To the Emperor Theodosius, on Eutyches’s Appeal

Leo the bishop to Theodosius Augustus. [a]

How much protection the Lord has granted his church through your mercy and faith is shown once again by the letter you have sent me, so that we rejoice that there is in you not only the mind of a king but also the mind of a priest. For besides your imperial and public cares, you have a most devout concern for the Christian religion, that no schisms or heresies or other offenses may grow up among God’s people. For your realm is in its best state when people serve the eternal and unchangeable Trinity by confessing one Godhead. What the disturbance was that arose in the church of Constantinople, and that could so move my brother and fellow bishop Flavian as to deprive the presbyter Eutyches of communion, I have not yet been able to understand clearly. For although the presbyter sent a written complaint about his trouble to the Apostolic See, he touched on only a few points, and briefly. He asserted that he kept the decrees of the Synod of Nicaea and had been blamed without cause for differing in faith. [b]

But the statement of his accuser, Bishop Eusebius, copies of which the presbyter has sent us, made nothing clear about his objections. Though he charged a presbyter with heresy, he did not say plainly what opinion he disapproved of in him; and the bishop himself also declared that he held to the decrees of the Synod of Nicaea. So we had no means of learning anything more fully. And because the way of our faith, and the praiseworthy concern your piety has shown, require that the merits of the case be known, no room must now be left for deception. We must be told the points on which he thinks him unsound, so that a right judgment may be passed with full information. I have sent a letter to that bishop, from which he may gather that I am displeased that he still keeps silent about what has been done in so grave a matter, when he ought to have been quick to disclose everything to us from the start. And we believe that, even after this reminder, he will tell us the whole, so that when what now seems obscure has been brought to light, judgment may be passed in keeping with the teaching of the Gospels and the apostles. Dated the 18th of February, in the consulship of the illustrious Asturius and Protogenes (in the year 449). [c]