Commontide
Ecumenical Commemoration
Bishop of Rome & Doctor of the Church
November 10 · d. 461
also known as Leo I, Saint Leo, Pope Leo the Great
Leo the Great was bishop of Rome from 440 to 461 and one of only three popes the church has called "the Great." He is remembered for two things above all: the Tome, his letter defining that Christ is one person in two natures, which the Council of Chalcedon received in 451 as the standard of the faith, and the day in 452 when he rode out unarmed to meet Attila the Hun and turned him back from Italy. He was named a Doctor of the Church, and his feast is November 10.
Leo was a deacon of the church of Rome, one of the men the popes leaned on for the hardest business of the day. In the year 440 he was far from home, away in Gaul (in what is now France), sent by the emperor to make peace between two quarrelling commanders, when word reached him that the bishop of Rome had died and that the clergy and people had chosen Leo himself to take his place. He came back and was consecrated, and for twenty-one years he was the shepherd of a city and a church in a world that was coming apart. The Western empire was crumbling; its armies could no longer hold the frontiers, and one wave of invaders after another was pressing into Italy. Two great dangers came to Leo's door in those years, one to the faith and one to the city, and he met them both with the same steadiness.
The danger to the faith came out of the East. An aged monk named Eutyches, who led a monastery in Constantinople, had begun to teach that Christ had only one nature, that his humanity had been so swallowed up in his divinity, like a drop of honey lost in the sea, that he was not truly a man as we are men. Leo saw the peril at once. If Christ had not really become one of us, if he had not taken true human flesh and a true human soul, then he had not really died our death, nor carried our nature up to God; and a Saviour who was not truly man could not save men. So Leo wrote a letter to Flavian, the bishop of Constantinople, and set the faith down as plainly as it has ever been set: that Christ is one person in two natures, each nature whole and each doing its own proper work. In Charles Lett Feltoe's translation in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, the letter reads:
For each form does what is proper to it with the co-operation of the other; that is the Word performing what appertains to the Word, and the flesh carrying out what appertains to the flesh.
The letter became famous under a single word: the Tome of Leo.
At first the Tome was refused. In 449 a council gathered at Ephesus, on the coast of Asia Minor (in what is now western Turkey), and it would not even let Leo's letter be read; it upheld Eutyches and drove out those who stood against him. Leo was appalled, and gave that assembly the name the church has kept for it ever since: not a lawful council but a robber-synod, the Latrocinium. He would not let the matter rest. Two years later a far greater council met at Chalcedon, across the water from Constantinople (today Kadıköy in Istanbul), with hundreds of bishops present, and there the Tome of Leo was read aloud. When the reading was finished the bishops cried out together. In Henry Percival's translation in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers:
This is the faith of the fathers, this is the faith of the Apostles. So we all believe, thus the orthodox believe. Anathema to him who does not thus believe. Peter has spoken thus through Leo.
The council then wrote the faith into the words the whole church would confess, that Christ is "recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation," in the translation of Henry Bettenson. The faith that one man's error had endangered was now set on a rock.
The danger to the city came in arms. In 452 Attila and his Huns poured down into northern Italy, burning the towns as they came, and no army in the field could stop them. Leo did not wait behind the walls of Rome. He rode north to meet Attila himself, with two officials of the empire beside him and no soldiers at all, and found the king by the river Mincio, near Mantua. What passed between them no one wrote down; but Attila turned back, and Italy was spared. The church has long told that Leo did not stand there alone: that as he spoke, the apostles Peter and Paul were seen above him in the robes of bishops, with drawn swords, and that it was they, not the unarmed old man, whom Attila feared. Three years later the danger returned, when the Vandal king Genseric brought his fleet to the very mouth of the Tiber. This time Leo could not send the enemy away, but he went out to meet them and won what mercy could be won: Rome was plundered, but it was not burned, and its people were not put to the sword.
And through all of it Leo preached. He stood before his people at Christmas and told them what the faith he was defending actually meant for them: that the Son of God had taken their nature so that they might come to share in his. In Feltoe's translation he told them, "Christian, acknowledge your dignity, and becoming a partner in the Divine nature, refuse to return to the old baseness by degenerate conduct."
Leo died in 461, and was the first pope to be laid to rest in St Peter's. The empire he had served would be gone within a generation. But the words he set down at Chalcedon did not go with it; across the world, in every land where the church is found, Christians still confess Christ as Leo confessed him, one person in two natures. The shepherd who guarded the flock with a letter and the city with his own body is remembered most for the letter, and for a faith that a robber-council could not overturn and the fall of Rome could not undo.
How we know Leo is, for a bishop of the fifth century, unusually secure, because so much of what he wrote survives. About ninety-six sermons and a hundred and forty-three letters have come down under his name, among them the dogmatic letter to Flavian of Constantinople, dated 13 June 449, that the church calls the Tome. The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon preserve the reading of that letter and the bishops' response to it. For the meeting with Attila the nearest witness is Prosper of Aquitaine, a cleric of Leo's own circle at Rome, whose chronicle records the embassy of 452 within a few years of the event. Between Leo's own words, the conciliar acts, and Prosper, the frame of his life stands on firmer ground than that of almost any pope of the age.
He was born, tradition holds, in Tuscany, around the year 400, though the Catholic Encyclopedia notes that his birth date is in fact unknown. He served as a deacon of the Roman church under Popes Celestine and Sixtus III, trusted enough to be sent on imperial business; and it was on one such errand, a mission to reconcile two commanders in Gaul, that he learned he had been elected bishop of Rome. He was consecrated on 29 September 440 and held the see for twenty-one years.
The controversy that produced the Tome turned on the person of Christ. Eutyches, the aged head of a monastery in Constantinople, pressed the unity of Christ so far that his human nature seemed to be absorbed into the divine. Leo's letter answered with the formula of one person in two natures, each keeping its own properties. The Second Council of Ephesus in 449, which Leo condemned as the Latrocinium, the Robber Council, rejected the Tome and vindicated Eutyches; but two years later the Council of Chalcedon, in 451, reversed that judgment. It received the Tome to the acclamation that Peter had spoken through Leo, and framed the Definition of the two natures that has been the standard of Chalcedonian Christology ever since.
The meeting with Attila is where the sources part from the later devotion. That Leo went out in 452 with the consul Avienus and the prefect Trygetius, met Attila near the river Mincio, and that the Huns then withdrew from Italy, is recorded by Prosper close to the time. The scene the church came to love, in which the apostles Peter and Paul appear at Leo's side with drawn swords and turn Attila back, is not in Prosper; it belongs to later tellings, and it was given its most famous form more than a thousand years afterward by Raphael, who painted it on the wall of a papal apartment in the Vatican, the Stanza di Eliodoro, in 1513 and 1514. Whether or not the apostles were seen, an unarmed bishop walked out to meet the man Europe feared and the city was spared; and the way the church told the story, apostles and all, is itself part of Leo's history. Three years later, when Genseric and the Vandals took Rome in 455, Leo's intercession is credited with sparing the city from fire and its people from slaughter.
Leo is kept on November 10, the day of his death, in the Roman calendar and in the calendar of the Church of England; the Christian East commemorates him on February 18. He is honoured as a Doctor of the Church and as one of the three popes the tradition has called "the Great." In art he is shown in the vestments of a pope, with the pallium on his shoulders, and his most celebrated image is the meeting with Attila, the subject of Raphael's fresco in the Vatican, where Peter and Paul hover above him sword in hand. He is remembered for two things chiefly: the Tome, the letter that gave Chalcedon its Christology, and the day he faced Attila and turned him back; and beyond these, as the pope who did more than any before him to set out the authority of the see of Peter, the architect, in the language of the historians, of the Roman primacy. The church that reveres him reveres a bishop who guarded, in one lifetime, both the creed and the city.
Letter 28 to Flavian (the Tome of Leo)(Latin, 449)
Leo's dogmatic letter of 13 June 449 defining that Christ is one person in two natures, each keeping its own properties; read at Chalcedon in 451 and received as the standard of the faith.
Public domain: New Advent (NPNF Second Series, Vol. 12, tr. Feltoe)
The Sermons and Letters of Leo the Great (NPNF Second Series, Vol. 12)(Latin, 5th century)
The full corpus of Leo's surviving sermons (about ninety-six) and letters (about a hundred and forty-three) in translation, including the Nativity sermons ("Christian, acknowledge your dignity") and the whole dossier of the Eutychian controversy.
Public domain: Christian Classics Ethereal Library
The Council of Chalcedon (Extracts and the Definition), NPNF Second Series, Vol. 14(Greek, 451)
The conciliar acts that preserve the reading of Leo's Tome, the bishops' acclamation ("Peter has spoken thus through Leo"), and the Definition of the two natures; the documentary frame for Leo's greatest doctrinal victory.
Public domain: New Advent (NPNF Second Series, Vol. 14, tr. Percival)
The Book of the Popes (Liber Pontificalis): Life of Leo(Latin, early medieval)
The early papal biography of Leo's reign, the source of much of the later devotional memory, including the tradition of his burial at St Peter's.
Public domain: Internet Archive (Loomis, 1916)
Leo the Great(English, 2009)
The most accessible introduction for the general reader: a short survey of Leo's life and thought set alongside annotated translations of his own letters and homilies.
Public domain: Routledge (publisher)
Leo the Great and the Spiritual Rebuilding of a Universal Rome(English, 2008)
The major scholarly monograph on Leo, arguing that his achievement was to remake the Roman church in the fifth-century crisis at the level of thought and idea as well as administration; the deeper study for the reader who wants the whole picture.
Public domain: Brill (publisher)
Primary sources. Leo speaks for himself more fully than most figures of his century. His sermons and letters, including the Tome (Letter 28 to Flavian) and the Christmas sermons, are translated by Charles Lett Feltoe in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Volume 12, free at CCEL and New Advent. The reading of the Tome at Chalcedon and the bishops' acclamation, "Peter has spoken thus through Leo," are in the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, translated by Henry Percival in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Volume 14; the Definition of the two natures is widely printed, and is quoted above in Henry Bettenson's rendering in Documents of the Christian Church. For the meeting with Attila the contemporary record is the chronicle of Prosper of Aquitaine.
Recommended modern biography. Bronwen Neil's Leo the Great (Routledge, The Early Church Fathers, 2009) is the best way in for the general reader: a short, readable introduction to Leo's world and thought, set beside annotated translations of his own letters and homilies, so that the reader hears Leo directly. For going deeper, Susan Wessel's Leo the Great and the Spiritual Rebuilding of a Universal Rome (Brill, 2008) is the major scholarly study of how Leo remade the Roman church in the crisis of the fifth century, in doctrine as well as in administration.
Further reading. The Catholic Encyclopedia article on Pope St. Leo I gives a compact scholarly summary of the life and works. The Liber Pontificalis (the Book of the Popes), in Louise Ropes Loomis's translation, carries the early papal account of his reign, including the tradition of his burial at St Peter's.
Online resources. Leo's letters and sermons are at New Advent and, complete, in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers at CCEL; the extracts from the Council of Chalcedon, with the acclamation and the Definition, are in the same series at New Advent.
Leo the pope, as it is read in the miracles of our blessed Lady, in the church of S. Mary the More, as he sang there mass, and much people by order were communed and houseled, and a matron, a certain woman, kissed his hand, whereof he was tempted vehemently in his flesh. And this holy man was a great wreaker and avenger on himself, and cut off his hand that same day privily, and threw it from him. Afterward the people murmured among them because the pope sang no mass, and did not divine service solemnly as he was wont to do. Then Leo turned him unto the Blessed Virgin, our Lady, and committed himself wholly to her providence. Then she anon appeared to him and restored to him his hand and reformed it with her holy hands, commanding that he should go forth and offer sacrifice unto her son. Then this holy man Leo preached unto all the people that came thither, and showed evidently how his hand was restored to him again. This Leo the pope held the council at Chalcedon, and ordained virgins to be veiled. It was also made there a statute that the Virgin Mary should be called the mother of God. That same time Attila destroyed Italy. Then Leo waking, prayed in the church of the apostles three days and three nights, and after said to his men: Who that will follow me, let him follow. When then he approached to Attila, anon as he saw S. Leo he descended from his horse, and fell down plats to his feet, and prayed him that he should ask what he would. And he desired that he should go out of Italy and release the christian people that he had in captivity. And his servants reproved him that the triumphing prince of the world should be overcome of a priest. He answered: I have provided for myself and to you. I saw on his right side a knight standing with a sword drawn and saying to me: But if you spare this man you shall be slain, and all your men.
Then S. Leo wrote an epistle to Fabian, bishop of Constantinople, against Eutichius and Nestorius, which he laid upon the sepulchre of S. Peter, and was in continual fastings and prayers, saying: O holy Peter, what that I have erred in this epistle as man, you to whom the cure of the Church i8 committed, correct and amend. And after forty days Peter appeared to him praying, and said: I have read it and amended it. Then Leo took the epistle, and found it corrected and amended with the hands of the apostle. Other forty days also he was continually in fastings and prayers at the sepulchre of S. Peter, beseeching to get him forgiveness of his sins. To whom Peter appeared and said: I have prayed our Lord for you, and he has forgiven you all your sins, save only of the imposition of your hand you shall be examined. He died about the year of our Lord four hundred and sixty
Not all the East received the council Leo had won. The Definition of Chalcedon was accepted in the West and in the imperial church of Constantinople, but a large body of Eastern Christians held that in Christ the divine and the human are united in one nature, and could not accept the two-natures formula. From Chalcedon the churches now called Oriental Orthodox, the Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and Ethiopian, date their separation from the imperial church, a division that has lasted to the present day.
Leo died on 10 November 461 and was buried at St Peter's, the first pope to be laid to rest there; his remains were moved inside the basilica in 688. In 1754 Pope Benedict XIV named him a Doctor of the Church, and the tradition counts him one of only three bishops of Rome it has honoured with the title "the Great," alongside Gregory I and Nicholas I.
British (Received Pronunciation): Chalcedon /ˈkælsɪdɒn/; Pontificalis /ˌpɒntɪfɪˈkɑːlɪs/
Readings for a Teacher of the Faith
Proverbs 3:13–26Psalm 119:89–1061 John 1:1–10Matthew 13:47–52
Almighty God, you gave your servant Leo the Great special gifts of grace to understand and teach the truth revealed in Christ Jesus: Grant that by this teaching we may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.