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Pope Leo IX

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Saint Leo IX
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(born 1002, Egisheim, Alsace, Upper Lorraine — died April 19, 1054, Rome; feast day April 19) Pope (1049 – 54). He was consecrated bishop of Toul in 1027. He was named pope by Emperor Henry III but insisted on election by the clergy and people of Rome. His efforts to strengthen the papacy and eradicate clerical marriage and simony laid the foundation for the Gregorian reform movement. His assertion of papal primacy and his military campaign against the Normans in Sicily (1053) alienated the Eastern church. His representatives excommunicated the patriarch of Constantinople. Though Leo had already died, their act triggered the Schism of 1054.

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Saints: Leo IX
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Leo IX (1002–54), pope. Born of noble, bilingual parents in Alsace, he was educated at Toul, mainly by Adalbert, later bishop of Metz. As a deacon of the pre-Gregorian unreformed Church he was given command of troops provided by the bishop to put down a Lombard rebellion. He was most successful and gained a reputation for handling men skilfully. In 1027 he was chosen bishop of Toul. He reformed the canons who served the cathedral, and the monasteries of Moyenmoutier and Saint-Dié. He also held many synods and visitations. In 1048 the Emperor Henry III chose him as pope, and Leo was acclaimed by the Roman clergy and people.

Once pope, he travelled through Italy, Germany, and France, holding twelve reforming synods. This process was a useful innovation which greatly helped to eliminate simony and nepotism, long taken for granted, and clerical marriage. At Reims, for example, his synod led to the deposition of certain bishops, while others, including the host-bishop of the assembly, had to make their peace privately with the pope by resigning their charge and accepting it again from him, significantly with a new crozier. The movement spread through Europe, obtaining English participation and support through delegates sent to the councils. It was paradoxical that Leo IX, usually regarded as the initiator of the Gregorian Reform which liberated the Church from both the emperors and the Roman nobility, owed his appointment to both. The ideal of independence from the secular power emerged later; in early days the Gregorian papal reformers were ready to work with and through the kings. So close was their partnership that at the end of his life Leo tried to form a political and military alliance against the Norman invaders of southern Italy. He led an army against them, but was defeated and captured at Civitella. Peter Damian and others criticized severely this military involvement: battles should be fought by emperors, not popes.

Another important setback just before his death was the breach with Constantinople, which eventually led to the Eastern Schism. He sent legates to Constantinople to deal with accusations of heresy which came from Michael Cerularius, the patriarch: he did not live to see the full conflict unfold of mutual accusation and separation. Leo placed his bed and his coffin side by side in St. Peter's and died there on 19 April. Within forty years, it is said, seventy cures, believed to be miraculous, took place; Leo was acclaimed as a saint; in 1087 his relics were enshrined. Another link between Leo IX and England was his friendly relationship with Edward the Confessor. Edward had vowed to go on pilgrimage to Rome but found himself unable to do so. Instead Leo accepted his plan to refound Westminster Abbey. Feast: 19 April.

Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.

  • AA.SS. Apr. II (1675), 642–74; A. Poncelet, ‘Vie et miracles de S. Léon IX’, Anal. Boll., xxv (1906), 258–97; C. Morris, The Papal Monarchy: the Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (1989); H. Tritz, ‘Die hagiographischen Quellen zur Geschichte Papst Leos IX’, St. Greg., iv (1952), 191–364; R. Mayne, ‘East and West in 1054’, C.H.J., xi (1953–5), 133–48; D. M. Nicol, ‘Byzantium and the Papacy in the 11th century’, J.E.H., xiii (1962), 1–20. See also O.D.P., pp. 147–8
 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Saint Leo IX
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Leo IX, Saint, 1002-54, pope (1049-54), a German named Bruno of Toul, b. Alsace; successor of Damasus II. A relative of Holy Roman Emperor Henry III, he was educated at Toul and was made bishop there in 1027. Leo traveled widely, vigorously combating clerical incontinence and simony; his pontificate marks the beginning of papal reform in the 11th cent. The heresy of Berengar of Tours concerning the Real Presence also occupied the attention of the pope. St. Leo mediated questions presented by England, France, and Hungary. He added to the papal lands in Italy through an exchange with Emperor Henry III. He fought the Normans of S Italy, but was defeated (1053) at Civitella. The bitter feeling between East and West brought an attack (1053) on the pope by Michael Cerularius, the patriarch of Constantinople. This culminated in the excommunication of Michael and those in his communion by the papal legates (1054). He was succeeded by Victor II. Feast: Apr. 19.
Wikipedia: Pope Leo IX
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Saint Leo IX
Leon IX.jpg
Papacy began February 12, 1049
Papacy ended April 19, 1054
Predecessor Damasus II
Successor Victor II
Personal details
Birth name Bruno von Eguisheim-Dagsburg
Born June 21, 1002(1002-06-21)
Eguisheim, Alsace, Duchy of Swabia, Holy Roman Empire
Died April 19, 1054 (aged 51)
Rome, Papal States, Holy Roman Empire
Other Popes named Leo
Papal styles of
Pope Leo IX

Emblem of the Papacy SE.svg
Reference style His Holiness
Spoken style Your Holiness
Religious style Holy Father
Posthumous style Saint

Pope Saint Leo IX (June 21, 1002 – April 19, 1054), born Bruno of Eguisheim-Dagsburg (German Bruno von Egisheim-Dagsburg), was Pope from February 12, 1049 to his death. He is regarded as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, with the feast day of April 19. Leo IX is widely considered the most historically significant German Pope of the Middle Ages.

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Biography

Leo IX was a native of Eguisheim, Upper Alsace, now in France, but then firmly German. The family to which he belonged was of noble rank, and his father, Count Hugo, was a relative of Emperor Conrad II (1024–1039). He was educated at Toul, where he successively became canon and, in 1026, bishop. In the latter capacity he rendered important political services to his relative Conrad II, and afterwards to Emperor Henry III (1039–1056). He became widely known as an earnest and reforming ecclesiastic by the zeal he showed in spreading the rule of the order of Cluny.

On the death of Pope Damasus II (1048), Bruno was selected as his successor by an assembly at Worms in December 1048. Both the Emperor and the Roman delegates concurred. However, Bruno apparently favored a canonical election and stipulated as a condition of his acceptance that he should first proceed to Rome and be freely elected by the voice of clergy and people of Rome. Setting out shortly after Christmas, he met with abbot Hugh of Cluny at Besançon, where he was joined by the young monk Hildebrand, who afterwards became Pope Gregory VII (1073–85); arriving in pilgrim garb at Rome in the following February, he was received with much cordiality, and at his consecration assumed the name of Leo IX.

Leo IX favored traditional morality in his reformation of the Catholic Church. One of his first public acts was to hold the well-known Easter synod of 1049, at which celibacy of the clergy (down to the rank of subdeacon) was required anew. Also, the Easter synod was where the Pope at least succeeded in making clear his own convictions against every kind of simony. The greater part of the year that followed was occupied in one of those progresses through Italy, Germany and France which form a marked feature in Leo IX's pontificate. After presiding over a synod at Pavia, he joined Henry III in Saxony, and accompanied him to Cologne and Aachen; to Reims he also summoned a meeting of the higher clergy, by which several important reforming decrees were passed. At Mainz also he held a council, at which the Italian and French as well as the German clergy were represented, and ambassadors of the Greek emperor were present; here too simony and the marriage of the clergy were the principal matters dealt with.

After his return to Rome he held (April 29, 1050) another Easter synod, which was occupied largely with the controversy about the teachings of Berengar of Tours; in the same year he presided over provincial synods at Salerno, Siponto and Vercelli, and in September revisited his native Germany, returning to Rome in time for a third Easter synod, at which the question of the reordination of those who had been ordained by simonists was considered.

In 1052 he joined the Emperor at Pressburg, and vainly sought to secure the submission of the Hungarians; and at Regensburg, Bamberg and Worms the papal presence was marked by various ecclesiastical solemnities.

Commemorative shield on the wall of the Castle of Eguisheim, Alsace, birthplace of Pope Leo IX.

After a fourth Easter synod in 1053 Leo IX set out against the Normans in the south with an army of Italians and German volunteers, but his forces suffered total defeat at the Battle of Civitate on June 15, 1053; on going out, however, from the city to meet the victorious enemy he was received with every token of submission, pleas for forgiveness and oaths of fidelity and homage. From June 1053 to March 1054 the Pope was nevertheless detained at Benevento in honourable captivity; he did not long survive his return to Rome, where he died on April 19, 1054.

Leo IX sent a letter to Michael Cærularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, in 1054, that cited a large portion of the Donation of Constantine believing it genuine.[1] The official status of this letter is acknowledged in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 5, entry on Donation of Constantine, page 120:

"The first pope who used it in an official act and relied upon it, was Leo IX; in a letter of 1054 to Michael Cærularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, he cites the "Donatio" to show that the Holy See possessed both an earthly and a heavenly imperium, the royal priesthood."

Leo IX assured the Patriarch that the donation was completely genuine, not a fable or old wives tale, so only the apostolic successor to Peter possessed that primacy and was the rightful head of all the Church. Little did Leo IX know that he cited and testified to the authenticity of the most stupendous fraud in European history. The Patriarch rejected the claims of papal primacy, and subsequently the Catholic Church was split in two in the Great East-West Schism of 1054.

Before his death, Leo IX had sent a legatine mission, under Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida, to Constantinople, to negotiate with Patriarch Michael I Cerularius (1043–1059) in response to his actions concerning the church in Southern Italy. Humbert quickly disposed of negotiations by delivering a bull excommunicating the Patriarch. This act, though legally invalid due to the Pope's death at the time, was answered by the Patriarch's own bull of excommunication against the Humbert and his associates and is popularly considered the official split between the Eastern and Western Churches in what is now called the Schism of 1054.

References

  1. ^ Migne's Patrologia Latina, Vol. 143 (cxliii), Col. 744-769. Also Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova Amplissima Collectio, Vol. 19 (xix) Col. 635-656.

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