Section 09: Legacy and Reception
The closing section turns from Leo’s life to the long afterlife of his memory: his death in 461, his title “the Great,” his declaration as a Latin Doctor of the Church in 1754, and his veneration in the Orthodox East as a pre-schism Father with a feast on 18 February. The second file is the §4 both-sides treatment of the contested legacy — how the Roman and the Orthodox traditions read his primacy theology and the Canon 28 episode, and what modern scholarship makes of him.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father / Latin)
Contents
| File | Title | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| doctor-and-saint.md | Doctor and Saint | Leo’s death (10 November 461), burial at St Peter’s, and the 688 translation of his relics; “the Great” (Magnus), the first pope so called; Doctor of the Church (Benedict XIV, 1754); the Latin feast (10 November) and the Eastern Orthodox feast (18 February); his veneration as a pre-schism Father; the honest naming of the irony that the East venerates the Chalcedonian Leo while declining his doctrine of Roman primacy. |
| the-contested-legacy.md | The Contested Legacy | (§4 both-sides.) How Leo’s primacy theology and the Canon 28 episode are read in the Roman tradition (an early witness to the papacy, vindicated at Vatican I) and the Orthodox tradition (Christology received, ecclesiology not; primacy of honour in a synodal Church); the Canon 28 fault line; modern scholarship — Susan Wessel’s “spiritual rebuilding of a universal Rome” thesis and Bronwen Neil — by name and argument. The Roman reading is reported in its own terms; the ecclesiological framing stands within the Orthodox reading. |
How to Use
- Read Doctor and Saint first for the positive reception — the saint of two calendars, the doctor of the Latin Church, the pre-schism Father of the East.
- Then read The Contested Legacy, the section’s both-sides file, which holds to Methodology §4: the Roman reading is reported accurately in its own terms, and the Orthodox reading is stated as the judgment of the Church.
Cross-References
- Leo and Canon 28 and The Petrine Theology — the primacy material whose reception this section traces.
- The Council and the Tome — the Christological achievement that the East received without reservation.
- St. Photius the Great and St. Mark of Ephesus — the later Eastern reception of the primacy question.
- Church Fathers and Ecumenical Councils — the patristic and conciliar frameworks.
- Methodology — §4, the both-sides method governing the second file.
References
Full citations are at the foot of each file. The principal modern works are Susan Wessel, Leo the Great and the Spiritual Rebuilding of a Universal Rome (Leiden: Brill, 2008) and Bronwen Neil, Leo the Great (London: Routledge, 2009), read with Jalland (1941) and Meyendorff; the death, feasts, and Doctor declaration are documented at the foot of doctor-and-saint.md.