Leo the Great

Wow, I'm having to use my old get-through-college method of not daring to look up for the end of the tunnel, until I'm almost there. St. Leo the Great takes us up to the thirteenth Doctor. There are thirty-three Doctor's total, so we're not quite half way through the list. The entire purpose of this project is so I could learn something about these men and women who continue to teach the Church in every generation. That other people read this causes me to want to do the series as best I can, but the truth is that what I don't know about any of these Doctors could fill a book.

All that aside, let's get on with St. Leo the Great.

The Doctors of the Church guru, John F. Fink, to whom I turn for instruction, says that considering how much all popes have written, it's amazing that only two are considered Doctors. Also, they are the only two popes to be called 'great.'

Before getting into his ecclesiastical dealings, we should consider two things that would mark him out as 'great' no matter who he was. First, Leo met Attila and talked him out of sacking Rome by offering him an annual tribute. I ask you, who ever talked Attila out of anything? The second is not as good an ending, but powerful still. Genseric and the Vandals showed up at the walls of Rome and Leo went out to talk. He couldn't spare the city totally, but he did get them to agree they wouldn't burn the city or massacre the citizenry. They did pillage the city for fifteen days, and take backs slaves.

Those are significant accomplishments, in both cases. From those alone, without any consideration of religion, we are safe in assuming that Leo was a great man. He must have been very charismatic personally.

Now for matter ecclesiastical. Take a look at this list of letters and sermons. Impressive isn't it? One of the requirements for becoming a Doctor of the Church is a large body of writings. How else can someone dead for more than a thousand years still teach us? Ninety-six sermons and one hundred forty-three letters

Leo dealt with a couple of heresies, Manichaeanism and Priscillianism. And as always there was a couple of troublesome Church Councils. One of which at Ephesus is not considered a council as a result of the Fourth Ecumenical Council. The Fourth Ecumenical Council also raised the Patriarchate of Constantinople to the level of Rome. Leo didn't like that.

Enough about councils and those that manipulate them. Here is a quote from the Tome, a letter he wrote to Archbishop Flavian.

There enters then these lower parts of the world
the Son of God, descending from His heavenly home
and yet not quitting His Father's glory,
begotten in a new order by a new nativity.
In a new order, because being invisible in His own nature,
He became visible in ours, and He whom nothing could contain
was content to be contained:
abiding before all time He began to be in time:
the Lord of all things, He obscured His immeasurable majesty
and took on Him the form of a servant:
being God that cannot suffer,
He did not disdain to be man that can, and, immortal as He is,
to subject Himself to the laws of death.