We may proceed without interruption from the name of Innocent to that of Leo, who ascended the chair of St. Peter in the year 440, and occupied it for one-and-twenty years. He was remarkable for his political skill, theological learning, and great ecclesiastical energy. He maintained with the haughtiness of the Roman, and with the zeal of the churchman, that all the pretensions and all the practices of his church were matters of unbroken apostolical succession. But withal he seems to have been sound in the faith as to salvation, and zealously opposed to all heretics. The Eastern churches had lost the respect of Christendom, from their long and disgraceful controversies. Power, not subtleties, was the ambition of Rome. Leo condemned the whole race of heretics from Arius to Eutyches; but more especially the Manichaean heresy.
By his great exertions and extraordinary genius he raised the claims of the Roman bishop, as the representative of St. Peter, to a height before unknown. "The apostle," he says, "was called Petra, the rock, by which denomination he is constituted the foundation.... In his chair dwelleth the ever living, the super abounding, authority. Let the brethren therefore acknowledge that he is the primate of all bishops, and that Christ, who denieth His gifts to none, yet giveth unto none except through him."
Making due allowance for the character of the times and for official and inherited opinions, we believe Leo was sincere in his convictions, and probably a Christian. At heart he cared for God's people, and more than once, by his prayers and political sagacity, saved Rome from the barbarians. When Attila, the most terrible of the foreign conquerors, with his countless hosts, was hovering over Italy, ready to fall upon the defenseless capital, Leo went forth to the "Destroyer" in the name of the Lord, and as the spiritual head of Rome; and so earnestly did he pray for his people, that the wild passions of the Hun were soothed, and, to the astonishment of all, he agreed to terms by which the city was saved from havoc and slaughter. But Leo's main object through life, and that which he fully accomplished, was to lay the groundwork of the great spiritual monarchy of Rome. During his pontificate he had the greatest name in the empire, if not in all Christendom. He died in the year 461.