LEO (Alessandro de' Medici) was elected pope on the 1st of April ,605, at the age of seventy. He had long been archbishop of Florence and nuncio to Tuscany; and was entirely pro-French in his sympathies. He died on the 27th day of his pontificate, and was succeeded by Paul V.
See the contemporary life by Vitorelli, continuator of Ciaconius, Vitae et res gestae summorum Pontiff. Rom.; Ranke, Popes (Eng. trans., Austin), ii. 330; v. Reumont, Gesch. der Stadt Rom. iii. 2, 604; Brosch, Gesch. des Kirchenstaates (1880), i. 350.