Feast day: November 10

St. Leo the Great

Pope & Doctor of the Church · d. 461

Patron of Popes, confessors

The pope who defined Christ's two natures at Chalcedon — and rode out, unarmed, to meet Attila the Hun, persuading him to spare Rome.

Leo became pope in 440, in the twilight of the Western Roman Empire, and proved one of the strongest and clearest minds ever to hold the office — so great that he is one of only two popes given the title 'the Great.' At a time when central authority was crumbling, he labored to hold the Church together in unity of faith and discipline, and to assert the role of the bishop of Rome as the guardian of that unity.

His most lasting achievement was doctrinal. When the Church was torn by disputes over how Christ could be both God and man, Leo set out the orthodox faith in a famous letter, the 'Tome.' Read aloud at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, it settled the question — that Christ is one person in two natures, truly God and truly man — and the assembled bishops are said to have cried out, 'Peter has spoken through Leo!'

He showed the same authority in the face of armies. In 452, when Attila and his Huns were sweeping toward Rome, leaving devastation behind them, Leo went out to meet the dreaded conqueror in person — unarmed, with only his priestly dignity — and persuaded him to turn back from the city. A few years later he confronted the Vandal king who sacked Rome, and at least won mercy for its people from massacre and fire.

A great preacher whose sermons survive, a defender of the poor, and a tireless shepherd, Leo died in 461. He was declared a Doctor of the Church, honored as the pope who, amid the collapse of an empire, gave the faith its clearest words and the papacy its enduring strength.

He talked Attila the Hun out of sacking Rome. No army, no walls — words.

“Christian, remember your dignity.”
— St. Leo the Great

Image: Authors of Menologion of Basil II (circa 985 AC, Constantinople), Byzantine manuscript illuminators[1]: Pantoleon with G (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/09154b.htm