Saint Gelasius I

Saint Gelasius I (died 496), pope from 492 to 496, from both a theological and a literary point of view considered the most important pope of the 5th century after Pope Leo I. Born in Rome of African descent, Gelasius was elected at a time of war and unrest in Italy. He was a vigorous administrator and used his private fortune to help the poor and to relieve famine. He cultivated excellent relations with Theodoric, the Ostrogothic king of Italy who, despite his Arianism, was tolerant of his Catholic subjects and did not interfere in ecclesiastical affairs.

Throughout his short reign Gelasius was embroiled in controversy with the Eastern church. Pope Felix III, Gelasius's predecessor, had provoked a schism by excommunicating the patriarch of Constantinople (present-day İstanbul) for doctrinal concessions to monophysitism. The excommunication was never recognized in the Byzantine Empire, and Gelasius alienated both the eastern bishops and the Byzantine emperor Anastasius I by his repeated demands that they yield to papal authority. In a letter to Anastasius on the relationship between church and state, Gelasius formulated his influential “two swords” theory—the doctrine that pope and emperor enjoy equal authority in their respective spheres of competence. This doctrine was frequently cited in the conflicts between the church and the Holy Roman Empire during the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century).

In Italy and the West, Gelasius stamped out the remaining traces of Pelagianism and Manichaeism, and in Rome he successfully opposed an attempt to revive the pagan festival of the Lupercalia. A relentless proponent of Rome's ecclesiastical supremacy, Gelasius is the first pope known to have been called the “vicar of Christ.” Many of his letters have been preserved, and by tradition he is credited with writing part of the so-called Leonine Sacramentary, a 6th-century compilation. He is thought to have had no part in the 7th-century Sacramentary that commonly bears his name, Sacramentarium Gelasianum (Gelasian Sacramentary), which contains a section of the liturgy.