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| To Eulogius, Patriarch of Alexandria.
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Epistle XXXV.
To Eulogius, Patriarch of Alexandria.
Gregory to Eulogius, &c.
In the past year I received the letters of your
most sweet Holiness; but on account of the extreme severity of my
sickness have been unable to reply to them until now. For lo, it
is now almost full two years that I have been confined to my bed,
afflicted with such pains of gout that I have hardly been able to rise
on feast-days for as much as three hours space to solemnize mass.
And I am soon compelled by severe pain to lie down, that I may be able
to bear my torment with intervening groans. This pain of mine is
sometimes moderate, and sometimes excessive: but neither so
moderate as to depart, nor so excessive as to kill me. Hence it
comes to pass that, being daily in death, I am daily debarred from
death. Nor it is surprising that, grievous sinner as I am, I am
long kept confined in the prison of such corruption. Whence I am
compelled to exclaim, Bring my soul out of prison, that I may
confess thy name (Ps. cxli. 8). But, since I am not yet worthy
to obtain this by my prayers, I beg that the prayer of your Holiness
may afford me the aid of its intercession, and deliver me from the
weight of sin and corruption into that liberty, which you know well, of
the glory of the children of God.
Your to me most sweet and ever to be honoured Blessedness has informed me in your letter that our common son
Anatolius, deacon of the city of Constantinople, had written to you to
say that certain monks from the parts about Jerusalem had come to me to
make some enquiry concerning the error of the
Agnoitæ111
| 111 The
Agnoetæ or Themistiani arose in connexion with the
Monophysite controversy in the sixth century, being led by Themistius,
a deacon of Alexandria, who taught the limitation of the human
knowledge of Christ, referring especially to Mark xiii. 32; and John xi. 34. The majority of the Monophysites
rejected his view, which was condemned also by the orthodox.
Eulogius of Alexandria, to whom the letter before us is addressed,
wrote a treatise against the Agnoetæ, from which extracts are
given by Photius. Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem, pronounced
the anathema against Themistius. On the same subject, cf. Ep.
XXXIX. below. Gregory’s arguments in Ep. XXXIX. against the
views of the Agnoetæ are interesting to English readers at the
present day, when similar views have been lately put forward and
discussed. | , and you say that he
begged your Holiness to write to me to express your opinion with
respect to this enquiry. But neither have monks come to me from
the parts about Jerusalem to make any enquiry, nor do I think that the
said our common son can have told you in his letters what was not the case; but I suspect that the interpreter has mistaken the
meaning of his letters. For the same deacon, now more than two
years ago, wrote to me that monks had come from the aforesaid parts to
the city of Constantinople making such enquiries, and he desired to ask
me what I thought. To him, long before I received your letters, I
made the very same reply against that same heresy as I found afterwards
in the epistle of your Holiness: and I returned great thanks to
Almighty God that concerning all questions the Fathers of the Romans
and of the Greeks, whose followers we are, have spoken with one
spirit. For in many parts I found this your epistle to be as
though I had been reading the writings of the Latin Fathers against the
aforesaid heresy. And consider how much I must love and praise
the excellence of my most holy brother, in whose mouth I recognised the
venerable Fathers, whom I love so much. Praise therefore be to
Him, to Him be glory in the highest, of whose gift the voice of Mark
still cries aloud in the See of Peter112
; from the
effusion of whose spirit, when the priest enters into the Holy of
Holies for searching into mysteries, spiritual bells resound in holy
Church, as in the tabernacle, from the words of preaching. Right,
then, and highly to be praised is your preaching. But we implore
the Almighty Lord to keep you long even in this life, that from the
organ of God, which you are, the voice of truth may in this world sound
more widely. And for me, I pray you, intercede, that the way of
this pilgrimage, which has become too rough for me, may with speed be
finished, to the end that I, who cannot by my own merits, may by yours
be able to attain to the promises of the eternal country, and to
rejoice with the citizens of heaven.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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