LIBERIUS, Pope. - Nothing certain is known of his life before the papacy: according to the Liber Pontificalis he was Roman by birth; according to the epitaph, which is not certainly his, he would have been a lector and then for some years a deacon.
I. THE PONTIFICATE
The beginnings of his pontificate, which ran from 17 May 352 to 23 Sept. 366, coincide with the campaign unleashed by the emperor Constantius II to impose on all bishops the repudiation of the ὁμόνων and the condemnation of Athanasius. Liberius did not remain idle. He invited Athanasius to Rome, who instead sent a memorial signed by 80 Egyptian bishops. Liberius had it examined in a synod and declared himself in solidarity with Athanasius. At the same time he sent an embassy to Constantius at Arles, to implore the convocation of a general council at Aquileia. The Emperor had it held at his residence in Arles (353) and succeeded in having Athanasius condemned even by the Roman legates. Only Paulinus of Trier refused, and he was exiled. Saddened by the defection of his legates, Liberius asked for a new council, which the Emperor fixed at Milan (355). But once again violence and threats prevailed over those assembled, with the exception of the Roman legates, Eusebius of Vercelli, Lucifer of Cagliari and Dionysius of Milan, who were exiled and whose sees were occupied by compliant bishops. Liberius consoled them with a letter, in which he commended himself to their prayers for the trial that awaited him. Indeed, shortly afterwards the eunuch Eusebius arrived in Rome with the task of inducing Liberius to condemn Athanasius, and having failed in this, he had him seized by night and taken to the court at Milan.
There too Liberius conducted himself with admirable fortitude and dignity, so that Constantius exiled him to Berea in Thrace (355) and put the archdeacon Felix in his place. Toward the end of 357 Liberius was brought to the court of Sirmium, where he cooperated with Basil of Ancyra in turning imperial favor away from the Anomoeans toward the moderate faction. During 358 Liberius was able to return to Rome, welcomed with joy and affection by the faithful, who would hear nothing of a dual pontificate, Liberius and Felix, so that the latter, after a futile attempt to resume power, withdrew for good. Liberius neither took part in nor sent legates to the Council of Rimini (359), which later allowed him to condemn its decisions, to associate himself with the conciliar initiatives taken at the Synod of Alexandria (362) and to prescribe to the Italian bishops that they forgive their brothers who had sincerely returned to the Nicene faith, thus preventing the Luciferian schism from establishing itself in Italy. In 366 three bishops arrived in Rome, legates of 64 Homoean bishops, to restore communion with the Apostolic See. Liberius required that they accept in writing the Nicene faith, condemn the formula of Rimini and all errors contrary to that faith, and recognize the pontifical rights in case of controversies. This obtained, he granted his communion and gave them letters addressed to the 64 bishops and to all the orthodox of the East, which were read and approved at the Council of Tyana and would have brought about a full pacification, had not the emperor Valens intervened to prevent it. In the meantime, however, Liberius had already died. To him is due the construction of the Liberian Basilica, renewed by Sixtus II (St. Mary Major). His name was inscribed in the Hieronymian Martyrology, while it was excluded from the Roman Martyrology, owing not so much to the calumnies of the Liber Pontificalis, which presents him as a heretic and persecutor of Catholics, as to the weakness with which he would have bought his return to Rome.
II. THE FALL
It is a disputed question. Among the Fathers of the Church, St. Athanasius alludes to it twice: in the Apologia contra arianos, written in 350 and expanded around 360, he mentions L. among the bishops favorable to him; however, he adds that he did not endure to the end the privations of exile (ch. 8); in the Historia arianorum ad monachos, written toward the end of 357, he says that L., after two years of exile, overcome by threats of death, wavered and subscribed (ch. 41). Both passages seem to indicate, in their context, that this consisted in the abandonment of Athanasius. St. Hilary, in the invective launched in 360 against Constantius, writes that he does not know whether the Emperor committed greater impiety in exiling L. or in sending him back (Contra Constantium, ch. 2). St. Jerome, both in the Chronicon (Ad an. Abr., 2365 = a. 352) and in the De viris illustribus (ch. 97), speaks of the subscription of a heretical formula. The 1st document of the Collectio Avellana, in reporting Constantius's response to the requests of the Romans: "You will have L. better than he departed," comments: "This indicated the consent with which he had yielded to the perfidy." Rufinus finally reports, without adopting either one, the two current versions; of the return bought by L. with acquiescence to the imperial will, or due to Constantius's compliance with the requests of the Roman people (Hist. eccl., I, 27).
It is evident that at the time of L.'s return to Rome there was a rumor circulating that L. had yielded in something to Constantius. The Greek historian Sozomen, who writes on good information in the 5th century, says that L. would have acceded to one of the formulas of Sirmium, in agreement with Basil of Ancyra (v.), in order to restore peace in the East and return to Rome.
There remain, however, four letters that L. would have written from exile and are preserved in the Fragmenta of St. Hilary of Poitiers (v.); in them L. shows himself concerned to separate his responsibility from that of St. Athanasius and to obtain at any cost the return to Rome. The dispute over their authenticity is anything but closed, and it was recently noted that "the lack of the cursus velox and of the other characteristics proper to L.'s periodic style make very improbable the opinion of those who maintain that the four arhythmic letters were dictated by the Pope" (Fr. Di Capua, Il ritmo prosaico nelle lettere dei papi etc., Rome 1937, p. 240).
In any case, if there was a fault in L., this does not involve pontifical infallibility. For this to be involved, it would have been necessary that L., besides condemning Athanasius and entering into communion with the Orientals, had subscribed to an openly heretical formula and had intended to impose it on the whole Church. But this does not result at all. The question is therefore of a historical and not a theological order. In any case, the observation of P. Batiffol deserves to be recalled: "L. and Hilary [of Poitiers] had extended their hand to Basil of Ancyra; no one reproached Hilary for it; should we treat L. less well? For the moment Constantius was grateful to him for having cooperated in a peace whose conditions were believed secure and stable" (La paix constantinienne et le catholicisme, Paris 1914, p. 465 ff.).