Over at the National Review, Michael Brendan Dougherty assures us that The Realignment Won’t Purge Libertarians, to the effect, I guess, that the new, improved, Trumpified Republican Party won’t, or at least shouldn’t, exclude anti-woke libertarians “who emphasize free speech and inquiry” over tradition, particularly when it comes to religious matters. Trumpy conservatives like himself shouldn’t exclude these willing warriors just because they aren’t always, well, washed in the Blood of the Lamb. Summing up his expectations/predictions/wishes with a dramatic flourish that easily one-ups my secular skull, Mike concludes that “Battles over the role of religion in American life are unlikely to revive a pure Gelasian conception of ‘the liberty of the Church.’”
OK, Mike, so WTF is a “pure Gelasian conception”? Well, Mike may or may not have seen this coming, but there are two “Gelasians”. First listed on my browser is, via Wikipedia, of course, “an age in the international geologic timescale or a stage in chronostratigraphy, being the earliest or lowest subdivision of the Quaternary period/system and Pleistocene epoch/series. It spans the time between 2.588 ± 0.005 Ma (million years ago) and 1.806 ± 0.005 Ma. It follows the Piacenzian stage (part of the Pliocene) and is followed by the Calabrian stage.”
Which, I seriously bet, is not what Mike meant. Because there is another “Gelasian”, referring to Pope Gelasius I, who sat in the papal chair (in Rome) from 492 to 496 AD. During that time, he got into several pissing contests with both the Roman emperor, Anastasius, who by that time was resident in Constantinople, and the Patriarch of Constantinople, Euphemius. The “Eastern Church” advocated the Monophysite (“one nature”) “heresy” (dunno if they still do), claiming that Christ was fully divine, rather than god and man both, which the Roman church opposed. Gelasius insisted that the bishop of Rome (i.e., himself) was the head of “the Church” and that his authority took precedence over Patriarch and Emperor alike. His letter to Anastasius, known variously as “Famuli vestrae pietatis” and “duo sunt”, claiming that there were “two swords”—two authorities over men, the emperor and the pope, with the pope having the power to confer legitimacy on the emperor—laid foundations for the Catholic Church’s later claims to make and break kings and emperors (and anyone else who got in their way). Probably not what Mike’s evangelical pals like to hear, but, since the odds are very good that they won’t know what the hell he’s talking about, they’ll let it slide.
The geologic “Gelasian”, on the other hand, comes from Gelia, an ancient city in Sicily, founded by Greek colonists in 698 BC. The dividing line between the Pliocene and the Pleistocene, of which the Gelasian is the first age/stage, is visible in the rocks of Mount San Nicola, outside the city. The end of the Pliocene was marked, among other things, by the union of North and South America via the isthmus of Panama, leading to a massive change in the fauna (animals) as the South American species were largely replaced by their northern rivals. The union of the two continents ended the free circulation of ocean water around the globe, promoting global cooling and, ultimately, the Ice Ages. At the same time, in Africa, the first humans were getting their act together. Good times!
