Leo was unable to save the city a second time from barbarian hordes just a few years later, when the Vandals sacked the city. He is a former news editor at GoLocalProv.com and was a correspondent for the New Hampshire Union Leader, where he covered the 2008 presidential primary. Pope Leo X (born Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, ... Leo treated the Eastern Catholic Greeks with great loyalty, ... Leo called Janus Lascaris to Rome to give instruction in Greek, and established a Greek printing-press from which the first Greek book printed at Rome appeared in 1515. He was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1754. When in 455 the city was captured by the Vandals under Genseric, although for a fortnight the town had been plundered, Leo's intercession obtained a promise that the city should not be injured and that the lives of the inhabitants should be spared. Leo is credited with orchestrating the dogmatic definition of Christ’s dual yet distinct natures that was issued from the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. One thing is undisputable though: Attila retreated after his meeting with the Pope. Saint Leo IX, head of the medieval Latin church (1049–54), during whose reign the papacy became the focal point of western Europe and the great East-West Schism of 1054 became inevitable. Leo died on 10 November, 461, and was buried in the vestibule of St. Peter's on the Vatican. He is perhaps most famous for persuading Attila the Hun to abandon his plans to sack the city of Rome and to withdraw his forces beyond the Danube river (452) The “important document” was written by one of his world-shaking popes, Leo the Great, who was born about 391 and reigned from 440 to 461. The meeting ended with Attila agreeing to not invade Rome. saints, The so-called "Sacramentarium Leonianum" is a collection of orations and prefaces of the Mass, prepared in the second half of the sixth century. Leo’s indomitable spirit and profound mind has ever continued to influence and inform the Roman Catholic Church throughout the centuries after his death on November 10, 461, when he was buried, according to his wishes, as … Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/StephenBeale1, Invite the Holy Spirit to Bring Fullness to Your Prayer. He was still a deacon when he was elected pope. Stephen Beale. After Rome was sacked, anyway, by the Vandals in 455, Pope Leo I assisted in rebuilding the city. I cannot help thinking that those Christians later called Monophysites and those by contrast called Nestorians (said to have made the two natures of Christ so distinct as to seem like two persons) did not in practice believe falsehoods, since their faith truly referred to God and its mysterious content was tacitly reflected in sacred liturgy. Saint Leo the Great, also known as Pope Saint Leo I, was born into a Roman aristocratic family. The next pope called "the great" is Pope St. Gregory (540-604). Without Leo, the council could hardly have brought the clarity it did to the creed that Anglican and Catholics still recite Sunday by Sunday. All rights reserved. Attila was, apparently, so impressed with Pope Leo I that he willingly withdrew. Leo says that this would be bad news for humanity, which would not have been saved unless God had really taken our complete human nature, “for we could not have overcome the author of sin and of death unless he who could neither be contaminated by sin nor detained by death had taken upon himself our nature and made it his own”. Catholic Exchange is a project of Sophia Institute Press. Indeed if it had not been for God choosing to reveal things about himself, we should be left knowing that he is but not at all what he is. He served as a deacon during the reign of Pope Celestine I (422-432). Pope Saint Leo I is one of the only two Popes in two thousand years to be called "the Great." “A brilliant distillation of the no-nonsense conservatism of Latin Christianity,” says Professor Duffy, “the Tome restated the paradoxes of the New Testament in starkly simple yet eloquent language.”. Exchange is a meditation on that mystery too and … Attila was, apparently, so impressed with Pope I... 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