LEO IX, Pope, Saint. - Bruno, bishop of Toul, b. June 21, 1002 in Egisheim, of the family of the counts of Dagsburg in Alsace, d. April 19, 1054 in Rome. Educated in the Cluniac monastery of St-Evre near Toul, he entered the imperial court. In 1026 he was elected bishop of Toul and consecrated on Sept. 9, 1027. He worked hard for the spread of the Cluniac monastic reform, and in particular for the three monasteries of his diocese, namely St-Evre, St. Mansuetus and St. Idulf of Moyenmoutier in the Vosges (cf. R. Bloch, Die Klosterpolitik Leos IX. in Deutschland, Burgund und Italien, in Archiv für Urlaubsforschung, 11 [1930], especially pp. 190-94).
As a prince of the Empire, he was most loyal to the emperor Conrad II and to his son Henry III, whose cousin he was. Henry III designated him pope at the Diet of Worms in Dec. 1048, but Bruno accepted the tiara only on condition that the Roman clergy and people should canonically choose him. After putting on the pilgrim's garb and not the pontifical
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insignia, he began the journey to Rome (according to Vibert, Vita di Leone IX). Bruno of Segni narrates the meeting of Bruno of Toul with the monk Hildebrand, later Gregory VII, near Besançon. In Rome he was elected unanimously by the clergy and the people and crowned in the Lateran on Feb. 12, 1049. Shortly afterwards he energetically began the reform of the clergy and of the Church in a Lateran synod.
L. called excellent collaborators from outside, such as Hildebrand, Humbert of Silva Candida, Hugh of Remiremont, Frederick of Lorraine (later Stephen IX) and others, to the Roman Curia. The Pope himself made numerous journeys through Italy, France and Germany, where at the Synods of Pavia, Reims and Mainz he issued ordinances against simony, lay investiture and clerical marriage. At the Synod of Vercelli (1050) he condemned Berengar of Tours for his erroneous theories on the Eucharist. He also went to Toul and to Germany, where he met with the emperor Henry III. Having returned to Italy, he found the Normans threatening southern Italy. L. himself marched against them, but the papal army was defeated on June 18, 1053 near Civitate and the Pope taken prisoner. He returned to Rome on March 12, 1054, mortally ill. Under L. the schism between the Eastern and Western Church, long in preparation, was definitively realized; the Pope no longer sees, from Constantinople, the legates who had excommunicated the patriarch Michael Cerularius.
L. was the best German pope of the Middle Ages. His pontificate, which manifested a harmonious cooperation between the priesthood and the Empire, represents the beginning of the medieval ecclesiastical reform. Shortly after his death he was venerated as a saint. Feast on April 19.