Liber Pontificalis (The Book of the Popes)

The Liber Pontificalis is anonymous. Each life follows a fixed pattern: the pope’s origin and length of reign, his decrees, his buildings and gifts to churches, the number of his ordinations, and his burial. The first compilation was made at Rome in the first half of the sixth century, and from then on lives were added, often soon after each pope’s death, down to the later ninth century.

Its value changes with the period. From about the end of the fifth century the entries were written by men close to the events and with access to the records of the Roman church, and they are an important source for the popes of the sixth to ninth centuries. For the first three centuries the compilers had little beyond older lists of names and years, and much of what they add, such as the liturgical rules assigned to individual early popes, reflects the customs of their own time. The long lists of Constantine’s gifts to the Roman basilicas in the life of Silvester are a special case and are widely thought to draw on real records. A citation from the early lives is evidence for what was believed at Rome in the sixth century, not for the first.