Leo II: Pope 682-683. The importance of his brief pontificate lies in his action in confirming the acts of the sixth ecumenical council, which contained the inclusion of his predecessor Honorius among the condemned leaders of Monothelitism (q.v.). Similarly, in sending the acts of the council to the Spanish bishops, he included Honorius as one " who did not, as became his apostolic authority, extinguish the flame of heretical doctrine, but by his negligence fostered it." Macarius of Antioch and his Monothelite friends, who had been sent to Rome, were (according to the Liber pn»tifualis) imprisoned in various monasteries, with the exception of two who recanted. The same authority describes Leo as learned in the Scriptures, Greek, and ecclesiastical music, and as charitable. The date of his burial is July 3, 683. (N. BoxwETsca.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY: The Eplstold are in MPL, xcvi., cf. NA, viii. 363-364. Consult: Liber pontificalis, ed. Mommeen in MGH, Gent. Pont. Rom., i (1898 ), 200-202; ASB, June, v. 375; R. Baxmann, Die Politik der Pitpste. i. 185 sqq., Elberfeld, 1868; J. Langen, Gmchirhte der romischen Kirche ii. 568 sqq., Bonn, 1885: Ceillier, Auteurs weres, xi. 784-785, xii. 955-958; Hefek. Concilienpeachichte, iii. 287 eqq, Eng. tranal., v. 179 sqq.; Bower, Popes, i. 486-487; Milman, Latin Christianity, ii. 287: DCB, iii. 673-674.

Leo IIL: Pope 795-816. A Roman by birth, he was elected Dec. 26 and consecrated the next day. His election is said by the Liber pontificalis

to have been unanimous; but the Roman aristocracy was certainly hostile to him at the start, which drove him to rely on the support of Charlemagne. He sent word of his election to the king, assuring him of his fidelity, and Charlemagne's answer expressed his readiness to renew the alliance between the Frankish kingdom and the Church. At first this relation was useful to Leo, and soon enough was absolutely necessary, owing not only to the danger of Saracen attack but even more to the hostile attitude of Leo's personal opponents in Rome, the men whom his elevation had robbed of their power. At the customary procession on St. Mark's day, 799, he was attacked and maltreated; and a tumultuous gathering judged him on various grave charges and declared him deposed. His partizans rallied and released him in the night. He fled to Germany, where Charlemagne received him as the lawful pope, and in November he was restored by the Frankish power. In Charlemagne's mind, however, the duty of protection involved the right of oversight. His commissioner was directed to make a full investigation as well of the charges against Leo as of the violence of his opponents. Difficulties stood in the way either of judging a pope or of allowing his sacred office to be filled by a man under suspicion of serious misdoing. The suggestion of Leo's voluntary retirement to a monastery was made, but not so easily carried out. Charlemagne decided to take the matter up in person, and appeared in Italy in the autumn of 800. The investigation ended not by a judicial condemnation or by a judicial acquittal, but by Leo's taking a solemn oath in Charlemagne's presence that he was innocent of the charges, after which his opponents were condemned to death as rebels, though the sentence was commuted to banishment. Two days later, on Christmas day, Leo crowned Charlemagne as emperor, apparently (though the question has been much debated) without any preliminary knowledge or desire on the king's part, and to the profit rather of Leo's own importance.

Charlemagne deduced from the new title the conclusion that Rome was to be treated as an integral part of his empire, and thenceforth little essential difference can be observed between its bishop and the other metropolitans of the empire; the pope was considered a subject of the emperor. The extent to which this was carried may be seen from the small part assigned to Leo in the settlement of the controversies of the time. The Adoptionist controversy was taken in hand by Charlemagne himself, and Leo had nothing to do but to repeat at a Roman synod Oct. 23, 798, the condemnation already pronounced in Germany. In the negotiations as to the Filioque he ventured, indeed, to dissociate himself from the conclusion of the Frankish Church, but his solemn exposition of the ancient text of the creed, engraved on silver tablets, in St. Peter's made no impression on Charlemagne and his theologians, and the Filioque was accepted both in the Frankish Church and tacitly in Rome. Even in his relations with the Greek Church Leo was hampered by his relation to Charlemagne. When the, emperor died (Jan. 28, 814), Leo neglected to have the Roman people do homage to his successor LoiuS

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dilute, if not disintegrate and dissolve, the essence of Christianity, Liebner brings to bear the entire force of contemplative and speculative reasoning in order to conceive as a whole the organic cooperation of the physical, logical, and ethical, and thereby to maintain the full, unmaimed, and undiluted effect of Christianity.

Starting from the principle of the Incarnation, Liebner now more lucidly exhibits the relation of faith and knowledge, showing how the one postulates and presupposes the other; how faith can as little be void of thought as can God; and how Christianity is a redemption both for mind and heart. Participation in the life of salvation is also participation in the ideas of salvation which are inseparably connected with it, every divine gift and grace is at the same time a task to be worked out by human effort; so we are to work out, as the proper content of thought, the salutary ideas immanent in the facts of salvation, under constant and formative guidance of God's word and of the Spirit who leads into all truth. As faith without works is dead, so is it also dead without knowledge. On the ground of such faith rests, for Liebner's theology, the certainty that theology itself, as the scientific self-consciousness of Christianity, must also find its scientific principles in its own peculiar content, the Gospel, with full confidence that the vital Christian fund of faith is susceptible of scientific elaboration. In this consciousness, his theology disarmed prejudices against faith on the one hand and knowledge on the other, by showing in the relation between God and the universe, Creator and creature, God and man, spirit and nature, freedom and necessity, etc., how the atomistic conception of diversity is unable to discern or comprehend the idea of unity; how it severs and dismembers unity, and is in the last analysis a conception of death and decay. He shows equally how the monistic conception of unity loses sight of and confounds diversity: whereas faith, when comprehended in its vital truth and depth, manifests itself as the deepest ground and motive for a truly organic philosophy, which does justice to both diversity and unity. These fundamental ideas are especially expanded in his Introductio in dogmaticam christianam (Leipsic, 1854-55), which he wrote at Leipsic, whither he bad been persuaded to go after declining calls to Marburg and Heidelberg.

In 1855 he was appointed court preacher and vice-president of the Superior Consistory of Saxony. The manner in which he embraced this position as an opportunity to increase his already richly blessed labors appears from his writings: Ueber das Wesen der Kirchenvisitation, a memorial to the official visitors (1857); Ueber den Stand der christlichen Erkenntnis in der deutschen evangelischen Kirche, an address before the Conference at Eisenach in 1859, incidentally describing the constructive work of the new era (Dresden, 1860); his Reformation sermon in 1864; a second volume of sermons, Predigt-Beiträge zur Förderung der Erkenntnis Christi in der Gemeinde (1861), and the Jahrbücher für deutsche Theologie which he founded in conjunction with Dorner, Ehrenfeuchter, and others, for the support of his constructive theology.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: M. M. Rüling, Zur Erinnerung an . . . T. A. Liebner, Dresden, 1871; C. Schwarz, Zur Geschichte der neuesten Theologie, pp. 371 sqq., Leipsic, 1864; A. Mücke, Die Dogmatik des 19. Jahrhunderts, pp. 280 sqq., Gotha, 1867.