Saint Siricius

Roman bishop

• Born: c. 335 or 340
• Birthplace: Probably in or near Rome (now in Italy)
• Died: November 26, 0399
• Place of death: Rome (now in Italy)

Siricius was the first pope to exercise his authority throughout the Roman Empire. In the process, he set precedents that were to be used to great effect by his successors.

Early Life

Siricius (sih-RIHSH-ee-uhs), who was born c. 335 or 340, was Roman by birth. Little of his early life is known. He was ordained by Pope Liberius as a lector and later as a deacon. Siricius received the standard Roman clerical education, and he may well have been classically educated also. His entire career was spent in the church of Rome.

On December 11, 384, Liberius’s successor, Damasus I, died. By this time, the papacy had become increasingly politicized, and there followed intense campaigning for his office. The candidates included Siricius; Ursinus, who had also been a candidate and was responsible for rioting in the election of 366; and Jerome, who seems to have been Damasus’s favorite. Later that month, or perhaps early in January of 385, Siricius was elected and consecrated the next pope; a congratulatory letter from the emperor still survives. Ursinus and his partisans were then officially expelled from Rome. Jerome, perhaps believing that he was no longer welcome, also departed, settling in Palestine with several of his protégés.

Life’s Work

Siricius’s activities during his pontificate are known primarily from the letters he sent or received and from the account given in the sixth or seventh century Liber Pontificalis (The Book of the Popes, 1916), compiled by many writers and written over many years.

Siricius became pope at a time when the bishops of Rome were just beginning to exercise their claimed large-scale ecclesiastical authority. Several of his letters, for example, contain the first of the papal decrees later collected as canon law.

Some of Siricius’s letters document his desire to formalize ecclesiastical discipline and practices. He was concerned, for example, that the proper procedures be followed in the choice of bishops and in appointments to other ranks of the clergy. On February 10, 385, he replied to a letter that Bishop Himerius of Tarragona in Spain had written to Damasus. He discussed the proper way to deal with converted Arians and Novatians (they were not to be rebaptized); the proper times for baptism (Easter and Pentecost but not Christmas); and various classes of individuals, such as penitents, incontinent monks and nuns, and married priests. This epistle is the first of the papal decretals. Elsewhere, Siricius decreed that new bishops must have more than one consecrator, that bishops should not ordain clerics for another’s church or receive those deposed by another bishop, and that a secular official, even if baptized, could not hold a clerical office.

Decrees such as these exemplify the papal role of overseer of ecclesiastical procedures throughout the Roman Empire. Siricius and his successors portrayed themselves as the inheritors of the authority of Peter. Siricius even claimed to have something of Peter within himself: “We bear the burdens of all who are weighed down, or rather the blessed apostle Peter, who is within us, bears them for us. . . .” Siricius also claimed that the bishop of Rome was the head of the college of all the bishops and that bishops who did not obey him should be excommunicated. He asserted that his decisions, the statuta sedis apostolicae (the statutes of the apostolic see), should have the same authority as church councils. Like other bishops, Siricius also appropriated some of the trappings and authority of the secular government. For example, he referred to his decrees with the technical word rescripta, the same word used by the emperors for their responses to official queries.

At this time, however, it appeared that the authority of the Roman see was on the wane. In the east, the Council of Constantinople in 381 had assigned the bishop of Constantinople, the capital of the eastern part of the Empire, the same honorary status as the bishop of Rome. Siricius was not even the most influential bishop in Italy: He was overshadowed by Ambrose in Milan. Ambrose not only was a man of greater abilities but also was the bishop of an Imperial capital. Milan, not Rome, was where emperors tended to reside at that time. As a result, Ambrose had the ear of the emperors. Despite his claims, Siricius was able to impose his direct authority only on some of the local, rural bishops, whose elections he oversaw. He is said to have ordained thirty-two bishops “in diverse locations” as well as thirty-one priests and sixty deacons for the city of Rome.

In spite of the limitations on him, Siricius energetically tried to assert the authority of his see. In the east, he attempted to assume some administrative responsibility in Illyria by instructing Archbishop Anysius of Thessalonica to see to it that episcopal ordinations were carried out properly. The pope wished to restrict the influence not only of the see of Constantinople, which also claimed authority over Thessalonica, but also of Ambrose in Milan. Ambrose, however, had anticipated Siricius and already exercised a supervisory role in Illyria. In 381, at the emperor’s request, he had assembled a council at Aquileia to investigate irregularities in the Illyrian church. As a result, Siricius made little progress there.

Siricius also belatedly became involved in a schism that had occurred at Antioch, where there were rival claimants to the bishopric. Ambrose in 391 had been instrumental in the summoning of a church council in southern Italy, at Capua, to consider the matter, and the results were forwarded to the East. Although Siricius must have been involved, the extent of his participation is uncertain. Subsequently, according to the writer Severus of Antioch, Siricius wrote to the Antiochenes on his own initiative. He recommended that there should be only one bishop, whose election conformed with the canons of the Council of Nicaea. Shortly thereafter, the Council of Caesarea did in fact recognize the claimant who met Siricius’s criteria.

In the north, Siricius became involved in other ecclesiastical controversies. In 386, he wrote to the emperor Magnus Maximus, then resident in Trier, about a priest named Agroecius, whom Siricius accused of having been wrongfully ordained. Maximus’s reply survives. Noting that the matter should be dealt with by the Gallic bishops themselves, the emperor answered:

But as regards Agroecius, whom you claim had wrongly risen to the rank of presbyter, what can I decree more reverently on behalf of our catholic religion than that catholic bishops judge on this very matter? I shall summon a council of those who dwell either in Gaul or in the Five Provinces, so it may judge with them sitting and considering the matter.

Maximus also forwarded to Siricius the results of his investigations into the Priscillianists, whom he referred to as “Manichees.” Priscillian and his followers already had appealed to Ambrose and to Siricius’s predecessor Damasus and had been rebuffed by both. In 386 they were condemned at a synod at Trier, and Priscillian and several of his supporters were executed; others were sent into exile. This heavy-handed secular interference in ecclesiastical affairs was considered a bad precedent, and Siricius, like Ambrose and Martin of Tours, seems to have denied Communion to those bishops, such as Felix of Trier, who had supported the executions. The resultant “Felician schism” lasted until c. 400. This incident may be behind the curious account in The Book of the Popes of Siricius’s discovery of Manichaeans in Rome and his exiling of them.

Like many of his successors, Siricius attempted to impose his authority through church councils held in Rome, attended at this time primarily by local bishops. A synod assembled on January 6, 386, dealt with matters of ecclesiastical discipline. A council of 385-386 issued nine canons concerning ecclesiastical discipline, which were sent to the African church on January 6, 386. This council met in Saint Peter’s Basilica and is the first known to have met at the Vatican.

Another local concern of Siricius was a problem caused by a certain Jovinian, who, after abandoning his life as a monk, began to teach that ascetic practices such as celibacy and fasting served no useful purpose. Jovinian even went so far as to claim that Mary, by having children, had ceased to be a virgin. He also asserted that those who had been properly baptized were incapable of sin. Jovinian was denounced to Siricius, who in 390 or 392 assembled a local synod that excommunicated the former monk and eight of his followers. This news was carried to Milan, where Jovinian had fled, but Ambrose assembled another synod and excommunicated him again.

Siricius’s papacy also saw the final decline of pagan worship. The emperor Theodosius I, in a series of decrees, formalized Christianity as the only legal religion in the Empire. As a result, this period saw the construction and expansion of the churches and sacred buildings at Rome, often at the expense of pagan temples. The Basilica of Saint Paul on the Via Ostiensis (Ostian Way) was rebuilt during Siricius’s papacy in the same general shape it now has and was dedicated in 390. Siricius also rebuilt the Church of Saint Pudentiana. On November 26, 399, Siricius died, and he was buried in the cemetery of Priscilla, at the Basilica of Sylvester, on the Via Salaria. By the seventh century, his tomb was venerated by pilgrims coming to Rome.

Significance

A man of only middling talents, Siricius was more of an administrator than an innovator. In the realm of ecclesiastical politics, he had to compete with others, such as the bishops of Milan and Constantinople, who were situated in Imperial capitals and who had Imperial support. Nevertheless, Siricius, who had a strong view of the rights and responsibilities of the bishop of Rome, did what he could to strengthen the position of his see. During his tenure, the pope ceased to be merely another bishop and truly began to assume an empire-wide presence.

Siricius established a secure foundation for papal authority on which several of his fifth century successors were to build. His Italian rival Ambrose had died in 397, and with the withdrawal of the Imperial administration to Ravenna, Milanese authority rapidly declined. In the fifth century, Innocent I and Leo I were successful in establishing a papal vicariate in Illyria. Leo, later called “the Great,” also was able to gain the support of the Imperial government in his attempts to assert his ecclesiastical hegemony at least in the western part of the Empire.

The last years of the fourth century were a very critical period of Church history. Not only was the Roman Empire beginning to split into eastern and western halves, but also the “barbarian invasions” already had begun in the East, even though they had yet to affect the West. As the influence of the state weakened, the Church assumed greater authority. Even though Siricius could not foresee the fall of the Western Empire later in the fifth century, his attempts to establish the authority of the see of Rome set many precedents for the great power the popes soon were to exercise.

Bibliography

Duchesne, Louis. Early History of the Christian Church from Its Foundation to the End of the Fifth Century. Reprint. London: John Murray, 1957-1960. Still one of the best histories of the early Church, placing Siricius’s activities in their broader historical context. Based primarily on the original sources.

Duffy, Eamon. Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001. Examines the history of the Roman papacy, from its beginnings nearly two thousand years ago to the reign of Pope John Paul II.

Loomis, Louise Ropes, trans. The Book of the Popes. Vol. 3. New York: Octagon, 1965. This volume contains a translation of the biography of Siricius found in Liber pontificalis, a compilation that dates back to the sixth or seventh century. It is a mixture of tradition, myth, and solid historical fact.

McBrien, Richard P. Lives of the Popes: The Pontiffs from Saint Peter to John Paul II. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999. Profiles all 262 Roman popes to date and includes essays on the papal election process as well as timelines of papal, ecclesiastical, and secular persons and events. Also rates all the popes, from the best to the worst.

MacDonald, J. “Who Instituted the Papal Vicariate of Thessalonica?” Studia Patristica 4 (1961): 478-482. A discussion of Siricius’s role in the ecclesiastical politics of Illyria in the late fourth century, with references to other, similar studies.