Saint Leo the Great

10 November  ·  Memorial  ·  White

Saint Peter and Saint Paul come down the sky with drawn swords, and below them a pope on a white mount lifts his hand toward an army. The Huns rein back in confusion, and Attila on his dark horse looks up at the apostles in the sky. The Vatican Museums record that Raphael set the meeting at the gates of Rome and gave Leo the face of the pope who was reigning as he painted it, Leo X. The meeting itself was in the north, at the Mincio near Mantua, in 452, and it sent Attila out of Italy.

Vatican Museums, “Encounter of Leo the Great with Attila”, Stanza di Eliodoro: museivaticani.va

His life

Leo was a native of Tuscany, the son of Quintianus, and a deacon of the Roman Church under Pope Celestine I. He was away in Gaul on the emperor's business when he was chosen pope, and he was consecrated on 29 September 440. His dogmatic letter to Flavian, the Tome of 449, set out the faith that Christ is one Person in two natures, against Eutyches; two years later the Council of Chalcedon solemnly accepted it as an expression of the Catholic faith. In 452 he met Attila at the Mincio and obtained his promise to withdraw from Italy; in 455, when the Vandal Genseric took Rome, Leo's intercession won the promise that the lives of the people would be spared, though the city was plundered for two weeks. He died on 10 November 461 and was buried at Saint Peter's. Benedict XIV declared him a Doctor of the Church in 1754. He turned back an army with no weapon but the faith of Peter; the sermon tells the rest of us what we are worth.

Johann Peter Kirsch, “Pope St. Leo I (the Great)”, The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 9 (1910): newadvent.org

“Christian, acknowledge your dignity, and becoming a partner in the Divine nature, refuse to return to the old baseness by degenerate conduct.”

Saint Leo the Great, Sermon 21 (on the Nativity), 3, trans. Charles Lett Feltoe, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 12 (1895): newadvent.org

In Scripture

¹⁶Simon Peter answered and said: Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God. ¹⁷And Jesus answering said to him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. ¹⁸And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. ¹⁹And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.

Matthew 16:16–19, Douay-Rheims (Challoner).

In painting

The day in the next three years

Near this day

• The Dedication of the Lateran Basilica
• Saint Martin of Tours
• The Dedication of the Basilicas of Saints Peter and Paul

The saints of the year  ·  The feasts  ·  The Rosary

Written and checked by the Monstrance editors; sources cited. Scripture in the Douay-Rheims (Challoner). Every painting is in the public domain, and each caption follows the record of the institution that holds it.