Letters
The correspondence of Pope Leo I with emperors, empresses, bishops and councils. It includes the Tome to Flavian (Letter 28), which the Council of Chalcedon accepted as a standard of faith, and the letters in which Leo refused canon 28.
Read the text at newadvent.org ↗The same translation with notes (CCEL) ↗
The collection of Leo’s correspondence from his twenty-one years as bishop of Rome runs to more than 170 numbered items, most of them dated by day and consulship. They are the main source for Rome’s part in the controversy over Eutyches: the Tome of June 449, the protests against the council of Ephesus held that year, the instructions to the legates sent to Chalcedon, and the letters of May 452 to the emperor Marcian, the empress Pulcheria and Bishop Anatolius of Constantinople in which Leo accepted the council’s teaching and rejected its canon on the rank of Constantinople.
The letters are Leo’s own statements and show how he understood his office: he writes as the successor of Peter, charged with guarding the canons of Nicaea. They give one side of each exchange. The replies of the Eastern court and bishops survive only in part, some of them within the same collection.
Cited in
- August AD 449, firm date
- October AD 451, firm date