Saint Gelasius I

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

Pope Gelasius I was the third pope of African origin (more exactly from Kabylie) in Catholic history. Gelasius had been closely employed by his predecessor, Felix III, especially in drafting papal documents.

Struggle with the Anastasius I and Acacius

Gelasius' election, March 1, 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 the papal party viewed as 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.^[1]

Powers of Church and State

During the Acacian schism, Gelasius went further than his predecessors in asserting 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.

In 494, Gelasius wrote a very influential letter, known from its incipit as Duo sunt, to Anastasius^[2]. This letter established the dualistic principle that would underlie all Western European political thought for almost a millennium. In the letter Gelasius expressed a distinction between "two powers", which he called the "holy authority of bishops" (auctoritas sacrata pontificum) and the "royal power" (regalis potestas). These two powers, auctoritas lending justification to potestas, and potestas providing the executive strength for auctoritas were, he said, to be considered independent in their own spheres of operation, yet expected to work together in harmony.

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.

Gelasius smoked out the closeted Manichaeans, the heretical dualists who considered themselves Christians and certainly passed for such and were suspected to be present in Rome in large numbers. Gelasius decreed that the Eucharist had to be received "under both kinds", with wine as well as bread. As the Manichaeans held wine to be impure and essentially sinful, they would refuse the chalice and thus be recognized. Later, with the Manichaeans suppressed, the old method of receiving communion under one kind - the bread - was restored.

Death

After a brief but dynamic reign, his death occurred on November 19, 496; his interment occurred on November 21.

Gelasius natione Afer

Some have asserted that Gelasius was a black African by descent, because the Liber Pontificalis plainly states that he was natione Afer ('African by birthright'). Gelasius' own statement in a letter that he is Romanus natus (Roman-born) is certainly not inconsistent.^[3] However, his being of African heritage does not prove that he was a black African, as at the time most natives of that continent's Mediterranean shores were not black. No visual representation of Gelasius, or description of his skin color, survives to settle the issue.

Writings

Gelasius was the most prolific writer of the early popes. 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, ceaselessly 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, supposed to be connected to the pressures for orthodoxy during the pontificate of Gelasius 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"

Main article: 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 acually 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.

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

External links

• Duo sunt: introduction and text in English

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