BELISARIO. — Celebrated Byzantine strategist. Born ca. 500, died in 565. Entrusted with the task of driving the Ostrogoths from Italy, he soon conquered Sicily and the southern part of the peninsula as far as Naples, and occupied Rome, placing it in a state of defense.
During the siege of Rome by Vitiges, B., although hesitant and not without reluctance (L. Duchesne, L'Eglise au VIe siècle, pp. 151–54), agreed in March 527 to depose Pope Silverius, who was accused of wishing to surrender the city to the Goths; he had him stripped of his priestly vestments and dressed in a monastic habit. Moreover, he had the Roman clergy elect as Pope the deacon Vigilius (v.), formerly apocrisarius in Constantinople and devoted to the empress. According to the concordant testimony of the Liber pontificalis (ed. L. Duchesne, I, pp. 291–393), Procopius (Anecdota, 1), and the Carthaginian deacon Liberatus (Breviarium, 20), the deposition of Silverius was a revenge exacted by Theodora, who thus intended, though in vain, to obtain from a Pope less hostile than the deposed pontiff to her policy of favoring the Monophysites the restoration to the patriarchal throne of Constantinople of Anthimus, previously deposed by Pope Agapitus.
Moreover, while B. was in Rome, he had made substantial gifts to the churches, such as the remarkable cross of 100 pounds of gold, on which all his victories were inscribed, intended for the tomb of St. Peter; he had founded a monastery on the Via Flaminia and a xenodochium for pilgrims on the Via Lata (Lib. pontif., ed. L. Duchesne, I, pp. 142 and 296).
Subsequently B. acted as intermediary between the empress and Pope Vigilius, both after the violence suffered by the Pontiff himself in the church of St. Peter in Constantinople, because he did not approve the « Profession of Faith of Justinian »; and in order to bring Vigilius back to Constantinople, when, to escape the untenable situation created for him by the emperor, he had sought refuge in Chalcedon; and again on 1 May 553, when he informed the Pope that Justinian would never accept one of his proposals concerning the Fifth Ecumenical Council, whose inauguration was imminent (5 May).
BELISARIO. - Alongside a certain Liberatus, he is presented as the author of two acrostic and telestic poems (v. CELESTIO), composed from the verses of Sedulius, which every 16 lines celebrate Sedulius antistes. They are believed to date from around the year 500, and their authors are described as scholastici. Cf. Anthologia latina, ed. A. Riese, Leipzig 1906, nn. 492 and 493. Antonio Ferrua