ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the use of the language of persecution by Gelasius, bishop of Rome 492–496, in the context of the Acacian Schism, which divided Rome and Constantinople over the issue of the correct definition of the relationship between Christ’s human and divine natures. In Late Antiquity, persecution was profoundly connected to authentic Christian identity and its history became a source of ideas and language, which was used by polemicists to describe their world and their aspirations for it. In Gelasius’ case, he mobilized the language of persecution to challenge the Henotikon and the legitimacy of its author Acacius, to portray himself and his allies as standing in direct continuity with the heroes of Christian antiquity, and to demand resistance to what he considered an attack against the authority of the church. To accomplish these goals, Gelasius recast Rome’s opponents as persecutores – contemporary manifestations of Christianity’s imperial oppressors; any opposition to Rome became a persecutio comparable to that suffered by Christian martyrs before Constantine. But interestingly, although the letters and tractates considered in this chapter were generally addressed to recipients in the East, the immediate context for Gelasius’ rhetoric was Rome’s local literary culture, which produced a number of polemical texts associated with various controversies within the Roman church.
