Tag Archives: Leo the Great

St Leo the Great and the background to Chalcedon

12 Friday May 2017

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St. Leo the Great deserves his title; he has a claim to be the greatest Pope since St. Peter. There is an argument to be made for his being the Pope who definitively established the Petrine claims. This short series cannot hope to do justice to the man, or even his Papacy, but it tries to illuminate these wider issues by focussing on the most controversial part of his career – the part he played at the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451.

The Council was called by the Emperor Marcian to sort out the mess left by the second Council of Ephesus, held in 449 which had ended in chaos. The successor of St. Cyril of Alexandria, Patriarch Dioscorus, had there secured the declaration that the monk Eutyches, who had been condemned for Christological heresy, was in fact orthodox. The decision was over-turned at Chalcedon, something the Egyptian Church and other Eastern Churches have never accepted. It was the first great schism. Central to it was the definition of the two natures of Christ offered by Pope Leo.

When the Fathers at Chalcedon declared ‘Peter has spoken through Leo’ what did this mean? Since 1054 Orthodox Christians from Greece and Russia have contested the plain meaning of the words; since they also contest the plain meaning of Matthew 16:18, this occasions no surprise.

At the heart of much of the dispute is the question of the jurisdiction held by the early Popes. Canon 3 of the Council of Sardica (343)  allowed appeals to Rome from the decision of a local bishop (See H. Hess, The early development of Canon law and the Council of Sardica (2002), esp. pp. 212-214.) This was a codification of Rome’s response to the case presented by St. Athanasius in 341. In his Apologia ad Constantium Athanasius tells us that after he was expelled from Alexandria by the Arian-inclined authorities he went to Rome to appeal against the judgement of the Eusebian bishops at Tyre who had deposed him and other orthodox bishops, including Paul of Constantinople. Pope Julius (337-352) presided over a council of 50 bishops in 341 and overturned the Tyrian verdict; Athanasius, Paul and their fellows returned to their Sees and were reinstated.

It might be noted here that his opponents were just as interested in being in Rome’s favour as two of them, Ursacius of Singiduum and Valens of Muras wrote to beg forgiveness. (See Athanasius, Apologia contra Arianos 58 for the texts).

That such a view, that is that Rome had appellate jurisdiction from other bishoprices, was not confined to the West is shown not only by the appeal to it from Athanasius and Paul of Constantinople, it is present in St. Jerome’s writings. Its most recent manifestation was one with which the young Leo was personally familiar as he had been involved with it. After the Council of Ephesus (the ‘robber council’) Flavian, Theodoret and Eusebius had written to Pope Celestine to protest against their deposition and to seek his approval to their restoration. They did so in view of the fact that before that Council the Pope’s legates had declared that: ‘Peter, the prince and leader of the apostles [who] was given the power of loosing and binding sins’ continued to live and judge in his successors. This was read into the record at Chalcedon.

The circumstances which made that necessary will be the subject of a short series of posts on Chalcedon which will appear after one celebrating the centenary of Fatima. This is a ‘trigger warning’ to Bosco.

Pope St Leo the Great and the development of the Papacy

11 Thursday May 2017

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Faith, Pope, Saints

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13 May is the centenary of the first appearance of Our Lady at Fatima, and we shall have a post on that. After that there will be a short series on the Council of Chalcedon, but as some background to the latter might be in order, especially around the claims made for the powers of the Pope, it seemed appropriate to deal with those wider questions in a short post, before proceeding to deal with Chalcedon,

It is easy (which is no doubt why it is done so often) to assume that from the beginning the Papacy based itself on the Petrine verses in St. Matthew’s Gospel. The Eastern Orthodox like to point out that those claims were cast in terms of ‘primacy’; they are correct. But what did that much-disputed word mean to those who used it in the early Church? If we are to understand this, we need to understand something about Roman ideas of inheritance and authority – ideas which were shared across the whole Empire – including Constantinople.

St. Leo the Great made two main contributions to the developing understanding of what ‘primacy’ mean. The first amounts to an assertion that the past existed in the present, not just because he was Peter’s successor, but in the form of a direct and present link between the Apostle and the Pope. As he put it in his sermon on 19 September 443 (Sermon 3.4)

Regard him [Peter] as present in the lowliness of my person. Honour him. In him continues to reside the responsibility for all shepherds, along with the protection of the sheep entrusted to them. His dignity does not fade even in an unworthy heir.’

This is what Leo understood by the saying of the Chalcedonian Fathers: ‘Peter has spoken through Leo. (See here also W. Ullmann, ‘Leo I and the Theme of Papal Primacy’, Journal of Theological Studies 1960, pp. 26-28).

Under Roman jurisprudence, a person was supposed to be present in his legal representative, even as the deceased was in his heir. The same jurisprudence was present in the eastern empire, so to argue that anyone in Constantinople would have been ignorant of this conception of what it meant for Leo to have said what he had said seems to strain credulity. Indeed, as K. Shatz puts it in Papal Primacy From Its Origins to the Present (1996), Leo made ‘the “church of tradition … into the church of the capital city that extends its laws to the whole world.’ (pp. 33-36 for the argument).

On this understanding the Pope was not simply Peter’s representative but his living successor – Peter spoke through him. Thus, Rome’s judgments and decrees were rendered universal because the Holy Apostle was understood to be present in Leo and in the system of justice he administered. As Leo put in in that same sermon on 19 September 443 (3.3):
Persevering in the fortitude he received, blessed Peter does not relinquish his government of the Church. He was ordained before the others so that, when he is called rock, declared foundation, installed as doorkeeper for the kingdom of heaven, appointed arbiter of binding and loosing (with his definitive judgments retaining forces even in heaven), we might know through the very mysteries of these appellations what sort of fellowship he had with Christ. He now manages the things entrusted to him more completely and effectively. He carries out every aspect of his duties and responsibilities in him and through him whom he has been glorified.

So, if we do anything correctly or judge anything correctly, if we obtain anything at all from the mercy of God through daily supplications, it comes about as the result of his works and merits. In this see his power lives on and his authority reigns supreme. This, dearly beloved, is what the confession has obtained [Matthew 16:18]. Since it was inspired by God the Father in the apostle’s heart, it has risen above all the uncertainties of human thinking and has received the strength of a rock that cannot be shaken by any pounding.

It is Peter’s presence that brings about the Christian universalism that Leo envisoned himself exercising. If we look at his letter to the bishops of Illyricium, 12 January 444, placing them under Anastasius, the bishop of Thessalonica, and telling them that serious disputes must be referred to Rome, we see him exercising that power of which his sermons spoke.

The primacy of Rome was not simply the result of Apostolic succession, or of inhertance from St. Peter, but of this very special relationship which ensured that Peter spoke through the Pope. As Leo says in a sermon given on 29 September: [Sermons 5.4]
our solemnity is not merely the apostolic dignity of the most blessed Peter. He does not cease to preside over his see but unfailingly maintains that fellowship which he has with the eternal Priest. That stability which he received from Christ the rock (by having himself been made ‘rock’) has poured over onto his heirs as well. Whenever there is any show of firmness, it is undoubtedly the shepherd’s fortitude that appears.
Leo’s views are set out in fuller form in a sermon preached on 29 June 443 (Sermon 83.1) in which he makes it clear that since Peter exercises the Lord’s power on His behalf, so too does the Pope exercise the powers of Christ Himself, as Peter speaks through him.

This is not a claim made by any other Bishop. It was made in public by Leo in his sermons and letters, and it was based firmly upon Scripture, patristic testimony and the common law of the Empire. How this impacted upon the background to Chalcedon will be the subject of tomorrow’s post.