Letters of Celestine I (to and concerning the Council of Ephesus) 26.0–26.5

Celestine, bishop, to the holy synod assembled at Ephesus. At last we must rejoice at the end of evils; at last we must all say in common: 'Your right hand, O Lord, has been glorified in power; your right hand has shattered the enemies.' For properly they have been shattered, since, as David says, we see the mouth of those who speak iniquity destroyed. Yet we see that you, priests of the faith, were with us the executors of this matter so faithfully accomplished, you who, coming together into one and, according to the apostle, seeking not your own things but those of Christ Jesus, carried out the business of our common Lord. With you, then, we speak of your holiness, whose sound we rejoice has gone out into all the earth, since the words of the truth preached by you have come even to the end of the same world. Our God does not allow what he has granted to be hidden, since heavenly benefits are never concealed. So it comes about that, as so great a heavenly gift becomes known according to the divine will, as it is written, every man may be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. I speak, then, to victors, who carried into the battle against the enemy faith alone, which, as the apostle John says, conquers even the world; I write back to you properly in the words of the same apostle, you who, according to the divine page, have known as fathers him who

is from the beginning, and as young men, since you are strong and the word of God abides in you, you have conquered the evil one. Rejoicing in such companions, we did not doubt at all of this outcome; confidence of victory held our mind, since we saw the weight of the divine cause resting on you, whom we knew well, according to that prophetic saying, to hate the assembly of the wicked and not to sit with the impious. I have obtained, then, what I believed, since against the guilty and the perverse, as the same prophet says, the innocent

and the upright have clung to me. In one and the same report, then, brought by our sons, the religious and God-beloved men John the presbyter and Epithymitus the deacon, we learned of a just deposition and a still more just exaltation, approving what we read in the Gospel, that our God exalts the humble and casts down the mighty from their seat; from which sentence that most wise man of ours did not stray, who says that the memory of the humble is kept by our God and that of the proud destroyed. When could this be seen more fulfilled than now, when our Saviour, preparing to honour the well-deserving, has scattered the bones of men who please themselves, and the spotless Lamb, having provided a most worthy shepherd, has cast the deadly wolf out of his folds? We have read the praises of the new bishop written by your Fraternity, and none of us could be surprised, since you said what is known. Assertion is spent on uncertain things; things ascertained do not seek testimony. The wrestling school of good deeds has always trained him; we gave him such as we find him in your letters, such, certainly, to put it briefly, as our teacher commands a priest to be, so that by the judgment of all he deserves fittingly to hear: 'Behold, truly an Israelite, in whom there is no guile.' Do not these words fit him with your praises? Did you hear otherwise what you said? Such a successor the blessed simplicity of Sisinnius of holy memory was seeking, so that his place should be held only by one like himself. Indeed, we do better if, refraining now from the name of that sacrilegious man, we say that the see was vacant. It was done by divine judgment that the church should merit him as a remedy. Indeed, once ordained, he took away discord and restored concord: what will he not

be able to provide over time, whose beginnings have provided this? We say these things to one another about him whom the restoration of peace was seeking. We were present, and would not call ourselves absent, when the mystical words were spoken over his head, when the joy of divine salvation was restored to all; finally, no catholic was absent there, where all conquered in common. We rejoiced, besides, at the testimony of the most clement and most Christian emperor on this matter, since we saw that his judgment agreed with the letter of your Love. Nor is it surprising if the king's heart, which is in the hand of God, agrees with those whom it knows to be God's priests. So runs the royal word: 'By carrying out divine things he has served the Augustus.' Happy the empire which the carrying out of divine things serves, and no less happy the man whom the ruler of earthly things so proclaims. Worthy of this testimony is one who could be approved before ordination, not one who could be disapproved after it. We know by what road our holy brother and fellow bishop Maximian came, by what stages of service, step by step, he reached the priestly summit. Not the glory of riches, not a leap of honours such as unbridled desire usually brings to the ambitious, raised him; by the vote of the poor, to whom as a faithful and prudent servant he gave food in due season, he was set over all his Lord's goods; and yet, even if there was a desire, he desired the episcopate only for the sake of the good work, as the apostle says. So our God attends to both what we want and why we want it. Who would doubt that, presiding, he can do more fully what he could exercise as a subordinate?

The blasphemer is hated. One who strove to wound souls could not hold this office, that is, the care of souls; his ruin was great, as great a ruin as his teaching was depraved. Now, since we rejoice at the correction of the past, it is fitting that we take care for the future, lest what has been cut off may sprout more and more. Since it is inevitable that, wherever this pestilence is, members of our body are troubled, and that through our patience worse things than before may seem to have been nursed, we have written to the emperor's clemency that the sickness be removed farther from the midst of health; for we have learned that he has returned to Antioch and that he has been granted the opportunity of living there, where he came from. This exile is the destruction of the innocent. Let us look more carefully at what the things conceived there before may bring forth there. It is not hard for him to persuade those who know him; the church of that same city is before our eyes, which through him lost a priest; and yet do we labour to notice who was the cause of sin to whom? Unless perhaps, and we say this for the peace of the churches, its bishop shows that he was deceived by deserting the condemned man. But who would hope that anyone can be corrected there, where he sees the author of perversity holding the citadel, where the exile is honoured by all? Great is the despair of health there, we say it mourning, where, as Isaiah says, every head is in pain and every heart in sorrow, from the feet to the head. When will any member there have hope of health, where the whole frame of the body is in danger? Labour, dearest brothers, labour, I beseech you, that he who did this deed be truly removed from your midst. Solitude alone befits such men. For where ought he to find comfort who so treated him who reigns everywhere? The whole sum of the business has been accomplished by you; what now presses and remains must be done, lest the labour be in vain. We are placed far away indeed, but through our anxiety we view the whole more closely. The care of the blessed apostle Peter keeps all present; we cannot excuse ourselves before our God for what we know. For although your Holiness has kept silent about what we are saying, we have nevertheless learned everything by inquiring more diligently. Let the end of so great a cause, which remains, then, I beg you, correspond to your acts, since we do not want you to fail in a small thing who have accomplished the greatest

things. Be a help before the kings of the earth to what we have written. They themselves know what they owe to their times; they know that their kingdoms stand on the foundation of the catholic faith. The vein of their fathers' and grandfathers' belief is kept pure by its holy heirs; it flows from them uncorrupted through their descendants, and no mud has ever fouled it in them. The faithful course of a spring keeps its beginning, when what was received at the source is seen in the offspring. Let us pursue alike the dog and the evil worker; do, being present, what we, being absent, exhort. For although we owe this care to all in general, it is especially fitting for us to help the endangered people of Antioch, whom a pestilent disease has besieged. Let us free from such knots the city in which, as the Acts of the Apostles say, we read that they were first called Christians. Let us, then, with all our strength provide for those to whom we know we owe, according to religion, the name we are called by. This anxiety of ours the God-beloved sons, most dear and most welcome to our hearts, John the presbyter and Epithymitus the deacon, have proved by their presence; we have sent them back to you in haste after their arrival, taking care that those whom we received in the days of the Lord's nativity we might give back at the time of the Lord's resurrection. As for those who seem to have shared Nestorius's impiety and joined themselves to him as associates in his crimes, although your sentence against them is read, we too decree what seems right. Many things must be considered in such cases, which the apostolic see has always considered. What we say the example of the Caelestians attests, who until now have held out hope from a synod. They have, if they come to their senses, the opportunity of returning, which is denied only to those who are known to have been condemned by name with the authors of the heresy by the signature of all the brothers; for by God's mercy we rejoice that some of their number have already returned to us. This was done with the intention that a sentence at least might separate those whom a mixed conscience could not. I advise your Fraternity to follow this example. Let the head of the crime be condemned with those whom the synodal decrees name; the rest, who share his views and whom we do not hold in ecclesiastical communion, are to know that they are to be expelled from their cities and will not be in our college, unless, in accordance with the decree of the church and of the most Christian emperors, condemning what has been condemned together with its authors and associates, they profess themselves catholic priests. We wish this form to be kept also regarding those who believed that the Christian emperors could be deceived in church cases and who by another procedure have again occupied churches. As for the bishop of Antioch, if there is hope of his correction, we wish him to be summoned by your Fraternity, so that, unless he comes to think what we think, condemning the new blasphemy by a written profession after the same example, he may understand that the church will make arrangements concerning him too, as regard for our faith commands. Yet we must trust the divine mercy that all will return to the way, if the head and cause of these evils is removed from the aforementioned place.