Leo I the Thracian

Pope Leo I talked Attila out of Rome, or was present when Attila decided not to take it, and either way it made the papacy. He was born in Tuscany around 400 and was already an influential deacon under two popes, sent on a diplomatic mission to Gaul to reconcile two Roman commanders, and elected in absentia in 440 while he was still away. He inherited a western empire that was visibly failing and a church arguing about the nature of Christ. His answer to the second was the Tome of 451, a letter to the council of Chalcedon setting out that Christ is one person in two natures, divine and human, complete in each. The council adopted it — the bishops are recorded as saying that Peter had spoken through Leo — and it remains the position of the Catholic, Orthodox and most Protestant churches. The churches that rejected it, in Egypt, Syria and Armenia, are still separate. His claim for the see of Rome was equally consequential: that the bishop of Rome inherits Peter's commission directly, and that his authority over other bishops follows from it rather than from the city's imperial status. In 452 he met Attila at the river Mincio in northern Italy as part of an imperial embassy, and the Huns withdrew — plague and hunger in their army and a Roman force on the Danube probably mattered more than the interview, but the interview is what was painted. He met Gaiseric in 455 with less success and got the Vandals to sack the city without burning it. He died in 461.

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