A Deacon of Rome
Leo was born around 400. The Book of the Popes, a later collection of short lives of the bishops of Rome, calls him a Tuscan, though he may have been born in Rome itself. By the 420s he was a deacon of the Roman church, and by about 430 his influence reached well beyond the city. That year John Cassian wrote a treatise against Nestorius at Leo's request, shortly before the Council of Ephesus.
In 440 the emperor's court sent Leo to Gaul to reconcile two quarreling Roman officials, the general Aetius and the magistrate Albinus. While he was away, Bishop Sixtus III died, and the Roman church chose the absent deacon to succeed him. He was consecrated on 29 September 440 and served for twenty-one years.
His Rome was a declining capital. The western emperors lived at Ravenna, the Vandals had taken Roman Africa in 439, and the Huns were gathering in the north. In a city without an emperor, its bishop became its leading man. Nearly a hundred of Leo's sermons and more than 140 of his letters survive.
Loading the rest of this biography