Pope Leo I
Pope Leo I , also known as Leo the Great, was Bishop of Rome from 29 September 440 until his death on 10 November 461. He is the first of the three Popes listed in the Annuario Pontificio with the title "the Great", alongside Popes Gregory I and Nicholas I.
Leo was a Roman aristocrat. He is perhaps best known for meeting Attila the Hun in 452 and persuading him to turn back from his invasion of Italy, though how large a part his personal authority played is debated, and some argue that Attila was already ready to end his campaign. He is also a Doctor of the Church, most remembered theologically for issuing the Tome of Leo, a document which was a major foundation to the debates of the Council of Chalcedon, the fourth ecumenical council. That meeting dealt primarily with Christology and elucidated the definition of Christ's being as the hypostatic union of two natures, divine and human, united in one person, "with neither confusion nor division". It was followed by a major schism associated with Monophysitism, Miaphysitism and Dyophysitism. He also contributed significantly to developing ideas of papal authority.
Early life
According to the Liber Pontificalis, he was a native of Tuscany and son of Quintianus or Quintilianus. By 431, as a deacon, he was sufficiently well known outside of Rome that John Cassian dedicated to him the treatise against Nestorius written at Leo's suggestion. About this time Cyril of Alexandria appealed to Rome regarding a jurisdictional dispute with Juvenal of Jerusalem, but it is not entirely clear whether the letter was intended for Leo in his capacity as archdeacon, or for Pope Celestine I directly.Near the end of the reign of Pope Sixtus III, Leo was dispatched at the will of Emperor Valentinian III to settle a dispute between Aëtius, one of the chief Roman military commanders in Gaul, and the chief magistrate Albinus. Johann Peter Kirsch sees this commission as a proof of the confidence placed in the able deacon by the Imperial Court.
Papacy
During Leo's absence in Gaul, Pope Sixtus III died on 11 August 440, and on 29 September Leo was unanimously elected by the people to succeed him. Soon after assuming the papal throne, Leo learned that in Aquileia, Pelagians were received into church communion without formal repudiation of their heresy; he censured this practice and directed that a provincial synod be held where such former Pelagians be required to make an unequivocal abjuration.Leo claimed that Manichaeans, possibly fleeing Vandal Africa, had come to Rome and secretly organized there. In late 443, Leo preached a series of sermons condemning the Manichaeans and calling for Romans to denounce suspected heretics to their priests. Eventually, suspected heretics were brought to court, and likely under torture, they confessed to various crimes. By early 444, Leo announced to the bishops of Italy that the Manichaeans had been eradicated from Rome. According to his contemporary Prosper of Aquitaine, Leo exposed the Manichaeans and burned their books. He was equally firm against the Priscillianist sect. Bishop Turibius of Astorga, astonished at the spread of the sect in Spain, had addressed the other Spanish bishops on the subject, sending a copy of his letter to Leo, who took the opportunity to write an extended treatise against the sect, examining its false teaching in detail and calling for a Spanish general council to investigate whether it had any adherents in the episcopate.
From a pastoral perspective, he energized charitable works in a Rome beset by famines, an influx of refugees, and poverty. He further associated the practice of fasting with charity and almsgiving, particularly on the occasion of the Quattuor tempora,. It was during Leo's papacy that the term "Pope", which previously meant any bishop, came to exclusively mean the Bishop of Rome.
Papal authority
Leo drew many learned men about him and chose Prosper of Aquitaine to act in some secretarial or notarial capacity. Leo was a significant contributor to the centralisation of spiritual authority within the Church and in reaffirming papal authority. In 450, the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II, in a letter to Pope Leo I, was the first to call the Bishop of Rome the Patriarch of the West, a title that would continue to be used by the popes through the present days.By 447, he declared that heretics deserved the most severe punishments. The Pope justified the death penalty declaring that if the followers of a heresy were allowed to live, that would be the end of human and Divine law.
Various regional matters
On several occasions, Leo was asked to arbitrate disputes in Gaul. Patroclus of Arles had received from Pope Zosimus the recognition of a subordinate primacy over the Gallican Church, which was strongly asserted by his successor Hilary of Arles. An appeal from Chelidonius of Besançon gave Leo the opportunity to assert the pope's authority over Hilary, who defended himself stoutly at Rome, refusing to recognize Leo's judicial status. Feeling that the primatial rights of the bishop of Rome were threatened, Leo appealed to the civil power for support and obtained, from Valentinian III, a decree of 6 June 445, which recognized the primacy of the bishop of Rome based on the merits of Peter, the dignity of the city, and the legislation of the First Council of Nicaea; and provided for the forcible extradition by provincial governors of any bishop who refused to answer a summons to Rome. Faced with this decree, Hilary submitted to the pope, although under his successor, Ravennius, Leo divided the metropolitan rights between Arles and Vienne.File:Priest celebrating Mass at Altar of Leo I in St. Peter's Basilica.jpg|thumb|left|Priest celebrating Mass at the Altar of Leo the Great with the Fuga d'Attila relief by Alessandro Algardi in St. Peter's Basilica
In 445, Leo disputed with Patriarch Dioscorus, Cyril of Alexandria's successor as Patriarch of Alexandria, insisting that the ecclesiastical practice of his see should follow that of Rome on the basis that Mark the Evangelist, the disciple of Peter the Apostle and the founder of the Alexandrian Church, could have had no other tradition than that of the prince of the apostles.
The fact that the African province of Mauretania Caesariensis had been preserved to the empire and thus to the Nicene faith during the Vandal invasion and, in its isolation, was disposed to rest on outside support, gave Leo an opportunity to assert his authority there. In 446 he wrote to the Church in Mauretania in regard to a number of questions of discipline, stressing the point that laymen were not to be appointed to the episcopate.
In a letter to the bishops of Campania, Picenum, and Tuscany he required the observance of all his precepts and those of his predecessors; and he sharply rebuked the bishops of Sicily for their deviation from the Roman custom as to the time of baptism, requiring them to send delegates to the Roman synod to learn the proper practice.
Because of the earlier line of division between the western and eastern parts of the Roman Empire, Illyria was ecclesiastically subject to Rome. Pope Innocent I had constituted the metropolitan of Thessalonica his vicar, in order to oppose the growing influence of the patriarch of Constantinople in the area. In a letter of about 446 to a successor bishop of Thessalonica, Anastasius, Leo reproached him for the way he had treated one of the metropolitan bishops subject to him; after giving various instructions about the functions entrusted to Anastasius and stressing that certain powers were reserved to the pope himself, Leo wrote: "The care of the universal Church should converge towards Peter's one seat, and nothing anywhere should be separated from its Head."
He succeeded in having an imperial patriarch, Timothy Salophakiolos, and not Timotheus Aelurus, chosen as Coptic Orthodox Pope of Alexandria on the murder of Greek Patriarch Proterius of Alexandria.
Writings
Almost 100 sermons and 150 letters of Leo I have been preserved.''Tome''
At the Second Council of Ephesus in 449, Leo's representatives delivered his famous Tome, a statement of the faith of the Roman Church in the form of a letter addressed to Archbishop Flavian of Constantinople, which repeats, in close adherence to Augustine of Hippo, the formulas of western Christology. The council did not read the letter nor did it pay any attention to the protests of Leo's legates but deposed Flavian and Eusebius of Dorylaeum, who appealed to Rome. That is one reason that the council was never recognized as ecumenical and was later repudiated by the Council of Chalcedon.It was presented again at the subsequent Council of Chalcedon as offering a solution to the Christological controversies still raging between East and West.
Council of Chalcedon
, in the beginning of the conflict, appealed to Leo and took refuge with him on his condemnation by Flavian, but on receiving full information from Flavian, Leo took his side decisively. Leo demanded of the emperor that an ecumenical council should be held in Italy, and in the meantime, at a Roman synod in October 449, repudiated all the decisions of the "Robber Synod". In his letters to the emperor and others he demanded the deposition of Eutyches as a Manichaean and Docetic heretic.The Council of Chalcedon of 451 rejected the heresy of Eutyches who denied the true human nature of the Son of God, and affirmed the union in his one Person, without confusion and without separation, of his two natures, human and divine.
The acts of the council report:
"After the reading of the foregoing epistle, the most reverend bishops cried out: 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. So taught the Apostles. Piously and truly did Leo teach, so taught Cyril. Everlasting be the memory of Cyril. Leo and Cyril taught the same thing, anathema to him who does not so believe. This is the true faith. Those of us who are orthodox thus believe. This is the faith of the fathers. Why were not these things read at Ephesus? These are the things Dioscorus hid away."
Leo firmly declined to confirm their disciplinary arrangements, which seemed to allow Constantinople a practically equal authority with Rome and regarded the civil importance of a city as a determining factor in its ecclesiastical position; but he strongly supported its dogmatic decrees, especially when, after the accession of Emperor Leo I, there seemed to be a disposition toward compromise with the Eutychians.