Among Leo’s memorable acts as one of the great lights of his age was the part he was called upon to perform as a powerful intercessor with barbaric kings.  When Attila with his swarm of Mongol conquerors appeared in Italy,—­the “scourge of God,” as he was called; the instrument of Providence in punishing the degenerate rulers and people of the falling Empire,—­Leo was sent by the affrighted emperor to the barbarian’s camp to make what terms he could.  The savage Hun, who feared not the armies of the emperor, stood awe-struck, we are told, before the minister of God; and, swayed by his eloquence and personal dignity, consented to retire from Italy for the hand of the princess Honoria.  And when afterwards Genseric, at the head of his Vandals, became master of the capital, he was likewise influenced by the powerful intercession of the bishop, and consented to spare the lives of the Romans, and preserve the public buildings and churches from conflagration.  Genseric could not yield up the spoil of the fallen capital, and his soldiers transported to Carthage, the seat of the new Vandal kingdom, the riches and trophies which illustrious generals had won,—­yea, the treasures of three religions; the gods of the capitoline temple, the golden candlesticks which Titus brought from Jerusalem, and the sacred vessels which adorned the churches of the Christians, and which Alaric had spared.

Thus far the intrepid bishop of Rome—­for he was nothing more—­calls forth our sympathy and admiration for the hand he had in establishing the faith and healing the divisions of the Church, for which he earned the title of Saint.  He taught no errors like Origen, and pushed out no theological doctrines into a jargon of metaphysics like Athanasius.  He was more practical than Jerome, and more moderate than Augustine.

But he instituted a claim, from motives of policy, which subsequently ripened into an irresistible government, on which the papal structure as an institution or polity rests.  He did not put forth this claim, however, until the old capital of the Caesars was humiliated, vanquished, and completely prostrated as a political power.  When the Eternal City was taken a second time, and her riches plundered, and her proud palaces levelled with the dust; when her amphitheatre was deserted, her senatorial families were driven away as fugitives and sold as slaves, and her glory was departed,—­nothing left her but recollections and broken columns and ruined temples and weeping matrons, ashes, groans, and lamentations, miseries and most bitter sorrows,—­then did her great bishop, intrepid amid general despair, lay the foundation of a new empire, vaster in its influence, if not in its power, than that which raised itself up among the nations in the proudest days of Vespasian and the Antonines.