Letter 12

From: Pope Honorius I To: The Lombard court Date: ~628 AD Context: Honorius writes about the ongoing Three Chapters controversy among Lombard bishops. Honorius, bishop, to the bishops and clergy of the Lombard church. I want to address the Three Chapters controversy directly, because the continuing division of the northern Italian church is causing pastoral harm that has gone on too long. The position of the Roman see is that the Council of Constantinople under Justinian, which condemned the Three Chapters, is a legitimate ecumenical council whose decisions are binding. I know that many of you do not accept this. I am not going to repeat the theological arguments — you know them as well as I do, and additional arguments are not what is needed here. What is needed is a way to restore communion between churches that share the same faith on every point that actually matters — the nature of Christ, the authority of Chalcedon, the basics of Christian morality — but that have divided over a question about a set of fifth-century theologians that most ordinary Christians have never heard of. I am proposing the following: that the bishops who remain in schism return to communion with Rome on the basis of their acceptance of Chalcedon and the other councils prior to Justinian's, and that the question of the Three Chapters specifically be set aside for further discussion without requiring either side to formally repudiate its position. I am aware that this will be criticized as kicking the problem down the road. It is. But the problem as it currently stands is doing active harm, and a deferral of the theological dispute is better than a continuation of the pastoral harm. Honorius, bishop of Rome