To the Monks of Palestine

Leo the bishop to the whole body of monks settled throughout Palestine.

The anxious care I owe to the whole church and to all its sons has learned from many sources that some offense has been given to your minds, beloved, through my translators. Either ignorant, as it seems, or malicious, they have made you take some of my statements in a sense different from what I meant, since they were not able to turn the Latin into Greek with proper accuracy; and yet in explaining subtle and difficult matters, someone who undertakes to discuss them can scarcely satisfy himself even in his own language. Still, this has been of some advantage to me: by your disapproving of what the catholic faith rejects, we know that you are greater friends of the true than of the false, and that you quite rightly refuse to believe what I myself also abhor, in keeping with the ancient teaching. For although my letter addressed to bishop Flavian, of holy memory, is clear enough in itself, and needs neither correction nor explanation, yet other writings of mine agree with that letter, and in them my position will be found set out in the same way. For necessity was laid on me to argue against the heretics who have thrown many of Christ’s peoples into confusion, before our most merciful princes, before the holy synod, and before the church of Constantinople. So I have laid down what we ought to think and feel about the Incarnation of the Word, according to the teaching of the gospel and the apostles, and in nothing have I departed from the creed of the holy fathers. For the faith is one, true, unique and catholic; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken away. Yet Nestorius first, and now Eutyches, have tried to attack it from opposite sides, though with the same disloyalty, and have tried to force on the church of God two contradictory heresies. That is why both have been deservedly condemned by the disciples of the Truth: because the false view that each of them held, in his own way, was utterly mad and sacrilegious. [a]

Nestorius, therefore, must be anathematized for believing the blessed Virgin Mary to be the mother of his manhood only. In this way he made the person of his flesh one thing and that of his Godhead another, and did not recognize the one Christ in the Word of God and in the flesh, but spoke of the Son of God as separate and distinct from the son of man. Yet without losing that unchangeable essence which belongs to him together with the Father and the Holy Spirit from all eternity and apart from time, “the Word became flesh” within the Virgin’s womb in such a way that, by that one conception and one giving birth, she was at the same time, by virtue of the union of the two substances, both handmaid and mother of the Lord. Elizabeth knew this too, as Luke the evangelist declares, when she said: “Why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” But Eutyches too must be struck with the same anathema. Entangled in the treacherous errors of the old heretics, he has chosen the third dogma of Apollinaris, so that he denies the reality of his human flesh and soul, and maintains that the whole of our Lord Jesus Christ is of one nature, as if the Godhead of the Word had turned itself into flesh and soul. And he speaks as if being conceived and born, being nursed and growing, being crucified and dying, being buried and rising again, ascending into heaven and sitting at the Father’s right hand, from where he will come to judge the living and the dead: as if all these things belonged to that essence alone which admits none of them without the reality of the flesh. For the nature of the only Son is the nature of the Father and the nature of the Holy Spirit, and the eternal Trinity, in its undivided unity and its equality of one substance, is at once incapable of suffering and unchangeable. But if this heretic draws back from the perverse views of Apollinaris, so as not to be proved to hold that the Godhead is capable of suffering and mortal, and yet dares to declare that the nature of the incarnate Word, that is, of the Word made flesh, is one, he undoubtedly crosses over into the mad view of Mani and Marcion. He believes that the man Jesus Christ, the mediator between God and men, did everything in appearance only, and had no human body, but that a phantom-like apparition presented itself to the eyes of those who saw him. [d]

These wicked lies were long ago rejected by the catholic faith, and the blasphemies of such men were condemned by the unanimous votes of the blessed fathers throughout the world. So whoever these are who are so blinded, and such strangers to the light of truth, as to deny the presence of human nature, that is, our nature, in the Word of God from the time of the Incarnation, they must show on what ground they claim the name of Christian, and how they agree with the true gospel, if the child-bearing of the blessed Virgin produced either the flesh without the Godhead or the Godhead without the flesh. For as it cannot be denied that “the Word became flesh and dwelt in us,” so it cannot be denied that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.” But what reconciliation could there be, by which God might be propitiated toward the human race, unless the mediator between God and man took up the cause of all? And how could he properly fulfill his mediation, unless he who in the form of God was equal to the Father were also a sharer of our nature in the form of a slave, so that the one new Man might bring about the renewal of the old, and the bond of death fastened on us by one man’s wrongdoing might be loosed by the death of the one Man who alone owed nothing to death? For the pouring out of the blood of the Righteous One for the unrighteous was so powerful in its effect, so rich a ransom, that if the whole body of us captives only believed in their Redeemer, not one would be held in the tyrant’s chains; since, as the apostle says, “where sin abounded, grace abounded much more.” And since we, who were born under the prior verdict of sin, have received the power of a new birth into righteousness, the gift of freedom has become stronger than the debt of slavery. [j]

What hope, then, do they leave themselves in the power of this mystery, who deny the reality of the human person in our Savior’s body? Let them say by what sacrifice they have been reconciled, by what shedding of blood brought back. Who is he “who gave himself for us as an offering and a victim to God, for a fragrant aroma”? Or what sacrifice was ever more holy than the one the true High Priest placed on the altar of the cross by the sacrificial offering of his own flesh? For although in the sight of the Lord the death of many of his saints has been precious, no innocent person’s death was the propitiation for the world. The righteous have received crowns, not given them; and from the endurance of the faithful have come examples of patience, not the gift of justification. For their deaths affected themselves alone, and no one has paid off another’s debt by his own death. One alone among the sons of men, our Lord Jesus Christ, stands out as the one in whom all are crucified, all dead, all buried, all raised again. Of them he himself said: “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things to myself.” True faith, too, which justifies transgressors and makes them righteous, is drawn to him who shared their human nature, and wins salvation in him in whom alone man finds himself not guilty. So it is free to glory in the power of him who, in the lowliness of our flesh, joined battle with the proud enemy, and shared his victory with those in whose body he had triumphed. [m]

So although in our one Lord Jesus Christ, the true Son of God and of man, the person of the Word and of the flesh is one, and both share their actions in common, we must still understand the character of the acts themselves. By the contemplation of sincere faith we must distinguish those to which the lowliness of his weakness is brought down from those to which his sublime power inclines, and see what it is that the flesh does not do without the Word, or the Word without the flesh. For instance, without the power of the Word the Virgin would not have conceived or given birth; and without the reality of the flesh his infancy would not have lain wrapped in swaddling clothes. Without the power of the Word the Magi would not have worshiped the child to whom a new star had pointed them; and without the reality of the flesh that child would not have been ordered carried away into Egypt and taken out of reach of Herod’s persecution. Without the power of the Word the Father’s voice from the sky would not have said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”; and without the reality of the flesh John would not have been able to point to him and say, “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world.” Without the power of the Word there would have been no restoring of the sick to health, no raising of the dead to life; and without the reality of the flesh he would not have been hungry and needed food, or grown tired and needed rest. Lastly, without the power of the Word the Lord would not have declared himself equal to the Father, and without the reality of the flesh he would not also have said that the Father was greater than he. For the catholic faith upholds and defends both positions, believing the only Son of God to be both man and the Word, according to the distinctive properties of his divine and his human substance. [p]

So from the beginning when, in the Virgin’s womb, “the Word became flesh,” no kind of division ever arose between the divine and the human substance, and through all the growth and changes of his body the actions belonged to one person the whole time. Even so, we do not, by any mixing of them, confuse the very acts that were done inseparably; and from the character of the acts we see what belonged to each form. For his divine acts do not prejudice his human acts, nor his human acts his divine. Both work together in such a way, and to this very end, that in their working his two sets of qualities are not swallowed up one by the other, nor his individuality doubled. So let these Christians who believe in a phantom tell us what nature of the Savior’s it was that was nailed to the wood of the cross, that lay in the tomb, and that on the third day rose in the flesh when the stone was rolled away from the grave; or what kind of body Jesus showed to his disciples’ eyes when he came in while the doors were shut. For to drive away the disbelief of those who saw him, he required them to examine with their eyes and to touch with their hands the still open marks of the nails and the wound in his pierced side. But if, though the truth is so clear, their persistence in heresy will not leave its place in the darkness, let them show where they find the hope of eternal life they promise themselves, which no one can reach except through the mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ. For “there is no other name given to men under heaven by which they must be saved.” Nor is there any ransoming of mankind from captivity except in his blood, “who gave himself as a ransom for all.” As the blessed apostle proclaims, “when he was in the form of God, he did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even the death of the cross. For this reason God also exalted him and gave him a name that is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, of things on earth and of things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.” [r]

So although the Lord Jesus Christ is one, and the true Godhead and true manhood in him form absolutely one and the same person, and the wholeness of this union cannot be separated by any division, yet the exaltation with which “God exalted him” and “gave him a name that surpasses every name” we understand to belong to that form which needed to be enriched by this increase of glory. Of course “in the form of God” the Son was equal to the Father, and between the Father and the only Son there was no difference of essence and no difference of majesty; nor through the mystery of the Incarnation had the Word lost anything that the Father’s gift would have to give back to him. But “the form of a slave,” through which the Godhead, which cannot suffer, fulfilled a pledge of great loving-kindness, is human weakness, which was lifted up into the glory of the divine power. The Godhead and the manhood were so completely united, right from the Virgin’s conception, that without the manhood the divine acts were not done, and without the Godhead the human acts were not done. For this reason, just as the Lord of majesty is said to have been crucified, so he who is equal with God from eternity is said to have been exalted. Nor does it matter by which substance Christ is spoken of, since, the unity of his person remaining inseparable, he is at once wholly Son of man according to the flesh and wholly Son of God according to his Godhead, which is one with the Father. Whatever, then, Christ received in time, he received by virtue of his manhood, on which is conferred whatever it did not have. For according to the power of the Word, “all things that the Father has” the Son also has without distinction; and what he received from the Father “in the form of a slave,” he himself also gave in the form of the Father. He is in himself at once both rich and poor. He is rich, because “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. This was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made”; and he is poor, because “the Word became flesh and dwelt in us.” But what is that emptying of himself, or that poverty, except the taking of the form of a slave, by which the majesty of the Word was veiled and the plan for mankind’s redemption carried out? For the original chains of our captivity could not be loosed unless a man of our race and our nature appeared who was not bound by the prior verdict of the old debt, and who with his spotless blood might blot out the bond of death, as had been divinely foreordained from the beginning. So it came to pass, in the fullness of the appointed time, that the promise proclaimed in many ways reached its long-awaited fulfillment, and that what had been announced again and again, by one testimony after another, had all doubt removed. [u]

And so all these heresies have been destroyed, which through the holy devotion of the presiding fathers have been cut off from the body of catholic unity, and which deserved to be exiles from Christ, because they have made the Incarnation of the Word, the one salvation of those who believe rightly, a stone of offense and a stumbling block to themselves. That being so, I am surprised that you, beloved, have any difficulty in seeing the light of the Truth. It has been made clear by many explanations that the Christian faith was right in condemning both Nestorius and Eutyches with Dioscorus, and that no one can be called a Christian who gives his assent to the blasphemous opinion of either the one or the other. So I am grieved that, as I hear, you are treating the teaching of the gospel and the apostles with contempt by stirring up the various bodies of citizens to sedition, by disturbing the churches, and by inflicting not only insults but even death on priests and bishops, so that in your fury and cruelty you lose sight of your resolve and your profession. Where is your rule of gentleness and quietness? Where is the patience that suffers long? Where is the calm of peace? Where is the firm foundation of love and the courage of endurance? What evil persuasion has carried you off? What persecution has separated you from the gospel of Christ? Or what strange craftiness of the Deceiver has shown itself, that you should forget the prophets and apostles, forget the saving creed and confession that you pronounced before many witnesses when you received the sacrament of baptism, and give yourselves up to the devil’s deceits? What would “the claws” and other cruel tortures have done to you, if the empty comments of heretics have had so much weight in taking the purity of your faith by storm? You think you are acting for the faith, and yet you go against the faith. You arm yourselves in the name of the church, and yet you fight against the church. Is this what you have learned from prophets, evangelists and apostles: to deny the true flesh of Christ, to subject the very essence of the Word to suffering and death, to make our nature different from his who restored it, and to reckon that all that the cross lifted up, that the spear pierced, that the stone of the tomb received and gave back, was only the work of divine power and not also of human lowliness? It is with this lowliness in mind that the apostle says, “For I do not blush for the gospel,” since he knew what a slur was cast on Christians by their enemies. And so the Lord also proclaimed: “Whoever confesses me before men, I will also confess before my Father.” For those in whom the flesh of Christ awakens no respect will not be worthy to be acknowledged by the Son and the Father; and those who blush to declare with their lips what they have consented to bear on their foreheads will prove that they have gained no power from the sign of the cross. [x]

Give up, my sons, give up these suggestions of the devil. Nothing can impair God’s Truth, but the Truth does not save us except in our flesh. For, as the prophet says, “Truth has sprung out of the earth.” And the Virgin Mary conceived the Word in such a way that she supplied flesh from her own substance to be united to him, without the addition of a second person and without the loss of her nature. For he who was in the form of God took the form of a slave in such a way that Christ is one and the same in both forms: God bending down to the weak things of man, and man rising up to the high things of the Godhead. As the apostle says: “Theirs are the fathers, and from them, according to the flesh, is Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.” [aa]