Letters of Leo the Great

Contents

Only the passages on marriage and remarriage are published: Letters 4.2, 5.3, 6.3 and 12.3 (the "husband of one wife" rule for clergy), Letter 159 (to Nicetas of Aquileia, 21 March 458, on wives who remarried while their husbands were captives) and Letter 167.3–6 (to Rusticus of Narbonne, 458/59). Letters 159 and 167 fall after 451; they are included at the editor's decision because they rule on marriage.

Reading pages: 4.2–12.3 · 159.0–167.6

1. 4.2Leo orders that husbands of widows and men married more than once be removed from clerical office, as the Apostle and Leviticus require.
2. 5.3Clergy must be married once and to a virgin; a man who remarried after baptism, his first wife having died before it, is still twice married.
3. 6.3Leo tells Anastasius of Thessalonica to ordain only proven men married once to a virgin, counting a marriage before baptism.
4. 12.3Leo rules that neither a man married twice nor a man whose wife had been married before may be ordained, because priestly marriage figures Christ's marriage to the one church.
5. 159.0Leo opens his reply to Nicetas of Aquileia on questions raised by the barbarian invasions.
6. 159.1Leo rules that when husbands return from captivity, the first, lawful marriages of wives who had remarried in the belief that their husbands were dead are to be restored.
7. 159.2Leo holds that the second husband is not guilty, but that, as with property, the returning husband's marriage must be restored.
8. 159.3Leo rules that if a returning husband wants his wife back, she is to return, and the second union, forced by necessity, is judged blameless.
9. 159.4Leo rules that wives who refuse to return to their returning husbands, preferring their second husbands, are to be excommunicated.
10. 159.5Leo rules that captives who ate sacrificial food under fear or hunger are to be restored after penance measured by compunction rather than time.
11. 159.6Leo rules that those who were rebaptized are to be received back through penance and the bishop's imposition of hands, with communion given in danger of death.
12. 159.7Leo rules that those baptized by heretics are not to be rebaptized but received by imposition of hands with invocation of the Holy Spirit; the letter is dated 21 March 458.
13. 167.3Deacons, like bishops and presbyters, must live in continence with their wives after ordination, without putting them away.
14. 167.4A cleric who gives his daughter to a man with a concubine has not given her to a married man, since a concubine is not a wife unless freed, dowered, and publicly married.
15. 167.5Girls married by their fathers to men who had concubines are blameless, since the concubines were not wives.
16. 167.6A man who leaves a slave concubine to marry a free wife has not married twice; penitents who recover must be urged to complete penance; those who die before reconciliation are left to God's judgment.