440 Sessa
depict bishops as exemplary estate managers, and these narratives may have
been created to counter mistrust among Romans regarding the pope’s over-
sight of ecclesiastical wealth.71
Popes and lay Households
Despite aristocratic entry into the Roman church during the Ostrogothic
period, there was continual tension between Rome’s bishops and Italy’s
aristocrats.72 Perhaps the most infamous conflict occurred during Gelasius’
episcopate, when the bishop found himself opposing the traditions and
answering the criticisms of a group of Roman senatorial aristocrats.73 A local
cleric had committed adultery with a Roman woman (presumably the wife
of a senator, though our sources never reveal her identity), and the senators
felt that Gelasius had failed to discipline him severely enough. To make mat-
ters worse, they were planning on making this wayward clergyman the butt of
public mockery during that year’s Lupercalia festival, a pagan holdover that
remained part of local Christian aristocratic tradition. If nothing else, Gelasius’
letter against the Lupercalia and the senators who funded it is a remarkable
record of one pope’s anger, indignation, and frustration at elite laymen over
whom Gelasius had relatively little control and whose respect for him was nei-
ther absolute nor unconditional. In their view, Gelasius was clearly an untrust-
worthy prelate who failed to govern his clergy in an authoritative manner.
Gelasius’ relations with Italian aristocrats were not always adversarial.
His letters reveal moments of cooperation, wherein he bent his own rules in
order to assist a vir or femina illustris on matters that pertained to the church.74
However, scholars have also argued that Gelasius inaugurated an invasive form
of papal oversight over the domestic sphere. Gelasius appears to be the first
Roman bishop to prescribe a regulatory regime for the building, dedication,
and use of private estate chapels.75 These small churches and oratories were
constructed on the estates of Italian aristocrats, in some cases dedicated to
local saints, and were used by the household (including tenants and slaves) for
71 Cf. Gesta de Xysti purgatione and Gesta Polychronii in Wirbelauer, Zwei Päpste in Rom.
72 Pietri, “Aristocratie et société cléricale”, pp. 466–7 and Bowes, Private Religion, Public
Values and Religious Change, especially pp. 66–91.
73 Gelasius, Ep. 100, ed. Günther, pp. 453–65.
74 Cf. Gelasius, Ep. 21 and 33, ed. Thiel, p. 388, 448.
75 Pietri, “Évergetisme chrétien et foundatins privées” and Bowes, Private Worship, Public
Values, and Religious Change, pp.125–88.