To the Emperor Theodosius, Naming His Representatives

To Caesar Theodosius, the most religious and devout Augustus, Leo, pope of the catholic church of the city of Rome. [a]

How much God’s providence deigns to care for human interests is shown by your merciful concern, which, moved by God’s Spirit, is unwilling that there should be any disturbance or difference, since the faith, which is absolutely one, cannot differ from itself in anything. Eutyches, as the minutes of the bishops’ proceedings reveal, has been found out in an ignorant and unwise error, and he ought to have withdrawn from a conviction that is rightly condemned. Yet your piety, which loves the catholic truth with great jealousy for God’s honor, has decided on a synodal judgment at Ephesus, so that the truth to which he is blind may be brought home to the ignorant old man. So I have sent my brothers Julius the bishop and Renatus the presbyter, and my son Hilary the deacon, to act as my representatives as the matter requires. They will bring with them such a spirit of justice and kindness that, while the whole misguided error is condemned (for there can be no doubt what the integrity of the Christian faith is), yet if the one who has gone astray repents and begs for pardon, he may receive the help of priestly indulgence. For in the appeal he sent us, he kept for himself the right to earn our forgiveness by promising to correct whatever our judgment disapproved of in his opinion. But what the catholic church everywhere believes and teaches on the mystery of the Lord’s incarnation is set out more fully in the letter I have sent to my brother and fellow bishop Flavian. Dated the 13th of June, in the consulship of the illustrious Asturius and Protogenes (in the year 449). [b]