GELASIUS, the name of two popes.
Gelasius I. succeeded Felix III. in 492, and confirmed the estrangement between the Eastern and Western Churches by insisting on the removal of the name of Acacius, bishop of Constantinople, from the diptychs. He was also the first decidedly to assert the supremacy of the papal over the imperial power, and the superiority of the pope to the general councils. He is the author of De duabus in Christo naturis adversus Eutychen et Nestorvum. Five of his letters have also come down to us, and he is most probably the author of Liber Sacramentorum, published at Rome in 1680; but the so-called Decretum Gelasti, de libris recipiendis et non recipiendis is evidently a forgery. Gelasius died in 496, and was canonized, his day being the 18th November....
Gelasius II. (Giovanni da Gaeta) was of noble descent, and was born at Gaeta about 1050. He received his theological education in the abbey of Monte Casino, and afterwards held the office of chancellor under Urban II., and of cardinal-deacon under Pascal II. On the death of Pascal II. he was elected pope by the cardinals, 18th January 1118, and when his person was seized by Cencius Frangipani, a partisan of the emperor Henry V., he was almost immediately set at liberty through the general uprising of the people in his behalf. The sudden appearance of the emperor, however, compelled him to leave Rome for Gaeta, and the imperial party chose an anti-pope, Burdinus, archbishop of Braga, under the name of Gregory VIII. Gelasius, at a council held at Capua, fulminated bulls of excommunication against his ecclesiastical rival and the emperor; and under the protection of the Norman princes he was able to return to Rome, where he stayed for a time in partial concealment, but having barely escaped capture by the Frangipani while celebrating mass iu the church of St Praxede, he left the city, and after wandering through various parts of Italy and France died in the abbey of Clugny, January 19, 1119.
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