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The central authority of the Universal Church is the impregnable foundation of social justice because it is the infallible organ of religious truth. Pope Leo had a twofold task to accomplish: he had not only to re-establish in the Christian East the moral order which had been subverted by the misdeeds of the patriarch of Alexandria, but also to confirm his Eastern brethren in the true faith which was threatened by the heresy of Monophysitism. The distinctive truth of Christianity, the truth of the God-Man, was at stake. The Monophysites, in asserting that the humanity of Jesus Christ was entirely absorbed by His divinity and that, therefore, after the incarnation He was God alone, were reverting, unconsciously, no doubt, to the inhuman God of Eastern paganism, the God Who devours all that He has created and is nothing but an abyss unfathomable to the human spirit. Their assertion was ultimately a disguised denial of any permanent revelation or incarnation, but it took shelter behind the great theological reputation of St. Cyril, who, in vindicating against Nestorius the unity of the person of Jesus Christ, had let fall from his pen an inaccurate phrase: Μία φύσις του Θεου Λογου σεσαρκωµένη (one incarnate nature of God the Word). And just because the denial of the faith was so disguised, it was necessary to find a new formula to express in clear and precise terms the truth of the Divine Humanity. The whole orthodox world was awaiting such a formula from the successor of St. Peter. Pope Leo himself was profoundly aware of the importance of the question. “Jesus Christ, the Savior of mankind,” he says, “in founding the faith which recalls the wicked to righteousness and the dead to life, instilled into the minds of His disciples the exhortations of His teaching and the marvels of His works, that the one Christ might be acknowledged both as the Only-begotten of God and as the Son of Man. For one belief without the other was of no avail to salvation, and it was equally perilous to believe the Lord Jesus Christ to be God alone and not Man, or to be Man alone and not God” — since the former belief places Him out of reach of our infirmity and the latter makes Him unable to effect our salvation — “but both were to be confessed, for just as true humanity existed in the Godhead, so true Divinity existed in the manhood. In order, therefore, to confirm them in their most wholesome (saluberrimam) knowledge of this faith, the Lord had questioned His disciples: and the Apostle Peter, surpassing the things of the body and transcending human knowledge by the revelation of the Spirit of the Father, beheld with the eyes of his mind the Son of the living God and acknowledged the glory of the Godhead because he did not look merely at the substance of flesh and blood. And Christ so approved the sublime faith of Peter that He pronounced him blessed and endowed him with the sacred stability of the inviolable Rock on which the Church should be built to prevail against the gates of Hell and the jaws of death; so that in the decision of all causes nothing shall be ratified in Heaven but that which has been established by the judgment of Peter.” 1
Claiming, as he does, that the primary function of the authority of the Church — that of asserting and defining Christian truth — belongs for all time to the Chair of St. Peter, which he occupies, Leo considers it his duty to combat the new heresy by expounding anew the confession of the Apostle. In penning his famous dogmatic epistle to Flavian, he regards himself as the inspired interpreter of the prince of the Apostles; and the whole orthodox East regarded him in the same light. In the Leimonarion2 of St. Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem in the seventh century, we find the following legend: When St. Leo had written his epistle to St. Flavian, the bishop of Constantinople, against the impious Eutyches and Nestorius, he placed it upon the tomb of the chief Apostle Peter and with prayers, vigils and fasts he entreated the sovereign Apostle in these words: “If, in the frailty of human nature, I have been guilty of error, do thou, to whom Jesus Christ our Savior, Lord and God has entrusted this throne and the whole Church, supply every defect in what I have written and remove all that is superfluous.” After forty days had elapsed, the Apostle appeared to him while he was praying and said: “I have read and corrected it.” And, taking up his epistle from the tomb of blessed Peter, Leo opened it and found it corrected by the Apostle’s hand.3
This epistle, truly worthy of such a reviser, defined with wonderful clearness and vigor the truth of the two natures in the one person of Christ and thenceforth left no place in the Church for the two opposite errors of Nestorius and Eutyches. The fact that St. Leo’s epistle was not read at the robber council of Ephesus was the main reason urged for the quashing of the decrees of the pseudo-council. Though Dioscorus had succeeded in coercing the entire gathering of Eastern bishops into condemning St. Flavian and putting their names to a heretical document, he encountered unexpected opposition when he ventured on open rebellion against the Pope. For the latter, on receiving from his legates news of what had passed at Ephesus, at once convened a council of Latin bishops at Rome, and with their unanimous approval condemned and deposed Dioscorus. The “Pharaoh,” who had returned to Alexandria in triumph, attempted to outwit the Pope; he was soon to realize that it was no mere empty self-aggrandizement with which he was confronted, but a living spiritual authority which claimed the allegiance of the Christian conscience throughout the world. The pride and effrontery of the usurping bishop were shattered upon the true Rock of the Church; employing all his customary methods of violence, he succeeded in compelling only ten Egyptian bishops to lend their names to the condemnation of Pope Leo.4 Even in the East this futile insult was universally regarded as an act of insanity, and it proved the final undoing of the Egyptian “Pharaoh.”
The Emperor Theodosius II, the champion of the two opposite heresies and the patron of both Nestorius and Dioscorus, had just died, and with the accession of Pulcheria and her nominal consort, Marcian, there began a short phase during which the imperial government, apparently from religious conviction, ranged itself decisively upon the side of truth. In the East this alone was enough to restore courage to the orthodox bishops and to enlist on the side of the true faith which the new Emperor professed all those who had only sided with heresy to please his predecessor. But the orthodox Emperor himself had little confidence in these pliant prelates. For him, supreme authority in matters of faith belonged to the Pope. “In all that concerns the Catholic religion and the faith of Christians,” we read in a letter of his to St. Leo, “we have thought it right to approach, in the first place, your Holiness, who is the overseer and guardian of the divine faith (την τε σην άγιωσύνην επισκοπεύουσαν και αρχουσαν τες θείας πίστεως) 5 According to the Emperor’s view, it is by the Pope’s authority (σου αυθεντουντος) that the forthcoming council must banish all impiety and error from the Church and establish perfect peace among all the bishops of the Catholic faith.6 And in another letter, which follows close upon the first, the Emperor asserts again that the duty of the council will be to acknowledge and expound for the East what the Pope has decreed at Rome.7 The Empress Pulcheria uses the same language in her assurance to the Pope that the council “will define the Catholic belief by your authority (σου αυθεντουντος), as Christian faith and piety require.” 8
When the œcumenical council had assembled at Chalcedon in 451 under the presidency of the Roman legates, the bishop Paschasinus, who was the principal legate, rose and said: “We bear instructions from the blessed and apostolic bishop of the city of Rome, who is the head of all the Churches, forbidding us to admit Dioscorus to the deliberations of the council.” 9 And the second legate, Lucentius, explained that Dioscorus was already condemned for having usurped judicial powers and having assembled a council without the consent of the Apostolic See, a thing which had never happened before and was forbidden (όπερ ουδέποτε γέγονεν ουδε εξον γενέσθαι).10 After considerable discussion, the Emperor’s representatives announced that Dioscorus would not sit as a member of the council, but would appear as an accused man, since he had incurred accusation on fresh counts subsequently to his condemnation by the Pope.11 Judgment upon him was withheld until after the reading of the Pope’s dogmatic epistle, which was hailed by the orthodox bishops with shouts of: “Peter has spoken by the mouth of Leo!” 12 In the following session, several clergy of the Church of Alexandria presented a petition addressed “to the most holy Leo, beloved of God, universal archbishop and patriarch of great Rome, and to the holy œcumenica1 council at Chalcedon.” It was a bill of accusation against Dioscorus who, the complainants alleged, after ratifying heresy in a council of brigands and murdering St. Flavian, “attempted a still greater wickedness,” the excommunication of the most holy and sacred Apostolic See of great Rome.13 The council did not think itself competent to pass fresh judgment on a bishop whom the Pope had already judged, and it was proposed that the Roman legates should pronounce judgment on Dioscorus.14 Accordingly they did so, having first enumerated all the crimes of the patriarch of Alexandria in these terms: “The most holy and blessed archbishop of great and old Rome, Leo, through us and the holy council here present, and together with the thrice blessed and most glorious Apostle Peter, who is the Rock and base of the Catholic Church and the foundation of the orthodox faith, has deprived the said Dioscorus of episcopal status and expelled him entirely from his priestly office.” 15
The solemn recognition of the Pope’s supreme authority at the council of Chalcedon was sealed by the letter of the Eastern bishops to Leo, in which they impute to him the merit of all that had been done at the council. “It is you,” they wrote, “who through your legates have guided and ruled (ήγεµόνευες) the whole gathering of the Fathers, as the head rules the members (ώς κεφαλη µελων), by showing them the true meaning of the dogma.” 16 It is clear that to reject the supremacy and doctrinal authority of the Roman See as usurped and false involves not merely a charge of usurpation and heresy against a man of the character of St. Leo the Great; it means accusing the œcumenical council of Chalcedon of heresy and with it the whole Orthodox Church of the fifth century. This is the conclusion that emerges unmistakably from the authentic evidence which the reader has had set before him.
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1. Works (ed. Migne), i. 309.
2. A kind of chrestomathy composed of edifying stories.
3. v. the life of St. Leo the Pope in the Russian Martyrology.
4. Mansi, vi. 510.
5. ibid., 93.
6. loc. cit.
7. ibid., 100.
8. ibid., 101.
9. ibid., 580-1.
10. ibid., 645.
11. loc. cit.
12. ibid., 972.
13. ibid., 1005-9.
14. ibid., 1045.
15. ibid., 1048.
16. ibid., 148.
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