Digital Continent Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul 2016 | Page 22

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without permission.29 He had to boldly remind Christendom of his position and authority in
order to work toward his obligation to keep the Church on a true course toward the heavenly
kingdom, just as Gregory VII would do.
Both Leo the Great and Gelasius I stoutly reminded the world of the authority,
responsibility, and position of the papacy already established which demanded obedience. St
Clement wrote: “You, therefore, who have laid the foundations of this insurrection, be subject in
obedience to the priests and receive correction unto repentance”30 in his letter to the Corinthians.
St. Julius I in his Epistle of 341 to the Antiochenes exerted Rome’s position as judge over other
churches: “Yet why has nothing been written to us, especially regarding the Alexandrian church:
Or do you not know that it is the custom to write to us first, and that here what is just is
decided?”31 The Roman Church had a clear understanding of its role as judge and its expectation
of obedience to its corrections and decisions.

29

Aloysius K. Ziegler, “Pope Gelasius I and His Teaching on the Relation of Church and State,” The
Catholic Historical Review 27, no. 4 (January, 1942), 436, accessed March 26, 2015,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25014075.
30

Denzinger, 19.

31

Denzinger, 27.