VOLUME XVI SLICE IV Lefebvre, Tanneguy to Letronne, Jean Antoine (continued 7)

(C. H. Ha.)

Leo XI. (Alessandro de’ Medici) was elected pope on the 1st of April 1605, at the age of seventy. He had long been archbishop of Florence and nuncio to Tuscany; and was entirely pro-French in his sympathies. He died on the 27th day of his pontificate, and was succeeded by Paul V.

See the contemporary life by Vitorelli, continuator of Ciaconius, Vitae et res gestae summorum Pontiff. Rom.; Ranke, Popes (Eng. trans., Austin), ii. 330; v. Reumont, Gesch. der Stadt Rom. iii. 2, 604; Brosch, Gesch. des Kirchenstaates (1880), i. 350.

Leo XII. (Annibale della Genga), pope from 1823 to 1829, was born of a noble family, near Spoleto, on the 22nd of August 1760. Educated at the Accademia dei Nobili ecclesiastici at Rome, he was ordained priest in 1783, and in 1790 attracted favourable attention by a tactful sermon commemorative of the emperor Joseph II. In 1792 Pius VI. made him his private secretary, in 1793 creating him titular archbishop of Tyre and despatching him to Lucerne as nuncio. In 1794 he was transferred to the nunciature at Cologne, but owing to the war had to make his residence in Augsburg. During the dozen or more years he spent in Germany he was entrusted with several honourable and difficult missions, which brought him into contact with the courts of Dresden, Vienna, Munich and Württemberg, as well as with Napoleon. It is, however, charged at one time during this period that his finances were disordered, and his private life not above suspicion. After the abolition of the States of the Church, he was treated by the French as a state prisoner, and lived for some years at the abbey of Monticelli, solacing himself with music and with bird-shooting, pastimes which he did not eschew even after his election as pope. In 1814 he was chosen to carry the pope’s congratulations to Louis XVIII.; in 1816 he was created cardinal-priest of Santa Maria Maggiore, and appointed to the see of Sinigaglia, which he resigned in 1818. In 1820 Pius VII. gave him the distinguished post of cardinal vicar. In the conclave of 1823, in spite of the active opposition of France, he was elected pope by the zelanti on the 28th of September. His election had been facilitated because he was thought to be on the edge of the grave; but he unexpectedly rallied. His foreign policy, entrusted at first to Della Somaglia and then to the more able Bernetti, moved in general along lines laid down by Consalvi; and he negotiated certain concordats very advantageous to the papacy. Personally most frugal, Leo reduced taxes, made justice less costly, and was able to find money for certain public improvements; yet he left the finances more confused than he had found them, and even the elaborate jubilee of 1825 did not really mend matters. His domestic policy was one of extreme reaction. He condemned the Bible societies, and under Jesuit influence reorganized the educational system. Severe ghetto laws led many of the Jews to emigrate. He hunted down the Carbonari and the Freemasons; he took the strongest measures against political agitation in theatres. A well-nigh ubiquitous system of espionage, perhaps most fruitful when directed against official corruption, sapped the foundations of public confidence. Leo, temperamentally stern, hard-working in spite of bodily infirmity, died at Rome on the 10th of February 1829. The news was received by the populace with unconcealed joy. He was succeeded by Pius VIII.

Authorities.—Artaud de Montor, Histoire du Pape Léon XII. (2 vols., 1843; by the secretary of the French embassy in Rome); Brück, “Leo XII.,” in Wetzer and Welte’s Kirchenlexikon, vol. vii. (Freiburg, 1891); F. Nippold, The Papacy in the 19th Century (New York, 1900), chap. 5; Benrath, “Leo XII.,” in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie, vol. xi.-(Leipzig, 1902), 390-393, with bibliography; F. Nielsen, The History of the Papacy in the 19th century (1906), vol. ii. 1-30; Lady Blennerhassett, in the Cambridge Modern History, vol. x. (1907), 151-154.

(W. W. R.*)

Leo XIII. (Gioacchino Pecci) (1810-1903), pope from 1878 to 1903, reckoned the 257th successor of St Peter, was born at Carpineto on the 2nd of March 1810. His family was Sienese in origin, and his father, Colonel Domenico Pecci, had served in the army of Napoleon. His mother, Anna Prosperi, is said to have been a descendant of Rienzi, and was a member of the third order of St Francis. He and his elder brother Giuseppe (known as Cardinal Pecci) received their earliest education from the Jesuits at Viterbo, and completed their education in Rome. In the jubilee year 1825 he was selected by his fellow-students at the Collegium Romanum to head a deputation to Pope Leo XII., whose memory he subsequently cherished and whose name he assumed in 1878. Weak health, consequent on over-study, prevented him from obtaining the highest academical honours, but he graduated as doctor in theology at the age of twenty-two, and then entered the Accademia dei Nobili ecclesiastici, a college in which clergy of aristocratic birth are trained for the diplomatic service of the Roman Church. Two years later Gregory XVI. appointed him a domestic prelate, and bestowed on him, by way of apprenticeship, various minor administrative offices. He was ordained priest on the 31st of December 1837, and a few weeks later was made apostolic delegate of the small papal territory of Benevento, where he had to deal with brigands and smugglers, who enjoyed the protection of some of the noble families of the district. His success here led to his appointment in 1841 as delegate of Perugia, which was at that time a centre of anti-papal secret societies. This post he held for eighteen months only, but in that brief period he obtained a reputation as a social and municipal reformer. In 1843 he was sent as nuncio to Brussels, being first consecrated a bishop (19th February), with the title of archbishop of Damietta. During his three years’ residence at the Belgian capital he found ample scope for his gifts as a diplomatist in the education controversy then raging, and as mediator between the Jesuits and the Catholic university of Louvain. He gained the esteem of Leopold I., and was presented to Queen Victoria of England and the Prince Consort. He also made the acquaintance of many Englishmen, Archbishop Whately among them. In January 1846, at the request of the magistrates and people of Perugia, he was appointed bishop of that city with the rank of archbishop; but before returning to Italy he spent February in London, and March and April in Paris. On his arrival in Rome he would, at the request of King Leopold, have been created cardinal but for the death of Gregory XVI. Seven years later, 19th December 1853, he received the red hat from Pius IX. Meanwhile, and throughout his long episcopate of thirty-two years, he foreshadowed the zeal and the enlightened policy later to be displayed in the prolonged period of his pontificate, building and restoring many churches, striving to elevate the intellectual as well as the spiritual tone of his clergy, and showing in his pastoral letters an unusual regard for learning and for social reform. His position in Italy was similar to that of Bishop Dupanloup in France; and, as but a moderate supporter of the policy enunciated in the Syllabus, he was not altogether persona grata to Pius IX. But he protested energetically against the loss of the pope’s temporal power in 1870, against the confiscation of the property of the religious orders, and against the law of civil marriage established by the Italian government, and he refused to welcome Victor Emmanuel in his diocese. Nevertheless, he remained in the comparative obscurity of his episcopal see until the death of Cardinal Antonelli; but in 1877, when the important papal office of camerlengo became vacant, Pius IX. appointed to it Cardinal Pecci, who thus returned to reside in Rome, with the prospect of having shortly responsible functions to perform during the vacancy of the Holy See, though the camerlengo was traditionally regarded as disqualified by his office from succeeding to the papal throne.

When Pius IX. died (7th February 1878) Cardinal Pecci was elected pope at the subsequent conclave with comparative unanimity, obtaining at the third scrutiny (20th February) forty-four out of sixty-one votes, or more than the requisite two-thirds majority. The conclave was remarkably free from political influences, the attention of Europe being at the time engrossed by the presence of a Russian army at the gates of Constantinople. It was said that the long pontificate of Pius IX. led some of the cardinals to vote for Pecci, since his age (within a few days of sixty-eight) and health warranted the expectation that his reign would be comparatively brief; but he had for years been known as one of the few “papable” cardinals; and although his long seclusion at Perugia had caused his name to be little known outside Italy, there was a general belief that the conclave had selected a man who was a prudent statesman as well as a devout churchman; and Newman (whom he created a cardinal in the year following) is reported to have said, “In the successor of Pius I recognize a depth of thought, a tenderness of heart, a winning simplicity, and a power answering to the name of Leo, which prevent me from lamenting that Pius is no longer here.”

The second day after his election Pope Leo XIII. crossed the Tiber incognito to his former residence in the Falconieri Palace to collect his papers, returning at once to the Vatican, where he continued to regard himself as “imprisoned” so long as the Italian government occupied the city of Rome. He was crowned in the Sistine Chapel 3rd March 1878, and at once began a reform of the papal household on austere and economic lines which found little favour with the entourage of the former pope. To fill posts near his own person he summoned certain of the Perugian clergy who had been trained under his own eye, and from the first he was less accessible than his predecessor had been, either in public or private audience. Externally uneventful as his life henceforth necessarily was, it was marked chiefly by the reception of distinguished personages and of numerous pilgrimages, often on a large scale, from all parts of the world, and by the issue of encyclical letters. The stricter theological training of the Roman Catholic clergy throughout the world on the lines laid down by St Thomas Aquinas was his first care, and to this end he founded in Rome and endowed an academy bearing the great schoolman’s name, further devoting about £12,000 to the publication of a new and splendid edition of his works, the idea being that on this basis the later teaching of Catholic theologians and many of the speculations of modern thinkers could best be harmonized and brought into line. The study of Church history was next encouraged, and in August 1883 the pope addressed a letter to Cardinals de Luca, Pitra and Hergenröther, in which he made the remarkable concession that the Vatican archives and library might be placed at the disposal of persons qualified to compile manuals of history. His belief was that the Church would not suffer by the publication of documents. A man of literary taste and culture, familiar with the classics, a facile writer of Latin verses1 as well as of Ciceronian prose, he was as anxious that the Roman clergy should unite human science and literature with their theological studies as that the laity should be educated in the principles of religion; and to this end he established in Rome a kind of voluntary school board, with members both lay and clerical; and the rivalry of the schools thus founded ultimately obliged the state to include religious teaching in its curriculum. The numerous encyclicals by which the pontificate of Leo XIII. will always be distinguished were prepared and written by himself, but were submitted to the customary revision. The encyclical Aeterni Patris (4th August 1879) was written in the defence of the philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas. In later ones, working on the principle that the Christian Church should superintend and direct every form of civil life, he dealt with the Christian constitution of states (Immortale Dei, 1st November 1885), with human liberty (Libertas, 20th June 1888), and with the condition of the working classes (Rerum novarum, 15th May 1891). This last was slightly tinged with modern socialism; it was described as “the social Magna Carta of Catholicism,” and it won for Leo the name of “the working-man’s pope.” Translated into the chief modern languages, many thousands of copies were circulated among the working classes in Catholic countries. Other encyclicals, such as those on Christian marriage (Arcanum divinae sapientiae, 10th February 1880), on the Rosary (Supremi apostolatus officii, 1st September 1883, and Superiore anno, 5th September 1898), and on Freemasonry (Humanum genus, 20th April 1884), dealt with subjects on which his predecessor had been accustomed to pronounce allocutions, and were on similar lines. It was the knowledge that in all points of religious faith and practice Leo XIII. stood precisely where Pius IX. had stood that served to render ineffectual others of his encyclicals, in which he dealt earnestly and effectively with matters in which orthodox Protestants had a sympathetic interest with him and might otherwise have lent an ear to his counsels. Such were the letters on the study of Holy Scripture (18th November 1893), and on the reunion of Christendom (20th June 1894). He showed special anxiety for the return of England to the Roman Catholic fold, and addressed a letter ad Anglos, dated 14th April 1895. This he followed up by an encyclical on the unity of the Church (Satis cognitum, 29th June 1896); and the question of the validity of Anglican ordinations from the Roman Catholic point of view having been raised in Rome by Viscount Halifax, with whom the abbé Louis Duchesne and one or two other French priests were in sympathy, a commission was appointed to consider the subject, and on the 15th of September 1896 a condemnation of the Anglican form as theologically insufficient was issued, and was directed to be taken as final.

The establishment of a diocesan hierarchy in Scotland had been decided upon before the death of Pius IX., but the actual announcement of it was made by Leo XIII. On the 25th of July 1898 he addressed to the Scottish Catholic bishops a letter, in the course of which he said that “many of the Scottish people who do not agree with us in faith sincerely love the name of Christ and strive to ascertain His doctrine and to imitate His most holy example.” The Irish and American bishops he summoned to Rome to confer with him on the subjects of Home Rule and of “Americanism” respectively. In India he established a diocesan hierarchy, with seven archbishoprics, the archbishop of Goa taking precedence with the rank of patriarch.

With the government of Italy his general policy was to be as conciliatory as was consistent with his oath as pope never to surrender the “patrimony of St Peter”; but a moderate attitude was rendered difficult by partisans on either side in the press, each of whom claimed to represent his views. In 1879, addressing a congress of Catholic journalists in Rome, he exhorted them to uphold the necessity of the temporal power, and to proclaim to the world that the affairs of Italy would never prosper until it was restored; in 1887 he found it necessary to deprecate the violence with which this doctrine was advocated in certain journals. A similar counsel of moderation was given to the Canadian press in connexion with the Manitoba school question in December 1897. The less conciliatory attitude towards the Italian government was resumed in an encyclical addressed to the Italian clergy (5th August 1898), in which he insisted on the duty of Italian Catholics to abstain from political life while the papacy remained in its “painful, precarious and intolerable position.” And in January 1902, reversing the policy which had its inception in the encyclical, Rerum novarum, of 1891, and had further been developed ten years later in a letter to the Italian bishops entitled Graves de communi, the “Sacred Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs” issued instructions concerning “Christian Democracy in Italy,” directing that the popular Christian movement, which embraced in its programme a number of social reforms, such as factory laws for children, old-age pensions, a minimum wage in agricultural industries, an eight-hours’ day, the revival of trade gilds, and the encouragement of Sunday rest, should divert its attention from all such things as savoured of novelty and devote its energies to the restoration of the temporal power. The reactionary policy thus indicated gave the impression that a similar aim underlay the appointment about the same date of a commission to inquire into Biblical studies; and in other minor matters Leo XIII. disappointed those who had looked to him for certain reforms in the devotional system of the Church. A revision of the breviary, which would have involved the omission of some of the less credible legends, came to nothing, while the recitation of the office in honour of the Santa Casa at Loreto was imposed on all the clergy. The worship of Mary, largely developed during the reign of Pius IX., received further stimulus from Leo; nor did he do anything during his pontificate to correct the superstitions connected with popular beliefs concerning relics and indulgences.

His policy towards all governments outside Italy was to support them wherever they represented social order; and it was with difficulty that he persuaded French Catholics to be united in defence of the republic. The German Kulturkampf was ended by his exertions. In 1885 he successfully arbitrated between Germany and Spain in a dispute concerning the Caroline Islands. In Ireland he condemned the “Plan of Campaign” in 1888, but he conciliated the Nationalists by appointing Dr Walsh archbishop of Dublin. His hope that his support of the British government in Ireland would be followed by the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the court of St James’s and the Vatican was disappointed. But the jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887 and the pope’s priestly jubilee a few months later were the occasion of friendly intercourse between Rome and Windsor, Mgr. Ruffo Scilla coming to London as special papal envoy, and the duke of Norfolk being received at the Vatican as the bearer of the congratulations of the queen of England. Similar courtesies were exchanged during the jubilee of 1897, and again in March 1902, when Edward VII. sent the earl of Denbigh to Rome to congratulate Leo XIII. on reaching his ninety-third year and the twenty-fifth year of his pontificate. The visit of Edward VII. to Leo XIII. in April 1903 was a further proof of the friendliness between the English court and the Vatican.

The elevation of Newman to the college of Cardinals in 1879 was regarded with approval throughout the English-speaking world, both on Newman’s account and also as evidence that Leo XIII. had a wider horizon than his predecessor; and his similar recognition of two of the most distinguished “inopportunist” members of the Vatican council, Haynald, archbishop of Kalocsa, and Prince Fürstenberg, archbishop of Olmütz, was even more noteworthy. Dupanloup would doubtless have received the same honour had he not died shortly after Leo’s accession. Döllinger the pope attempted to reconcile, but failed. He laboured much to bring about the reunion of the Oriental Churches with the see of Rome, establishing Catholic educational centres in Athens and in Constantinople with that end in view. He used his influence with the emperor of Russia, as also with the emperors of China and Japan and with the shah of Persia, to secure the free practice of their religion for Roman Catholics within their respective dominions. Among the canonizations and beatifications of his pontificate that of Sir Thomas More, author of Utopia, is memorable. His encyclical issued at Easter 1902, and described by himself as a kind of will, was mainly a reiteration of earlier condemnations of the Reformation, and of modern philosophical systems, which for their atheism and materialism he makes responsible for all existing moral and political disorders. Society, he earnestly pleaded, can only find salvation by a return to Christianity and to the fold of the Roman Catholic Church.

Grave and serious in manner, speaking slowly, but with energetic gestures, simple and abstemious in his life—his daily bill of fare being reckoned as hardly costing a couple of francs—Leo XIII. distributed large sums in charity, and at his own charges placed costly astronomical instruments in the Vatican observatory, providing also accommodation and endowment for a staff of officials. He always showed the greatest interest in science and in literature, and he would have taken a position as a statesman of the first rank had he held office in any secular government. He may be reckoned the most illustrious pope since Benedict XIV., and under him the papacy acquired a prestige unknown since the middle ages. On the 3rd of March 1903 he celebrated his jubilee in St Peter’s with more than usual pomp and splendour; he died on the 20th of July following. His successor was Pius X.

See Scelta di atti episcopali del cardinale G. Pecci ... (Rome, 1879); Leonis XIII. Pont. Max. acta (17 vols., Rome, 1881-1898); Sanctissimi Domini N. Leonis XIII. allocutiones, epistolae, &c. (Bruges and Lille, 1887, &c.); the encyclicals (Sämtliche Rundschreiben) with a German translation (6 vols., Freiburg, 1878-1904); Discorsi del Sommo Pontefice Leone XIII. 1878-1882 (Rome, 1882). There are lives of Leo XIII. by B. O’Reilly (new ed., Chicago, 1903), H. des Houx (pseudonym of Durand Morimbeau) (Paris, 1900), by W. Meynell (1887), by J. McCarthy (1896), by Boyer d’Agen, (Jeunesse de Léon XIII. (1896); La Prélature, 1900), by M. Spahn (Munich, 1905), by L. K. Goetz (Gotha, 1899), &c. A life of Leo XIII. (4 vols.) was undertaken by F. Marion Crawford, Count Edoardo Soderini and Professor Giuseppe Clementi.

(A. W. Hu.; M. Br.)

1 Leonis XIII. Pont. Maximi carmina, ed. Brunelli (Udine, 1883); Leonis XIII. carmina, inscriptiones, numismata, ed. J. Bach (Cologne, 1903).

LEO, the name of six emperors of the East.

Leo I., variously surnamed Thrax, Magnus and Makelles, emperor of the East, 457-474, was born in Thrace about 400. From his position as military tribune he was raised to the throne by the soldiery and recognized both by senate and clergy; his coronation by the patriarch of Constantinople is said to have been the earliest instance of such a ceremony. Leo owed his elevation mainly to Aspar, the commander of the guards, who was debarred by his Arianism from becoming emperor in his own person, but hoped to exercise a virtual autocracy through his former steward and dependant. But Leo, following the traditions of his predecessor Marcian, set himself to curtail the domination of the great nobles and repeatedly acted in defiance of Aspar. Thus he vigorously suppressed the Eutychian heresy in Egypt, and by exchanging his Germanic bodyguard for Isaurians removed the chief basis of Aspar’s power. With the help of his generals Anthemius and Anagastus, he repelled invasions of the Huns into Dacia (466 and 468). In 467 Leo had Anthemius elected emperor of the West, and in concert with him equipped an armament of more than 1100 ships and 100,000 men against the pirate empire of the Vandals in Africa. Through the remissness of Leo’s brother-in-law Basiliscus, who commanded the expedition, the fleet was surprised by the Vandal king, Genseric, and half of its vessels sunk or burnt (468). This failure was made a pretext by Leo for killing Aspar as a traitor (471), and Aspar’s murder served the Goths in turn as an excuse for ravaging Thrace up to the walls of the capital. In 473 the emperor associated with himself his infant grandson, Leo II., who, however, survived him by only a few months. His surnames Magnus (Great) and Makelles (butcher) respectively reflect the attitude of the Orthodox and the Arians towards his religious policy.

See E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (ed. Bury, 1896), iv. 29-37; J. B. Bury, The Later Roman Empire (1889), i. 227-233.

Leo III. (c. 680-740), surnamed The Isaurian, emperor of the East, 717-740. Born about 680 in the Syrian province of Commagene, he rose to distinction in the military service, and under Anastasius II. was invested with the command of the eastern army. In 717 he revolted against the usurper Theodosius III. and, marching upon Constantinople, was elected emperor in his stead. The first year of Leo’s reign saw a memorable siege of his capital by the Saracens, who had taken advantage of the civil discord in the Roman empire to bring up a force of 80,000 men to the Bosporus. By his stubborn defence the new ruler wore out the invaders who, after a twelve months’ investment, withdrew their forces. An important factor in the victory of the Romans was their use of Greek fire. Having thus preserved the empire from extinction, Leo proceeded to consolidate its administration, which in the previous years of anarchy had become completely disorganized. He secured its frontiers by inviting Slavonic settlers into the depopulated districts and by restoring the army to efficiency; when the Arabs renewed their invasions in 726 and 739 they were decisively beaten. His civil reforms include the abolition of the system of prepaying taxes which had weighed heavily upon the wealthier proprietors, the elevation of the serfs into a class of free tenants, the remodelling of family and of maritime law. These measures, which were embodied in a new code published in 740, met with some opposition on the part of the nobles and higher clergy. But Leo’s most striking legislative reforms dealt with religious matters. After an apparently successful attempt to enforce the baptism of all Jews and Montanists in his realm (722), he issued a series of edicts against the worship of images (726-729). This prohibition of a custom which had undoubtedly given rise to grave abuses seems to have been inspired by a genuine desire to improve public morality, and received the support of the official aristocracy and a section of the clergy. But a majority of the theologians and all the monks opposed these measures with uncompromising hostility, and in the western parts of the empire the people refused to obey the edict. A revolt which broke out in Greece, mainly on religious grounds, was crushed by the imperial fleet (727), and two years later, by deposing the patriarch of Constantinople, Leo suppressed the overt opposition of the capital. In Italy the defiant attitude of Popes Gregory II. and III. on behalf of image-worship led to a fierce quarrel with the emperor. The former summoned councils in Rome to anathematize and excommunicate the image-breakers (730, 732); Leo retaliated by transferring southern Italy and Greece from the papal diocese to that of the patriarch. The struggle was accompanied by an armed outbreak in the exarchate of Ravenna (727), which Leo finally endeavoured to subdue by means of a large fleet. But the destruction of the armament by a storm decided the issue against him; his south Italian subjects successfully defied his religious edicts, and the province of Ravenna became detached from the empire. In spite of this partial failure Leo must be reckoned as one of the greatest of the later Roman emperors. By his resolute stand against the Saracens he delivered all eastern Europe from a great danger, and by his thorough-going reforms he not only saved the empire from collapse, but invested it with a stability which enabled it to survive all further shocks for a space of five centuries.

See E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (ed. Bury, 1896), v. 185 seq., 251 seq. and appendices, vi. 6-12; J. B. Bury, The Later Roman Empire (1889), ii. 401-449; K. Schenk, Kaiser Leo III. (Halle, 1880), and in Byzantinische Zeitschrift (1896), v. 257-301; T. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders (1892, &c.), bk. vii., chs. 11, 12. See also Iconoclasts.

Leo IV., called Chozar, succeeded his father, Constantine V., as emperor of the East in 775. In 776 he associated his young son, Constantine, with himself in the empire, and suppressed a rising led by his five step-brothers which broke out as a result of this proceeding. Leo was largely under the influence of his wife Irene (q.v.), and when he died in 780 he left her as the guardian of his successor, Constantine VI.

Leo V., surnamed The Armenian, emperor of the East, 813-820, was a distinguished general of Nicephorus I. and Michael I. After rendering good service on behalf of the latter in a war with the Arabs (812), he was summoned in 813 to co-operate in a campaign against the Bulgarians. Taking advantage of the disaffection prevalent among the troops, he left Michael in the lurch at the battle of Adrianople and subsequently led a successful revolution against him. Leo justified his usurpation by repeatedly defeating the Bulgarians who had been contemplating the siege of Constantinople (814-817). By his vigorous measures of repression against the Paulicians and image-worshippers he roused considerable opposition, and after a conspiracy under his friend Michael Psellus had been foiled by the imprisonment of its leader, he was assassinated in the palace chapel on Christmas Eve, 820.

See E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (ed. Bury, 1896), v. 193-195.

(M. O. B. C.)

Leo VI., surnamed The Wise and The Philosopher, Byzantine emperor, 886-911. He was a weak-minded ruler, chiefly occupied with unimportant wars with barbarians and struggles with churchmen. The chief event of his reign was the capture of Thessalonica (904) by Mahommedan pirates (described in The Capture of Thessalonica by John Cameniata) under the renegade Leo of Tripolis. In Sicily and Lower Italy the imperial arms were unsuccessful, and the Bulgarian Symeon, who assumed the title of “Czar of the Bulgarians and autocrat of the Romaei” secured the independence of his church by the establishment of a patriarchate. Leo’s somewhat absurd surname may be explained by the facts that he “was less ignorant than the greater part of his contemporaries in church and state, that his education had been directed by the learned Photius, and that several books of profane and ecclesiastical science were composed by the pen, or in the name, of the imperial philosopher” (Gibbon). His works include seventeen Oracula, in iambic verse, on the destinies of future emperors and patriarchs of Constantinople; thirty-three Orations, chiefly on theological subjects (such as church festivals); Basilica, the completion of the digest of the laws of Justinian, begun by Basil I., the father of Leo; some epigrams in the Greek Anthology; an iambic lament on the melancholy condition of the empire; and some palindromic verses, curiously called καρκίνοι (crabs). The treatise on military tactics, attributed to him, is probably by Leo III., the Isaurian.

Complete edition in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, cvii.; for the literature of individual works see C. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897).

(J. H. F.)

LEO, Brother (d. c. 1270), the favourite disciple, secretary and confessor of St Francis of Assisi. The dates of his birth and of his becoming a Franciscan are not known; but he was one of the small group of most trusted companions of the saint during his last years. After Francis’s death Leo took a leading part in the opposition to Elias: he it was who broke in pieces the marble box which Elias had set up for offertories for the completion of the basilica at Assisi. For this Elias had him scourged, and this outrage on St Francis’s dearest disciple consolidated the opposition to Elias and brought about his deposition. Leo was the leader in the early stages of the struggle in the order for the maintenance of St Francis’s ideas on strict poverty, and the chief inspirer of the tradition of the Spirituals on St Francis’s life and teaching. The claim that he wrote the so-called Speculum perfectionis cannot be allowed, but portions of it no doubt go back to him. A little volume of his writings has been published by Lemmeus (Scripta Iratris Leonis, 1901). Leo assisted at St Clara’s death-bed, 1253; after suffering many persecutions from the dominant party in the order he died at the Portiuncula in extreme old age.

All that is known concerning him is collected by Paul Sabatier in the “Introduction” to the Speculum perfectionis (1898). See St Francis and Franciscans.

(E. C. B.)

LEO, HEINRICH (1799-1878), German historian, was born at Rudolstadt on the 19th of March 1799, his father being chaplain to the garrison there. His family, not of Italian origin—as he himself was inclined to believe on the strength of family tradition—but established in Lower Saxony so early as the 16th century, was typical of the German upper middle classes, and this fact, together with the strongly religious atmosphere in which he was brought up and his early enthusiasm for nature, largely determined the bent of his mind. The taste for historical study was, moreover, early instilled into him by the eminent philologist Karl Wilhelm Göttling (1793-1869), who in 1816 became a master at the Rudolstadt gymnasium. From 1816 to 1819 Leo studied at the universities of Breslau, Jena and Göttingen, devoting himself more especially to history, philology and theology. At this time the universities were still agitated by the Liberal and patriotic aspirations aroused by the War of Liberation; at Breslau Leo fell under the influence of Jahn, and joined the political gymnastic association (Turnverein); at Jena he attached himself to the radical wing of the German Burschenschaft, the so-called “Black Band,” under the leadership of Karl Follen. The murder of Kotzebue by Karl Sand, however, shocked him out of his extreme revolutionary views, and from this time he tended, under the influence of the writings of Hamann and Herder, more and more in the direction of conservatism and romanticism, until at last he ended, in a mood almost of pessimism, by attaching himself to the extreme right wing of the forces of reaction. So early as April 1819, at Göttingen, he had fallen under the influence of Karl Ludwig von Haller’s Handbuch der allgemeinen Staatenkunde (1808), a text-book of the counter-Revolution. On the 11th of May 1820 he took his doctor’s degree; in the same year he qualified as Privatdozent at the university of Erlangen. For this latter purpose he had chosen as his thesis the constitution of the free Lombard cities in the middle ages, the province in which he was destined to do most for the scientific study of history. His interest in it was greatly stimulated by a journey to Italy in 1823; in 1824 he returned to the subject, and, as the result, published in five volumes a history of the Italian states (1829-1832). Meanwhile he had been established (1822-1827) as Dozent at Berlin, where he came in contact with the leaders of German thought and was somewhat spoilt by the flattering attentions of the highest Prussian society. Here, too, it was that Hegel’s philosophy of history made a deep impression upon him. It was at Halle, however, where he remained for forty years (1828-1868), that he acquired his fame as an academical teacher. His wonderful power of exposition, aided by a remarkable memory, is attested by the most various witnesses. In 1830 he became ordinary professor.

In addition to his lecturing, Leo found time for much literary and political work. He collaborated in the Jahrbücher für Wissenschaftliche Kritik from its foundation in 1827 until the publication was stopped in 1846. As a critic of independent views he won the approval of Goethe; on the other hand, he fell into violent controversy with Ranke about questions connected with Italian history. Up to the revolutionary year 1830 his religious views had remained strongly tinged with rationalism, Hegel remaining his guide in religion as in practical politics and the treatment of history. It was not till 1838 that Leo’s polemical work Die Hegelingen proclaimed his breach with the radical developments of the philosopher’s later disciples; a breach which developed into opposition to the philosopher himself. Under the impression of the July revolution in Paris and of the orthodox and pietistic influences at Halle, Leo’s political convictions were henceforth dominated by reactionary principles. As a friend of the Prussian “Camarilla” and of King Frederick William IV. he collaborated especially in the high conservative Politisches Wochenblatt, which first appeared in 1831, as well as in the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, the Kreuzzeitung and the Volksblatt für Stadt und Land. In all this his critics scented an inclination towards Catholicism; and Leo did actually glorify the counter-Reformation, e.g. in his History of the Netherlands (2 vols. 1832-1835). His other historical works also, notably his Universalgeschichte (6 vols., 1835-1844), display a very one-sided point of view. When, however, in connexion with the quarrel about the archbishopric of Cologne (1837), political Catholicism raised its head menacingly, Leo turned against it with extreme violence in his open letter (1838) to Goerres, its foremost champion. On the other hand, he took a lively part in the politico-religious controversies within the fold of Prussian Protestantism.

Leo was by nature highly excitable and almost insanely passionate, though at the same time strictly honourable, unselfish, and in private intercourse even gentle. During the last year of his life his mind suffered rapid decay, of which signs had been apparent so early as 1868. He died at Halle on the 24th of April 1878. In addition to the works already mentioned, he left behind an account of his early life (Meine Jugendzeit, Gotha, 1880) which is of interest.

See Lord Acton, English Historical Review, i. (1886); H. Haupt, Karl Follen und die Giessener Schwarzen (Giessen, 1907); W. Herbst, Deutsch-Evangelische Blätter, Bd. 3; P. Krägelin, H. Leo, vol. i. (1779-1844) (Leipzig, 1908); P. Kraus, Allgemeine Konservative Monatsschrift, Bd. 50 u. 51; R. M. Meyer, Gestalten und Probleme (1904); W. Schrader, Geschichte der Friedrichs-Universität in Halle (Berlin, 1894); C. Varrentrapp, Historische Zeitschrift, Bd. 92; F. X. Wegele, Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, Bd. 18 (1883); Geschichte der deutschen Historiographie (1885); G. Wolf, Einführung in das Studium der neueren Geschichte (1910). Leo’s Rectitudines singularum personarum nebst einer einleitenden Abhandlung über Landsiedelung, Landbau, gutsherrliche und bäuerliche Verhältnisse der Angelsachsen, was translated into English by Lord Acton (1852).

(J. Hn.)

LEO, JOHANNES (c. 1494-1552), in Italian Giovanni Leo or Leone, usually called Leo Africanus, sometimes Eliberitanus (i.e. of Granada), and properly known among the Moors as Al Hassan Ibn Mahommed Al Wezaz Al Fasi, was the author of a Descrizione dell’ Affrica, or Africae descriptio, which long ranked as the best authority on Mahommedan Africa. Born probably at Granada of a noble Moorish stock (his father was a landowner; an uncle of his appears as an envoy from Fez to Timbuktu), he received a great part of his education at Fez, and while still very young began to travel widely in the Barbary States. In 1512 we trace him at Morocco, Tunis, Bugia and Constantine; in 1513 we find him returning from Tunis to Morocco; and before the close of the latter year he seems to have started on his famous Sudan and Sahara journeys (1513-1515) which brought him to Timbuktu, to many other regions of the Great Desert and the Niger basin (Guinea, Melli, Gago, Walata, Aghadez, Wangara, Katsena, &c.), and apparently to Bornu and Lake Chad. In 1516-1517 he travelled to Constantinople, probably visiting Egypt on the way; it is more uncertain when he visited the three Arabias (Deserta, Felix and Petraea), Armenia and “Tartary” (the last term is perhaps satisfied by his stay at Tabriz). His three Egyptian journeys, immediately after the Turkish conquest, all probably fell between 1517 and 1520; on one of these he ascended the Nile from Cairo to Assuan. As he was returning from Egypt about 1520 he was captured by pirates near the island of Gerba, and was ultimately presented as a slave to Leo X. The pope discovered his merit, assigned him a pension, and having persuaded him to profess the Christian faith, stood sponsor at his baptism, and bestowed on him (as Ramusio says) his own names, Johannes and Leo. The new convert, having made himself acquainted with Latin and Italian, taught Arabic (among his pupils was Cardinal Egidio Antonini, bishop of Viterbo); he also wrote books in both the Christian tongues he had acquired. His Description of Africa was first, apparently, written in Arabic, but the primary text now remaining is that of the Italian version, issued by the author at Rome, on the 10th of March 1526, three years after Pope Leo’s death, though originally undertaken at the latter’s suggestion. The Moor seems to have lived on Rome for some time longer, but he returned to Africa some time before his death at Tunis in 1552; according to some, he renounced his Christianity and returned to Islam; but the later part of his career is obscure.

The Descrizione dell’ Affrica in its original Arabic MS. is said to have existed for some time in the library of Vincenzo Pinelli (1535-1601); the Italian text, though issued in 1526, was first printed by Giovanni Battista Ramusio in his Navigationi et Viaggi (vol. i.) of 1550. This was reprinted in 1554, 1563, 1588, &c. In 1556 Jean Temporal executed at Lyons an admirable French version from the Italian (Historiale description de l’Afrique); and in the same year appeared at Antwerp both Christopher Plantin’s and Jean Bellere’s pirated issues of Temporal’s translation, and a new (very inaccurate) Latin version by Joannes Florianus, Joannis Leonis Africani de totius Africae descriptione libri i.-ix. The latter was reprinted in 1558, 1559 (Zürich), and 1632 (Leiden), and served as the basis of John Pory’s Elizabethan English translation, made at the suggestion of Richard Hakluyt (A Geographical Historie of Africa, London, 1600). Pory’s version was reissued, with notes, maps, &c., by Robert Brown, E. G. Ravenstein, &c. (3 vols., Hakluyt Society, London, 1896). An excellent German translation was made by Lorsbach, from the Italian, in 1805 (Johann Leos des Afrikaners Beschreibung von Afrika, Herborn). See also Francis Moore’s Travels into the inland parts of Africa (1738), containing a translation of Leo’s account of negro kingdoms. Heinrich Barth intended to have made a fresh version, with a commentary, but was prevented by death; as it is, his own great works on the Sudan are the best elucidation of the Descrizione dell’ Affrica.

Leo also wrote lives of the Arab physicians and philosophers (De viris quibusdam illustribus apud Arabes; see J. A. Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, Hamburg, 1726, xiii. 259-298); a Spanish-Arabic vocabulary, now lost, but noticed by Ramusio as having been consulted by the famous Hebrew physician, Jacob Mantino; a collection of Arabic epitaphs in and near Fez (the MS. of this Leo presented, it is said, to the brother of the king); and poems, also lost. It is stated, moreover, that Leo intended writing a history of the Mahommedan religion, an epitome of Mahommedan chronicles, and an account of his travels in Asia and Egypt.

(C. R. B.)

LEO, LEONARDO (1694-1744), more correctly Lionardo Oronzo Salvatore de Leo, Italian musical composer, was born on the 5th of August 1694 at S. Vito dei Normanni, near Brindisi. He became a student at the Conservatorio della Piètà dei Turchini at Naples in 1703, and was a pupil first of Provenzale and later of Nicola Fago. It has been supposed that he was a pupil of Pitoni and Alessandro Scarlatti, but he could not possibly have studied with either of these composers, although he was undoubtedly influenced by their compositions. His earliest known work was a sacred drama, L’Infedeltà abbattuta, performed by his fellow-students in 1712. In 1714 he produced, at the court theatre, an opera, Pisistrato, which was much admired. He held various posts at the royal chapel, and continued to write for the stage, besides teaching at the conservatorio. After adding comic scenes to Gasparini’s Bajazette in 1722 for performance at Naples, he composed a comic opera, La Mpeca scoperta, in Neapolitan dialect, in 1723. His most famous comic opera was Amor vuol sofferenze (1739), better known as La Finta Frascatana, highly praised by Des Brosses. He was equally distinguished as a composer of serious opera, Demofoonte (1735), Farnace (1737) and L’Olimpiade (1737) being his most famous works in this branch, and is still better known as a composer of sacred music. He died of apoplexy on the 31st of October 1744 while engaged in the composition of new airs for a revival of La Finta Frascatana.

Leo was the first of the Neapolitan school to obtain a complete mastery over modern harmonic counterpoint. His sacred music is masterly and dignified, logical rather than passionate, and free from the sentimentality which disfigures the work of F. Durante and G. B. Pergolesi. His serious operas suffer from a coldness and severity of style, but in his comic operas he shows a keen sense of humour. His ensemble movements are spirited, but never worked up to a strong climax.

A fine and characteristic example of his sacred music is the Dixit Dominus in C, edited by C. V. Stanford and published by Novello. A number of songs from operas are accessible in modern editions.

(E. J. D.)

LEO (The Lion), in astronomy, the fifth sign of the zodiac (q.v.), denoted by the symbol Ω. It is also a constellation, mentioned by Eudoxus (4th century B.C.) and Aratus (3rd century B.C.). According to Greek mythology this constellation is the Nemean lion, which, after being killed by Hercules, was raised to the heavens by Jupiter in honour of Hercules. A part of Ptolemy’s Leo is now known as Coma Berenices (q.v.). α Leonis, also known as Cor Leonis or the Lion’s Heart, Regulus, Basilicus, &c., is a very bright star of magnitude 1.23, and parallax 0.02″, and proper motion 0.27″ per annum. γ Leonis is a very fine orange-yellow binary star, of magnitudes 2 and 4, and period 400 years. ι Leonis is a binary, composed of a 4th magnitude pale yellow star, and a 7th magnitude blue star. The Leonids are a meteoric swarm, appearing in November and radiating from this constellation (see Meteor).

LEOBEN, a town in Styria, Austria, 44 m. N.W. of Graz by rail. Pop. (1900) 10,204. It is situated on the Mur, and part of its old walls and towers still remain. It has a well-known academy of mining and a number of technical schools. Its extensive iron-works and trade in iron are a consequence of its position on the verge of the important lignite deposits of Upper Styria and in the neighbourhood of the iron mines and furnaces of Vordernberg and Eisenerz. On the 18th of April 1797 a preliminary peace was concluded here between Austria and France, which led to the treaty of Campo-Formio.

LEOBSCHÜTZ (Bohemian Lubczyce), a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Silesia, on the Zinna, about 20 m. to the N.W. of Ratibor by rail. Pop. (1905) 12,700. It has a large trade in wool, flax and grain, its markets for these commodities being very numerously attended. The principal industries are malting, carriage-building, wool-spinning and glass-making. The town contains three Roman Catholic churches, a Protestant church, a synagogue, a new town-hall and a gymnasium. Leobschütz existed in the 10th century, and from 1524 to 1623 was the capital of the principality of Jägerndorf.

See F. Troska, Geschichte der Stadt Leobschütz (Leobschütz, 1892).

LEOCHARES, a Greek sculptor who worked with Scopas on the Mausoleum about 350 B.C. He executed statues of the family of Philip of Macedon, in gold and ivory, which were set up by that king in the Philippeum at Olympia. He also with Lysippus made a group in bronze at Delphi representing a lion-hunt of Alexander. Of this the base with an inscription was recently found. We hear of other statues by Leochares of Zeus, Apollo and Ares. The statuette in the Vatican, representing Ganymede being carried away by an eagle, though considerably restored and poor in execution, so closely corresponds with Pliny’s description of a group by Leochares that we are justified in considering it a copy of that group, especially as the Vatican statue shows all the characteristics of Attic 4th-century art. Pliny (N.H. 34. 79) writes: “Leochares made a group of an eagle aware whom it is carrying off in Ganymede and to whom it is bearing him; holding the boy delicately in its claws, with his garment between.” (For engraving see Greek Art, Plate I. fig. 53.) The tree stem is skilfully used as a support; and the upward strain of the group is ably rendered. The close likeness both in head and pose between the Ganymede and the well-known Apollo Belvidere has caused some modern archaeologists to assign the latter also to Leochares. With somewhat more confidence we may regard the fine statue of Alexander the Great at Munich as a copy of his gold and ivory portrait at Olympia.

(P. G.)

LEOFRIC (d. 1057), earl of Mercia, was a son of Leofwine, earl of Mercia, and became earl at some date previous to 1032. Henceforth, being one of the three great earls of the realm, he took a leading part in public affairs. On the death of King Canute in 1035 he supported the claim of his son Harold to the throne against that of Hardicanute; and during the quarrel between Edward the Confessor and Earl Godwine in 1051 he played the part of a mediator. Through his efforts civil war was averted, and in accordance with his advice the settlement of the dispute was referred to the Witan. When he became earl of Mercia his direct rule seems to have been confined to Cheshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire and the borders of north Wales, but afterwards he extended the area of his earldom. As Chester was his principal residence and the seat of his government, he is sometimes called earl of Chester. Leofric died at Bromley in Staffordshire on the 31st of August 1057. His wife was Godgifu, famous in legend as Lady Godiva. Both husband and wife were noted as liberal benefactors to the church, among their foundations being the famous Benedictine monastery at Coventry. Leofric’s son, Ælfgar, succeeded him as earl of Mercia.

See E. A. Freeman, The Norman Conquest, vols. i. and ii. (1877).

LEOMINSTER, a market-town and municipal borough in the Leominster parliamentary division of Herefordshire, England, in a rich agricultural country on the Lugg, 157 m. W.N.W. of London and 12½ N. of Hereford on the Great Western and London & North-Western railways. Pop. (1901) 5826. Area, 8728 acres. Some fine old timber houses lend picturesqueness to the wide streets. The parish church, of mixed architecture, including the Norman nave of the old priory church, and containing some of the most beautiful examples of window tracery in England, was restored in 1866, and enlarged by the addition of a south nave in 1879. The Butter Cross, a beautiful example of timber work of the date 1633, was removed when the town-hall was building, and re-erected in the pleasure ground of the Grange. Trade is chiefly in agricultural produce, wool and cider, as the district is rich in orchards. Brewing (from the produce of local hop-gardens) and the manufacture of agricultural implements are also carried on. The town is under a mayor, four aldermen and twelve councillors.

Merewald, king of Mercia, is said to have founded a religious house in Leominster (Llanlieni, Leofminstre, Lempster) in 660, and a nunnery existed here until the Conquest, when the place became a royal demesne. It was granted by Henry I. to the monks of Reading, who built in it a cell of their abbey, and under whose protection the town grew up and was exempted from the sphere of the county and hundred courts. In 1539 it reverted to the crown; and in 1554 was incorporated, by a charter renewed in 1562, 1563, 1605, 1666, 1685 and 1786. The borough returned two members to the parliament of 1295 and to other parliaments, until by the Representation Act 1867 it lost one representative, and by the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 separate representation. A fair was granted in the time of Henry II., and fairs in the seasons of Michaelmas and the feasts of St Philip and St James and of Edward the Confessor, in 1265, 1281 and 1290 respectively. Charters to the burghers authorized fairs on the days of St Peter and of St Simon and St Jude in 1554, on St Bartholomew’s day in 1605, in Mid-lent week in 1665, and on the feast of the Purification and on the 2nd of May in 1685; these fairs have modern representatives. A market was held by the abbey by a grant of Henry I.; Friday is now market day. Leominster was famous for wool from the 13th to the 18th century. There were gilds of mercers, tailors, drapers, dyers and glovers in the 16th century. In 1835 the wool trade was said to be dead; and that of glove-making, which had been important, was diminishing. Hops and apples were grown in 1715.

See G. Townsend, The Town and Borough of Leominster (1863), and John Price, An Historical and Topographical Account of Leominster and its Vicinity (Ludlow, 1715).

LEOMINSTER, a township of Worcester county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., about 45 m. N.W. of Boston and about 20 m. N. by E. of Worcester. Pop. (1890) 7269; (1900) 12,392, of whom 2827 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 17,580. It is a broken, hilly district, 26.48 sq. m. in area, traversed by the Nashua river, crossed by the Northern Division of the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad, and by the Fitchburg Division of the Boston & Maine, and connected with Boston, Worcester and other cities by interurban electric lines. Along the N.E. border and mostly in the township of Lunenburg are Whalom Lake and Whalom Park, popular pleasure resorts. The principal villages are Leominster, 5 m. S.E. of Fitchburg, and North Leominster; the two adjoin and are virtually one. According to the Special U.S. Census of Manufactures of 1905 the township had in that year a greater diversity of important manufacturing industries than any place of its size in the state, or, probably, in the United States; its 65 manufactories, with a capital of $4,572,726 and with a product for the year valued at $7,501,720 (39% more than in 1900), produced celluloid and horn work (the manufacture of which is a more important industry here than elsewhere in the United States), celluloid combs, furniture, paper, buttons, pianos and piano-cases, children’s carriages and sleds, stationery, leatherboard, worsted, woollen and cotton goods, shirts, paper boxes, &c. Leominster owns and operates its water-works. The township was formed from a part of Lancaster township in 1740.

LEÓN, LUIS PONCE DE (1527-1591), Spanish poet and mystic, was born at Belmonte de Cuenca, entered the university of Salamanca at the age of fourteen, and in 1544 joined the Augustinian order. In 1561 he obtained a theological chair at Salamanca, to which in 1571 was added that of sacred literature. He was denounced to the Inquisition for translating the book of Canticles, and for criticizing the text of the Vulgate. He was consequently imprisoned at Valladolid from March 1572 till December 1576; the charges against him were then abandoned, and he was released with an admonition. He returned to Salamanca as professor of Biblical exegesis, and was again reported to the Inquisition in 1582, but without result. In 1583-1585 he published the three books of a celebrated mystic treatise, Los Nombres de Cristo, which he had written in prison. In 1583 also appeared the most popular of his prose works, a treatise entitled La Perfecta Casada, for the use of a lady newly married. Ten days before his death, which occurred at Madrigal on the 23rd of August 1591, he was elected vicar general of the Augustinian order. Luis de León is not only the greatest of Spanish mystics; he is among the greatest of Spanish lyrical poets. His translations of Euripides, Pindar, Virgil and Horace are singularly happy; his original pieces, whether devout like the ode De la vida del cielo, or secular like the ode A Salinas, are instinct with a serene sublimity unsurpassed in any literature, and their form is impeccable. Absorbed by less worldly interests, Fray Luis de León refrained from printing his poems, which were not issued till 1631, when Quevedo published them as a counterblast to culteranismo.

The best edition of Luis de León’s works is that of Merino (6 vols., Madrid, 1816); the reprint (Madrid, 1885) by C. Muñoz Saenz is incorrect. The text of La Perfecta Casada has been well edited by Miss Elizabeth Wallace (Chicago, 1903). See Coleccion de documentos inéditos para la historia de España, vols. x.-xi.; F. H. Reusch, Luis de León und die spanische Inquisition (Bonn, 1873); M. Gutiérrez, Fray Luis de León y la filosofía española (Madrid, 1885); M. Menendez y Pelayo, Estudios de crítica literaria (Madrid, 1893), Primera série, pp. 1-72.

LEON, MOSES [Ben Shem-ṭob] DE (d. 1305), Jewish scholar, was born in Leon (Spain) in the middle of the 13th century and died at Arevalo. His fame is due to his authorship of the most influential Kabbalist work, the Zohar (see Kabbala), which was attributed to Simon b. Yoḥai, a Rabbi of the 2nd century. In modern times the discovery of the modernity of the Zohar has led to injustice to the author. Moses de Leon undoubtedly used old materials and out of them constructed a work of genius. The discredit into which he fell was due partly to the unedifying incidents of his personal career. He led a wandering life, and was more or less of an adventurer. But as to the greatness of his work, the profundity of his philosophy and the brilliance of his religious idealism, there can be no question.

See Graetz, History of the Jews, vol. iv. ch. i.; Geiger, Leon de Modena.

(I. A.)

LEON OF MODENA (1571-1648), Jewish scholar, was born in Venice, of a notable French family which had migrated to Italy after the expulsion of the Jews from France. He was a precocious child, but, as Graetz points out, his lack of stable character prevented his gifts from maturing. “He pursued all sorts of occupations to support himself, viz. those of preacher, teacher of Jews and Christians, reader of prayers, interpreter, writer, proof-reader, bookseller, broker, merchant, rabbi, musician, matchmaker and manufacturer of amulets.” Though he failed to rise to real distinction he earned a place by his criticism of the Talmud among those who prepared the way for the new learning in Judaism. One of Leon’s most effective works was his attack on the Kabbala (’Ari Nohem, first published in 1840), for in it he demonstrated that the “Bible of the Kabbalists” (the Zohar) was a modern composition. He became best known, however, as the interpreter of Judaism to the Christian world. At the instance of an English nobleman he prepared an account of the religious customs of the Synagogue, Riti Ebraici (1637). This book was widely read by Christians; it was rendered into various languages, and in 1650 was translated into English by Edward Chilmead. At the time the Jewish question was coming to the fore in London, and Leon of Modena’s book did much to stimulate popular interest. He died at Venice.

See Graetz, History of the Jews (Eng. trans.), vol. v. ch. iii.; Jewish Encyclopedia, viii. 6; Geiger, Leon de Modena.

(I. A.)

LEÓN, or León de las Aldamas, a city of the state of Guanajuato, Mexico, 209 m. N.W. of the federal capital and 30 m. W. by N. of the city of Guanajuato. Pop. (1895) 90,978; (1900) 62,623, León ranking fourth in the latter year among the cities of Mexico. The Mexican Central gives it railway connexion with the national capital and other prominent cities of the Republic. León stands in a fertile plain on the banks of the Turbio, a tributary of the Rio Grande de Lerma, at an elevation of 5862 ft. above sea-level and in the midst of very attractive surroundings. The country about León is considered to be one of the richest cereal-producing districts of Mexico. The city itself is subject to disastrous floods, sometimes leading to loss of life as well as damage to property, as in the great flood of 1889. León is essentially a manufacturing and commercial city; it has a cathedral and a theatre, the latter one of the largest and finest in the republic. The city is regularly built, with wide streets and numerous shady parks and gardens. It manufactures saddlery and other leather work, gold and silver embroideries, cotton and woollen goods, especially rebozos (long shawls), soap and cutlery. There are also tanneries and flour mills. The city has a considerable trade in wheat and flour. The first settlement of León occurred in 1552, but its formal foundation was in 1576, and it did not reach the dignity of a city until 1836.

LEON, the capital of the department of Leon, Nicaragua, an episcopal see, and the largest city in the republic, situated midway between Lake Managua and the Pacific Ocean, 50 m. N.W. of Managua, on the railway from that city to the Pacific port of Corinto. Pop. (1905) about 45,000, including the Indian town of Subtiaba. Leon covers a very wide area, owing to its gardens and plantations. Its houses are usually one-storeyed, built of adobe and roofed with red tiles; its public buildings are among the finest in Central America. The massive and elaborately ornamented cathedral was built in the Renaissance style between 1746 and 1774; a Dominican church in Subtiaba is little less striking. The old (1678) and new (1873) episcopal palaces, the hospital, the university and the barracks (formerly a Franciscan monastery) are noteworthy examples of Spanish colonial architecture. Leon has a large general trade, and manufactures cotton and woollen fabrics, ice, cigars, boots, shoes and saddlery; its tanneries supply large quantities of cheap leather for export. But its population (about 60,000 in 1850) tends to decrease.

At the time of the Spanish conquest Subtiaba was the residence of the great cacique of Nagrando, and contained an important Indian temple. The city of Leon, founded by Francisco Hernandez de Cordova in 1523, was originally situated at the head of the western bay of Lake Managua, and was not removed to its present position till 1610. Thomas Gage, who visited it in 1665, describes it as a splendid city; and in 1685 it yielded rich booty to William Dampier (q.v.). Until 1855 Leon was the capital of Nicaragua, although its great commercial rival Granada contested its claim to that position, and the jealousy between the two cities often resulted in bloodshed. Leon was identified with the interests of the democracy of Nicaragua, Granada with the clerical and aristocratic parties.

See Nicaragua; E. G. Squier, Central America, vol. i. (1856); and T. Gage, Through Mexico, &c. (1665).

LEON, the name of a modern province and of an ancient kingdom, captaincy-general and province in north-western Spain. The modern province, founded in 1833, is bounded on the N. by Oviedo, N.E. by Santander, E. by Palencia, S. by Valladolid and Zamora and W. by Orense and Lugo. Pop. (1900) 386,083. Area, 5986 sq. m. The boundaries of the province on the north and west, formed respectively by the central ridge and southerly offshoots of the Cantabrian Mountains (q.v.), are strongly marked; towards the south-east the surface merges imperceptibly into the Castilian plateau, the line of demarcation being for the most part merely conventional. Leon belongs partly to the river system of the Miño (see Spain), partly to that of the Duero or Douro (q.v.), these being separated by the Montañas de Leon, which extend in a continuous wall (with passes at Manzanal and Poncebadon) from north to south-west. To the north-west of the Montañas de Leon is the richly wooded pastoral and highland district known as the Vierzo, which in its lower valleys produces grain, fruit, and wine in abundance. The Tierra del Campo in the west of the province is fairly productive, but in need of irrigation. The whole province is sparsely peopled. Apart from agriculture, stock-raising and mining, its commerce and industries are unimportant. Cattle, mules, butter, leather, coal and iron are exported. The hills of Leon were worked for gold in the time of the Romans; iron is still obtained, and coal-mining developed considerably towards the close of the 19th century. The only towns with more than 5000 inhabitants in 1900 were Leon (15,580) and Astorga (5573) (q.v.). The main railway from Madrid to Corunna passes through the province, and there are branches from the city of Leon to Vierzo, Oviedo, and the Biscayan port of Gijón.

At the time of the Roman conquest, the province was inhabited by the Vettones and Callaici; it afterwards formed part of Hispania Tarraconensis. Among the Christian kingdoms which arose in Spain as the Moorish invasion of the 8th century receded, Leon was one of the oldest. The title of king of Leon was first assumed by Ordoño in 913. Ferdinand I. (the Great) of Castile united the crowns of Castile and Leon in the 11th century; the two were again separated in the 12th, until a final union took place (1230) in the person of St Ferdinand. The limits of the kingdom varied with the vicissitudes of war, but roughly speaking it may be said to have embraced what are now the provinces of Leon, Palencia, Valladolid, Zamora and Salamanca. For a detailed account of this kingdom, see Spain: History. The captaincy-general of the province of Leon before 1833 included Leon, Zamora and Salamanca. The Leonese, or inhabitants of these three provinces, have less individuality, in character and physique, than the people of Galicia, Catalonia or Andalusia, who are quite distinct from what is usually regarded as the central or national Spanish type, i.e. the Castilian. The Leonese belong partly to the Castilian section of the Spaniards, partly to the north-western section which includes the Galicians and Asturians. They have comparatively few of the Moorish traits which are so marked in the south and east of Spain. Near Astorga there dwells a curious tribe, the Maragatos, sometimes considered to be a remnant of the original Celtiberian inhabitants. As a rule the Maragatos earn their living as muleteers or carriers; they wear a distinctive costume, mix as little as possible with their neighbours and do not marry outside their own tribe.

LEON, an episcopal see and the capital of the Spanish province of Leon, situated on a hill 2631 ft. above sea-level, in the angle made by the Torio and Bernesga, streams which unite on the south, and form the river Leon, a tributary of the Esla. Pop. (1900) 15,580. Leon is on the main railway from Madrid to Oviedo, and is connected with Astorga by a branch line. The older quarters of the city, which contain the cathedral and other medieval buildings, are surrounded by walls, and have lost little of their beauty and interest from the restoration carried out in the second half of the 19th century. During the same period new suburbs grew up outside the walls to house the industrial population which was attracted by the development of iron-founding and the manufacture of machinery, railway-plant, chemicals and leather. Leon thus comprises two towns—the old, which is mainly ecclesiastical in its character, and the new, which is industrial. The cathedral, founded in 1199 and only finished at the close of the 14th century, is built of a warm cream-coloured stone, and is remarkable for simplicity, lightness and strength. It is one of the finest examples of Spanish Gothic, smaller, indeed, than the cathedrals of Burgos and Toledo, but exquisite in design and workmanship. The chapter library contains some valuable manuscripts. The collegiate church of San Isidoro was founded by Ferdinand I. of Castile in 1063 and consecrated in 1149. Its architecture is Romanesque. The church contains some fine plate, including the silver reliquary in which the bones of St Isidore of Seville are preserved, and a silver processional cross dating from the 16th century, which is one of the most beautiful in the country. The convent and church of San Marcos, planned in 1514 by Ferdinand the Catholic, founded by Charles V. in 1537, and consecrated in 1541, are Renaissance in style. They are built on the site of a hostel used by pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela. The provincial museum occupies the chapterhouse and contains some interesting Roman monuments. The lower part of the city walls consists of Roman masonry dating from the 3rd century. Other buildings are the high school, ecclesiastical seminaries, hospital, episcopal palace and municipal and provincial halls.

Leon (Arab. Liyun) owes its name to the Legio Septima Gemina of Galba, which, under the later emperors, had its headquarters here. About 540 Leon fell into the hands of the Gothic king Leovigild, and in 717 it capitulated to the Moors. Retaken about 742, it ultimately, in the beginning of the 10th century, became the capital of the kingdom of Leon (see Spain: History). About 996 it was taken by Almansur, but on his death soon afterwards it reverted to the Spaniards. It was the seat of several ecclesiastical councils, the first of which was held under Alphonso V. in 1012 and the last in 1288.

LEONARDO DA VINCI (1452-1519), the great Italian painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mechanician, engineer and natural philosopher, was the son of a Florentine lawyer, born out of wedlock by a mother in a humble station, variously described as a peasant and as of gentle birth. The place of his birth was Vinci, a castello or fortified hill village in the Florentine territory near Empoli, from which his father’s family derived its name. The Christian name of the father was Piero (the son of Antonio the son of Piero the son of Guido, all of whom had been men of law like their descendant). Leonardo’s mother was called Catarina. Her relations with Ser Piero da Vinci seem to have come to an end almost immediately upon the birth of their son. She was soon afterwards married to one Accattabriga di Piero del Vacca, of Vinci. Ser Piero on his part was four times married, and had by his last two wives nine sons and two daughters; but he had from the first acknowledged the boy Leonardo and brought him up in his own house, principally, no doubt, at Florence. In that city Ser Piero followed his profession with success, as notary to many of the chief families in the city, including the Medici, and afterwards to the signory or governing council of the state. The son born to him before marriage grew up into a youth of shining promise. To splendid beauty and activity of person he joined a winning charm of temper and manners, a tact for all societies, and an aptitude for all accomplishments. An inexhaustible intellectual energy and curiosity lay beneath this amiable surface. Among the multifarious pursuits to which the young Leonardo set his hand, the favourites at first were music, drawing and modelling. His father showed some of his drawings to an acquaintance, Andrea del Verrocchio, who at once recognized the boy’s artistic vocation, and was selected by Ser Piero to be his master.

Verrocchio, although hardly one of the great creative or inventive forces in the art of his age at Florence, was a first-rate craftsman alike as goldsmith, sculptor and painter, and particularly distinguished as a teacher. In his studio Leonardo worked for several years (about 1470-1477) in the company of Lorenzo di Credi and other less celebrated pupils. Among his contemporaries he formed special ties of friendship with the painters Sandro Botticelli and Pietro Perugino. He had soon learnt all that Verrocchio had to teach—more than all, if we are to believe the oft-told tale of the figure, or figures, executed by the pupil in the picture of Christ’s Baptism designed by the master for the monks of Vallombrosa. The work in question is now in the Academy at Florence. According to Vasari the angel kneeling on the left, with a drapery over the right arm, was put in by Leonardo, and when Verrocchio saw it his sense of its superiority to his own work caused him to forswear painting for ever after. The latter part of the story is certainly false. The picture, originally painted in tempera, has suffered much from later repaints in oil, rendering exact judgment difficult. The most competent opinion inclines to acknowledge the hand of Leonardo, not only in the face of the angel, but also in parts of the drapery and of the landscape background. The work was probably done in or about 1470, when Leonardo was eighteen years old. By 1472 we find him enrolled in the lists of the painters’ gild at Florence. Here he continued to live and work for ten or eleven years longer. Up till 1477 he is still spoken of as a pupil or apprentice of Verrocchio; but in that year he seems to have been taken into special favour by Lorenzo the Magnificent, and to have worked as an independent artist under his patronage until 1482-1483. In 1478 we find him receiving an important commission from the signory, and in 1480 another from the monks of San Donato in Scopeto.

Leonardo was not one of those artists of the Renaissance who sought the means of reviving the ancient glories of art mainly in the imitation of ancient models. The antiques of the Medici gardens seem to have had little influence on him beyond that of generally stimulating his passion for perfection. By his own instincts he was an exclusive student of nature. From his earliest days he had flung himself upon that study with an unprecedented ardour of delight and curiosity. In drawing from life he had early found the way to unite precision with freedom and fire—the subtlest accuracy of expressive definition with vital movement and rhythm of line—as no draughtsman had been able to unite them before. He was the first painter to recognize the play of light and shade as among the most significant and attractive of the world’s appearances, the earlier schools having with one consent subordinated light and shade to colour and outline. Nor was he a student of the broad, usual, patent appearances only of the world; its fugitive, fantastic, unaccustomed appearances attracted him most of all. Strange shapes of hills and rocks, rare plants and animals, unusual faces and figures of men, questionable smiles and expressions, whether beautiful or grotesque, far-fetched objects and curiosities, were things he loved to pore upon and keep in memory. Neither did he stop at mere appearances of any kind, but, having stamped the image of things upon his brain, went on indefatigably to probe their hidden laws and causes. He soon satisfied himself that the artist who was content to reproduce the external aspects of things without searching into the hidden workings of nature behind them, was one but half equipped for his calling. Every fresh artistic problem immediately became for him a far-reaching scientific problem as well. The laws of light and shade, the laws of “perspective,” including optics and the physiology of the eye, the laws of human and animal anatomy and muscular movement, those of the growth and structure of plants and of the powers and properties of water, all these and much more furnished food almost from the beginning to his insatiable spirit of inquiry.

The evidence of the young man’s predilections and curiosities is contained in the legends which tell of lost works produced by him in youth. One of these was a cartoon or monochrome painting of Adam and Eve in tempera, and in this, besides the beauty of the figures, the infinite truth and elaboration of the foliage and animals in the background are celebrated in terms which bring to mind the treatment of the subject by Albrecht Dürer in his famous engraving done thirty years later. Again, a peasant of Vinci having in his simplicity asked Ser Piero to get a picture painted for him on a wooden shield, the father is said to have laughingly handed on the commission to his son, who thereupon shut himself up with all the noxious insects and grotesque reptiles he could find, observed and drew and dissected them assiduously, and produced at last a picture of a dragon compounded of their various shapes and aspects, which was so fierce and so life-like as to terrify all who saw it. With equal research and no less effect he painted on another occasion the head of a snaky-haired Medusa. (A picture of this subject which long did duty at the Uffizi for Leonardo’s work is in all likelihood merely the production of some later artist to whom the descriptions of that work have given the cue.) Lastly, Leonardo is related to have begun work in sculpture about this time by modelling several heads of smiling women and children.

Of certified and accepted paintings produced by the young genius, whether during his apprentice or his independent years at Florence (about 1470-1482), very few are extant, and the two most important are incomplete. A small and charming strip of an oblong “Annunciation” at the Louvre is generally accepted as his work, done soon after 1470; a very highly wrought drawing at the Uffizi, corresponding on a larger scale to the head of the Virgin in the same picture, seems rather to be a copy by a later hand. This little Louvre “Annunciation” is not very compatible in style with another and larger, much-debated “Annunciation” at the Uffizi, which manifestly came from the workshop of Verrocchio about 1473-1474, and which many critics claim confidently for the young Leonardo. It may have been joint studio-work of Verrocchio and his pupils including Leonardo, who certainly was concerned in it, since a study for the sleeve of the angel, preserved at Christ Church, Oxford, is unquestionably by his hand. The landscape, with its mysterious spiry mountains and winding waters, is very Leonardesque both in this picture and in another contemporary product of the workshop, or as some think of Leonardo’s hand, namely a very highly and coldly finished small “Madonna with a Pink” at Munich. The likeness he is recorded to have painted of Ginevra de’ Benci used to be traditionally identified with the fine portrait of a matron at the Pitti absurdly known as La Monaca: more lately it has been recognized in a rather dull, expressionless Verrocchiesque portrait of a young woman with a fanciful background of pine-sprays in the Liechtenstein gallery at Vienna. Neither attribution can be counted convincing. Several works of sculpture, including a bas-relief at Pistoia and a small terra-cotta model of a St John at the Victoria and Albert Museum, have also been claimed, but without general consent, as the young master’s handiwork. Of many brilliant early drawings by him, the first that can be dated is a study of landscape done in 1473. A magnificent silver-point head of a Roman warrior at the British Museum was clearly done, from or for a bas-relief, under the immediate influence of Verrocchio. A number of studies of heads in pen or silver point, with some sketches for Madonnas, including a charming series in the British Museum for a “Madonna with the Cat,” may belong to the same years or the first years of his independence. A sheet with two studies of heads bears a MS. note of 1478, saying that in one of the last months of that year he began painting the “Two Maries.” One of the two may have been a picture of the Virgin appearing to St Bernard, which we know he was commissioned to paint in that year for a chapel in the Palace of the Signory, but never finished: the commission was afterwards transferred to Filippino Lippi, whose performance is now in the Badia. One of the two heads on this dated sheet may probably have been a study for the same St Bernard; it was used afterwards by some follower for a St Leonard in a stiff and vapid “Ascension of Christ,” wrongly attributed to the master himself in the Berlin Museum. A pen-drawing representing a ringleader of the Pazzi conspiracy, Bernardo Baroncelli, hung out of a window of the Bargello after his surrender by the sultan at Constantinople to the emissaries of Florence, can be dated from its subject as done in December 1479. A number of his best drawings of the next following years are preparatory pen-studies for an altar-piece of the “Adoration of the Magi,” undertaken early in 1481 on the commission of the monks of S. Donato at Scopeto. The preparation in monochrome for this picture, a work of extraordinary power both of design and physiognomical expression, is preserved at the Uffizi, but the painting itself was never carried out, and after Leonardo’s failure to fulfil his contract Filippino Lippi had once more to be employed in his place. Of equal or even more intense power, though of narrower scope, is an unfinished monochrome preparation for a St Jerome, found accidentally at Rome by Cardinal Fesch and now in the Vatican gallery; this also seems to belong to the first Florentine period, but is not mentioned in documents.

The tale of completed work for these twelve or fourteen years (1470-1483 or thereabouts) is thus very scanty. But it must be remembered that Leonardo was already full of projects in mechanics, hydraulics, architecture, and military and civil engineering, ardently feeling his way in the work of experimental study and observation in every branch of theoretical or applied science in which any beginning had been made in his age, as well as in some in which he was himself the first pioneer. He was full of new ideas concerning both the laws and the applications of mechanical forces. His architectural and engineering projects were of a daring which amazed even the fellow-citizens of Alberti and Brunelleschi. History presents few figures more attractive to the mind’s eye than that of Leonardo during this period of his all-capable and dazzling youth. He did not indeed escape calumny, and was even denounced on a charge of immoral practices, but fully and honourably acquitted. There was nothing about him, as there was afterwards about Michelangelo, dark-tempered, secret or morose; he was open and genial with all men. He has indeed praised “the self-sufficing power of solitude” in almost the same phrase as Wordsworth, and from time to time would even in youth seclude himself for a season in complete intellectual absorption, as when he toiled among his bats and wasps and lizards, forgetful of rest and food, and insensible to the noisomeness of their corruption. But we have to picture him as anon coming out and gathering about him a tatterdemalion company, and jesting with them until they were in fits of laughter, for the sake of observing their burlesque physiognomies; anon as eagerly frequenting the society of men of science and learning of an older generation like the mathematician Benedetto Aritmetico, the physician, geographer and astronomer Paolo Toscanelli, the famous Greek Aristotelian Giovanni Argiropoulo; or as out-rivalling all the youth of the city now by charm of recitation, now by skill in music and now by feats of strength and horsemanship; or as stopping to buy caged birds in the market that he might set them free and watch them rejoicing in their flight; or again as standing radiant in his rose-coloured cloak and his rich gold hair among the throng of young and old on the piazza, and holding them spellbound while he expatiated on the great projects in art and mechanics that were teeming in his mind. Unluckily it is to written records and to imagination that we have to trust exclusively for our picture. No portrait of Leonardo as he appeared during this period of his life has come down to us.

But his far-reaching schemes and studies brought him no immediate gain, and diverted him from the tasks by which he should have supported himself. For all his shining power and promise he remained poor. Probably also his exclusive belief in experimental methods, and slight regard for mere authority whether in science or art made the intellectual atmosphere of the Medicean circle, with its passionate mixed cult of the classic past and of a Christianity mystically blended and reconciled with Platonism, uncongenial to him. At any rate he was ready to leave Florence when the chance was offered him of fixed service at the court of Ludovico Sforza (il Moro) at Milan. Soon after that prince had firmly established his power as nominal guardian and protector of his nephew Gian Galeazzo but really as usurping ruler of the state, he revived a project previously mooted for the erection of an equestrian monument in honour of the founder of his house’s greatness, Francesco Sforza, and consulted Lorenzo dei Medici on the choice of an artist. Lorenzo recommended the young Leonardo, who went to Milan accordingly (at some uncertain date in or about 1483), taking as a gift from Lorenzo and a token of his own skill a silver lute of wondrous sweetness fashioned in the likeness of a horse’s head. Hostilities were at the moment imminent between Milan and Venice; it was doubtless on that account that in the letter commending himself to the duke, and setting forth his own capacities, Leonardo rests his title to patronage chiefly on his attainments and inventions in military engineering. After asserting these in detail under nine different heads, he speaks under a tenth of his proficiency as a civil engineer and architect, and adds lastly a brief paragraph with reference to what he can do in painting and sculpture, undertaking in particular to carry out in a fitting manner the monument to Francesco Sforza.

The first definite documentary evidence of Leonardo’s employments at Milan dates from 1487. Some biographers have supposed that the interval, or part of it, between 1483 and that date was occupied by travels in the East. The grounds of the supposition are some drafts occurring among his MSS. of a letter addressed to the diodario or diwâdar of Syria, lieutenant of the sultan of Babylon (Babylon meaning according to a usage of that time Cairo). In these drafts Leonardo describes in the first person, with sketches, a traveller’s strange experiences in Egypt, Cyprus, Constantinople, the Cilician coasts about Mount Taurus and Armenia. He relates the rise and persecution of a prophet and preacher, the catastrophe of a falling mountain and submergence of a great city, followed by a general inundation, and the claim of the prophet to have foretold these disasters; adding physical descriptions of the Euphrates river and the marvellous effects of sunset light on the Taurus range. No contemporary gives the least hint of Leonardo’s having travelled in the East; to the places he mentions he gives their classical and not their current Oriental names; the catastrophes he describes are unattested from any other source; he confuses the Taurus and the Caucasus; some of the phenomena he mentions are repeated from Aristotle and Ptolemy; and there seems little reason to doubt that these passages in his MSS. are merely his drafts of a projected geographical treatise or perhaps romance. He had a passion for geography and travellers’ tales, for descriptions of natural wonders and ruined cities, and was himself a practised fictitious narrator and fabulist, as other passages in his MSS. prove. Neither is the gap in the account of his doings after he first went to the court of Milan really so complete as has been represented. Ludovico was vehemently denounced and attacked during the earlier years of his usurpation, especially by the partisans of his sister-in-law Bona of Savoy, the mother of the rightful duke, young Gian Galeazzo. To repel these attacks he employed the talents of a number of court poets and artists, who in public recitation and pageant, in emblematic picture and banner and device, proclaimed the wisdom and kindness of his guardianship and the wickedness of his assailants. That Leonardo was among the artists thus employed is proved both by notes and projects among his MSS. and by allegoric sketches still extant. Several such sketches are at Christ Church, Oxford: one shows a horned hag or she-fiend urging her hounds to an attack on the state of Milan, and baffled by the Prudence and Justice of Il Moro (all this made clear by easily recognizable emblems). The allusion must almost certainly be to the attempted assassination of Ludovico by agents of the duchess Bona in 1484. Again, it must have been the pestilence decimating Milan in 1484-1485 which gave occasion to the projects submitted by Leonardo to Ludovico for breaking up the city and reconstructing it on improved sanitary principles. To 1485-1486 also appears to belong the inception of his elaborate though unfulfilled architectural plans for beautifying and strengthening the Castello, the great stronghold of the ruling power in the state. Very soon afterwards he must have begun work upon his plans and models, undertaken during an acute phase of the competition which the task had called forth between German and Italian architects, for another momentous enterprise, the completion of Milan cathedral. Extant records of payments made to him in connexion with these architectural plans extend from August 1487 to May 1490: in the upshot none of them was carried out. From the beginning of his residence with Ludovico his combination of unprecedented mechanical ingenuity with apt allegoric invention and courtly charm and eloquence had made him the directing spirit in all court ceremonies and festivities. On the occasion of the marriage of the young duke Gian Galeazzo with Isabella of Aragon in 1487, we find Leonardo devising all the mechanical and spectacular part of a masque of Paradise; and presently afterwards designing a bathing pavilion of unheard-of beauty and ingenuity for the young duchess. Meanwhile he was filling his note-books as busily as ever with the results of his studies in statics and dynamics, in human anatomy, geometry and the phenomena of light and shade. It is probable that from the first he had not forgotten his great task of the Sforza monument, with its attendant researches in equine movement and anatomy, and in the science and art of bronze casting on a great scale. The many existing sketches for the work (of which the chief collection is at Windsor) cannot be distinctly dated. In 1490, the seventh year of his residence at Milan, after some expressions of impatience on the part of his patron, he had all but got his model ready for display on the occasion of the marriage of Ludovico with Beatrice d’Este, but at the last moment was dissatisfied with what he had done and determined to begin all over again.

In the same year, 1490, Leonardo enjoyed some months of uninterrupted mathematical and physical research in the libraries and among the learned men of Pavia, whither he had been called to advise on some architectural difficulties concerning the cathedral. Here also the study of an ancient equestrian monument (the so-called Regisole, destroyed in 1796) gave him fresh ideas for his Francesco Sforza. In January 1491 a double Sforza-Este marriage (Ludovico Sforza himself with Beatrice d’Este, Alfonso d’Este with Anna Sforza the sister of Gian Galeazzo) again called forth his powers as a masque and pageant-master. For the next following years the ever-increasing gaiety and splendour of the Milanese court gave him continual employment in similar kinds, including the composition and recitation of jests, tales, fables and “prophecies” (i.e. moral and social satires and allegories cast in the future tense); among his MSS. occur the drafts of many such, some of them both profound and pungent. Meanwhile he was again at work upon the monument to Francesco Sforza, and this time to practical purpose. When ambassadors from Austria came to Milan towards the close of 1493 to escort the betrothed bride of their emperor Maximilian, Bianca Maria Sforza, away on her nuptial journey, the finished colossal model, 26 ft. high, was at last in its place for all to see in the courtyard of the Castello. Contemporary accounts attest the magnificence of the work and the enthusiasm it excited, but are not precise enough to enable us to judge to which of the two main groups of extant sketches its design corresponded. One of these groups shows the horse and rider in relatively tranquil march, in the manner of the Gattemalata monument put up fifty years before by Donatello at Padua and the Colleoni monument on which Verocchio was now engaged at Venice. Another group of sketches shows the horse galloping or rearing in violent action, in some instances in the act of trampling a fallen enemy. Neither is it possible to discriminate with certainty the sketches intended for the Sforza monument from others which Leonardo may have done in view of another and later commission for an equestrian statue, namely, that in honour of Ludovico’s great enemy, Gian Giacomo Trivulzio.

The year 1494 is a momentous one in the history of Italian politics. In that year the long ousted and secluded prince, Gian Galeazzo, died under circumstances more than suspicious. In that year Ludovico, now duke of Milan in his own right, for the strengthening of his power against Naples, first entered into those intrigues with Charles VIII. of France which later brought upon Italy successive floods of invasion, revolution and calamity. The same year was one of special importance in the prodigiously versatile activities of Leonardo da Vinci. Documents show him, among other things, planning during an absence of several months from the city vast new engineering works for improving the irrigation and water-ways of the Lomellina and adjacent regions of the Lombard plain; ardently studying phenomena of storm and lightning, of river action and of mountain structure; co-operating with his friend, Donato Bramante, the great architect, in fresh designs for the improvement and embellishment of the Castello at Milan; and petitioning the duke to secure him proper payment for a Madonna lately executed with the help of his pupil, Ambrogio de Predis, for the brotherhood of the Conception of St Francis at Milan. (This is almost certainly the fine, slightly altered second version of the “Virgin of the Rocks,” now in the National Gallery, London. The original and earlier version is one of the glories of the Louvre, and shows far more of a Florentine and less of a Milanese character than the London picture.) In the same year, 1494, or early in the next, Leonardo, if Vasari is to be trusted, paid a visit to Florence to take part in deliberations concerning the projected new council-hall to be constructed in the palace of the Signory. Lastly, recent research has proved that it was in 1494 that Leonardo got to work in earnest on what was to prove not only by far his greatest but by far his most expeditiously and steadily executed work in painting. This was the “Last Supper” undertaken for the refectory of the convent church of Sta Maria delle Grazie at Milan on the joint commission (as it would appear) of Ludovico and of the monks themselves.

This picture, the world-famous “Cenacolo” of Leonardo, has been the subject of much erroneous legend and much misdirected experiment. Having through centuries undergone cruel injury, from technical imperfections at the outset, from disastrous atmospheric conditions, from vandalism and neglect, and most of all from unskilled repair, its remains have at last (1904-1908) been treated with a mastery of scientific resource and a tenderness of conscientious skill that have revived for ourselves and for posterity a great part of its power. At the same time its true history has been investigated and re-established. The intensity of intellectual and manual application which Leonardo threw into the work is proved by the fact that he finished it within four years, in spite of all his other avocations and of those prolonged pauses of concentrated imaginative effort and intense self-critical brooding to which we have direct contemporary witness. He painted the picture on the wall in tempera, not, according to the legend which sprung up within twenty years of its completion, in oil. The tempera vehicle, perhaps including new experimental ingredients, did not long hold firmly to its plaster ground, nor that to the wall. Flaking and scaling set in; hard crusts of mildew formed, dissolved and re-formed with changes of weather over both the loosened parts and those that remained firm. Decade after decade these processes went on, a rain of minute scales and grains falling, according to one witness, continually from the surface, till the picture seemed to be perishing altogether. In the 18th century attempts were first made at restoration. They all proceeded on the false assumption, dating from the early years of the 16th century, that the work had been executed in oil. With oil it was accordingly at one time saturated in hopes of reviving the colours. Other experimenters tried various “secrets,” which for the most part meant deleterious glues and varnishes. Fortunately not very much of actual repainting was accomplished except on some parts of the garments. The chief operations were carried on by Bellotti in 1726, by Mazza in 1770, and by Barezzi in 1819 and the following years. None of them arrested, some actually accelerated, the natural agencies of damp and disintegration, decay and mildew. Yet this mere ghost of a picture, this evocation, half vanished as it was, by a great world-genius of a mighty spiritual world-event, remained a thing indescribably impressive. The ghost has now been brought back to much of true life again by the skill of the most scrupulous of all restorers, Cavaliere Cavenaghi, who, acting under the authority of a competent commission, and after long and patient experiment, found it possible to secure to the wall the innumerable blistered, mildewed and half-detached flakes and scales of the original work that yet remained, to clear the surface thus obtained of much of the obliterating accretions due to decay and mishandling, and to bring the whole to unity by touching tenderly in with tempera the spots and spaces actually left bare. A further gain obtained through these operations has been the uncovering, immediately above the main subject, of a beautiful scheme of painted lunettes and vaultings, the lunettes filled by Leonardo’s hand with inscribed scutcheons and interlaced plait or knot ornaments (intrecciamenti), the vaultings with stars on a blue ground. The total result, if adequate steps can be taken to counteract the effects of atmospheric change in future, will remain a splendid gain for posterity and a happy refutation of D’Annunzio’s despairing poem, the Death of a Masterpiece.