Attila at the gates
Leo the Great meets Attila the Hun
One year after Chalcedon, Leo faces a different kind of crisis.
Attila the Hun has crossed the Alps into northern Italy with an army that has devastated everything in its path. He has taken and burned Aquileia. He has taken Padua, Milan, and Mantua. He is moving toward Rome.
The emperor Valentinian III sends an embassy to negotiate. Leo is part of it — not a soldier, not a general, not a political official, but the bishop of Rome, walking out to meet the most feared military commander in the Western world.
The meeting takes place somewhere on the Po River. We do not know exactly what was said. What we know is that Attila turned around.
The Christian tradition, and later artistic depictions, insists that Attila saw Saints Peter and Paul standing in the air behind Leo, threatening him with swords. Medieval paintings show the vision with great specificity. It may be true. It may be the tradition's way of saying that something inexplicable happened in that meeting.
The secular account suggests a combination of factors: plague was devastating Attila's army, supply lines were stretched, and the prospect of another negotiated settlement was more profitable than sacking Rome.
But Leo stood between a city and an army, and the army turned around. Whatever happened in that meeting, it is one of the most extraordinary moments in the history of the late Roman world.
Leo returns to Rome. Attila dies the following year.
“It is not by our own power or our own merits that we ask for what we ask, but trusting in the mercy of him who called us.”
— Leo I, Sermon 5, c. 445 AD
“Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, But we trust the name of the LORD our God.”
Leo walked out to meet Attila with no army, no weapons, and no apparent leverage. He had the authority of his office and whatever was in him.
We do not know what he said. We know what happened.
The church in every era faces moments when the only thing standing between what is sacred and what would destroy it is the person willing to walk out and say: not this. Not here. Not while I stand.
This is not a story about special powers reserved for popes. It is a story about the courage available to anyone who has decided that some things are worth standing in front of.
Leo walked out to meet Attila with no army. What he had was the authority of someone who had already decided what mattered more than his own safety. That decision is available before the army arrives — or instead of it.