These memoirs comprise the life and life-work of the late Sovereign Pontiff of the Catholic Church, Leo XIII, his splendid achievements as a churchman, a statesman, and a scholar. He lived through the greater portion of the nineteenth century, and was well into the twentieth before he died. He left the stamp of his magnificent genius upon the present age in such a pronounced way that it will be known for generations to come as the Leonine Century. At various periods of his Pontificate, especially on the occasions of his jubilee celebrations, biographies have been published in many languages. All the principal events of his youth, his growth into manhood, his studies in preparation for the priesthood, his priestly career, his labors as delegate to Benevento and to Umbria, his nunciature at Brussels, Belgium, his episcopal labors in Perugia, his cardinalate, his successful services in behalf of the Church as its Sovereign Pontiff, and his wonderful work through his Encyclicals, have been told and retold. The writer of this biography has endeavored to condense within these pages a multitude of facts of the Holy Father's eventful career gathered from oral traditions, personal reminiscences, and a knowledge of local environments.