The following notes come from
Erick Ybarra, The Papacy: Revisiting the Debate Between
Catholics and Orthodox (Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Road, 2022)
Tome of Leo
It should be asked how St. Leo
could, at once, believe his Tome was the definitive criteria of Christological orthodoxy
while at the same time acquiescing to a council to examine the Christological
subject. It is due, he says, to the (1) need for healing and (2) a “fuller
judgment.” In his own words:
But because the healing even
of such men must not be neglected, and the most Christian Emperor has
piously and devoutly desired a council of bishops to be held, that
all error may be destroyed by a fuller judgment, I have sent our brothers
Julius the bishop, Renatus the presbyter, and my son Hilary the deacon, and
with them Dulcitius the notary, whose faith we have proved, to be present in my
stead at your holy assembly, brethren, and settle in common with you
what is in accordance with the Lord’s will. (Letter 33)
From the looks of it, it might
appear as if the pope admitted that a council’s judgment, a “common” settlement,
carried a greater authority than his own. And, if it were not for other
statements requiring a synthesis of Leonine thought, one is well within reason
to reach such a conclusion. However, the late Fr. Reuben Parsons (1841-1906)
explains who this is to be read in light of other clear statements by St. Leo
which indicate, as Demacopoulos observed, that papal judgment leaves no room
for dissent:
In his Synodal Epistle to the
fathers at Ephesus, St. Leo says that the emperor wished for a Council, “in
order that, by a fuller judgment, every error might be swept away.” But we have
already seen that the Pope told Flavian that the affair “needed no treatment
whatever by a synod”; that he told Theodosius that “for reasonable causes he should
refrain from calling a Synod;” we have heard St. Peter Chrysologus advising
Eutyches to obediently attend to what the Roman Pontiff would write, because “the
Blessed Peter shows to seekers the truth faith.” If, in the face of all this,
at the request of the emperor, a Council was called, the Pontiff so permitted,
not because he thought an ecumenical synod superior to himself, but to repress
the contumacy of the heretics, by leaving them no possible excuse for their
obstinacy . . . Again, in his epistle to the fathers of Nicaea (afterwards at
Chalcedon) the Pontiff forbade any disputation upon faith, because he had
already, in his epistle to Flavian, fully explained what was to be believed.
Writing this, could he have dreamed of a critical examination of his letter?
St. Leo assented to the holding of a General Council . . . but in it he was
to be dominant; what he desired, was to be done; disputes were to be avoided,
and his Dogmatic Epistle to Flavian was to be the rule of faith in the matter
of Eutychianism. (Studies in Church History, volume 1, second ed.
[New York: Fr. Pustet & Co., 1906], 340-410
In other words, St. Leo did not
hand off the dogmatic question of Eutychianism to a higher court to examine
afresh and come to its own decision, since he was well under the impression
that the “primacy of his own see . . . gave him the right to make definitive pronouncements
in doctrinal disputes.” (Gerald Bray, Creeds, Councils and Christ [Leicester,
England: InterVarsity Press, 1984] 159) (pp. 299-301)
The only objections that were ever
raised to the Tome came from a small minority of bishops from Illyricum and
Palestine. These saw a conflict between the Tome and St. Cyril’s Christology,
which had become dogmatic since the Council of Ephesus (431). The imperial
commissioners reluctantly decided a committee should be had for five days so
that these objects “may be instructed” by a portion of the rest of the bishops
who had already signed. But of the six hundred or so bishops present, these two
groups were in the extreme minority. (p. 316)
This amounts to approximately fifty
of the six hundred or so bishops at the council, which makes up less than 10
percent of the council. (p. 316 n. 195—~10% is a large minority report)