cept a decree upon the faith of the Church from
the hand of emperors, first the usurper Basiliscus, then Zeno, and at the
time itself Anastasius. And under this censure lay not only Acacius, but
the three following bishops of Constantinople--Fravita, Euphemius, and
Macedonius. For though the last two were firm enough to suffer deposition,
and afterwards death, for the faith of Chalcedon, they were not firm enough
to refuse the emperor's imposition of an imperial standard in doctrine, the
acceptance of which would have destroyed the essential liberty of the
Church.

Two months after the violent deposition of Euphemius at Constantinople,
Pope Gelasius closed a pontificate of less than five years, in which he
resisted the wickedness and tyranny of Anastasius, as Pope Felix had
resisted the like in Zeno. Space has allowed me to quote but a few passages
of the noble letters which he has left to the treasury of the Church. It
may be noted that with his pontificate closes the period of about twenty
years, from 476 to 496, in which no single ruler of East or West, great or
small, professed the Catholic faith. The eastern emperors were Eutychean;
the new western rulers Arian, save when they were pagan. The next year the
conversion of Clovis, with his Franks, opens a new series of events. We may
allow Gelasius,[68] in his letter to Rusticus, bishop of Lyons, to express
the character of his time. "Your charity, most loving brother, has brought
us great consolation in the midst of that whirlwind of calamities and
temptations under which we are almost sunk. We will not weary you by
writing how straitened we have been. Our brother Epiphanius (bishop of
Ticinum or Pavia) will inform you how great is the persecution we bear on
account of the most impious Acacius. But we do not faint. Under such
pressure neither courage fails nor zeal. Distressed and straitened as we
are, we trust in Him who with the trial will find an issue, and if He
allows us for a time to be oppressed, will not allow us to be overwhelmed.
Dearest brother, see that your affection, and that of yours, to us, or
rather to the Apostolic See, fail not, for they who are fixed into the Rock
with the Rock shall be exalted."[69]

NOTES:

[29] See Philips, _Kirchenrecht_, vol. iii., sec. 119.

[30] Tillemont, xvi. 68.

[31] Simplicii, _Ep._ viii.; Photius, i. 115.

[32] Pope Gelasius, 13th letter.

[33] Mansi, vii. 1032-6; Jaffe, 359.

[34] Mansi, vii. 1028; Jaffe, 36