Leo I of Rome

“ Leo X (1513-21) has given his name to this age of papal culture, but he was not entitled to the honour; he had the inborn Medicean interest and enjoyment in intellectual matters, a nice taste, and some delicacy of perception, but it needs no more than a look at his fat jowl in Raphael's portrait to see that he could not have been a motive force in a great period. He stands on an historic eminence as the last Pope to wield the Italian sceptre over all Europe, the last to send his tax-collectors from Sicily to England, from Spain to Norway, the last to enjoy the full heritage of Imperial Rome. ”

“ Leo did his best to restore peace to Italy, and raised Rome to the dignity of a great capital. Few princes have ever been more richly endowed than he with the qualities which make princedom popular; a liberality which bordered on profuseness, a generous readiness to reward merit, and a charming urbanity of manners, which made every one who approached his person believe himself the object of the Pope’s particular regard. Erasmus felt the magical influence of his presence, and wrote to his friends, saying, that Leo was as far superior to the rest of men, as men are superior, to beasts. ”

“ And perhaps oftenest of all they offered up that prayer of Leo’s which, intertwining commands and promises, unfolds the depths of both command and promise for earth and heaven—“Almighty and everlasting God, give unto us the increase of faith, hope, and charity; and that we may obtain that which Thou dost promise, make us to love that which Thou dost command.”
Thus, often resting their hearts on the staff of Leo’s faithful words, the two women lived through those days of terrible suspense. And on the fourth came the good tidings, that once more, as far as possible, Leo had saved Rome. ”

“ And briefly Leo’s desire was to reign. To reign by the support of France since it seemed impossible to do so by the support of Germany! To reign by the support of the people, since the people was now becoming the master, the bestower of thrones! To reign by means even of an Italian Republic, if only that Republic could wrest Rome from the House of Savoy and restore her to him, a federal Republic which would make him President of the United States of Italy pending the time when he should be President of the United States of Europe! ”

“ In one sense it was a complete triumph for the Pope; but Leo was a clear-sighted statesman and knew that the power to which he had been restored rested on a weak foundation. The very fact that he had been compelled to appeal for justice to a temporal sovereign lowered the office that he held in the eyes of the world; and he possessed no guarantee that, once the Franks had left Rome, his enemies would not again attack him. Without a recognized champion, always ready to enforce her will, the Papacy remained at the mercy of those who chose to oppose or hinder her. ”

“ But with the waning power, glory, and wealth of Rome,--decimated, pillaged, trodden under foot by Goths and Vandals, rebuked by Providence, deserted by emperors, abandoned to decay and ruin,--some expedient or new claim to precedency was demanded to prevent the Roman bishops from sinking into mediocrity. It was at this crisis that the pontificate of Leo began, in the year 440. It was a gloomy period, not only for Rome, but for civilization. The queen of cities had been repeatedly sacked, and her treasures destroyed or removed to distant cities. Her proud citizens had been sold as slaves ”

“ The theatre of Pompey and the amphitheatre of Titus still rose in their beauty; and as the Gothic king inhabited the vast and deserted halls of the Cæsarean palace, he looked down upon the games of the Circus Maximus, where the diminished but unchanged populace of Rome still justified St. Leo's complaint, that the heathen games drew more people than the shrines of the martyrs whose intercession had saved Rome from Attila. In fine, St. Fulgentius could still say, If earthly Rome was so stately, what must the heavenly Jerusalem be! ”

“ Was it not prodigious to see that man, Leo XIII, despoiled of his kingdom and allowing himself to be called a socialist, assembling under his banner the great flock of the disinherited, and marching against the kings at the head of that fourth estate to whom the coming century will belong? The eternal struggle for possession of the people continued as bitterly as ever even in Rome itself, where pope and king, who could see each other from their windows, contended together like falcon and hawk for the little birds of the woods. ”

“ Italy rejoiced when Giovanni de' Medici was selected to succeed him, with the title of Leo X. "Venus ruled in Rome with Alexander, Mars with Julius, now Pallas enters on her reign with Leo." Such was the tenor of the epigrams which greeted Leo upon his triumphal progress to the Lateran. It was felt that a Pope of the house of Medici would be a patron of arts and letters, and it was hoped that the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent might restore the equilibrium of power in Italy. Leo X. has enjoyed a greater fame than he deserved. ”

“ The coronation of the emperor followed two days afterwards; its effect was to bring out with increased clearness the personally subordinate position of Leo. The decision of the emperor, however, secured for Leo’s pontificate an external peace which was only broken after the accession of Louis the Pious. His enemies began to renew their attacks; the violent repression of a conspiracy led to an open rebellion at Rome ”

“ Ethne said. “How can it be said that Rome is saved?”
“Rome is still there,” Marius replied mournfully, remembering vanished Aquileia, “despoiled indeed, but not destroyed; still a home of the living, still a city, not a heap of ashes and a charnel-house of the dead. And this she owes to Leo. As to us, our lives at least are saved; and if life is still worth anything to him, we have saved the poor old Jew and his noble wife. For he is poor, without pretence, at last, and she is noble.” ”

“ Meanwhile Leo died, and with him all the fine and noble arts, which had been restored to life by him and by his predecessor, Julius II; and his successor was Adrian VI, in whose pontificate all arts and talents were so crushed down, that, if the government of the Apostolic Seat had remained long in his hands, that fate would have come upon Rome under his rule which fell upon her on another occasion, when all the statues saved from the destruction of the Goths, both the good and the bad, were condemned to be burned. ”

“ When he looked to the eastern emperor, now become in the eyes of the Church the legitimate sovereign of Rome, by whose commission Odoacer professed to rule, instead of a Marcian, the not unworthy husband of St. Pulcheria, instead of Leo I., who was at least orthodox, and had been succeeded by his grandson the young child Leo II., he found upon the now sole imperial throne that child's father Zeno. He was husband of the princess Ariadne, daughter of Leo I., [25] a man of whom the Byzantine historians give us a most frightful picture. ”

“ It seems to me so much like the old disputes among the disciples which should be the greatest. We know Leo never wants to be greatest for himself. If he wants it for his city and his Church, I suppose it is because he thinks it best for all the rest. These tribes you call barbarian seem to change and migrate about so much, whilst your Rome seems to stay ”

“ Leo would have used, and required him to meet at Rome the accusation brought against him by John Talaia, a duly elected patriarch of Alexandria, just as St. Julius, a hundred and forty years before, had invited the accusing bishops at Antioch to meet St. Athanasius before his tribunal. He who resided in a state only second to the emperor in the real capital of the empire to go to a city living in durance under the northern barbarians, and submit to the judgment of one whose own tribunal was in captivity to such masters! ”

“ People talked of the Vatican being closed, and pictured a dark, gloomy palace, encompassed by high walls, whereas this palace overlooked all Rome, and the Pope from his window could see the world. Pierre himself had viewed the panorama from the summit of the Janiculum, the loggie of Raffaelle, and the dome of St. Peter’s, and so he well knew what it was that Leo XIII was able to behold. In the centre of the vast desert of the Campagna, bounded by the Sabine and Alban mountains, the seven illustrious hills appeared to him with their trees and edifices. ”

“ At the same time he had certainly searched documents, studied encyclical letters, based his sketch upon facts: first Leo’s religious education at Rome, then his brief nunciature at Brussels, and afterwards his long episcopate at Perugia. And as soon as Leo became pope in the difficult situation bequeathed by Pius IX, the duality of his nature appeared: on one hand was the firm guardian of dogmas, on the other the supple politician resolved to carry conciliation to its utmost limits. ”

“ Leo delighted in the society of clever people, poetasters, petty scholars, lutists, and buffoons. Rome owes no monumental work to his inventive brain, and literature no masterpiece to his discrimination. Ariosto, the most brilliant poet of the Renaissance, returned in disappointment from the Vatican. ”

“ Julius to the Eusebian prelates is full of it. St. Leo saw the empire of Rome falling around him, but he is so possessed with that idea that he does not allude to the ruin of temporal kingdoms. St. Gregory trembles for the lives of his beleaguered people, but he does not know the see which is not subject to the Apostolic See. In weakness and in power, in ages of an ever varying but always persistent adversity, in times [Pg 353] of imperial patronage, and, again, under heretical domination, the mind of every Pope is full of this idea. ”

“ With regard to the political methods of Leo some difference of opinion may still be entertained. Some have seen in him the single-minded and unscrupulous friend of Medicean Florence, prepared to sacrifice alike the interests of the Church and of the Papacy to the advancement of his family. To others he is the clear-sighted statesman who, perceiving the future changes and difficulties of the Church, sought for the Papacy the firm support of a hereditary alliance.
Truth may lie midway between these two opinions. If we view Leo as a man, similar doubts encounter us. ”

“ It was only the sign of that utter impotence into which Roman power in the West had fallen. The city of Rome was the trophy of Cæsarean government [Pg 9] during five hundred years—from Julius, the most royal, to Valentinian, the most abject of emperors. And now its temporal greatness was lost for ever. It ceased to be the imperial city, but by the same stroke became from the secular a spiritual capital. The Pope, freed from the western Cæsar, [4] gave to the Cæsarean city its second and greater life: a life of another kind generating also an empire of another sort. ”

“ In not a few places among the barbarians the bishops became the acknowledged heads of the Roman element of the communities. In meeting the threatened invasion of Italy by Attila, Leo was the representative of the Roman people, the head of the embassy sent to induce the Hun to recross the Danube. Under such circumstances the see of Rome constantly gained in importance politically and ecclesiastically. As a centre of unity it was far more powerful than a feeble emperor at Ravenna or puppets set up by barbarians. ”

“ Leo at once formed a new league with the emperor and the king of Spain, and to ensure English support made Wolsey a cardinal. Francis entered Italy in August and on the 14th of September won the battle of Marignano. The pope in October signed an agreement binding him to withdraw his troops from Parma and Piacenza, which had been previously gained at the expense of the duchy of Milan, on condition of French protection at Rome and Florence. ”

“ Leo and his successors; but yet not events at Rome alone—the whole condition of things in East and West which Pope Simplicius had to look upon outside of his own city, despotic emperors in the East, with bishops bending to their will, allowing the apostolic hierarchy to be displaced, and the apostolic doctrine determined by secular masters; Teuton settlements in the West ruled by the heresy most inimical to the Church; the Catholic population reduced in numbers and lowered in social position ”

“ But the genius of Leo served only to defer the downfall of the Western Empire, which was doomed to disappear fifteen years after his death. His successors continued to protect Italy, so far as in them lay, against the horrors of war; and Pope Agapetus, though weighed down by years, undertook the perilous mission of going to Constantinople to make peace between the Emperor of the East and the King of the Visigoths. A few years afterwards, Pope Pelagius I. had the courage to seek an interview with Totila, and so preserve Rome from massacre and dishonour. ”

“ Leo the Thirteenth is fond of variety—and no wonder, shut up for life as he is in the Vatican; he enjoys directing work and improvements in the gardens; he likes to talk with Vespignani, the architect of the Holy Apostolic Palaces, who is also the head of the Catholic party in the Roman municipality, to go over the plans of work he has ordered, to give his opinion, and especially to see that the work itself is executed in the shortest possible time. Time is short for a pope; Sixtus the Fifth, who filled Rome and Italy with himself, [Pg 242] reigned only five years ”