The See of Peter

The Early Church and Peter's Primacy

Pope Gelasius I (492-496)

Born: c. 410 AD
Died: 496 AD

Biography

Pope Gelasius I (died 19 November 496) served as Bishop of Rome from 1 March 492 until his death, succeeding Felix III. The Liber Pontificalis describes him as natione Afer — of African origin — though in his own correspondence he identifies himself as Romanus natus, born a Roman; modern accounts generally reconcile the two by placing his birth in Rome to African-descended parents. Before his elevation he served as archdeacon of the Roman Church under Felix III, in which capacity he is widely held to have drafted much of Felix’s later jurisdictional correspondence, including the formal excommunication of Acacius of Constantinople (28 July 484). The continuity between the two pontificates is therefore architectural rather than merely sequential: the discipline Gelasius exercised as pope was largely the discipline he had helped articulate as Felix’s archdeacon.

His four-and-a-half-year pontificate produced the most theologically substantive corpus of any late-fifth-century pope. His letter to the emperor Anastasius (Letter VIII), known by its opening words Duo Sunt, articulates the doctrine of the two powers that would frame medieval Western thought on the relationship of spiritual and imperial authority. Contrary to a common modern reading, Duo Sunt does not present the two powers as balanced peers: it explicitly subordinates the imperial to the priestly, since priests must answer to God even for the kings themselves. His Decretum Gelasianum (494) defines the canon of Sacred Scripture in the West, names the apocrypha and condemned authors, sets out the catalogue of patristic authority by which the See’s reception of writers determines their standing in the Church, and grounds the See’s authority over all these matters in the three sees of Peter — Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch — with Rome holding the primacy by the Lord’s own institution. His Tomus de anathematis vinculo applies the principles of canonical absolution and continuing schism to the Acacian situation. His Adversus Andromachum defends the Catholic liturgical calendar against attempts to revive the pagan Lupercalia in Rome. The synodal acta of the Second Roman Council of 495 record the absolution of Misenus of Cumae eleven years after his deposition under Felix, with Gelasius grounding the act in the Apostolic See’s primacy held by the delegation of Christ the Lord over the whole Church and in the binding-and-loosing power committed to Peter above the rest.

Throughout his correspondence Gelasius maintained the Roman position in the Acacian Schism that Felix had established: communion with Rome is the criterion of orthodoxy; any Eastern bishop named with Acacius in the diptychs is in schism by that fact; reconciliation requires formal satisfactio in the canonical form. The schism itself would not be formally resolved until 519, twenty-three years after Gelasius’s death, when the Formula of Hormisdas would close the Acacian period on terms structurally continuous with the Roman discipline Gelasius had spent his pontificate maintaining.

theseeofpeter.com provides the only complete English translation for large portions of the Gelasian corpus. The bulk of Gelasius’s jurisdictional letters, the full Decretum Gelasianum, the Tomus de anathematis vinculo, Adversus Andromachum, Adversus Pelagianam Haeresim, the Decreta Duo, the Constituta, the synodal acta of 495, and most of the fragments have not previously been available in complete English. The reader who wishes to understand how the See of Peter maintained its discipline across the closing years of the fifth century — and how that discipline laid the documentary foundation for the resolution of the Acacian Schism in 519 — will find Gelasius’s corpus indispensable.

Pope Gelasius I died on 19 November 496, after a pontificate of approximately four and a half years. He was venerated as a saint in the Western Church.

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Pope Gelasius I (492-496)

1

Letter I, from Pope Gelasius to Euphemius, Bishop of Constantinople

Gelasius writes to Euphemius of Constantinople, who seeks Catholic communion while retaining the condemned Acacius in the sacred diptychs, declaring that it would be excessively arrogant to suppose the first see obligated to report to those over whom it has been delegated by Christ's gift to preside, refusing to descend to Constantinople's fallen communion, and summoning Euphemius before the tribunal of Christ, where Peter's glorious confession will judge all whom it received to govern.
2

Letter II, from Pope Gelasius to Laurentius, Bishop of Lignido

Gelasius writes to Laurentius of Lignido, having assumed the pontificate, prescribing according to the custom of the Roman Church the formula of faith which all are bound to profess, setting forth the Christological definition against all who would confuse, divide, or diminish the two natures of Christ, and expressing hope that the emperor will support this preaching in the Illyrian regions.
3

Rescript of the Bishops of Dardania to Pope Gelasius

The bishops of Dardania write to Gelasius, addressing him as the holy apostolic lord and most blessed father of fathers, giving thanks for his pastoral admonition, professing their desire to obey his commands in all things and to preserve inviolate the precepts of the Apostolic See, and requesting that he send a representative from his angelic see to oversee the ordering of affairs in their region
4

Letter III, from Pope Gelasius to the Bishops of Dardania

Gelasius writes to all the bishops throughout Dardania announcing his election to the Apostolic See, transmitting a summary of the Catholic faith against the Eutychian heresy, warning that those who communicated with the condemned have themselves been condemned by the Apostolic See according to the decree of Chalcedon, and directing the bishops to maintain inviolate communion with the see of blessed Peter as received from their fathers and to report any attempts at subversion to Rome with pastoral solicitude.
5

Letter III bis, from Pope Gelasius to Natalis the Abbot

Gelasius writes to the abbot Natalis, declaring that by the divinely instituted governance of the blessed Apostle Peter the vicars of his see are debtors to all churches, commending Natalis's zeal for the faith, warning that the Greeks refuse to hear the voice of truth and prefer to infect the healthy rather than receive healing themselves, and directing him to preach confidently in all neighboring provinces since the heavenly Bishop does not abandon those whom He has furnished with the arms of His truth.
6

Letter IV (Commonitorium), from Pope Gelasius to Faustus, Master of Offices, Serving as Legate at Constantinople

Gelasius sends a commonitorium to Faustus at Constantinople, demonstrating that Acacius was rightly condemned by the Apostolic See and cannot be absolved after death, that Christ gave the power of binding and loosing principally to blessed Peter and what is bound on earth is not loosed for one who dies bound, that the canons direct all appeals of the whole Church to the examination of the first see from which there is no appeal and whose judgment may not be judged, and that the supreme judgment of all belongs to the Apostolic See alone, which judges the whole Church and is itself judged by no one.
7

Letter V, from Pope Gelasius to Honorius, Bishop of Dalmatia

Gelasius writes to Honorius of Dalmatia warning that the Pelagian heresy, long condemned by the Apostolic See through Innocent, Zosimus, Boniface, Celestine, Sixtus, and Leo, is resurfacing in the Dalmatian regions, grounding his intervention in the care delegated to Peter by the Savior's own voice and in the solicitude he cannot dissemble, and directing that what the Fathers have once condemned must not be reopened for examination.
8

Letter VI, from Pope Gelasius to Honorius, Bishop of Dalmatia

Gelasius writes again to Honorius of Dalmatia, expressing surprise that Honorius was surprised by the Apostolic See's concern for his region, declaring that the care of the Apostolic See is owed according to the custom of the forebears to all the Churches throughout the world, and urging him to join his own diligence to Rome's vigilance against the Pelagian heresy rather than resent the inquiry.
9

Letter VII, from Pope Gelasius to All the Bishops throughout Picenum

Gelasius writes to all the bishops throughout Picenum, rebuking them for negligence in allowing the Pelagian heresy to resurface in their regions, refuting at length its three principal errors — that children are born without original sin, that they cannot be condemned for original sin alone, and that grace is not necessary for salvation — and closing with the declaration that as it pertains to the governance of the Apostolic See to minister the solicitude owed to all the Churches, so it must not dissemble the power divinely handed down to it against the contumacious and negligent.
10

Letter VIII To the Emperor Anastasius

Gelasius writes to Emperor Anastasius — declaring that the world is principally governed by two powers, the sacred authority of the bishops and the royal power, of which the priests bear the heavier weight; that assent is all the more owed to the prelate of the Roman See, whom the supreme Divinity willed to have pre-eminence over all priests; that the authority of the Apostolic See has been set above the entire Christian Church in all Christian ages, affirmed both by the canons of the Fathers and by manifold tradition; and urging the removal of Acacius from ecclesiastical recitation on the principle that complicity in heresy is itself heresy.
11

Letter IX, from Pope Gelasius to the Bishops of Lucania, Bruttium, and Sicily

Gelasius writes to the bishops of Lucania, Bruttium, and Sicily — establishing that the Apostolic See moderates the canons of the Fathers with reference to the necessity of the times, and then setting forth twenty-eight disciplinary canons on the ordination of monks and laity, the qualifications for clerical office, the reserved powers of bishops, the subordinate ministry of priests and deacons, the consecration of virgins and non-veiling of widows, the servile condition, the prohibition of dishonest trades and simony, the four portions of church revenue, and the duty of every cleric to report episcopal transgressions to Rome.
12

Letter X, from Pope Gelasius to the Bishops of Sicily

Gelasius writes to the bishops of Sicily — confirming that bishops have the governance of church resources subject to the distribution of stipends to widows, orphans, the poor, and the clergy, and that the thirty-year prescription barred in civil law bars also ecclesiastical claims against bishops who have possessed church property and dioceses for thirty years or more.
13

Letter XI, from Pope Gelasius to the Bishops of Dardania and Illyricum

Gelasius writes to the bishops of Dardania and Illyricum to commend their orthodox constancy amid the Eutychian contagion — grounding his pastoral care in the primacy of the Apostolic See, whose solicitude, divinely delegated, is owed to all the Churches — and rules that Eutyches, Dioscorus, Timothy Aelurus, Peter Mongus, Acacius of Constantinople, and Peter the Fuller of Antioch must all be shunned together with their partakers; that the bishop of Thessalonica, having refused to condemn their names, has not received communion with the Apostolic See; that the judgment directed to the Dalmatian bishops is extended also to Illyricum; and that Acacius, having died in excommunication, cannot now be absolved, since the power of binding and loosing was given by Christ to the apostles with reference to the present life.
14

Letter XII, from Pope Gelasius to Æonius, Bishop of Arles

Gelasius writes to Æonius of Arles to announce his accession to the Apostolic See and to ask that his greeting be conveyed to the Gallic bishops — grounding his address in the principal governance of the Blessed Apostle Peter, which, by Christ the Lord's delegation, owes the care of the whole sheepfold to the universal flock throughout the world.
15

Letter XIII, from Pope Gelasius to the Bishops of Dardania

Gelasius writes to the bishops of Dardania to demonstrate that Acacius was rightly condemned by the sole judgment of the Apostolic See — grounding his answer in the primacy Peter received from the Lord's voice, by virtue of which the First See confirms every synod by her own authority, has the right to loose what has been bound by any bishops' sentences, to judge the whole Church, and to be judged by none; from her, no one is permitted to appeal.
16

Letter XIII (Forma Brevior), from Pope Gelasius to the Bishops of Dardania

The shorter recension of Letter XIII, transmitted alongside the longer form in the manuscript tradition — addressing the same Dardanian inquiry, defending Acacius's condemnation by the apostolic see's sole authority, and grounding the answer in the primacy Peter received from the Lord's voice.
17

Letter XIV (Tractatus IV), of Pope Gelasius — Setting Forth What Should Be Answered Against the Greeks

Gelasius's tractate against the Greeks — adducing testimony from the letters of Pope Simplicius and Pope Felix III concerning Petrus Aelurus and Petrus Mongus, then quoting Acacius's own letter to Simplicius in which he condemned Petrus Mongus as a "son of night" before himself receiving him into communion — and grounding the argument in the unity of the Church under the head Christ established in Peter, so that the occasion of schism might be removed.
18

Letter XV, from Pope Gelasius to the Eastern Bishops

Gelasius's letter to the Eastern bishops who defended Acacius — arguing that no new synod was needed because Acacius confessed his offense by his own letter, that Acacius lacked any authority to absolve the holder of the Second See without the assent of the First, and that the Eastern bishops who consented by chain of communion to the displacement of Catholic prelates from their sees stand convicted with him; grounded in the principle that Roman communion is the test of Catholic identity ("Will you acquiesce? you are mine. Will you not acquiesce? you are not mine").
19

Ten Fragments of the Letters of Pope Gelasius

Ten fragments of letters of Pope Gelasius, preserved in the canonical collections of Cardinal Deusdedit (eleventh century) and of Anselm of Lucca (eleventh century), recording Gelasius's exercise of jurisdiction over churches in Italy: the delegation of episcopal acts to local bishops as visitors of the Apostolic See, the appellate jurisdiction over clerical disputes (with even the Arian Gothic king Theodoric referring contumacious clerics back to Rome's examination), the exclusion from communion of those who defy the mandates of the Apostolic See, and the comprehensive instruction of newly ordained bishops in the four portions of church revenue and the Ember Days ordination rule.
20

The Tome of Pope Gelasius On the Bond of Anathema

The treatise of Pope Gelasius establishing three theses: that the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon are valid only insofar as the Apostolic See has approved them; that the things established against Acacius are just; and that Peter of Alexandria could only have been absolved by the Apostolic See — grounded in the principle that what is contrary to the privileges of the universal Church the Apostolic See sustains by no reasoning, that an anathema fixed against an error remains perpetual against that error and binds those who persist in it, that secular power cannot bind or loose a bishop, and that the inferior cannot absolve the superior.
21

The Tractate of Pope Gelasius Against Andromachus

The treatise of Pope Gelasius condemning the superstitious celebration of the Lupercalia and demonstrating that the calamities suffered by Rome have proceeded not from the cessation of the Lupercalia but from her own crimes — addressed to the senator Andromachus and the circle of Roman aristocrats who, while professing Christianity, sought to revive the ancient pagan festival on the grounds that public misfortune had followed its abolition.
22

The Tractate of Pope Gelasius Against the Pelagian Heresy

The treatise of Pope Gelasius against the Pelagian heresy — condemned by his predecessors through both divine and human laws — demonstrating from the testimony of the saints in both Testaments that under the ordinary economy of fallen nature no man in this life lives wholly without sin; tracing pride as the cause of both the angelic and the human fall; establishing that the renewal of nature is effected through the sacrament of baptism, with full sanctification conferred even on infants unknowing through the sacramental font; declaring the mystery of the resurrection of the body; and closing with the Christ-and-Church figure under male and female, by which the faithful are baptized into one body in Christ.
23

Two Decrees of Pope Gelasius from the Letter to the Bishops of Dardania

Two decrees extracted from Pope Gelasius's letter to the bishops of Dardania concerning the case of the patriarch Acacius — the first arguing that Christ's institutions of five hundred years' standing cannot be overturned when even the human law of thirty years' possession cannot be broken, the second declaring that since Acacius justly merited exclusion from apostolic communion and persisted in that condemnation until his death, the absolution he did not seek while alive cannot now be obtained for him in death, and his name and the names of his confederates must remain removed from communion at the Lord's table — invoking Christ's word delegating the binding power to the apostles and the practice of the predecessors who carefully preserved the purity of the Lord's table separated from heretical pollution.
24

The Constituta of Pope Gelasius I, Which the Bishops Receive at Their Ordination

The standard charge of Pope Gelasius given to a newly ordained bishop on the day of his consecration — forbidding him to presume any unlawful ordinations, refusing the sacred orders to bigamists, those not married to virgins, the illiterate, the bodily maimed, public penitents, members of the curia, and any obligated to a servile condition; refusing to receive Africans into ecclesiastical orders on suspicion of Manichaean associations or rebaptism; commanding the bishop to preserve and increase rather than diminish the Church's ministries and ornaments; ordering the four-fold division of the Church's revenue and the offerings of the faithful (one part to the bishop, one to the clergy, one to the poor and pilgrims, one to the fabric of the Church); reserving ordinations of presbyters and deacons to the fasts of the fourth, seventh, and tenth months and to the beginning and middle of Lent on the evening of the Sabbath; reserving the sacrament of baptism to the festivities of Easter and Pentecost, except in danger of death lest souls perish eternally; and exhorting the obedient observance of these precepts of the Apostolic See.
25

Letter XV, from Pope Gelasius to Rusticus, Bishop of Lyon

Pope Gelasius writes to Rusticus, bishop of Lyon, to thank him for the support sent to the Apostolic See amid the persecutions sustained on account of the most impious Acacius — commending Aeonius of Arles for likewise providing assistance, sending Epiphanius of Pavia as legate to the Gallic provinces for the redemption of his captive people, and exhorting Rusticus and his region to continue their devotion not so much to Gelasius as to the Apostolic See itself, since those who are made firm on the rock will be exalted together with the rock.
26

Appendix One: Various Fragments of Pope Gelasius I (circa 494-496 AD)

Six fragments preserved from the letters of Pope Gelasius I, surviving in the manuscript collections of Étienne Baluze and in a ninth-century Lucca codex — touching on the determination of parochial boundaries by the place of baptismal regeneration with reference to the synodal acts of Leo I; on the inviolability of ancient parochial dispositions against the temerity of self-made laws; on the ordination of Anastasius as bishop of Lucera and the four-fold division of Church revenues addressed to subordinate Roman officials; on the case of Antistia who broke her purpose of widowed chastity by remarriage; on the standing of catechumens and public penitents in relation to the church and the canonical hours; and giving a precious window onto the practical pastoral and disciplinary work of the Apostolic See in the years 492-496.
27

The Decretum Gelasianum: The Council of Rome (494) on the Books to Be Received and Not Received by the Catholic Church

The decree of Pope Gelasius I, issued at a Roman council of seventy bishops in 494, declaring that the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church has obtained primacy over all other Churches not by any synodal decree but by the evangelical voice of the Lord, who said to Peter "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church" — establishing the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments received by the Roman Church (the full Catholic canon, including Wisdom, Sirach, Tobit, Judith, the Maccabees, and the seven deuterocanonical books); enumerating the three sees of Peter (Rome having neither stain nor wrinkle, Alexandria founded through Mark, and Antioch where Peter dwelt before coming to Rome) with no place given to Constantinople; receiving the four ecumenical councils through Chalcedon while silently passing over their canons that elevated Constantinople; receiving the works of the orthodox Fathers — Cyprian, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, Athanasius, Cyril, John Chrysostom, Theophilus, Hilary, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Prosper — and the Tome of Pope Leo to Flavian, the disputing of even a single iota of which incurs anathema; rejecting the Synod of Ariminum and a long catalogue of apocryphal works; and naming as condemned heresiarchs Simon Magus, Marcion, Arius, Macedonius, Nestorius, Eutyches, Dioscorus, and culminating in Acacius of Constantinople with his associates — all bound under the indissoluble bond of anathema for eternity.
28

Acts of the Second Roman Council under Pope Gelasius I (13 May 495), at which Misenus of Cumae was Absolved

The synodal acta of 13 May 495 record Misenus of Cumae's libellus of repentance and his formal absolution by Gelasius and a Roman synod of fifty-five bishops, eleven years after his deposition under Felix III for compromised legation in 484 — Gelasius grounding the absolution in the Apostolic See's primacy over the whole Church by the delegation of Christ the Lord, in the Petrine power of binding and loosing committed to Peter above the rest, and in the conditional mercy built into Felix's original sentence; with Misenus subscribing his renunciation in the sight of God and the blessed Apostle Peter and his vicar, the synod acclaiming Gelasius as Vicar of Christ, and Vitalis (Misenus's fellow legate, deceased in excommunication) noted as having borne the lot of divine judgment beyond ecclesial remedy.

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