Through the subtle speculations of Greek thought he had felt the entangling embrace of a parasite, eating out the life of Christianity, and had kept and unfolded for the Church the great primitive faith in the Divine and human Christ. Around him was a broken, bewildered Christendom; on the shores of Africa, a Church with magnificent traditions of martyrs and fathers, Perpetua, Felicitas, Cyprian, Augustine, long torn to pieces by schisms, now lying helpless under the tyranny of the Arian Vandals, ready to become the prey of the Moslem invasion so soon to come and crush both Catholic and Arian under one weight of death. In the East, heresies innumerable, originating in the subtle thinkers of Alexandria and Antioch, fought out by the fierce monks of the desert; Syria, Greece, Egypt, Carthage biting and devouring one another until the common enemy came and destroyed them all. Spain was in the hands of Arians; Gaul torn between contending races and beliefs; Britain had relapsed into heathenism. The one thing needful at the moment seemed to be _Unity_, and for this unity Leo sacrificed, strove, and toiled. And his own soul being a city at unity within itself, with primitive simplicity of character, Roman strength of will, Christian singleness of heart, this unity he succeeded in preserving through that distracted age. But always with him unity was a means and not an end, the essential condition of life, valued for the sake of the life it guarded; and always he worked with the sense that he, a mortal man, was working under an Immortal King for an immortal kingdom; always with the sense that he, “the successor of Peter,” could do nothing but by standing on the rock of Peter’s confession, always translating the old Roman order and law, the old simple apostolic confession of Christ, into the languages of the new world. So the great Bishop battled on, until at last, six years after he had saved the city for the second time by his mediation with the Vandals, the faithful voice was silenced on earth for ever. It was in the corridor of the villa on the Sabine hills that Marius brought home the news of the death of Leo. He had just gained one more victory for the faith, over the subtle heresies of the East. “The glory of the day is everywhere arisen,” he wrote, “the Divine Mystery, the Incarnation, is restored to the age. It is the world’s second Festival since the Advent of the Lord.” The battle for him was over. The great commander could say at last his “Nunc Dimittis,” “Let me depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.” And he had been “liberated in peace.” “No more shall we hear his clear strong words of hope and love,” Marius said. “No more in any new peril that may come on her will Rome have Leo to save her by throwing himself into the chasm.” A hush of awe and tender gratitude fell on them all. Fabricius said— “The last of the great Romans has departed.” And Damaris— “The latest of the great saints has entered into life.”