YEAR OF OUR LORD MLVI. LEO OF OCHRID. NOTICE.
(Fabricius, *Bibliotheca Graeca*, ed. Harles, vol. VII, p. 715)
Leo, Archbishop of the Bulgarians, a fierce adversary of the Latins, concerning whose writings Cave [speaks] at the year of Christ 1051, who correctly calls him Achridenus or Achridanus A, on the authority of Sigebert of Gembloux, chapter 147, *De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis*, because at that time the archbishops of the Bulgarians had their see at Achrida B. Pope Leo IX wrote against this Leo Achridanus. No one wrote more furiously or petulantly against the Latins than he, in the judgment of Nic. Comnenus, page 185, where he cites his *On the Procession of the Holy Spirit* (that it proceeds from the Father alone) and book 1 *Against the Use of Unleavened Bread in the Holy Eucharist*, at page 188. Mention is made of his three epistles on unleavened bread in Beveridge, *Codex canonum*, vol. II; in the *Synopsis of Canonical Epistles* of Alexius Aristenus, where a passage is cited from the first in Dd. 3b. Allatius also [cites] from the first and third epistles in *De consensu*, pages 1163 and 1167. The very bitter epistle to John, Bishop of Trani in Apulia, which he wrote in the year 1053 against the Latins, exists in the Latin version of the Legate Humbert in Baronius at that year, n. 23 ff., together with the epistle of Pope Leo IX, which is set in opposition to the, as he says, unheard-of presumptions of Cerularius and of this Leo; this also exists in the volumes of the Councils, vol. IX of Labbe, page 949, and vol. VI of Hardouin, page 927. (FABRIC.) — In the Bavarian Munich codices 112 and 115, [there is] an Epistle of Leo, Archbishop of Bulgaria, on unleavened bread and the Sabbaths, sent to a certain Roman pontiff. (Cat. emend. Gr., pages 43 and 44.) — The same in codex Paris. 1315, n. 2, in the public library. In Vienna in codex 157, n. 18, [are] excerpts from the works of Leo the metropolitan and other Greek writers against the Latins concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit, unleavened bread, fasting, the Sabbaths, etc. (Lambec. *Comment.*, vol. IV, p. 339.) — In the Escorial parchment codex, [there are] three epistles of Leo, Archbishop of Bulgaria, concerning fasts and the Sabbaths. Item, concerning designation and suffrage, election, status, and the privileges of the metropolitan archbishops. And concerning the universal ecclesiastical status and order, as attested by Pluerus in *Itinerarium per Hispaniam*, p. 179. (HARL.)
(a) Leo Achridanus is incorrectly distinguished from Leo, Archbishop of Bulgaria, in the Nesselian Index of the manuscripts of the Vienna library. (b) See the Dissertation prefaced to the works of Theophylact, vol. CXXIII. EDIT. PATR.
THE EPISTLE OF LEO ACHRIDANUS TO JOHN, BISHOP OF TRANI.
(Written in the year 1055.)The Greek text of this epistle, which was published in Latin from the version of Cardinal Humbert in Baronius and Canisius but not yet published in Greek, was transcribed from Munich codex 286 (a paper manuscript of the 15th century, f. 277) and most kindly communicated to us by Dr. J. Hergenröther, professor at the University of Würzburg. The name of Michael Cerularius is entirely absent from the inscription.
LEO ARCHBISHOP OF BULGARIA EPISTLE SENT TO A CERTAIN BISHOP OF ROME CONCERNING UNLEAVENED BREAD AND THE SABBATHS.
A The great love of God and the pleasant bowels of His compassion have moved us to write to your holiness, and through you to all the princes of the priests, and the priests of the Franks, and the monks, and the people, and to the most reverend Pope himself, and to call to mind the matter of the unleavened bread and the Sabbaths, which you keep in a manner mystically indecent, and thereby communicate with the Jews.
For the unleavened bread and the Sabbaths were things that they were commanded by Moses to keep; but our Pascha is Christ. He, that He might not be found to be an adversary to the Law, was both circumcised and celebrated the legal Pascha first; B then, having brought that to an end, He instituted our new one. And this is manifest from those things which, while speaking concerning the mystical supper in the Gospel according to Matthew, the divine evangelist also says thus: "Now on the first day of the unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying to him: Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the Pascha? And he said: Go ye to the city to a certain man, and say to him: My time is near, with thee I make the Pascha with my disciples." And after a little: "When it was evening, he sat down with the twelve; and whilst they were eating, he said: Amen, amen I say to you, that one of you is about to be-
betray me." And after Judas had said a little later: "Is it I, Rabbi?" he says to him: "You have said it." Up A to this point, O men of God, are the things of the legal Passover; but then the evangelist, adding what belongs to the mystical and our own, says: "And whilst they were eating, Jesus took bread and broke it, and gave to his disciples and said: Take, eat, this is my body which is broken for you." And taking the cup, he gave thanks and gave to them, saying: "Drink ye all of it: this is my blood of the New Testament." By saying "new," he showed that the things of the old had passed away and ceased. See how he called his bread "body" under the New Testament, as being lifegiving and animate and productive of heat. For the bread is so-called from *airō* (to lift up), because I lift up and carry to things above, possessing heat and inflation from the leaven and the salt; B but unleavened bread differs in nothing from a soulless stone and brick-dust and earthenware, sticking [(9)] to the earth below and attaching itself to dry mud, which Moses commanded the wretched Jews to eat once a year with fasting and bitter herbs, and legislated, saying that they are symbols of suffering and grief [(10)]. For if under the Old Testament the loaves of the presence are called loaves, yet they are called so abusively and indiscriminately, as in: "He gave them bread of heaven, and man did eat angels' food." And, "My tears have been my meat day and night"; but manna is signified by these. But our Passover is entirely joy and gladness, and it raises us from the earth through joy to heaven, just as leaven through its own heat C raises the bread, which, participating in both salt and leaven, is full of every sweetness; but the unleavened, having neither leaven nor salt, is dry mud. Or do you not hear Christ saying to his disciples: "You are the salt of the earth," and that "The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened"? He calls the holy Church "woman"; the three measures, being three most full D of grace, signify cryptically the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, in whom [(13)] we always spiritually live and move and have our being—in which the muddy unleavened bread in no way participates. Since
A salt and leaven were bad, why did Christ in these names manifest the disciples, and by the grace of the Holy Spirit place them as the light of the world and leaven? But see for me again, what David, singing about Christ, says: "You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek," who, before Moses and Abraham, acknowledging God from the Virgin and from the heavens and the earth and the remaining creatures, and appearing in the holy scriptures without genealogy, and being called high priest, rose up and gave him bread and wine, prefiguring from above the divine worship according to us in these [elements] in spirit and truth. For this reason the divine Apostle says, that if perfection were through the Levitical priesthood, Christ would not have been called a priest according to the order of Melchizedek, and that when the priesthood is changed, there is of necessity a change of law. The law having ceased, then, according to the same Apostle, of necessity the unleavened breads also cease.
Again, the same great Apostle, discoursing about these things in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, in the passage read on the holy and great Thursday, says: "Brothers, I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord on the night when he was being betrayed took bread, and having given thanks, he broke it and said, 'Take, eat; this is my body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of me.' Likewise also B regarding the cup: 'This cup is the New Testament in my blood; do this in remembrance of me.' For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord." But the unleavened breads neither have a remembrance of the Lord, nor do they proclaim his death, as they were Mosaic and established by the law sixteen hundred years ago, and have been abolished and ended by the New Testament, that is to say, by the Gospel.
And how do you judaically observe the Sabbath during the holy Quadragesima? Or do you not hear the Gospel saying that "as the disciples walked on the Sabbaths, they began to make a way, plucking the ears of grain and eating"? That is to say, they were effecting the destruction of the Sabbath as the beginning of the destruction of the law, introducing a way for the annulling of the law. And the Jews said to Christ: "Do you see what they are doing on the Sabbaths?" And he said: "Yes. Or do you not hear what David did when he was hungry, he and those with him? How he entered into the house of God and ate the loaves of the presence," and the rest. And that the Sabbath was made for man C
not man for the Sabbath. But they said, "This man is not from God, because he does not keep the Sabbath." And again, when the Lord A said, among those in the Sabbath who had a withered hand, and similarly those oppressed by a demonic spirit in the Sabbath, he healed, and the Jews were grumbling and saying similar things, Christ says: "Hypocrites, does not each one of you untie his donkey from the manger on the Sabbath, or his ox, and lead it away to water?" And similarly concerning the paralytic, whom he made whole on the Sabbath; and because of this, those who keep the Sabbaths with unleavened bread, and say they are Christians, are neither Jews nor Christians, but are pure, being like the B hide of a leopard, as the great Basil says, whose hair is neither black nor entirely white.
How is it that such people also eat things strangled, in which the blood is retained? Or do you not know that the blood of every animal is its life, and that he who eats blood eats life? "But flesh," says the Scripture, "with the blood of life you shall not eat." For I will certainly require your blood from the hand of the beasts, and from the hand of man, his brother, I will require it. And again, according to this, neither are the Gentiles clean (for the majority of those who sacrifice also eat), nor are the Jews clean (for they eat neither blood nor things strangled), but neither are the Christians clean, introducing a murky mixture C into their worship and dissolving that which is in the image of the orthodox faith.
And that you also do not chant the "Alleluia" during Lent, but only at Easter, which is interpreted: "The Lord has come, and praise, hymn, and bless him." According to this, then, do you neither chant the "God is the Lord, and he appeared unto us," nor the "Blessed is he who comes"? For this is also an "Alleluia."
What is this great deception of yours concerning such things? Will you not look up, will you not understand, will you not correct yourselves and the people, as those about to be judged for these things by God? Will you not stop saying D "Thus Peter and Paul [and Benedict] and the rest taught"? You deceive yourselves and the people in these things. But what I have written, these are the things which Peter and Paul and the rest of the apostles, and Christ taught, and the holy and ecumenical seven councils, having mastered them, confirmed, and the holy...