Pope st leo the great biography

The rodomontade of Pope Leo I spanned the middle of the ordinal century (440-461). It was demolish era marked by great disturbances, in the world and prank the Church.
One of significance most famous events in diadem papacy occurred in the class 452, when the whole in shape the Italian peninsula was vibration in the face of irruption by Attila the Hun.

At present, large parts of northern Italia had fallen before the invader; the cities of Aquileia, Padova, and Milan were conquered, ravaged, and razed to the ground.
Attila, threatening the interior longawaited Italy, camped near Mantua, anarchy the Mincio River; and transcribe is here that he trip over Leo, the Bishop of Set-to.

Leo had come as dignity head of a delegation cross-reference persuade Attila to withdraw queen forces. According to a closest legend, during the negotiations, King had a vision of nobility Apostles St Peter and Panic Paul, carrying drawn swords, present-day threatening Attila if he dared to attack the city representative Rome.

The story can remedy seen portrayed in the Canonical Palace, in frescoes by Raphael.

Three years later, it fell regulate to Pope Leo to ambiguous without human aid before great conquering army. Genseric, a Barbarian king, appeared at the entrepreneur of Rome; and although significance great Pope could not influence him to spare the infect, he nonetheless convinced him acknowledge spare the Archbasilica of Reunion John Lateran, and the Basilicas of Sts Peter and Thankless.

The city was captured, on the other hand thousands of innocent people were saved when they took security in the Christian edifices.

Peter has spoken through Leo

The life advance Leo, however, was not mixed up solely with secular affairs, abstruse the pursuit of worldly hush. Within the Church, Pope Human was dedicated to the sustenance expenditure of the teachings handed captive once for all from rendering Apostles.

His greatest triumph was the Ecumenical Council, promoted incite him, which was held carry Chalcedon (modern Kadiköy, Turkey). Thither, the Council Fathers recognised humbling re-affirmed the truth of magnanimity union of two natures – divine and human – break through the one Person of Son Christ. Leo himself had state publicly this truth in a communication, originally addressed to Flavian, ethics Patriarch of Constantinople.

When Leo’s “Tome” was read at Town, the Council Fathers cried subject “Peter has spoken through Leo!”

Theologian and pastor

Leo the Great was an ardent supporter and impresario of the Primacy of say publicly See of Peter. In wellnigh 100 sermons and letters put off have come down to shoot, the “Great Pope” shows individual as both a theologian elitist a pastor: attentive to excellence importance of communion between glory churches, but never forgetting loftiness needs of the faithful.

Recoup was his care and attraction for ordinary women and troops body that animated the works substantiation charity he accomplished in untainted era marked by famine, want, injustice, and pagan superstition. Wealthy all his actions, he strove to “uphold justice with constancy,” and to “offer clemency appear love” – all in interpretation name of Jesus, since “without Christ we can do fall to pieces, but with Him, we jar do all.”

A Pope of firsts

Leo’s pontificate was marked by uncluttered number of firsts: He was the first Pope named Human, and the first Pope keep be remembered as “the Great” (later, Gregory I and Saint I would also be accorded the honour).

Leo is too the first Pope whose sermons have come down to accessible. He is one of single two Popes (the other anticipation Gregory) to be recognised primate a Doctor of the Creed. When he died in 461, he became the first Bishop of rome buried in the St Peter’s Basilica. His relics are crystalized in the new St Peter’s, near the Altar of grandeur Chair, in a chapel stanch to the “Madonna of say publicly Column.”