Saint Leander
Archbishop of Seville (534- 596)
Feast- February 27
St. Leander was born around the year 534 at Cartagena, Spain, of Severianus and Theodora, an elite Hispano-Roman family. Some historians claim that his father Severian was either the duke or governor of Cartagena. The family emigrated from Carthagena around 554 and went to Seville. The eminent worth of the children of Severian would seem to indicate that they were reared in distinguished surroundings. The family was staunchly Catholic, enjoying an elite position in the secure surroundings of tolerated Catholic culture in Seville.
Severian had three sons, Leander, Isidore, and Fulgentius and one daughter, Florentina. St. Leander and St. Isidore both became bishops of Seville; St. Fulgentius, Bishop of Carthagena, and St. Florentina, a nun, who directed forty convents and one thousand nuns.
St. Leander entered into a monastery in Seville very young and became a Benedictine monk, where he lived many years and attained to an eminent degree of virtue and sacred learning. These qualities occasioned his being promoted to the see of Seville in 579; but this change of condition made little or no alteration to his way of life, though it brought on him a great increase of solicitude. In the meantime, he founded a celebrated school, which soon became a center of Catholic learning.
Spain at that time was held in possession by the Visigoths. These Goths, being infected with Arianism, established that heresy wherever they came, at the time Saint Leander was made bishop, it had already reigned in Spain a hundred years. The Catholic hierarchy were in collusion with the representatives of the Byzantine emperor, who had maintained a considerable territory in the far south of Spain ever since his predecessor had been invited to the peninsula by the former Visigoth king. Since the Visigoth nobles and the king were Arians, Catholic Christianity was in danger politically as well as physically. Nonetheless, by his prayers to God and his most zealous and unwearied endeavors, Leander became the happy instrument of conversion for Spain to the Catholic faith.
As Bishop he had access to the Catholic Merovingian princess Ingunthis, who had come as a bride for the kingdom’s heir, and he worked tirelessly with her to convert her husband St. Hermenegild, the eldest son of King Leovigild, an act of court intrigue that cannot honestly be divorced from a political context. Leander defended the new convert even when he went to war with his father “against his father’s cruel reprisals,” the Catholic Encyclopedia puts it. “In endeavoring to save his country from Arianism, St. Leander showed himself an Orthodox Christian and a far-sighted patriot.” And for this he was banished by King Leovigild. The pious Catholic prince, now known as Saint Hermenegild, a martyr, was put to death in prison in 585 by his unnatural father in the following year, for refusing to receive Communion from the hands of an Arian bishop.
Exiled by Leovigild, St. Leander drew to Byzantium from 579 to 582. Wrath and exile to Constantinople, where St. Leander met and became close friends of the Papal Legate, the future Pope Gregory the Great. It was Leander who suggested that Gregory write the famous commentary on the Book of Job called the Moralia.
When Leovigild fell sick and found himself past hopes of recovery, he sent for Saint Leander, and recommended to him his other son Recared. This son, by listening to Saint Leander, became a Catholic, and finally brought the whole nation of the Visigoths to the faith. The new king Recared also brought the Suevi back to Catholic unity.
Once back home, in this decisive hour for the future of Spain, Leander did most to ensure the religious unity, the fervent faith, and the broad culture on which its later greatness was based. He had a share in the conversion of King Reccared, and never ceased to exercise over him a deep and beneficial influence. Under King Reccared, St. Leander began his life work of propagating Christian orthodoxy against the Arians in Spain. Saint Leander was no less zealous in the reformation of morals than in restoring the purity of faith, and planted the seeds of zeal and fervor which produced martyrs and Saints. He received from Saint Gregory the Great a painting of the Mother of God by the hand of Saint Luke, Evangelist, since known as Our Lady of Guadelupe (of Spain). It is he who, as a refutation of Arianism, added to the liturgy of Spain the recitation of the Nicene Creed during Mass, and this practice spread to Rome and subsequently the entire Church. The next time you recite the Nicene Creed at Mass, think of St. Leander. For it was St. Leander of Seville who, as bishop, introduced this practice in the sixth century. He saw it as a way to help reinforce the faith of his people and as an antidote against the heresy of Arianism, which denied the divinity of Christ.
The third local Council of Toledo (over which he presided in 589) decreed the consubstantiality of the three Persons of the Trinity and brought about moral reforms. St. Leander’s unerring wisdom and unyielding dedication brought the Visigoths and the Suevi back to the true Faith and obtained the gratitude of Gregory the Great. On his return from this council, St Leander convened an important synod in his metropolitan city of Seville, and afterwards never ceased his efforts to consolidate the work, in which his brother and successor St. Isidore was to follow him.
Worn out by his many activities in the cause of Christ. This holy doctor of Spain died about the year 596, on the 27th of February.
St. Isidore wrote of his brother Leander: “This man of suave eloquence and eminent talent shone as brightly by his virtues as by his doctrine. By his faith and zeal, the Gothic people have been converted from Arianism to the Catholic faith.”
*On leap years, the feast day of this Saint is celebrated on February 28.
[1] “Saint Leander, Archbishop of Seville.” [Online]. Available: http://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_leander.html. [Accessed: 16-Feb-2018].
[2] “Saint Leander of Seville – Franciscan Media.” [Online]. Available: https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-leander-of-seville/. [Accessed: 16-Feb-2018].
[3] “CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: St. Leander of Seville.” [Online]. Available: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09102a.htm. [Accessed: 16-Feb-2018].
[4] “St. Leander of Seville – Saints & Angels,” Catholic Online. [Online]. Available: http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=706. [Accessed: 16-Feb-2018].
[5] “Catholic Exchange,” Catholic Exchange. [Online]. Available: https://catholicexchange.com/. [Accessed: 16-Feb-2018].
[6] “Leander of Seville,” Wikipedia. 30-Jan-2018.