They Ruled East and West

By Thomas V. Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Jul 07, 2026 | In Lives of the Popes

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So far in this series, we’ve seen a number of examples of early popes exercising authority over bishops and churches outside of Rome, and even outside of the West. As the documentary record improves, this becomes even clearer, and the popes in this installment, especially St. Innocent I, are striking for the extent to which they asserted their prerogative to govern the entire global Church. We also see evidence of the ancient discipline of clerical continence, the first instance of a person being executed for heresy, and the beginning of the Pelagian controversy.

38—St. Siricius (384-99)

St. Siricius was a lector and deacon in Rome under Pope Liberius, and continued to serve as a deacon under Pope St. Damasus. After Damasus died, Siricius was elected unanimously, despite the continued claims of antipope Ursinus.

Pope Siricius acted confidently as governor of the universal Church. He is best known as the author of the oldest completely preserved papal decretal (disciplinary decree), the Directa of 385, written in response to a letter from the Spanish Bishop Himerius of Tarragona. It contains decisions on fifteen points including baptism, penance, and clerical celibacy.

In the Directa, St. Siricius says that the bishops of Rome are “heirs” to the government of St. Peter, and that the Roman church is the “head” of the other churches. He asserts his authority to discipline or excommunicate lesser clergy in other dioceses, without requiring the mediation of the local bishop. The pope tells Bishop Himerius to spread the word of the decisions in the Directa to the neighboring provinces, for “no priest of the Lord is free to be ignorant of the statutes of the Apostolic See.” (In another letter to North Africa, he ordered that no new bishops be consecrated without notifying Rome.)

The most significant specific ruling in the Directa is the assertion that clerical continence is a practice of apostolic origin, absolutely required of all deacons, priests, and bishops. Married clergy were required to live separately from their wives and permanently cease conjugal relations with them upon ordination. This law was also passed at a council St. Siricius held in Rome in 386 (the decisions of which were sent as a command to the bishops of North Africa). These are important sources for the discipline of clerical continence in the early Church, and especially in the West.

Speaking of celibacy, Siricius had to condemn some heretics who opposed this and other counsels of the Gospel, such as the Roman monk Jovinian, who opposed fasting and denied that celibacy is superior to marriage. St. Siricius excommunicated Jovinian, with the support of St. Ambrose of Milan and other Italian bishops. Siricius and Ambrose also opposed Bishop Bonosus of Sardica, who held Trinitarian errors and denied the perpetual virginity of Mary.

Pope St. Siricius also worked for the peace of the Church in various ways; for instance, he helped to resolve a major schism within the church of Antioch, the Meletian schism, which had been a problem during the reign of St. Damasus.

A case in which his intervention was less successful was that of the Spanish bishop Priscillian, whose colleagues had accused him of heresy and magic before Emperor Magnus Maximus. The emperor condemned Priscillian to death, a decision protested by St. Siricius, St. Ambrose, and St. Martin of Tours, partly because the civil ruler had no right to judge an ecclesiastical case. Despite their urging a reduced sentence, Priscillian was executed, and this is considered the first instance of an execution for heresy. In response, Pope Siricius excommunicated the bishops who had accused Priscillian to the emperor.

St. Siricius was mentioned in an anti-Donatist letter by St. Optatus of Milevis:

You cannot then deny that you do know that upon Peter first in the city of Rome was bestowed the Episcopal Cathedra, on which sat Peter, the Head of the Apostles (for which reason he was called Cephas), that, in this one Cathedra, unity should be preserved by all, lest the other Apostles might claim—each for himself—separate Cathedras, so that he who should set up a second Cathedra against the unique Cathedra would already be a schismatic and a sinner. Well then, on the one Cathedra, which is the first of the endowments, Peter was the first to sit. To Peter succeeded Linus, to Linus succeeded Clement…to Liberius succeeded Damasus, to Damasus Siricius, who today is our colleague, with whom ‘the whole world,’ through the intercourse of letters of peace, agrees with us in one bond of communion.

Pope Siricius’s contemporaries St. Paulinus of Nola and St. Jerome both found cause to criticize him somewhat: Paulinus felt the pope had given him a “haughty” reception on his visit to Rome, while Jerome thought St. Siricius had shown a “lack of judgment” in giving favorable treatment to Jerome’s opponent Rufinus. But even if there were anything to these complaints, they would be mere blips in the overall excellent record of a pope whom history has judged to be a saint.

The name of Pope Siricius can be seen carved on a pillar in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome. The original basilica had been built by Constantine, but a larger version was then built by Emperor Theodosius and consecrated by Pope St. Siricius in 390. When the basilica was rebuilt after a fire in 1823, the columns from the old building were used, including the one bearing the words SIRICIUS EPISCOPUS (Bishop Siricius).

39—St. Anastasius I (399-401)

We only know a few things about the reign of Pope St. Anastasius I. Most important is his condemnation of Origen as a heretic at a council in 400, under the influence of St. Jerome and his friends in Rome. Like the two popes before him, St. Anastasius maintained the policy of special relations between the Roman Church and the province of Illyricum in order to keep it from being absorbed into the jurisdiction of Constantinople. The African bishops, dealing with a priest shortage, asked St. Anastasius to allow them to let former Donatists serve as clergy in the Church, but St. Anastasius only told them to keep fighting Donatism.

St. Jerome praised St. Anastasius for his evangelical poverty, and said that his reign had been so short because Rome did not deserve such a good bishop. Sts. Augustine and Paulinus were also on good terms with this pope.

40—St. Innocent I (401-17)

Elected unanimously after the death of St. Anastasius, St. Innocent (possibly an Albanian) was highly active in governing the worldwide Church—to the point that some historians have considered him to be “the first pope”, though what we’ve learned about the popes so far should disabuse us of the notion that there was anything fundamentally new here.

In the city of Rome itself, Pope Innocent built churches including San Vitale (originally Sts. Gervasius and Protasius), confiscated churches from the Novatianists, and combatted the Montanists, the Manichaeans (who practiced an esoteric admixture of Gnosticism and various pagan religions and philosophies, with a slight Christian tint), the Photinians (who held multiple Trinitarian and Christological heresies), and the Priscillianists (followers of the above-mentioned executed bishop Priscillian, who held a kind of Gnostic-Manichaean dualism potentially influenced by Zoroastrianism).

In 410, midway through St. Innocent’s rule, Rome was for the first time captured by barbarians. With Rome under siege by Alaric and his Goths, the pope led an embassy to Emperor Honorius in Ravenna in the hopes of bringing about a truce, but this failed, and during St. Innocent’s absence Rome was sacked.

In his government over the West, Pope St. Innocent renewed Pope St. Damasus’s decree of Roman jurisdiction over the province of Illyricum, with the Archbishop of Thessalonica made vicar apostolic over that region. He wrote decretals to Bishop Victricius of Rouen, to the Spanish bishops, and to several others, settling various disciplinary matters, holding up Roman disciplines as the norm, advising on the canonical books of Scripture, and giving liturgical directions. In one such letter to Britain, he ruled (along the lines of Pope St. Siricius) that priests who had children after becoming priests should lose their office. He induced Emperor Honorius to suppress the Montanist sect in Africa, resulting in the return of many of these schismatics to the Church.

In governing the East, Pope Innocent protected St. John Chrysostom against persecution by the Empress Eudoxia and Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria. St. John had been deposed from his episcopate at Constantinople by the Synod of the Oak, but the pope held this decision to be invalid, and wrote to the people of Constantinople rebuking them for their treatment of their bishop. Together with the Western emperor, Honorius, Innocent sought to hold a general synod at Thessalonica to resolve the matter, but this never took place. Pope Innocent continued to write consoling letters to St. John in exile, and after Chrysostom’s death, the pope insisted that the Eastern bishops publicly recognize that Chrysostom had been wrongly condemned.

Pope Innocent also made decisions about how communion was restored after local schisms at Antioch and Constantinople.

The pontificate of St. Innocent saw the beginning of the Pelagian controversy. Pelagius was a monk from Britain or Ireland who lived in Rome for many years. In opposition to St. Augustine’s teaching on grace, he denied original sin, the necessity of grace, and infant baptism, while asserting the capacity of human beings to become righteous through their own efforts. Pope St. Innocent intervened in this controversy on multiple occasions.

In Bethlehem, St. Jerome and the nuns under his spiritual care were attacked by Pelagian heretics, including an act of arson and the murder of a deacon. The bishop, John of Jerusalem, did nothing about it. Pope Innocent wrote first offering consolation and support to St. Jerome, and second to Bishop John, warning him that he would be held accountable for further negligence.

In 415 and 416, multiple requests were made for the pope to rule on the orthodoxy of Pelagius. These appeals came from the Synod of Jerusalem, and from African synods at Carthage and Milevis, which condemned Pelagius and asked Rome to confirm their decision. St. Augustine and four other African bishops also wrote to the pope, laying out their anti-Pelagian position.

In his response, St. Innocent confirmed the decisions of the African synods, excommunicated Pelagius (rejecting an Eastern synod which had acquitted him), and praised the African bishops at length for having submitted the decision to the supreme authority of Rome:

For you wanted it to be referred to our judgment, knowing what is due to the Apostolic See, since all of us who have held this position desire to follow that apostle from whom the episcopacy itself and the whole authority of this name is derived. Following him, we know how to condemn what is evil and to approve what is praiseworthy, just as we approve the fact that in observing the teachings of our predecessors you did not think that they should be ignored. For they established it not by a human but by a divine decision that one should not regard as settled, whatever questions are dealt with, even in distant and remote provinces, before it comes to the knowledge of this see. In this way a correct declaration is upheld by the whole authority of this see, and—just as all waters go forth from their original source and the pure waters of their incorrupt spring flow through the different regions of the whole world—from this see the other churches learn what they should teach, whom they should absolve, and whom a stream fit for clean bodies should avoid like those persons filthy with a foulness that cannot be purified.

And in a letter to the African council of Milevis, Pope St. Innocent wrote:

You act conscientiously and appropriately, therefore, in consulting the office of the Apostolic See, that mystical office, I say, to which, except for those matters that lie outside, there pertains the solicitude for all the churches over what judgment should be maintained in troubling affairs. You have followed the form of the ancient rule, which you know has been observed with me by the whole world. But I set aside this issue, because I do not believe that this has escaped the attention of Your Wisdom. Why did you endorse this practice by your action if it was not because you knew that responses always flow from the apostolic fountain through all the provinces for those who ask for them? I think that, especially when a question of faith is discussed, all our brothers and fellow bishops ought to refer it only to Peter, that is, to the source of their title and dignity, as Your Charity has now referred this question, which could benefit all the churches in common throughout the world. For these churches must necessarily become more cautious when they see that the inventors of these evils have been separated from communion with the Church by decrees of our judgment in response to the two synods. (Letter 182)