Gelasius of Caesarea (; died 395) was bishop of

Caesarea Maritima Caesarea Maritima (; Greek: ''Parálios Kaisáreia''), formerly Strato's Tower, also known as Caesarea Palestinae, was an ancient city in the Sharon plain on the coast of the Mediterranean, now in ruins and included in an Israeli national pa ...

from 367 to 373 and from 379 to his death. He was also an author, though none of his work survives. Gelasius participated in the

First Council of Constantinople The First Council of Constantinople ( la, Concilium Constantinopolitanum; grc-gre, Σύνοδος τῆς Κωνσταντινουπόλεως) was a council of Christian bishops convened in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) in AD 381 b ...

in 381. He was forced to surrender his position as bishop to the semi-

Arian Arianism ( grc-x-koine, Ἀρειανισμός, ) is a Christological doctrine first attributed to Arius (), a Christian presbyter from Alexandria, Egypt. Arian theology holds that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who was begotten by God ...

ist Euzoius between the years of 373 and 379, because in matters of

Christology In Christianity, Christology (from the Greek grc, Χριστός, Khristós, label=none and grc, -λογία, -logia, label=none), translated literally from Greek as "the study of Christ", is a branch of theology that concerns Jesus. Diff ...

he was a staunch Nicaean. According to

Jerome Jerome (; la, Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος Σωφρόνιος Ἱερώνυμος; – 30 September 420), also known as Jerome of Stridon, was a Christian priest, confessor, theologian, and historian; he is co ...

, his writing was careful and polished, though he never published what he wrote.Tixeront, Joseph. ''A Handbook of Patrology'' 1923, p. 211. However, in the fifth century

Socrates Scholasticus Socrates of Constantinople ( 380 – after 439), also known as Socrates Scholasticus ( grc-gre, Σωκράτης ὁ Σχολαστικός), was a 5th-century Greek Christian church historian, a contemporary of Sozomen and Theodoret. He is th ...

cites some of his works, and it seems that he wrote a sequence to Eusebius' Church History, preserved in the first fifteen chapters of Rufinus' tenth book added to Eusebius' history, which includes the legend of

Helena Helena may refer to: People *Helena (given name), a given name (including a list of people and characters with the name) *Katri Helena (born 1945), Finnish singer *Helena, mother of Constantine I Places Greece * Helena (island) Guyana * H ...

's discovery of the

True Cross The True Cross is the cross upon which Jesus was said to have been crucified, particularly as an object of religious veneration. There are no early accounts that the apostles or early Christians preserved the physical cross themselves, althoug ...

. Gelasius was nephew to

Cyril of Jerusalem Cyril of Jerusalem ( el, Κύριλλος Α΄ Ἱεροσολύμων, ''Kýrillos A Ierosolýmon''; la, Cyrillus Hierosolymitanus; 313 386 AD) was a theologian of the early Church. About the end of 350 AD he succeeded Maximus as Bishop of ...

,Tixeront, Joseph. ''A Handbook of Patrology'' 1923, p. 210. the most vigorous advocate for Jerusalem in the later fourth century, and at whose deathbed request Gelasius wrote his history. He is also the first to mention the rôle of Helena, the mother of

Constantine the Great Constantine I ( , ; la, Flavius Valerius Constantinus, ; ; 27 February 22 May 337), also known as Constantine the Great, was Roman emperor from AD 306 to 337, the first one to convert to Christianity. Born in Naissus, Dacia Mediterran ...

, in the finding (''inventio'') of the Holy Wood, the Cross of Christ in Jerusalem under the Temple of Venus on the hill known as

Golgotha Calvary ( la, Calvariae or ) or Golgotha ( grc-gre, Γολγοθᾶ, ''Golgothâ'') was a site immediately outside Jerusalem's walls where Jesus was said to have been crucified according to the canonical Gospels. Since at least the early medie ...

.John Wortley, "The Wood of the True Cross," in ''Studies on the Cult of Relics in Byzantium up to 1204'' (Farnham and Burlington 2009), VI 3. Cf. S. Borgehammar, "How the Cross was found, from event to medieval legend," ''Bibliotheca Theologiae Practicae'' 47 (Stockholm 1991) 54-5 and J.W. Drijvers, ''Helen Augusta: the mother of Constantine the Great and the legend of her finding the True Cross'' (Leiden 1991).

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