Pope Leo III

gigatos | January 20, 2022

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Summary

Leo III (Rome, 750 – Rome, June 12, 816) was the 96th pope of the Catholic Church from December 26, 795 until his death.

Little is known of his life prior to his election to the papal throne. Born and raised in Rome, a priest of modest origin and lacking support among the great Roman families, he gained considerable experience in the Lateran offices. At the time of his election he was cardinal priest of Santa Susanna. He was unanimously elected pontiff on December 26, 795, the day his predecessor, Pope Adrian I, was buried, and was consecrated the next day.

Relations with the Franks

His first act was to communicate his election to the Frankish king Charlemagne, giving him the keys of Peter”s tomb (symbolizing the confirmation of the king”s role as guardian of religion) and the banner of Rome (a political symbol with which Charlemagne was recognized as an armed defender of the faith). In Charles, therefore, was summed up all the political power, but always within the protection of the Mater Ecclesia, while the Pope retained all religious power. But in this way Charlemagne”s power fell within the supremacy of the Church, while the king of the Franks saw things in exactly the opposite way: a Church that recognized itself as the daughter of the political and religious authority unified in the person of the sovereign. And in this sense he replied to the pontiff, declaring that it was his function to defend the Church, while the pope”s task, as first among the bishops, was to pray for the kingdom and for the victory of the army. Charlemagne was absolutely convinced of this subdivision of roles and of being himself (except in the theological field) the one responsible for the management of the Church, and he proved it with his continuous interferences in the ecclesiastical field. The pope, for that matter, did not have the pulse of his predecessor to oppose the king”s claims….

The attack of 799 and its consequences

On April 25, 799, Leo III was attacked by the Roman nobles Pascale, nephew of Pope Adrian I, and Campolo, primicerius, who wanted to eliminate Leo and have a member of their faction elected to the Papal throne.

The attack was foiled thanks to the intervention of the duke of Spoleto, protected by Charlemagne”s missi dominici. Not feeling safer, Leo III moved temporarily, with a retinue of 200 people, to Paderborn, in Saxony, where Charlemagne himself was. He spent there about one month. There are no records of the talks of Paderborn between the pope and Charlemagne, but the subsequent events make us guess the results.

Representatives of the opposition arrived from Rome with news that in part seemed to confirm the accusations made against the pope by the conspirators. Charlemagne consulted with the theologian and advisor Alcuin of York who, having taken note of the accusations and suspicions against the pope, suggested to the king an attitude of extreme prudence: no earthly power could judge the pope (prima sedes a nemine iudicatur) and his eventual deposition could be particularly harmful to the person in charge and bring the entire Christian Church into heavy disrepute; “… in you is placed the salvation of Christianity”, he wrote to the king.

Escorted by Frankish bishops and nobles, Leo returned to Rome on November 29, 799, and was triumphantly welcomed (Frankish diplomacy had in fact moved in Rome to outflank the opposition, and Charlemagne”s lack of cooperation was, in part, a surprise to the attackers). The pope returned to the sacred throne, while the bishops of the escort who had accompanied him collected documents and testimonies on the accusations, which they sent to Charlemagne together with those responsible for the attack on the pontiff

The attack suffered by the pontiff, which was however a sign of a climate of unease in Rome, could not be left unpunished (Charles was still invested with the title of Patricius Romanorum), and in the annual meeting held in August 800 in Mainz with the great of the kingdom he communicated his intention to descend in Italy.

Officially, Charlemagne”s visit to Rome in November 800 was intended to unravel the issue between the pope and the heirs of Hadrian I, who accused the pontiff of being totally unfit for the papal tiara, as a “dissolute man.” He had with him his son Charles the Younger, a large retinue of high prelates and armed men, and he also brought back those responsible for the attempt on the pope, including Pascale and Campolo themselves; on November 23, Leo went to meet him at Mentana, about twenty kilometers from the city, also with a large retinue of people and clergy, and they solemnly entered the city. The accusations (and the evidence) soon proved difficult to refute, and Charlemagne found himself in extreme embarrassment, but he certainly could not let the head of Christianity be slandered and questioned. On December 1, the king summoned citizens, nobles and the Frankish and Roman clergy to St. Peter”s (a cross between a tribunal and a council) to announce that he would restore order and ascertain the truth. The debate went on for three weeks; if it is true that the pope”s position did not seem to come out clearly, the accusers were unable to produce concrete evidence and, in the end, based on principles (erroneously) attributed to Pope Simmacus (beginning of the 6th century), the position already expressed by Alcuin of York (who had preferred not to participate in the journey to Rome) was imposed: the pontiff, the highest authority in matters of Christian morality, as well as faith, as the representative of God who judges all men, cannot be judged by men. But this did not mean absolution, and Leo chose (or perhaps the move had already been decided in Paderborn) to submit to an oath. On December 23, in front of Charlemagne and an immense crowd, Leo III swore on the Gospel and, calling God as a witness, innocence for the crimes and faults of which he was accused. It was enough to establish the pope”s extraneousness to the accusations made against him and to recognize him as the legitimate holder of the papal throne; the direct and immediate consequence was that Pascale and Campolo were found guilty of the crime of lese majesty and sentenced to death. Through the intercession of Leo himself, who feared the effects of a new hostility in case of execution, the sentence was commuted to exile.

In 797 Irene of Athens ascended the throne of the Byzantine Empire, the only legitimate descendant of the Roman Empire, proclaiming herself basilissa dei Romei (empress of the Romans). The fact that the “Roman” throne was occupied by a woman pushed the pope to consider the “Roman” throne vacant. Irene was the first woman to have full power over the Byzantine Empire and, to emphasize this, she also assumed the male imperial title of basileus dei Romei, that is “emperor of the Romans”.

The next day, at the end of the Christmas Eve services that Charlemagne was attending in St. Peter”s Basilica, the pope placed a golden crown on his head, consecrating him Christian emperor and pronouncing these words: “To the most august Charlemagne, crowned by God, great and peaceful emperor of the Romans, life and victory!”. Charlemagne received the title according to the custom practiced in Constantinople, that is through the acclamatio of the people. It is still unclear who took the initiative (and the problem does not seem solvable), but it seems likely that the details were defined during the confidential talks in Paderborn and, perhaps, at the suggestion of Alcuin: the coronation could in fact be the price that the pope had to pay to Charles for the absolution of the accusations that had been made against him. According to another interpretation (P. Brezzi), the paternity of the proposal would be attributed to an assembly of Roman authorities, which was however accepted (in this case the pontiff would have been the “executor” of the will of the Roman people of which he was the bishop. It should be noted, however, that the only historical sources on the events of those days are of Frankish and ecclesiastical extraction and for obvious reasons both tend to limit or distort the interference of the Roman people in the event. It is certain, however, that with the act of coronation the Church of Rome presented itself as the only authority capable of legitimizing civil power by attributing to it a sacred function, but it is equally true that, as a consequence, the position of the emperor became a guide also in the internal affairs of the Church, with a strengthening of the theocratic role of his government. In any case, it must be acknowledged that with that single gesture, Leo, who was not a particularly outstanding figure, indissolubly bound the Franks to Rome, broke the link with the Byzantine Empire, which was no longer the sole heir of the Roman Empire, perhaps fulfilled the aspirations of the Roman people and established the historical precedent of the absolute supremacy of the pope over earthly powers. The birth of a new Western Empire was not well received by the Eastern Empire, which, however, did not have the means to intervene. Empress Irene had to watch helplessly what was happening in Rome; she always refused to recognize Charlemagne as emperor, considering the coronation of Charlemagne by the pope an act of usurpation of power.

With the occasion of his visit to Rome, Charlemagne”s son, Pepin, was crowned king of Italy and in this way the old question of the territories that should have been returned to the Church, according to the commitment solemnly signed between Charlemagne himself and Pope Adrian I, and never respected, continued to remain unresolved.

No documents report on the motivations and decisions made in a subsequent visit of Pope Leo to the emperor in 804.

At the death of Charlemagne, which occurred in 814, the anti-papal faction of the exiles Pascale and Campolo came back to life, planning a new attempt on the life of the pope, but this time those responsible were discovered and immediately tried and executed. The new emperor Ludovico sent to Rome the king of Italy Bernardo, son of the defunct king Pipino, to carry out investigations and to solve the problem, that he closed definitively sedating further disorders. The situation was entrusted to the duke Guinigisio I of Spoleto, who settled in the city with his troops and executed new capital punishment. However the sources are uncertain for these years and for the complicated circumstances of the first foreshortening of the IX century.

Also read, history – Fall of the Western Roman Empire

Ecclesiastical and theological issues

Already in 798 Charlemagne had made an act with which he extended his role of guide to the ecclesiastical sphere by assuming some prerogatives of the pontiff. He sent an embassy to Rome with the task of presenting to the pope the plan for the ecclesiastical reorganization of Bavaria, with the elevation of the diocese of Salzburg to an archiepiscopal see and the appointment of the trusted bishop Arno as titular of that see. The pope took note, did not even try to regain possession of what was supposed to be his privilege and agreed to Charles” plan, simply implementing it. In 799 the Frankish king exorbitated again from his royal functions by summoning and presiding over a council in Aachen (a sort of duplicate of the one in Frankfurt in 794) in which the learned theologian Alcuin of York refuted, with the technique of dispute, the thesis of Bishop Felix of Urgell, the promoter of the heresy of adoption that was spreading again. Alcuin came out the winner, Felix of Urgell admitted defeat, abjured his theses and made an act of faith, with a letter that he also addressed to his faithful. Subsequently, a commission was sent to southern France, the land of spread of adoptionism, with the task of restoring obedience to the Church of Rome. In all of this, the pope, who would have been personally responsible for convening the council and setting the agenda, was little more than a spectator.

Another theological issue that saw Charlemagne prevail at the expense of the pontiff (some years later, when he had already been crowned emperor) was that of the filioque. In the formulation of the traditional text of the Creed, the formula was used according to which the Holy Spirit descends from the Father through the Son and not, equally, from the Father and the Son (in Latin, filioque) as it was used in the West. The pope himself, in obedience to the deliberations of the councils that had established this, considered the Greek version valid (which, among other things, did not provide for the recitation of the Creed during Mass), but wanted to submit the question anyway. In November 809, the emperor convened a council of the Frankish Church in Aachen, which declared the Filioque to be a doctrine of the Church and ordered the chanting of the Creed with this incision during Mass. Leo, who in turn convened an assembly of bishops the following year, refused to take note of it (perhaps also to avoid contrasts with the Eastern Church), and for about two centuries the Roman Church used a different formulation from that of the other Western Churches, until, around the year 1000, the version established by the Frankish emperor, which has survived until today, was finally considered correct and accepted.

Also read, battles – Siege of Jerusalem (1099)

Relations with other Christian kingdoms

Leo aided the resettlement of the Anglo-Saxon king Eardwulf of Northumbria (808-811 or 830) and settled several disputes between the archbishops of York and Canterbury.

Leo III died on June 12, 816. His liturgical celebration falls on that date.

In 1673 his name was included by Pope Clement X in the Roman Martyrology. The recurrence was removed from the calendar during the 1953 liturgical revision, but is still maintained by the current edition of the Roman Martyrology, which thus commemorates him:

“June 12 – In Rome at St. Peter”s, St. Leo III, pope, who conferred on Charlemagne, king of the Franks, the crown of the Roman Empire and did all he could to defend the right faith and the divine dignity of the Son of God. “

Sources