# The New International Encyclopædia/Leo (popes)

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​LEO. The name of thirteen popes. Leo I., Saint, Pope 440–461, surnamed ‘the Great,’ one of the most eminent of the Latin fathers. He was born in Tuscany. By Pope Celestine I. (422–432) he was made one of the seven Roman deacons. His influence is attested by Cassian’s dedication to him of his De Incarnatione Contra Nestorium (430), and Cyril of Alexandria appealed to his aid against Bishop Juvenal of Jerusalem, who desired to be made a patriarch (431). Pope Sixtus III. (432–444) sent him on a civil embassy to Gaul, while absent on which he was elected Pope. Leo’s letters, addressed to all parts of the Church, exhibit prodigious activity and zeal, and are used by Catholic controversialists as an evidence of the extent of the jurisdiction of the Roman See. In a council held at Rome in 449, he set aside the proceedings of the so-called Robber Synod of Ephesus, which had been held that year and had pronounced in favor of Eutyches (q.v.), summoned a new council at Chalcedon, in which his legates presided, and in which Leo’s celebrated ‘dogmatical letter’ was accepted ‘as the voice of Peter,’ and adopted as the authentic exposition of the orthodox doctrine on the person of Christ. The history of Leo’s interposition with Attila (452) in defense of the Roman city and people will be found in the article Attila; and his subsequent similar interposition with Genseric (455), if less dramatic in the incidents with which history or legend has invested it, was at least so far successful as to save the lives of the citizens, and the public and private buildings of the city of Rome. He formulated clearly the monarchical idea of the Papacy, which he conceived to be built upon Peter and the divinely constituted head of the Christian world. Accordingly he acted consistently in the character of universal bishop. He regulated affairs in Africa no less than in Gaul and Spain. When he found that the Council of Chalcedon (451) had put Constantinople above all other apostolic patriarchates, he required the Emperor to cancel the offensive 28th canon, and as the Emperor declared that its confirmation depended upon the Pope, Leo asserted that the ​Greeks had given it up. Leo endeavored to extirpate heresy (Manicheism, Priscillianism), but rather unsuccessfully. He died in Rome, November 10, 461. His sermons and letters, of great interest and value, are in Migne, Patrologia Latina, liv.-lvi., and a partial English translation in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2d series, xii. Consult: Gore, Leo the Great (London, 1880); Arendt, Leo der Grosse und seine Zeit (Mainz, 1835); Perthel, Papst Leos I. Leben und Lehren (Jena, 1843); Langen, Geschichte der römischen Kirche von Leo I. bis Nicolaus I. (Bonn, 1885).
Leo II., Saint, Pope 682–683. He was born in Sicily. He confirmed the canons of the Council of Constantinople (680–681), and the condemnation of Pope Honorius for “not extinguishing the flame of incipient heresy.” He succeeded in healing the schism between the sees of Rome and Ravenna, through an arrangement by which the bishops of Ravenna were to be ordained at Rome and to be excused from the payment of the money fee previously exacted from them. He was the friend and patron of church music, and aided in the improvement of the Gregorian chant. His letters are in Migne, Patrologia Latina, xcvi.
Leo III., Pope 795–816. His pontificate is chiefly remarkable as the epoch of the establishment of the new Empire of the West. He was a native of Rome. During the greater part of the eighth century the popes, through the practical withdrawal of the Byzantine emperors, had exercised a temporal supremacy in Rome, which was fully recognized by the gift of Pepin, the pontiffs being placed under the protectorate of the Frankish sovereigns, who received the title of patrician. The pontificate of Leo, however, was a troubled one, and in 799 he was treated with much violence and obliged to flee to Spoleto, whence he afterwards repaired to Paderborn, in order to hold a conference with Charlemagne. On his return to Rome he was received with much honor by the Romans, and the chiefs of the conspiracy against him were sentenced to banishment. In the following year (800) Charlemagne, having come to Rome, was solemnly crowned and saluted Roman Emperor by the Pope, and the temporal sovereignty of the Pope over the Roman city and State, though under the suzerainty of the Emperor, was formally established. In 804 Leo visited Charlemagne at his court at Aix-la-Chapelle. With Charlemagne’s successor, Louis le Débonnaire, Leo was embroiled in a dispute about the right of sovereign jurisdiction in Rome, which had not been brought to a conclusion when Leo died in Rome, May 25, 816. Consult his letters in Migne, Patrologia Latina, cii.
Leo IV., Saint, Pope 847–855. He was a native of Rome. He built a new Roman suburb, occupying four years in the task, and it was named in his honor Civitas Leonina. He also restored Porta, a town near the mouth of the Tiber, where he colonized several thousand Corsicans who had been driven from their own country by an inroad of Saracens. He also founded a new town which was called Leopolis, since destroyed. Consult his works in Migne, Patrologia Latina, cxv.
Leo V., Pope 903. Leo VI., Pope 928–929. Leo VII., Pope 936–939. All these three held office in the darkest times of the Papacy, when it was under the domination of turbulent and ambitious secular lords and women. Leo VII. is said to have been a man of great personal holiness and austerity, and to have done much to restore monastic discipline. His letters are in Migne, Patrologia Latina, cxxxii.—Leo VIII., Pope 963–965. These dates, however, must be taken with the qualification that his title to the Papacy was not good until after the abdication in June, 964, of Benedict V., the legitimate successor of John XII., in whose place Leo was put by the Emperor Otho I.—Leo IX., Saint, Pope 1048–54. Bruno, son of Count Hugh of Egisheim, a cousin of the Emperor Conrad II. He was born in 1002 at Egisheim in Alsace, and became a canon and then Bishop of Toul. He was instrumental in the negotiation of four treaties between the emperors and the kings of France, and was elected Pope by the influence of Henry III. He was a man of great erudition, and did much to correct abuses. His steadfast assertion of the prerogatives of his office was a preparation for the conflict waged by Henry VII. against the Empire. He supported the Greek Emperor in Southern Italy against the Normans, by whom he was captured and detained, though with every mark of respect, for nine months. Restored to Rome on becoming dangerously ill, he died in 1054, recognized already, by popular consent, as a saint. His day is April 19th. Consult Hunkler, Leo der Neunte und seine Zeit (Mainz, 1851).
Leo X., Pope 1513–21. Giovanni de’ Medici, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent. He was born in Florence in 1475, and destined in childhood for an ecclesiastical career. His education was intrusted to the ablest scholars of the age; and through the influence of his father with Pope Innocent VIII., he was created a cardinal at the age of thirteen years, in 1488. In the expulsion of the Medici from Florence, in 1494, the young cardinal was included, and he used the occasion as an opportunity of foreign travel. He was employed as legate by Julius II.; and during the war with the French he was taken prisoner in the battle of Ravenna, but soon afterwards effected his escape. On the death of Julius II., in 1513, he was chosen Pope at the early age of thirty-seven, and took the name of Leo X. His first appointment of the two great scholars Bembo and Sadoleto as his secretaries was a pledge of the favor toward learning which was the characteristic of his pontificate; but he did not neglect the more material interests of the Church and the Roman See. He brought to a successful conclusion the Fifth Council of the Lateran, and averted the schism which was threatened by the rival Council of Pisa. At the beginning of his reign his forces aided in driving the French from Italy, although in 1515 the new King, Francis I., restored the fortunes of France. In 1516 Leo concluded a concordat with Francis, which continued to regulate the French Church till the Revolution. In the political relations of the Roman See he consolidated, and in some degree extended, the reconquests of his warlike predecessor, Julius II., although he used his position and his influence for the aggrandizement of his family. His desertion of the alliance of Francis I. for that of his young rival, Charles V., although the subject of much criticism, was dictated by a sound consideration of the interests of Italy. But it is most of all as a patron of learning and art that the reputation of Leo has lived with posterity. Himself a scholar, he loved learning for its own sake; and his Court was the meeting-point of all the scholars of Italy and the world. He founded a ​Greek college in Rome, and established a Greek press, which he endowed munificently. (See Lascaris). In the encouragement of art he was no less munificent. Painting, sculpture, architecture, were equally favored; and it is to his vast project for the rebuilding of Saint Peter’s, and to the step to which he had recourse for procuring the necessary funds—his permitting the preaching of an indulgence, one of the conditions of obtaining which was the contribution to this work—that the first rise of the Reformation in Germany is ascribed. He himself seems to have regarded the movement as of little importance, describing it as ‘a squabble among the friars.’ In 1520 he issued a bull of excommunication against Luther, which the Reformer burned. Leo X.’s personal habits were in keeping with his taste, splendid and munificent in the highest degree. In his moral conduct he maintained a strict propriety, although he was not free from the stain of nepotism, the vice of that age, and his character was more modeled on the ideal of an enlightened prince than on that of a zealous and ascetic churchman. His death, which occurred rather suddenly on December 1, 1521, during the public rejoicings in Rome for the taking of Milan, was by some ascribed to poison; but there seems no solid reason for the suspicion. Consult: Roscoe, Life and Pontificate of Leo X. (Liverpool, 1805; new ed. London, 1883); Conforti, Leone X. ed il suo secolo (Parma, 1896); Niti, Leone X. e la sua politica (Florence, 1892); and his Regesta, ed. Cardinal Hergenröther (Freiburg, 1884–91).
Leo XI., Pope 1605. Alessandro Ottaviano de’ Medici. He was born in Florence in 1535 and made Bishop of Pistoia in 1573, Archbishop of Florence and cardinal in 1574, holding later the cardinal-bishoprics of Albano and Palestrina. Clement VIII. intrusted him in 1596 with the difficult mission to the Court of France, soon after the conversion of Henry IV., and he acted for the Holy See in the conclusion of the Peace of Vervins. He became Pope on April 1, 1605, but reigned only twenty-six days.
Leo XII., Pope 1823–29. Annibale della Genga. He was born near Spoleto in 1760, and educated in Rome for the priesthood, which he received in 1783. After serving as chamberlain and secretary to Pius VI. he was made titular Archbishop of Tyre in 1793 and appointed Nuncio at Cologne, though the fortunes of war obliged him to change his residence several times. Under Pius VII. he was employed on diplomatic missions in Germany, and after Napoleon’s fall was the bearer of the Pope’s congratulations to Louis XVIII. He was made a cardinal in 1816, and held the Bishopric of Sinigaglia until 1820, when he returned to Rome as Cardinal-Vicar. In 1823 he was elected to succeed Pope Pius VII. His pontificate was marked by great zeal for the welfare of the Church, both in Europe and abroad. At home he condemned the secret societies, especially the Free Masons and the Carbonari. Consult: Wiseman, Recollections of the Last Four Popes (London, 1858); Artand de Montor, Histoire du pape Léon XII. (2 vols., Paris, 1843).
Leo XIII., Pope 1878–1903. Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaello Luigi Pecci. He was born in the ancestral seat of his family at Carpineto, 37 miles from Rome, March 2, 1810, and educated in the Jesuit college at Viterbo and the Collegio Romano, making further studies in law and theology after taking his doctor’s degree from the latter. He was ordained priest and made a domestic prelate by Gregory XVI. in 1837. As delegate successively at Benevento, Spoleto, and Perugia, he displayed great energy, and was especially successful in the task of suppressing brigandage. In 1843 he was made Archbishop of Damietta in partibus, and sent as Nuncio to Brussels, where he exercised a powerful influence in the support of the Church against secularist attacks. At the end of 1845 he was recalled to undertake the administration of the See of Perugia, and made his entry there the following summer amid universal rejoicings. He ruled his diocese with great zeal, promoted education, and cared for the material wants of the poor by founding monti di pietà (loan associations under ecclesiastical direction). The year of revolutions (1848) brought many troubles to the Church in Perugia as elsewhere, which were met by the Archbishop with increased zeal and devotion. His services were recognized by Pope Pius IX., who made him a cardinal in 1853, carrying out an intention expressed by Gregory XVI. before his death. He was not, however, prominent in the Papal councils, being supposed to be hardly a persona grata to the powerful Antonelli. He continued his labors at Perugia under difficulties which increased after the annexation of Umbria to the dominions of Victor Emmanuel in 1860, and the promulgation of numerous laws inimical to religious interests. He raised his voice in energetic protest against what he considered the spoliation of the Church and against tampering with the law of marriage, and declined to join in a public reception to Victor Emmanuel when he visited Perugia. In 1877 he was brought to Rome to fill the important office of Cardinal Camerlengo, and a few months later, on the death of Pius IX., was called upon to perform the administrative functions attached to it during a vacancy in the Holy See. On February 20, 1878, he was chosen to fill the vacancy, taking the title of Leo XIII. in imitation of the Pope of his boyhood. The combined learning, holiness, and statesmanlike sagacity displayed by him made his long, almost unprecedented, reign one of the most notable in the recent history of the Church. The great causes to which he devoted the last quarter century of his life are best marked by the numerous well-considered encyclicals in which he spoke through the Catholic hierarchy to the world. His first dealt with the study of theology, and commended the system of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the study of whose works he did all in his power to encourage, regarding it as the best means of meeting the difficulties of modern philosophy. In later ones he dealt acutely and broadly with social questions, the famous Rerum Novarum of 1891 being regarded as going a long way to meet the claims of modern socialism. Those on Christian marriage (1880) and on Freemasonry (1881) were more on traditional lines; but one which commended the diligent study of the Bible (1893) and those of 1894 and 1896 on the reunion of Christendom were of a nature to surprise and conciliate those who had no accurate knowledge of the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. The restoration of Christian unity had always been specially near his heart. He displayed a particular interest in the ​English-speaking race, addressing a touching letter ad Anglos in 1894; and the decision of the commission which in 1896 pronounced that Anglican ordinations were invalid had an important bearing on the attitude of the High-Church party toward Rome. His recognition of the importance of this race, especially in the New World, was marked by the establishment of a permanent representative in the United States and one in Canada who were responsible immediately to him. He maintained unwaveringly the attitude of his predecessor toward the Italian Government, considering it as a usurper in Rome and himself as a prisoner in the Vatican. Elsewhere his general policy was to support existing governments as representatives of law and order. Thus, though with some difficulty, he persuaded French Catholics to support the Republic; and he condemned the Nationalist ‘plan of campaign’ in Ireland. The Kulturkampf (q.v.) waged by the Prussian Government against the Holy See was brought to a close in 1887, the Papacy issuing from it triumphant. Leo XIII. reëstablished the ancient hierarchy of Scotland in 1878, and also established one in India. His constant efforts were devoted to the promotion of peace in the temporal order throughout the world; in 1885 he was able to secure it in a definite case by acting as arbitrator in the dispute which arose between Germany and Spain concerning the Caroline Islands. His life was of the simplest and most abstemious description, which doubtless had much to do with its prolongation. His interest in science and literature was always great, and marked for example by the provision of large sums for the Vatican Observatory. In 1883 he threw open the Vatican archives to all properly qualified scholars, expressing the conviction that the Church had nothing to fear from the study of the facts of history. His Latin style is of a high order, both in prose and verse: the composition of Latin poetry was one of his favorite relaxations. For his life, consult biographies by Bonghi (Città di Castello, 1884), O'Reilly (London, 1887), Weinand (2d ed., Cologne, 1892), T’Serclaes (Lille, 1894), Hall (New York, 1899). Narfon (Eng. trans., London, 1899); also Boyer d’Agen, La jeunesse de Léon XIII. (Tours, 1896); id., La prélature de Léon XIII. (ib., 1902); Goetz, Leo XIII., seine Weltanschauung und seine Wirksamkeit (Gotha, 1899); Keller, Life and Acts of Leo XIII. (New York, 1887). An edition of his Carmina was published in 1883; also Poems, Charades, and Inscriptions of Pope Leo. XIII. (ed. Henry, Philadelphia, 1902). His encyclicals have been published in Latin and German (Freiburg, 1881 seq.).