostra contradentur alloquia, in quo ratio •poposcerit, eom-
petentibus solatiis adjuvate, quia hunc semper nostrum fuisse reco-
litis. Data eodem die.
◆
From:Unknown correspondent
To:Pope Hormisdas, Rome (unknown)
Date:~515-523 AD
Context:Part of the papal correspondence surrounding the Acacian Schism (484-519), the major breach between Rome and Constantinople over the condemnation of the Monophysite patriarch Acacius. Pope Hormisdas (514-523) worked tirelessly to resolve this schism, which was finally healed in 519 under Emperor Justin I.
[This letter is part of the extensive diplomatic correspondence generated by the resolution of the Acacian Schism. The schism had divided the Eastern and Western churches for thirty-five years over the condemnation of Patriarch Acacius of Constantinople, who had promoted a compromise formula (the Henotikon) that Rome rejected as insufficiently orthodox. Hormisdas conducted negotiations through multiple embassies to Constantinople, exchanging letters with emperors, patriarchs, imperial officials, and powerful aristocratic women at court. The correspondence reveals the machinery of late antique ecclesiastical diplomacy: formal theological demands, careful diplomatic language, networks of lay and clerical allies, and the constant anxiety of a pope trying to manage events happening months away by letter.]
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.