Letter 120: Leo, the bishop, to his beloved brother Theodoret, the bishop. On the return of our brothers and fellow priests, whom the See of the blessed Peter sent to the holy council, we ascertained, beloved, the victory you and we together had won by assistance from on high over the blasphemy of Nestorius, as well as over the madness of Eutyches. Wherefor...

Leo, Bishop of Rome, to his beloved brother Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus. I. He congratulates Theodoret on their shared victory, and approves of honest inquiry that leads to good results On the return of our brothers and fellow bishops, whom the See of the blessed Peter sent to the holy council, we learned, beloved, of the victory you and we together have won -- with heaven's help -- over the blasphemy of Nestorius and the madness of Eutyches. We therefore make our boast in the Lord, singing with the prophet: "Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth" (Psalm 124:8). He did not allow us to suffer any harm through our brothers but rather confirmed, by the irrevocable assent of the whole assembly, what He had already established through our ministry. This demonstrated that what was first formulated by the foremost See of Christendom and then received by the judgment of the entire Christian world had truly proceeded from God Himself -- so that in this, as in all things, the members might be at one with the Head. Our cause for rejoicing is all the greater when we consider that the fiercer the enemy's assault upon Christ's servants, the more he afflicted only himself. And lest the assent of other Sees to the decisions of the one See that the Lord appointed to take precedence should seem like mere complaisance, or lest any other base suspicion creep in, certain parties were found who disputed our definitions before they were approved. This was, in the Lord's mysterious providence, turned to our advantage, for by their very opposition they ensured that the faith emerged more clearly tested and more firmly established. II. He praises the Council of Chalcedon's doctrinal achievement The definition of the faith set forth at Chalcedon is no innovation. It is the faith of Nicaea restated and confirmed; the faith of the Apostles, of the Prophets, and of the Fathers, vindicated against both the heresy that divides Christ and the heresy that dissolves His true humanity. That definition now stands as the permanent standard of the Church's confession, and whoever opposes it opposes not the opinion of any single bishop but the consensus of the universal Church gathered under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. III. He encourages Theodoret to persevere As for yourself, beloved brother, continue with confidence in the work you have so faithfully carried out. You have endured unjust suffering for the sake of the truth, and the Lord has vindicated you. Do not be discouraged by the hostility of those who resent the triumph of orthodoxy. The same Providence that sustained you through trial will continue to uphold you. I urge you to promote unity and peace among all the bishops of the East, and to work tirelessly so that the faith, now firmly established, may take root in every heart. Where there is uncertainty, bring clarity. Where there is weakness, bring strength. And where there is opposition, meet it with patience and with the irrefutable force of the truth itself. Let us give thanks together that the Church has been delivered from so great a danger, and let us pray that no future storm may shake what has been so firmly built. Dated from Rome.

To Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, on Perseverance in the Faith. I. He congratulates Theodoret on their joint victory, and expresses his approval of an honest inquiry which leads to good results. Leo, the bishop, to his beloved brother Theodoret, the bishop. On the return of our brothers and fellow priests, whom the See of the blessed Peter sent to the holy council, we ascertained, beloved, the victory you and we together had won by assistance from on high over the blasphemy of Nestorius, as well as over the madness of Eutyches. Wherefore we make our boast in the Lord, singing with the prophet: our help is in the name of the Lord, who has made heaven and earth : who has suffered us to sustain no harm in the person of our brethren, but has corroborated by the irrevocable assent of the whole brotherhood what He had already laid down through our ministry: to show that, what had been first formulated by the foremost See of Christendom, and then received by the judgment of the whole Christian world, had truly proceeded from Himself: that in this, too, the members may be at one with the Head. And herein our cause for rejoicing grows greater when we see that the more fiercely the foe assailed Christ's servants, the more did he afflict himself. For lest the assent of other Sees to that which the Lord of all has appointed to take precedence of the rest might seem mere complaisance, or lest any other evil suspicion might creep in, some were found to dispute our decisions before they were finally accepted. And while some, instigated by the author of the disagreement, rush forward into a warfare of contradictions, a greater good results through his fall under the guiding hand of the Author of all goodness. For the gifts of God's grace are sweeter to us when they are gained with mighty efforts: and uninterrupted peace is wont to seem a lesser good than one that is restored by labours. Moreover, the Truth itself shines more brightly, and is more bravely maintained when what the Faith had already taught is afterwards confirmed by further inquiry. And still further, the good name of the priestly office gains much in lustre where the authority of the highest is preserved without it being thought that the liberty of the lower ranks has been at all infringed. And the result of a discussion contributes to the greater glory of God when the debaters exert themselves with confidence in overcoming the gainsayers: that what of itself is shown wrong may not seem to be passed over in prejudicial silence. II. Christ's victory has won back many to the Faith. Exult therefore, beloved brother, yes, exult triumphantly in the only-begotten Son of God. Through us He has conquered for Himself the reality of Whose flesh was denied. Through us and for us He has conquered, in whose cause we have conquered. This happy day ranks next to the Lord's Advent for the world. The robber is laid low, and there is restored to our age the mystery of the Divine Incarnation which the enemy of mankind was obscuring with his chicaneries, because the facts would not let him actually destroy it. Nay, the immortal mystery had perished from the hearts of unbelievers, because so great salvation is of no avail to unbelievers, as the Very Truth said to His disciples: he that believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believes not shall be condemned Mark 16:16 . The rays of the Sun of Righteousness which were obscured throughout the East by the clouds of Nestorius and Eutyches, have shone out brightly from the West, where it has reached its zenith in the Apostles and teachers of the Church. And yet not even in the East is it to be believed that it was ever eclipsed where noble confessors have been found among your ranks: so that, when the old enemy was trying afresh, through the impenitent heart of a modern Pharaoh , to blot out the seed of faithful Abraham and the sons of promise, he grew weary, through God's mercy, and could harm no one save himself. And in regard to him the Almighty has worked this wonder also, in that He has not overwhelmed with the founder of the tyranny those who were associated with him in the slaughter of the people of Israel, but has gathered them into His own people; and as the Source of all mercy knew to be worthy of Himself and possible for Himself alone, He has made them conquerors with us who were conquered by us. For while the spirit of falsehood is the only true enemy of the human race, it is undoubted that all whom the Truth has won over to His side share in His triumph over that enemy. Assuredly it now is clear how divinely authorized are these words of our Redeemer, which are so applicable to the enemies of the Faith that one may not doubt they were said of them: You, He says, are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to fulfil. He was a murderer from the beginning and stood not in the truth, because the truth is not in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar and the father thereof John 8:44 . III. Dioscorus, who in his madness has attacked even the bishop of Rome, has shown himself the instrument of Satan. It is not to be wondered, then, that they who have accepted a delusion as to our nature in the true God agree with their father on these points also, maintaining that what was seen, heard, and in fact, by the witness of the gospel, touched and handled in the only Son of God, belonged not to that to which it was proved to belong , but to an essence co-eternal and consubstantial with the Father: as if the nature of the Godhead could have been pierced on the Cross, as if the Unchangeable could grow from infancy to manhood, or the eternal Wisdom could progress in wisdom, or God, who is a Spirit, could thereafter be filled with the Spirit. In this, too, their sheer madness betrayed its origin, because, as far as it could, it attempted to injure everybody. For he, who afflicted you with his persecutions, led others wrong by driving them to consent to his wickedness. Yea, even us too, although he had wounded us in each one of the brethren (for they are our members), even us he did not exempt from special vexation in attempting to inflict an injury upon his Head with strange and unheard of and incredible effrontery. But would that he had recovered his senses even after all these enormities, and had not saddened us by his death and eternal damnation. There was no measure of wickedness that he did not reach: it was not enough for him that, sparing neither living nor dead, and repudiating truth and allying himself with falsehood, he imbrued his hands, that had been already long polluted, in the blood of a guiltless, Catholic priest. And since it is written: he that hates his brother is a murderer 1 John 3:15: he has actually carried out what he was said already to have done in hate, as if he had never heard of this nor of that which the Lord says, learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest unto your souls: for My yoke is easy and My burden is light Matthew 11:29-30 . A worthy preacher of the devil's errors has been found in this Egyptian plunderer, who, like the cruellest tyrant the Church has had, forced his villainous blasphemies on the reverend brethren through the violence of riotous mobs and the blood-stained hands of soldiers. And when our Redeemer's voice assures us that the author of murder and of lying is one and the same, He has carried out both equally: as if these things were written not to be avoided but to be perpetrated: and thus does he apply to the completion of his destruction the salutary warnings of the Son of God, and turns a deaf ear to what the same Lord has said, I speak that which I have seen with My Father; and you do that which you have seen with your father John 8:38 . IV. Those who undertake to speak authoritatively on doctrine, must preserve the balance between the extremes. Accordingly while he strove to cut short Flavian of blessed memory's life in the present world, he has deprived himself of the light of true life. While he tried to drive you out of your churches, he has cut off himself from fellowship with Christians. While he drags and drives many into agreement with error, he has stabbed his own soul with many a wound, a solitary convicted offender beyond all, and through all and for all, for he was the cause of all men's being accused. But, although, brother, you who are nurtured on solid food, have little need of such reminders, yet that we may fulfil what belongs to our position according to that utterance of the Apostle who says, Besides these things that are without, that which presses on me daily, anxiety for all the churches. Who is weakened and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble and I burn not 2 Corinthians 11:28-29? we believe this admonition ought to be given especially on the present occasion, that whenever by the ministration of the Divine grace we either overwhelm or cleanse those who are without, in the pool of doctrine, we go not away in anything from those rules of Faith which the Godhead of the Holy Ghost brought forward at the Council of Chalcedon, and weigh our words with every caution so as to avoid the two extremes of new false doctrine : not any longer (God forbid it) as if debating what is doubtful, but with full authority laying down conclusions already arrived at; for in the letter which we issued from the Apostolic See, and which has been ratified by the assent of the entire holy Synod, we know that so many divinely authorised witnesses are brought together, that no one can entertain any further doubt, except one who prefers to enwrap himself in the clouds of error, and the proceedings of the Synod whether those in which we read the formulating of the definition of Faith, or those in which the aforesaid letter of the Apostolic See was zealously supported by you, brother, and especially the address of the whole Council to our most religious Princes, are corroborated by the testimonies of so many fathers in the past that they must persuade any one, however unwise and stubborn his heart, so long as he be not already joined with the devil in damnation for his wickedness. V. Theodoret's orthodoxy has been happily and thoroughly vindicated. Wherefore this, too, it is our duty to provide against the Church's enemies, that, as far as in us lies, we leave them no occasion for slandering us, nor yet, in acting against the Nestorians or Eutychians, ever seem to have retreated before the other side, but that we shun and condemn both the enemies of Christ in equal measure, so that whenever the interests of the hearers in any way require it, we may with all promptitude and clearness strike down them and their doctrines with the anathema that they deserve, lest if we seem to do this doubtfully or tardily, we be thought to act against our will. And although the facts themselves are sufficient to remind your wisdom of this, yet now actual experience has brought the lesson home. But blessed be our God, whose invincible Truth has shown you free from all taint of heresy in the judgment of the Apostolic See. To whom you will repay due thanks for all these labours, if you keep yourself such a defender of the universal Church as we have proved and do still prove you. For that God has dispelled all calumnious fallacies, we attribute to the blessed Peter's wondrous care of us all, for after sanctioning the judgment of his See in defining the Faith, he allowed no sinister imputation to rest on any of you, who have laboured with us for the Catholic Faith: because the Holy Spirit adjudged that no one could fail to come out conqueror of those whose Faith had now conquered. VI. He asks Theodoret for his continued cooperation, and refers him to a letter which he has written to the bishop of Antioch. It remains that we exhort you to continue your co-operation with the Apostolic See, because we have learned that some remnants of the Eutychian and Nestorian error still linger among you. For the victory which Christ our Lord has vouchsafed to His Church, although it increases our confidence, does not yet entirely destroy our anxiety, nor is it granted us to sleep but to work on more calmly. Hence it is we wish to be assisted in this too by your watchful care, that you hasten to inform the Apostolic See by your periodic reports what progress the Lord's teaching makes in those regions; to the end that we may assist the priests of that district in whatever way experience suggests. On those matters which were mooted in the often-quoted council, in unlawful opposition to the venerable canons of Nicæa, we have written to our brother and fellow bishop, the occupant of the See of Antioch , adding that too which you had given us verbal information about by your delegates with reference to the unscrupulousness of certain monks, and laying down strict injunctions that no one, be he monk or layman, that boasts himself of some knowledge, should presume to preach except the Lord's priests. That letter, however, we wish to reach all men's knowledge for the benefit of the universal Church through our aforesaid brother and fellow bishop Maximus; and for that reason we have not thought fit to add a copy of it to this; because we have no doubt of the due carrying out of our injunctions to our aforesaid brother and fellow bishop. (In another hand.) God keep you safe, beloved brother. Dated 11 June in the consulship of the illustrious Opilio (453). About this page Source. Translated by Charles Lett Feltoe. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 12. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1895.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. <https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3604120.htm>. Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is feedback732 at newadvent.org. (To help fight spam, this address might change occasionally.) Regrettably, I can't reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback — especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads.