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, 360. [35] Photius, i. 123, translated. [36] Mansi, vii. 1065; Baronius (anno 484), 17; Jaffe, 364. [37] It is to be observed that the Pope calls his judgment the Judgment of the Holy Ghost, just as Pope Clement I. did in the first recorded judgment. See his letter, secs. 58, 59, 63, quoted in _Church and State_, 198-199. [38] Photius, i. 124. [39] Mansi, vii. 1139; Baronius (anno 484), 26, 27. [40] Domini sacerdotes. [41] Jaffe, 365; Mansi, vii. 1065. [42] iv. 16. [43] Silentiarius, in the Greek court, officers who kept silence in the emperor's presence. [44] _Ep._ x.; Mansi, vii. 1067. [45] "The recital of a name in the diptychs was a formal declaration of Church fellowship, or even a sort of canonisation and invocation. It was contrary to all Church principles to permit in them the name of anyone condemned by the Church."--_Life of Photius_, i. 133, by Card. Hergenroether. [46] "Cui feo la dote Dono infelice di bellezza, ond' hai Funesta dote d'infinite guai." --_Filicaja._