Saint Leo III

Saint Leo III (750?-816), pope from 795 to 816. He was born in Rome of modest southern Italian lineage. Upon his election to the papacy, Leo had the banner of Rome and the keys to the tomb of Saint Peter sent to the Frankish king Charlemagne in recognition of the king's suzerainty. Although Leo was elected unanimously, his personality and methods aroused hostility in aristocratic circles. In 799 Leo's retinue was attacked by an armed gang that attempted without success to gouge out his eyes and cut out his tongue. Accused of perjury and adultery, Leo was deposed and imprisoned, but he managed to escape to Charlemagne at Paderborn. In December 800, Charlemagne journeyed to Rome to settle the affair in person; Leo was exonerated and his accusers exiled. Two days later, Leo crowned Charlemagne emperor and knelt before him in homage—the first and last occasion on which a pope offered obeisance to a Western emperor (see Holy Roman Empire). Charlemagne's biographer Einhard reports that the coronation came as an unwelcome surprise to Charlemagne, but contemporary descriptions of the ceremony suggest that it was carefully arranged in advance.

The coronation of Charlemagne, a watershed in Western history, marked the end of papal dependence on the emperors of the East and the beginning of a distinctly Western European theory of the relationship between church and state, in which the emperor held temporal sway and the pope spiritual sway. Charlemagne frequently interfered in the papal domain, but Leo managed to keep control over doctrinal matters—for example, to avoid giving offense to the Eastern church, he firmly resisted imperial pressure to insert the filioque in the Nicene Creed. With money donated by Charlemagne, Leo built and decorated many churches in Rome. After the death of Charlemagne in 814, Leo was able to act more independently. When he detected a second conspiracy to depose and assassinate him, Leo personally tried the conspirators on charges of treason and condemned scores of suspects to death. Although Leo did not lose his eyes and tongue in the attack of 799, he was introduced into the catalog of saints in 1673 in the belief that these organs had been restored miraculously to him. His traditional feast day (now suppressed) is June 12.