À partir de la fin du cinquième siècle, on rencontre parfois des références à une histoire ecclésiastique de Gélase, évêque de Césarée (367-avant septembre 400) et neveu de Cyrille de Jérusalem (348-387). On a beaucoup spéculé sur le caractère et l'étendue de cet ouvrage, mais depuis les travaux de F. Winkelmann un consensus s'est établi: Gélase fut le successeur immédiat d'Eusèbe de Césarée et son histoire ecclésiastique, des persécutions de Dioclétien jusqu'à son propre temps, fut la source principale des historiens (...) postérieurs de l'église, Rufin, Socrate, Sozomène, Théodoret et Gélase de Cyzique, et de nombreuses vies hagiographiques. Bien qu'il existe encore des discussions sur le point de chute de l'histoire (la mort de Valens en 378 ou celle de Théodose I en 395) et sur son caractère (un ouvrage indépendant ou une continuation, dans le même manuscrit, de l'histoire ecclésiastique d'Eusèbe de Césarée), on ne doute plus de l'originalité de Gélase de Césarée. En effet, selon cette théorie Gélase fut à l'origine d'importantes traditions comme la trouvaille de la vraie croix par Hélène, ou la conversion des Éthiopiens et des Géorgiens. Désireux de connaître la version originelle de Gélase, des savants ont investi beaucoup d'énergie dans la reconstruction minutieuse de son texte perdu, surtout sur la base des ouvrages de Rufin, Socrate et Gélase de Cyzique. (shrink)

Im Jahr 1918 erschien als 28. Band der Reihe „Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte“ (GCS), nach dem frühen Tod von Gerhard Loeschcke von Margret Heinemann unter schwierigen Bedingungen eilig fertiggestellt (L./H.), die „Gelasius Kirchengeschichte“. Nach über 80 Jahren konnte nun G. C. Hansen (Ha.) endlich eine Neubearbeitung für die GCS vorlegen, deren Anfänge (noch durch M. Heinemann selbst) bis auf das Jahr 1945 zurückgehen (S. V f.).

The article refers to the beginning of the religious-political distinction of the semantics of ,secular' and ,sacred'. Already in the 5th century Pope Gelasius I. developed this distinction in the framework of Christology. Occidental Christianity later turned to then developed motives, explanatory schemes and legitimation patterns to find an approach for disentangling religion and politics, state and religion. The thesis of the article states that it is typical for modernity to base all explanations of moral and legal orders on (...) the autonomy of a profane reason. With this the traditional Christian master narrative of ,two swords' or ,two powers' is leading to a dead end both for justifying the constitutional guaranteed separation of state and religion and for structuring their correlation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Beyond Ratzinger's Republic:Communio's Postliberal TurnSam Zeno Conedera S.J. and Vincent L. Strand S.J.Is the political future of the West a postliberal one? For the past decade, numerous prominent thinkers in America and Europe have been debating this question. Matters that not long ago were merely of historical interest, such as Pope Gelasius I's understanding of the relation between sacral authority and royal power, Thomas Aquinas's thought on monarchy (...) and Robert Bellarmine's theory of the pope's indirect authority in temporal matters are now increasingly studied for their potential answers to contemporary political questions. This development, which would have been nearly unimaginable just a decade earlier, unsurprisingly has been led by Catholics. We say "unsurprisingly" in view of the long pre-modern tradition of Catholic political thought, as well as the Church's long struggle against liberalism during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some of the current postliberal writers explicitly connect themselves to both of these aspects by using the term "integralist" to describe their position.1 [End Page 889]This "new integralism" represents a radical departure from the mainstream of Catholic political discourse of the last half century, which has largely sought rapprochement with Western liberalism. A group of writers, led by John Courtney Murray, George Weigel, Michael Novak, and Robert George, have held that the American constitutional order is rooted in the natural law tradition, and therefore is basically friendly to Catholic political thought. The Church's role in American life, they say, is upholding the natural law as a public moral philosophy, while embracing the non-establishment clause of the First Amendment as a matter of principle, in accordance with the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. This "Whig Thomism," which for decades represented the predominant outlook of conservative American Catholics, must now face the challenge of a different sort of Thomism represented by the integralists.2While the engagement between Whig Thomists and integralists has received most of the attention from scholars and journalists alike, another postliberal option has emerged in recent years. Its source is a group of Catholic thinkers associated with the Communio theological movement. Their political vision, which has no single name or label, has a complex and subtle relationship with the thought of earlier Communio writers, most of whom shared the Whig Thomist desire for reconciliation with Western liberalism. [End Page 890] The appearance of a Communio postliberalism therefore represents a significant development within this intellectual tradition. The most important representative of the earlier Communio perspective on political questions is Joseph Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI, who has recently been lauded as the "most important Catholic thinker of the twentieth century" on matters at the intersection of theology and politics.3In an article titled "Ratzinger's Republic" that appeared in these pages in 2020, we identified a significant tension in his thought about the Church's contribution to political life.4 Exploring Ratzinger's writings on natural law, we demonstrated that two currents are present. In accord with his fundamental theological commitments about nature and grace and about faith and reason, Ratzinger often questioned the effectiveness of arguments from natural law. He claimed that, since reason is historically conditioned, and therefore in the current order marked by sin, reason needs grace and faith to function properly. Yet, on other occasions, Ratzinger strongly endorsed arguments from natural law, highlighting its role as the foundation of a just democratic political order. We traced this ambivalence about natural law back to a dilemma at the heart of Ratzinger's political thought. On the one hand, in accord with his thinking about the relations of nature and grace and faith and reason, Ratzinger argued that the state needs the Church to supply moral values that the state cannot furnish on its own. On the other hand, he believed it belongs to the very nature of the Church to be separate from the state, and he endorsed nonconfessional, religiously pluralistic states.5 In light of these two commitments, Ratzinger argued that the contribution Christians are to make to the state is to supply moral values that were discerned under the influence of grace and divine revelation but... (shrink)

Great Christian Jurists and Legal Collections in the First Millennium is a systematic collection of essays describing how Christian leaders and scholars of the first millennium in the West contributed to law and jurisprudence and used written norms and corrective practices to maintain social order and to guide people from this life into the next. With chapters on topics such as Roman and post-Roman law, church councils, the papacy, and the relationship between royal and ecclesiastical authority, as well as on (...) individual authors such as Lactantius, Ambrosiaster, Augustine, Leo I, Gelasius I, and Gregory the Great, this book invites a more holistic and realistic appreciation of early-medieval contributions to the history of law and jurisprudence for entry-level students and scholars alike. Great Christian Jurists and Legal Collections in the First Millennium provides a fresh look, from a new perspective, enabling readers to see these familiar authors in a fresh light. (shrink)

Članek je posvečen vprašanju, katere vire je pri pisanju svoje Cerkvene zgodovine oziroma dodatka k prevodu Evzebijevega istoimenskega dela uporabljal Rufin iz Akvileje. Iz samega besedila izhaja, da je upora­bljal tako ustne kot pisne vire, pri čemer Rufin prve večkrat navaja, drugih pa skorajda ne. Kljub temu je danes moč zanesljivo reči, da se je pri pisanju opiral na številne tako latinske kot grške vire. Rufinov ugled na področju (cerkvene) zgodovine je v zadnjem stoletju precej omajala teza, da je za (...) večji del svojega dodatka enostavno prevedel danes izgubljeno cerkveno zgodovino Gelazija iz Cezareje. Ker naj bi bilo vsebino slednje moč rekonstruirati iz kasnejših grških virov, je Rufinov dodatek v strokovnih krogih deležen manj pozornosti, kot si kljub svojim pomanjkljivostim zasluži. Članek se tako osredotoča predvsem na dva vidika Rufinovih pisnih virov — na vprašanje njegove odvisnosti od Gelazija in na vprašanje, za katere pisne vire dejansko lahko rečemo, da jih je uporabljal. (shrink)