444 Sessa
strained. Rome never broke communion with the emperor, but its bishops
could not accept Acacius’ justification for his more irenic stance toward the
anti-Chalcedonians, that as bishop of Constantinople he needed to cooperate
with the court.87 The idea of cooperation with imperial forces on this particu-
lar religious matter was especially intolerable to Gelasius, who responded by
authoring what later medieval thinkers knew as the ‘theory of the two swords’.88
In a letter addressed to the emperor Anastasius and dated to 493, Gelasius
declared that, “there are two primary means by which the world is governed:
the sacred authority (auctoritas) of the pontiff and the power (potestas) of
kings”.89 In Gelasius’ view, the auctoritas of bishops is necessarily weightier,
because they ultimately render an account before God of the actions of all
men, including kings. Consequently, he reasoned, even Christian emperors
should bow to bishops on matters of religious doctrine.
Needless to say, Gelasius’ letter to Anastasius did not end the schism
(Anastasius simply ignored it), and while some of his successors took equally
hardline positions (e.g. Symmachus), others were more conciliatory (e.g.
Anastasius II). Roman Christians and clerics were also divided, and some
scholars believe that the Acacian schism was behind the Laurentian schism.90
It was not until the emergence of a Chalcedonian emperor, Justin I (and his
nephew Justinian), that the rift was officially healed. In 519, Hormisdas sent
legates to Constantinople along with a document (the libellus Hormisdae),
which presented the Roman church’s conditions for reconciliation (e.g. the
condemnation of bishops who had accepted the Henotikon) and unambigu-
ously underlined Rome’s total authority in matters of doctrine and faith.
Bishop John of Constantinople signed the document (undoubtedly under
considerable imperial pressure) and the schism ended, seemingly as a victory
for Rome. However, as Sotinel has observed, the reunion between Rome and
Constantinople was ultimately based on a misunderstanding of intentions,
for neither emperor nor eastern bishop was going to accept Rome’s claims
to primacy without equivocation.91 One bishop, Dorotheus of Thessalonica,
87 Sotinel, “Emperors and Popes”.
88 Meyendorff, Imperial Unity, pp. 161–2 and Demacopoulos, Invention of Peter, pp. 89–95.
89 Gelasius, Ep. 12.2, ed. Thiel, pp. 350–1 with an English translation in Demacopoulos,
Invention of Peter, pp. 173–80.
90 Caspar, Geschichte des Papstuums, pp. 84–91; Richards, The Popes and the Papacy, pp.92–6;
Moorhead, Theoderic, pp. 125–6; Noble, “Theodoric and the Papacy”. However, the only late
ancient author to link the Laurentian with the Acacian schism is the Constantinopolitan
author Theodore the Lector, and not all scholars accept the connection: see Amory, People
and Identity, pp. 204–5 and Sessa, Formation of Papal Authority, pp. 212–3.
91 Sotinel, “Emperors and Popes”, p. 271.