Pope Gelasius I

Saint Gelasius I
Papacy began	492
Papacy ended	21 November 496
Predecessor	Felix III
Successor	Anastasius II
Personal details
Birth name	Gelasius
Born	Unknown Roman Africa or Rome[1]
Died	21 November 496(496-11-21) Rome, Ostrogothic Kingdom
Sainthood
Feast day	21 November
Other Popes named Gelasius

Papal styles of Pope Gelasius I
Reference style	His Holiness
Spoken style	Your Holiness
Religious style	Holy Father
Posthumous style	Saint

Pope Saint Gelasius I (died 21 November 496) was pope from 492 until his death in 496. He was the third and last Bishop of Rome of Berber origin^{[citation needed]} in the Catholic Church. Gelasius was a prolific writer whose style placed him on the cusp between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.^[2] Gelasius had been closely employed by his predecessor Felix III, especially in drafting papal documents. His reign was characterized by a call for strict orthodoxy, a more assertive push for papal authority, and increasing tension between the churches in the West and the East.

Struggle with Anastasius I and Acacius

Gelasius' election on 1 March 492 was a gesture for continuity: Gelasius inherited Felix's struggles with Eastern Roman Emperor Anastasius I and the patriarch of Constantinople and exacerbated them by insisting on the removal of the name of the late Acacius, patriarch of Constantinople, from the diptychs, in spite of every ecumenical gesture by the current, otherwise quite orthodox patriarch Euphemius (q.v. for details of the Acacian schism).

The split with the emperor and the patriarch of Constantinople was inevitable, from the western point of view, because they had embraced a view of a single, Divine ("Monophysite") nature of Christ, which was a Christian heresy. Gelasius' book De duabus in Christo naturis ("On the dual nature of Christ") delineated the Western view. Thus Gelasius, for all the conservative Latinity of his writing style, stood on the cusp of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.^[2]

Powers of Church and State

During the Acacian schism, Gelasius affirmed the primacy of Rome over the entire Church, East and West, and he presented this doctrine in terms that set the model for subsequent popes asserting the claims of papal supremacy, due to the succession of the Roman Popes from the Apostle Peter.

In 494, Gelasius wrote a very influential letter, known as Duo sunt, to Anastasius on the topic of Church-State relations, whose political impact was felt for almost a millennium.^[3]

Suppression of pagan rites and heretics

Closer to home, Gelasius finally suppressed the ancient Roman festival of the Lupercalia after a long contest. Gelasius' letter to Andromachus, the senator, covers the main lines of the controversy and incidentally offers some details of this festival combining fertility and purification that might have been lost otherwise. Significantly, this festival of purification, which had given its name— dies februatus, from februare, "to purify"— to the month of February, was replaced with a Christian festival celebrating the purification of the Virgin Mary instead: Candlemas, observed forty days after Christmas, on 2 February.

Death

After a brief but dynamic reign, his death occurred on 21 November 496.

Writings

Gelasius was the most prolific writer of the early Roman bishops. A great mass of correspondence of Gelasius has survived: forty-two letters according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, thirty-seven according to Father Bagan^[4] and fragments of forty-nine others, carefully archived in the Vatican, expounding to Eastern bishops the primacy of the see of Rome. There are extant besides six treatises that carry the name of Gelasius. According to Cassiodorus, the reputation of Gelasius attracted to his name other works not by him.

Decretum Gelasianum

The most famous of pseudo-Gelasian works is the list de libris recipiendis et non recipiendis ("books to be received and not to be received"), the so-called Decretum Gelasianum, which is believed to be connected to the pressures for orthodoxy during his pontificate and intended to be read as a decretal by Gelasius on the canonical and apocryphal books, which internal evidence reveals to be of later date. Thus the fixing of the canon of scripture has traditionally been attributed to Gelasius,^[5] and a non-historical Roman synod of 494 has been invented as the supposed occasion.

The "Gelasian Sacramentary"

In the Catholic tradition, the so-called "Gelasian Sacramentary", actually the Liber sacramentorum Romanae ecclesiae ("Book of Sacraments of the Church of Rome") is a book of liturgy that was actually composed in Merovingian times. An old tradition linked the book to Pope Gelasius, apparently based on Walafrid Strabo's ascription to him of what is evidently this book. Most of its liturgy reflects the mix of Roman and Gallican practice inherited from the Merovingian church.

Notes

References

The main source for the life of Gelasius, aside from Liber Pontificalis, is a vita written by Cassiodorus' pupil Dionysius Exiguus.

• Norman F. Cantor, Civilization of the Middle Ages.
• Catholic Encyclopedia, 1908.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Pope Gelasius I

•  "Pope St. Gelasius I". Catholic Encyclopedia. 1913. 
• Duo sunt: introduction and text in English
• Opera Omnia by Migne Patrologia latina with analytical indexes
• Fontes Latinae de papis usque ad annum 530 (Papa Felix IV)
• Liber pontificalis
• Decretum Gelasianum: De Libris Recipiendis et Non Recipiendis

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