Leo the Great

Bronwen Neil

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135284077
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia antica

Pope Leo I's theological and political influence in his own time (440-461) and beyond far outweighs the amount of attention he has received in recent scholarship. That influence extended well beyond Rome to the Christian East through his contribution to preparations for the Council of Chalcedon and its outcome. For this he was alternately praised and vilified by the opposing parties at the Council. Leo made his views known through letters, and a vast number of homilies. While so many of these survive, Leo and his works have not been the subject of a major English-language socio-historical study in over fifty years.

In this brief introduction to the life and works of this important leader of the early church, we gain a more accurate picture of the circumstances and pressures which were brought to bear on his pontificate. A brief introduction surveys the scanty sources which document Leo's early life, and sets his pontificate in its historical context, as the Western Roman Empire went into serious decline, and Rome lost its former status as the western capital. Annotated translations of various excerpts of Leo's letters and homilies are organised around four themes dealing with specific aspects of Leo's activity as bishop of Rome:

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• Leo as spiritual adviser on the life of the faithful

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• Leo as opponent of heresy

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• the bishop of Rome as civic and ecclesiastical administrator

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• Leo and the primacy of Rome.

Taking each of these key elements of Leo's pontifical activities into account, we gain a more balanced picture of the context and contribution of his best-known writings on Christology. This volume offers an affordable introduction to the subject for both teachers and students of ancient and medieval Christianity.

Part I
INTRODUCTION

Leo the Great (440–61) had the misfortune to live in interesting times. Fortunately he seems to have thrived on adversity throughout his twenty-one years as bishop of Rome, during a period of tremendous social and religious turmoil. Inheriting a see that had recently been riven by domestic strife and sectarian divisions and was inundated with refugees from Africa, both orthodox and heretical, Leo was able to maintain social order. In the tinderbox conditions surrounding the theological disputes of the late 440s and 450s, he managed to keep his head. He undertook the leadership of a church that under his predecessors had been operating well over budget. Imperial coffers had dried up and the western emperor himself, resident in Ravenna and Rome in the 440s, then solely in Rome from about 450, was ineffectual. The city, battered by barbarian attack, had lost many of its wealthy citizens and much of its self-respect. By taking over the reins of leadership, and stressing the privilege and responsibilities of Petrine succession, Leo managed to restore some sense of civic pride in Rome and its church. Leo sought to make Christianity a truly civic religion by implementing a new liturgical calendar of feasts that would eclipse the worn-out pagan traditions and bringing the papacy to the fore in negotiations with rivals for power over Rome.

Leo’s influence extended well beyond his own see of Rome, to the Christian East, through his contribution, in absentia, to the Council of Chalcedon (451). His achievements in the areas of Roman primacy and christology were not uncontroversial, however, and certainly not universally embraced. To further his causes in the areas of doctrine, Roman authority and church discipline, Leo made numerous doctrinal and canonical communications in the form of letters and homilies. Easily the most famous is his Tome to Flavian, a work that was pivotal in the christological disputes of the mid-fifth century but whose impact extended well into the Middle Ages. Leo’s contribution to Chalcedonian theology has long dominated scholarship on this pope, and continues to do so.¹

The present volume attempts to redress the balance by offering a new English version of eighteen homilies and letters attributed to Leo. The selected texts are grouped under four themes, which had a major bearing on Leo’s pontificate: 1. Pastoral caregiver; 2. Theologian and opponent of heresy; 3. Heir of St Peter; 4. Administrator of the wider church. While in most cases the existing translations in French, German, English and Italian are exemplary, I hope by presenting these texts according to their chronological order within these four categories to give the reader a sense of Leo’s social and historical context, as well as the import of his views on Christology, heresy, ecclesiology and soteriology, and how these developed over time.

After a brief overview of the main events of Leo’s life and pontificate, this introduction follows the thematic divisions of the texts translated within. In Part II a brief introduction to each translated text will treat the events that occasioned its production and the textual tradition. I hope thereby to present an accurate picture of the external circumstances and internal pressures which were brought to bear on Leo’s pontificate. By taking these pressures into account we gain a more balanced appreciation of the context and contribution of his best-known writings, those that deal with the Eutychian controversy.

1
LEO’ SLIFEANDTIMES

Contemporary sources on Leo’s life before he entered the pontificate on 29 September 440 are regrettably scarce. A few details are provided by the author of The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis). The earliest recension of this collection of achievements of the bishops of Rome dates to the early sixth century and is thus more than 150 years removed from Leo’s own day. Liber Pontificalis relates that Leo was born in Tuscany, a dubious claim, and was the son of an otherwise unknown Quintianus. The anonymous author omits to mention that Leo was made deacon under Sixtus III (432–40), in which role he would have received valuable training for the office of bishop. Indeed, this was a common career path in the papal administration. Part of his role as deacon was to undertake diplomatic missions for the imperial government (legationes publicae). According to Prosper’s Chronicle, Leo was acclaimed pope while conducting such a mission in Gaul. He had been sent there to settle a dispute between Albinus, praetorian prefect of Gaul, and the general Aetius.¹

A Life of St Leo composed in Greek conveys the high esteem in which Leo was held by certain parties in the East (van De Vorst 1910: 400–408). The Greek Life is preserved in a single manuscript of southern Italian origin.² The anonymous author upheld Leo’s contribution to Chalcedon but made no mention of the Tome by name. In fact the Greek Life includes very few verifiable historical facts at all, though it does mention by name Leo’s enemies Nestorius (ch. 5), Dioscorus, and Eutyches (ch. 6). The author claims that Leo had monastic training as a youth (ch. 2), a topos of the hagiographical tradition, as is his account of Leo’s miracles ‘in every place and city’ (ch. 4). Leo’s theological acumen is attributed to the training he received in Greek (ch. 3), a very suspicious claim as Leo himself states that his capacity to understand Greek was limited, and certainly he never wrote in that language.³ According to the Life, it was an orthodox council, presumably Chalcedon, which proclaimed Leo pope, recognising him as a worthy shepherd of the ‘divine and first church’ (ch. 5). This curious phrase appears to be a plain acknowledgement of papal primacy, a rarity in Greek texts and perhaps explained by its southern Italian provenance. The Life does not include the fanciful story recounted in The Spiritual Meadow by John Moschus. According to the seventh-century Greek monk, Leo had prostrated himself on St Peter’s tomb before sending the Tome to Flavian, and prayed that the saint would correct any errors or omissions in the document. After forty days the apostle appeared to Leo, saying ‘I have read it and corrected it.’ Leo then took up the letter from the tomb and found it corrected by the apostolic hand.⁴ This apocryphal story enhances the significance of the Tome to a degree that even Leo could not have anticipated at the time of its composition, although one can well imagine him making such a dramatic gesture in an effort to legitimise his claim to apostolic authority. John Moschus, a partisan of Sophronius of Jerusalem, was embroiled in the christological controversy over the number of ‘energies’, or ‘activities’ in Christ, and no doubt included this story to affirm the Tome’s reputation as a ‘pillar of orthodoxy’, as it was known after the Fifth Ecumenical Council of 553. In the seventh-century monoenergist and monothelete debates, the Tome was frequently cited as the ultimate authority by those who argued for two energies and two wills in Christ, including Sophronius and Maximus the Confessor.

Bishops of Rome as civic leaders

At the time of Leo’s accession in 440, Rome was still recovering from the three sieges of Alaric from 408 to 410, and the departure of many of its noble families to the relative safety of their estates in North Africa and other provinces. The Gothic occupation struck a massive blow to the city of Rome’s confidence in its invincibility. As Jerome put it plaintively in a letter on the virtues of monogamy to the widow Geruchia, ‘What is safe if Rome be lost?’ (ep. 123.16, Labourt 1949–63 (1961): 93). The peace settlement that was reached between Alaric and Olympius, acting for Emperor Honorius (395–423) after the first siege in 408, included Roman payment of 5000 pounds of gold, 30,000 pounds of silver, and large quantities of silk robes, skins dyed purple, pepper, and hostages.⁵ However, Honorius, safely ensconced in his court in Ravenna, did not honour his pledge to hand over noble hostages to Alaric. According to the historian Zosimus, the young emperor was more interested in the fate of his pet pigeons than in the slaughter and capture of many citizens of Rome (Dunn 2009). In vain, Pope Innocent travelled to Ravenna—conveniently escaping the third and final siege—to petition the emperor. Fortunately for the Roman population, Alaric died within the year, before he could fulfil his plans to cross over to North Africa.

Even before Alaric’s siege of Rome, the Senate was struggling to maintain its civic institutions, as the dispute over the Altar of Victory demonstrated in 384 CE. Sacrifices at this altar at the beginning of senatorial sessions had been believed to guarantee the security and prosperity of Rome since the time of Augustus. The pagan senator Symmachus appealed in vain to Theodosius I to have the altar restored to the Senate after its removal by Emperor Gratian in 382. Gratian was also the first emperor to refuse the title of pontifex maximus, an office that made the emperor the head of the state religion and had been held by emperors since Augustus. Ambrose of Milan was pivotal in the new emperor Theodosius’s decision against the Symmachan party (Matthews 1990: 203–9). With the division of the empire between Theodosius I’s sons in 395, Arcadius maintained Constantinople as the eastern capital, and the western emperor, Honorius, set up his court in Milan, leaving his general, Stilicho, in effective control. From the time of Alaric’s entry into Italy in 401 Honorius vacillated between Rome and Ravenna, and finally in 408 moved his court permanently to the safer city of Ravenna, with its resident army (Gillett 2001: 139–41).

The end of the fourth century saw the ‘aristocratisation’–to quote the phrase of Lepelley (1998: 21) – of the episcopal office, and Rome was not exempt. This is obvious from Pope Damasus’s inscription at the basilica of St Lawrence in Damaso, which echoes the classical love of honour (philotimia) without shame: ‘I confess I wished to build a new roof for the archives, to add columns on right and left besides, which would keep the name of Damasus intact forever’ (ILCV 1, 970: 181). In a letter of Innocent I to the bishops who had gathered at the Council of Toledo in 400, we find the pope forbidding anyone to be promoted to the episcopate who had wooed the crowds with spectacles, or who had been ordained to the priesthood of the imperial cult (ep. 3, PL 20: 491–2) (Lepelley 1998: 23). Papal properties and their revenues were often donated for the upkeep of churches, even as early as Silvester (314–35), the first bishop of Rome to serve imperial Christianity (LP 1: 170–1). Other examples include the Liber Pontificalis entries for Damasus, Innocent I and Sixtus III. The inscription in the apse of St Mary Major, ‘Bishop Sixtus for the people of God’, presents Pope Sixtus as fulfilling a civic function in providing the rich mosaics that decorated the nave and apse.⁶ This is indicative of the new levels of largesse required of the incumbent of the see of Rome in the fourth and fifth centuries.

The level of luxury enjoyed by the bishops of Rome was subject to criticism by pagan contemporaries such as the fourth-century historian Ammianus Marcellinus, who accuses the popes of hiding their faults behind the greatness of the city of Rome and urges them to emulate the rustic simplicity of provincial bishops (Res gestae 27.3.14–15, Rolfe 1986: 3.20–1).

In the 430s and 440s, the residence of the court was still shifting between Ravenna and Rome. In the absence of strong leadership by the emperor or Senate, the bishop of Rome—like the bishops of other major sees—came to play an increasingly important part in civic affairs in the fifth century (Neil forthcoming). They exercised their civic authority in roles that had traditionally been imperial responsibilities, such as raising tribute for peace treaties, ransoming prisoners of war and other captives, and leading diplomatic representations to emperors and enemy invaders. They were also increasingly involved in patronising the construction of public buildings, now including churches and shrines. In this chapter we consider how Leo fulfilled these four functions. A related civic role, providing for the poor, will be dealt with below (Chapter 2) in relation to almsgiving.

When Leo acceded to the papal throne, both the city and the church were facing an uncertain future. From Sixtus III Leo inherited divisions within the urban population that stemmed from the pontificate of Celestine (422–32), in whose time many had abandoned communion with their bishop. Celestine’s predecessor, Boniface, had been ordained on the same day in 418 as a rival, the popular candidate Eulalius, who had the support of the empress Placidia. Both Eulalius and Boniface were expelled from the city by decree of Emperor Honorius, then residing in Milan.⁷ Eulalius sneaked into the city to celebrate Easter at St John Lateran in the following year and was evicted by imperial decree. Boniface was recalled and held the see for almost four years. However, when Boniface died in 422 ‘the clergy and people’ (LP 1: 227, Davis 2000: 35) requested the recall of the exiled Eulalius, who sensibly refused to return to Rome. Pope Celestine was elected a week after the death of Boniface, while the city was still in uproar, and many refused to accept the new pope. A law of Theodosius II and Valentinian III (425–55) issued at Aquileia three years later subjects those of plebeian rank (plebs) who had separated themselves from communion with Pope Celestine to expulsion by the urban prefect (Codex Theodosianus 16.5.62, Mommsen and Rougé 2005, SC 497: 328).

Roman food supplies from North Africa had been cut off after the Vandal invasions of this province, beginning in 429 and culminating in the conquest of its major city, Carthage, in 439. The impact on the city of Rome of the loss of this major source of grain and oil was swift and momentous. In the first year of his pontificate, then, Leo would have had to deal with the effects of a shortage of food and an influx of North African refugees, including Manichees, Donatists and Nicene Christians. Each of these groups was fleeing persecution by the Arian king Geiseric in Africa Proconsularis, where the majority of Vandals settled (Heather 2007: 139).⁸ The two richest alternative sources of grain, the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, were systematically attacked, with Sicily weakened by raids from 440 to 442, and Sardinia falling to Geiseric in the 460s.⁹ After 439, the Vandals adopted the Roman system of taxation in North Africa for their own purposes, and the effects of resultant shortfalls in the Roman system show up in legislation from 440 onwards (Wickham 2005: 88–92). It is possible, as Wickham suggests, that Rome was forced to buy supplies of grain and oil from Geiseric for cash. Many of the huge landholdings of the Roman senatorial class in North Africa were also taken over by the Vandals, another lost revenue for the capital. Those who could afford to do so had left the city in droves in the aftermath of 410. The population of Rome was reduced to c. 500,000, less than half of its number in the first century CE (Wickham 2005: 33). The demographic trend was not a straightforward decline, however, and the mid fifth century seems to have seen something of a recovery, if we are to trust the findings based on pork rations.¹⁰ The apparent spike in the 450s may well have been due in part to an influx of refugees from North Africa. Added to the Vandal threat from the south, the Hun loomed large on northern Italy’s horizons, with the surrender of Milan to Attila and his capture of the wealthy coastal cities of Aquileia and Altinum in 452.

The effects of this economic and demographic crisis on the city come through more clearly in Leo’s homilies than in his letters, which present a picture of the church in ‘business as usual’ mode. In Rome, the imperial government assured the supply of grain and other basic commodities such as pork and oil, but these handouts were available strictly to citizens only, regardless of their financial circumstances. In the food crisis of 383 or 384 the urban prefect had been forced to expel all foreigners from the city to ease the pressure on scanty resources. Ambrose of Milan was outspoken in his condemnation of the banishers for their inhumanity towards those who provided food for the city through their trade (De offic. 3.45–52, Davidson 2001: 1, 380–6). Bishops of Rome probably had to step in when imperial food supplies ran short: for example, Pope Gelasius (492–6) allegedly delivered the city of Rome from danger of famine (LP 1: 255). By the sixth century total control of the food dole (annona) had passed to the bishops of Rome, who also used the produce of their estates to provide for the poor (Humphries 2000: 542).

Barbarian invasions

Rome faced two serious external threats during Leo’s lengthy pontificate: the Huns and the Vandals. Attila had been waiting for his opportunity to attack Rome for two decades. Until the accession of Marcian in 450, the eastern emperors had been paying considerable sums to contain Attila’s expansion in the East. Marcian decided to take a stronger ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• PART I Introduction
• PART II Texts
• Notes
• Bibliography