To the Empress Eudocia, About the Monks of Palestine

Leo the bishop to Eudocia Augusta. [a]

I do not doubt that your piety knows how great my devotion to the catholic faith is, and with what care I am bound, with God’s help, to guard against the gospel of truth being resisted at any time by ignorant or disloyal men. And so, after offering you the dutiful greetings that your clemency is always entitled to receive from me, I pray the Lord to gladden me with news of your safety, and to bring ever more help through you to the upholding of that article of the faith over which the minds of certain monks in the province of Palestine have been much disturbed; so that, as far as your devout zeal can bring it about, all confidence in such heretical perversity may be destroyed. For what but sheer destruction was to be feared for men who were moved neither by the principles of God’s mysteries, nor by the authority of the Scriptures, nor by the evidence of the holy places themselves? May it benefit the churches, then, as by God’s favor it does benefit them, and may it benefit the human race itself, which the Word of God took on himself in the Incarnation, that you have formed the wish to make your home in that country, where the proofs of his wonderful works and the signs of his sufferings speak to you of our Lord Jesus Christ as not only true God but also true man. [b]

If, then, these men revere and love the name “catholic,” and wish to be counted among the members of the Lord’s body, let them reject the crooked errors they have rashly committed, and let them show penitence for their wicked blasphemies and deeds of bloodshed. For the salvation of their souls, let them yield to the synodal decrees that have been confirmed in the city of Chalcedon. And because nothing but true faith and quiet humility reaches an understanding of the mystery of mankind’s salvation, let them believe what they read in the gospel and what they confess in the creed, and not entangle themselves in unsound teachings. For as the catholic faith condemns Nestorius, who dared to maintain two persons in our one Lord Jesus Christ, so it also condemns Eutyches and Dioscorus, who deny that true human flesh was taken on in the Virgin Mother’s womb by the Word of God, the only Son. [d] If your urging has any success in convincing these men, which will win you eternal glory, I beg your clemency to let me know of it by letter, so that I may have the joy of knowing that you have reaped the fruit of your good work, and that they, through the Lord’s mercy, have not perished. Dated the 15th of June, in the consulship of the illustrious Opilio (in the year 453).