Pope Leo I

“ By his character and natural gifts, Leo the Thirteenth is essentially active rather than contemplative, and it is not surprising that the chief acts of his pontificate should have dealt rather with political matters than with questions of dogma and ecclesiastical authority. It has certainly been the object of the present Pope to impress upon the world the necessity of Christianity in general, and of the Roman Catholic Church in particular, as a means of social redemption and a factor in political stability. ”

“ The second day after his election Pope Leo XIII. crossed the Tiber incognito to his former residence in the Falconieri Palace to collect his papers, returning at once to the Vatican, where he continued to regard himself as “imprisoned” so long as the Italian government occupied the city of Rome. He was crowned in the Sistine Chapel 3rd March 1878, and at once began a reform of the papal household on austere and economic lines which found little favour with the entourage of the former pope. ”

“ The same may be said of the devotion to the Holy Spirit with its annual Pentecostal novena. He has not only known what to suggest, but his practical sense has so arranged that his suggestions were not mere ephemeral directions but were soon incorporated into the very soul-life of the people. No one can look back over the last generation and make any contrasts without saying that Leo has done as much for the religious spirit of the world as any of his predecessors.
All these considerations convince us that Leo has been an all-round great Pope. He has been a Leader among men. ”

“ Leo XII. is forgotten; I have begun again to transact affairs with the new Secretary of State, Albani; everything is going on as though nothing had happened, and I do not even know whether you in Paris know that there is a new Pontiff! How beautiful that ceremony of the papal benediction is! The Sabine Range on the horizon, then the deserted Roman Campagna, then Rome itself, then the Piazza San Pietro and the whole people falling on its knees under an old man's hand: the Pope is the only prince who blesses his subjects. ”

“ The idea that the Pope's political utterances can ever be considered as ex cathedrâ is too illogical to be presented seriously to the world by thinking men. Leo the Thirteenth is undoubtedly a first-rate statesman, [Pg 265] and it might be to the advantage not only of all good Catholics but of all humanity, and of the cause of peace itself, to follow his advice in national and party politics whenever practicable. ”

“ He must quiet the disagreeable wranglings of the German humanists. Other problems connected with his family interests served to complicate the situation and eventually to prevent the successful consummation of many of his plans. At the very time of Leo’s accession Louis XII. of France, in alliance with Venice, was making a determined effort to regain the duchy of Milan, and the pope, after fruitless endeavours to maintain peace, joined the league of Mechlin on the 5th of April 1513 with the emperor Maximilian I., Ferdinand I. of Spain and Henry VIII. of England. ”

“ Near the confluence of the Mincio and the Po he was met by Leo, whose eloquence persuaded him to turn back. Legend has sought to enhance the impressiveness of the occurrence by an unnecessarily imagined miracle. The pope was less successful with Genseric when the Vandal chief arrived under the walls of Rome in 455, but he secured a promise that there should be no incendiarism or murder, and that three of the oldest basilicas should be exempt from plunder—a promise which seems to have been faithfully observed. ”

“ For us Leo XIII is the guardian of the Holy Scriptures, the interpreter of the doctrine of Jesus Christ, the supreme dispenser of the treasures of the Church, the head of the Catholic religion, the chief shepherd of souls, the infallible teacher, the secure guide, who directs us on our way through a world wrapped in darkness and the shadow of death. All the strength of the Church is in the pope; all the foundations of our faith are based on the successor of Peter. ”

“ Of what this most noble Pope did for Rome, Anastasius gives a long account. If the Romans loved and admired him as a cardinal priest, they loved and admired him no less as Pontiff to the end. While fully acknowledging still the sovereignty of the eastern emperor, a man as unworthy of the loyalty which bound the Pope to him, as a sovereign could be, the Pope neither by his heresy nor by his tyranny was induced to renounce him. ”

“ The Pope, behind the crumbling walls of Aurelian, shudders at the cruelties practised on his people: the bishop of Constantinople, by terming himself ecumenical, announces ostentatiously that he claims to rule all his brethren in the East—that he is supreme judge over his brother patriarchs. One only thing he does not do: he claims no power over the Pope himself; he does not attempt to revise his administration in the West. He acknowledges his primacy, seated as it is in a provincial city, pauperised, and decimated with hunger and desertion. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ If, in your wisdom, you consider the matter to its bottom, you will see that not only the cause carried on at Rome is concerned. In the case of other bishops, if there be any lapse, it may be restored; but if the Pope of Rome is endangered, not one bishop but the episcopate itself will seem to be shaken. You well know how we are steering the bark of faith amid storms of heresies, whose winds roar around us. ”

“ I do not know that any one has ever been in a position to know more thoroughly the inner sentiments of the Pope, that any one has ever heard a prince who governs the Christian world express himself so plainly on subjects so vast and so far removed from the narrow circle of diplomatic commonplaces. Here there was no intermediary between the Sovereign Pontiff and myself and it was easy to see that Leo XII., thanks to his candid character and the impulse of a familiar conversation, dissimulated nothing and in no way sought to deceive. ”

“ In the past many conflicting estimates were made of the character and achievements of the pope during whose pontificate Protestantism first took form. More recent studies have served to produce a fairer and more honest opinion of Leo X. A report of the Venetian ambassador Marino Giorgi bearing date of March 1517 indicates some of his predominant characteristics:—“The pope is a good-natured and extremely free-hearted man, who avoids every difficult situation and above all wants peace; he would not undertake a war himself unless his own personal interests were involved; he loves learning ”

“ So complete was his sway over Leo, that, on Leo's death, a cardinal in the conclave remarked that they wanted a new Pope, not one who had already been Pope for years; and the gibe turned the scale against the future Clement VII. Medici both, Leo and the Cardinal regarded the Papacy mainly as a means for family aggrandisement. In 1518 Leo had fulminated against Francis Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, as "the son of iniquity and child of perdition," [430] because he desired to bestow the duchy on his nephew Lorenzo. ”

“ 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 so why do you show such blind and foolish hatred of those Jesuits, who, politically, are your friends? Why don’t you employ their intelligent zeal, which is ready to serve you, so that you may assure yourselves the help of the next, the coming pope? It is necessary for you that he should be on your side, that he should continue the work of Leo XIII, which is so badly judged and so much opposed, but which cares little for the petty results of to-day, since its purpose lies in the future, in the union of all the nations under their holy mother the Church. ”

“ Thus slowly, but yet deliberately, between 1887 and 1893, a transformation took place in Leo’s spirit and policy, and with it was brought about one of the most momentous changes in the attitude of the Church towards the problems of the times and their impelling forces. A rapprochement with France inevitably entailed not only an Leo XIII. and the French Republic. alliance with modern democracy, but also a recognition of its principles and aims. In Rome there was no room for both pope and king. ”

“ 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 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 ”

“ The succession was expected to fall to Leo’s secretary of stale, Cardinal Rampolla; but he was credited with having inspired the French sympathies of the late pope; Austria exercised its right of veto (see Conclave, ad fin.) , and on the 8th of August, Giuseppe Sarto, who as cardinal patriarch of Venice had shown a friendly disposition towards the Italian government, was elected pope. He took as his secretary of state Cardinal RaphaelPius X. Merry del Val, a Spaniard of English birth and education, well versed in diplomacy, but of well-known ultramontane tendencies. ”

“ St. Leo Ep. ad. Episc. Galliæ. T. 1. Operum, p. 1143. Venetiis, 1753.- In this instance, Pope Leo exercised a high act of his Primacy, in the General Council of Chalcedon; when, in his name, and by his Authority, as Head of the Universal Church, and as invested with the dignity of Peter, sentence was pronounced against the second Patriarch of the Church, with the consent of the whole Synod, acknowledging this right and authority in the Bishop of Rome. ”

“ When Leo the Isaurian attempted, in the eighth century, to repress the worship of images, the resistance which he met at Constantinople, though violent, was speedily allayed; but the Pope, assuming a far higher position than any Byzantine ecclesiastic could attain, boldly excommunicated the emperor, and led a revolt against his authority, which resulted in the virtual independence of Italy. His position was at this time singularly grand. He represented a religious cause to which the great mass of the Christian world were passionately attached. He was venerated as the emancipator of Italy. ”

“ This had already begun under Leo I., and been further promoted by the pragmatic sanction. Not only the superintendence but often the nomination of public functionaries and judges was now in the hands of the popes. And the accession to St Peter's chair of a man of real genius in the person of Gregory I., surnamed the Great, marked the beginning of a new era. By force of individual character, as well as by historic necessity, this pope became the most potent personage in Rome. Power fell naturally into his hands; he was the true representative of the city, the born defender of church and state. ”

“ It was not long before Rome had a Saxon colony in the neighbourhood of the Vatican.
Sergius raised a monument to St. Leo the Great in St. Peter's itself. It was the first example, as hitherto the Popes had either been buried in the cemeteries outside the walls or in the atrium of the Basilica. But from the time that in 688 Pope Sergius had translated the body of St. Leo into the transept itself, and raised an altar over it, other very distinguished Popes received the like honour. ”