Letter XIV, or Tractatus, of Pope Gelasius. In Which He Sets Forth Examples From the Letters of Pope Simplicius and Pope Felix [Showing] That They Had Long Since Recognized — or Had Been Seen to Judge — the Impiety of Timothy Aelurus and Peter of Alexandria. Afterward He Continues in His Own Words, Instructing What Should Be Answered Against the Greeks.
Chapter I: From the Letter of Pope Simplicius to Acacius (Letter XVII): Petrus Mongus, a Long-Standing Heretic, Cannot Be Promoted Without Satisfactio
This, [Simplicius] says, causes Us no small astonishment: that by those very letters of yours, Peter — who is shown to have been long since the associate and prince of heretics, as We remember not to be hidden from your beloved person’s knowledge, and the very instructions by which he was confuted We are confident you know, and concerning whom there is no doubt that he still endures outside Catholic communion, as it is certain We have often written that he ought to be expelled from that city — that this same man, your beloved person reckons should be advanced to the rule of the foresaid Church; and that he is to be received as agreeing to the promised definitions of the right faith — though, as We said above, he abides as estranged from that fellowship, just as he is severed from its communion. To which if he now contends to return, he cannot enter except through that satisfactio which befits the Christian rules; and accordingly, not to ascend to the height of sacerdotal dignity, but to be fitted, as is consequent, to the medicine which after repentance is to be granted: desiring, when reconciled, the help of his own soul, not aspiring to the rank of supreme honor — he who is for so long convicted of having been perverse — lest under the appearance of one returning, he seek not the remedy of sincere salvation but find a faculty of propagating depravity. By such a course we do not so much draw him from error as inflict ruin upon the faithful: in this way, violating the statutes of the Synod of Chalcedon, we open to ravening wolves an entrance into the Church through cruel coupling. Indeed, by the very same men with whom he was once divided from Catholic participation, he is said to be requested as bishop: so that it appears sufficiently evident that they do not desire the right faith, but seek in their own presider the power of nefarious doctrine; nor between themselves and those who think rightly can faithful peace thence be born, where the deadly damnation of heretical minds grows, and the wretched captivity of Catholics.
Chapter II: From the Letter of Pope Felix III to Emperor Zeno (Letter II): Petrus Mongus, a Thirty-Year Deserter and Adversary, Must Be Driven Out
You see, then, [Felix] says, by what is now consequent without doubt, that the ravager of the Alexandrian Church, who has long been raging in deadly impunity, is nonetheless to be condemned by your imperial precepts, by which he is rightly long since proved to have been ejected. Is he not the very man who through thirty years has been a deserter of the Catholic Church, and a propagator and teacher of her enemies, and ever swift and ready to shed blood? Are we now to receive even this dissimulation by some kind of connivance? In which truly there is no need for subtle discussion, since his crimes are open.
Chapter III: Many More Such Witnesses Could Be Adduced — Now Let Us Hear Acacius Himself
Many similar things in their various letters the diligent reader, if he should seek, will find. I now pass over the writings and admonitions of Pope Simplicius, which many esteem as worthless and judge to be despised. Let us consider more attentively what Acacius himself, then perhaps still of sound mind, judged concerning that same Peter, and what sentence he pronounced concerning him to the Apostolic See.
Chapter IV: Acacius’s Own Letter to Simplicius — The Death of Timothy Aelurus, the Failed Coup of Petrus Mongus, the Restoration of Timothy Salofaciolus
To the Holy Lord and Most Blessed Father, the Archbishop Simplicius — Acacius.
“Carrying about with us, as the Apostle [says] (2 Cor. 11:28), the solicitude for all the Churches, you ceaselessly exhort us, although we are watching willingly and running ahead. But you display divine zeal in your accustomed way, more carefully inquiring after the state of the Alexandrian Church, that you may take up the labor for the paternal canons, sweating in pious devotion for these things, as has always been approved. But Christ our God, who works together for good to those who love Him (Rom. 8:28), residing in our thoughts, and recognizing one mind in us in these matters and the same for His glory, has perfected every victory; making us partners with the most tranquil prince. He has indeed taken from human life Timothy [Aelurus], my predecessor breathing forth storms and disturbing — as it appeared — ecclesiastical tranquillity, saying to him: ‘Be silent and be still’ (Mark 4:39).
“He has scattered Peter [Mongus] also, who similarly had risen up by storms from Alexandria, and has turned him into eternal flight, the Holy Spirit blowing — one of those very men who had been condemned long ago and beforehand. As it has been found in our archives, and from your archives, if you should deign to inquire, you may know what at the time has subsequently transpired concerning that same man, brought from Rome to the Alexandrian bishop and back. This Peter, being a son of night, and showing himself a stranger to the works of the bright day, finding the darkness wholly suited for carrying out brigandage as the cooperator of those men, in the middle of the night — with the body still lying unburied of him who had subverted the paternal canons — crept onto the see, as he himself reckoned, with one and only one [accomplice] present, and that one a partner sharing in his madness: so that for this he was subjected to greater punishments; nor was that which he hoped for accomplished. But he, judging of himself in the smallest part — appeared nowhere at all afterward.
“Timothy [Salofaciolus, also called Albus], on the other hand, the guardian of the paternal canons, who is given for an example of Davidic gentleness, and patient until the end, and restored by Christ to his proper authority, rejoices in the honor of his proper see; and receiving the voices of his spiritual children, awaits the grace of his cure, with honor multiplied upon him by Christ the Prince of priests.”
Chapter V: Acacius’s Words, Like Caiaphas’s Prophecy, Convict Their Speaker
Behold the most powerful testimony of Acacius — what he thought of Timothy [Aelurus], what he thought of [Petrus Mongus]. Truly, just as it is written in the Gospel concerning Caiaphas the high priest, so it has befallen Acacius. For of him it is said that, when he was prince of the priests of that year, he said concerning the Lord’s passion: It is expedient that one man should die for the people, that the whole nation perish not (John 11:50). And the blessed evangelist John adds, saying: This he did not say of himself; but, being prince of the priests of that year, he prophesied. So also this man, since he was placed in the dignity of the highest priesthood — whether unwilling or against his will, for his variability and inconstancy make us uncertain — pronounced a most true sentence concerning the enemies of God. Which sentence, if he had wished to keep, he would not have called back into the Church the storm which he had truly driven out from her; nor concerning him whom he had said: Be silent and be still, would he have permitted the person of [Petrus Mongus] to speak again in the Church. The same storm which he had foretold to have been scattered by the Holy Spirit, and whom he had affirmed to be a son of night, and whom he was reporting to be estranged from the work of light, loving the darkness fitting for the works of robbers — he who had imposed upon himself by deceitful arts the false name of priesthood, from him who, as [Acacius] himself says, had subverted the paternal canons.
Chapter VI: Petrus Mongus, So Described, Was Then Reported to Rome by the Catholic Patriarch Timothy Salofaciolus
This Peter, concerning whom Timothy of blessed memory the Catholic — as [Acacius] himself called him, the guardian of the paternal canons, sometime bishop of the Church of Alexandria — referred many things worse than what is set out above to the Apostolic See, asserting specifically and affirming him to have been an enemy of the faith, an enemy of the Synod of Chalcedon through every effort of his unfortunate career.
What, then, are we to do? Are we not to believe so many and such great priests of so many sees, who all with one mouth, with one consent, declared Peter to be a public and deadly beast of human salvation — into whose communion, in disastrous conjunction, persuaded by a demonic spirit, Acacius unhappily allied himself, evilly building up again what he had well destroyed? Nor is there need to say more from this point, since for those fearing God and dreading the day of judgment and loving the unity of the Church, the cause is sufficiently and manifestly clear. For this is the only ground that divides unity and dissipates concord: that as long as the names of transgressors are not removed from the Church, they in no way permit the bond of peace to be restored.
Chapter VII: If Eutychians, Why Not Arians? The Double Standard Lays Bare the True Aim
For if it is permitted that the names of the followers and communicators of Eutyches — as Peter was [Eutyches’s] follower, and Acacius [Petrus Mongus’s] communicator — be reckoned within the Church, why should not the followers and communicators of Arius, or of any other heretics, be permitted by the same lot? Or is Eutyches considered to have been of less impiety and perfidy than Arius? No one of sound mind would dare to say this. If, therefore, the impiety is equal, let the detestation also be equal of both: lest, if such license were once admitted, all things should thereafter be permitted to all, and there should arise (which God forbid) so promiscuous a confusion and mixture of things, that there be no certain discrimination between clean and unclean — according to the prophet (Ezek. 22:26). It is not the work of our humility to bear sentence concerning the dissension of the whole world; but it is ours to be solicitous concerning our own salvation, since each one of us is to render account of himself before that tribunal of the eternal Judge and King (2 Cor. 5:10), where we must render account for our deeds, even for an idle word and the smallest farthing (Matt. 5; Matt. 12). Whence we wish to bear such and so great straits as the enemy may bring upon us in the present age, only that we incur not the causes of eternal death.
Chapter VIII: Even Granting Petrus’s Repentance — Which is Denied — His Restoration Without the First See’s Assent Was Unlawful
But it is said of Peter — though it be said without warrant, especially of a man so most pertinacious, who through thirty years was a famous attacker of the truth — that he was received into the Church by sincere penance: whence the peaceful would mourn, and the faithful and humble would weep. For if he had kept measure with tempered power, neither would the Church today sigh that the heretic Peter, absolved by no regular order, was assumed into her society for his audacious temerity; nor would the children of peace suffer such losses of charity — which is the perfection of all virtues, and without which, according to the Apostle, all that we do is vain (1 Cor. 13) — nor, biting one another, would they be consumed by one another. But in whatever manner Peter is said to have been received, it nevertheless appears that he was a heretic, who is defended as having repented for perversity; and that he was depraved and unfaithful, and ejected from the Church by ecclesiastical right, cannot be doubted or questioned. But let us grant for a little that he repented (which is in no way true): it must therefore be seen how — that is, whether he who was cut off and uprooted by competent order and regular severity has been received again rightly and consequently as a penitent. But it will never be taught, never demonstrated, never at all proved that his purgation was lawful, since it was not celebrated according to the competent rules.
For no one could or should have either expelled or recalled the holder of the Second See without the assent of the First See. Unless perhaps, the order of things now being confused and disturbed, neither First, nor Second, nor Third See ought to be observed, or to be received according to the ancient statutes of the elders; and, with the head removed (as we see), all the members are at variance with one another in conflict; and there comes about that which was written concerning the people of Israel: In that time, there was no leader in Israel: each one did what was pleasing in his own eyes (Judg. 21:25).
Chapter IX: The First See of the Most Blessed Peter — Through Which the Dignity of All Bishops Has Always Been Strengthened
By what reason or consequence is anything to be defended for the other sees, if to the First See of the most blessed Peter the ancient and longstanding reverence is not paid — through which the dignity of all priests has always been strengthened and confirmed, and by the unconquered and singular judgment of the three hundred and eighteen Fathers the most ancient honor was upheld? As they recalled the Lord’s sentence: You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And to you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever you bind or loose on earth, shall be bound or loosed in heaven (Matt. 16:18–19). And again to the same: Behold, I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not; and you, when you have once converted, confirm your brethren (Luke 22:32); and that: If you love Me, feed My sheep (John 21:17).
Why, then, was the Lord’s word so frequently directed to Peter? Were the rest of the holy and blessed apostles not endowed with like virtue? Who would dare to affirm this? But — that with the head established, the occasion of schism might be removed — and the one frame of the body of Christ might be shown, which by the most glorious fellowship of charity should run together to one head; and there should be one Church, in which faith might be placed — even unto the house of one Lord and one Redeemer, in which we should be nourished by one bread and one cup (1 Cor. 10).
Chapter X: This Is Why Our Forefathers Sent Their Causes to Rome — Seeking the Solidity of the See That Peter Held
For which reason, as I have said, our elders, those revered teachers of the Churches and those most illustrious lights of the Christian people — whose merits of their virtues lifted them up to the most glorious palms of confession and the shining crowns of martyrdom — sent the principles of their priesthood, the beginnings derived from it, filled with the charity of Christ, to that See where Peter the prince of the apostles had sat: seeking thence the most weighty supports of the firmness of their solidity. So that, by this appearance, it might appear to all that the Church of Christ is truly one through all things, and indissoluble, which — composed of the bond of concord and the wonderful texture of charity — should be shown alone and undivided through every part as the tunic of Christ, which not even those very soldiers who crucified the Lord dared to divide (John 19:23–24).
If all this is violated and torn apart on account of the perfidy of [Petrus Mongus], the tyrannical pride of Acacius, and his impious presumption — see, and weigh wisely, into how grave a peril our conscience is brought, while so great an observance of the elders is dissolved. For who would not do whatever pleased him, if once a corrupted order should pass into custom? But if it is sacrilegious even to think such things, why is the form of the elders not held with the most diligent observance, since in this tenor of observance there is the evident and great mystery of ineffable and undoubted unity?
Chapter XI: Are There Two Churches? Two Pastors? God Forbid
Are there two Churches and two pastors? God forbid. For there is one who has made both [things] one (Eph. 2:14), removing the wall of enmities in His own body. Why then through the names of [Petrus Mongus] and Acacius is a hostile fence again woven, which once the cross of Christ, His death and His blood, destroyed, dissolved, and overturned? Therefore let not the interposed name of [Petrus Mongus] and Acacius divide those whom the precious blood of so great a Mediator has united.
Chapter XII: You Who Wish Others Subject to You, Yield Yourselves to Your Forefathers — One Prince Among the Twelve, Sent to Rome
Lastly, it is just that you who wish to have others freely and properly subjected to you, should yourselves yield to your elders by the ancient custom, that you may confidently command those subject to you. Twelve indeed were the apostles, supported by equal merits and equal dignity. And although all alike shone with spiritual light, Christ willed that one prince should be from among them; and by a wonderful dispensation directed him to Rome, the lady of the nations — that in the principal city, or in the first, He might first direct the chief, Peter. There, just as in the virtue of his teaching he shone forth sublime, so also, adorned by the glorious shedding of his blood, he rests in eternal lodging — granting to the See which he himself blessed, that, by the Lord’s promise (Matt. 16:18), it should never be conquered by the gates of hell, and that it should be the safest port of all the wave-tossed. Whoever has rested in him will rejoice in a blessed and eternal repose; whoever has despised him — let him see what kinds of excuses he will offer in the day of judgment.
For my part, I believe, hope, and trust in Christ, that from His charity neither tribulation, nor anguish, nor sword, nor persecution, nor life, nor death will ever be able to separate me (Rom. 8:35). Let persecution come, let laws rage: it is more glorious for the soldier of Christ to die than to be conquered; better to be defrauded of present advantages than to lack future ones.
Footnotes
- ↩ This document is one of four Tractatus of Gelasius preserved in the Roman archives. Despite being numbered “Letter XIV” in PL 59 by Migne’s editor, the heading itself names it a tractatus, and its character is that of a doctrinal teaching-tract, not a personal letter to a specific addressee. Its likely use was as an internal Roman document — a kind of refutation manual — supplied to Catholic correspondents who needed to answer Greek defenses of Acacius. It draws first upon excerpts of papal correspondence from the immediate predecessors (Simplicius, Felix III), and then upon Acacius’s own letter to Simplicius, before proceeding to a sustained doctrinal exposition of Petrine primacy. The closing apostrophe (“you who wish others subject to you, yield to your forefathers”) makes the implied audience clear: those Eastern hierarchs who claimed authority over their suffragans while refusing to acknowledge the authority of the Apostolic See.
- ↩ Satisfactio — the formal repentance and reparation by which a heretic returns to communion. The principle, articulated through the corpus of Pope Simplicius, holds that reconciliation and ecclesiastical orders are distinct hierarchies: a returning heretic must first pass through penance and satisfactio before any restoration to ministry, and one worthy of indulgence after repentance is not thereby worthy of honor. Cf. Simplicius Letters V–VII (the “nearly three years” of instruction concerning Petrus Mongus), XVII (the present extract), and the Holstenius letter. Gelasius cites this principle here against the Greek defense of Petrus Mongus’s installation by Acacius — a defense the principle nullifies at the root.
- ↩ Quae plerique vilia aestimant, et judicant contemnenda — “which many esteem worthless and judge contemptible.” Gelasius is referring to the Eastern reception of Simplicius’s repeated written interventions concerning Petrus Mongus, which Acacius and his circle ignored or set aside. The phrase is bitter: it is not Gelasius who esteems Simplicius’s writings worthless, but those who have already chosen Acacius’s side. Gelasius is preparing the rhetorical move that follows: if the Greeks will not accept the testimony of one Pope, let them accept the testimony of Acacius himself.
- ↩ The salutation alone is striking. Domino sancto, et beatissimo Patri, archiepiscopo Simplicio — “To the Holy Lord and Most Blessed Father, the Archbishop Simplicius” — is the language of an Eastern patriarch addressing the Bishop of Rome with explicit honorifics that acknowledge papal primacy. Dominus, beatissimus Pater, archiepiscopus: the very titles by which Acacius now addresses Simplicius are the titles his successors in the East would refuse to accord. Gelasius’s strategy in citing this letter is precise: Acacius has condemned himself out of his own mouth, both by what he says about Petrus Mongus, and by the very form in which he addresses the Pope.
- ↩ Illius qui paternos canones subverterat — referring to Timothy Aelurus, whom Acacius has just described as having been silenced by Christ. The phrase “subverter of the paternal canons” is Acacius’s own characterization of Timothy Aelurus, the Monophysite patriarch installed at Alexandria after the murder of the orthodox Patriarch Proterius on Good Friday 457. Petrus Mongus had been Aelurus’s deacon and henchman.
- ↩ Secundae enim sedis amittentem nec expellere quisquam, nec revocare, sine primae sedis assensu, vel potuit, vel debuit. This is one of the most concentrated jurisdictional formulas in Gelasius. The “Second See” is Alexandria; its holder cannot be removed or restored without Roman assent. The principle is universal — applicable a fortiori to lesser sees, since if even the Second See is bound to require Roman assent, no see is exempt. The verb pairing vel potuit vel debuit (“either could or should have”) closes both legal and moral routes simultaneously: not only was Acacius’s action without authority (non potuit), it was also a violation of duty (non debuit).
- ↩ The reference to the three hundred and eighteen Fathers is to the Council of Nicaea (325), traditionally numbered as 318 bishops. Gelasius is grounding the antiquity of the Roman primacy not in any later development but in Nicaea — Canon 6 of which acknowledged the traditional jurisdictional prerogatives of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch over their respective regions. The Roman primacy is, on Gelasius’s reading, what Nicaea took for granted as the antiquum and the vetustum.
- ↩ The triad of Petrine texts — Matt. 16:18–19 (the rock and the keys), Luke 22:32 (Peter’s faith and the strengthening of the brethren), John 21:17 (the feeding of the sheep) — is here gathered into a single argumentative unit. Gelasius’s selection and ordering of these three texts as a single Petrine commission, taken together, is among the earliest such consolidations in the Latin tradition; the same triad would later become standard in Roman ecclesiology. The argument that follows — that this concentration of speech upon Peter alone reveals the divine institution of a head — is the explicit doctrinal claim.
- ↩ Sed ut capite constituto, schismatis tolleretur occasio. The phrase is taken from St. Jerome, Adversus Jovinianum I, where Jerome poses the same rhetorical question — why is the Church founded on Peter rather than on all the apostles equally? — and gives the same answer: that one was chosen so that, with a head established, the occasion of schism might be removed. Gelasius is here quoting Jerome almost verbatim. The PL editor’s parenthetical attribution at this point in the text reflects this. The reasoning is theologically distinctive: papal primacy is grounded not in any merit or precedence of Peter over the others, but in the structural necessity of unity — without a head, schism is the inevitable outcome. This is the unity ground of papal primacy: the primacy exists not for the honor of the holder but for the integrity of the Church. The argument also functions as an implicit refutation of any merely honorific reading of the primacy: a “first among equals” whose function is ceremonial cannot prevent schism, because his action does not bind the body. Only a head — one whose decisions establish the unity they articulate — can perform the office Christ instituted at capite constituto. The Petrine primacy described here is therefore not optional honor but constitutive office; the office must do what merely honorific precedence cannot.
- ↩ The image of the seamless tunic of Christ as figure of the Church’s indivisibility is patristic — Cyprian uses it in De unitate ecclesiae, and the figure recurs through the Fathers. Gelasius’s deployment of it here gives the unity-ground argument its visual form: the Church’s unity is not an abstract requirement but the very tunic of Christ, which the soldiers of the crucifixion were unwilling to tear. The argument is then: if the soldiers of the crucifixion respected the unity of the tunic, what shall we say of those Christians who, for the sake of their party, would tear it?
- ↩ This is Gelasius’s direct engagement with what would later be formulated as the primus inter pares reading of the Roman primacy — the view that the bishop of Rome holds primacy of honor only, as first among equals, with no governing authority distinct from his ceremonial precedence. Gelasius answers it not by denying the equality but by conceding it entirely: yes, the twelve were equal in merits, equal in dignity, equal in spiritual light. The pivot is the next clause: cumque omnes aequaliter spirituali luce fulgerent, unum tamen principem esse ex illis voluit Christus — “and although all alike shone with spiritual light, Christ nevertheless willed that one prince should be from among them.” Equality in apostolic dignity does not entail equality in office. The principate is not derived from any inequality among the twelve; it is a distinct positive act of Christ, instituted alongside their equality. The egalitarian premise — that all the apostles were equal — is granted; the egalitarian conclusion — that there is therefore no governing primacy — does not follow. The principate rests on a separate divine institution, and that institution is recorded in the Petrine texts gathered in Ch. IX. The primus inter pares objection mistakes equality of order for absence of office.
Historical Commentary