Pope Leo IV

Saint Leo IV
150px
Birth name	???
Papacy began	April 10, 847
Papacy ended	July 17, 855
Predecessor	Sergius II
Successor	Benedict III
Born	??? Rome, Italy
Died	July 17 855 ???
Other popes named Leo

Pope Saint Leo IV was pope from April 10, 847 to July 17, 855. A Roman by birth, Leo had been a Benedictine monk and served in the papal curia under Pope Gregory IV. He was later appointed a cardinal by Pope Sergius II. Upon Sergius' death, Leo was unanimously chosen to succeed him on April 10, 847.

His pontificate was chiefly distinguished by his efforts to repair the damage done by the Saracens, who had attacked Rome during the reign of his predecessor. Leo supervised the fortification the city to protect it against future attacks from the Muslim enemy and several important churches of the city, especially those of St Peter and St Paul, were rebuilt under his direction.

When the Muslims fleet again threatened, he summoned the leaders of the mariner cities of Italy—Naples, Gaeta and Amalfi—to form a league. The subsequent Battle of Ostia, in which the Saracen fleet was destroyed, was one of the most famous in the his of the papacy during the Middle Ages.

Leo held three synods, one of them in 850, distinguished by the Leo's crowning of the holy Roman emperor Louis II. He also censured the Archbishop Hincmar of Reims for excommunicating an imperial vassal, and he excommunicated Cardinal Anastasius of San Marcello (later Antipope Anastasius Bibliothecarius) for disobediance.

Leo IV died on July 17, 855 and was buried in St. Peter's and was succeeded by Benedict III. A medieval tradition claimed that a woman, Pope Joan, succeeded him, disguising herself as a man. However, the supposed Pope Joan is generally believed to be fictitious.

Biography

Fresco of Leo IV

The son of a Roman named Radoald, Leo received his early education at Rome in the monastery of Saint Martin, near St. Peter's. His reputation for piety and competence attracted the notice of Gregory IV, who made him a subdeacon. Later, he was created cardinal priest of the church of the Quatuor Coronati by Sergius II.

Defender and rebuilder=

Leo was unanimously elected to succeed Sergius II after the alarming attack of the Saracens on Rome in 846. He was consecrated April 10, 847 but without the consent of the emperor. As soon as he became pope, Leo began to take precautions against a repetition of the Saracen raid. He entirely rebuilt 15 of the great towers of the city walls, putting these key defensive installations of the city into a thorough state of repair.

To do this, he received money from the emperor, as well as aid from the cities and agricultural colonies of the Duchy of Rome. The work took him four years to accomplish, and the newly fortified portion was called the "Leonine City," after him. In 852 the fortifications were completed, and were blessed by the pope with great solemnity.

The Battle of Ostia in an 1829 engraving

While the work of refortifying the city was in progress, a great fleet of the Saracens sailed for Rome from Sardinia. Leo succeeded in facilitating a coalition of Greek-Italian maritime city-states, including Rome, Naples, Amalfi, and Gaeta, to oppose the Muslim advance. The command of the unified fleet was given to Cesarius, son of Duke Sergius I of Naples. In 854 Leo fortified Civitavecchia, Italy, a popular Saracen target. Thereafter, the town was named Leopoli in his honour. The coalition, aided by a providential tempest in 849, completely destroyed the Muslim fleet off Ostia.

When the rebuilding of the walls of Rome was accomplished, Leo rebuilt Portus, the ancient harbor town on the right bank of the mouth of the Tiber, south of Rome. Its governance was given to a number of Corsican exiles, who had driven from their homes during the previous assaults of the Saracens. Other cities under the control of the Roman duchy were also fortified, either by the pope's own efforts or as a result of his encouragement.

Leo also labored to restore the damage which the Saracen raid of 846 had done to the various churches in Rome. Saint Peter's itself had suffered very severely. The old church were never reach its former magnificence until it was entirely rebuilt during the Renaissance, but Leo managed to make parts of it more beautiful than it had been before. Its altar received again gold covering, which weighed 206 pounds and was studded with precious gems.

Leo also restored Saint Martin's, where he had been educated, and the Quatuor Coronati, of which he had been the priest. Other church buildings whose restoration he supported included the Lateran Palace, St. Paul's, the Anglo-Saxon Borgo, Subiaco, and many other places both inside and outside of Rome. Leo also built the church of Santa Maria Nova to replace the decaying Santa Maria Antiqua.

Church and imperial politician

In 850, Leo crowned Louis II of Italy, the son of Lothair I and great-grandson of Charlemagne, as holy roman emperor. Three years later, says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, anointed and bless the five-year old English king Alfred the Great of Wessex. Leo reportedly "hallowed the child Alfred to king by anointing; and receiving him for his own child by adoption, gave him confirmation, and sent him back [to England] with the blessing of Saint Peter the Apostle."

The same year (853) he held an important synod in Rome, in which various decrees were passed for the furtherance of ecclesiastical discipline and learning. The council condemned Cardinal Anastasius of St. Marcellus, who had previously been the librarian of the Roman Church and would later be better known as Antipope Anastasius Bibliothecarius. It also censured Archbishop John of Ravenna, and Leo went personally to Ravenna to enforce the decree.

Another man who defied the authority of the pope was Duke Nomenoe of Brittany. Nomenoe sought independence both from both of Leo and Charles the Bald, then king of West Francia. Nomenoe deposed a number of bishops, but apointednew ones, placing them under the jurisdiction of a metropolitan see of his own creation. This independence would continue until the thirteenth century, when the bishops of Breton were once again subjected to the authority of the archbishop of Tours.

Leo was also involved in attempting to secure the obedience of one of the most famous churchment of the era, Archbishop Hincmar of Reims. In 847 Pope Leo IV supported Hincmar's accession at Reims and him the pallium as a symbol of Rome's backing. One of Hincmar's first concerns was to restore to his metropolitan see of the domains that had been alienated under his predecessor, Ebbo, and given to laymen. Hincmar was in constant conflict with the ecclesiastical clerks who had been ordained and thus declared their ordinations invalid. Ancient church tradition, however, held otherwise, and this Hincmar was condemned in 853 at the council of Soissons. Hincmar would go on to have one of the most remarkable careers ecclesiastical history of the Carolingian period.

It was while Leo was involved with the controversy with Hincmar that he died. He was buried in Saint Peter's Basilica on July 17, 855. He is credited with being a worker of miracles both by his biographer and by the eastern Patriarch Saint Photius.

Legacy

It was celebrated in a famous fresco by Raphael and his pupils in his rooms of the Vatican Palace. Another episode of Leo's life celebrated by the Urbinate in his series of frescoes painter is the Incendio di Borgo: it depicts the great burning of the Anglo-Saxon district of Rome (the "Borgo") which, according to the legend, was stopped by Leo simply making the sign of the cross.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Cheetham, Nicolas, Keepers of the Keys, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1983. ISBN 06841863X
• Coppa, Frank J. The Great Popes Through History: An Encyclopedia. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2002. ISBN 9780313324185
• Davis, Raymond. The Lives of the Ninth-Century Popes (Liber Pontificalis): The Ancient Biographies of Ten Popes from C.E. 817-891. Translated texts for historians, v. 20. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995.
• Morrison, Karl Frederick. Tradition and Authority in the Western Church, 300-1140. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969. ISBN 9780691071558

External links

• Catholic Encyclopedia: Pope St. Leo IV
• Opera Omnia by Migne Patrologia Latina with analytical indexes

Roman Catholic Popes
Preceded by: Sergius II	Pope 847–855	Succeeded by: Benedict III

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