To the Emperor Marcian, on the Presumption of Anatolius

Leo the bishop to Marcian Augustus.

By the great bounty of God’s mercy, the joys of the whole catholic church were multiplied when the most deadly error was abolished among us through the holy and glorious zeal of your clemency. So our labors reached their desired end all the more quickly, because your majesty, in the service of God, had helped them so faithfully and powerfully. For although the freedom of the gospel had to be defended against certain dissenters, in the power of the Holy Spirit and through the agency of the Apostolic See, God’s grace has shown itself more plainly than we could have hoped. It has granted the world that in the victory of the truth only the authors of the violation of the faith should perish, and the church be restored to soundness. So the war that the enemy of our peace had stirred up was ended so happily, with the Lord’s right hand fighting for us, that when Christ triumphed all his priests shared in the one victory, and when the light of truth shone out, only the shadows of error, with its champions, were driven away. When the Lord’s own resurrection was first believed, confidence was much increased, to strengthen the beginnings of faith, by the fact that certain apostles doubted the bodily reality of our Lord Jesus Christ. By examining the prints of the nails and the wound of the spear with sight and touch, they removed the doubts of all by doubting. So now too, while the misbelief of some is refuted, the hearts of all who hesitate are strengthened, and what blinded a few serves to enlighten the whole body. In this work your clemency rightly and properly rejoices, having faithfully seen to it that the devil’s snares should do no harm to the Eastern churches, but that more acceptable whole burnt offerings should be offered everywhere to propitiate God. For through the mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, one and the same creed is held by people, priests and princes, most glorious son and most merciful Augustus. [a]

But now that the matters for which so great a gathering of priests assembled have been brought to a good and welcome conclusion, I am surprised and grieved that the peace of the universal church, which God had restored, is again being disturbed by a spirit of self-seeking. My brother Anatolius seems to have acted, of necessity, in his own interest when he forsook the error of those who ordained him and, with a healthy change of mind, accepted the catholic faith. Even so, he ought to have taken care not to spoil by any perverse desire what he is known to have obtained through you. For out of regard for your faith and your intervention, though his beginnings were suspect because of those who consecrated him, we chose to be kind to him rather than just, so that by healing measures we might calm all the disturbances that the devil’s work had stirred up. This ought to have made him modest rather than the opposite. For even if he had been ordained lawfully and in due order, for outstanding merit and by the wisest choice, no votes could have availed for him if he acted without regard to the canons of the fathers, the ordinances of the Holy Spirit and the precedents of antiquity. I speak before a Christian and truly religious, truly orthodox prince when I say that Anatolius the bishop greatly lessens his own proper merits by desiring undue advancement. [d]

Let the city of Constantinople have its high rank, as we wish, and under the protection of God’s right hand long enjoy the rule of your clemency. Yet things of this world stand on a different footing from things of God, and there can be no sure building except on the rock that the Lord has laid as a foundation. Whoever covets what is not his due loses what is his own. Let it be enough for Anatolius that with the help of your piety, and by my favor and approval, he has obtained the bishopric of so great a city. Let him not look down on a city that is royal, even though he cannot make it an Apostolic See, and let him by no means hope that he can rise by doing injury to others. For the privileges of the churches, settled by the canons of the holy fathers and fixed by the decrees of the Nicene synod, cannot be overthrown by any unscrupulous act, nor disturbed by any innovation. In faithfully carrying out this task, with the help of Christ, I am bound to show unflinching devotion. For it is a charge entrusted to me, and it counts toward my condemnation if the rules approved by the fathers and drawn up under the guidance of God’s Spirit at the Synod of Nicaea for the government of the whole church are broken with my connivance, which God forbid, and if the wishes of a single brother weigh more with me than the common good of the Lord’s whole house. [e]

And so, knowing that your glorious clemency is anxious for the peace of the church, and gives its protection and approval to the measures that lead to peaceful unity, I pray and beg you with earnest entreaty to refuse all approval and protection to these unscrupulous attempts against Christian unity and peace. Put a healthy check on the desires of my brother Anatolius, which will only harm himself if he persists, so that he may not want things opposed to your glory and to the needs of the times, nor wish to be greater than those before him. Let him be free instead to stand as high as he can in virtues, which he will share only if he prefers to be adorned with love rather than puffed up with ambition. He ought never to have conceived this unwarranted wish in the secret of his heart at all. But when my brothers and fellow bishops, who were there to represent me, withstood him, he might at least have given up his unlawful self-seeking at their healthy opposition. For both your gracious majesty and his own letter affirm that the delegates of the Apostolic See opposed him, as they ought, with the most justified resistance. So his presumption was all the less excusable, in that it did not hold itself back even when rebuked.

And so, since it befits your glorious faith that, as heresy was overthrown with God acting through you, all self-seeking should now be defeated as well, do what suits both your Christian and your royal goodness. Let this bishop obey the fathers and further the cause of peace. Let him not think he had any right to ordain a bishop for the church of Antioch, as he presumed to do without any precedent and against the provisions of the canons; that act, out of a longing to re-establish the faith and in the interests of peace, we have decided not to cancel. So let him stop treating the rules of the church with contempt, and shun unlawful excesses, so that by attempting things hostile to peace he does not cut himself off from the universal church. I would much rather love him for acting blamelessly than find him persisting in this presumptuous frame of mind, which may separate him from us all. My brother and fellow bishop Lucian, who brought your clemency’s letter to me with my son Basil the deacon, has carried out with all devotion the duties he undertook as legate. He must not be counted to have failed in his mission; rather, the course of events failed him. Dated the 22nd of May, in the consulship of the illustrious Herculanus (in the year 452). [f]