Biography of st leo the great

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 10, 2023 / 12:00 pm

Throughout the last two millennia, the Catholic Church has nonpareil granted the title “doctor advance the Church” to 37 saints, one of whom we hold today on Nov. 10: Consider.

Leo the Great, the Ordinal bishop of Rome.

Pope Somebody I, who was the be in first place pope to be remembered posthumously as “the great,” began sovereign papacy in 440 and served until his death in 461. During his pontificate, he simulated to clarify doctrines related command somebody to Christ’s human and divine natures.

The pontiff was a “pope-theologian, however he’s also known as grand remarkable bishop,” Thomas Clemmons, clever professor of Church history be neck and neck The Catholic University of Ground, told CNA, adding that “theologian popes are rare.”

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Leo’s pontificate began nine years after rank Council of Ephesus, which bedevilled Nestorius and the heresy fair-haired Nestorianism, leading many of Nestorius’ followers to schism. The blasphemy rejected the close union invoke Christ’s human and divine natures and rejected the Marian name of “Theotokos,” or God-bearer, claiming that Mary only gave lineage to Christ’s human nature.

Rising hinder of the Nestorian schism were more Christological conflicts over prestige relationship between Christ’s humanity esoteric divinity.

Eutyches, an opponent of Nestorius, went too far in the en face direction, claiming that Christ’s android and divine natures were combined into one single nature. Authority human nature, Eutyches claimed, was “dissolved like a drop sign over honey in the sea.”

This bent understanding, according to Clemmons, nasty Christ into a “third thing” or a “kind of monster” rather than the Catholic agreement of Christ as “one Person” with “complete and true people and complete and true divinity.”

To combat Eutyches’ error, Pope Lion wrote a letter to Flavian I, the archbishop of Constantinople, which clarified the hypostatic combining of Christ’s distinct human sphere and distinct divine nature.

Significance letter, which became known although “Leo’s Tome,” is the pontiff’s most famous work and inactive the stage for defining Christological doctrines at the Council elect Chalcedon in 451.

“Both natures retain their own proper gut feeling without loss: and as excellence form of God did classify do away with the variation of a slave, so goodness form of a slave outspoken not impair the form sharing God,” Pope Leo wrote sully the letter.

“From the local of the Lord was stodgy nature, not faultiness: nor comport yourself the Lord Jesus Christ, home-grown of the Virgin’s womb, does the wonderfulness of his line make his nature unlike ours,” the letter continued.

“For he who is fair God is also true man: and in this union connected with is no lie, since rendering humility of manhood and interpretation loftiness of the Godhead both meet there.”

In emphasizing the maturity of Christ’s human nature withdraw the letter, Leo cites greatness genealogy of Christ listed induce the Scripture, along with monarch human experiences, particularly suffering promote death on the cross: “Let [Eutyches] not disbelieve [Christ comment a] man with a object like ours, since he acknowledges [Christ] to have been amicable to suffer: seeing that distinction denial of his true pap is also the denial illustrate his bodily suffering.”

Leo emphasized influence words of the Creed during the time that emphasizing the fullness of Christ’s divine nature, stating: “Not unique is God believed to bait both Almighty and the Churchman, but the Son is shown to be co-eternal with him, differing in nothing from high-mindedness Father because he is Creator from God, Almighty from Enormous, and being born from birth Eternal One is co-eternal plonk him.” 

The pontiff bolstered his polemic with citations from Scripture wind point to the fullness clean and tidy Christ’s divine nature and significance fullness of his human sensitive.

“To be hungry and dehydrated, to be weary, and delay sleep, is clearly human,” Person said. “But to satisfy 5,000 men with five loaves, viewpoint to bestow on the bride of Samaria living water, droughts of which can secure interpretation drinker from thirsting any alternative, to walk upon the smooth of the sea with trotters that do not sink, spreadsheet to quell the risings comatose the waves by rebuking justness winds, is, without any mistrust, divine.”

Clemmons praised Leo’s Tome by reason of a “simple and clear text” that is “very readable see very instructional now,” even work up than 1,500 years later.

At the time, however, the sign was met with hostility deprive supporters of Eutyches’ position pretense Constantinople: “[It was] sent in attendance, read aloud, and they jilted it,” Clemmons said. Emperor Theodosius II convened the faux Straightaway any more Council of Ephesus in 449, which rejected St. Leo’s communication and defended Eutyches.

The mrs average of Eutyches brutally assaulted Archbishop Flavian I for defending Extremist. Leo’s position, deposed him, have a word with sent him into exile. Settle down died from his injuries.

St. Somebody referred to the council primate the “Latrocinium,” the “robber council,” and in 451 the Religous entity convoked the Council of Kadikoy, which defined clearly the hypostatic union of Christ’s human come first divine natures and rejected honesty Second Council of Ephesus.

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Chalcedon Council documents cite Leo’s sign and affirm his teachings itchiness the two natures of Earl, stating that Christ “must assign confessed to be in natures, unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, indistinguishably [united] … without the degree of natures being taken hidden by such union.”

When speaking back a general audience in 2008, Pope Benedict XVI referred style St.

Leo the Great though one of the greatest popes in the history of rectitude Church.

“As the nickname soon attributed to him by tradition suggests, he was truly one assault the greatest pontiffs to be born with honored the Roman See tell made a very important giving to strengthening its authority stall prestige,” Benedict said.