To Anatolius of Constantinople, in Rebuke of His Self-Seeking

Leo the bishop to Anatolius the bishop. [a]

Now that the light of the truth of the gospel has been made plain through God’s grace, as we wished, and the night of the most deadly error has been driven from the universal church, we are glad in the Lord beyond words. For the difficult charge entrusted to us has been brought to the desired end, as the text of your letter announces, so that, as the apostle teaches, “we all speak the same thing, and there are no divisions among us, but we are perfect in the same mind and in the same knowledge.” We commend you, beloved, for taking part in this work. For in this way your activity benefited those who needed correction, and you cleansed yourself of all complicity with the wrongdoers. For when your predecessor Flavian, of happy memory, was deposed for his defense of the catholic truth, it was believed, not unjustly, that those who ordained you seemed to have consecrated one like themselves, against the provisions of the holy canons. But God’s mercy was present in this, directing and strengthening you, so that you might make good use of bad beginnings, and show that you were promoted not by human judgment but by God’s loving-kindness. And this may be accepted as true, on condition that you do not lose the grace of this divine gift through some other cause of offense. For a catholic, and above all a priest of the Lord, must not only be caught up in no error, but also be corrupted by no greed. For as Holy Scripture says, “Do not go after your lusts, and turn away from your desire.” Many enticements of this world and many vanities must be resisted, if the perfection of true self-discipline is to be reached; and its first stain is pride, the beginning of transgression and the origin of sin. For a mind greedy of power knows neither how to keep from what is forbidden nor how to enjoy what is permitted, so long as transgressions go unpunished and run into undisciplined and wicked excesses, and wrongdoings are multiplied, which we bore only out of our zeal for the restoration of the faith and our love of harmony. [b]

And so, after the not irreproachable beginning of your ordination, and after the consecration of the bishop of Antioch, which you claimed for yourself against the rules of the canons, I grieve, beloved, that you have fallen into this too: that you should try to break down the most sacred provisions of the Nicene canons. It is as though this opportunity had offered itself to you on purpose, for the see of Alexandria to lose its privilege of second place, and the church of Antioch to give up its right to be third in dignity, so that when these places had been made subject to your jurisdiction, all metropolitan bishops might be stripped of their proper honor. By these unheard-of excesses, never attempted before, you went so far beyond yourself as to drag into an occasion of self-seeking, and to force connivance from, that holy synod which the zeal of our most Christian prince had called together solely to put out heresy and to confirm the catholic faith. It was as though the unlawful wishes of a crowd could not be rejected, and as though what was truly ordained by the Holy Spirit in the canon of Nicaea could be overruled in any part by anyone. Let no synodal councils flatter themselves on the size of their gatherings, and let no number of priests, however much larger, dare either to compare themselves with those three hundred and eighteen bishops or to put themselves above them. For the Synod of Nicaea is hallowed by God with such privilege that, whether church judgments are backed by fewer or by more, whatever is opposed to its authority is utterly without authority. [e]

So these things that are found to be contrary to those most holy canons are utterly unprincipled and misguided. This haughty arrogance tends to disturb the whole church, for it set out to misuse a synodal council in this way: to win the brothers over by wicked arguments, or to compel them by intimidation, to agree with it, when they had been summoned simply on a matter of faith and had reached a decision on the subject that was to engage their care. It was on this ground that our brothers sent by the Apostolic See, who presided in our place at the synod with praiseworthy firmness, withstood these illegal attempts, openly protesting against bringing in any blameworthy innovation contrary to the enactments of the Council of Nicaea. There can be no doubt about their opposition, since you yourself complain in your letter that they wished to block your attempts. In writing this you indeed commend them greatly to me, while you accuse yourself by refusing to obey them about your unlawful designs, vainly seeking what cannot be granted, and craving what is bad for the health of your soul and can never win our consent. For may I never be guilty of assisting so wrong a desire, which ought rather to be overturned with my help, and the help of all who do not set their minds on high things but agree with the lowly. [f]

Those holy and venerable fathers who, in the city of Nicaea, after condemning the blasphemous Arius with his impiety, laid down a code of canons for the church to last until the end of the world, live on in their decrees not only among us but among the whole of humankind. If anywhere people venture on what is contrary to their decrees, it is by that very fact null and void. So what is laid down for everyone, for our lasting good, can never be altered by any change, nor can what was meant for the common good be turned to private interests. And so, as long as the limits the fathers fixed remain, no one may invade another’s right, but each must exert himself within his own proper and lawful bounds, as far as he is able, in the breadth of love. The bishop of Constantinople may reap the fruits of this richly enough, if he relies on the virtue of humility rather than being puffed up with the spirit of self-seeking.

“Do not be high-minded,” brother, “but fear,” and stop disturbing the devout ears of Christian princes with unwarranted demands. I am sure they will be better pleased by your modesty than by your pride. For your purpose gains no support whatever from the written assent of certain bishops, given, as you allege, sixty years ago, and never brought to the knowledge of the Apostolic See by your predecessors. This transaction was doomed from the start to fall through, and it has long since done so; and now you wish to prop it up by means that are too late and useless, namely, by extracting from the brothers an appearance of consent, which their modesty yielded, from sheer weariness, to their own injury. Remember what the Lord threatens against the one who causes one of the little ones to stumble, and have the wisdom to understand what judgment from God he will have to endure who has not feared to give occasion of stumbling to so many churches and so many priests. For I confess that I am so firmly bound by love of the whole brotherhood that I will agree with no one in demands that go against his own interests. So you can see clearly, beloved, that my opposition to you comes from the kindly intention of restraining you, by sounder counsel, from disturbing the universal church. The rights of provincial primates may not be overthrown, nor may metropolitan bishops be cheated of privileges grounded in antiquity. The see of Alexandria may not lose any of the dignity that it earned through Saint Mark, the evangelist and disciple of blessed Peter, nor may the splendor of so great a church be darkened by another’s clouds, now that Dioscorus has fallen through his persistence in impiety. The church of Antioch too, in which the Christian name first arose at the preaching of the blessed apostle Peter, must keep the position the fathers assigned it, and, being set in the third place, must never be lowered from it. For the see is one thing and those who hold it another, and each person’s chief honor is his own integrity. And since integrity does not lose its proper worth in any place, how much more glorious must it be when it is set in the splendor of the city of Constantinople, where many priests may find, in watching you, both a defense of the fathers’ canons and an example of uprightness? [g]

In writing this to you, brother, I urge and admonish you in the Lord to lay aside all ambitious desires, to cherish instead a spirit of love, and to adorn yourself, to your profit, with the virtues of love, as the apostle teaches. For love “is patient and kind, does not envy, does not act wrongly, is not puffed up, is not ambitious, does not seek its own.” So if love does not seek its own, how greatly does he sin who covets what belongs to another? I want you to keep yourself from this altogether, and to remember the saying, “Hold what you have, so that no one else takes your crown.” For if you seek what is not permitted, you will deprive yourself, by your own action and judgment, of the peace of the universal church. Our brother and fellow bishop Lucian and our son Basil the deacon attended to your instructions with all the zeal they had, but justice refused to give effect to their pleadings. Dated the 22nd of May, in the consulship of the illustrious Herculanus (in the year 452). [k]