Suggest an Edit — Leo IX

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Biography

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Bruno of Egisheim-Dagsburg was born on 21 June 1002 at Egisheim in Alsace, then a territory of the Holy Roman Empire. He belonged to a leading noble family of the region: his father was Count Hugh of Egisheim and his mother Heilwig of Dagsburg, and through them he was a kinsman of the Salian imperial house, a cousin of Emperor Conrad II. Destined for the Church, he received his education at Toul, became a canon of its cathedral, and in 1026 was appointed bishop of Toul, an office he held for more than two decades. As bishop he was known for personal austerity, for efforts to reform the clergy of his diocese, and for organizing the military defense of Toul when the see was threatened.

After the death of Pope Damasus II in 1048, Emperor Henry III nominated Bruno to the papacy. Bruno would not take the office by imperial designation alone and went to Rome so that the clergy and people might elect him. He was consecrated as Leo IX on 12 February 1049. His pontificate became a turning point in the eleventh-century Latin reform later associated with Gregory VII. Leo held synods in Rome and in cities of Italy, Germany, and France, condemning simony and the marriage or concubinage of clergy. He traveled far more widely than recent predecessors, restoring a visible papal presence north of the Alps, and he gathered in the Curia a circle of reformers that included Hildebrand (the future Gregory VII), Humbert of Silva Candida, and Frederick of Lorraine.

In southern Italy he tried to restrain Norman expansion that endangered papal lands and local churches. He assembled a coalition army and met the Normans at Civitate on 18 June 1053. The papal force was defeated; Leo was taken prisoner and held for about nine months before being released to return to Rome, his health already failing.

The last phase of the pontificate was overshadowed by conflict with Constantinople. Disputes over papal primacy, the filioque, and the use of unleavened bread, sharpened by Patriarch Michael I Cerularius, led Leo to send a legation headed by Cardinal Humbert. Leo died in Rome on 19 April 1054, before the legates, on 16 July 1054, laid a bull of excommunication against Cerularius on the altar of Hagia Sophia. That exchange of anathemas has traditionally been treated as a landmark in the East-West Schism, though the pope himself was already dead and the rupture unfolded over a longer period. He was buried in St. Peter's Basilica and was soon venerated as a saint; his feast is kept on 19 April.

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