Commemoration Day: February 18 (March 3)
Biography
St. Leo the Great (c. 400 – 461) was bishop of Rome from 440. He guided the Church through the hard times of the barbarian invasions: in 452 he met Attila and persuaded him to turn back from Rome, and in 455 he obtained from the Vandal king Genseric that the city would not be burned and its inhabitants not slain.
He took an active part in the Christological disputes. His dogmatic epistle to Flavian, archbishop of Constantinople (the "Tome of Leo"), setting out the teaching on the two natures in the one Person of Christ, was read at the Fourth Ecumenical Council in Chalcedon (451) and received by its Fathers as an expression of the Orthodox faith.
His letters and sermons have come down to us; the sermons were preached on the feasts of the Lord, the fasts and the commemorations of the saints.