[514][515][516][517][518][519][520][521][522][523]. It is argued that these accounts are best understood as a heresiological motif employed by the compiler(s) of the Liber Pontifi calis in order to emphasize and reinforce the authority and the legitimacy of those who were said to have opposed Manichaeism. This conclusion is suggested by the nature of the Liber Pontifi calis itself, which was only one of a set of confl icting polemical sources that debated the recent past of Rome's episcopacy. Moreover, as it was employed by Christian controversialists, "Manichean" had, by the sixth century, become an epithetical term of disapprobation rather than an accurate descriptor of a particular sect or system of belief. The depiction of the fi ght against Manichaeism in the Liber Pontifi calis was thus a small part of a larger discursive project intended to represent the Roman Church-and Gelasius, Symmachus, and Hormisdas in particular-as the consummate enemies of heresy, the defenders of orthodoxy, and the locus of authentic and legitimate authority.I would like to thank the editor of JLA and the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and suggestions. 1 Aug. De haer. 46 (CCSL 46: 312-20) and various letters and sermons of Leo I, especially Tr. 16 (CCSL 138: 61-67); Tr. 24 (CCSL 138: 109-16); Tr. 34 (CCSL 138: 178-87); Tr. 42 (CCSL 138a: 238-50); Tr. 76 (CCSL 138a: 472-86); and JK 405 = Ep. 7 (PL 54: 620-22). On Manichaeism in general and its reception by Christian and imperial offi cials, see for example
This essay examines the use of heresiological rhetoric in the letters and tractates of Leo I (bishop of Rome, 440–461) written in defense of the Council of Chalcedon (451). In these texts, Leo claimed the Constantinopolitan monk Eutyches and his supporters, the Eutychians, were an existential threat to the faith. However, Leo’s Eutychians were a heresiological confabulation. Heresiology employs polemical comparison and hostile classification to demarcate the boundaries of authentic Christianity. Because heresiology understands heresy genealogically, contemporary error could be described and condemned thanks to its affiliation with previous heretical sects. This was largely a taxonomic exercise; naming heresies allowed their supposed errors to be categorized and compared, especially with its (imagined) antecedents. Leo employed precisely this kind of comparison to associate Eutyches with earlier heresiarchs. He then reduced all opposition to Chalcedon to ‘Eutychianism,’ the error named for Eutyches, or else to its opposite and equally incorrect counterpart ‘Nestorianism’—both of which were, according to Leo, part of the same diabolically inspired misunderstanding of Christ. In short, Leo transformed Eutyches, the man, into a ‘hermeneutical Eutychian,’ a discursive construct intended to advance Leo’s own theological agenda, especially the creation of an orthodox identity coterminous with adherence to Chalcedon.
This essay examines the relationship between Gelasius, bishop of Rome from 492 to 496, and the Ostrogothic court, which occasioned several jurisdictional questions: the Roman church’s authority to adjudicate controversies within suburbicarian Italy, the proper venue to judge disputes involving clerics, and the appropriate involvement of the Ostrogoths in resolving these questions. Importantly, Gelasius did not identify the Ostrogoths as Arian heretics; but neither did he view their religion as equivalent to his own. This ambiguity, together with Theoderic’s stated aim of preserving traditional Roman law, provided Gelasius with rhetorical ammunition as he attempted to navigate the vexing jurisdictional landscape that characterized Ostrogothic Italy.
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