On November 10 the Church honors Pope Leo I (c. 400-461), one of the four Latin Doctors of the Church and one of only three popes to bear the title "the Great." Elected pope in 440, he ruled the See of Rome for twenty-one years and left a theological and pastoral legacy that shaped the papacy permanently. His Tome to Flavian, read at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, defined the two natures of Christ in one person — and the council fathers, hearing it, declared "Peter has spoken through Leo."
In 452, when Attila and the Huns invaded Italy and stood before the gates of Rome, Leo rode north to the Mincio river and met the Hun chieftain face to face. The interview — in which Leo is said to have warned Attila of the fate of Alaric, who had sacked Rome in 410 and died shortly after — persuaded Attila to withdraw. In 455, when the Vandals under Genseric approached the city, Leo again went out to meet the invader and obtained at least the sparing of the city from fire and massacre. These two embassies fixed his image in the Western imagination as the pope who saved Rome.
He died on November 10, 461. His original sarcophagus, carved with scenes of his meetings with Attila and Genseric, was found in the grottoes beneath St. Peter's Basilica in 1739 and is now visible to pilgrims in the Vatican grottoes at Rome. His relics are enshrined above the confessio of St. Peter. He is the patron of pontifical power and of those who defend the Church against temporal powers.
