RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Leo XIII
Leontius of Byzantium
open questions that it is impossible to do more than give a somewhat disjointed account of the present state of knowledge concerning both. Among the works in MPG, lxxxvi. 1185-2100, under the name of " Leontius of Byzantium or of Jerusalem," there are four of unequal length which occur in manuscript collections earlier than the year 1000 among the works of " Leontius the Monk " or " the Hermit." These are: (1) the tripartite work " Against the Nestorians and Eutychians "; (2) the " Solution of the Syllogisms Proposed by Severus "; (3) the " Thirty Chapters against Severus "; (4) the treatise " Against the Frauds of the Apollinarians." The first two undoubtedly belong to the same author, who wrote the first between 529 and 544. He had been a Nestorian in his youth, but had seen the error of his ways and become a zealous opponent of both the Monophysites and all whom he called " concealed Nestorians," meaning the adherents of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Diodorus of Tarsus. The " Thirty Chapters" are also by the same author, but do not seem to have been published as a substantive work. The last-named treatise is a masterpiece of patristic learning, possibly though by no means certainly from the same hand. The treatise De sectis, the longest known of the works ascribed to Leontius in Migne, was formerly thought to be, according to the Greek title, a work conceived on the basis of utterances of the Abbot Theodore, and, according to the time of the work as a whole, the date of Leontius was frequently put as late as 600. It is now, however, generally admitted that it contains genuine Leontian material in a later recasting, made between 579 and 607. In spite of much recent discussion, it still seems safe to regard it as based upon a substantive work by Leontius, and not (as with Moller) upon mere lecture-notes of his worked into literary shape by his disciple Theodore, or (as with Zahn) the conception of a third writer from information given by Theodore. It may be taken as demonstrated that the treatises of a Leontius of Jerusalem Contra Nestorianos (MPG, lxxxvi. 1396-1768) and Contra Morwphysitas (ib. 1769-1901) offer in some way indubitably Leontian material — perhaps they also are a recasting of the treatise on which the De sectis is based. One thing seems sure, viz., the Doctrina antiquorum patrum de verbi incarnatione edited by F Dekamp, Minister, 1907, compiled in the seventh century, quotes this fundamental work, not the De sectis; all that appears in the latter to suggest a date later than that of Leontius is absent in the Doctrina quotations. It is not possible to go further into detail as to the nature of this fundamental work until more textual investigations have been made; but the hypothesis that the " Solution " and the " Thirty Chapters " originally formed part of it still seems not improbable. It may have been a dogmatic-polemical treatise directed principally against Arians and Sabellians, Nestorians and Monophysites, perhaps consisting of separate chapters against particular heresies, in which the patristic citations were followed by explanations in the nature of dogmatic, polemical, and historical scholia, thus accounting for the quotations " from the scholia of Leontius," of which five exist in the
Doctrina, and for the use of the word scholia in the Greek title of the De sectis.
Whoever Leontius may have been, it is clear that he was not merely an accomplished theologian but an influential man. The proposition that one of the Trinity suffered in the flesh, on the orthodoxy of which Justinian insisted, was evidently defended by him; the edict of the Three Chapters condemned Theodore (and Diodorus) , whom he labored to confute; Justinian's policy followed the path of the orthodoxy of Cyril and of Chalcedon, which Leontius represented; the later orthodoxy took up many Leontian thoughts; and his Aristotelianism was the parent of scholasticism. Yet, strangely enough, tradition tells nothing certain of his life. The most one can do is to attempt to identify him with four bearers of the name in the reign of Justinian. (1) The Leontius, a relation of the influential Comes Vitalian, who came forward at Constantinople in 519 with the Scythian monks led by John Maxentius, resisted the " Nestorianizing " tendencies of the Roman legates then in Constantinople, and went to Rome to obtain a confirmation of the proposition just cited and a condemnation of Faustus of Riez, disappearing in 520. (2) The Leontius who in 531 (or 533), together with Hypatius of Ephesus and a certain Eusebius, appeared as an orthodox participant in the conference with the Severians arranged by Justinian. (3) The Leontius who in 536 appeared among the monks of Jerusalem before the council held in Constantinople, together with Domitian, later bishop of Ancyra, and Theodore Ascidas, to obtain the condemnation of Anthimus for Monophysite tendencies. (4) The " Origenist " Leontius, " a Byzantine in race," of whom Cyrillus Scythopolitanus recounts in his Vita Sabm that he was received into the " new laura " between 519 and 521, went with Sabas in 531 to Constantinople, was there convicted of Origenism, returned later to the monastic settlements under Sabas and became a leader among the opponents of Theodore of Mopsuestia and his admirers, went again to Constantinople in 541 in the interests of his cause, and died there not long after. The last three of these are easily connected, and harmonize with the theological position of the writer Leontius, while the second is closely related to the first. The fourth identification alone offers positive difficulties — although the fact that the extant works of Leontius do not portray an " Origenist " in the sense of the Vita Sabce is not an insuperable objection; and the silence of tradition as to the career of Leontius is most easily explained on the assumption that he was held to some extent to have compromised himself. If these identifications are accepted, the only period of his life left dark is that before 519; and the " Byzantine monk " of the Doctrina receives its confirmation from the " Byzantine in race " of the Vita Sabas.
(F. Loofs.)
Bibliography: The earlier information is summed up in J. Fessler, Institution** patrologwe, ii. 934-935, Innsbruck, 1851, ed. B. Jungmann, consult ii., part 2, 1896. For later studies consult: F. Loofs, in TV, iii. 1-2, Leipsic, 1887, cf. T. Zahn, in Theologisches Literaturblatt, 1887, pp. 89-92, and W. Moller, in Theologische Literaturzeitung, 1887, pp. 336-339; F. Loofs, Studien iiber die dem
Leontius of Neapolis Leprosy