The name Leo, the Latin word meaning “lion,” inspires images of noble ferocity and preeminence of personality. The name has special meaning to my family because my maternal grandfather, Leon Carkoski, born in 1893 to Polish immigrants in Elyria, Nebraska, was called Leo by family and friends.
Leo played baseball for a while, eventually settling down to become a farmer and rancher. My grandfather was a kindly man, honest and trustworthy, known to love his wife, Helen; respected for his strength of character and deeply held Catholic spirituality. He drank whiskey to keep warm on cold spring mornings while plowing the ground before sunrise, as well as on Saturday evenings when playing rousing polkas on his concertina at dances and hoedowns with other amateur musicians.
When Polish tempers flared, Leo was sent for to arbitrate, sometimes having to crack a few heads before gaining peace. He was not nicknamed “Knock ’em Down Carkoski” for nothing!
Leo came to California to live near his two daughters, Valentina and Virginia. My beloved sister Helen, then a very little girl, reveres memories of Grandpa’s gentle laughter, especially when disagreeing with our mother, telling her, “Just remember, Sis, you haven’t paid for your diapers yet.”
Helen is the last of our family to have interacted with Grandpa Leon. He died on Nov. 11, 1947, two years before I was born, the day after the Church commemorates another Leo.
Like my grandfather, the first pope named Leo (440-461) combined intense spirituality with pragmatic diplomacy. A cartload of mischievous errors was assailing the faith. Pope Leo recognized the source of these lies: “The devil is always discovering something novel against the truth.”
Left over from the First Council of Nicaea in 325, Arianism denied the eternal divinity of Jesus. Monarchianism destroyed the equality of divinity between the Father and the Son. Decades before Leo’s pontificate, two heresies briefly appealed to the brilliant St. Augustine, later their most vigorous opponent. Manichaean dualism promoted Plato’s belief in a “good god/bad god” split; while the arrogance of Pelagian “works earns salvation” claptrap had not disappeared.
Surviving the Council of Ephesus of 434, Nestorianism insisted that the Virgin Mary cannot be called Theotokos because she is really only Christotokos, having given birth to Christ’s human nature alone. Nestorius ignored the basic fact that a mother necessarily gives birth to a person, not a nature.
In reaction against Nestorianism, Eutychianism (aka Monophysitism, Greek: “one nature”) went too far the other way, teaching that Jesus’ human nature, including His soul, was swallowed up by His divinity leaving Christ with but one nature. Following his excommunication by Flavian, archbishop of Constantinople, the author of this last heresy, Eutyches, archimandrite (abbot) of a monastery near Constantinople, appealed to the pope.
Leo investigated. How could the Divine Word redeem humanity from death, hell and sin by merely “appearing” as a man without truly being made flesh, as John 1:14 states? Leo’s lengthy, finely reasoned response — referred to historically as Pope Leo’s Tome — explained that the Divine Word redeemed mankind by necessarily taking on a real human nature. With laser-like precision, Leo explained the true, apostolic teaching of how the Person of God the Son was made incarnate by the hypostatic union of divine and human natures in the womb of the Virgin Mary.
Further, Pope Leo realized that, if Jesus is not fully human, the Most Holy Eucharist is not truly the body and blood of the Lord:
“The Eucharist is seen as a continuation of the Incarnation. The flesh received in Communion is the same flesh the Son of God took from the Virgin Mary … “Our sharing in the Body and Blood of Christ has no other purpose than to transform us into that which we receive … What was visible in our Redeemer has passed over into His mysteries [the Mass] … This indeed is received by means of the mouth which we believe by means of faith.”
Leo called for a synod at Ephesus in 449 to settle the matter. He dispatched two legates bearing his answer concerning Eutyches to Flavian. They were also to preside.
Disaster followed. Dioscoros, Patriarch of Alexandria, friend and ally of Eutyches, hijacked the meeting’s presidency. Surrounded by soldiers, Dioscoros refused to allow Leo’s Tome to be read and, cowing the bishop with threats, Eutyches was exonerated. Dissenting bishops were silenced and beaten, including the loyal Flavian, who died soon after. Denouncing the proceedings, the papal legates fled back to Rome.
Enraged, Pope Leo condemned what he called a "synod of robbers" and prepared for a new assembly of bishops. The Fifth Ecumenical Council was held in Chalcedon in 451. The synod at Ephesus was repudiated, Eutychianism was condemned and Dioscoros was deposed.
The Council Fathers solemnly accepted Leo's Tome as a dogmatic expression of the Catholic faith concerning the Person of Christ, crying out, “This is the faith of the fathers! This is the faith of the apostles! So do we all believe! … Peter has spoken thus through Leo!”
Leo confirmed the Chalcedonian decrees. Yet he took care to eliminate the canon elevating the archbishop of Constantinople to the rank of Patriarch, second after Rome, thus diminishing the ancient Patriarchates of Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem.
At home, Leo attempted to keep a sense of civic pride among the citizens of the city of Rome, so wantonly neglected by the Emperors at Constantinople. The pope was active in building and restoring churches, even erecting a basilica over the grave of Pope Cornelius in the Via Appia.
And then there were the secular politics of the Empire. Beginning in 330, with Constantinople the now glittering capital of the eastern half of the Empire, Rome remained capital of its western half but, allowed to deteriorate, it fell prey to Germanic tribes including the infamous sacking of once mighty Rome by the Visigoths under Alaric in 410.
The Western emperors were mediocre at best. The beleaguered Romans looked to their bishop for protection when the Huns appeared with Attila, “the Scourge of God,” at their head.
This rampaging, barbarian tribe carved a bloody swath across Europe before arriving in Italy in 452. When informed, Leo took his life into his hands. Leaving Rome, he traveled north, meeting with Attila in Mantua. Encountering him on a bridge above the Mincio Rive, Leo somehow convinced Attila to spare the Eternal City. Their conversation is unknown to history, yet it was enough to cause Attila to withdraw.
Later legend had Attila startled to see Peter and Paul hovering over the pope’s head with swords drawn. The apostles threatened catastrophe should he advance, as illustrated in Raphael’s thundering fresco in the Vatican. The work was commissioned in 1512 and the artist depicted Pope Leo X as Pope Leo I. Raphael was well-aware on which side his bread was buttered.
Today, professors shrug off the event, if mentioned at all. Students are led to believe Leo simply paid off the Hun.
Again, in 455, after another Roman defeat, Leo courageously faced Genseric and the Vandals. This time, Leo was unable to prevent the city from being sacked. Yet such was Leo’s imposing personality, Genseric guaranteed that no lives would be taken, nor buildings destroyed, and he kept his word.
A number of Pope Leo’s sermons still exist, and the saint’s bones rest today in St. Peter's Basilica beneath the altar in the chapel especially dedicated to him. Numbered among the Western Fathers of the Church, in 1754 Benedict XIV bestowed on him the dignity of being a Doctor of the Church.
In 1954, two films recounted the story of Leo’s meeting with Attila. The first is Attila, an Italian production, starring Anthony Quinn and Sophia Loren, with Leo Cattozzo as Leo I. The second is Sign of the Pagan, an American production, starring Jack Palance and Rita Gam, with Pope Leo played by veteran character actor Moroni Olsen. Neither is all that noteworthy, but, of the two, I prefer the latter. Jack Palance has much more psychotic fun with the role than Tony Quinn, who alternately glowers and bellows when not lusting after Sophia.
Having so skillfully guarded the deposit of faith, in company with Popes St. Gregory I and St. Nicholas I, historians refer to Leo as “the Great,” an honorific it seems certain that will be extended in our own day to St. John Paul II of happy memory.
Nov. 10 is the feast day of this remarkable pope, St. Leo I, Expositor of the hypostatic union, Defender of Rome, Father and Doctor of the Church.
Sean M. Wright, MA, award-winning journalist, Emmy nominee, and Master Catechist for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, is a parishioner at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Santa Clarita. he answers comments at [email protected].
