Pope Gelasius I
Pope|English name=Gelasius I|image=
|birth_name=Gelasius|term_start=
492|term_end=
November 19,
496|predecessor=
Felix III|successor=
Anastasius II|birth_date=???|birthplace=
Rome,
Italy|dead=dead|death_date=
November 19,
496|deathplace=
Rome,
Italy|other=Gelasius}}
Pope Gelasius I was
Pope (
492 â€"
496). He is known as the third
pope of African origin (more exactly from
Kabylie) in
Catholic history. Gelasius had been closely employed by his predecessor Felix, especially in drafting papal documents, and his 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.
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 [
1]. 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.
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, the February Lupercalia was replaced with a festival celebrating the purification and fertility of the
Virgin Mary instead.
Gelasius smoked out the closeted
Manichaeans, the heretical dualists who considered themselves Christians and certainly passed for such and were present in Rome in large numbers, it was suspected. 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 normal method of receiving communion under the form of bread alone returned into vogue.
After a brief but dynamic reign, his death occurred on
November 19, 496; (his interment occurred on
November 21).
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. [
2] 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.
Gelasius was the most prolific writer of the early popes. A great mass of correspondence of Gelasius has survived, forty-two letters 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. The reputation of Gelasius attracted to his name other works not by him.
Main article: Decretum Gelasianum
.The most famous of pseudo-Gelasian works is the 5th-century list
de libris recipiendis et non recipiendis ("books to be received and not to be received"), the so-called
Decretum Gelasianum, connected to the pressures for orthodoxy during the pontificate of Gelasius and intended 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 [
3] and a non-historical Roman synod of
494 has been invented as the supposed occasion.
References
Catholic Encyclopedia, 1908.
*Norman F. Cantor,
Civilization of the Middle Ages.*
Duo sunt: introduction and text in English
