Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| To Eudocia Augusta, about the Monks of Palestine.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Letter CXXIII.
To Eudocia Augusta507
| 507 See Letter CXVII.,
chap. iii., n. 8. | , about the Monks of Palestine508
| 508 See Letter CIX.
above. | .
Leo, the bishop, to Eudocia Augusta.
I. A request that she should use her
influence with the monks of Palestine in reducing them to
order.
I do not doubt that your piety is aware how great
is my devotion to the catholic Faith, and with what care I am bound,
God helping me, to guard against the Gospel of
truth being withstood at any time by ignorant or disloyal men.
And, therefore, after expressing to you my dutiful greetings which your
clemency is ever bound to receive at my hands, I entreat the
Lord to gladden me with the news of your
safety, and to bring aid evermore and more by your means to the
maintenance of that article of the Faith over which the minds of
certain monks within the province of Palestine have been much
disturbed; so that to the best of your pious zeal all confidence in
such heretical perversity may be destroyed. For what but sheer
destruction was to be feared by men who were not moved either by the
principles of God’s mysteries509
| 509 Ratio
sacramentorum, it cannot be too often repeated that to Leo and
other early Fathers, all nature, and all its phenomena, and all
God’s dealings with mankind are sacramenta, and capable of
a sacramental (i.e. higher, inner) interpretation: the particular
sacramentum he is thinking of here is the incarnation, which he
speaks of just below, as often elsewhere, as the sacramentum salutis
humanæ (the sacrament or mystery whereby man is saved). | , or by the authority of the Scriptures, or by
the evidence of the sacred places themselves510
| 510 Viz., the places in
Palestine where these monks themselves lived, which trustworthy history
or tradition connects with the various incidents in our Lord’s
life. | .
May it advantage then the Churches, as by God’s favour it does advantage them, and may it
advantage the human race itself which the Word of God adopted at the Incarnation, that you have conceived
the wish to take up your abode in that country511
| 511 Eudocia had just made a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land. | where
the proofs of His wondrous acts and the signs of His sufferings speak
to you of our Lord Jesus Christ as not only true God but also true Man.
II. They are to be told that the catholic
Faith rejects both the Eutychian and the Nestorian extremes. He
wishes to be informed how far she succeeds.
If then the aforesaid revere and love the name of
“catholic,” and wish to be numbered among the members of
the Lord’s body, let them reject the
crooked errors which in their rashness they have committed, and let
them show penitence512
| 512 Agant
pœnitentiam: this is the regular and very expressive
translation in the Latin Versions and among the Fathers of the Greek
μετανοεῖν. | for their wicked
blasphemies and deeds of bloodshed513
. For the
salvation of their souls let them yield to the synodal decrees which
have been confirmed in the city of Chalcedon. And because nothing
but true faith and quiet humility attains to the understanding of the
mystery of man’s salvation, let them believe what they read in
the Gospel, what they confess in the Creed, and not mix themselves up
with unsound doctrines. For as the catholic Faith condemns
Nestorius, who dared to maintain two persons in our one Lord Jesus Christ, so does it also condemn Eutyches and
Dioscorus514
| 514 Leo not unfrequently
joins these two together as equally responsible (e.g. Lett. CIX.
3). | who deny that
the
true human flesh
was assumed in the Virgin Mother’s womb by the only-begotten Word
of God.
If your exhortations have any success in
convincing these persons, which will win for you eternal glory, I
beseech your clemency to inform me of it by letter; 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 (453). E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
