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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Leo III Biography Leo III (Pope, 795–816). His pontificate is chiefly remarkable as the epoch of the establishment of the new Empire of the West. He was a native of Rome. During the greater part of the eighth century the popes, through the practical withdrawal of the Byzantine emperors, had exercised a temporal supremacy in Rome, which was fully recognized by the gift of Pepin, the pontiffs being placed under the protectorate of the Frankish sovereigns, who received the title of patrician. The pontificate of Leo, however, was a troubled one, and in 799 he was nearly killed in a brutal attack and obliged to flee to Spoleto, whence he afterward repaired to Paderborn, in order to hold a conference with Charlemagne. On his return to Rome he was received with much honor by the Romans, and the chiefs of the conspiracy against him were sentenced to banishment. In the following year (800)Charlemagne , having come to Rome, was solemnly crowned and saluted Roman Emperor by the Pope, and the temporal sovereignty of the Pope over the Roman city and state, though under the suzerainty of the Emperor, was formally established. In 804 Leo visited Charlemagne at his court at Aix-la-Chapelle. With Charlemagne's successor, Louis le Débonnaire, Leo was embroiled in a dispute about the right of sovereign jurisdiction in Rome, which had not been brought to a conclusion when Leo died in Rome, May 25, 816. Consult: Ferdinand Gregorovius, History of the City of Rome, vol. ii (London, 1894); H. K. Mann, Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, vol. ii (ib., 1902—06); his letters in Migne, Patrologia Latina, cii. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XIII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 776. |