Pope Gelasius I was the bishop of Rome from 1 March 492 to his death on 21 November 496. Gelasius was a prolific author whose style placed him on the cusp between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Some scholars have argued that his predecessor Felix III may have employed him to draft papal documents, although this is not certain.

During his pontificate he called for strict Catholic orthodoxy, more assertively demanded obedience to papal authority, and, consequently, increased the tension between the Western and Eastern Churches. Surprisingly, he also had cordial relations with the Ostrogoths, who were Arians (i.e., had a different view on the nature of Jesus), and therefore perceived as heretics from the perspective of Nicene Christians. J. Conant opined that the latter assertion probably merely denotes that he was born in Roman Africa before the Vandals invaded it.

Acacian schism

The papal election of Gelasius on 1 March 492 was a gesture of continuity: Gelasius inherited the conflicts of Pope Felix III with Eastern Roman Emperor Anastasius and the patriarch of Constantinople and exacerbated them by insisting on the obliteration of the name of the deceased Patriarch Acacius of Constantinople from the diptychs, in spite of every ecumenical gesture offered by the contemporaneous Patriarch Euphemius.

The split with the Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople was inevitable, from the Western view, because they considered the Monophysite view of Jesus Christ having only a Divine nature a heresy. Gelasius authored the book De duabus in Christo naturis (On the dual nature of Christ), which described Catholic doctrine in the matter. Thus Gelasius, for all the conservative Latinity of his style of writing, was on the cusp of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Pope Gregory XVI quoted from it in his letter to the Swiss clergy, Commissum divinitus (17 May 1835), responding to the , which gave some of the Swiss cantons authority over church matters including the sacraments.

Suppression of the Lupercalia

Closer to home, after a long contest Gelasius finally suppressed the ancient Roman festival of the Lupercalia, 6 treatises are extant that bear the name of Gelasius. According to Cassiodorus, the reputation of Gelasius attracted to his name other works not by him. Although his dogmatic letters connected to the Acacian Schism were widely circulated in late antiquity, and have been the focus of much scholarly interest, the majority of Gelasius' letters were in fact concerned with the administration of the church of suburbicarian Italy.

Decretum Gelasianum

The most famous of pseudo-Gelasian works is the list De libris recipiendis et non recipiendis ("On books to be received and not to be received"), also denominated the Decretum Gelasianum, which is believed to be connected to the pressure 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 determination of the canon of Sacred Scripture has traditionally been attributed to Gelasius.

Gelasian Sacramentary

In the Latin Catholic tradition, the pseudo Gelasian Sacramentary is in fact a liturgical book that was derived from Roman sources and transcribed, with inclusion of native Gallican liturgical elements, near Paris in the middle of the 8th century. While including the texts of some prayers that Gelasius composed, he was not a principal author or compiler of the book. The manuscript (Vatican, Vatican Library, Reg. lat. 316 + Paris, National Library, ms. lat. 7193, fol. 41–56) is actually titled the Liber sacramentorum Romanae ecclesiae (Book of Sacraments of the Roman Church).

The attribution to Gelasius is premised in part at least on the chronicle of the Supreme Pontiffs that is denominated the Liber Pontificalis, which states of Gelasius that he "fecit etiam et sacramentorum praefationes et orationes cauto sermone et epistulas fidei delimato sermone multas" ("he also made prefaces to the sacraments and prayers in careful language and many epistles in polished language regarding the faith").

See also

  • List of popes
  • Famuli vestrae pietatis
  • Pope Saint Gelasius I, patron saint archive

References

Literature

The primary source for the biography of Pope Saint Gelasius I, beside the Liber Pontificalis, is a vita written by Cassiodorus' pupil Dionysius Exiguus.

  • Cohen, Samuel (2022). "Gelasius and the Ostrogoths: jurisdiction and religious community in late fifth‐century Italy". Early Medieval Europe. 30 (1): 20–44. doi:10.1111/emed.12519.
  • Norman F. Cantor, Civilization of the Middle Ages.
  • Neil, Bronwen, and Allen, Pauline (eds. and trans.). The letters of Gelasius I (492-496) : pastor and micro-manager of the Church of Rome. Turnhout, Belgium. pp. 8–9.
  • Catholic Encyclopedia, 1908.
  • Rudolf Schieffer, Gelasius I, in Lexikon des Mittelalters, Bd. 4 (1989), Sp. 1197.
  • Ullmann, W., Gelasius I. (492–496): Das Päpsttum an der Wende der Spätantike zum Mittelalter, Stuttgart, 1981.
  • Duo sunt: introduction and text in English
  • Collected Works (Opera Omnia) in Migne's Patrologia Latina
  • Fontes Latinae de papis usque ad annum 530 (Pope Felix IV)
  • Liber Pontificalis
  • Decretum Gelasianum: De Libris Recipiendis et Non Recipiendis