Gelasius

Gelasius, the name of two popes.—GELASIUS I., an African by birth, succeeded Felix III. in 492, and was one of the earliest bishops of Rome to assert the supremacy of the papal chair, not only over temporal authority, but also over general councils of the church. He vigorously repressed Pelagianism, which was spreading in Dalmatia, renewed the ban of his predecessor against the oriental patriarch, drove out the Manichæans from Rome, and died in 496. There are extant a treatise of his against the Eutychians and Nestorians, De duabus in Christo naturis, several letters, and a Codex Sacramentarius.—GELASIUS II., formerly John of Gaeta, was educated at the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino, was cardinal and chancellor under Urban II. and Paschal II., and on the death of the latter in the June of 1118 was chosen pope by the party hostile to the Emperor Henry V. The imperial party at Rome under the Frangipani seized his person, but were forced to set him free by the menacing attitude of the mob. The new pope fled before the advancing imperial troops to Gaeta, where he first received his consecration, and whence he fulminated the thunders of excommunication against Henry V. and Gregory VIII., the antipope he had set up. Soon after he was able to return to Rome, but ere long had to betake himself for protection to France, where he died in the monastery of Clugy, early in 1119.