Leo I (emperor)
Leo I | |
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Leo the Great | |
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Holy and Right-Believing Emperor of the Romans | |
Venerated in | Eastern Orthodoxy |
Feast | 20 January |
Attributes | Imperial attire |
Leo I (
Ruling the East for more than 15 years, Leo proved to be a capable ruler. He oversaw many ambitious political and military plans, aimed mostly at aiding the faltering Western Roman Empire and recovering its former territories. He is notable for being the first Eastern Emperor to legislate in Koine Greek rather than Late Latin.[9] He is commemorated as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, with his feast day on 20 January.[10][11]
Reign
He was born in
Leo's
Leo I made an alliance with the Isaurians and was thus able to eliminate Aspar. The price of the alliance was the marriage of Leo's daughter to Tarasicodissa, leader of the Isaurians, who, as Zeno, became emperor in 474.[7] In 469, Aspar attempted to assassinate Zeno[20] and very nearly succeeded. Finally, in 471, Aspar's son Ardabur was implicated in a plot against Leo but was killed by palace eunuchs acting on Leo's orders.[21]
Leo sometimes overestimated his abilities and made mistakes that threatened the internal order of the Empire. The
Leo's reign was also noteworthy for his influence in the
Leo died of dysentery at the age of 73 on 18 January 474.[23][24][25]
Marriage and children
Leo and Verina had three children. Their eldest daughter
An unknown son was born in 463. He died five months following his birth. The only sources about him are a horoscope by Rhetorius and a hagiography of Daniel the Stylite.[27] The Georgian Chronicle, a 13th-century compilation drawing from earlier sources, reports a marriage of Vakhtang I of Iberia to Princess Helena of Byzantium, identifying her as a daughter of the predecessor of Zeno.[28] This predecessor was probably Leo I, the tale attributing a third daughter to Leo. Cyril Toumanoff identified two children of this marriage: Mithridates of Iberia; and Leo of Iberia. This younger Leo was father of Guaram I of Iberia. The accuracy of the descent is unknown.
See also
Notes
- ^ http://laststatues.classics.ox.ac.uk/, LSA-593 (K. de Kersauson, R. Delbrueck)
- ^ Leo's full name is commonly given as Flavius Valerius Leo,[4][5][6] but this is not corroborated by either the Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire[2] nor the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium.[7]
- ^ Bury 1958, Chapter X: the reign of Leo I, p. 323, note 1. "After the coronation of the child the two Leos would be distinguished as Λέων ὁ Μέγας and Λέων ὁ Μικρός, and this I believe, must be the origin of the designation of Leo as 'the Great'; just as reversely Theodosius II. was called 'the Small', because in his infancy he had been known as ὁ μικρός βασιλεύς to distinguish him from Arcadius. Leo never did anything which could conceivably earn him the title of Great in the sense in which it was bestowed by posterity on Alexander or Constantine."
References
- ^ "Statue – Louvre Collections". Louvre Collections (in French). Retrieved 6 February 2024.
- ^ a b c PLRE 2 p. 664
- ^ Rösch 1978, pp. 165.
- ISBN 9780816074822.
- ISBN 9781473859272.
- ISBN 9780190499136.
- ^ a b c d Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, pp. 1206–1207
- ^ a b "Leo I". Encyclopædia Britannica
- ISBN 978-0-670-02098-0. p. 90.
- ^ "Ὁ Ἅγιος Λέων Μακέλλης ὁ Μέγας" [Saint Leo Makelles the Great] (in Greek). Μεγασ Συναξαριστης [Great Synaxaristes].
- ^ Mother of God of the "Life-Giving Spring". Self-Ruled Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America. Retrieved 27 October 2012.
- ^ Friell 1998, pp. 170, 261.
- ^ Friell 1998, p. 170.
- ^ a b Bury 1958, p. 315.
- ^ Candidus, F.H.G. IV, p. 135
- ^ John Malalas, XIV, p. 369
- ^ Bury 1958.
- ^ Edward Gibbon (1952) [1789]. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1. Chapter XXXVI. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. p. 582. Bibl. Theophanes, p. 95 [ed. Par.; tom. i p. 170, ed. Bonn].
- ISBN 978-0713999976.
- ^ Norwich, John Julius (1989), Byzantium: The Early Centuries. pg 167
- ^ "Wace, Henry. Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century A.D., with an Account of the Principal Sects and Heresie". Archived from the original on 22 February 2014. Retrieved 16 February 2014.
- ^ Bury 1958, p. 337.
- ^ Auctarium Prosperi Havniense 474. "Leo maior defunctus est XV k. Febr."
- ^ John Malalas Book XIV, 46. "On the following 3rd February the emperor Leo the Elder was stricken with illness and died of dysentery at the age of 73."
- Euthymiusdied on 20 January 473 and that the emperor Leo I died 'at the end of the first year after the death of the great Euthymius'.
- ^ Hugh Elton, "Leo I (457–474 A.D.)"
- ^ a b Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, vol. 2
- ^ "Georgian Chronicle", Chapters 13–14. Translation by Robert Bedrosian (1991)
Sources
- Ostrogorsky, George (1956). History of the Byzantine State. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
- ISBN 978-0-486-20398-0.
- Friell, Gerard (1998). The Rome That Did Not Fall: The Survival of the East in the Fifth Century. Ancient history. London: ISBN 978-0-415-15403-1.
- ISBN 978-0-88-141056-3.
- ISBN 978-1-4281-3267-2.
- Profile of Leo I in the Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire.
- Profile of Leo I in the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium.
- Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell, The Rome that Did Not Fall The Survival of the East in the Fifth Century, Routledge Press, 1999, ISBN 0-415-15403-0
- Rösch, Gerhard (1978). Onoma Basileias: Studien zum offiziellen Gebrauch der Kaisertitel in spätantiker und frühbyzantinischer Zeit. Byzantina et Neograeca Vindobonensia (in German). Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. ISBN 978-3-7001-0260-1.
External links
- Media related to Emperor Leo I at Wikimedia Commons
- Leo I Timeline