From: Pope Hormisdas, Rome
To: Unknown recipient (bishops)
Date: ~515-523 AD
Context: Part of the papal correspondence surrounding the Acacian Schism (484-519), the major breach between Rome and Constantinople over the condemnation of the Monophysite patriarch Acacius. Pope Hormisdas (514-523) worked tirelessly to resolve this schism, which was finally healed in 519 under Emperor Justin I.
[This letter is part of the extensive diplomatic correspondence generated by the resolution of the Acacian Schism. The schism had divided the Eastern and Western churches for thirty-five years over the condemnation of Patriarch Acacius of Constantinople, who had promoted a compromise formula (the Henotikon) that Rome rejected as insufficiently orthodox. Hormisdas conducted negotiations through multiple embassies to Constantinople, exchanging letters with emperors, patriarchs, imperial officials, and powerful aristocratic women at court. The correspondence reveals the machinery of late antique ecclesiastical diplomacy: formal theological demands, careful diplomatic language, networks of lay and clerical allies, and the constant anxiety of a pope trying to manage events happening months away by letter.]
seu
Tertia suggestio legatorum supra nominatorum. &• ^j^ d.
7Mart.
Etiam Lignidi omnia secundwn Hormisdae mandalum acta esse nuntiant,
In alia epistola significavimus *) beatitudini vestrae de Scam- ep. 59.
pina civitate de venerabili Trojo episcopo: quo ordine libellum
dedit, et qualis festivitas est celebrata in ipsa civitate. Cum Dei
misericordia venimus ad^) Lignidum. Theodoritus episcopus venera-
intellecta infra subjiciunt: nisi quomodo ad nos pervenerit, non possumus dieere.
Quare G' stricte sequi satiuB duxiinus.
B) G* a* nos positos, quod cum b cc ad grammaticae leges correximuB. Mox
b cc w. cr. (pro vv, ss., i. e. viri sublimes) ... Hinohis. Patricius hic memoratus
is yidetur, ad quem lcgati superiorcm epistolam 54 deferebaut. In arcana autem
Procopii historia cap. 17 Leontins referendarius memoratur.
Btasii II Laurentio de Lignido (non de Lychnido) inscriptam. Laurentio huic,
54*
a. 519. bilis vir ipsius civitatis similiter libellmn dedit, qui libellus in eccle-
sia est relectus, et omnia secundmn constitutionem vestram sunt
f acta. Rogate Deum ; sperate ab apostolis ejus beatissimo Petro et
Paulo, ut Deus, qui initia talia donavit orationibus vestris, similiter
sequantur et prospera, ut tempora coronae^) vestrae in correctione
ecclesiarum semper praedicentur. Quam epistolam ad apostolatom
vestrum direximus die Nonarum Martiarum.
◆
From:Pope Hormisdas, Rome
To:Unknown recipient (bishops)
Date:~515-523 AD
Context:Part of the papal correspondence surrounding the Acacian Schism (484-519), the major breach between Rome and Constantinople over the condemnation of the Monophysite patriarch Acacius. Pope Hormisdas (514-523) worked tirelessly to resolve this schism, which was finally healed in 519 under Emperor Justin I.
[This letter is part of the extensive diplomatic correspondence generated by the resolution of the Acacian Schism. The schism had divided the Eastern and Western churches for thirty-five years over the condemnation of Patriarch Acacius of Constantinople, who had promoted a compromise formula (the Henotikon) that Rome rejected as insufficiently orthodox. Hormisdas conducted negotiations through multiple embassies to Constantinople, exchanging letters with emperors, patriarchs, imperial officials, and powerful aristocratic women at court. The correspondence reveals the machinery of late antique ecclesiastical diplomacy: formal theological demands, careful diplomatic language, networks of lay and clerical allies, and the constant anxiety of a pope trying to manage events happening months away by letter.]
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.