While almost all of the works in this vault use Victorian translations, there is no out-of-copyright English translation of this treatise, so it was machine-translated (by Claude, 2026) from the public-domain Latin. It has not been checked by a human translator.
Against Eutyches and Nestorius. The third tractate in Thiel’s edition of the letters of Pope Gelasius (492–496).
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It was necessary also, since a recent dispute, or case, touches many people concerning the sacrament of the Lord’s incarnation (that is, concerning the true confession of both the Godhead and the manhood of our Saviour), that they should receive, so far as He graciously deigns to disclose it, what agrees with faith and reason. This was the more necessary because, as far as report has reached us, a pernicious cunning has hit upon a childish invention, and thinks it has found an argument that will serve it for a proof: that by some device or other it may count it right for us to confess one substance in the Restorer of the human race. With laughable craft it declares that against the Eutychians, who preach one nature in our Redeemer, we rightly put forward two; but that against the Nestorians, who divide the natures, our confession should set forth one in the same sacrament of the Lord. This insidious perversity must therefore be guarded against with the greatest care. It rests neither on the truth of the faith nor on the reason of things, and with a harmful subtlety it labours by every means to fix in our Restorer the notion of a single nature.
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For each plague raves with equal blasphemy about the conception by the holy Virgin, and about the first and original coming-forth of the Lord our Saviour. In the womb of an untouched mother, with no earthly father to do his part, He took His beginning by a divine working. He formed the matter of our human condition from the substance of her who bore Him, and by the condescension of His majesty imparted the union of divine power, so that the union of both natures came to be, ineffably, wonderfully and mightily, from the very beginning of His conception. Nothing whatever of this sacrament was set up within holy Mary either before or after: rather, the conception itself came at one and the same moment as the accomplishment of this mystery. Nor was the completion of the union added there to some substance that was already present. The beginning was made, on the contrary, from the perfect union of both substances. So the Angel answered the venerable Virgin when, learning of the glorious offspring that was to come, she said: “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” He replied: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” He says “which shall be born of thee” to express that the property of our condition was to be taken from the mother. He says “holy” because He would be begotten without the contagion of carnal concupiscence. And He says “shall be called the Son of God” to show at the same time that, as has been said, the sacrament of the human and the divine nature was to be wonderfully united in this conception. So it is written: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” The Spirit of God chose to say “the Word was made flesh”, although the Word was in no way changed into flesh, so as to signify more pointedly the truth of the original union of Godhead and manhood, by nature, in one and the same. For it would thus be plain that the Word Himself, working in the womb of the Virgin mother, had called forth from that same fruitfulness of hers the conception of the substance which He took to Himself to keep.
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Of this conception of our Lord, then, which can in no way be explained but is to be believed devoutly by this confession, the Eutychians say that there is one nature, that is, the divine. Nestorius no less speaks of a single one, that is, the human. If against the Eutychians we must assert two, because they put forward one, it follows that against Nestorius too, who speaks of one, we must without any doubt proclaim, not one, but two, as having existed united from its very beginning. Against Eutyches, who tries to assert one, that is, the divine alone, we fittingly add the human, so as to show that the two of which that singular sacrament consists abide there. Against Nestorius, who likewise speaks of one, that is, the human, we supply the divine no less. In the same way, therefore, against his one, we hold by a true definition that two existed in the fullness of this mystery from the first effects of its union. And both men, who in different ways prate of single natures, we overcome, not either of them with one nature only, but both with the property of two natures, the human and the divine, united from their beginning without any confusion or failing, and abiding.
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For although the Lord Jesus Christ is one and the same, both wholly God-man and wholly man-God, and although whatever belongs to the manhood the God-man makes His own, and whatever belongs to God the man-God has, yet, so that this sacrament may abide and may not be dissolved in any part, the whole man so continues to be what God is, that the whole God continues to be whatever man is. If anything, which God forbid, either of the Godhead or of the manhood departed from it, there would follow an unspeakable dissolution of the sacrament. Then, what must be shunned in the very saying and hearing, either the man would cease to be God, if only the manhood remained there and not the Godhead too, or God would in consequence cease to be man, if only the Godhead remained united there and not the manhood too. Nor would our condition appear glorified by union with the Godhead, but rather consumed, if it does not itself subsist in glory, and if the Godhead alone exists there and the manhood has ceased to be. Then, too, what the mind shrinks from saying but necessity forbids us to leave unsaid, the Godhead would appear changeable on either count: if either it has itself been turned into flesh, or the condition of manhood has been so poured over into the Godhead that its own property has ceased to be. For if the manhood no longer exists at all of itself, it remains that it was added to the Godhead and grew on to it, passing, that is, into the nature of the Godhead in such a way that the manhood altogether ceased to be. In that case the divine substance appears in every way to admit change. It can neither be lessened nor increased at all, and yet it would seem to have been enlarged by the manhood poured into it and added to it. But if the human condition neither subsists as poured into the Godhead (lest it be thought by its coming to have absorbed it) nor endures in its own property, then it is found to have remained nowhere at all. It is found not exalted but rather abolished, and so the indissoluble sacrament, so far as it rests with them, is dissolved.
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Again, if the manhood has been poured over into the Godhead, as they suppose, or has been wholly carried across into it, so that the human substance has ceased to be, then the form of the manhood has ceased without its own proper being. If they say that the lineaments of a human form subsist in the naked Godhead, what else are they shown to be bringing in but the Anthropomorphites, whom the Catholic Church long ago condemned for dreaming such things? For if both the substance and the form of the man Jesus Christ were consumed in this pouring-over, who is it that holy Stephen saw “standing at the right hand of power”? Who is the Son of man that “shall come to judge the quick and the dead”? Who will it be that “they shall look on, whom they pierced”? The whole mystery is abolished. The whole sacrament, as has been said, and God forbid it, is emptied and dissolved, and false will be what the Saviour Himself said: “Handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.” And He certainly said this after the resurrection. He spoke as the one who went about with His disciples for forty days, eating and living with them. He spoke as the one who ascended into heaven, and as the one who is promised to come again from thence. Either let them read where, after He declared this of His flesh, He was changed, and was lifted up into heaven in another way than He had shown Himself to His disciples; or else we do better to follow what the divine books establish, and not to pursue the dreams and empty phantoms of madmen.
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But these foolish men say, thinking to escape by it the force of this plain showing: “In the way He Himself willed, so He exalted and magnified the human nature.” Plainly, just as He Himself willed: as He foretold by His prophets, and as He willed it to be made known to His Church by His apostles and by His evangelists. Therefore, as has been said, let us turn over the sacred pages from the beginning of this sacrament. Let us see what they declare of His conception, what of His birth, and what of the one and same Person of our Lord Jesus Christ, at once God-man and man-God. Let us see what the divine voice pronounces of Him before His passion, or what He testifies of Himself; what He no less teaches after the resurrection; how He went about with His disciples on earth, and how He ascended into heaven; what was promised of Him as He ascended into heaven, and what of Him now set in the heavens; what all the heavenly sayings declare of His coming, and how He willed either to be understood or to be set forth by our confession. Let us hear all this on the witness of the Scriptures, and let us, as is fitting, be content in all things with His will, by which He has deigned to make Himself known to us.
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But now let us search more carefully whether the Eutychians, who make a show of refuting Nestorius, and on his account try to slip into Catholic minds a wish for one nature (though this has already been destroyed by plain reason), are not themselves brought back to that same Nestorius, willing or unwilling, by a roundabout way and hidden windings, “understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm”. For they say: “Before the union there were two natures; after the union, one came to be.” I ask them what they mean by “before the union”. If they mean before the mystery of the Lord’s incarnation came about, who does not know that the natures are different and ineffably distinct? The one is the highest of all natures; the other, though it bears the image of the Godhead, is of an earthly condition, and weak. But we are dealing with the account of the sacred incarnation, not with the distance between these natures, which everyone knows. Before this mystery was begotten in the Virgin’s womb there is no question and no dispute: the natures of Godhead and manhood are two, and far apart. But we, as has been said, are speaking of the Christian mystery, which was set in the womb of the Virgin mother. If, then, they would have it taken from that point, that before the union there were two, in the mother’s womb, that is, then there was some interval there, in which these natures are to be thought of as separate before their union and as coming together into union afterwards. This smells of Nestorius. He said it of the birth: he held that a bare man was begotten and was afterwards advanced to be God. These men are caught thinking the same of the conception of this mystery, if any interval at all is said to have come between, so that something came first and something followed later. For then the conception itself was not the union, and the union did not exist from the first in the conception, with everything that is called “before” and “after” wholly removed in the effecting of this union. It is not that two substances first existed, the human form which was assumed and the Godhead which assumed it, so that their union followed afterwards. Rather, this ineffable and great mystery was begun by the union, and united in the very beginning of this conception.
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Now if, as they rave, one nature came to be by the union, then there is either the abolition of one or the confusion of both. Neither of these does the Catholic faith admit, nor the truth of the sacrament itself, as the pages published by God bear witness, as has been said. By their testimony He was conceived by this union of two natures from His very beginning, and the Virgin’s conceiving went forward completed by this same union of Godhead and manhood. So too the holy birth took place with both natures abiding in this mystery. And through all the time in which our Redeemer vouchsafed to be in this world, God and man at once, each abiding properly, He truly appeared as existing so by fitting signs, conspicuous in His words and deeds. So He came to the passion which He vouchsafed to undergo for us. So after the resurrection He did not disdain to show Himself even to disciples who searched Him out. Such He ascended into heaven, and such He is promised to come again from thence, and in both natures, even now set in heaven, the apostolic preaching affirms Him to exist. Who, then, would dare, with a mind no less sacrilegious than it is ignorant in its blasphemies and deadly in its madness, to say that after the union one nature came to be? For we are instructed by the teaching of the whole saving Scripture that two were united in the conception. We are instructed that under the one and same Person of our Lord Jesus Christ, wholly God-man and wholly man-God, two were brought forth in their properties by an undefiled birth; that the same, abiding properly, were manifest in His life in the world; and that in all things, as has now often been said, each persists without the failing of the other. In both, one and the same Lord Jesus Christ, wholly God-man and wholly man-God, abides properly from them and truly in them: without confusion of Himself, without any division that any condition could touch, and without the loss or failing of either. From them and in them Christ is one and perfect and true. Without them, or without either of them (that is, without the manhood or the Godhead), Christ is neither perfect, nor one, nor true.