Epistola Ad Theodorum Papam

Victor, Bishop of Carthage, to the most blessed and honorable holy brother Theodore the Pope. Your most blessed fatherhood’s work, acceptable to God, and glorious way of life are manifest to nearly the whole world. Therefore, while the whole earth is filled with the cultivation of the true faith through apostolic preachings and teachings, yet by the instruction of divine eloquence, with your exhortatory admonition guiding, the orthodox Church of Christ is built up, founded on apostolic institution and most firmly strengthened by the faithful Fathers. To this Church all the most blessed apostles, endowed with an equal share of honor and authority, turning the multitudes of peoples, piously and holily led men foreknown by the grace of divine predestination from darkness to light, from error to true faith, from death to life, through salutary precepts and admonitions. Your honorable fraternity, following more fully the merits and more perfectly fulfilling the examples of these holy apostles, adorns the Church of God with probity of morals and sanctity of deeds, and, thriving in sacred faith and Christian morals, ceaselessly works and accomplishes through pontifical efforts what it commands to be done pleasing to God, preserving the mandates of divine law: because, as the Apostle says, not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law will be justified (Rom. 2:13).

In which divine law your holy and venerable sincerity, as it is written, meditates day and night (Psalm 1): which meditation is not only beheld by reading through the figure of letters, but, with the grace of Christ abounding in you, is known to be immovably implanted in your conscience, the sacrosanct law of Christ, God the Lord, in no way departing from your heart, as the prophet says in the Psalms: The mouth of the just will meditate wisdom, and his tongue will speak judgment (Psalm 36). The law of God is in his heart: not written with ink, but with the spirit of the living God in your inner sanctuary; nor on stone tablets, but on the fleshly tablets of the heart (2 Corinthians 3), as the epistle of the most blessed Apostle Paul sent to the Corinthians teaches us. With these things premised, we signify to your God-pleasing fraternity that on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of August of the fourth indiction, our humility, with divine grace anticipating by its gift as it commanded, received, through your holy and God-worthy prayers, the consecration and stole of pontifical honor in the holy church of the city of Carthage.

In that pinnacle of dignity, that we may be governed by Almighty God from on high, and, freed from evil deeds, may possess not only the priestly name but also, with the protecting help of Christ our Lord God, its merit, we entreat, commending ourselves to your holy and God-acceptable prayers, that, fortified by your supplications poured forth to God on our behalf and instructed by your good teachings, we may be rendered worthy, together with all the Christian people entrusted to us, to be protected unharmed by divine shelter. Therefore, for the greeting of your holy and honorable fraternity, we have sent in our stead Mellosus, your humble brother, our bishop, and Redemptus, a deacon, and Cresciturus, a notary of our holy see, your servants, whom we request to be returned to us more quickly by your blessedness, so that they may be able to return to their own churches before winter, with God’s favor. Above all, however, I confess that at the very beginning of our elevation our heart was not lightly wounded, so that I would long for that prophetic precept, saying: “Who will give water to my head, or a fountain of tears to my eyes, and sitting I will weep day and night” (Jer. 9)? For behold, the churches of God are not lightly disturbed; we do not bear the voices and groans of the most Christian bishops, who complain and cry out that the novelties and contrived fictions, which, as it is said, have been approved by our venerable fellow priest Paul against the most true faith, ought to be rejected.

We, however, weaving moderation into the matters, thought it expedient to bear with equanimity the most just complaints of our aforementioned most blessed fellow priests, and to bring this very matter to the venerable ears of your brotherhood with vigilant care. For they assert that certain volumes of writings, in the form of epigrams, have recently been hung in sacred buildings in the imperial city, entirely contrary to the Catholic religion, to the true faith itself, and to the traditions of the Fathers. For what madman would dare to proclaim with sacrilegious voice that in our Lord Jesus Christ there exists only one will or one operation, when it is most clearly evident from the most manifest definitions of the Fathers that in our Lord Jesus Christ two natures are found, and with them two wills, two operations, or natural properties in every way? And we could confirm the intention of our smallness with manifold testimonies of the Fathers, did we not hold most firmly that your most holy brotherhood retains these things in heart in all respects. However, that we may be confirmed in all things by the decrees of the apostolic see itself, we have seen fit to insert the definition of your most blessed predecessor Leo of apostolic memory, and it contains (Epistle X): For each nature acts, in communion with the other, what is proper to it.

We, therefore, following the decrees of the Fathers in all things, most firmly proclaim in Christ our Lord two natures, and their two wills, and two operations, and truthfully confess Him true God and true man without human faults, repudiating the mockeries, vanities, and lying follies of all heresies. It is yours, therefore, most holy brother, by canonical discretion to oppose as usual things contrary to the catholic faith, and not to permit anything to be said anew which the authority of the venerable Fathers did not at all sanction. For we, humble of heart, wise in what is right with the Lord as our helper, are bound with you by one bond of charity, stoutly defending the true faith and catholic religion in all things. Therefore, it must be pressed more diligently that the wicked be able to be resisted by catholics, lest, oppressed by the torpor of idleness, we be held liable for the guilt of silence, and be judged as if we were lending favor, while we neglect to repel things adverse to the catholic faith. For it was said by the blessed Felix, the apostle and predecessor of your holiness: "Indeed, to neglect, when you are able, to overthrow the perverse, is nothing other than to foster them; nor is the secret partnership free from scruple, which ceases to oppose manifest crime." It is clear, most holy teacher, the poisonous cunning of serpents without simplicity, the deceitful fallacy of heretics is manifest. For what is it to remove the properties of the natures in Christ our Lord, except to introduce a confusion of those same natures?

which is contrary to the Catholic Church, that is, to the statutes of the holy Council of Chalcedon, from which the foundation of faith and its perfection undoubtedly consist. We could indeed also direct similar writings of ours to that same brother and fellow bishop of ours, the most blessed Paul, high priest of the royal city, were it not that we know that it has been said, through the false utterances of evil men, that our African province could perpetrate some evils which do not consist in truth. But we also add this to our petition: that you order that those things which were written in letter form by our fellow bishops of our holy council to the most blessed Paul the patriarch be sent, through the respondents of your Beatitude, to that same brother of ours, Paul.