Relevant
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Leo studies and translations
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STUDIES (Click on images below.)
 
The Soteriology of Leo the Great
Bernard Green --------------
 
Leo the Great
and the Spiritual Rebuilding
of a Universal Rome
Susan Wessel --------------
TRANSLATIONS
 
St Leo the Great
Letters
Edmund Hunt
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St Leo the Great
Sermons
Freeland and Conway --------------
 
Leo the Great
Selection of Letters and Sermons
Bronwen Neil --------------
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I. Eutyches has been driven into his error by
presumption and ignorance.
Having read your letter, beloved, at the late arrival of which we are surprised,
and having perused the detailed account of the bishops’ acts, we have at last
found out what the scandal was which had arisen among you against the purity of
the Faith: and what before seemed concealed has now been unlocked and laid open
to our view: from which it is shown that Eutyches, who used to seem worthy of
all respect in virtue of his priestly office, is very unwary and exceedingly
ignorant, so that it is even of him that the prophet has said: “he refused to
understand so as to do well: he thought upon iniquity in his bed.” But what more
iniquitous than to hold blasphemous opinions, and not to give way to those who
are wiser and more learned than ourself. Now into this unwisdom fall they who,
finding themselves hindered from knowing the truth by some obscurity, have
recourse not to the prophets’ utterances, not to the Apostles’ letters, nor to
the injunctions of the Gospel but to their own selves: and thus they stand out
as masters of error because they were never disciples of truth. For what
learning has he acquired about the pages of the New and Old Testament, who has
not even grasped the rudiments of the Creed? And that which, throughout the
world, is professed by the mouth of every one who is to be born again, is not
yet taken in by the heart of this old man.
II. Concerning the twofold nativity and nature of Christ
Not knowing, therefore, what he was bound to think concerning the incarnation
of the Word of GOD, and not wishing to gain the light of knowledge by researches
through the length and breadth of the Holy Scriptures, he might at least have
listened attentively to that general and uniform confession, whereby the whole
body of the faithful confess that they believe in GOD the Father Almighty,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our LORD, who was born of the Holy Spirit and
the Virgin Mary. By which three statements the devices of almost all
heretics are overthrown. For not only is GOD believed to be both Almighty and
the Father, but the Son is shown to be co-eternal with Him, differing in nothing
from the Father because He is GOD from GOD, Almighty from Almighty, and
being born from the Eternal one is co-eternal with Him; not later in point of
time, not lower in power, not unlike in glory, not divided in essence: but at
the same time the only begotten of the eternal Father was born eternal of the
Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. And this nativity which took place in time took
nothing from, and added nothing to that divine and eternal birth, but expended
itself wholly on the restoration of man who had been deceived: in order that he
might both vanquish death and overthrow by his strength, the Devil who possessed
the power of death. For we should not now be able to overcome the author of sin
and death unless He took our nature on Him and made it His own, whom neither sin
could pollute nor death retain. Doubtless then, He was conceived of the Holy
Spirit within the womb of His Virgin Mother, who brought Him forth without the
loss of her virginity, even as she conceived Him without its loss.
But if he could not draw a rightful understanding (of the matter) from this
pure source of the Christian belief, because he had darkened the brightness of
the clear truth by a veil of blindness peculiar to himself, he might have
submitted himself to the teaching of the Gospels. And when Matthew speaks of
“the Book of the Generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of
Abraham,” he might have also sought out the instruction afforded by the
statements of the Apostles. And reading in the Epistle to the Romans, “Paul, a
servant of Jesus Christ, called an Apostle, separated unto the Gospel of GOD,
which He had promised before by His prophets in the Holy Scripture concerning
His son, who was made unto Him of the seed of David after the flesh,” he might
have bestowed a loyal carefulness upon the pages of the prophets. And finding
the promise of GOD who says to Abraham, “In thy seed shall all nations be
blest,” to avoid all doubt as to the reference of this seed, he might have
followed the Apostle when He says, “To Abraham were the promises made and to his
seed. He saith not and to seeds, as if in many, but as it in one, and to thy
seed which is Christ.” Isaiah’s prophecy also he might have grasped by a closer
attention to what he says, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son and
they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is interpreted “GOD with us.” And the
same prophet’s words he might have read faithfully. “A child is born to us, a
Son is given to us, whose power is upon His shoulder, and they shall call His
name the Angel of the Great Counsel, Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty GOD, the
Prince of Peace, the Father of the age to come.” And then he would not speak so
erroneously as to say that the Word became flesh in such a way that Christ, born
of the Virgin’s womb, had the form of man, but had not the reality of His
mother’s body. Or is it possible that he thought our LORD Jesus Christ was not
of our nature for this reason, that the angel, who was sent to the blessed Mary
ever Virgin, says, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the
Most High shall overshadow thee: and therefore that Holy Thing also that shall
be born of thee shall be called the Son of GOD,” on the supposition that as the
conception of the Virgin was a Divine act, the flesh of the conceived did not
partake of the conceiver’s nature? But that birth so uniquely wondrous and so
wondrously unique, is not to be understood in such wise that the properties of
His kind were removed through the novelty of His creation. For though the Holy
Spirit imparted fertility to the Virgin, yet a real body was received from her
body; and, “Wisdom building her a house,” “the Word became flesh and dwelt in
us,” that is, in that flesh which he took from man and which he quickened with
the breath of a higher life.
III. The Faith and counsel of GOD in regard to the incarnation of the Word
are set forth.
Without detriment therefore to the properties of either nature and substance
which then came together in one person, majesty took on humility, strength
weakness, eternity mortality: and for the paying off of the debt belonging to
our condition inviolable nature was united with passible nature, so that, as
suited the needs of our case, one and the same Mediator between GOD and men, the
Man Christ Jesus, could both die with the one and not die with the other. Thus
in the whole and perfect nature of true man was true GOD born, complete in what
was His own, complete in what was ours. And by “ours” we mean what the Creator
formed in us from the beginning and what He undertook to repair. For what the
Deceiver brought in and man deceived committed, had no trace in the Saviour.
Nor, because He partook of man’s weaknesses, did He therefore share our faults.
He took the form of a slave without stain of sin, increasing the human and not
diminishing the divine: because that emptying of Himself whereby the Invisible
made Himself visible and, Creator and LORD of all things though He be, wished to
be a mortal, was the bending down of pity, not the failing of power. Accordingly
He who while remaining in the form of GOD made man, was also made man in the
form of a slave. For both natures retain their own proper character without
loss: and as the form of GOD did not do away with the form of a slave, so the
form of a slave did not impair the form of GOD. For inasmuch as the Devil used
to boast that man had been cheated by his guile into losing the divine gifts,
and bereft of the boon of immortality had undergone sentence of death, and that
he had found some solace in his troubles from having a partner in delinquency,
and that GOD also at the demand of the principle of justice had changed His own
purpose towards man whom He had created in such honour: there was need for the
issue of a secret counsel, that the unchangeable GOD whose will cannot be robbed
of its own kindness, might carry out the first design of His Fatherly care
towards us by a more hidden mystery; and that man who had been driven into his
fault by the treacherous cunning of the devil might not perish contrary to the
purpose of GOD.
IV. The properties of the twofold nativity and nature of Christ are weighed
one against another.
There enters then these lower parts of the world the Son of GOD, descending from
His heavenly home and yet not quitting His Father’s glory, begotten in a new
order by a new nativity. In a new order, because being invisible in His own
nature, He became visible in ours, and He whom nothing could contain was content
to be contained: abiding before all time He began to be in time: the LORD of all
things, He obscured His immeasurable majesty and took on Him the form of a
servant: being GOD that cannot suffer, He did not disdain to be man that can,
and, immortal as He is, to subject Himself to the laws of death. The LORD
assumed His mother’s nature without her faultiness: nor in the LORD Jesus
Christ, born of the Virgin’s womb, does the wonderfulness of His birth make His
nature unlike ours. For He who is true GOD is also true man: and in this union
there is no lie, since the humility of manhood and the loftiness of the Godhead
both meet there. For as GOD is not changed by the showing of pity, so man is not
swallowed up by the dignity. For each form does what is proper to it with the
co-operation of the other; that is the Word performing what appertains to the
Word, and the flesh carrying out what appertains to the flesh. One of them
sparkles with miracles, the other succumbs to injuries. And as the Word does not
cease to be on an equality with His Father’s glory, so the flesh does not forego
the nature of our race. For it must again and again be repeated that one and the
same is truly Son of GOD and truly son of man. GOD in that “in the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with GOD, and the Word was GOD;” man in that “the
Word became flesh and dwelt in us.” GOD in that “all things were made by Him,
and without Him was nothing made:” man in that “He was made of a woman, made
under law.” The nativity of the flesh was the manifestation of human nature: the
childbearing of a virgin is the proof of Divine power. The infancy of a babe is
shown in the humbleness of its cradle: the greatness of the Most High is
proclaimed by the angels’ voices. He whom Herod treacherously endeavours to
destroy is like ourselves in our earliest stage: but He whom the Magi delight to
worship on their knees is the LORD of all. So too when He came to the baptism of
John, His forerunner, lest He should not be known through the veil of flesh
which covered His Divinity, the Father’s voice thundering from the sky, said,
“This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And thus Him whom the
devil’s craftiness attacks as man, the ministries of angels serve as GOD. To be
hungry and thirsty, to be weary, and to sleep, is clearly human: but to satisfy
5,000 men with five loaves, and to bestow on the woman of Samaria living water,
draughts of which can secure the drinker from thirsting any more, to walk upon
the surface of the sea with feet that do not sink, and to quell the risings of
the waves by rebuking the winds, is, without any doubt, Divine. Just as
therefore, to pass over many other instances, it is not part of the same nature
to be moved to tears of pity for a dead friend, and when the stone that closed
the four-days’ grave was removed, to raise that same friend to life with a voice
of command: or, to hang on the cross, and turning day to night, to make all the
elements tremble: or, to be pierced with nails, and yet open the gates of
paradise to the robber’s faith: so it is not part of the same nature to say, “I
and the Father are one,” and to say, “the Father is greater than I.” For
although in the LORD Jesus Christ GOD and man is one person, yet the source of
the degradation, which is shared by both, is one, and the source of the glory,
which is shared by both, is another. For His manhood, which is less than the
Father, comes from our side: His Godhead, which is equal to the Father, comes
from the Father.
V. Christ’s flesh is proved real from Scripture.
Therefore in consequence of this unity of person which is to be understood in
both natures, we read of the Son of Man also descending from heaven, when the
Son of GOD took flesh from the Virgin who bore Him. And again the Son of GOD is
said to have been crucified and buried, although it was not actually in His
Divinity whereby the Only-begotten is co-eternal and con-substantial with the
Father, but in His weak human nature that He suffered these things. And so it is
that in the Creed also we all confess that the Only-begotten Son of GOD was
crucified and buried, according to that saying of the Apostle: “for if they had
known, they would never have crucified the LORD of glory.” But when our LORD and
Saviour Himself would instruct His disciples’ faith by His questionings, He
said, “Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” And when they had put on
record the various opinions of other people, He said, “But ye, whom do ye say
that I am?” Me, that is, who am the Son of Man, and whom ye see in the form of a
slave, and in true flesh, whom do ye say that I am? Whereupon blessed Peter,
whose divinely inspired confession was destined to profit all nations, said,
“Thou art Christ, the Son of the living GOD.” And not undeservedly was he
pronounced blessed by the LORD, drawing from the chief corner-stone the solidity
of power which his name also expresses, he, who, through the revelation of the
Father, confessed Him to be at once Christ and Son of GOD: because the receiving
of the one of these without the other was of no avail to salvation, and it was
equally perilous to have believed the LORD Jesus Christ to be either only GOD
without man, or only man without GOD. But after the LORD’S resurrection (which,
of course, was of His true body, because He was raised the same as He had died
and been buried), what else was effected by the forty days’ delay than the
cleansing of our faith’s purity from all darkness? For to that end He talked
with His disciples, and dwelt and ate with them, He allowed Himself to be
handled with diligent and curious touch by those who were affected by doubt, He
entered when the doors were shut upon the Apostles, and by His breathing upon
them gave them the Holy Spirit, and bestowing on them the light of
understanding, opened the secrets of the Holy Scriptures. So again He showed the
wound in His side, the marks of the nails, and all the signs of His quite recent
suffering, saying, “See My hands and feet, that it is I. Handle Me and see that
a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have;” in order that the
properties of His Divine and human nature might be acknowledged to remain still
inseparable: and that we might know the Word not to be different from the flesh,
in such a sense as also to confess that the one Son of GOD is both the Word and
flesh. Of this mystery of the faith your opponent Eutyches must be reckoned to
have but little sense if he has recognized our nature in the Only-begotten of
GOD neither through the humiliation of His having to die, nor through the glory
of His rising again. Nor has he any fear of the blessed apostle and evangelist
John’s declaration when he says, “every spirit which confesses Jesus Christ to
have come in the flesh, is of GOD: and every spirit which destroys Jesus is not
of GOD, and this is Antichrist.” But what is “to destroy Jesus,” except to take
away the human nature from Him, and to render void the mystery, by which alone
we were saved, by the most barefaced fictions. The truth is that being in
darkness about the nature of Christ’s body, he must also be befooled by the same
blindness in the matter of His sufferings. For if he does not think the cross of
the LORD fictitious, and does not doubt that the punishment He underwent to save
the world is likewise true, let him acknowledge the flesh of Him whose death he
already believes: and let him not disbelieve Him man with a body like ours,
since he acknowledges Him to have been able to suffer: seeing that the denial of
His true flesh is also the denial of His bodily suffering. If therefore he
receives the Christian faith, and does not turn away his ears from the preaching
of the Gospel: let him see what was the nature that hung pierced with nails on
the wooden cross, and, when the side of the Crucified was opened by the
soldier’s spear, let him understand whence it was that blood and water flowed,
that the Church of GOD might be watered from the font and from the cup. Let him
hear also the blessed Apostle Peter, proclaiming that the sanctification of the
Spirit takes place through the sprinkling of Christ’s blood. And let him not
read cursorily the same Apostle’s words when he says, “Knowing that not with
corruptible things, such as silver and gold, have ye been redeemed from your
vain manner of life which is part of your fathers’ tradition, but with the
precious blood of Jesus Christ as of a lamb without spot and blemish.” Let him
not resist too the witness of the blessed Apostle John, who says: “and the blood
of Jesus the Son of GOD cleanseth us from all sin.” And again: “this is the
victory which overcometh the world, our faith.” And “who is He that overcometh
the world save He that believeth that Jesus is the Son of GOD. This is He that
came by water and blood, Jesus Christ: not by water only, but by water and
blood. And it is the Spirit that testifieth, because the Spirit is the truth,
because there are three that bear witness, the Spirit, the water and the blood,
and the three are one.” The Spirit, that is, of sanctification, and the blood of
redemption, and the water of baptism: because the three are one, and remain
undivided, and none of them is separated from this connection; because the
catholic Church lives and progresses by this faith, so that in Christ Jesus
neither the manhood without the true Godhead nor the Godhead without the true
manhood is believed in.
VI. The wrong and mischievous concession of Eutyches. The terms on which he
may be restored to Communion. The sending of deputies to the east.
But when during your cross-examination Eutyches replied and said, “I confess
that our LORD had two natures before the union but after the union I confess but
one,” I am surprised that so absurd and mistaken a statement of his should not
have been criticised and rebuked by his judges, and that an utterance which
reaches the height of stupidity and blasphemy should be allowed to pass as if
nothing offensive had been heard: for the impiety of saying that the Son of GOD
was of two natures before His incarnation is only equalled by the iniquity of
asserting that there was but one nature in Him after “the Word became flesh.”
And to the end that Eutyches may not think this a right or defensible opinion
because it was not contradicted by any expression of yourselves, we warn you
beloved brother, to take anxious care that if ever through the inspiration of
GOD’S mercy the case is brought to a satisfactory conclusion, his ignorant mind
be purged from this pernicious idea as well as others. He was, indeed, just
beginning to beat a retreat from his erroneous conviction, as the order of
proceedings shows, in so far as when hemmed in by your remonstrances he agreed
to say what he had not said before and to acquiesce in that belief to which
before he had been opposed. However, when he refused to give his consent to the
anathematizing of his blasphemous dogma, you understood, brother, that he abode
by his treachery and deserved to receive a verdict of condemnation. And yet, if
he grieves over it faithfully and to good purpose, and, late though it be,
acknowledges how rightly the bishops’ authority has been set in motion; or if
with his own mouth and hand in your presence he recants his wrong opinions, no
mercy that is shown to him when penitent can be found fault with: because our
LORD, that true and “good shepherd” who laid down His life for His sheep and who
came to save not lose men’s souls, wishes us to imitate His kindness; in order
that while justice constrains us when we sin, mercy may prevent our rejection
when we have returned. For then at last is the true Faith most profitably
defended when a false belief is condemned even by the supporters of it.
Now for the loyal and faithful execution of the whole matter, we have appointed
to represent us our brothers Julius Bishop and Renatus priest [of the Title of
S. Clement], as well as my son Hilary, deacon. And with them we have associated
Dulcitius our notary, whose faith is well approved: being sure that the Divine
help will be given us, so that he who had erred may be saved when the wrongness
of his view has been condemned. GOD keep you safe, beloved brother.
The 13 June, 449, in the consulship of the most illustrious Asturius and
Protogenes.
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