From: Unknown sender
To: Unknown recipient (Dioscorus)
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.]
HORjnSDA LEGATIS NOSTRIS QUIBUS 8UPRA. NcceSSe CSt, Ut
uel de iniunctae actionis statu uel de uestrae dilectionis
5 nostram Coust: uestram V 6 instuctioni F, corr. a
682
Saggestioncs Dioscori et legatorum ad Horinisdam
cogitemus absentia, et pro his rebus soUicitudo nostra non
2 patitur scribendi quaslibet occasiones omittere. antebac per magistrianum, qui in patricii Symmacbi remeauit obsequium, litteras karitati uestrae direximus, hortantes, ut nos de uni- uersis, quae in causa ecclesiastica gesta sunt uel geruntur, 5 non omitteretis instruere: quod et facere pro nostrae cogitati- onis releuatione debebitis. nostri enim uoti est, ut labori uestro deus omnipotens desideratum concedere dignetur
3 effectum. Stepbanum negotiatorem, per quem uobis nostra contradentur alloquia, in quo ratio poposcerit, competentibus 10 solatiis adiuuate, quia hunc semper nostrum fuisse recolitis. Data eodem die.
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From:Unknown sender
To:Unknown recipient (Dioscorus)
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.