Saint Leo III

Saint Leo III was pope from 795 to 816. On Christmas Day 800, in Saint Peter’s Basilica, he placed the imperial crown on the head of Charlemagne, King of the Franks. The Roman Martyrology also stresses that he worked hard to defend the true faith in the divine dignity of the Son of God. His memorial falls on June 12.

He was a Roman; the year of his birth is unknown. He served in the papal treasury and became cardinal priest of the church of Saint Susanna. On December 26, 795, the day Pope Adrian I was buried, he was elected to succeed him, and he was consecrated the next day. Soon afterward he sent Charlemagne the keys of the confession of Saint Peter and the banner of Rome.

On April 25, 799, during a procession through the streets of Rome, armed men linked to the family of Adrian I attacked him. They pulled him from his horse, beat him and tried to put out his eyes and tear out his tongue, and at night they imprisoned him in the monastery of Saint Erasmus on the Caelian Hill. The Liber Pontificalis, a medieval collection of the lives of the popes, says that he miraculously recovered his sight and speech. Once he had been freed, he took refuge with the Duke of Spoleto and then went to Charlemagne, who received him at Paderborn. Escorted by the Franks, he returned to Rome, where the people welcomed him with joy.

His opponents brought grave charges against the pope. In 800 the king came to Rome. Leo then publicly swore a solemn oath that he was innocent, and on Christmas Day he crowned Charlemagne emperor. The authors of the attack were sentenced to death, but at the pope’s request the sentence was commuted to exile in the land of the Franks.

In 798 he convened a synod that condemned the teaching of Bishop Felix of Urgell, according to which Christ as man was the Son of God only by adoption. When, in 809, the Franks gathered in synod at Aachen apparently supported adding the words “and the Son” (Filioque) to the Creed, Leo III recognized the teaching that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as true, but advised against changing the text of the Creed. Thanks to Charlemagne’s generosity he restored many churches in Rome, furnished them richly and helped the poor.

After Charlemagne’s death in 814, a new conspiracy against the pope was discovered in Rome, and Leo had its leaders seized and executed. He died in Rome on June 12, 816, after more than twenty years as pope, and was buried in Saint Peter’s Basilica. In 1673 his name was entered in the Roman Martyrology under June 12.