Saint Leo IX

Having gone to see his parents at the castle of Eguisheim, he was afflicted by an accident that nearly led him to the grave. Having retired to an apartment to spend the night, he was sleeping soundly when a toad climbed onto his face and attached itself to suckle. This vile animal cast its venom upon him, which soon spread into the young man's blood. The pain having awakened Bruno, he jumped from the bed, called for help, and with a movement of his hand tore off the hideous batrachian, which he threw onto the bed, but which the servants who rushed in searched for in vain. His face, throat, and chest swelled extraordinarily: the malady resisted the power of remedies, keeping the patient between life and death for two months, especially the last eight days during which he could not articulate a single word. His desolate parents had made the sacrifice of him to God: but the Lord, satisfied with this submission to His decrees, did not wish to test their Christian and legitimate tenderness any further; He restored health to young Bruno in a sudden and miraculous manner. One night, he believed he saw Saint Benedict holding a cross in his hand, which he applied to his mouth, then to the most swollen parts of his body, and which, having as it were gathered all the bad humors behind his ear with the tip of this cross, disappeared. Bruno, during this vision, felt perfectly awake; he immediately felt much better. After a few days, the abscess opened behind his ear, discharged a great deal of pus, and soon the sick man was radically cured. He attributed his recovery, after God, to the intercession of Saint Benedict; thus, from that moment, he held the monastic state in singular esteem and, although nothing proves that Bruno ever wore the religious habit, it is supposed that he embraced the life of the cloister, perhaps in the abbey of Saint-Épvre of Toul. Shortly before his death, in fact, he uttered these words: "It has been a long time since I saw the cell where I lived as a monk, changed into vast palaces; and I must now return to the narrow dwelling of the tomb." In a charter given to the abbey of Saint-Épvre in 1030, he says he was associated with the religious of that abbey before his elevation to the episcopate; and, since that time, had rendered them every possible service, in return for which he had obtained that they should make memory of him at all hours of the office, throughout the whole time of his life.

After the death of Bishop Berthold, which occurred in 1018 or 1019, Bruno, having returned to Toul, continued his residence in that city, near Bishop Herman, for whom he professed all the sentiments of obedience, submission, and respect that he had manifested to his predecessor. The Prelate, for his part, had for this distinguished cleric all the affection of a father; he ordained him deacon and was edified by the way of life he had adopted. Bruno, in fact, divided his time between prayer and study; he employed his leisure hours in the instruction of the poor, in visiting hospitals, and in the composition of sacred hymns and their musical settings. It is mainly to the firmness and authority of Bruno that Herman owed the maintenance of the common and canonical life restored in the cloister of the cathedral of Toul by the care of his predecessor.

Bruno's parents, desiring to make him known to the Emperor Conrad the Salic, their relative, sent him to his court. He soon acquired the affection of the sovereign and the consideration of the courtiers. The favor of which he became the object did not make him forget Christian humility, and although, by his birth, he could aspire to the highest ecclesiastical dignities, he thought only of maintaining himself in a happy obscurity.

Conrad had to go to Lombardy in 1024 to reduce the city of Milan, which had revolted. Bruno, still a deacon, was asked by Bishop Herman to accompany the Emperor on this expedition and to lead the troops that the Church of Toul was obliged to provide in this occurrence; age and infirmities no longer allowing the Prelate to place himself at the head of his vassals. Bruno acquitted himself of this mission as an old warrior would have done: providing for everything, leading his troop with a wisdom that earned him the esteem of the entire army, and finding the secret of combining military bravery and punctuality with fidelity to the pious obligations of his holy state.

During this time, Bishop Herman died (April 1, 1026). Immediately after the final honors had been paid to his mortal remains, the clergy and the people of Toul turned their eyes toward Bruno to replace him. They sent the two canons, Norbert and Liétard, to the Emperor to represent to him how much they needed a bishop whose birth, influence, and wisdom could protect them from the exactions and pillaging to which they were continually exposed; that the diocese of Toul was situated on the borders of the three kingdoms of France, Burgundy, and Germany; that the King of France in particular, seeking by all means to take possession of the city of Toul, they implored the Emperor to grant them Bruno, his relative, a deacon of their Church, equally desired by the clergy, by the people of the city and the countryside, as well as by the bishops of the province. They added that this candidate having been raised among them, they had, according to the canons, the right to request him as their spiritual leader and that it would be a sort of injustice to refuse them.

They wrote at the same time to Bruno, who was still in Lombardy, to beg him, in the name of the entire diocese, not to remain insensitive to their wishes, and not to abandon a poor Church for a richer one that would certainly be offered to him. The virtuous deacon could not resist the solicitations of which he was the object, and the very sad picture that was painted for him of the state of the Church of Toul was precisely the motive that determined him to take it as his spouse and to consecrate his strength and talents to it. He had the letters he had received from the Toul clergy delivered to the Emperor, along with the resolution he had reached and the main reason for his acquiescence. Conrad would have liked to keep a man of Bruno's merit with him, whom he intended to raise to the highest dignities of the Church and the Empire; but touched by the selflessness and modesty of the young deacon, he could not hold back his tears and felt obliged to lend his support to the promotion that the deputies of the city of Toul had solicited.

No sooner had Bruno received permission to leave the army than he handed over the command of his troops to a lieutenant and took the road to his new residence, where he arrived safely after avoiding various ambushes that the refractories of Lombardy had set for him on his way to this side of the Alps.

He was received in Toul on Ascension Day, the tenth of the Kalends of June (May 23) of the year 1026, by the clergy and the leading nobility of the country, to the acclamations of all the people, then immediately enthroned in his cathedral, according to canonical forms, by Theodoric, Bishop of Metz, his cousin.

Although he was not yet consecrated, Bruno set to work without any delay and fulfilled all the functions of a pastor that are not linked to ordination. He devoted all his care to healing the ills caused to his diocese by the war and by its topographical position, which exposed it at any moment to becoming the prey of the troops of the neighboring prince, the most ambitious or the most enterprising. He brought no less zeal to the restoration of monastic discipline, which had hardly been maintained in all its fervor except in the Abbey of Saint-Épvre in Toul. He deposed the Abbot of Saint-Mansuy who, neglecting the salvation of souls, thought only of living as a great lord and increasing his domain. He entrusted the care of this monastery to Widric, prior of Saint-Épvre, who soon introduced an edifying reform there.

The Emperor learned with joy of the happy beginnings of Bruno's episcopate: he had this worthy relative asked to defer the ceremony of his consecration until Easter of the following year, 1027; that then they would go to Rome together to receive from the hand of the Pope, one, the imperial crown, the other, the episcopal consecration. But the new Prelate, little sensitive to these kinds of honors, went to find Conrad and begged him to consent to his being consecrated by the Archbishop of Trier, so that this Prelate could not give a false interpretation to a trip to Rome and consider the consecration, in that city, of one of his suffragans as an attack on his authority. The Emperor had difficulty subscribing to such motives; he yielded, however, and Bruno went to Trier to receive consecration at the hands of his metropolitan.

A very unexpected incident caused the ceremony to be delayed by a few months. Before beginning it, the consecrating Prelate wanted, in consequence of a very recent ordinance that he had published on his own private authority, to force Bruno to sign an act by which he would commit himself, as a suffragan, to undertake nothing without his order and will. The Bishop of Toul, regarding this pretension as an attack on the freedom of the episcopate, formally refused to subscribe to it and made respectful remonstrances to Poppo; but this archbishop, not wanting to relinquish any of the right of inspection he had claimed for himself, Bruno returned to Toul and his consecration did not take place. The Emperor, informed of this difficulty, summoned the metropolitan and the suffragan to his court, which he was holding in Worms, and persuaded the former to desist from an excessive demand. Bruno, for his part, was willing to promise that he would undertake nothing of importance in the affairs of his Church without having taken the counsel and advice of the archbishop. Then the consecration of the Bishop of Toul took place on September 9 of the year 1026, and from then on the two Prelates always lived in perfect understanding.

Bruno was one of the best-built and most polite men of his century. He knew music perfectly and willingly used this talent to compose hymns and responsories for which the pious monks of the Vosges, his friends, wrote the lyrics. He was no less skilled in the other arts and sciences and was rightly considered one of the most learned men of his century. But, notes the author of his life, he seemed to make little of these advantages which, moreover, he turned so well to the honor of religion; he was an even greater Prelate in the Church of Jesus Christ than a great man of letters in the world. His humility was the subject of admiration for those who knew his talents. He added to it a marvelous patience in all that he had to suffer from difficult spirits and obstinate sinners, an exquisite politeness, and an unalterable sweetness which, happily harmonizing with a grand and majestic air, won everyone over and at the same time commanded respect. He was beneficent and charitable, to the point of reducing himself to indigence to lift others out of it. He practiced continuous penance through secret austerities, poured out his prayers before the Lord with the sentiments of a lively compunction, and never ascended to the holy altar to offer our adorable mysteries without shedding tears as abundant as they were affectionate.

The enemy of men could not contemplate such a perfect servant of God without trying to shake him through affliction. But for the just, tribulation becomes the principle of all patience, and patience, in its turn, gives birth to perfection for him. The holy Bishop therefore saw enemies arise against him from different sides. Some tried to make his loyalty suspect to the Emperor and to ruin the credit he enjoyed at court; others worked to embroil him with the lords of his neighborhood, and they succeeded particularly with Eudes, Count of Champagne. Bruno conducted himself, in such circumstances, with all the prudence of the serpent joined to the simplicity of the dove; and as for what concerned him personally, he never opposed anything but patience to the most unjust proceedings. Robert, King of France, having formed the design of making himself master of Lorraine, wanted to enter this country from the beginning of the reign of Conrad the Salic, and before this prince could have established himself on the throne; the Emperor sent Bruno to France with the title of ambassador and charged him with negotiating an honorable agreement between the kingdom and the empire. The holy diplomat acquitted himself of his mission with such wisdom and dignity that he attracted the esteem and respect of all the French; he re-established such perfect harmony between Conrad and Robert that, during all the time that these two princes still lived, it was never disturbed, and that after their death, its effects even persisted under the reign of their successors.

Raoul III, King of Burgundy, having died without children in 1034, those of Gisela and Gerberga, his two sisters, laid claim to the succession. Conrad the Salic had married Gisela, daughter of Gerberga, and Eudes, Count of Champagne, had married the other heiress. The latter, being closer to the object of his covetousness, first seized several fortresses; but defeated by the arms of Conrad and by the lively solicitations of Bruno, he was forced to return them and withdraw.

However, he retained from this disappointment a secret resentment against our Bishop. Thus, some time later, the nobility of Toul having revolted against their leader and first pastor, under the pretext that this Prelate did not want to render them justice against the townspeople, the Count of Champagne threw himself into the Barrois, came to besiege Toul, and committed the most frightful disorders throughout the country. But the townspeople, animated by the exhortations of their bishop, the protector and defender of their rights, supported the attacks of the count's army so vigorously that it was forced to lift the siege of the city and withdraw. This was not, unfortunately, without having burned the village of Saint-Amand, which at that time was outside the enclosure and which, later, became the district where the market halls and the synagogue are found today; it also burned the collegiate church of Saint-Gengoult, the abbeys of Saint-Épvre and Saint-Mansuy, then, while returning home, the village of Void, Commercy, and the castle of Stainville, three leagues from Bar-le-Duc.

No sooner was Conrad informed of the incursion of the Count of Champagne into Lorraine and the violence to which he was giving himself over there, than he rushed with an army to the deliverance of this unfortunate country. He came to camp at Saint-Mihiel on the mountain of Châtelet, then at the faubourg Saint-Épvre of Toul, where he took a few days of rest. Eudes, frightened, asked for peace and obtained it; but having taken the field again in 1037 and having besieged Bar-le-Duc, he was defeated and killed by Gothelon, Duke of Lower Lorraine.

Bruno was tested by several illnesses, one of which kept him for more than a year on a bed of suffering. It served to manifest the virtue of the holy Prelate, and to prove that the true Christian is no less sublime in the midst of the sharpest pains than in the most solemn public acts.

The great devotion of the time was the journey to Rome and to Jerusalem. Now, our Bishop had made it a rule to visit the tomb of the holy Apostles every year, when his health did not prevent it. He was traveling there once, accompanied by five hundred people, both clerics and laymen, when suddenly this troop was struck as if by a plague caused by the bad air of the country. The greatest number of these unfortunate pilgrims was soon reduced to the last extremity. Then the holy Bishop had the pious thought of soaking in wine the relics he was accustomed to carry with him, especially those of Saint Epvre, his glorious predecessor, and of having his afflicted companions drink this wine. All those who drank of it with faith and devotion were immediately healed.

As for himself, during the whole journey, he celebrated the Holy Mass almost every day and exhorted the people who attended in a touching manner to convert, to do penance, and to raise their thoughts toward heaven. These miracles and this piety made him venerated and cherished, particularly in the province of Rome.

His custom was, when he wished to take his rest at night, to place himself most devoutly under the protection of the relics of the Saints; then, delivered from all the cares of the world, he relaxed his soul in holy contemplation, and thus received the sleep necessary for the body. One night when he had thus piously fallen asleep, it seemed to him that he was transported into the main church of Worms, where he saw an infinite multitude of people dressed in white, among whom he recognized one of his friends, the archdeacon Bezelin, who had died while accompanying him on one of his pilgrimages to Rome. Having asked him what this multitude was, he learned that they were those who had finished their lives in the service of Saint Peter. While he was in admiration of this, Saint Peter himself appeared, who announced that all this multitude would receive communion from the hand of Bruno. And indeed, having clothed him in pontifical vestments, the same Saint Peter and the first martyr Stephen led him to the altar, amidst an ineffable melody, and all received communion from his hand. After communion, it seemed to him that Saint Peter gave him five golden chalices, three to another who followed him, and only one to a third. Having awakened, he told it to his friends and wondered what it meant. The event made him understand it well; for he was elected Pope in the main church of Worms. He occupied the seat of Saint Peter for five years, his successor, Victor, for three years, and Stephen, for one.

Another time, during sleep, it seemed to him that a person who looked like a deformed old woman sought him out with importunity and strove to join him in a familiar, yet sincere conversation. This person had a face so hideous, clothes so torn, hair so bristling and in such disorder, that one could barely recognize anything of a human form in her. Terrified by such horrible ugliness, he tried to avoid this person; but she sought all the more to attach herself to him. Tired of her importunity, the man of God made the sign of the cross on her face; she, immediately falling to the ground as if dead, rose again with a beauty that was ever more wonderful. Awakened by the fright of this vision, he rose to attend the night office. Having fallen asleep again afterward, while admiring the thing, it seemed to him that he saw the venerable Abbot Odilo, who had just died, and he begged him to tell him what this vision meant. Odilo answered him with joy: "You are very blessed, and you have delivered her soul from death." That this account is not a fabrication, adds the archdeacon Wibert, a contemporary biographer of the holy Pontiff, we have as irrefutable witnesses the dean Walter and his intimate companion Warneher, who certify having heard him say these things while weeping, and while wondering greatly what it meant. Moreover, concludes Wibert, no one doubts that the vision of this woman signified the deplorable state of the Church, to which the holy Pontiff, through the assistance of Christ, restored its ancient beauty.

Bruno, having begun the restoration of the abbey of Saint-Epvre, which had been so mistreated by the war, saw with satisfaction a crowd of people hasten to come to his aid in an undertaking that was as useful as it was very abbaye de Saint-Épvre Famous abbey of Toul and seat of the episcopal schools. considerable. The lords and the rich offered him money; others lent their time and their arms, everyone put their hand to the work, and soon the monastery was restored. In a charter that he gave around the year 1030, on this occasion, the bishop took pleasure in praising the zeal and fervor with which he was assisted, and in marking the names of all those who had made him some gift for the monastery, from the Emperor Conrad and the Empress Gisela down to the abbots and ecclesiastics of the lowest rank.

A few years later, Bruno completed the abbey of Poussay, begun by Berthold, his ante-predecessor. He dedicated the church there in honor of the Blessed Virgin and Saint Menne, and performed the translation of the relics of this virgin of Toul there on May 15 of the year 1036.

In 1044, he ratified the foundation made by Gauthier, lord of Deuilly, and Adile, his wife, of the priory of Deuilly, located at the foot of the castle of that name, two leagues from Lamarche, in the department of the Vosges; he confirmed the donation of goods made to this priory, added some to them, consecrated the church under the invocation of Our Lady, and exempted it from the parochial jurisdiction of Saint-Vallier (Vosges), arrondissement of Mirecourt.

For several years, the Catholic Church had been torn by a deplorable schism. Emperor Henry III, called the Black, went to Rome with the goal of putting an end to it. He had the three competitors who bore the name of Pope deposed, or forced them to abdicate, namely: Benedict IX, Sylvester III, and Gregory VI. After which he had Suidger, Bishop of Bamberg, elected, who took the name Clement II. This new Pontiff showed great zeal against simony; but he held the Apostolic See for only nine months, and his successor Damasus II held it for only twenty-three days, carried off as he was by the poison of his enemies.

The Romans, who had known the upright intentions of the Emperor, sent deputies to him in Germany to elect a Pope in concert with him. Henry held a great assembly of the prelates and lords of the empire at Worms to deliberate on the choice of a Pope who could effectively remedy the evils of the Church. The deliberation was short: the merit, birth, and virtue of Bruno, Bishop of Toul, won all the votes. He alone was surprised and afflicted by this choice, and unable to resolve to consent to it, he asked to be granted three days to reflect. He spent them in prayer and absolute fasting; then, being ever more strongly urged to accept, he made his confession publicly, exaggerating his faults, with the goal of making it better understood that he was unworthy of the supreme rank to which they wished to elevate him. But this sincere apprehension and this true reluctance that he manifested toward the sovereign Pontificate showed all the better that he was the more worthy of it.

Bruno finally yielded, declaring however that he would only consent to his election insofar as it was ratified unanimously by the clergy and the people of Rome. He left Worms immediately to come and celebrate the feast of Christmas in his church of Toul. He was accompanied there by four Prelates: Hugh of Pisa, envoy of the Romans; Eberhard of Trier, successor of Poppo; Adalberon of Metz, and Theodoric or Thierry of Verdun. The day after Christmas, December 27, he set out for the capital of the Christian world, having in his train a great number of people who wished to form a procession of honor for him. He passed through the abbey of Moyenmoutier and dedicated the church of Saint John the Baptist there, which was then at the entrance of the monastery. He took into his company Humbert, a religious of that convent, whom he used to advantage on several occasions. He made him archbishop of all Sicily, then cardinal-vicar of Rome, where he kept him.

Instead of traveling with the pomp of his new dignity, he walked in the habit of a pilgrim, occupying himself continually with prayers for the salvation of so many souls with which he was charged. At Augsburg, while in prayer, he heard an angel's voice singing with marvelous harmony: "Thus says the Lord: I think thoughts of peace, and not of affliction; you will call upon me and I will hear you, I will bring back your captivity from all places." Encouraged by this revelation, he set out, accompanied by a multitude of people who flocked from all sides. Among the number, a pious servant of God, having approached, said to him: "As soon as you set foot in the church of the Prince of the Apostles, do not forget to use these divine words: Peace to this house and to all who dwell in it!" He received this advice with humility and conformed to it devoutly. He thus arrived as far as the Tiber, which was flooded and prevented him from crossing for seven days. The holy man was afflicted by this setback because of the multitude of people who had gathered around him. He invoked the help of God and began the dedication of a church of Saint John built in the vicinity. The consecration was not yet finished when the river, having returned to its ordinary bed, left the passage free, which everyone attributed to the merits of the holy Pontiff. Upon approaching Rome, the whole city came out to meet him with songs of joy; but he dismounted from his horse and walked for a long time barefoot, praying, groaning, and shedding torrents of tears. After having thus long immolated himself to Jesus Christ on the altar of his heart as a living, holy, and pleasing victim to God, he spoke to the clergy and the people and explained to them the choice the Emperor had made of his person, begging them to declare their will frankly, whatever it might be. He added that, according to the canons, the election of the clergy and the people must precede any other suffrage; and that, as he had come only against his will, he would willingly return, unless his election were approved by a unanimous voice. They answered this speech only with acclamations of joy, and he spoke again to exhort the Romans to the correction of morals and to ask for their prayers. He was therefore enthroned on February 12, 1049, which was the first Sunday of Lent: he took the name Leo IX and held the Holy See for five years.

Of all the virtues that shone in his person, the most radiant were mercy and patience. He was quick to forgive the guilty, wept with compassion for those who confessed their crimes, and gave alms until he reduced himself to indigence. Providence tested him more than once to make his trust in God shine forth. When he arrived in Rome, he found nothing in the coffers of the apostolic chamber, and everything he had brought with him had been spent on travel expenses and alms. Nothing remained for those in his retinue either, and they thought of selling their own clothes at a loss to return to their country without the holy man's knowledge. He exhorted them to trust in God, but he sympathized with their affliction from the depths of his soul. On the very day they were all ready to withdraw secretly, deputies of the nobles of the province of Benevento arrived with magnificent gifts for the Pope, whose blessing and protection they requested. He received them with paternal kindness, but reproached his own men for their lack of faith, showing them, by this example, never to distrust Providence. From that moment, the fame of Pope Leo resounded to the ends of the earth; everywhere people blessed God for having given such a pastor to His Church; an extraordinary multitude of pilgrims flocked to the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles; all were admitted into the presence of the holy Pope and received his blessing; those who could not possibly make the journey sent him gifts so that he might bless them from afar. But of all the offerings placed at his feet, he took nothing for himself or his own: everything was for the poor.

To draw down more and more the blessings of heaven upon his Pontificate, the holy Pope Leo made a pilgrimage to Mount Gargano, where there was a famous church of Saint Michael the Archangel; he likewise visited the monastery of Saint Benedict at Monte Cassino. Very skilled at recognizing men of merit, he made the monk Hildebrand—who was to be Pope under the name of Gregory VII—a cardinal and treasurer of the Roman Church. Finally, in the second we ek after E Hildebrand Pope during whose pontificate Saint Gausbert died. aster, he held in Rome the Council he had announced several months earlier; bishops from various countries were present, among others the archbishops of Trier and Lyon.

In this Council, the Pope first confirmed the decrees of the first four general Councils, as well as the decrees of the Roman Pontiffs, his predecessors, notably those against simony and the incontinence of clerics; then he expressly anathematized simony, which had infected several parts of the universe; finally, he deposed some bishops convicted of this crime. The Lord deigned to confirm his authority with a miracle. The bishop of Sutri, being accused of simony, wanted to justify himself by false testimony; but at the very moment he was about to pronounce the oath, he was suddenly struck by God, like another Ananias; he was carried out of the assembly and expired. The decree of Clement II was presented to the Pontiff, allowing those who had been ordained by simoniacs to exercise their functions after forty days of penance; in order not to disrupt the administration of the Church with overly radical measures, Leo IX decided that this decree would continue to be executed. The custom of paying tithes was made general throughout the Church. Incestuous marriages were condemned, and several noble persons who had contracted such were forced to separate. In this same Council, according to Father Richard, who cites Mansi in support, the Pope approved the life and actions of Saint Adeodatus or Dieudonné (Saint Dié), who died in the odor of sanctity after leaving the bishopric of Nevers to embrace the religious state in the Vosges.

Just as Saint Peter once visited the churches of Judea to strengthen faith and piety there, so his successor Saint Leo IX visited the principal provinces of the universal Church. Thus, in the same year 1049, in the week of Pentecost, he held a Council in Pavia, but its acts have not come down to us. It was certainly for the same purpose as the one in Rome.

Approaching Passignano on the road to Pavia, the holy Pope sent word to Saint John Gualbert, founder of the Vallombrosan Congregation, that he intended to dine with him at his monastery of Passignano. Much surprised by this visit, Gualbert asked the monastery's steward if there was any fish left: upon his negative response, he sent two novices to fish in a nearby lake. As there had never been any fish in that lake, the novices pointed out to him that it was difficult to catch any there. The holy Abbot having, for his only answer, reiterated his command, they went, cast the net out of obedience, and caught two enormous pike, which served to treat the Pope and his retinue.

After holding the Council of Pavia in the week of Pentecost, Pope Saint Leo crossed the Alps by the Mont Joux, otherwise the Great Saint Bernard, and found himself on June 29 in Cologne, where he celebrated the feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul with the Emperor. Upon descending from the Alps, he was received by Saint Hugh, Abbot of Cluny, who had just succeeded Saint Odilo and to whom the holy Pope confirmed all the privileges of his abbey.

On this journey, Leo IX rendered a great service to the empire. Godfrey the Hardy or the Bearded, Duke of Lower Lorraine, supported by Baldwin, Count of Flanders, and Theodoric, Count of Holland, was waging war against Emperor Henry the Black over Upper Lorraine, to which Godfrey had claims, but with which the Emperor had invested Gerard of Alsace, ancestor of those Dukes of Lorraine who, in the last century, ascended the throne of Austria.

In forcing the city of Verdun, Godfrey had burned its cathedral. Pope Saint Leo, in punishment for this sacrilege, launched a sentence of excommunication against him. The Duke, awakened as if by a thunderbolt, recognized his fault. Not only did he go to Aachen and submit to the Emperor, who, at the Pope's prayer, received him into his good graces, but, having returned in all haste to Verdun, he did public penance there and had the church he had reduced to ashes rebuilt from top to bottom. While it was being rebuilt, the Duke often joined the workers and performed the duties of a laborer. Godfrey, having repaired all the scandal by this frank humility, was received back into the bosom of the Church.

The holy Pope's journey, his sovereign authority, and his presence in Gaul and Germany were even more useful to the Church than to the empire; they were even necessary to it. It was a matter of extirpating simony, not among a few individuals, but among bishops and lords.

But, to reform, to correct bishops supported in their scandals by the nobility of their family, by the weakness or connivance of princes, one feels that a Pope was needed who joined the authority of holiness to the holiness of authority, who could boldly say to the new Simons: "May your money perish with you!" and before whom the new Ananiases had to tremble at being struck dead for their lies. This Pope, the Lord had provided to His Church: it was Leo IX.

Arrived in the Gauls, he announced that he would go to Reims to visit the sepulcher of Saint Remi, the apostle of the Franks, and that he would hold a Council there afterwards. Not yet being Bishop of Toul, he had made the journey to France several times to negotiate peace between the Emperor and the King. Not having been able to satisfy his devotion in these circ umsta Reims Site of the baptism of Clovis. nces, he promised Herimaire, Abbot of Saint-Remi, to make this pilgrimage on foot during the following Lent. The Abbot took the opportunity to ask him to perform the dedication of his monastery's new church at that time. Bruno having been elected Pope, Herimaire begged him to remember his promise if he ever returned to the Gauls. The new Pope had him assured that, even if the good of the Church did not call him back to the Gauls, he would return for the sole love of Saint Remi, in order to dedicate his basilica, if it pleased God.

Eberard, Archbishop of Trier, who had accompanied his suffragan, who had become his father and his head, to Rome, had to think about returning to his diocese. But before that, he begged the Pope to be willing to confirm and renew the ancient privileges that attributed to the Church of Trier the primacy of the Gauls. Leo subscribed to his request and had a bull dispatched to him by which he declares: that having had the ancient privileges of the metropolis of Trier read in the church of the Holy Apostles; that the whole assembly having testified to approving them, he confirmed the rights and prerogatives of this ancient church; granted the Archbishop of Trier the Roman miter, so that he might use it in ceremonies; gave him rank after the legates of the Holy See, in France and Germany, on the condition that Eberard and his successors send, each year, to Rome, a deputy to receive the commissions of the Holy See, and to go in person to the Pope, once in three years.

It is good to show the men of little faith of our century who might be tempted to believe in an eclipse and even the possible disappearance of the Papacy, that it has been fought at all times: it was even in the middle of the 11th century, one of the beautiful centuries of the Church. The struggle is one of the necessary elements of the vitality of the supreme Pontificate: the journey of Leo IX to Reims is one of the many proofs of this.

As soon as Herimaire had learned that the Pope was on his way to Reims to consecrate the new church of his monastery, he went to Laon where Henry, King of France, was, to warn him of the Pontiff's arrival, to ask for his agreement for the dedication that Leo was to perform, to pray His Majesty to honor the ceremony with his presence, and to order the prelates and lords of the kingdom to be there. The King promised to subscribe to Herimaire's requests, unless he were prevented by some important business. The Abbot of Saint-Remi then went to take the Holy Father's orders, and to concert with him on the day and order of the ceremony. Leo assured him that he would be in Reims for Saint Michael's Day, September 29, and would celebrate a solemn mass in the cathedral church that day; that on the first day of October he would perform the elevation of the relics of Saint Remi, the dedication of his church the next day, and that the following three days would be employed in holding the Council that he had decided upon for this moment.

The mere word Council spread alarm among the simoniacal bishops and the lords who had contracted incestuous marriages; thus these prevaricators resolved in concert to prevent the holding of the one the sovereign Pontiff had just announced. They acted accordingly with the King of France, represented to him that by leaving full latitude to the Pope, in his States, he was compromising the dignity of his crown; that after all, an ecclesiastical assembly could well take place in times of peace; but that the kingdom being prey to the factions of ambitious and restless lords, it was more appropriate to march against the rebels; that furthermore, a military expedition being decided, he should not exempt the abbots, who possessed the best part of the kingdom's goods; that it was especially necessary to force the Abbot of Saint-Remi to do so, whose riches had inspired so much pride in him that he had had the pretension of calling the Pope to perform the consecration of his church.

The King, not glimpsing the secret motives that inspired his advisors, thought he should side with their opinion. He therefore sent Frolland, Bishop of Senlis, to tell the Pope that, obliged to march, with all the Prelates of his kingdom, against rebel vassals, neither these Prelates nor he himself could attend the Council. Leo did not let himself be disconcerted by such a setback: he replied to the envoy that he did not want to thwart the King of France in any way; but that, for his part, he could not fail a given word; that he would go to perform the dedication of the church of Saint-Remi, and that, if there were any Prelates devoted to the interests of religion, he would hold the Council with them.

The King left abruptly for his expedition, and forced the Abbot of Saint-Remi to follow him, as if to punish him for having attracted the Pope to France. Nevertheless, he could not escape that supernatural influence that the presence or even just the thought of the proximity of their supreme Pontiff exerts on Christians; he had soon understood what inconvenience there was in removing the Abbot of Saint-Remi from his monastery, at the moment when the Pope was arriving there, and, from the second day, he allowed him to return.

For his part, the Pope, accompanied by the archbishops of Trier, Lyon, and Besançon, went to Saint-Remi, on Saint Michael's Day, as he had indicated, and fulfilled the program of ceremonies previously agreed upon between His Holiness and the Abbot of the monastery. From the abbey, where he had stayed, he went to the cathedral of Reims. Archbishop Vidon, surrounded by his clergy, was waiting for him at the city gate and led him to the metropolis. Leo celebrated mass there pontifically, then went to take his meal at the archiepiscopal palace.

The following night, the Pope went secretly to the monastery of Saint-Remi, to take a bath, get shaved, and thus put himself in a state to perform the translation of the relics of the apostle of the Franks more decently. Despite the military expedition, prepared exclusively to disturb this feast, one saw then the admirable fact that was reproduced during the painful pilgrimage imposed on Pius VI, of venerable memory; political preoccupations, the presence of enemy troops could not stop the momentum of the populations eager to see, hear, and admire the person of the Vicar of Jesus Christ. An innumerable crowd of people gathered, not only from all parts of France, but from England and other neighboring countries, had gone to Reims and was stirring to satisfy its pious and filial curiosity. The Pope was obliged to show himself, on several occasions, from the windows of the house he occupied, and from there he exhorted the people who only left after having received his blessing.

The day of the feast of Saint Remi having arrived, the Pope, accompanied by the archbishops of Reims, Trier, Lyon, and Besançon, by Herimaire, Abbot of the place, by Hugh, Abbot of Cluny, and by several other Prelates, went to the tomb of Saint Remi, lifted the reliquary, and, after the appropriate prayers, carried it, on his shoulders, into the oratory of the Trinity.

The next morning, the second day of October, the reliquary of the Blessed one was carried back, from the cathedral where it had been brought the day before, to the monastery of Saint-Remi, by making a procession around the city. In order to shorten the dedication ceremonies, which are very long, the Pope divided the various parts among the bishops who assisted him, and who accomplished them in a simultaneous manner. Then he celebrated the holy mass and gave an exhortation to the people who were crowding, both in the enclosure and in the surroundings of the newly consecrated temple.

The sovereign Pontiff ordered that the anniversary of this solemnity would be annually celebrated in the diocese of Reims on October 1st; then he decided that, by special privilege, the diocesan archbishop, the Abbot of Saint-Remi, and seven priests specially designated by the community, would alone have the right to celebrate the holy mysteries, at the high altar of the conventual church; that, nevertheless, the canons of Reims would enjoy this favor twice a year, namely: the second feast of Easter and the eve of the Ascension when, according to custom, they would go in procession to the abbey. The seven priests designated, to enjoy the benefit of the altar reserved by the Pope, were distinguished from their confreres by the title of cardinal-priests of Saint-Remi.

The following day, October 3, Leo made, in the church he had consecrated the day before, the opening of the Council previously announced. There were twenty bishops, nearly fifty abbots, and a large number of ecclesiastics there. When it was necessary to take rank, a great dispute arose, despite the presence of the supreme head, between two high personages, for a very small subject: the Archbishop of Reims and that of Trier wanted to claim the first place, each of them pretending to possess the title of primate of the Gauls: poor humanity is found everywhere! The Pope, having at heart to avoid what could disturb the holding of the Council, had the seats placed in a circle so that no one could take advantage of the first place.

When everything was arranged, the Holy Father, dressed in his pontifical vestments, preceded by the cross and the Gospel, left the chapel of the Trinity, went to pray before the altar, then came to place himself in the middle of the choir, his face turned towards the tomb of Saint Remi. He had, on his right, the Archbishop of Reims, and that of Trier on his left. Peter, deacon of the Roman Church, having had silence made on behalf of the Pope, stood up and proposed the articles that would be the subject of the Council's deliberations, namely: simony, the possession, by laypeople, of ecclesiastical charges and even altars; the unjust dues demanded in the church courtyards; the interference of clerics in secular affairs; incestuous or adulterous marriages. The Bishop of Langres was accused before the Council of simony and other crimes. The Archbishop of Besançon took the floor for his defense; but Saint Remi, in whose presence this Council was held, performed the same miracle that he had once operated by rendering an Arian bishop mute in a Council; for the voice suddenly failed the Archbishop of Besançon; seeing this, the Archbishop of Lyon said that the Bishop of Langres recognized himself guilty of having sold sacred orders, but that he denied the other crimes of which he was accused. As it was getting late, the Pope postponed the judgment until the next day.

Then the Archbishop of Besançon confessed the miracle that had operated in him the previous day, when he suddenly lost his speech, while wanting to defend such a bad cause. The Pope could not hold back his tears; he exclaimed: "Saint Peter still lives." And rising at that instant with the whole Council, he went to prostrate himself in prayer before the tomb of this Saint, in whose honor an antiphon was sung.

The Fathers of this Council held three sessions, at the end of which they drafted twelve canons against the abbots who had been reported to them.

God, who had authorized the conduct of the holy Pope by a miracle in the Council itself, confirmed it by similar facts after the Council. The two men who had most opposed it, Gebuin, Bishop of Laon, and Hugh, Lord of Braine, both perished in the same year of an ignominious death. The first, who had given the King the fatal advice of a military expedition so as not to come into the presence of the Pope, perished outside his diocese, under the blow of excommunication and abandoned by everyone. The second, for having threatened a minister of Jesus Christ to cut off his head, had his own head cut off with a sword blow in this war.

Hugh, Bishop of Langres, who had been accused of so many crimes at the Council of Reims and excommunicated for having fled the Council, could not resolve to bear the weight of this excommunication. He went barefoot to Rome, confessed his sins to the Pope, and received absolution. He did more; he presented himself, in the year 1050, at the Council of the Lateran, barefoot, shoulders bare, and holding rods in his hands to strike himself. The Fathers of the Council were moved at this spectacle, and it is assured that the Pope restored him to the episcopate, in case his Church or some other were willing to receive him; but Hugh thought only of expiating his sins; he retired to Saint-Vannes of Verdun, of which Walleran, his brother, was abbot, took the monastic habit there, and died some time later in great sentiments of penance. He was skilled, and, despite the disorders of which he was guilty, he had had zeal against the heretics.

Father Longueval noted that, among the prayers made for the opening of the third session, the Veni Creator was sung. This is the first time, he says, that I find mention of this hymn. Then he adds: The author of the life of Saint Hugh, Abbot of Cluny, assures that it was this holy abbot who, first, ordered, for his monastery, that it be sung at Terce on the day of Pentecost.

The Pope went from Reims to Verdun, to perform the dedication of the church of Saint Mary Magdalene there, then to Metz where, to satisfy the desire of Warin, Abbot of Saint-Arnoui, he consecrated the church of the monastery that this religious had just finished. Leo left there, as a gift, a precious cope sent to Pope John XIX by Queen Gisla, wife of Stephen, King of Hungary, as indicated by an inscription attached to the reverse of this cope, preserved until the time of Dom Calmet who saw it. Moreover, and among other privileges, the Pope granted, to Abbot Warin and his successors, the use of sandals and the dalmatic, when they would officiate in the principal solemnities. It is known that sandals are the footwear of the Pope and bishops when they officiate; they were besides also that of priests, except for the richness. As for the dalmatic, which became the ordinary garment of deacons, it was originally reserved for those of the Roman Church to the exclusion of all others. Pope Sylvester is said to have been the first to introduce its use in the Church. Pope Zachary usually wore it under his chasuble and, until the end of the 11th century, the bishops of France used it only by special permission of the sovereign Pontiff who only granted it with much reserve.

From Metz, the tireless Leo IX went to Mainz where he held a Council. Emperor Henry the Black attended it, as well as nearly forty bishops from different parts of Germany. Simony and the marriage of priests were forbidden there. Sibichon, Bishop of Speyer, having seen himself accused of several considerable faults, of which unfortunately he was guilty, nevertheless had the temerity to want to purge himself of them by the test of the body and blood of Jesus Christ; but, in punishment for such a sacrilege, his jaw was suddenly paralyzed and remained so until the death of the unfortunate prelate.

The Pope took the road back to Italy, occupying himself constantly, by holding Councils, with the repression of disorders and abuses. It is thus that at Siponto, an ancient city of Apulia, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, he deposed, in an assembly of Prelates, two archbishops recognized as guilty of the crime of simony.

Upon returning to Rome, he held, in the Lateran church, the Council he had scheduled for the month of April 1050. Several points of ecclesiastical discipline were addressed there, and the conduct of several bishops was examined. Above all, the errors of Berengar, who denied the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, were condemned. But one of the acts of this Council, the most solemn and the most interesting for the Church of Toul, was the canonization of Saint Gerard by his successor Leo. All the bishops and abbots present at the Council signed the bull issued by the Pope on this occasion, in which, after declaring that the feast of Saint Gerard would henceforth be celebrated in the Church on April 23, he expressed the desire to perform the translation of the relics of his Blessed predecessor himself.

Leo did indeed come a second time to Toul to perform this act of fraternal piety. On the occasion of this ceremony, he granted Dodon, Abbot of Saint-Mansuy, a bull by which he confirmed him in the possession of the goods of that monastery. This bull is dated October 22, 1050, the second year of the Pontificate of Leo IX and the twenty-sixth of his episcopate; which shows that he still retained the title of first pastor of the church of Toul.

Towards the beginning of the following year (1051), Leo left Toul to return to Rome, where he arrived before Easter. He spent the feast of the Purification in Augsburg with the Emperor. It was there that he made a remarkable prediction.

He had much to struggle against the invaders of the goods of the Roman Church, mainly against Hunfroi, Archbishop of the Church of Ravenna, swollen with the spirit of pride and rebellion; several courtiers favored him, envious of the Pope's glory. The leader of the discord was Nixon, Bishop of Freisingen, whom divine power punished in the following manner. Sent to Italy to carry the Emperor's responses, he came to Ravenna and, in favor of the Archbishop, spoke insolent words against the holy Pope, even uttering this blasphemy while placing his finger on his throat: "I want this throat to be cut by the sword if I do not have him deposed from the honor of the apostolate!" At that very instant, he was seized in the throat by an intolerable pain and died impenitent on the third day. The Archbishop of Ravenna, because of his incorrigible presumption, was anathematized by the holy Pope at the Council of Vercelli. He was therefore summoned to Augsburg by order of the Emperor, forced to return what he had unjustly usurped, and to ask for absolution. As he was prostrated at the feet of the Saint and all the bishops present were interceding for him, the Pope said: "May God give him absolution for all his sins according to his devotion!" The Archbishop rose with a mocking laugh, and the holy Pope, bursting into tears, said quietly to those who were near: "Alas! This wretch is dead!" And, in fact, he was immediately attacked by an illness, and, barely arrived in Ravenna, he lost both the life and the dignity of which he was so proud.

After his return to Rome, Saint Leo held, in the capital of the Christian world, a Council in which Gregory, Bishop of Vercelli, was deposed for considerable faults. The Pontiff, filled with zeal for the maintenance of order and respect for good morals, took, in this assembly, measures to repress the disorders caused in Rome by public women and the scandals they created there. He advocated replacing him, as bishop of his dear Church of Toul, with Udon, who was its primicerius, and transmitted to Frederick, brother of Godfrey, Duke of Lower Lorraine, the office of chancellor that Udon had held until then. Leo spent the rest of that year visiting the churches and monasteries of Italy to restore discipline and settle affairs as if he had been specially charged with them.

In the year 1052, Pope Saint Leo IX made a third and final trip to Germany to negotiate peace between the Emperor and Andrew, King of Hungary. As Andrew had not wanted to subscribe to all the conditions, the Emperor, irritated, besieged Pressburg with a powerful army. The besieged, supported by God, whom they invoked in their distress, defended themselves so well that the Emperor made vain efforts to take their city. However, King Andrew had implored the Pope's mediation, promising to pay the Emperor the same tribute as his predecessors, provided that the past was forgiven. The Pope, having arrived in Pressburg, found the Emperor personally disposed to peace; but some courtiers, jealous of the holy Pontiff's credit and successes, dissuaded this prince, who, in the interval, was forced to lift the siege. Then King Andrew in turn became more difficult; the Pope threatened him with excommunication and sent him Saint Hugh, Abbot of Cluny, who finally concluded peace, but on conditions much less advantageous for the empire than the first ones.

Finding himself in Worms with the Emperor, the Pope pressed him to restore to the Holy See the Abbey of Fulda and some other places which, according to the wish of the founders, belonged to the Roman Church. The Emperor only consented when the Pope showed himself willing to make an exchange. The Pope therefore ceded to the Emperor the bishopric of Bamberg and the Abbey of Fulda in exchange for the Duchy of Benevento and some other places in Italy. However, Bamberg was to pay the Holy See a palfrey or twelve pounds of silver each year. But, to defend Benevento against the Normans of Italy, the Emperor granted the Pope some German troops, with which the latter hoped to put an end to the depredations of the Normans in Apulia. These troops were already setting out when the Emperor, following the advice of Gebhard, Bishop of Eichstätt, recalled his knights, so that only about three hundred remained with the Pope, most of them his relatives or vassals of his relatives. He had counted, by the mere sight of a numerous army, on bringing the Normans to reason without any bloodshed; this hope had vanished due to the pettiness of the Emperor and his council. On quite similar occasions, Pepin and Charlemagne themselves led the French into the service of Saint Peter and the defense of his Church. The German emperors never understood anything of this Christian magnanimity of Pepin and Charlemagne, even when it concerned a Pope of their nation and their family.

It was under these circumstances that Pope Saint Leo IX left the land of his fathers, which he was never to see again, and returned to Italy via Padua, where he had some consolation.

It was not the same in Mantua. Having arrived there for Quinquagesima of the year 1053, he wanted to hold a Council; but he was disturbed by the faction of some bishops who feared his just severity; for their servants came to insult those of the Pope, who thought they were safe being in front of the church where the Council was being held, so that the Pope was forced to get up and go out before the door to stop the noise. But, without respecting his presence, they persisted more and more in pursuing his unarmed people with armed force and tearing them from the door of the church where they wanted to take refuge, so that arrows and stones flew around the Pope's head and some were wounded while trying to hide under his mantle. It was so difficult to appease this tumult that the Council had to be abandoned, and the next day, as the authors of the sedition were to be examined to judge them severely, the holy Pope forgave them, for fear that he might appear to be acting out of vengeance. These base acts of violence by the guilty bishops show how great the evil was and what prodigious efforts were still needed to eradicate it.

Barely arrived in Rome, Saint Leo marched in person against the Normans. Here is the cause of this military expedition, the outcome of which was unfortunate.

Forty Norman pilgrims, returning from the Holy Land, had landed at Salerno, located on the port of that name, in the Kingdom of Naples, at the time when this city was being closely besieged by the Saracens. These pilgrims, people of heart and hand, left their staves to take up arms and struck the enemy with such resolution and success that they forced them to let go and retreat. The besieged did not know what praise to give their liberators, nor what means to use to keep them in Italy. They offered them the most beautiful products of the country, with a request to take them to their compatriots, in order to induce them to come and settle in such a beautiful and fortunate region. The hope of glory and booty touched the Normans even more than the beauty of the fruits that had been shown to them, but which they nevertheless judged to be much preferable to those they harvested in their province. Many of them therefore went to seek their fortune in Italy, under the leadership of Count Rodolfe and then the famous Robert Guiscard. Valor, for them, made up for numbers; they performed exploits that surpassed their reputation and, in a short time, they had delivered Italy from the yoke of the Greeks and Saracens; but it was to impose another on it that it could not shake off.

These Normans, reinforced by new colonies of their compatriots, having no more enemies to pillage in Italy, pillaged Italy itself, without sparing churches and monasteries, then thought of establishing themselves, by right of conquest, in the most beautiful province of this charming country. The Italians had not intended to buy the services of the Normans at this price; they were going to suffer the fate of the horse, having implored the help of man to take revenge on the stag: then they complained to Leo IX; and in fact the brigandage of their previous liberators was pushed to such an excess that it made them regret the yoke of the Greeks and Saracens. The Sovereign Pontiff exhausted, without success, all the means at his disposal, without omitting excommunication, about which these unbridled Normans seemed very little concerned; it was then that he decided to march against them with an army composed of Germans and Italians.

This is one of those steps that attracted to Leo IX the reproach of sometimes following the too impetuous movements of his zeal. But if one wants to go back to times so different from ours, where Prelates, having become great vassals of emperors or kings, did not astonish the people by marching to war, one will judge the conduct of Leo more soundly. A temporal prince himself, should he not protect and defend his subjects and allies against the fury and ravages of the Normans? Barely an adjutant in the militia of the cloister (he was a deacon then), had he not appeared in the militia of the camps of Lombardy with the rank of commander-in-chief, to the applause of the most experienced generals; and were not the premature successes he had obtained sufficient to make him hope for new and more complete ones? One cannot, at least, accuse his intentions; the letter he wrote on the occasion of this war to Constantine Monomachos, Emperor of Constantinople, proves that they were quite pure and upright: "In seeing," says the Pope, "the nation of the Normans rise with an impetuosity more than pagan against the Church of God, tormenting and massacring Christians, sparing neither the most tender age nor the weakest sex; making no difference between the sacred and the profane, stripping churches, tearing them down and burning them, I believed that the solicitude that must make me watch over the good of all these churches engaged me to oppose these evils. I have reprimanded the authors; I have prayed, conjured, and warned them; but everything has been useless. That is why I judged that it was necessary to make those who do not fear the vengeance of God fear the vengeance of men; not that I want the death of any Norman or anyone else; I only seek to repress, by the terror of arms, those whom the fear of the judgments of God does not stop."

If Peter Damian, usually respectful towards the Sovereign Pontiffs, did not approve of the expedition of Leo IX, the universal Church thought otherwise than he did; besides, one must forget the grievances of this pious hermit and forgive him for them. He was then pursuing, through his speeches and writings, those German and French bishops who had no scruples about taking up the helmet and putting on the cuirass: in the ardor of his zeal, he let his pen run and exceeded the bounds. Leo IX, moreover, did not imitate these Prelates in warrior costume: he united with his own the troops that the Emperor of Germany had sent him; and if he believed he had to accompany them, it is certain that he was not present at the combat, which may very well have compromised its success. It is highly probable that, if he had succeeded in his enterprise, he would not have been accused of more crime than was Jean X, generally praised for having driven the Saracens from the post they occupied on the Garigliano.

The battle took place on June 18, 1053, near Dragonara. On one side were the German knights who had come from Swabia, but who, according to the Normans themselves, did not exceed seven hundred, under the command of two dukes; next to them a considerable multitude of Lombards and other Italians, under the command of three counts. On the other side were three thousand Norman cavalrymen and some infantry, under the orders of three leaders: Count Humphrey, his young brother Robert Guiscard, who had recently arrived, and Richard, Count of Aversa. Richard was to attack the Italians, Humphrey the Germans, and Robert to support him with the reserve. Richard, who began the combat, put the Italians to flight without much difficulty; but Humphrey found other men in the Germans. The combat was murderous. Robert, having come to his brother's aid, was knocked off his horse up to three times. The victory was still undecided when Richard, having returned from the pursuit of the Italians, fell upon the Germans from another side. The Germans did not yield for that and died sword in hand to the last man. If the Emperor had let them come in numbers, the victory would have been theirs.

Covered in dust and blood, and furious at a victory so dearly bought, the Normans ran to Civitella to complete the victory by the capture of the Pope. It was a city more than a league from Dragonara, where the Pope had retired with his clergy while waiting for the outcome of the battle. At the approach of the Normans, the inhabitants climbed onto the walls to repel them; but the Normans set fire to the surrounding cottages to force the inhabitants, by the smoke, to leave the walls. Already the inhabitants, forced to retreat and believing themselves lost, were packing the Pope's chapel and luggage and demanding in a tumult that he surrender, through the burning gate, among the assailants, and that he deliver himself to the power of his enemies. The Pope ordered the cross to be carried before him to go and face the fury of the enemies himself, when all of a sudden the wind turned and pushed the fire against the Normans, who were thus forced to abandon the assault. The next morning, the Pope sent messengers to the Norman camp to exhort the counts to consider with repentance what they had done and to think of their salvation. If it was him they were looking for, he was ready; he feared no one, and his life was not dearer to him than the lives of the men they had killed. The Normans, whose fury was insensibly giving way to veneration for the head of the Church, replied humbly that, if it were possible for them to offer the Pope a worthy satisfaction, they would willingly undergo the penance he might please to prescribe for them. The Pope ordered the city gates to be opened, released the Normans from excommunication, and went among them. At the sight of the holy Pontiff, who had always treated them with the greatest meekness and whose virtues shone with a new brilliance in misfortune, these warriors, so proud until then, threw themselves to the ground weeping. Dressed in their triumphal and festive clothes, many crawled on their knees to his feet to receive his blessing and hear the words he addressed to them. Without any bitterness in his heart for the affliction they had caused him, and with the simplicity of the dove, the Pope stopped among them, recommended that they bring forth worthy fruits of penance, and dismissed them after giving them his blessing and having received from them the oath that they would be his faithful vassals in place of the knights they had killed.

Most of them hastened to make themselves masters again of the cities that had expelled them during the insurrection; but Count Humphrey, the gentlest of Tancred's sons after Drogo, remained with the Pope to serve as his safeguard, and promised, when he wanted to return to Rome, to accompany him as far as Capua. The Pope then went to the battlefield, where so many of his friends and relatives lay. When he saw their mutilated corpses, he was seized with extreme affliction, called them by their names while weeping, and wished he had died with them; but when he observed that the bodies of his own were intact and those of the Normans were mangled by wild beasts, he saw in it an assurance of their eternal salvation and a consolation for himself. He spent two days on the battlefield, fasting and praying, and, by the hands of the Normans themselves, had the bodies buried in a nearby church, which had been destroyed long ago, and celebrated the office of the dead there himself. Then, accompanied by Humphrey, he went to Benevento, where he arrived on the eve of Saint John the Baptist, not without some fear that the inhabitants might want to take advantage of the unfortunate circumstances; but this very misfortune had touched their hearts. Young and old, men and women went to meet him far from the city, and awaited his arrival amidst groans and tears; but when they caught sight of this procession, first the clerics and b ishops, Bénévent Episcopal see of Saint Januarius. advancing with all the marks of mourning and affliction, finally the holy Pope, who, with Christian resignation and affectionate looks, raised his hand to heaven to bless those who were waiting for him, then not one could hold back their tears; from all sides, groans and sobs were heard. However, no one was more deeply afflicted than the Pope; every day he said Mass for the souls of the deceased, until a vision ordered him no longer to pray for these dead, but to hold them among the Blessed. They also appeared to many people and recommended that they not weep for them, since they had a share in the glory of the martyrs. The Normans themselves built a beautiful basilica over their tombs, where several miracles occurred, and, what the power of their adversaries had not been able to obtain, the victory so dearly bought accomplished: they treated the vanquished with more humanity and kept to the Pope, until his death, the fidelity they had sworn to him.

A captive of the Normans, the holy Pope Leo spent the remainder of 1053 and the beginning of the following year in Benevento, continually occupied with prayers and mortifications. At the beginning of 1054, he felt himself attacked by an illness, more of weakness than of pain, but which, having taken away his appetite for all food, reduced him to consuming only water. He did not fail to celebrate the anniversary of his ordination on February 12, when he said Holy Mass for the last time. Foreseeing his approaching end, he had himself carried in a litter from Benevento to Rome, where many Normans wished to accompany him, as much out of honor for his person as to satisfy their devotion. The illness, only increasing, forced him to stop at Capua and stay there for twelve days; he did not re-enter Rome until April 17.

Nothing is more edifying than the account given by an eyewitness of the circumstances of this holy Pope's death. Scarcely arrived at his palace, he called for several bishops who were in Rome and said to them: "My brothers, my children, and children of our Mother the Holy Church, it is to you that the Lord has entrusted the government of His Church with the power to bind and to loose. That is why I conjure you to watch carefully over your flock and to defend your sheep against the snares of the wolves. What excuse will you be able to offer if you let the sheep perish that the Lord did not disdain to carry upon His shoulders? I commend myself to your prayers; my death is not far off. Suffer me for three more days and you will see the truth of what I tell you."

The next morning, he had the coffin he had prepared for himself carried to Saint Peter's, then asked to be transported there himself. He addressed a touching allocution to those present, then, fixing his eyes on the cross, he prayed for them and gave them absolution. He also prayed for the Church and particularly for the conversion of the simoniacs. It seemed that the zeal he had always displayed for the extirpation of simony acquired a new ardor at that moment. After an hour of silent meditation and conversation with the Lord, raising his voice, he said: "Great God, redeemer of the human race, who, through the prayer of your apostles Peter and Paul, cast down Simon the Magician, deign to hear me as you heard them; convert Theophylact, Gregory, and Peter, who have established simony in almost the entire Christian world. Grant them the grace to recognize their errors and to return to the path of truth; for you have said that you do not desire the death of the sinner, but rather that he be converted and live. You then, Lord, who changed Paul the persecutor, change those of whom I speak, so that they may know you and glorify you." This Theophylact, whose conversion Leo was requesting, was Benedict IX, who had usurped the Holy See, from which he had been driven, and who was then making some moves to return to it. Gregory and Peter may have been officers or prelates of Benedict IX's court.

Evening having come, he ordered that he be taken to the place in the church he had marked for his burial. At the sight of the tomb he had had prepared, he said: "See, my brothers, how vile and small is the dwelling that awaits me after so many goods and honors. This is all that remains of them for me on earth. But I believe that my Redeemer lives, that I will rise again on the last day, and that I will see my Lord and my God in my flesh."

On the 19th, in the morning, he received Extreme Unction and had himself presented before the altar of Saint Peter, where, for an hour, he prayed face down on the ground. Having then been placed back on his bed, he heard Mass and received the Holy Viaticum from the hands of the celebrating bishop; then, having asked those present for a few moments of silence, as if to rest, he breathed his last. Thus died this illustrious Pontiff, on April 19 of the year 1054, at the age of fifty-one years and twenty-eight days, after twenty-eight years of episcopate and five years, two months, and nine days of a pontificate whose every moment was employed in the extirpation of the vices that dishonored the sanctuary. His virtues and the miracles he performed during his life and after his death have caused him to be placed among the Saints.

What contributed much to the glory of the pontificate of Leo IX is that he knew how to recognize, attach to himself, and retain men of merit and devotion, such as Cardinal Humbert, Hildebrand, and Peter Damian; for the great art of governing is knowing how to choose men with whom one wishes to share the administration of affairs, and then to encourage them by treating them with the regard that is the first and sweetest reward for their self-denial and their labors.

Saint Leo IX is represented: 1st, lifting a leper onto his shoulders and carrying him to his own bed. It is said, in fact, that during his stay in Benevento, as he was crossing his palace while praying, he noticed in a corner a leper whose hideous wounds were visible through his rags. The unfortunate man had remained there, unable to go any further; he could barely stammer a few words. Immediately the Pope knelt beside him and consoled him until the moment the last of his servants had retired. Then he took the leper on his shoulders, carried him to the state bed that was prepared for him, but which he never used, and continued the recitation of his psalter. When at last he wanted to lie down on his mat spread on the floor and his stone pillow, the leper had disappeared. He woke his servant: the latter searched in vain throughout the palace, whose doors were well locked. The next day, the Pope, who had had some revelation in this regard, strictly forbade his servant to say anything about this event during his lifetime; 2nd, he is also painted blessing a church from afar, for it is reported that while traveling in Germany, the founders of a church near Speyer begged him to stop to consecrate it. The holy Pope, pressed in his journey, blessed it from afar; as they insisted, he assured the petitioners that they did not need him, since the church was consecrated; they went to see out of curiosity and found indeed the ordinary marks of the consecration of churches: crosses on the walls, alphabets traced in the ashes, etc.

[APPENDIX: CULT, RELICS, MONUMENTS, WRITINGS, THE GOLDEN ROSE.]

The city of Benevento—which Saint Leo had acquired for the Holy See by exchanging it for the abbey of Fulda and the bishopric of Bamberg—built within its walls, very shortly after the death of the holy Pope, a church in his honor, and Bishop Walderic, who had known him, instituted his feast to be celebrated on April 19. From Italy, the cult of Saint Leo soon passed to France, especially to Toul and Reims, then to Germany, at least in the churches bordering the Rhine.

Lutolph, dean of the cathedral of Toul, raised in the episcopal school of that city during the lifetime of Leo IX, wished to honor the memory of this great pope by building, not far from the basilica begun by Saint Gerard, another church that would be consecrated under his name. This design was executed almost as soon as it was conceived, and, as early as 1091, the city of Toul was endowed with a new temple bearing the title of Saint-Léon. Lutolph also thought of entrusting it to the care of edifying ecclesiastics. He cast his eyes on the Benedictine community of Saint-Mont, whose members lived in such regularity that they enjoyed the esteem and veneration of the clergy.

The abbey of Saint-Léon was originally built outside the walls of the city of Toul, on a piece of land belonging to the bishop; but having been ruined during the war that broke out between Charles II, Duke of Lorraine, Edward, Marquis of Pont-à-Mousson, and the bourgeois of Toul, the latter provided the dispossessed religious with an establishment within the walls of their city, where they came to settle and transferred the abbey in 1418.

When the Revolution had dispersed the religious and depopulated the monasteries, the one of which we speak was assigned by the city of Toul to the establishment of a communal college that still exists, and the holy Pope, who had illustrated and so loved his dear Church of Toul, no longer had, in his former diocese, a single public monument to perpetuate his memory. But now, after sixty years of a somewhat forced oblivion, an excellent priest, Abbé Noël, former vicar of the cathedral of Nancy, charged by the diocesan authority to form, in the Stanislas suburb of the episcopal city, on the road to Toul, a parish that the spiritual needs of a population growing every day imperiously demanded, Abbé Noël has conceived the happy idea of reviving the memory of the illustrious Pontiff and of making, in a way, amends by placing under his patronage the magnificent church he has raised and decorated as if by enchantment, and by surmounting its pediment with the statue of Saint Leo, Bishop of Toul, Pope of Rome, one of the most radiant glories and one of the most distinguished benefactors of the country.

We will not omit to say that, during one of his pastoral visits in the arrondissement of Sarrebourg, Mgr de Forbin-Janson had formed the project of building, on the plateau of the rock where the ruins of the old castle of Dachsbourg, belonging to the parents of Leo IX, had lain for two centuries, a chapel that would recall the memory of the holy Pontiff, at the same time that the faithful would invoke his assistance there.

The events of 1830 did not allow the Bishop of Nancy-Toul to realize his pious thought as he would have liked. But Abbé Klein, pastor of the parish of Dabo, with a zeal full of selflessness, was able to fulfill the wish of his fugitive bishop. And one can see, for years already, the modest sanctuary that has as it were preluded the one we have just pointed out, and in which Saint Leo lives again in a way, and intercedes for the goodness of God for his former diocesans and also for the Alsatians, his compatriots.

The relics of Saint Leo rest in the church of Saint Peter in Rome, under the altar of Saint Martial. One of his arms was brought to the church of Sainte-Croix in Wolfenheim, and his skull to the church of Lucelle in Alsace.

There are also slight particles of them at the cathedral of Toul, in the chapel of the holy Pope raised on the summit of the mountain of Dabo, and in the new parish church placed under the invocation of Saint Leo of Toul, which is being completed at this moment in the Stanislas suburb of Nancy.

**Monuments.** — 1st The ordinary residence of Count Hugh, father of Saint Leo, was the castle of Eguisheim in Alsace, and that of Dabo, formerly Dagsbourg, in the Vosges, between Phalsbourg and Saverne. The latter, whose ruins can still be seen, was demolished by the orders of Louis XIV in 1678 for fortification works: on the site, as we have just said, a small chapel has been raised in honor of our holy Pontiff. The small town of Dabo circles the mountain of difficult access, where this castle was perched like an eagle's nest. There is near Dabo a hill still called Léonsberg, from the name of our Saint; one also sees there a small chapel dedicated under his invocation and in which it is believed he was baptized.

2nd Among the foundations of Saint Leo or his family, one notes especially the following: the priory of Saint-Quirin, which owes its name to relics of this martyr brought from Rome by a sister of our holy Pope; — the abbey of Hesse between Dabo and Sarrebourg, of which Sorberge, niece of the pontiff, was the first abbess; — the monastery of Altorf, two leagues to the south of Molsheim; he consecrated the altar and the chapel dedicated to Saint Stephen there, and donated to the church an arm of Saint Cyriacus, who became its patron from then on.

But Upper Alsace received particular marks of his generosity: he abandoned to the monastery of Waffenheim or Sainte-Croix en Plaine, located two leagues south of Colmar, several of his domains, and donated to it a magnificent particle of the True Cross, which he placed in the church consecrated by his own hands.

This particle of the True Cross was one of the most considerable that had been seen until then in Alsace; hence the numerous pilgrimages that the faithful made to the church that possessed it.

The inhabitants of the villages of Waffenheim, Illienschwiller, and Dingsheim gradually left their old homes and settled around the monastery, which from then on took the name of Sainte-Croix and gave birth to a small adjacent town of the same name.

This monastery was converted in 1461 into a chapter of canons regular of Saint Augustine, and in 1524 it was suppressed; the church became the parish of the place. One could still see, before the Revolution, near Sainte-Croix, a small chapel near which lived a hermit, and which was the old church of Dingsheim.

It is at Waffenheim that the Golden Rose originated: Saint Leo IX will tell us himself in an admirable letter the origin of this poetic institution:

"O holy and admirable cross," he exclaims, "upon which Jesus Christ, our Lord, was attached! Dominated by love and, moreover, bound by duty, occupied with my saint whi le I stil Rose d'or Liturgical and diplomatic institution created by Leo IX. l live and sit on the Apostolic See, despite my unworthiness, I submit to our Apostolic See the church of my father Hugh, of my mother Heilvilge, of my two brothers Gerard and Hugh, currently deceased, founded by these same parents, dedicated by their care, and which has come to me by right of inheritance. Having become its possessor by right of legal succession, I submit it to our see in perpetuity, to be defended against all those who would be opposed to it or who would strive to harm it.

"In return for this liberality, O cross more brilliant than the sun, more precious than all created beings, and as compensation for these privileges granted to this monastery, for the salvation of my soul and the salvation of my parents who rest there in the Lord, the abbess of this place will give annually, at the determined time, to our Apostolic See, a golden rose of the weight of two Roman ounces, made as it should be, or the material if it is not, and will send it during the time of Lent.

"I have resolved to make this monument of this liberality subsist always, in order to recall, in this time, the victory of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered on you, O most holy cross, then to be feared and now to be sought, to be venerated."

Such is the origin of the golden rose that the Pope still gives today, on the third Sunday of Lent, and which he then sends to some prince or princess as a testimony of esteem and benevolence.

The day of the blessing of the rose is called Pascha rosata Sunday. The station is held at the church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme.

In Strasbourg, Leo IX consecrated the church of Saint-Pierre-le-Jeune, which had just been enlarged, and left there his silk tunic, which was kept for a long time as a precious monument.

Could he stay in Alsace without going to venerate the tomb of one of his relatives, Saint Odile? But the buildings of the monastery of Hohenbourg had been reduced to ashes in 1045. Leo had them rebuilt, consecrated the church, and composed several hymns in honor of the holy foundress, in whose intercession he had great confidence. The abbey of Andlau had the same happiness of seeing the venerable Pope within its walls. He raised the body of Saint Bicharde from the ground, had it placed behind the high altar of the church, which had just been rebuilt by Princess Mathilde, sister of Emperor Conrad, and consequently his close relative, and he likewise consecrated this church.

Above the small town of Eguisheim, one still sees the towers and ruins of an old castle. Wimpheling informs us that Leo consecrated there a small chapel in honor of Saint Pancras, a young hero of the faith who suffered martyrdom at the age of fourteen under the persecution of Diocletian in 304. He enriched it with a relic of this holy Martyr. This chapel was later transferred to the village named Hüsseren, where a monastery of canonesses dedicated to Saint Leonard was built after the death of Saint Leo, which Pope Innocent IV confirmed in 1245. This house was transferred first near the castle of Wer, in a valley of the Black Forest, and from there, in 1274, to Petit-Râle, where it subsisted until the time of the Reformation.

Between Bouffach and Geberschwir, behind the mountain, one could see the monastery of Saint-Sigismond, which Dagobert II, King of Austrasia, had founded during his stay at the castle of Isembourg, near Bouffach. Leo visited it: he had the sorrow of finding it in a state of total dilapidation and ready to fall into ruins. He had it restored at his own expense, consecrated the church, and changed its name to that of Saint-Marc. He likewise consecrated the church of Bergholzzell, which had just been built: the memory of this consecration has been preserved by an inscription that one sees against a pillar of this ancient church.

The chapter of canons, which his pious mother Heilwige had founded on an eminence near Reiningen, also attracted the attention of the zealous Pontiff. He went to visit this house, and, edified by the conduct of the canons, he consecrated their church, donated to them the head of Saint Romanus (martyred a few days before the illustrious Saint Lawrence, who had baptized and instructed him in the faith), and considerably increased their goods. This house was given in 1626 to the Jesuits of Freiburg and sold at the time of the Revolution: bought back later by an ecclesiastic of the diocese, it passed in 1525 to the religious of La Trappe. Thus the monastery of Ellenberg has been returned to its primitive destination, and the virtuous monks, who have replaced the former canons, edify the whole region in our day by their austerities and their high piety.

Leo marked his stay in Alsace with a distinguished benefit. Everyone knows the empire that the nobility exercised at that time throughout Europe: every lord believed himself entitled to avenge his private quarrels by armed force; from this often arose pillaging and massacres. To repress such a glaring abuse, the truce called the Truce of God was made. It was said therein, among other things, that churches would serve as an asylum for all sorts of persons, except those who had violated the truce, and that from Wednesday until Monday morning no violence would be used against anyone, even under the pretext of avenging an injury received. The acceptance of this truce suffered great difficulties in several provinces. Saint Odilo, Abbot of Cluny, had preached it a few years earlier and had it received in some provinces of the south and west of France. The Alsatian nobility, who were no less turbulent than those of the rest of France, were convoked by Saint Leo. The manly and persuasive eloquence, the ascendancy that his dignity gave him, the brilliance of his holiness and his virtues, and finally the advantage of belonging to the first family of the country, all this made a vivid impression on the minds of the Alsatian lords, and the Truce of God was accepted.

Writings. — Saint Leo, as we have seen, had received an excellent education: he was not only lettered, but learned. Besides theology, he had a thorough knowledge of the civil or rather customary law of his time, canon law, and music. At fifty, he learned the Greek language, no doubt to be better able to follow the controversy engaged between the West and the East.

It is even reported that, whether to familiarize himself with this language or to better savor the beauties of the sacred text, he recited the psalter in Greek every day, from the day he was able to read that language.

While our holy Pope was a prisoner at Benevento, one of his cardinals saw, at Trani, in Apulia, a letter written by Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Co Michel Cérulaire Patriarch of Constantinople during the Great Schism. nstantinople, and by Leo, Bishop of Ohrid, Metropolitan of Bulgaria.

This letter, which was addressed to John, Bishop of Trani, formulated four grievances against the Latin Church: the use of unleavened bread, the observance of the Sabbath, that is to say, fasting and abstinence on Saturday; the eating of strangled meats, birds, for example, caught in a snare; the fourth reproach was that the Latins do not sing Alleluias during Lent. It is easy to convince oneself, at first glance, that in all these reproaches there is no material for a schism: these are silly things and in themselves certainly indifferent. But let us examine the question more closely.

To understand the first difficulty, it must be known that the Greeks consecrate with leavened bread, and the Latins with unleavened bread or azymes. After having reproached the Latins for doing as the Jews do regarding the Sabbath, the Greeks condemn them for not doing as they do by eating strangled meat. Such is, once again, the logic of the Greeks and consequently that of the Russians, who followed them into the schism.

Saint Leo wrote to the two Eastern prelates a letter in forty-one articles on the union and unity of the Church; a letter that breathes charity, humility, and, at the same time, the authority of the Prince of the Apostles, and which is often of an eloquence all the more true for being less sought after. We regret being able to give only a short excerpt: "What Jesus Christ commanded us most, what He asked most of His Father for us, is peace and union. Woe therefore to the world because of its scandals! Woe to the miserable men who tear the unity of the Church, more cruel in that than the executioners of Jesus Christ who respected His seamless robe..." Then addressing the two bishops: "Certainly, if you do not come to repentance as soon as possible, you will be incorporated into that tail of the dragon which dragged the third part of the stars of heaven to the earth. Here it is, nearly one thousand and twenty years after the Passion of the Savior, that the Roman Church begins to learn from you in what manner it must celebrate Easter, as if Peter were not the one to whom the Son of God said: 'You are blessed, Simon..., confirm your brothers...'" The Pope then reproaches them for having acted severely against the Latins in Constantinople, while in Rome, the Greeks were not only respected but favored, "because the difference of customs does not harm salvation." Further on, he writes, in a few words and with a master's hand, the history of the Patriarchs of Constantinople. No Church in the world has been governed by so many bad subjects: it is enough to make one shudder. The Saints who have occupied this see, like Chrysostom and Flavian, have always and invariably been persecuted.

Leo reproaches the Patriarch for the disgrace of the church of Constantinople, which ordained women as bishops. "Even," he says, "a woman was ordained one day." Leo would not have said this if the ignoble fable of Pope Joan had been divulged at that time; for Cerularius would have used it to defend himself against Rome. This very judicious reflection is due to Mabillon.

The holy Pontiff concludes by exhorting Cerularius not to be the member of the body jealous of the head that directs, the branch separated from the vine and which rots apart.

At the same time, Saint Leo had sent legates to Constantinople to try to bring back the Patriarch. Among these legates was Frederick, cardinal-vice-chancellor of the holy Church, who was later Pope under the name of Stephen IX. Irritated by the resistance they were met with, the legates excommunicated Cerularius, who, in turn, excommunicated them and had the name of the Roman Pontiff removed from the diptychs. Thus, the schism of Photius was seen to be renewed.

We shall report the excommunication as it is read in *Fleury*, vol. IV, book LX, p. 159. It describes with great precision the different kinds of heresies that the Holy See was pursuing at that time.

"We have been sent by the Holy See of Rome to this imperial city to know the truth of the reports that had been made to it, and we have found much good and much evil there. For, as for the pillars of the empire, the persons constituted in dignity and the wise citizens, they are very Christian and very orthodox; but, as for Michael, abusively named patriarch, and his abettors, they sow many heresies there. They sell the gift of God, like the simoniacs; they make their guests women, like the Valesians, and then raise them not only to the clergy but to the episcopate: imitating the Arians, they rebaptize those baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity, namely the Latins; like the Donatists, they say that, outside the Greek Church, there is no longer in the world either the Church of Jesus Christ, or true sacrifice, or true baptism; like the Nicolaitans, they allow marriage to the ministers of the altar; like the Severians, they say that the law of Moses is cursed; like the Macedonians, they have cut from the symbol that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son; like the Manichaeans, they say, among other things, that everything that has leaven is animated; like the Nazarenes, they keep Jewish purifications, they refuse baptism to children who die before the eighth day, and communion to women in childbirth, and do not receive into their communion those who cut their hair and beards, following the custom of the Roman Church.

"Michael, admonished by the letters of Pope Leo because of his errors and several other excesses he has committed, has taken no account of them, and furthermore, as we wished to repress these evils by reasonable means, he refused to see us and to speak to us, and to give us churches to celebrate Mass, just as ten years earlier he had closed the churches of the Latins, naming them Azymites, persecuting them everywhere and in their person, anathematizing the Holy See, in contempt of which Michael takes the title of ecumenical patriarch.

"This is why, by the authority of the Holy Trinity, of the Apostolic Holy See, of the seven councils and of the whole Catholic Church, we subscribe to the anathema that the Pope has pronounced, and in his name we say:

"Michael, abusive patriarch, neophyte clothed in the monastic habit by the sole fear of men, and defamed for several crimes; and with him Leo, called Bishop of Ohrid, and Constantine, sacellarius of Michael, who has trampled with his profane feet the sacrifice of the Latins; they and all their sectarians be anathema, with the simoniacs, the heretics who have been named, and all the others, and with the devil and his angels, if they do not convert. Amen, amen, amen."

*Fleury* adds: "These heresies imputed to the Greeks were for the most part only consequences drawn from their doctrine or their conduct; but they did not admit them."

Besides the letter or rather the treatise refuting the quibbles of the Greeks, we have from Saint Leo:

2. A letter to the bishops of Istria and Venetia ordering that these two provinces would depend on the metropolis of Grado (ancient Aquileia).

3. Two letters to the five bishops of Africa — it was all that remained of this flourishing Church — declaring to maintain for the Bishop of Carthage his right as metropolitan.

4. A letter to Peter, Patriarch of Antioch, acknowledging receipt of the notice of his ordination which he had transmitted to Rome and congratulating him on his attachment to unity.

5. Two letters: one to Michael Cerularius and the other to the Emperor Constantine Monomachos.

The Emperor of the East, wishing to make the Emperor of Germany favorable to him, wrote to the Pope in the sense of unity and forced the Patriarch of Constantinople to do the same. Saint Leo replied to them briefly and sent them three legates to bring them, at the same time as his reply, the treatise from which we have cited a few words (January 1054).

6. A letter to the bishops of Italy ordering that persons entering religion will only be able to give half of their goods to the monasteries they have chosen.

7. A letter to the faithful of France inviting them to celebrate the feast of Saint Remigius on October 1st.

8. Various bulls.

9. A letter to the Duke of Brittany notifying the excommunication incurred by the bishops of his duchy for having refused to recognize the Archbishop of Tours as metropolitan and to go to the Council of Rome where they were cited as simoniacs.

10. A letter to King Edward of England releasing him from the vow he had made to go on a pilgrimage to Rome.

11. A letter approving the translation of the see of Tuscany to that of Porto.

12. Several other letters, bulls, diplomas, and occasional speeches that can be seen in the Patrologia Latina, vol. CXLIII, as well as the letter of Michael Cerularius to John, Bishop of Trani.

Let us say a word, now, about two contemporaries of Leo IX: Berengar and Lanfranc, whose lives hagiographers generally link to that of the holy Pope.

Berengar, born in Tours, a disciple of Saint Fulbert, B ishop of Bérenger Theologian whose Eucharistic doctrines were opposed by Bruno. Chartres, master of a famous school in his homeland, priest in 1039, archdeacon of Angers, stung by having been defeated in a dispute by Lanfranc, and even more grieved to see his school almost deserted, sought to distinguish himself by singular opinions, and even by attacking the doctrine of the Church on the Eucharist. He recognized neither transubstantiation nor the real presence. His error was condemned in a very large number of councils, as well as the book of Scotus Eriugena, where he had drawn it. What is vile and despicable in this heresiarch is his hypocrisy. When he found himself at a council, he would subscribe to the profession of faith that was presented to him, thus remaining publicly and formally faithful to his opinions. Once out of the assembly, he taught his errors more than ever; he retracted, however, in the end, with sincerity, his heresy, and spent the last eight years of his life in the exercises of penance and in good works. He died on the island of Saint-Côme, near Tours, in 1088.

Let us note that the heresy of Berengar found almost no partisans: it was the object of universal reprobation. But as it attacked a dogma so fundamental, so dear to the Church, it earned us a host of treatises on the Eucharist. We still have most of the works written against Berengar; one finds there enough to amply refute the modern heretics. Here are the names of their authors: Hugh, Bishop of Langres; Theoduin, Bishop of Liège; Eusebius Bruno, Bishop of Angers; Lanfranc, monk of Bec, then Archbishop of Canterbury; Adelman, scholastic of Liège, then Bishop of Brescia; Guitmond, monk of La Croix-Saint-Leufroy, then Bishop of Aversa, near Naples; the Blessed Maurilius, Archbishop of Rouen; Durand, Abbot of Troarn, in Normandy; Wolphem, Abbot of Brauweiler, near Cologne; Ruithard, monk of Corvey, then Abbot of Hersfeld; Geoffrey of Vendôme, whose first writing was a treatise on the Body of the Lord; Saint Anastasius, monk of Saint-Michel, then of Cluny; Jotsald, monk of Cluny; Alberic, monk of Monte Cassino; Ascelin, monk of Bec; Goscelin, scholastic of Liège, etc.

Erasmus asserted that the treatises of Guitmond, Lanfranc, and especially Adelman, scholastic of Liège, were preferable to all the polemical writings published in the 17th century: thus he would strongly urge the sacramentarians to read them to return to the faith in the Eucharist, as he had been confirmed in it himself.

See the History of Berengar, by François de Roye, professor of law at Angers, printed in 1656, in-4°; and Father Mabillon, *Analect.*, vol. I, p. 477, and *Act. Ben.*, vol. IX; Fleury and Ceillier have followed this latter author. See especially the continuators of the Hist. littér. de la Fr. They have pointed out several considerable errors into which Cave and Oudin had fallen.

To have an idea of the versatility of this heresiarch who, a worthy precursor of Luther, amused himself by making witticisms about the Popes, calling them *Pompifax*, *pulpifax*, we refer to the *Conciles généraux et particuliers*, vol. II, p. 257 and following.

Lanfranc, the most famous of the adversaries of Berengar, was born in Pavia, around 1005, of a family of senators, and his father was among the number of the conservators of the laws of the city. Lanfranc lost him at an early age, and, as he was to succeed him in his dignity, he went to Bologna to study eloquence and laws. His stay in this city was long, but he also made great progress there. Upon returning to Pavia, he acquired a great reputation at the bar, publicly taught civil law, and composed some treatises on this subject.

From Pavia, he went to France, and, after his literary dispute with Berengar, stopped for some time at Avranches, where he was followed by several disciples of great reputation and opened a school; but considering how vain it is to seek only to please men, he even wanted to avoid places where there were men of letters who could render him honor.

However, one day, going to Rouen, as he was passing in the evening through a forest beyond the Rille river, he met thieves who, having taken everything he had, tied his hands behind his back, covered his eyes with the hood of his cloak, took him away from the road, and left him tied in the thick brush. In this extremity, not knowing what to become, he lamented his misfortune.

When night had come, having returned to himself, he wanted to sing the praises of God and could not, because he had not learned them. Then he said: "Lord, I have spent so much time in study, I have worn out my body and my mind in it, and I still do not know how I should pray to You. Deliver me from this peril, and, with Your help, I will regulate my life in such a way that I can serve You." At daybreak, he heard travelers passing by and began to shout to ask them for help.

At first they were afraid; then, noticing that it was the voice of a man, they approached, and, having learned who he was, they delivered him and brought him back to the road. He asked them to indicate to him the poorest monastery they knew in the country. They replied: "We do not know of a poorer one than that which a certain man of God is building here nearby"; and, having shown him the way, they withdrew.

It was the Abbey of Bec, begun seven years earlier by the venerable Herluin. When Lanfranc arrived there, he found this good Abbot busy building an oven, where he was working with his own hands. After greeting each other, the Abbot asked him if he was a Lombard, recognizing him apparently by his language. "Yes," replied Lanfranc, "I am." — "What do you desire?" said Herluin. — "I want to be a monk," he replied. Then the Abbot commanded a monk, named Roger, who was working on his side, to give him the book of the rule, as Saint Benedict orders it to be read to postulants. Lanfranc, having read it entirely, said that, with the help of God, he would willingly observe everything it contained. After which the Abbot, knowing who he was and where he came from, granted his request. He prostrated himself and kissed the feet of the Abbot, whose humility and gravity he admired from then on.

Elected prior three years after his entry to Bec, he opened a school there which soon became the most famous in Europe.

William, Duke of Normandy, had married, without dispensation, Matilda, his relative, daughter of Baldwin, Count of Flanders; but he wanted to finally put an end to the scandal that such a marriage had caused; he sent Lanfranc to Rome to obtain a dispensation from Nicholas II. The Pope granted it, on the condition that William and Matilda each found a monastery. The Duke and the Duchess did what was required of them, and founded in Caen, in 1059, the two famous abbeys of Saint-Étienne and the Trinity. The first was for men, and the second for women.

The Abbey of Saint-Étienne having been completed in 1063, Lanfranc was named its first abbot. He opened a school which became as famous as that of Bec. Pope Alexander II, who had studied at Bec under Lanfranc, sent several of his relatives there.

In 1067, they wanted to raise Lanfranc to the archiepiscopal see of Rouen; but he constantly refused this dignity. He would have equally refused the Archbishopric of Canterbury, in 1070, if he had not been forced to accept it by the combined orders of Abbot Herluin and two councils. The Pope made him his legate in England.

No sooner had he been consecrated than he turned all his thoughts toward the reformation of his diocese, and even of all the dioceses of England, of which he was primate. He worked with all his strength to correct the abuses that had slipped into the monasteries, among the clergy, and among the simple faithful. He re-established everywhere the study of grammar, eloquence, and the Holy Scripture.

William the Conqueror had great confidence in him; he entrusted him with the government whenever he was obliged to go to Normandy. He asked him, while dying, to crown his son, William Rufus, king. The ceremony took place on September 29, 1087. Lanfranc died on May 28, 1089, and was buried in Christ Church, Canterbury. Capgrave and Trithemius have given him the title of Saint; but it is certain that he has never been honored with a public cult, not even in Canterbury, in Caen, or at Bec. Some authors have attacked his memory: one will find a solid refutation of what they have advanced in the *Anglia sacra* of Wharton.

Here is the title of the writings of Lanfranc that have reached us:

1. A Commentary on the Epistles of Saint Paul. Death prevented Dom Mabillon, who was its possessor, from giving it to the public. The one that Dom Luc d'Achéry published is certainly not by him.

2. The Treatise on the Body and Blood of the Lord, divided into twenty-three chapters, composed after the year 1079. Lanfranc establishes there the faith of the Church on the Eucharist, and combats there agilely the errors of Berengar.

3. Notes on the conferences of Cassian.

4. Statutes for the Order of Saint Benedict in England.

5. Sixty Letters, most of which are very important.

6. A Speech delivered in the Council of Winchester, in 1076, to prove that the primacy of Great Britain belonged to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

7. The Treatise on the secret of Confession. It appears not to be by Lanfranc, although it is attributed to him by several authors.

8. Sentences, where it is spoken in detail of the exercises of the monastic life. Father d'Achéry, having discovered this work, after his edition of the writings of Lanfranc, had it printed in the fourth volume of his Spicilegium. It is also in the eighteenth volume of the Library of the Fathers.

Lanfranc had composed other works that have not reached us, such as commentaries on the psalms, a history or rather a panegyric of William the Conqueror, etc.

This author had a profound knowledge of Scripture, tradition, and canon law. The solidity of his reasoning proves that he was very well versed in dialectics. One notices, in his writings, much order and precision; his grave and natural style interests and attaches the reader.

The best edition of the works of Lanfranc is that which Father d'Achéry gave in Paris, in 1648, in-fol., with excellent notes. One finds, in the same volume, several pieces concerning the history of Lanfranc, especially his life, written by Milon Crispin, monk of Bec, a contemporary author. See Dom Ceillier, the *Hist. littér. de la Fr.* and the *Patrologia Latina* of M. Migne, vol. CL.

The Life of Saint Leo was originally written by three contemporary authors: Wibert, archdeacon of the church of Toul; Anselm, monk of Saint-Remi, and by Saint Bruno, Bishop of Segni. The particular history of his life and that of his miracles were given by two anonymous authors, eyewitnesses. Cf. *Patrologia Latina*, vol. CXLIII, CXLIII and CXLV; *AA. SS.*, April 19; Schriuscher, *Hist. univ. de l'Église catholique*, vol. VII; Dom Ceillier, vol. XIII; *France littéraire*, vol. VII; *Conciles généraux et particuliers*, by Mgr Guérin; *les Saints d'Alsace*, by Father Hunckler; and especially *Histoire de l'Église de Toul*, by Father Guillaume, in vol. in-8°: it is from these works, and especially from the latter and notes due to the kindness of the author, that we have used to supplement Father Giry, who had omitted the Life of Saint Leo IX.