Saint Sixte III
Pape
(44 ème) de 432 à 440 (✝ 440)
Il fut un ardent
défenseur du concile d'Ephèse qui avait reconnu à la Vierge Marie le titre de
"Mère de Dieu". Il fit rebâtir la basilique de Sainte-Marie Majeure à
Rome, l'embellissant de mosaïques remarquables. Il accomplit également une œuvre
d'apaisement entre l'Église de Rome et les Églises d'Orient. Nous connaissons
sa correspondance avec saint
Augustin qui l'invite à une grande vigilance contre les pélagiens.
À Rome sur la voie Tiburtine, près de saint Laurent, en 440, saint
Sixte III, pape, qui apaisa les dissensions entre le patriarcat d’Antioche et
celui d’Alexandrie et donna au peuple de Dieu, dans la ville de Rome, la
basilique de Sainte-Marie sur l’Esquilin.
Martyrologe
romain
Saint Sixte III (432-440)
Il naquit à Rome.
Amateur d'art, il embellit la basilique de
Sainte-Marie-Majeur, la dotant de mosaïques qui sont, encore de nos jours,
admirés par tous.
Il fit construire aussi l'église de Saint-Laurent, à
Lucina.
Pope St. Sixtus
III
(XYSTUS).
Consecrated 31 July,
432; d. 440. Previous to his accession
he was prominent among the Roman
clergy and in correspondence with St. Augustine. He reigned during the Nestorian and Pelagian controversies, and it was probably owing to
his conciliatory disposition that he was falsely
accused of leanings towards these heresies. As pope he approved the Acts
of the Council of Ephesus and
endeavoured to restore peace between Cyril of Alexandria and John of Antioch. In the Pelagian controversy he frustrated the attempt of Julian of Eclanum to be readmitted to communion
with the Catholic Church. He defended the pope's right
of supremacy over Illyricum against the local bishops and the ambitious
designs of Proclus of Constantinople.
At Rome he restored the Basilica
of Liberius, now known as St.
Mary Major,
enlarged the Basilica of St.
Lawrence-Without-the-Walls, and obtained precious gifts
from the Emperor Valentinian III for St.
Peter's and the Lateran Basilica. The work which asserts that the consul Bassus
accused him of crime is a forgery. He is the author of eight letters (in P.L.,
L, 583 sqq.), but he did not write the works "On Riches", "On
False Teachers", and "On Chastity" ("De divitiis",
"De malis doctoribus", "De castitate") attributed to him. His
feast is kept
on 28 March.
Sources
DUCHESNE (ed.), Lib. Pont., I
(Paris, 1886), 126-27, 232-37; BARMBY in Dict.
Christ. Biog., s.v. Sixtus (3); GRISAR, History
of Rome and the Popes, tr. CAPPADELTA, I (St. Louis, 1911), nos. 54, 135,
140, 144, 154.
Weber, Nicholas. "Pope St. Sixtus III." The Catholic
Encyclopedia. Vol. 14. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. 28 Mar. 2016
<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14032a.htm>.
Ecclesiastical
approbation. Nihil
Obstat. July 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John
Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.
March 28
St. Sixtus III., Pope
HE was a priest among the Roman
clergy in 418, when Pope Zozimus condemned the Pelagian heretics. Sixtus was
the first, after this sentence, who pronounced publicly anathema against them,
to stop their slander in Africa that he favoured their doctrine, as we are
assured by St. Austin and St. Prosper in his chronicle. The former sent him two
congratulatory letters the same year, in which he applauds this testimony of
his zeal, and in the first of these letters professes a high esteem of a
treatise written by him in defence of the grace of God against its enemies. It
was that calumny of the Pelagian heretics that led Garnier into the mistake,
that our saint at first favoured their errors. But a change of this kind would
not have been buried in silence. After the death of St. Celestine, Sixtus was
chosen pope, in 432. He wrote to Nestorius to endeavour to reclaim him after
his condemnation at Ephesus, in 431: but his heart was hardened, and he stopped
his ears against all wholesome admonitions. The pope had the comfort to see a
happy reconciliation made, by his endeavours, between the Orientals and St.
Cyril: in which he much commended the humility and pacific dispositions of the
latter. He says, “that he was charged with the care and solicitude of all the churches
in the world, 1 and that it is unlawful for any one
to abandon the faith of the Apostolic Roman Church, in which St. Peter teaches
in his successors what he received from Christ.” 2 When Bassus, a nobleman of Rome,
had been condemned by the emperor, and excommunicated by a synod of bishops for
raising a grievous slander against the good pope, the meek servant of Christ
visited and assisted him in person, administered him the viaticum in his last
sickness, and buried him with his own hands. Julian of Eclanum or Eeulanum, the
famous Pelagian, earnestly desiring to recover his see, made great efforts to
be admitted to the communion of the Church, pretending that he had become a
convert, and used several artifices to convince our saint that he really was
so: but he was too well acquainted with them to be imposed on. This holy pope
died soon after, on the 28th of March, in 440, having sat in the see near eight
years. See his letters, Anastasius’s Pontifical, with the notes of Bianchini,
&c.
Rev. Alban Butler (1711–73). Volume
III: March. The Lives of the Saints. 1866.
