Pope St. Leo IV
790 CE–855 CE · Rome
Elected in the aftermath of the 846 Saracen sack of Rome's extramural basilicas, Leo IV is famed for the defensive transformation of the city. He enclosed the Vatican hill, including St. Peter's, within a great fortified circuit thereafter called the 'Leonine City'—walls whose course shaped Rome for a millennium. He helped organize the maritime league that defeated a Saracen fleet off Ostia in 849, an episode later immortalized in Raphael's Vatican frescoes. Leo also restored churches damaged in the raids and convened reforming synods. A vigorous, practical pope, he embodied the papacy's growing role as protector and ruler of the Roman populace.
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RomeרומאItaly
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Rome in this era
Between the 8th and 15th centuries Rome was the seat of the popes and capital of the Papal States, which grew from the Frankish king Pepin's grant of 756; Charlemagne was crowned emperor in St Peter's in 800. The city shrank far below its ancient size, and from 1309 to 1377 the popes resided at Avignon before returning to Rome.
About Rome
Rome, on the Tiber in central Italy, grew from an Iron Age settlement into the capital of the Roman Republic and then of an empire that by the 1st century CE ruled the whole Mediterranean. Its Jewish community, attested from the 2nd century BCE, is among the oldest in Europe. Christian tradition holds that the apostles Peter and Paul died there, and the city became the seat of the popes. After the Western Empire ended in 476 it passed to Gothic kings, to Byzantium and then to papal rule as capital of the Papal States, until it became the capital of unified Italy in 1871. Vatican City, independent since 1929, lies within it.
In Rome at the same time
Pope Adrian I, Pope St. Leo III, Pope Stephen IV, Pope Adrian II, Pope Formosus, Pope St. Nicholas I
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Pope St. Leo IV’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Pope St. Leo IV’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
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