Pope Leo III

Pope Leo III was a native of Rome, identified in the Liber Pontificalis as the son of Atzuppius (also rendered Azuppius). No contemporary source records a precise year of birth. He rose through the Roman clergy and, before his election, held the title of cardinal-priest of the church of Santa Susanna. On 26 December 795, the day after the death of Pope Adrian I, the clergy and people of Rome elected him bishop of Rome. Unlike Adrian, who had belonged to a powerful Roman family and had enjoyed a long, relatively secure pontificate, Leo lacked comparable aristocratic support in the city. Soon after his election he sent Charlemagne, king of the Franks and Lombards, the keys of the confession of Saint Peter and the banner of Rome, thereby affirming the papal-Frankish alliance established in the time of Pepin and Adrian I.

The early years of the pontificate were dominated by hostility from a faction of the Roman nobility connected with Adrian I's family. On 25 April 799, as Leo rode in the Greater Litany procession toward San Lorenzo in Lucina, armed men led by the primicerius Paschalis and the sacellarius Campulus attacked him. They tried to gouge out his eyes and tear out his tongue in order to render him incapable of holding office. Though wounded, he was not permanently blinded or muted. He was confined in the monastery of Sant'Erasmo on the Caelian Hill, escaped with the help of Winiges, duke of Spoleto, and crossed the Alps to Charlemagne, then campaigning in Saxony. Charlemagne received him at Paderborn, heard both the pope and representatives of his accusers, and resolved that the case should be examined in Rome. Leo returned under Frankish military escort.

In late 800 Charlemagne himself came to Rome. A synod met in Saint Peter's Basilica. Because it was held that no earthly court could sit in judgment on the Apostolic See, Leo, on 23 December 800, took a public oath of purgation, swearing on the Gospels that he was innocent of the charges of perjury and adultery brought against him. Two days later, on Christmas Day, during Mass in Saint Peter's, he placed a crown on Charlemagne's head, and the congregation acclaimed Charlemagne emperor of the Romans. The coronation, whether initiated by the pope, by the Frankish court, or jointly, created a Western imperial title independent of Constantinople, where Empress Irene then reigned. Byzantine observers treated the act as illegitimate. In the Latin West it became a defining moment in the relationship between the papacy and secular monarchy and a point of origin for later ideas of a revived Western, or Holy Roman, Empire.

In the remaining years of his pontificate Leo relied on Frankish protection to hold his position in Rome and in the papal territories of central Italy. He devoted substantial resources to restoring and decorating Roman churches and commissioned mosaics that proclaimed the authority of Saint Peter and the partnership of pope and emperor; among the best known is the Lateran triclinium mosaic depicting Christ, Saint Peter, Leo, and Charlemagne. On the Filioque question he accepted the doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son but refused to insert the phrase into the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed as used in Rome, and he had the creed without the Filioque inscribed on silver shields displayed in Saint Peter's. He died in Rome on 12 June 816 and was buried in Saint Peter's Basilica. He was succeeded by Stephen IV. In 1673 Pope Clement X confirmed his cult; he is commemorated as a saint on 12 June.