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LEO
school. Lentini and its citadel were almost entirely
destroyed by an earthquake in 1693. Population (1881),
12,740; (1899), 11,000. About one mile to the south-east
and higher up lies the town of Carlentini, founded by
Charles V., but greatly injured by the earthquake of 1693.
Population (1881), 6530; (1897), 5500.
Leo XIIL [Vincent JoachimEaphael Lewis Pecci]
(1810 ), Pope, reckoned the 257th successor of St
Peter, was born at Carpineto, 2nd March 1810. His
family was Sienese in origin, and his father had served
in the army of Napoleon. His earliest education he re¬
ceived from the Jesuits at Viterbo and in Rome. In the
jubilee year 1825 he was selected by his fellow-students
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,” a college in which clergy
of aristocratic birth are trained for the diplomatic service
of the Roman Church. Two years later Gregory XVI. ap¬
pointed him a domestic prelate, and bestowed on him, by
way of apprenticeship, various minor administrative offices
in the pontifical State. He was ordained priest 31st
December 1837, and a few weeks later was made governor
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 governor 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 gained the esteem of
Leopold I. and was presented to Queen Victoria of Eng¬
land and the Prince Consort. He also made the acquaint¬
ance 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; but before returning to Italy he spent the month of
February in London (where he was present at one of
Lord Palmerston’s receptions), and the months of 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
m 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 compara¬
tive 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. ap¬
pointed to it Cardinal Pecci, who thus returned to reside
iu Rome, with the prospect of having shortly responsible I
XIII. 195
functions to perform during the vacancy of the Holy See,
though the Camerlengo was traditionally regarded as dis¬
qualified 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 wras 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 unevent¬
ful 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 specula¬
tions 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 Hergenrbther, 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 pub¬
lication of documents. A man of literary taste and
culture, familiar with the classics, a facile writer of Latin
verses 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 their curriculum. The
numerous encyclicals by which the pontificate of Leo XIII.