For a general survey of the career of Pope Leo the Great, and for an estimate of his character and of his place in ecclesiastical history, the reader may be re ferred to the article on Leo I. In the Dictionary Of Christian Biography, by the Rev. C. Gore, Principal of Pusey House, Oxford with which may be compared the volume entitled Leo the Great, contributed by the same author to the s.p C. K. Series of The Fathers for English Readers. Something, however, may here be said, by way of introduction to the consideration of S. Leo's posi tion as a preacher and as a controversial theoloe gian, in reference to that commanding personality which Cardinal Newman has aptly characterised by the word majestic. Leo is the first of four Popes who, even if their lot had been cast in secular life, would have made their mark as great men the three others, it need not be said, being the first and seventh Gregories and the third Innocent. It is significant that when, on the vacancy of the Roman see in 440.