320 THERD PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590.
aiiB ; the West weak in a weak emperor ; nowhere a jjowerful and pure bisliop or divine, like Atlianasius, Augustine, or Jerome, in the former generation ; the overthrow of the Western empire at hand; anew age breaking, witli new peoples, for whose childhood the papacy was just the needful school ; the most numerous and last important general council convened ; and the system of ecumenical orthodoxy ready to be closed with tlie decision concerning the relation of tlie two natures in Christ.
Leo first took advantage of tlie distractions of the Korth African church under the Arian Yandals, and wrote to its bishops in the tone of an acknowledged OA-er-shej)herd. Under the stress of the times, and in the absence of a tow^cring character like Cyprian and Augustine, the Africans submitted to his authority (443). He banished the remnants of the Manichaeans and Pelagians from Italy, and threatened the bishops with his anger, if tliey should not purge their cliurches of the heresy. In East Illyria, which was important to Rome as the ecclesiastical outi)ost toward Constantinople, he succeeded in regaining and establishing the supremacy, wdiich had been acquired by Damasus, but had afterward slipped away. Ana&tasius of Thessalonica applied to him to be confirmed in his office. Leo granted the prayer in 444, extending the jurisch'ction of Anastasius over all the Illyrian bishops, but reserving to them a right of appeal in important cases, which ought to be decided by the pope according to divine revelation. And a case to his purpose soon presented itself, in which Leo brought his vicar to feel that he was called indeed to a participation of his care, but not to a plentitude of power {-plenHudo jpotcstatis). In the affairs of the Spanish church also Leo had an opportunity to make his influence felt, when Turibius, bishop of Astoi-gct, besought his intervention against the Priscillianists. He refuted these heretics point by point, and on the basis of his exposition the Spaniards drew up an orthodox regula jidei with eighteen anathemas against the Priscillianist error.
But ;n Gaul he met, as \ve have already seen, with a strenuous antagonist in Hilary of Aries, and, though he called the secular power to his aid, and procured from the emperoi
§ 63. LEO THE GREAT. 221
Valentinian an edict entirely favorable to his claims, he attained bnt a partial victory.' Still less successful was his eiTort to establish his primacy in the East, and to prevent his rival at Constantinople from being elevated, by the famous twentyeighth canon of Chalcedon, to official equality with himself.' His earnest protest against that decree produced no lasting eft'ect. But otherwise he had the most powerful influence in the second stage of the Christological controversy. He neutralized the tyranny of Dioscui-us of Alexandria and the results of the shameful robber-council of Ephesus (449), furnished the chief occasion of the fourth ecumenical council, presided over it by his legates (which the Roman bishop had done at neither of the three councils before), and gave the turn to the final solution of its doctrinal problem by that celebrated letter to Flavian of Constantinople, the main points of which were incorporated in the new symbol.* Yet he owed this iuflucnee by no means to his office alone, but most of all to his deep insight of the question, and to the masterly tact with which he held the Catholic orthodox mean between the Alexandrian and Antiochian, Eutychian and JSTestoi'ian extremes. The particulars of his connection with this important dogma belong, however, to the history of doctrine.
Besides thus shaping the polity and doctrine of the church, Leo did immortal service to the city of Rome, in twice rescuing it from destruction.' When Attila, king of the Huns, the ''scourge of God," after destroying Aquileia, was seriously threatening the capital of the world (a. d. 452), Leo, with only two companions, crozier in hand, trusting in the help of God, ventured into the hostile camp, and by his venerable form, his remonstrances, and his gifts, changed the wild heathen's purpose. The later legend, which Raphael's pencil has employed, adorned the fact Avith a visible appearance of Peter and Paul, accompanying the bishop, and, with drawn sword, threatening Attila with destruction unless he should desist.* A similar
' Comp. above, § 59. - See the particulars in § 36, above, near the close.
* Comp. Perthel, 1. c. p. 90 sqq., and p. 104 sqq.
* Leo himself says nothing of his mission to Attila. Prosper, in Chron. ad ann. 452, mentions it briefly, and Canisius, in the Vita Leonis (in the Ada Sanctorum^ for the month of Anril, torn. ii. p. 18), with later exaggerations.
iii