Eutyches’s Letter to Leo, with His Confession of Faith

God the Word is my witness before all others. He is sure of my hope and faith in Christ, the Lord and God of all, and he sees the proof that I hold the truth in these matters. But I call on your holiness too, to bear witness to my heart and to the soundness of my opinions and words. The wicked devil, however, has turned his evil influence against my zeal and resolve, the very things by which his power ought to have been destroyed. So he has exerted all the power he has, and has stirred up against me Eusebius, bishop of the town of Dorylaeum. Eusebius presented a written charge to Flavian, the holy bishop of the church in Constantinople, and to certain others whom he found gathered in that city on various business of their own. In it he called me a heretic. He raised no true accusation; he was contriving my ruin and disturbance for the churches of God. [b]

Their Holinesses summoned me to answer his accusation. Though I was held back by a serious illness as well as my great age, I came to clear myself, knowing well that a faction had been formed against my safety. Along with a written appeal bearing my signature, I offered them a statement setting out my confession of the holy faith. But the holy Flavian did not accept the document or order it to be read. He did hear me repeat, word for word, the faith that was set forth at Nicaea by the holy synod and confirmed at Ephesus. Then I was required to acknowledge two natures, and to anathematize those who denied this. But I feared the decision of the synod, and did not wish to take away or add a single word against the faith set forth by the holy Synod of Nicaea. I knew, too, that our holy and blessed fathers and bishops Julius, Felix, Athanasius and Gregory rejected the phrase “two natures.” I did not dare to discuss the nature of God the Word, who came into the flesh in the last days, entering the womb of the holy virgin Mary unchangeably, as he willed and knew, and becoming man in reality, not in appearance. Nor did I venture to anathematize our fathers I have named. So I asked them to let your holiness know of these things, so that you might judge what seemed right to you, and I promised that I would by all means follow your ruling. [c]

But without listening to anything I said, they broke up the synod and published the sentence deposing me, which they had been preparing against me before the inquiry. They were making up so much slander against me, as a faction, that even my safety would have been in danger had not the help of God, at the intercession of your holiness, quickly snatched me from an attack by soldiers. Then they began to force the heads of other monasteries to sign my deposition, a thing that was never done even against those who professed themselves heretics, nor even against Nestorius himself. They went so far that when I tried to put forward statements of my faith to reassure the people, those who were plotting this faction against me not only prevented them from being heard, but also seized them, so that I might at once be held a heretic before everyone. [f]

So I take refuge with you, the defender of religion and the enemy of such factions. Even now I bring in nothing new against the faith as it was handed down to us from the beginning. I anathematize Apollinaris, Valentinus, Mani and Nestorius, and those who say that the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior, came down from heaven and not from the Holy Spirit and the holy Virgin, together with all heresies back to Simon Magus. Yet for all this I stand in danger of my life as a heretic. I beg you not to be prejudiced against me by their scheming about me, but to pronounce the sentence on the faith that seems right to you. From now on do not allow this faction to utter any slander against me, and do not let a man be expelled and banished from the number of the orthodox who has spent his seventy years of life in self-control and all chastity, so that at the very end of his life he should suffer shipwreck. I have attached to this letter of mine both documents: the one presented by my accuser at the synod, and the one I brought but which was not accepted. I have also attached the statement of my faith, and what our holy fathers have decreed concerning the two natures. [g]

I charge you before God, who gives life to all things, and before Christ Jesus, who bore witness to the good confession under Pontius Pilate, that you do nothing out of favoritism. For I have held the same faith as my forefathers. From my boyhood I have been enlightened by the same faith as the one laid down by the holy synod of the 318 most blessed bishops who were gathered at Nicaea from the whole world, and which was confirmed and ratified afresh, to be received alone, by the holy synod assembled at Ephesus. I have never thought otherwise than as the right and only true orthodox faith has required. And I agree with everything that was laid down about that faith by the same holy synod. The leader and chief of that synod was Cyril of blessed memory, bishop of the Alexandrians, the partner and sharer in the preaching and in the faith of those saints and chosen ones of God: the greater Gregory and the other Gregory, Basil, Athanasius, Atticus and Proclus. Him and all of them I have held to be orthodox and faithful, I have honored them as saints, and I have counted them my teachers. But I pronounce anathema on Nestorius, Apollinaris and all heretics back to Simon, and on those who say that the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ came down from heaven. For he who is the Word of God came down from heaven without flesh, and was made flesh in the holy Virgin’s womb, unchangeably and unalterably, as he himself knew and willed. And he who was always perfect God before the ages was also made perfect man at the end of days, for us and for our salvation. May your holiness consider this, my full confession. [i]

I, Eutyches, presbyter and archimandrite, have signed this statement with my own hand. [k]