St. Leo the Great
Pope, Doctor of the Church
461 (April 11)
From Lives of Saints
with Excerpts from their writings
Published by John J. Crawley & Co., Inc. New York,
Nihil Obstat: John M. A. Fearns, S.T.D., Censor Librorum
Imprimatur: +Francis Cardinal Spellman, Archbishop of New York
August 7, 1954
Pope St. Leo the Great facing
Attila the Hun,
a sculpture in St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City
During the disintegration of the Western Empire,
when heresy was rife and all moral values were threatened by the barbarian
invasions, Pope Leo I stands out as the resolute champion of the faith.
His courage and sagacity lifted the prestige of the Holy See mightily, and
earned for him the title of "The Great," a distinction bestowed on but one
other pope, Gregory I. The Church honored Leo further with the title of
Doctor because of his expositions of Christian doctrine, extracts from
which are now incorporated in the lessons of the Catholic breviary. Of
his birth and early years we have no reliable information; his family was
probably Tuscan. We know that he was at Rome as a deacon under Pope
Celestine I and Pope Sixtus III, whose pontificates ran from 422 to 440.
Leo must have achieved eminence early, for even then he corresponded with
Archbishop Cyril of Alexandria, and Cassian dedicated his treatise against
Nestorius to him. In 440 Leo was sent to Gaul to try to make peace
between the imperial generals, Aetius and Albinus. Soon afterward Pope
Sixtus died, and a deputation came up from Rome to inform Leo that he had
been elected to the chair of St. Peter. His consecration took place in
September of that year, and he at once began to show great energy in the
performance of the papal duties.
The new pope set himself to make the Roman church a
pattern for all other churches. In the ninety-six sermons which have come
down to us, we find Leo stressing the virtues of almsgiving, fasting, and
prayer, and also expounding Catholic doctrine with clarity and
conciseness, in particular the dogma of the Incarnation. He was
determined to shield his flock from heresy, and when he discovered that
many Manichaeans, who had fled from the Vandals in Africa, had settled in
Rome and were spreading their errors, he summoned them before a council of
clergy and laymen. Under cross-examination some confessed to immoral
practices and some recanted. Against the recalcitrant, Leo invoked the
secular authority; their books were burned, and they themselves were
banished or else left Rome of their own volition. Meanwhile he was
preaching vigorously against the false teaching, as Augustine had done
earlier, and writing letters of warning to all the Italian bishops. One
hundred and forty-three letters written by him and thirty letters written
to him have been preserved; they illustrate the Pope's extraordinary
vigilance over the Church in all parts of the Empire. He also encouraged
the bishops, especially the Italian ones, to come to Rome to consult him
in person.
From Spain Turibius, bishop of Astorga, sent Leo a
copy of a letter he had been circulating on the heresy of Priscillianism.
The sect had made great headway in Spain and some of the Catholic clergy
favored it. As it developed there, it seems to have combined astrology
and fatalism with the Manichaean theory of the evil of matter. Leo wrote
back a long refutation of this doctrine and described the measures he had
taken against the Manichaeans in Rome. Several times he was asked to
arbitrate affairs in Gaul. Twice he nullified acts of the saintly Hilary,
bishop of Arles, who had exceeded his powers. The Emperor Valentinian III
in the famous edict of 445 denounced the Gallic bishop and declared "that
nothing should be done in Gaul contrary to ancient usage, without the
authority of the bishop of Rome, and that the decree of the apostolic see
should henceforth be law." Thus was the primary of Rome given official
recognition. One of Leo's letters to Anastatius, bishop of Thessalonica,
reminds him that all bishops had a right to appeal to Rome, "according to
ancient tradition." In 446 he writes to the African church in Mauretania,
forbidding the appointment of a layman to the episcopate, or of any man
who had been twice married or who had married a widow. (1 Timothy iii.
2.) The rules which he incorporated into Church law regarding admission
to the priesthood deserve mention: former slaves and those employed in
unlawful or unseemly occupations could not be ordained; to be acceptable,
candidates must be mature men who had already proved themselves in the
service of the Church.
Leo was now called upon to deal with difficulties
in the East far greater than any he had so far encountered in the West.
In the year 448, he received a letter from Abbot Eutyches of
Constantinople, complaining of a revival of the Nestorian heresy at
Antioch. The next year came a second letter, copies of which he sent also
to the patriarchs of Alexandria and Jerusalem. In this Eutyches protested
against a sentence of excommunication just issued against him by Flavian,
patriarch of Constantinople, and asked to be reinstated. His appeal was
supported by a letter from the Emperor of the East, Theodosius II. As no
official notice of the proceedings at Constantinople had hitherto reached
Rome, Leo wrote to Flavian for his version; with his reply, he sent a
report of the synod at which Eutyches had been condemned. From this it
seemed clear that Eutyches had fallen into the error of denying the human
nature of Christ, a heresy which was the opposite of Nestorianism.
A council was summoned at Ephesus by Theodosius,
ostensibly to inquire impartially into the matter. Actually it was packed
with friends of Eutyches and presided over by one of his strongest
supporters, Dioscorus, patriarch of Alexandria. This gathering, which Leo
branded as a Robber Council, acquitted Eutyches and condemned Flavian, who
was also subjected to physical violence. The Pope's legates refused to
subscribe to the unjust sentence; they were not allowed to read to the
council a letter from Leo to Flavian, known later as Leo's Tome.
One legate was imprisoned and the other escaped with difficulty. As soon
as the Pope heard of these proceedings, he declared the decisions null and
void, and wrote a bold letter to the Emperor, in which he said: "Leave to
the bishops the liberty of defending the faith; neither worldly power nor
terror will ever succeed in destroying it. Protect the Church and seek to
preserve its peace, that Christ in His turn may protect your empire."
Two years later, in 451, under a new emperor,
Marcian, a greater council was held at Chalcedon, a city of Bithynia in
Asia Minor. At least six hundred bishops were present. Leo sent three
legates. Flavian was dead but his memory was vindicated; Dioscorus was
convicted of having maliciously suppressed Leo's letters at the Robbers'
Council, and of virtually excommunicating the Pope himself. For these and
other offenses he was declared excommunicate and deposed. Leo's Tome
of 449 to Flavian was now read by his legates to the council. In it he
concisely defined the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation and the two
natures of Christ, avoiding the pitfalls of Nestorianism on the one hand
and of Eutychianism on the other. "Peter has spoken by the mouth of Leo!"
exclaimed the bishops. This statement of the two-fold nature of Christ
was to be accepted by later ages as the Church's official teaching. Leo,
however, refused to confirm the council's canon which recognized the
patriarch of Constantinople as primate over the East.
In the meantime, serious events of another kind
were happening in the West. Attila, "the scourge of God," after
overrunning Greece and Germany with his Huns, had penetrated France, where
he had been defeated at Chalons by the imperial general Aetius. Falling
back, he gathered fresh forces, and then entered Italy from the northeast,
burning Aquileia and leaving destruction in his wake. After sacking Milan
and Pavia, he set out to attack the capital. The wretched Emperor
Valentinian III shut himself up within the walls of remote Ravenna; panic
seized the people of Rome. In the emergency, Leo, upheld by a sense of
his sacred office, set out to meet Attila, accompanied by Avienus, the
council, Trigetius, the governor of the city, and a band of priests. Near
where the rivers Po and Mincio meet, they came face to face with the
enemy. The Pope reasons with Attila and induced him to turn back.
A few
years later the Vandal king, Genseric, appeared from Africa with his army
before the walls of Rome, then almost defenseless. This time Leo was able
to win from the invader only the promise to restrain his troops from arson
and carnage. After ten days of pillaging the city, the Vandals withdrew,
taking back to Africa a host of captives and immense booty, but sparing
the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul. Leo now set about repairing the
damage brought by the invasion. To the Italian captives in Africa he sent
priests, alms, and aid in rebuilding their churches. He was apparent
never discouraged, maintaining a steady trust in God in the most desperate
situations. His pontificated lasted for twenty-one years, and ruing this
time he won the veneration of rich and poor, emperors and barbarians,
clergy and laity. He died on November 10, 461, and his body was laid in
the Vatican basilica, where his tomb may still be seen.
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