Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/77

 I 63

cook the lead in warding off aberrations from the faith in Italy, Spain, Gaul and Aquileia. In a memorable doctrinal epistle he drew up the basis on which the Council of Chalcedon the greatest assembly the Church had known until then in 451 concurred in the decision that Christ is truly Man just as He is truly God, and that therefore He must be worshipped as one Lord in two natures. The Occident did not prevail at this Council without the powerful influence of the Em- press Pulcharia and her aged husband Marcian.

Just at this time the East, shaken by spiritual turmoil, was awaiting Attila's attack. But Leo understood how to use the goodwill of the civil authority, which regarded the Church as also its concern, without being false to the religious mission of Christianity. Indeed, almost against the will of the crumbling Christendom of the Orient, he once more accorded it a place of refuge inside the realms of the Imperial Church. The basic characteristic of his political point of view was a strong determination to salvage from the collapse of the Imperial unity the religious unity of all peoples under the dominion of the Roman See. He battled against the Manicheans, who poisoned Christian life in Rome and Italy, resorting even to the arm of the state in order to stamp out their dens of vice in the cities. He warded off the wolves who in the East and West of the Empire had broken into the sheepfold of Christ, nor did he concern himself greatly in what dark places of the soul, the intellect or folk tradition, the hereti- cal teaching had been born. At the very outset of his reign he ob- tained an imperial edict recognizing the primacy of the Holy See as based upon the priority of Peter, the dignity of Rome and the decisions of the Sacred Synods. Thus legal status was given to Papal decrees. His conception of the Roman leadership and resolute Papal guidance of the Church did not grow out of a personal passion to rule but rather out of the profound realization which he as a representative had of the weight and worthiness of the power he represented. His writ- ings, his words of advice to delegated authorities, combine the Stoic trait of equal respect for all men and peoples with the idea of a mo narchically ruled Empire of Christ and an awareness of the unplumb- able depths and inviolable unity of the Revelation given to mankind* His mood was that of one who would shepherd the peoples in the name of Christ and administer the legacy of Peter in the spirit of

64