GELASIUS OF CAESAREA

Bishop and church historian; b. before 335; d. c. 395. His mother was the sister of cyril of jerusalem. Gelasius became bishop of Caesarea (Palestine) in 367, was ousted by Valens in 372 for his attachment to the faith of Nicaea, but regained his see in 378. He was among the 150 fathers of the Ecumenical Council of constantinople i (381). None of his writings have survived. Jerome praised their style and stated that Gelasius kept them in his desk (De vir. ill. 130). Some of them were published, however, as is proved by the testimony of Photius (Bibl. cod. 88, 89) and by fragments quoted in the writings of theodoret of cyr, Leontius of Byzantium, and Severus of Antioch. Gelasius wrote also a polemical treatise against the Anomoeans and a collection of at least 20 instructions on the fundamental teachings of the Church that probably paralleled the famous Catechetical Instructions of his uncle, Cyril of Jerusalem. An Explanation of the Symbol, mentioned in fragment four, may have formed part of the above collection. His main work was an Ecclesiastical History, a continuation of Eusebius's work. According to F. Scheidweiler, it can be reconstructed for the most part from later church historians who borrowed from it: rufinus of aquileia, Gelasius of Cyzicus, socrates, and the author of the Vita Metrophanis et Alexandri. The literary dependence between Gelasius's History and that of Rufinus of Aquileia has been greatly debated. The fragments of Galasius's dogmatic writings have been edited by F. Diekamp in Analecta patristica 42–49.

Bibliography: f. diekamp, Analecta patristica (Orientalia Christiana Analecta 117; 1938) 16–49. j. quasten, Patrology, 3:347–348. b. altaner, Patrology, 272–273. f. scheidweiler, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 46 (1953) 277–301; 48 (1955) 162–164; 49 (1956) 2–6; 50 (1957) 74–98. f. x. murphy, Rufinus of Aquileia (Washington 1945) 61–63.

[v. c. de clerqc]