[Pope St. Leo the Great (440-461) is generally recognised as the principal Doctor of the mystery of the Incarnation in the Western Church. All know the part he played, through his legates and writings, in the Council of Chalcedon (451). Ho is also the most ancient of the great Latin Preachers, whose sermons on Church festivals are still extant. To this day, in the lessons of the second nocturn at Matins, the Roman breviary makes use of Leo’s eloquence to interpret the meaning and spirit of the various liturgical solemnities, for example, at Christmas and on the feast of the Epiphany.

St. Leo is certainly at his best when commenting on the dogmatic fact of the twofold nature, divine and human, in the one Person of Christ, which sums up the mystery of the Incarnation. True to the Western trend of theological exposition, he does not stop to weave subtle theories into the fabric of dogmatic beliof : he simply enumerates truths, but these he follows up with a wonderful wealth of practical conclusions for the everyday life of the faithful. Besides his classic work—the Tomos on the Incarnation which he sent to the Fathers of Chalcedon—St. Leo has left ten sermons which he preached in Rome on the feast of Christmas (see Migne, P. L., t. 54, col. 190-254). Each ranks as both a theological and an oratorical masterpiece.

The Christian political consciousness has been deeply stirred by the revolutionary events of our time and many to-day feel the need for its revival. Christians widely recognise in this country that they have to fulfil a necessary function in the political order, and this no matter whether the duty is based on the dogma of the sinfulness of man and his necessary imperfection or on the doctrine of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, according to which man as ‘Zoon politikon’ is essentially interwoven by his nature with Politics. Christians are more or less inclined to accept to-day the fundamental thesis that Politics has its own natural right to exist and its own basis and independent sphere within the framework of the natural aims of a community.

This insight has in itself weighty implications, from the political-sociological point of view. For if Politics exists in its own right it cannot be considered a sham or an ideological cloak for the nonpolitical forces of society. This does not mean that economics, or religion, or legal or racial motives, which play so great a part in society, cannot enter the sphere of Politics. On the contrary, they do so to a large extent. But the point is that by entering the political sphere an economic, religious, legal or racial question, from the very fact of its being regarded politically, changes its essential peculiarity. Its former nature remains no longer the same. Aristotle would call this change a ‘metabasis eis genos.’ The question acquires a distinctively political character.

In the space of a single article a survey of Don Sturzo’s world of ideas can be merely indicative, a throwing into relief of certain fundamental conceptions which give his thought so particular an originality and potency. Even so, selection is not easy; his mind embraces so many planes. Behind the political thinker is the sociologist, seeking the constant laws of human relationships; behind the sociologist is the metaphysician, the theologian, whose contribution to the shaping of Catholic thought is gaining increasing recognition; behind the theologian the mystic, for whom all human fellowship receives its true meaning in the fellowship of man with God, and Christianity is seen as a cosmic fact, irradiating the whole of human existence, throughout history and throughout the world. Such higher reaches, however, were best left to more competent pens than mine. I propose here to deal mainly with certain aspects of his sociology where it converges on political philosophy, the philosophy that at once inspired his active life and drew from it confirmation and vital elements.

Did space allow, it would be illuminating to illustrate this marriage of thought and action : how, as a young priest, intending to devote himself to university teaching and music, he was swept into active public life under the inspiration of Rerum Novarum, on the crest of the Christian Democratic movement of the nineties, to become the organiser of trade unions and peasant co-operatives, a leader in municipal activities and reforms, then founder of national institutions, and finally, in 1919, the founder and leader of a great political party in which his ideals found practical embodiment.

It were well that at the outset we should define the sense in which we understand the word Politics. No word has been more cruelly abused, with the result that its true sense has been disastrously obscured to the grave detriment of the people and of their rulers.

Perhaps our minds fly off at a tangent to the Tapers, Tadpoles, Rigbys and the like, so relentlessly and yet so faithfully portrayed in Coningsby by Disraeli; or to some Political Society the sole purpose of which appears to be to provide a licensed cockpit for the envenomed recrimination of rival partizans. We need to disillusion ourselves; this sort of thing is not true Politics; like all false notions it is more dangerous than ignorance.

In the days when Politics came into being the politike episteme was the Science of Citizenship and the politike techne was the Art of Citizenship, that is to say, the theory and the practice of a member of a polis, whether ruled or ruler (cf. Plato, Gorg. 521 D). The duty concerned was primarily social as distinct from individual; not that the individual was dispensed from all responsibility, but that his responsibility as a citizen was determined by his membership of the polls (cf. Plato, Gorg, loc. cit., Apol. 31 D; Arist. Eth. Nic. VI, viii. 2). All this worked, as it were, within a microcosm. Outside the Greek world there were no cities, only the barbaros ge, a variegated waste the contagion of which threatened— especially from the direction of Asia—the purity of Hellenic art and culture and the honest simplicity of Hellenic thought. Nor were the Greek cities, according perhaps to the highest political ideal, encouraged to mutual intercourse—on the contrary the aim of each city was to be aularkes, self-sufficient, to legislate for itself and to live to itself (cf. Arist. Eth. Nic. I, vii, 5).

It would be too much to claim that legislators would find in the monastic codes and histories of the early centuries adequate guidance for their post-war planning. Yet no student of early monachism can fail to admire the practical economic value of much of the history and teaching which make his sources.

The Egyptian monks, both hermits and cenobites, though often supported by alms, probably came as near as the monks of any time or place to adequately self-supporting manual labour. When Palladius visited Nitria, he found that no one was allowed to be idle (not even a guest, as perhaps he learnt from personal experience), and no one was in need. Yet the monks’ liturgical duties were held in high esteem, and those who were qualified had opportunity for intellectual culture. Self-support was not direct, for Nitria throve upon the weaving industry.

The same author describes in much greater detail an inspection which he made of the working departments in one of the Pachomian monasteries. After enumerating smiths, carpenters, camel-drivers and fullers, he says that every craft was practised, so that the monks supported both themselves and the convents of nuns. They kept pigs—but the portions of pork granted to sick and aged monks scandalized later generations and the passage disappeared from many MSS. of the history. In a final list of monastic crafts, agriculture and husbandry hold the first place.