Liberius

Pope Liberius was Bishop of Rome from 17 May 352 until 24 September 366. Contemporary evidence for his family and early career is extremely thin. The Liber Pontificalis describes him as a Roman by origin, and later writers have generally accepted that he was born in Rome, but no reliable source records the year of his birth or the details of his life before he succeeded Pope Julius I. He took office while the churches of the Roman Empire were still divided over the Nicene Creed of 325 and over the status of Athanasius of Alexandria, whom many Eastern bishops and the emperor Constantius II regarded as a disturber of the peace. The Western episcopate, including the Roman see under Julius, had largely supported Athanasius and the language of consubstantiality.

From the outset Liberius was pressed to join in the condemnation of Athanasius. After the Council of Arles in 353 and especially after the Council of Milan in 355, at which Constantius used exile and intimidation against dissenting Western bishops, Liberius still refused to subscribe. He was taken from Rome, held in detention, and then banished to Beroea in Thrace. During his absence the imperial court and a portion of the Roman clergy installed Felix II in the Roman see; later Catholic lists treat Felix as an antipope. The Roman people, according to several ancient historians, remained attached to Liberius.

What Liberius conceded in order to obtain his recall is the most disputed episode of his life. Fragments transmitted with the anti-Arian collection of Hilary of Poitiers include letters in Liberius's name in which he appears to break with Athanasius, to accept a doctrinal formula associated with the synods of Sirmium, and to seek restoration to his see. Sozomen, Jerome, and other fifth-century writers also report that he yielded under duress. The authenticity of every letter and the precise theological content of any formula he signed remain matters of scholarly debate; some Catholic apologists have argued that the most damaging texts are forgeries or that any signature was extorted and later repudiated. In 358 Constantius allowed him to return. Felix was obliged to give way, though he retained some following until his death a few years later. After the emperor's death in 361, Liberius openly supported the Nicene cause. He accepted the conciliatory measures associated with the Council of Alexandria in 362, which restored many bishops who had lapsed under pressure provided they accepted Nicaea, and he resisted the stricter Luciferian party, which refused communion with those who had compromised.

Later tradition credited Liberius with founding a basilica on the Esquiline Hill near the Macellum of Livia, called the Basilica Liberiana and subsequently identified with the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. The famous legend that the Virgin Mary caused snow to fall in August to mark the site of the church is a medieval story and is not found in fourth-century sources; the great Marian basilica in its present form is more securely connected with Pope Sixtus III in the fifth century, after the Council of Ephesus. Liberius died in Rome on 24 September 366 and was buried in the Cemetery of Priscilla on the Via Salaria. His death precipitated a bitter schism: Damasus and Ursinus were both elected, and the conflict involved serious street violence.

In later Christian memory Liberius is honored as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, where his feast is kept on 27 August. The Latin Church did not generally inscribe him in the Roman Martyrology as a saint, principally because of the reports that he had subscribed to a non-Nicene formula during his exile. His pontificate is frequently cited in historical theology as evidence both of Roman resistance to Arianizing emperors and of the vulnerability of the papacy when isolated and subjected to imperial coercion.