The Catholic Historical
Review
VOL. XCV
OCTOBER, 2009
No. 4
POPE LEO I ON POWER AND FAILURE
BY
KEVIN UHALDE*
Leo is known as one of the first and most forceful bishops of Rome
to claim supremacy based on succession from St. Peter. The most
important studies focus on how he expressed this supremacy, especially in letters addressed to other church and imperial officials. Leo
was also a conscientious pastor, however, who thought about Peter
and his legacy in terms other than supremacy. For example, Leo
preached repeatedly about Peter’s denial of Christ and subsequent
repentance, sometimes in contrast with the failed repentance of
Judas. The power Peter derived from his penance, according to Leo,
was not only key to his pastoral success but also fundamental to
the authority he passed on in the Church. The author focuses on
key texts related to the repentance of Peter and Judas and suggests
how they may help improve our understanding of Leo’s thoughts
on penance and justice.
Keywords: fallibility; Judas Iscariot; papacy; penance; Pope Leo I; St.
Peter
Leo I, bishop of Rome (440–61), who is usually referred to as the
Great, is most famous for claiming that bishops of his city were the
lawful heirs to St. Peter, the apostle of Jesus and first bishop of the
*Dr. Uhalde is an associate professor of history at Ohio University in Athens. Portions
of this essay were presented at the 2008 meetings of the American Society of Church
History and the North American Patristics Society.The author especially thanks Jaclyn
Maxwell, Kristina Sessa, Joshua Sosin, and the anonymous readers of The Catholic
Historical Review for helpful suggestions regarding this text. The author is solely
responsible for remaining deficiencies and has done all translations herein.
671
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POPE LEO I ON POWER AND FAILURE
Eternal City. Historians can trace Leo’s rationale through discussions
with his episcopal colleagues as well as with imperial officials, discussions that are preserved in his letters and that often arose out of
conflict or controversy. Leo is remembered in many modern accounts
as a strong and forceful bishop who was unafraid to face up to bishops who exceeded their jurisdiction, to heretics who did foul things
in secret, or to Attila the Hun and Geiseric the Vandal and regarded as
a pontiff who always was conscious that he represented true justice,
thanks to his relationship with Peter, which was both mystical and historical. For these reasons, Leo’s reign is often taken to represent the
beginning of the medieval papacy and his thoughts on justice and
authority to be the basis of future papal doctrine.
This essay does not focus on Leo’s claim to Petrine authority, his
political resolve in theological or jurisdictional matters, or his significance for future ages. Rather, it focuses on particular problems of scriptural analysis that Leo chose to address in sermons, which he delivered
to the people of Rome, as well as in the presence of other bishops, in
the case of sermons on the anniversary of his ordination.These problems involved apparent contradictions in the lives and figures of
people important to Christian history. Specifically, this essay will investigate how Leo handled Peter’s denial of Christ and his subsequent
repentance for that failure: Leo in no way apologized for Peter but
instead suggested that the apostle possessed a unique and powerful
experience of justice because of his lapse.This essay will also investigate how Leo handled the failed repentance of Judas Iscariot, which
Leo sometimes treated in close conjunction with Peter’s denial. Judas’s
example demonstrated how a misunderstanding of Christian justice
led to ruin, because there could be no effective forgiveness. In brief,
Leo used Peter’s failure and repentance to emphasize the advantage of
fallibility for those whose humility would allow them to find forgiveness. He used Judas’s failed repentance to emphasize the necessity of
following the path of true justice to find divine mercy, a path that led
only through the Church and its rightful leaders.
The details of these arguments must be teased out from a number
of different sermons and an examination of what penance meant to
Leo, both as an experience that Peter and Judas underwent and as an
act of devotion Leo encouraged his own followers to undertake.
Because particular problems within Leo’s thought will be analyzed
here, rather than his thought in general or a unified, Leonine doctrine,
it remains to be shown just how much Leo’s confidence in justice and
BY KEVIN UHALDE
673
authority should be weighed against his interest in uncertainty and
failure.The common denominator to them all was penance.
“So long as we are mortal, our nature is changeable (mutabilis),
even if it may rise to every possible height in the pursuit of virtue.”
This was how Leo began his sermon on the first Sunday of Lent in
442, after a brief apology for preaching the spiritual purpose of the
season to Christians who had already committed themselves to the
fast.“Nevertheless,” Leo continued,“just as [our nature] always has the
possibility of slipping, so it has the possibility of growing.” Leo was
not sounding the familiar dirge of human fallibility merely to encourage restraint in the overzealous and humility in the prideful during
their devotions, or even to denounce the deluded practices of the
Manichaeans among them, as he would do on the same day two years
later.1 Leo’s point here was both more subtle and of broader relevance. He explained how mutability, inescapable in any case, could be
for the good.“This is the true justice of the perfect,” he went on,“that
they never presume they are perfect, lest they abandon their focus on
a journey still uncompleted and so fall into the danger of failure, just
at the point where they leave off the bid for success.”2 This definition
of justice and warning about confidence bear on Leo’s understanding
of seasonal devotion, personal piety, and the psychological as well as
spiritual condition of humankind. The “true justice of the perfect,”
however, also lay at the basis of episcopal authority as Leo conceived
it, both generally and with specific regard to Rome. It explained an
apparent structural defect that actually gave stability to the Church,
1
All citations of Leo’s sermons are from the edition by Antoine Chavasse, Sancti
Leonis Magni romani pontificis tractatus septem et nonaginta, 2 vols., [Corpus
Christianorum Series Latina (hereafter CCSL), 138–138A], (Turnholt, 1973). Leo, Serm.
42.2, pp. 239–42; see Claude Lepelley,“Saint Léon le Grand et la cité romaine,” Revue
des sciences religieuses, 35 (1961), 130–50, here 137–44; Samuel N. C. Lieu,
Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China, 2nd ed.,
[Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 63], (Tübingen, 1992), pp.
204–07; Harry O. Maier, “‘Manichee!’: Leo the Great and the Orthodox Panopticon,”
Journal of Early Christian Studies, 4, no. 4, (1996), 441–60; H. G. Schipper and J. van
Oort, trans. and introd., Leo the Great: Sermons and Letters against the Manichaeans.
Selected Fragments, [Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum, Series Latina, 1], (Brepols, 2000).
2
Leo, Serm. 40.1, pp. 223–24:“Natura enim nostra, manente adhuc mortalitate, mutabilis, etiamsi ad summa quaeque uirtutum studio prouehatur, semper tamen sicut potest
habere quo recedat, ita potest habere quo crescat. Haec perfectorum uera iustitia, ut
numquam praesumant se esse perfectos, ne ab itineris nondum finiti intentione cessantes, ibi incidant deficiendi periculum, ubi proficiendi deposuerint adpetitum. Quia
ergo nemo nostrum, dilectissimi, tam perfectus et sanctus est, ut perfectior sanctiorque
esse non possit.”
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POPE LEO I ON POWER AND FAILURE
which, like towers built to survive winds and tremors, could endure
worldly vicissitudes.
The connection between the “true justice of the perfect” and episcopal authority lay in Peter: the historical antecedent as well as the
ecclesiological link between living bishops and the salvation delivered by Jesus Christ. Peter was the founder of Christian Rome, according to Leo, the apostle who transplanted the cross, symbol of Christian
triumph, to the Capitoline and set his seat at the head of the world.3
But Peter also knew failure, for he had denied knowing Jesus, although
he quickly realized a need to repent.4 Peter’s stability and also his failure are equally important to how Leo conceived of episcopal authority, which Peter received from Jesus and passed on to his successors.
The particular power that was rooted in Peter’s repentance is to be
seen most clearly when in juxtaposition with the failed penance of
Judas, whom Leo also discussed on multiple occasions, sometimes in
explicit contrast with Peter. Peter’s momentary failure taught him the
importance of finding forgiveness; Judas’s failure to understand the
way to seek forgiveness led him to his doom. By examining Leo’s
treatment of each in turn, I shall argue that the bishop’s varying explanations of how these two men experienced penance differently was
due to his understanding of pastoral responsibility and episcopal
authority.
Penance provided Leo with a means for explaining how the historical and sacramental dimensions of episcopal authority accommodated the uncertainty of human society. On another Palm Sunday,
for example, Leo explained how Peter “rushed into the weakness of
denial, allowed to hesitate for this reason, it would seem: so that the
remedy of penance might be founded in the prince of the church,
and so that no one might dare trust in his own virtue, when not
even blessed Peter had been able to escape the danger of mutabil3
M. Maccarrone, “La concezione di Roma città di Pietro e di Paolo: da Damaso a
Leone I,” Roma Costantinopoli Mosca: seminario 21 aprile 1981 (Naples, 1983), pp.
63–85, here pp. 74–83; Philip A. McShane, La Romanitas et le Pape Léon le Grand.
L’apport culturel des institutions impériales à la formation des structures ecclésiastiques (Tournai, 1979), pp. 136–47; on sedes or cathedra Petri, see Walter Ullmann,“Leo
I and the Theme of Papal Primacy,” Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 11 (1960),
25–51, here 27 n. 2.
4
Allan Fitzgerald, Conversion through Penance in the Italian Church of the Fourth
and Fifth Centuries: New Approaches to the Experience of Conversion from Sin (New
York, 1988), pp. 99–130, 489–90; idem,“Christ, Peter and the Rooster,” Augustinianum,
41, no. 2 (2001), 409–23, both with references.
BY KEVIN UHALDE
675
ity.”5 For Leo, uncertainty was the source of justice and the prospect
of failure was a means to salvation. This was a message applicable to
Christians pursuing their Lenten devotions, to bishops who would
guide sinners to forgiveness, and to the Church as a whole. In Leo’s historical and ecclesiological view, a lot rested upon once slippery rock.
This seems to be a different sort of bishop from the man whom
Erich Caspar in 1930 famously described, if not as a mountain, then as
the “crowning peak of a mountain range” and whose “authoritative
language . . . peremptory commands [and] unbending and unyielding
attitude,”Walter Ullmann wrote in 1960,“mark him out from his predecessors.”6 Both these formidable scholars, together with many others
before and after, saw Leo’s episcopacy as a milestone: the “last link” in
early Christian tradition, the beginning of the medieval papacy, or the
very transition itself between those two eras—“a biography spanning
numerous ruptures,” as Marco Ronconi recently commented.7 The
importance of his tenure could readily and legitimately be said to
derive from any number of achievements, including Leo’s doctrinal
letters preceding and following the council of Chalcedon;8 his
involvement in both religious and political diplomacy;9 his opinions
5
Leo, Serm. 60.4, p. 367, dated to 445: “[P]etrus . . . ancilla sacerdotis calumniante
perterritus, infirmitatem negationis incurrit, ob hoc, sicut apparet, haesitare permissus,
ut in ecclesiae principe remedium paenitentiae conderetur, et nemo auderet de sua uirtute confidere, quando mutabilitatis periculum nec beatus Petrus potuisset euadere.”
6
Erich Caspar, Geschichte des Papsttums von den Anfängen bis zur Höhe der
Weltherrschaft, I: Römische Kirche und Imperium Romanum (Tübingen, 1930), p.
423; Ullmann,“Leo I and the Theme of Papal Primacy,” p. 25.
7
For some representative references, including Basil Studer’s “last link,” see the opening pages of Elena Giannarelli,“Fra tradizione classica e innovazione cristiana,” in I sermoni di Leone Magno: fra storia e teologia (= Sermoni, v. 1: Introduzione), ed. Mario
Naldini (Fiesole, 1997), pp. 121–48. Marco Ronconi, “A maiestate’ humilitas”: Il rilievo
della retorica nella teologia di Leone Magno, [Tesi Gregoriana Serie Teologia, 129],
(Rome, 2005), p. 5 (“una biografia a cavallo di numerose fratture”).
8
Overviews include Basil Studer, “Italian Writers until Pope Leo the Great,” in
Patrology IV: The Golden Age of Latin Patristic Literature from the Council of Nicea
to the Council of Chalcedon, ed.Angelo di Berardino, trans. Placid Solari (Westminster,
MD, 1992), pp. 564–612, here pp. 589–612; idem,“Personalità e attività storico-letteraria
di Leone Magno,” in I sermoni di Leone Magno, pp. 19–49. Now greater attention has
been paid to the role of others, namely Prosper of Aquitaine, in these letters, e.g., N.W.
James,“Leo the Great and Prosper of Aquitaine: A Fifth Century Pope and His Adviser,”
Journal of Theological Studies, 44 (1993), 554–84; also Maccarrone,“La concezione di
Roma città di Pietro e di Paolo,” pp. 79, 81.
9
For example, see T. M. Charles-Edwards, “Palladius, Prosper, and Leo the Great:
Mission and Primatial Authority,” in Patrick, A.D. 493–1993, ed. David N. Dumville
(Woodbridge, UK, 1993), pp. 1–12.
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POPE LEO I ON POWER AND FAILURE
on pastoral care and especially penance; as well as a polished literary
style described as rerum eloquentia and eruditio spiritualis, which
would influence papal and Christian prose for centuries10—indeed,
the common exclamation that Leo’s “style” was quintessentially
“Roman” falls quite short of its true significance.11 But what maintained Leo’s rank as magnus among historians of the Church is, to
follow Ullmann, his “Petrinology,” his “papal Petrinity,” or his skillful
use of “juristic equipment” to establish his office as the “Schnittpunkt
of heaven and earth.”12 Vincenzo Faraoni even claims that, for Leo,
“the idea of the pope’s universal episcopacy was not only confirmed
in theory, but he knew to translate it actively into practice throughout
the entire Church, as none other of his predecessors.”13 Such a man,
if true to this image, could not have been bothered by much uncertainty or worried about his own fallibility, at least as it pertained to his
office. Such rigid consistency would be remarkable, however, and
indeed improbable for a tenure that exceeded two extremely eventful
10
Giannarelli, “Fra tradizione,” p. 129; Carlo Nardi, “Lingua e stile dei sermoni,” in I
sermoni di Leone Magno, pp. 101–19, here p. 104;Wilhelm Blümer, Rerum eloquentia:
christliche Nutzung antiker Stilkunst bei St. Leo Magnus (New York, 1991); also
Ullmann,“Leo I and the Theme of Papal Primacy,” passim on Leo’s “juristic skill”;William
J. Halliwell, The Style of Pope St. Leo the Great (Washington, DC, 1939); cf. Lepelley,
“Saint Léon le Grand et la cité romaine,” p. 145 n. 65:“On ne possède pas d’étude facilement accesible sur le style savant de Léon le Grande,” as opposed to Augustine’s “style
beaucoup plus direct et négligé.”
11
For example, see Louis Marie Olivier Duchesne, Histoire ancienne de l’église, 6th
ed., (Paris, 1911), 3:680–81:“. . . Léon parle comme il écrit, comme il ne cessa jamais de
penser, de sentir et d’agir, en Romain,” qtd. in Lepelley,“Saint Léon le Grand et la cité
romaine,” p. 132; Arthur Stephen McGrade, “Two Fifth-Century Conceptions of Papal
Primacy,” Studies in Medieval & Renaissance History, 7 (1970), 1–45, here 42; Studer,
“Italian Writers until Pope Leo the Great,” p. 595 et passim. The habit is well assessed
in Maccarrone,“La concezione di Roma città di Pietro e di Paolo,” p. 76; and summarized
by Giannarelli,“Fra tradizione classica e innovazione cristiana,” pp. 132–33.
12
Specifically, for Ullmann in “Leo I and the Theme of Papal Primacy,” Leo was important because he recognized the “need” and then provided the argument for a “juristic
link” (e.g., pp. 33–34 on the use of haeres in Serm. 2.2, 3.4, and 5.4) between Peter and
the bishop of Rome that accounted for the transmission of Petrine powers, which apostolic succession alone could not explain; see, e.g., p. 29 and the following on p. 33:
“[W]hat Leo did was to erect a fully-fledged and satisfying doctrine culminating in the
juristic succession of the pope to St. Peter. . . . [I]t is nothing more and nothing less than
juristic theology, as the originator of which he may well be claimed.”
13
V. Faraoni,“Primato della sede di Pietro nei Sermones di S. Leone Magno,” Palestra
del Clero, 51 (1972), 727–34, here 729; cf. Ullmann, “Leo I and the Theme of Papal
Primacy,” p. 49, on the difference between Leo and later medieval popes:“in ideological
substance there was no difference; the only difference was that later theory—so largely
Leonine theory—was applied in practice.”
BY KEVIN UHALDE
677
decades and less plausible still given the attention Leo repeatedly paid
to human doubt and weakness, including Peter’s own failure and
penance. Reality, like Leo, was more variable and complex. Coming to
grips with the variety within Leo’s ideas about power and forgiveness
brings us closer to the way Leo understood the larger relationship
between the Church and humanity and the role of the bishop.
To be sure, Leo neither considered nor described his apostolic
predecessor, Peter, as flighty or feeble. Even Peter’s failure to acknowledge Jesus, rather than weakening him, made him stronger than he
ever had been before. This was the fearless Peter who would brave
dangerous forests and deep oceans to face the domina, Rome, while
Paul still puttered about founding churches in lesser cities, according
to the rousing narrative Leo delivered the first time he preached on
the important feast of Peter and Paul.14 Peter’s failure gave him
courage; his repentance made him a pastor. The power to absolve sins
derived from the Keys and from the Holy Spirit, as Leo preached in a
Pentecost Sunday sermon:“It is clear that the remission of sins cannot
happen without the Holy Spirit at the bar. . . .Thus everyone, dearest,
who believed in the Lord Jesus, had the Holy Spirit poured into them,
and on top of that (etiam tunc) the apostles received the power of
remitting sins.”15 Leo’s Peter was no ordinary apostle, however. In
Caesarea Phillipi, when all the other apostles were unsure how to
answer Jesus’ question,“Who do you say I am? (vos autem quem me
esse dicitis),” Peter had not hesitated to respond,“You are the Christ,
son of the living God.” His certainty earned him his name, Petrus, the
foundation of Christ’s church, with keys to the kingdom of heaven
and the power to bind and loosen in heaven as on earth (potestas ligandi et solvendi).16 But Peter also derived power from his own uncertainty. The fact that even he later hesitated, denying three times that
he knew Jesus, and experienced the pain of repentance made him an
14
Leo, Serm. 82.4 (June 29, 441), p. 513.
Leo, Serm. 76.4 (June 2, 444), p. 477: “Vnde manifestum est peccatorum remissionem sine sancti spiritus aduocatione non fieri. . . . Omnes ergo, dilectissimi, qui in
Dominum Iesum crediderant, infusum sibi habebant spiritum sanctum, et remittendorum peccatorum etiam tunc apostoli acceperant potestatem. . . .”
16
Vulgate Matt. 16:15–19: “Dicit illis vos autem quem me esse dicitis? Respondens
Simon Petrus dixit tu es Christus Filius Dei vivi. Respondens autem Iesus dixit ei beatus
es Simon Bar Iona . . . ego dico tibi quia tu es Petrus et super hanc petram aedificabo
ecclesiam meam . . . et tibi dabo claves regni caelorum et quodcumque ligaveris super
terra merit ligatum in caelis et quodcumque solveris super terra merit solutum in
caelis.” Ullmann,“Leo I and the Theme of Papal Primacy,” pp. 34–38 on the juristic connotations of ligare and solvere.
15
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POPE LEO I ON POWER AND FAILURE
effective pastor. It was his own lapse that taught Peter the power of
penance to find mercy and enabled him to turn people toward forgiveness.The apostle soon put that power to spectacular use, as Leo
preached in several Palm Sunday sermons, by “turning the hearts” of
thousands of Jews “to penance.”Whereas the Vulgate text of Acts that
describes the event allowed a place for the other apostles (the Jews
turned for counsel “ad Petrum et ad reliquos apostolos”), Leo
bestowed the credit fully on Peter’s preaching, which triggered the
power of the Lord’s prayer on the cross: “Father, forgive them.”17 In
short, Leo’s interest in Peter’s fall and repentance did not mean he
doubted Peter’s strength or the stability of his Church.
Leo’s interest in Peter’s penance as a demonstration of how
penance worked was genuine and deep, as we shall see soon from his
comments on other historical penitents such as Judas.18 It was not a
secondary concern, although clearly Leo was also alert to Peter’s
importance for episcopal authority. The modern scholarly literature,
however, suggests otherwise. Allan Fitzgerald, for example, examines
fourth- and fifth-century reactions to Peter’s denial of Christ, which
seems to have provided most commentators in the century before
Leo with an argument for the reconciliation of sinners against rigorist
Novatians. Leo, however, marks a turning point in this respect as in so
many others, according to Fitzgerald, who writes that the bishop
“found Peter to be the one who explained his own role as bishop of
Rome rather than the one who guaranteed the value of penance and
pardon in the Church.”19 In much of the scholarship is there a similar
distinction, between the Leo who was a pastor concerned with
17
Leo, Serm. 62.3, p. 379:“De cuius utique orationis potentia fuit, ut praedicatio Petri
apostoli, ex his qui dixerunt: Sanguis huius super nos et super filios nostros (Matt.
27:25), multorum ad paenitentiam corda conuerteret, et uno die baptizarentur tria fere
milia Iudaeorum,”with ibid. 52.5, 54.3; cf.Acts 2:37–41:“His auditis conpuncti sunt corde
et dixerunt ad Petrum et ad reliquos apostolos quid faciemus viri fraters? Petrus vero ad
illos paenitentiam inquit agite et baptizetur unusquisque vestrum in nomine Iesu Christi
in remissionem peccatorum vestrorum et accipietis donum Sancti Spiritus vobis enim
est repromissio et filiis vestries et omnibus qui longe sunt quoscumque advocaverit
Dominus Deus noster . . . et adpositae sunt in illa die animae circiter tria milia.”
18
Along with other studies cited below, see Peter J. Riga, “Penance in St. Leo the
Great,”Eglise et théologie, 5 (1974), 5–32; Patrick Saint-Roch, La pénitence dans les conciles et les lettres des papes des origines à la mort de Gregoire le Grand (Vatican City,
1991).
19
Fitzgerald, Conversion through Penance, pp. 123–24, emphasis added. See
Caroline Humfress, Orthodoxy and the Courts in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2007), chap.
9 on “Heresy and the Courts” for the nonpastoral side to handling heretics, including
“Novatians” at pp. 252–53.
BY KEVIN UHALDE
679
penance, on the one hand, and the Leo who was a pontiff concerned
with power, on the other hand. For example, in Erwin Göller’s 1931
study, which remains the most thorough and nuanced analysis of
Roman episcopal sources for penance, the long section on Leo gives
far less attention to sermons than to his often-cited letters to various
bishops on problems related to penance.20 Like most historians of
penance writing about Roman bishops, Göller favored the letters over
the sermons—the extroverted pontiff over the introverted pastor.21
The “ideas expressed mainly in his sermons,” Göller wrote,“form the
background to Leo’s penitential theory,” but hard evidence for the
“institution” of penance had to be found elsewhere.22
The result of sorting the evidence into such categories (sermons
versus letters, institutions versus pastoral care) is too easily and often
a lopsided judgment: thus Göller viewed Leo’s political thought and
letters as more historically significant than his pastoral thought and
sermons.23 Perhaps, in terms of consequence and influence, they are.
But what about late-antique intellectual culture and Leo’s place
within it? Thanks to a few letters on deathbed penance and lapsed
penitents, Leo has figured prominently in histories of sacramental
penance, usually as a weathervane for the alleged tension between
penitential rules and penitential practice.24 Still, Leo’s ideas about
penance have not received the same thorough, probing treatment as
his juridical ideas about papal primacy—no doubt because most
scholars agree that Leo was neither innovative nor impressive in his
20
Erwin Göller, “Papsttum und Bussgewalt in spätrömischer und frühmittelalterlicher Zeit,”Römische Quartalschrift, 39–40 (1931–32), 71–267, 219–342, here 119–53.
Leo’s famous penitential letters are Ep. 108 (to Theodore of Fréjus) with Göller, pp.
125–29, 144–46; Ep. 159 (to Nicetas of Aquileia) with Göller, p. 142; Ep. 167 (to Rusticus
of Narbonne) with Göller, pp. 135–38, 146–51; and Ep. 168 (to the bishops of Campania,
Samnium, and Picenum) with Göller, pp. 129–32.
21
Cf. Paul Galtier, “A propos de la pénitence primitive: Méthodes et conclusions,”
Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 30 (1934), 517–57, 797–846, here 523–28.The case is
different for Gregory the Great, whose treatises were so influential, but see S.
Pappalardo, “Communio e disciplina penitenziale nel Registrum epistolarum di san
Gregorio Magno,” Synaxis, 4 (1986), 77–122.
22
Göller,“Papsttum und Bussgewalt,” p. 124, emphasis added.
23
Besides differences in sources and methodology, modern religious confession, of
course, also affects scholarship on both penance and the papacy in the previous century. See recently Allan Fitzgerald,“Tracing the passage from a doctrinal to an historical
approach to the study of Augustine,” Revue des études augustiniennes et patristiques,
50 (2004), 295–310.
24
Cf. Eric Rebillard, In hora mortis: Évolution de la pastorale chrétienne de la mort
aux IV e et V e siècles dans l’occident latin (Rome, 1994), pp. 109–19, 185–98.
680
POPE LEO I ON POWER AND FAILURE
theology.25 By contrast, Basil Studer once suggested that uncovering
the political and juridical rationale within Leo’s thoughts on episcopal
authority was far easier than tracing his pastoral or theological
motives.26 In the decades since Ullmann’s important study of Leo’s
“Petrinology” and inspired especially by Anton Chavasse’s dating and
critical edition of Leo’s sermons, scholars have allowed for more change,
complexity,and indeed uncertainty in Leo’s thought,even as it pertained
to religious authority.27 One example is Maurice Testard’s meticulous
and insightful analysis of Leo’s Sermon 82, preached on the conjoined
feast of Peter and Paul.This is one of those sermons that Leo personally
edited and revised, so that Testard can both recover and distinguish
between the contexts of two different versions and tell us what Leo may
have been reading in the meanwhile—not surprisingly, it was
Augustine.28 Testard’s attention to close textual analysis as well as the
broader literary context, still too rare in work on Leo, shows that the
bishop’s thought changed over time and at any given moment might not
fit neatly into modern academic categories.This certainly bears out with
regard to Leo’s ideas about Peter and penance. Even within Leo’s sermons alone, the variety of those ideas is impressive and hard to pigeonhole. Penance and power were related more deeply and intricately in
Leo’s mind than the ideology of the Apostolic Keys alone conveys.
In the sermons that Leo preached during Holy Week between 441
and 453, he addressed penance explicitly in seven of the eight sur25
See, for example, McGrade,“Two Fifth-Century Conceptions of Papal Primacy,” p.
39: “Leo has seldom been praised as a creative or subtle theologian”; Studer, “Italian
Writers until Pope Leo the Great,” p. 600:“Leo offers a traditional and rather elementary
doctrine. . . .”
26
Studer,“Italian Writers until Pope Leo the Great,” p. 607:“It is no surprise . . . [t]he
trilogy of Christ-Peter-bishop of Rome was too obvious to be overlooked.” Cf. Ullmann,
“Leo I and the Theme of Papal Primacy,” p. 50, contrasting “Leonine [i.e. juristic] argumentation” with the “sloppy and spongy views” that had sufficed before.
27
Thus McGrade,“Two Fifth-Century Conceptions of Papal Primacy,” who sought to
moderate some of Ullmann’s claims.
28
Maurice Testard,“La spiritualité pastorale de Saint Léon I le Grand: à propos d’une
correction du pape par lui-même,” in De Tertullien aux Mozarabes, I:Antiquité tardive
et Christianisme ancien (IIIe–VIe siècles). Mélanges offerts à Jacques Fontaine, ed.
Louis Holtz and Jean-Claude Fredouille (Paris, 1992), pp. 239–54. Ullmann,“Leo I and the
Theme of Papal Primacy,” p. 46 n. 1:“Both the extraordinary originality and receptivity
of Leo I emerge also to the full if due consideration is given to his utilizing Augustinian
thought patterns, apparently one of the first popes to do so.” See, e.g.,Yves-Marie Duval,
“Quelques emprunts de s. León à s. Augustin,” Mélanges de science religieuse, 15
(1958), 85–94; idem, “S. Léon et la tradition,” Recherches de science religieuse, 48
(1960), 166–84; and Chavasse’s introduction to his edition of Leo’s sermons.
BY KEVIN UHALDE
681
viving series, usually in the sermons for Palm Sunday.29 That is not
surprising, given that this week marked the end of the “forty-day
observance” of prayer, fasting, and alms, the approaching days of reconciling penitents and baptizing catechumens, and the commemoration of God’s death and resurrection, which liberated humanity from
sin.30 It was the season for repentance.Also, common scriptural readings and liturgical contexts circumscribed the contents of these sermons considerably. Each year, Leo returned to the same texts and to
their same stories, sometimes repeating himself and often finding new
lessons to draw, and focused above all on the scripture at hand. It is
due to neither chance nor genius, then, that Leo spoke repeatedly
about Peter’s denial of Christ—sometimes in opposition to Judas’s
betrayal.31 His listeners would have just heard the entire passion narrative read to them from the Gospels. It is all the more striking, then,
that even in this small batch of closely related sermons, Leo touched
upon a range of different ideas and practices related to penance, with
regard to both Peter and Judas, two very different kinds of penitents.
Penance did Judas no good:“so twisted was his conversion,” in Leo’s
words, “that he sinned even when he did penance.”32 Unlike Peter’s
Jews, whose penance was part of their first conversion, Judas was an
insider who had already shared in the mysteries before committing
his great sin.33 Nevertheless, Leo consistently positioned Judas among
29
The pairs were preached on Palm Sunday and Holy Wednesday, unless indicated
otherwise: Serm. 52–53 (441); Serm. 54–55 (442); Serm. 56-7 with 70–71 (443, includes
Good Friday and Saturday Vigil sermons); Serm. 58–59 with 72 (444, includes a Saturday
Vigil sermon, but revised Serm. 58–59 were assigned to Friday and Saturday); Serm.
60–61 (445); Serm. 62–63 (452); Serm. 67–69 (444, includes Saturday Vigil sermon).The
only series without any explicit reference to penance is from 453 and includes a Good
Friday sermon: Serm. 64–66; Serm. 72. Serm. 64 is the only Palm Sunday sermon not to
mention penance, while one Wednesday sermon (61) and one Saturday sermon (71)
referred to penance.
30
Quadraginta dierum obseruantia: Leo, Serm. 71.1, p. 434; also ibid. 40.3, 41.2,
42.3, 43.3, 44.2, 45.3, 46.4, 48.1, 50.1, 71.1; Josef A. Jungmann, The Early Liturgy to the
Time of Gregory the Great, trans. Francis A. Brunner (Notre Dame, IN, 1959), p. 254,
either paraphrases Leo or quotes inexactly with the phrase “quadraginta dierum exercitatio” (emphasis added).
31
Elena Cavalcanti,“La predicazione di Leone Magno a Roma,” in La comunità cristiana di Roma: La sua vita e la sua cultura dale origini all’alto medio evo, ed. Letizia
Pani Ermini and Paolo Siniscalco (Vatican City, 2000), pp. 248–67, here pp. 263–64.
32
Leo, Serm. 56.3, p. 331:“[C]onsummato scelere, tam peruersa ipsius conuersio fuit,
ut etiam paenitendo peccaret.”
33
Leo, Serm. 58.3, p. 343:“Non apostolici ordinis honor, non sacramentorum tibi communio denegatur”; Serm. 67.3, p. 410:“[Jesus] beneficiis reuocare est dignatus et uerbis,
assumendo in discipulum, prouehendo in apostolum, monendo signis, consecrando
682
POPE LEO I ON POWER AND FAILURE
the Jews and juxtaposed him with Peter’s converts, which suggests
the overlap between different kinds of penance and conversion as
much as it reveals the dark ambiguity late-antique commentators
found in Judas’s person.The more immediate lesson Leo intended for
his audience had to do with the failure of Judas’s penance to win him
forgiveness: there were different ways to do penance, Leo wanted
Christians to know, but without guidance and good company, they
might not perform penance correctly, and that could be dangerous.
Leo’s first Palm Sunday sermon, preached in 441, was mostly an
exciting retelling of the confrontation in the garden of Gethsamene.
As a conclusion, Leo assured his audience that Jews received no
thanks for setting in motion the events that led to human salvation. As
surely as Christ’s death liberated Christians, it implicated Jews. Leo
allowed that God’s goodness was so great, however, that the undeserving Jews could find mercy. Continuing to address the Jews of
Jesus’s day, he explained how,“Even you can attain forgiveness, if you
forsake this parricidal malice by confessing Christ as Son of God.”34
There were no limitations on this offer of forgiveness, not even when
it came to Judas, most culpable of all, whom Leo next addressed, also
in the second person: “That remedy would not pass you by either,
Judas, if you had sought refuge in the penance that calls you back to
Christ, and not the one that goads you to the noose.”The double use
of the feminine indefinite pronoun is notable: “si ad eam paenitentiam confugisses quae te revocaret ad Christum non quae instigaret ad laqueum.”35 Both pronouns are governed by paenitentia.
Therefore, Leo said Judas had a choice between two different kinds of
penance, one good and one lethal.
In his Palm Sunday sermon the following year, Leo again needled
Judas for missing his chance at forgiveness because, Leo observed,
“penance did not call you back to the Lord, but despair drew [you] to
the noose.”36 The phrase here is remarkably similar to that uttered one
mysteriis, ut cui nihil beniuolentiae deesset ad correctionem, nihil occasionis superesset ad crimen”; also Serm. 54.3, discussed below.
34
Leo, Serm. 52.5, p. 311:“Merito soli non habetis quod omnibus perire uoluistis. Et
tamen tanta est nostri bonitas Redemptoris, ut etiam uos possitis consequi ueniam, si
Christum Dei filium confitendo, illam parricidalem malitiam relinquatis.”
35
Ibid.:“Quod remedium nec te, Iuda, transiret, si ad eam paenitentiam confugisses
quae te reuocaret ad Christum, non quae instigaret ad laqueum.”
36
Leo, Serm. 54.3, p. 319:“Unde scelestior omnibus, Iuda, et infelicior exstitisti, quem
non paenitentia reuocauit ad Dominum, sed desperatio traxit ad laqueum.”
BY KEVIN UHALDE
683
year before.The sentiment, however, is quite distinct. Here, there was
only one kind of penance, the kind that would have worked. Judas’s
mistake was not choosing the wrong penance; it was his bad timing,
as Leo explained: “You ought to have waited for your crime to play
itself out and, until Christ’s blood was shed for all sinners, you ought
to have put off hideous death by hanging.”37 What made Judas “most
criminal and least happy” of all people was that he had been privileged to count among the apostles, to share their communion, and to
be privy to the miracles that revealed Christ’s power and the mysteries that revealed Christ’s purpose—yet Judas ignored all the clues.38
The thief on his cross repented without any of these demonstrations,
Leo observed elsewhere.39 But Judas, “homo inconvertibilis,” “followed [his] heart’s rage” and missed the opportunity for penance.
Instead of forgiveness, Leo told Judas,“your impiety would have yourself as judge, your punishment would suffer yourself as executioner.”40
On a number of occasions, in the context of controlling sin and winning forgiveness, Leo emphasized the importance for Christians to be
their own judge and prepare themselves for divine mercy.41 The failure of self-judgment to lead to fruitful penance for Judas had extra sig37
Ibid.: “Expectasses consummationem criminis et donec sanguis christi pro
omnibus peccatoribus funderetur, informis leti suspendium distulisses” (literally, “a
hanging of hideous death”).
38
Ibid.:“Cumque conscientiam tuam tot Domini miracula, tot dona torquerent, illa
saltem te a praecipitio tuo sacramenta reuocassent, quae in paschali caena . . .
acceperas. Cur de eius bonitate diffidis, qui te a corporis et sanguinis sui communione
non repulit, qui tibi . . . pacis osculum non negauit?”
39
Also see Fitzgerald, Conversion through Penance, pp. 459–60.
40
Leo, Serm. 54.3, p. 319:“Sed homo inconuertibilis . . . cordis tui secutus es rabiem
. . . ut quia facinus tuum omnem mensuram ultionis excesserat, te haberet impietas tua
iudicem, te pateretur tua poena carnificem.”
41
Leo, Serm. 26.4, p. 129: “Accusantes enim nosmetipsos confessionibus nostris, et
consensum animi carnis concupiscentiis denegantes, inimicitias quidem aduersum nos
eius qui peccati auctor est, commouemus”; Serm. 39.5, p. 218:“Circumspiciat se omnis
anima Christiana, et severo examine cordis sui interna discutiat”; Serm. 41.1, p. 233:
“Scrutetur quisque conscientiam suam, seque ante se statuat proprii censura iudicii”;
Serm. 48.3, p. 282: “Discutiant ergo se fidelium mentes, et intimos sui cordis affectus
uera examinatione diiudicent”; Serm. 90.1, p. 556:“[Q]uia nihil est efficacius ad exorandum Deum quam ut homo ipse se iudicet et numquam desinat a uenia postulanda,
qui se scit numquam esse sine culpa,” with Rebillard, In hora mortis, pp. 186–88; Serm.
94.2, p. 578:“Celebraturi igitur, dilectissimi, uerum et spiritale ieiunium, quod et corpus
et animam sui puritate sanctificet, cordis nostri secreta rimemur, et quibus rebus aut
contristentur aut gaudeant, iusto discutiamus examine.” In a different way, Leo chastised
those who were unable to successfully judge themselves in Serm. 44.1, pp. 258–59:
“. . . possint in cordibus suis non inuenire quod reprobent, et saepe aut fallantur
occultis, aut grauentur alienis. . . .”
684
POPE LEO I ON POWER AND FAILURE
nificance then, during Holy Week, when on Thursday the Roman
archdeacon presented penitents seeking the bishop’s absolution. Leo
had served as archdeacon for years before his ordination, so he would
have delivered the plea, or postulatio, of which several contemporary
specimens survive, which extolled the penitents for having judged
themselves, tortured their own consciences, and made themselves
ready for God’s forgiveness, should the bishop approve their
penance.42 By Good Friday, Leo, as bishop, had reason to hope that his
people understood Judas as a mad and tragic figure, for Judas had
missed all the repeated and various opportunities for forgiveness.The
bishop had been pointing them out all year long.
But Leo also claimed that Judas in fact did penance, however
wrongly and ineffectually. Could the despair Leo blamed for Judas’s
doom in 442 have been the antithesis of penance in his earlier
sermon from 441? The parallel constructions of revocare ad
Christum or Dominum and instigare or trahere ad laqueum must
be conscious and deliberate. We might imagine, although the manuscripts do not suggest it, an early scribal omission in the 441 text that
left out the phrase ad eam desperationem, from between non and
quae instigaret, which would mean Leo only ever intended one sort
of penance, which Judas forsook. But there is in fact other evidence,
not only that Leo understood Judas to have chosen between two different kinds of penance but also that Leo could explain why the
penance he chose was ineffective. Judas’s penance was signaled by
his confession, in Matt. 27:4: “I have sinned, handing over just blood
(Peccavi, tradens sanguinem justum).”43 Leo was not the first to
acknowledge Judas’s penance and then find fault with it. Ambrose of
Milan addressed Novatians in his treatise “On Penance” and compared
them to the Pharisees who turned their backs on the repentant Judas:
“Forgiveness is promised to all who convert . . . even the Jewish
42
Sermones tres de reconciliandis paenitentibus, ed. F. Heylen, [CCSL, 9], (Turnholt,
1957), pp. 349–63; François Bussini, “L’intervention de l’assemblée des fideles au
moment de la réconciliation des pénitents d’après les trois ‘Postulationes’ d’un archidiacre romain du Ve–VIe siècle,” Revue des sciences religieuses, 41 (1967): 29–38; idem,
“L’intervention de l’évêque dans la reconciliation des pénitents d’après les trois postulationes d’un archidiacre romain du V e–VIIe siècle,” Revue des sciences religieuses, 42
(1968), 326–38; Fitzgerald, Conversion through Penance, pp. 338–47; Kevin Uhalde,
Expectations of Justice in the Age of Augustine, (Philadelphia, 2007), pp. 121–22.
43
Leo, Serm. 52.5, p. 311:“Dicendo autem: Peccaui, tradens sanguinem iustum, in
impietatis tuae perfidia perstitisti, qui Iesum non deum dei filium, sed nostrae tantummodo conditionis hominem etiam inter extrema mortis tuae pericula credidisti, cuius
flexisses misericordiam, si eius omnipotentiam non negasses.”
BY KEVIN UHALDE
685
people [who] were called to baptism by Peter’s preaching. . . . I imagine that even Judas, thanks to God’s great commiseration, would not
have been shut out from forgiveness, if he had done penance before
Christ, not before the Jews, when he said,‘I have sinned, handing over
just blood.’”44 According to Ambrose, Judas had spilled his guts before
a merciless audience. Leo was Ambrose’s attentive reader. However,
Leo’s criticism of Judas the penitent in 441 was not the same as
Ambrose’s. Judas did real but ineffective penance, because he
repented his betrayal of Jesus the man but would not repent denying
Jesus was God and the son of God.That was why his penance was not
only useless but also constituted another sin in and of itself, as Leo
observed elsewhere.45 Judas’s loss was enormous, and he had only
himself to blame, as Leo summarized:“You would have bent [Jesus’s]
mercy (flexisses misericordiam), if you had not denied his omnipotence.”46 Not only was Judas’s penance real, in other words, but also
his forgiveness had been guaranteed, if only he had not violated the
terms of what might be called the “penitential bond.” To understand
this contractual nature between God and penitents and the twofold
reason Judas could be said to have violated that contract, we must
look at one final variety of penance Leo addressed in his sermons.
In a sermon on the September 29th anniversary of his consecration
as Rome’s bishop, Leo explained precisely what the word paenitentia
44
Ambrose, De paenitentia, 2.4.26–27, ed. and trans. Roger Gryson, [Sources chrétiennes, 179], (Paris, 1971), p. 150: “Omnibus enim conuersis pollicetur ueniam. . . .
Denique etiam Iudaeorum populus . . . Petri praedicatione uocatur ad baptismum, ut
sceleris tanti merita deponat. Sed quid mirum si salute negates aliis, qui uestram
recusatis, licet illi nihil different qui a uobis paenitentiam petunt. Arbitror enim quod
etiam Iudas potuisset tanta domini miseratione non exclude a venia si paenitentiam
non apud iudaeos, sed apud Christum egisset peccaui, inquit, quod tradiderim sanguine
iustum.” I address the idea of penance as a promise (“pollicetur ueniam”) below.
Ambrose also referred to Judas’s penance at Explanatio psalmorum xii, Ps. 37, 31.2,
ed. Michael Petschenig, [Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 64], (Vienna,
1919), p. 160: “Melior igitur insipientia quae oculos habet, ut uideat ulcera sua, quam
sapientia quae non habet. Et ideo insipientiae suae obtutu ammonites spiritali tantus
rex afflictum se miseriis protestatur, ut remedium posit paenitentiae repperire, quod
Iudas, qui agrum de iniquitatis mercede possedit, repperire non potuit.”
45
Leo, Serm. 56.3, quoted above. Maximus of Turin, Serm. 59.1, ed. Almut Mutzenbecher, [CCSL, 23], (Turnholt, 1962), p. 236, offered another interesting explanation of
why Judas’s real act of penance failed to save him:“actus paenitentia refuderit uenditionis praetium, sed conscientiae suae non resoluerit scelus”; Kevin Uhalde, “Juridical
Administration in the Church and Pastoral Care in Late Antiquity,” in A New History of
Penance, ed.Abigail Firey (Leiden, 2008), pp. 97–120, here p. 113.
46
Leo, Serm. 52.5, qtd. above.
686
POPE LEO I ON POWER AND FAILURE
meant. His audience on this occasion included, significantly, not only
the people of Rome but also the bishops, other clergy, and notables
gathered in Rome for the annual synod. Not surprisingly, Leo’s emphasis was not on ordinary repentance but instead on priestly powers. He
was explaining how Melchizedek was a better scriptural analogue for
bishops than was Aaron: Aaron’s priesthood had depended on his
bloodline, which expired; but Melchizedek’s legitimacy relied upon
God’s solemn oath, which was eternal.“Because penance points to a
change of will,”Leo preached,“God does not repent that which according to an eternal disposition cannot be other than he wished”—that is,
God’s nature is such that he can only do what he wants, so that he
never has cause to repent.47 Unlike Peter or any other human, God did
not falter, did not sin, and so, obviously, Leo here did not intend paenitentia and paenitere to connote the sacrament of penance or even
the somewhat broader notion of spiritual conversion.48 Instead, Leo
intended the most common, classical, psychological sense of paenitentia—the sense Robert Kaster has defined so well but also too
strictly as the exclusive domain of pagan authors: recognizing how one
might have acted differently and for the better.49 This kind of penance
did not necessarily involve remorse, because one’s recognition of error
was joined with belief in one’s greater potential. Leo’s interest in
priestly authority tapped a classical tradition of penitential thought,
much as his interest in specifically Petrine authority led him, according
to Ullmann, to tap a juridical tradition of inheritance. In the case of this
sermon, Leo invoked a traditional understanding of repentance to
articulate concisely how God always fulfilled God’s potential and so
would never have needed or been able to repent. This also helps
explain why repentance failed to save Judas. Judas’s first step toward
nullifying his own penance was to deny God’s omnipotence, which
would call into question the permanence of God’s promise.
47
Leo, Serm. 5.3, pp. 23–24:“Nam quia iusiurandum inter homines iis definitionibus
adhibetur, quae perpetuis pactionibus sanciuntur, diuini quoque iuramenti testificatio
in his inuenitur promissis, quae incommutabilibus sunt fixa decretis, et quia paenitentia mutationem indicat uoluntatis, in eo deus non paenitet in quo secundum aeternum
placitum non potest aliud uelle quam uoluit.”
48
Cf. Leo, Ep. 16.6 (a. 447), in which Leo demonstrates why Epiphany is not suited
for baptism: “Dominus enim nullius indigens remissione peccati, nec quaerens
remedium renascendi . . . quoniam ipse quidem baptizaret in aqua in poenitentiam, ille
autem baptizaturus esset ‘in Spiritu sancto et igni’; qui duplici potestate et uitam redderet, et peccata consumeret.”
49
Robert A. Kaster, Emotion, Restraint, and Community in Ancient Rome (Oxford,
2005), chap. 3, “The Structure of Paenitentia and the Egoism of Regret,” and esp. pp.
10–12, 81–83.
BY KEVIN UHALDE
687
As successors of Melchizedek, bishops were bound to God in an
ancient oath, but so were laypeople. God promised mercy to all who
believed, and this was as much an oath as the one made with
Melchizedek. It was the “most sacred bond,” as Leo once described it,
or again as a “promise that surpasses the human condition” and
“issues from the throne of power.”50 Penitential acts, according to
Leo, especially showing leniency and forgiveness toward others,
effectively activated the divine promise on behalf of an individual,
who bound God directly to himself by his pious actions.51 This paired
notion of mercy as promise and penance as bond was not unique to
Leo. In his treatise “On Penance,” Ambrose clearly stated that “forgiveness is promised to all who convert,” and there are similar claims
elsewhere.52 Just as the bishop of Rome enjoyed a historical and mystical link to Peter the apostle, penance itself had an ancient legacy.
Just as Leo understood all bishops to be part of the sacramental
inheritance first accepted by Peter from Christ, so all Christians were
party to the promise of repentance, which offset the uncertainty of
their human existence.
Leo spelled out little of this systematically or in any single place
but, as bishop, he enjoyed a more or less captive audience, whom he
addressed season after season, if not week after week, relying on variety as much as doctrine to guide it in the direction of justice and forgiveness. Peter and Judas provide two examples of how various
opportunities and contexts allowed Leo to treat his subjects with
complexity for the edification of his followers. He evoked the power
of penance to draw believers to the common sacraments, as Peter
50
Leo, Serm. 43.4, p. 256:“Unde si orationis huius sacratissimum pactum non tota sui
conditione seruatum est, nunc saltem conscientiam suam unusquisque cognoscat, et
alienis ignoscendo delictis, abolitionem suorum obtineat peccatorum”; Serm. 53.1, p.
314:“Excedit humanam conditionem ista promissio, nec tam de ligno crucis quam de
throno editur potestatis.” See J. Mark Armitage, A Twofold Solidarity: Leo the Great’s
Theology of Redemption, [Early Christian Studies, 9], (Strathfield,Australia, 2005).
51
Leo, Serm. 47.3, p. 277:“Et quia pro indulgentia maxime laborandum est delictorum, indubitabilem uobis misericordiam promittatis, si ipsi quoque circa subditos
uestros omnem offensam transtuleritis ad ueniam”; Serm. 50.3, p. 294:“Misericors enim
et justus dominus (Ps. 114:5) ita promittit indulgentiam suam. . . . Iusta prorsus et
benigna conditio, qua diuinae potentiae fit particeps homo, ut sententiam Dei ex suo
libret arbitrio, et eo sibi iudicio obstringat Dominum, quo iudicauerit ipse conseruum.”
52
Ambrose, De paenitentia, 2.4.26, p. 150: “Omnibus enim conuersis pollicetur
ueniam.” Also Celestine, Ep. 4, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne; Patrologia cursus completus,
Series Latina, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne (Paris, 1841–64), 50:col. 432 (emphasis added):
“[Deus] inuitans ad poenitentiam, sic promittat . . . non est deneganda poenitentia postulanti, cum illi se obliget iudici cui occulta omnia nouerit reuelari.”
688
POPE LEO I ON POWER AND FAILURE
turned the hearts of the Jews. He described Peter’s relationship with
penance in at least three forms, all of them distinct but closely related.
There was the sacramental power to bind and loosen, by which the
Holy Spirit enabled the apostles to remit sins.There was the remedy
of penance that could bring outsiders into the Church and be a goad
to conversion. And there was Peter’s own penance, which, Leo argued
in 442, made him the first human “expert” in divine humility.53 Leo no
doubt thought of his own episcopal position when he said,“primus
beatissimus apostolus expertus est,” but his principal claim here was
on Peter’s penitential power. On the anniversary of his own consecration, Leo reminded his colleagues and the people of Rome that “the
right to bind and to loosen remains with us.” The successors to the
apostle kept alive the power of penance,“so that the condemned is
led to penance and the reconciled to forgiveness by blessed Peter’s
governance.”54 Only proper penance, however, transcended the
“human condition” and triggered a response from divine mercy: that
was one of the lessons to be learned from Judas, Peter’s penitential
foil. On the one hand, as Leo preached during one Lent, sixteen years
after celebrating his first Holy Week as bishop,“What is more appropriate to Christian faith than that there be the remission of sins, not
only in the church, but also in everyone’s homes?”55 The role of the
bishop, on the other hand, during Lent and throughout the year, was
to remind his congregation that the “true justice” available to them in
this world was humility. If not even Peter could survive human existence without the remedy of penance, then neither could they.
53
Leo, Serm. 54.4–5, pp. 320–01 (emphasis added):“In nobis ergo Dominus nostro
pauore trepidabat, ut susceptionem nostrae infirmitatis indueret, et nostram inconstantiam suae uirtutis soliditate uestiret. . . . Quantum autem uniuersis fidelibus hac humilitate collatum sit, primus beatissimus apostolus Petrus expertus est, qui, cum illum
instantis saeuitiae uehementior procella turbasset, ad reparationem uigoris celeri mutatione conuersus est, sumens de exemplo remedium, ut tremefactum repente membrum
rediret ad sui capitis firmitatem.” He refers a little later to Peter’s “cordis facienda correctio,” but does not use paenitentia in this passage.
54
Leo, Serm. 5.5, pp. 24–25:“. . . ut manente apud nos iure ligandi atque soluendi, per
moderamen beatissimi Petri et condemnatus ad paenitentiam et reconciliatus perducatur ad ueniam.”
55
Leo, Serm. 49.5, p. 289:“Quid autem conuenientius fidei christianae quam ut non
solum in ecclesia, sed etiam in omnium domibus fiat remissio peccatorum?”See Kristina
Sessa, “Domestic Conversions: Households and Bishops in the Late Antique ‘Papal
Legends,’” in Religion, Dynasty, and Patronage in Early Christian Rome, 300–900, ed.
Kate Cooper and Julia Hillner (Cambridge, UK, 2007), pp. 79–114.