Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/465

 GELASIUS

407

QEMBLOURS

Qelasius II, Pope, b. at Gaeta, year unknown; elected 24 Jan., 1118; d. at Cluny, 29 Jan., 1119. No sooner li:ui Paschal II ended his stormy pontificate, than the cardinals, knowing that the emperor, Henry V, had concerted measures with a faction of the Ro- man nobility to force the selection of a pliant imperial candidate, met secretly in a Benedictine monastery on the Palatine. Having dispatched a messenger to Monte Cassino, to summon the aged chancellor, Car- dinal John of (.iaeta, they turned a deaf ear to his en- treaties and unanimously declared him pope.

John was of a noble family, probably the Gaetani. Early in life he entered the monastery of Monte Cas- sino, where he made such progress in learning and became so proficient in Latin, that, under successive pontiffs, he held the office of chancellor of the Holy See. He was the trusted adviser of Paschal II; shared his captivity and shielded him against the zeal- ots whocharged the pope with heresy for having, under dire compulsion, signed the " Privilegium ", which con- stituted the emperor lord and master of papal and episcopal elections (see P.^schal II and Investi- tures). When the news spread that the cardinals had elected a pope without consulting the emperor, the imperialist party broke tlown the doors of the monastery; and their leader, Cenzio Frangipani, seized the new pontiff by the throat, cast him to the ground, stamped on him with spurred feet, dragged hira by the hair to his neighbouring castle, and threw him, loaded with chains, into a dungeon. Indignant at this brutal deed, the Romans rose in their might; and, surrounding the robber's den, demanded the in- stant liberation of the pontiff. Frangipani, intimi- dated, released the pope, threw himself at his feet, and begged and obtained absolution. A procession was formed, and amidst shouts of joy Gelasius II (so he termed himself) was conducted to the Lateran and enthroned.

The triumph was of short duration; for, 2 March, the formidable figure of Henry V was seen in St. Pe- ter's. .\s soon as he had heard of the proceedings at Rome, he left his army in Lombardy and hastened to the capital. Gelasius immediately determined upon flight. On a stormy night, the pope and his court pro- ceeded in two galleys down the Tiber, pelted by the imperialists with stones and arrows. After several mishaps Gelasius at length reached Gaeta, where he was received by the Normans with open arms. Being only a deacon, he received successively priestly ordi- nation and episcopal consecration. Meanwhile, the emperor, ignoring the action of the cardinals, placed on the throne of St. Peter a senile creature of the royal power, Maurice Burdinus. Archbishop of Braga in Portugal, who had the audacity to take the venerated name of Gregory (see Gregory VIII, Antipope). Gelasius pronounced a solemn excommunication against both of them; and as soon as the emperor, frustrated of his prey, left Rome, he returned secretly; but soon took the resolution of taking refuge in France. He went by way of Pisa, where he consecrated its splendid marble cathedral, and Genoa. He was re- ceived by the P'rench with the utmost reverence. The powerful minister of Louis VI, the Abbot Suger, con- ducted him to the monastery of Cluny. Gelasius was perfecting plans for the convocation of a great council at Reims, when he succumljed to pleurisy, leaving the consummation of the fifty years' war for freedom to his successor, Callistus II (q. v.).

Baronius and Reumont agree in pronouncing that no historical personage ever compressed so many mis- fortunes into the short space of a year and five days. There seems to be no reason why the Benedictine Order should not take up his case for canonization. Benedict XIV tells us (" De Beat, et Canon.", I, xli, n. 30) that in his time the question was mooted; but for one reason or another, it was overlooked. The life of Gelasius was written by bis intimate friend, Pandul-

phus of Pisa, an eye-witness to what he narrates; it is in Muratori, "Rer. ital. Scr.", Ill, 1 sqq.

Liber Panlificalis, ed. Duchesne, II. 311-12, 376; Watte- mcH, Pontificum Romanorum Vila^ (1862). II, 91-114; Baro- nius, Ann. Eccl. ad ann. 1118, 1119; Gaetani, Vila del pontefice Gelasio II (Rome, 1802, 1811); histories of medieval Rome by Gregorovius; von Reumont.

J.\MES F. LoUGHLIN.

Gelasius of Cyzicus, ecclesiastical writer. He was the son of a priest of Cyzicus, and wrote in Bithy- nia, about 475, to prove against the Eutychians, that the Nicene Fathers did not teach Monophysitism. These details he gives us in his preface (Labbe, II, 117). Beyond that nothing is known about his per- sonality. His "Syntagma" or collection of Acts of the Nicene Council, has hitherto been looked upon as the work of a sorry compiler; recent investigations, however, point to its being of some importance. It is divided into three books (Labbe, II, 117-296): bk. I treats of the Life of Constantino down to .323; bk. II of History of the Council in thirty-six chapters; of bk. Ill only fragments have been published. The whole of book III was discovered by Canlinal Mai in the Ambrosian Library, and its contents are fully de- scribed by Oehler. The serious study of the sources of Gelasius may be said to have begun with Turner's identification of the long passages taken from Rufinus (X, 1-5) in bk. II. A complete analj'sis of the sources [the Hist. Eccl. of Eusebius, Rufinus (in the Greek version of Gelasius of Ca>sarea d. 395), Socrates, Theodoret, "John", and Dalmatiu.s], will be found in Loschcke, whose efforts it would appear, have restored to Gelasius a place among serious Church historians, of which he has been wrongly deprived, and have also lent weight to the hitherto generally rejected idea that there was an official record of the Acts of the Comicil of Nica!a ; and further that it was from this record that Dalmatius derived the opening discourse of Constan- tine, the confession of Hosius, the dialogue with Phipdo, and the nine dogmatic constitutions, which Hefele had pronoimced "most certainly spurious". The "John" to whom Gelasius refers as a forerunner of Theodoret, is still unidentified; from him were de- rived the published portions of bk. Ill, the letters of Constantine to Arius, to the Church of Nicomedia, and to Theodotus, all of which Loschcke contends are authentic. He also proves that a comparison of Con- stant ine's letter to the Synod of T\Te (335), as given by Gelasius and Athanasius (Apolog., n. 86), shows Gelasius to give the original, Athanasius an abbrevi- ated version.

Text of Gelasius in Labbe-Coleti. Cone, II, 117-296; Oehler in Zcilsehr. f. wisseruschafltiche Theol. (1861). IV, 439- 442; Turner, On Gelasius of Cyzicus in Journal of Theological Studies (1899), I, 126-7; Loschcke, Das Syntaqrrui des Gelasius Cy^icenus (Bonn, 1906); Lejat in Revue d'Hist. et de Litl. Relig. (1906). XI, 279; Hefele. Hisloire des Candles, new Fr. tr., Leclercq (Paris, 1907), I, 391 sqq.

Edw'ard Myers.

Gellee, Claude. See Lorrain, Claude.

Gemara. See Talmud.

Gemblours (Gembloux, Gemblacum), asuppressed Benedictine monastery about nine miles north-west of Namur on the river Orneau in Belgium, founded c. 945 by St. Guibcrt (Wibert) and dedicated to St. Peter the Apostle and the holy martyr Exuperius. St. Guibert was a.ssisted in the erection of the monas- tery and the selection of its monks by Erluin, who had resigned a canonry to become a monk. Some of Guibert 's relatives impugned the legality of the monas- tic foundation on the plea that the monastery was built on fiscal land which had been given in fief to Guibcrt 's ancestors and could not be alienated with- out imperial authority. Emperor Otto I summoned Guibert and Erluin to his court, but was so favourably impressed with the manner in which they defended their pious undertaking that on 20 September, 946, he