Emperor summoned a synod to revise the judgement of Flavian. It was to meet at Ephesus, like the council of 431. The Pope was, of course, invited. He could not come (Attila was just then at the gates of Rome); but he sent legates—Julius, Bishop of Puteoli, a priest Renatus, a deacon Hilarius,[1] and a notary Dulcitius. They brought letters to the Emperor, to Flavian of Constantinople, to the monks of the city, and to the synod. St. Leo's letter to Flavian is the most important document of this story. It is his famous Tome or Dogmatic Letter.[2] In his other letters he refers to this one as containing a plain statement of the Catholic faith. The Dogmatic Letter of Leo I to Flavian categorically rejects Eutyches' novelties.[3] It states the Catholic faith exactly as all Catholics (and the Orthodox too) have learned it in their catechism; the technical terms and language generally are those we still use. Our Lord is one person having two natures, of God and of man. Each nature is real, complete, perfect. "The property of either nature and substance[4] remaining and being joined in one person, lowliness is assumed by majesty, weakness by might, mortality by the eternal. To pay the debt of our condition an inviolable nature is joined to a nature which can suffer; so that, as befits our salvation, one and the same mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, could die in one nature, could not die in the other. Therefore God was born in the perfect nature of a true man, perfect in his own (nature), perfect in ours. We say in ours, which the Creator made in the beginning,. which he assumed to redeem it. … Wherefore he, who remaining in the form of God created man, he the same in the form of a servant was made man. Either nature holds without defect its properties; as the form of God does not destroy the form of a servant, so the form of a servant does not lessen the form of God."[5]
- ↑ Afterwards Pope Hilarius (461–468).
- ↑ No. xxviii. among St. Leo's letters (P.L. liv. 755–781; Mansi, v. 1366); see Hefele-Leclercq: op. cit. ii. (1), 567–580.
- ↑ The constant references to Eutyches in this letter are, together with the fact that his condemnation began the great controversy, the reason why he has acquired undeserved importance as the founder of Monophysism. Really his case was only an incident in the great quarrel.
- ↑ Nature, substance, essence mean the same thing.
- ↑ P.L. liv. 763.
