The Letter of Pope Vigilius

The manuscript from which this letter was printed was found in the Royal Library at Paris by Peter de Marca, who first published it with a Latin translation and a dissertation. Both of these, with the Greek text, are found in Labbe and Cossart’s collection of the councils, volume 5, column 596 and following, and also in Migne’s Latin Fathers, volume 69, column 121 and following. Some doubts have been raised about whether it is genuine. Hardouin holds that the learned Jesuit Garnier, in his notes on the Breviary of the deacon Liberatus, has proved it a forgery. But the learned have not generally agreed with him, and have accepted the letter as genuine. [a]

Vigilius to his beloved brother Eutychius. [b]

No one is unaware of the scandals that the enemy of the human race has stirred up throughout the world. With a wicked purpose, striving in every way to carry out his wish to destroy the church of God spread over the whole world, he led one person after another to compose different things, both in speech and in writing, not only in his own name but even in ours and in the names of others. He went so far as to try to divide us, who, together with our brothers and fellow bishops, are staying in this royal city, who defend the four synods with equal reverence and hold sincerely to the one and the same faith of those four synods. By his sophistries and schemes he tried to part us from them, so that we ourselves, who were and are of the same mind as they about the faith, fell apart into discord, and brotherly love was despised. [c]

But Christ our God, who is the true light, whom the darkness does not grasp, has removed all confusion from our minds. He has so restored peace to the whole world and to the church that what had to be defined by us has been soundly accomplished, through the revelation of the Lord and through the search for the truth. [d]

So I let you know, my dear brothers, that together with all of you, our brothers, we receive the four synods in every respect, that is, the synod of Nicaea, the synod of Constantinople, the first synod of Ephesus, and the synod of Chalcedon. We venerate them with a devout mind and guard them with all our mind. And if there are any who do not follow these holy synods in everything they have defined concerning the faith, we judge them to be strangers to the communion of the holy and catholic church.

Since we want you, my brothers, to know what we have done in this matter, we make it known to you by this letter. For no one can doubt how many discussions arose over the Three Chapters, that is, over Theodore, once bishop of Mopsuestia, and his writings, over the writings of Theodoret, and over the letter said to have been written by Ibas to Maris the Persian; and how many different things were said and written about these Three Chapters. Now if in every matter sound wisdom calls for taking back what was put forward after an examination, there ought to be no shame in making public what was at first left out, once it has been discovered by further study of the truth. And if this is so in ordinary affairs, how much more should the same rule of sound reason be kept in the disputes of the church? This is all the more so since it is clear that our fathers, and especially the blessed Augustine, who was truly distinguished in the divine scriptures and a master of Roman eloquence, retracted some of his own writings, corrected some of his own sayings, and added what he had left out and afterward discovered. Led by their example, we never gave up studying the questions raised by the dispute over the Three Chapters already mentioned, or searching the writings of our fathers for passages that bore on the matter. [e]

As a result of this investigation it became clear that the sayings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, which are spoken against on every side, contain a great many things contrary to the right faith and to the teaching of the holy fathers. For this very reason those same holy fathers left treatises they had written against him for the instruction of the church.

For among his other blasphemies we find that he said openly that God the Word was one person and Christ another; that this Christ was troubled by the passions of the soul and the desires of the flesh; that he advanced little by little from a lower to a higher stage of excellence by progress in his works; and that he became blameless in his way of life. He taught further that it was a mere man who was baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, who received through his baptism the grace of the Holy Spirit and earned his adoption; and that therefore Christ could be venerated in the same way that the image of the emperor is venerated, as standing for the person of God the Word. He also taught that only after his resurrection did he become unchangeable in his thoughts and wholly unable to sin.

He said moreover that the union of the Word of God with Christ was made in the way the apostle says a man and his wife are united: “The two shall become one flesh.” He said that after his resurrection, when the Lord breathed on his disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” he did not give them the Holy Spirit. In the same profane vein he dared to say that the confession Thomas made when he touched the Lord’s hands and side after the resurrection, “My Lord and my God,” did not refer to Christ, for Theodore did not acknowledge Christ to be God. Rather, he said, Thomas, filled with wonder at the miracle of the resurrection, spoke these words to give glory to God. [f]

But what is worse still, in interpreting the Acts of the Apostles Theodore makes Christ like Plato, Mani, Epicurus and Marcion. He says that just as each of these was the author of his own particular teaching and called his disciples after his own name, Platonists, Manichaeans, Epicureans and Marcionites, so Christ invented doctrines and called his followers Christians after himself. [g]

So let the whole catholic church know that we have reached the conclusions set out in this decree of ours justly and beyond reproach. Therefore we condemn and anathematize Theodore, once bishop of Mopsuestia, and his impious writings, together with all the other heretics who, as is well known, have been condemned and anathematized by the four holy synods already named and by the catholic church. We condemn and anathematize also the writings of Theodoret that oppose the right faith and are against the twelve chapters of Saint Cyril and against the first Council of Ephesus, which he wrote in defense of Theodore and Nestorius.

We also anathematize and condemn the letter to Maris, the Persian heretic, said to have been written by Ibas. It denies that Christ, the Word, took flesh of the holy Mother of God and ever-virgin Mary and was made man, and declares instead that a mere man was born of her, a man it calls a temple; so we are given to understand from it that God the Word is one person and Christ another. It also slanders Saint Cyril, the teacher and herald of the orthodox faith, calling him a heretic and charging him with writing things like those of Apollinaris. It reviles the first synod of Ephesus, as though it had condemned Nestorius without deliberation or investigation. It likewise declares the twelve chapters of Saint Cyril impious and contrary to the right faith. And on top of this it defends Theodore and Nestorius, and their impious teachings and writings.

Therefore we anathematize and condemn the impious Three Chapters already named, that is, the impious Theodore of Mopsuestia with his impious writings, all that Theodoret impiously wrote, and the letter said to have been written by Ibas, which contains the profane blasphemies described above. We likewise put under anathema anyone who at any time believes that these chapters should be accepted or defended, or tries to overturn this present condemnation.

And further, we define that those are our brothers and fellow priests who always keep the right faith set out by the synods already named, and who have condemned the Three Chapters named above, or who condemn them now.

And further, by this present written definition of ours, we annul and make void whatever has been said by me, or by others, in defense of the Three Chapters already named. [h]

Far be it from the catholic church that anyone should say that all the blasphemies described above, or those who held and followed such things, were received by the four synods already named, or by any one of them. For it is perfectly clear that the holy fathers already named, and especially the Council of Chalcedon, admitted no one under any suspicion unless he had first rejected the blasphemies named above and all like them, or else had renounced and condemned the heresy or blasphemies of which he was suspected.

The subscription.

May God keep you in good health, most honorable brother. Dated the 8th of December, in the twenty-second year of our lord the emperor Justinian, eternal Augustus, the twelfth year after the consulship of the illustrious Basil. [i]