Léon le Grand (review)

Much like Trevor Jalland, who published his biography of Pope Leo I in 1941, Philippe Henne sees Leo as a singular as much as a saintly figure. In a Western context, Leo was "un phare étincelant au milieu de la sombre nuit de l'apathie culturelle ambiante" (pp. 18–19); in the thick of Eastern church conflicts, "seul Léon aura le souci du bien commun" (p. 114). Henne here and there suggests that intellectual and spiritual isolation caused Leo to draw forth a simpler faith—couched in a famously simpler prose—than his Latin predecessors and Greek contemporaries. This is offered not as a thesis but as one of several themes in a biography aimed at orientating the general reader within the many, complex, and momentous events in which Leo was engaged. Only a few years ago, it would have made a greater contribution to a field that then was small relative to its subject's proverbial magnitude. While it remains a handy narrative of Leo's eventful life and introduction to his writings, other books—some more probing, others yet more accessible or useful—also have appeared. Henne has written two anthologies with introductions, for Origen and for Hilarius of Poitiers; such a format might better have suited Leo as well, especially given the use Henne makes of long quotations from primary sources throughout the text. Indeed, Bronwen Neil now offers just such an anthology in Routledge's Early Christian Fathers series (New York, 2009), with a substantial introduction and a scholarly bibliography far more current than in the book under review. A Dominican and professor of patrology at Université Catholique de Lille, Henne's major scholarly work has been on Christology in the Apostolic Age, and his treatment of Leo's involvement with Eastern theological debates is the strongest part of this study (the least satisfactory is that on Roman primacy, which reflects the work of Philip McShane but not Walter Ullman; see also Susan Wessel's Leo the Great and the Spiritual Rebuilding of a Universal Rome[Boston, 2008]). But balancing theological explication with political context means that Henne cannot probe deeply, and so readers will want to turn to Mark Armitage's A Twofold Solidarity: Leo the Great's Theology of Redemption(Strathfield, Australia, 2005) and especially to Bernard Green's Soteriology of Leo the Great(New York, 2008). Green works out changes and nuances in Leo's theology over the course of his episcopate by paying close attention to the chronology of his letters and sermons and their place in the liturgical year. Henne, too, duly draws attention to the circumstances of Leo's sermons and how his writings were edited and preserved; he also has insightful comments on Leo's famous Latin prose style and what its studied simplicity implied for doctrinal debate (for more systematic analyses there are recent studies by Wilhelm Blümer, Marco Ronconi, and essays in Mario Naldini (ed.), I sermoni di Leone Magno: fra storia e teologia[Florence, 1997]). But Leo does not make a biographer's task easy, especially because the bishop lifted his pen to write on such a diverse range of ecclesiastical, theological, pastoral, and administrative issues, and because the perspective he allows us on these issues varies greatly according to genre. Henne's book, written with clarity and admiration for its subject, makes a fine introduction to Leo. It reminds us that Leo's life is a story that begs to be retold but defies easy comprehension. We can hope that what appears to be a burgeoning interest in this important pope continues to flourish.