Section 02: The Preacher
Leo the Great is the first pope whose preaching survives as a substantial body: ninety-six genuine sermons, short and rhetorically polished, arranged around the cycle of the liturgical year. This section surveys that corpus and then turns to its content — the Nativity and Passion preaching in which Leo first laid down, from the pulpit, the two-natures Christology that the Tome would make conciliar.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father / Latin)
Contents
| File | Title | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| the-ninety-six-sermons.md | The Ninety-Six Sermons | The surviving corpus (96 genuine tractatus, the count and its transmission, the CCSL 138/138A edition of Antoine Chavasse); the organization by liturgical year (the natalis, Nativity, Epiphany, Lenten, Passion, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Ember-Day, and apostolic-feast cycles); the quality of Leo’s Latin (cursus, antithesis, catechetical clarity); the sermons as the seedbed of the Tome. |
| preaching-the-mystery.md | Preaching the Mystery | What Leo preached: the Nativity sermons and the dignity of the redeemed Christian (Sermon 21.3, “recognize your dignity”); the Passion and Easter sermons; the admirabile commercium; preaching as the pastoral form of his Christology. |
How to Use
- Read The Ninety-Six Sermons for the corpus, its transmission, and its liturgical architecture.
- Then read Preaching the Mystery for the doctrinal substance. Both files point forward to the Tome (Section 03) and to the full soteriology (Section 08), which they anticipate rather than exhaust.
Cross-References
- The Tome to Flavian — the dogmatic letter the sermons foreshadow.
- The Incarnation and the Two Natures — the soteriology the preaching proclaims.
- Theosis — the deification language to which Leo’s “partaker of the divine nature” belongs.
- Methodology — the governing citation standard.
References
Citations are given in full at the foot of each file. The sermons are cited from CCSL 138/138A (ed. Chavasse, Brepols, 1973), PL 54, and the translations of Freeland & Conway (FOTC 93) and Feltoe (NPNF 2nd ser. vol. 12).