Acacius, Patriarch of Constantinople

ACACIUS, Patriarch of Constantinople. - From 471 to 489. When Basiliscus, usurper of the imperial throne, imposed on the bishops the signing of an encyclical letter of his in which he condemned the doctrine of the Council of Chalcedon, A., driven by popular sentiment and by the monks of Constantinople, refused and, as a sign of mourning, draped in black the chair and the altar of Hagia Sophia. This earned him appointment as legate by Pope Simplicius, and he took advantage of this office to depose many heretical bishops, protected also by the favor of the emperor Zeno, who had returned to the throne after driving out the usurper Basiliscus (476).

It was not, however, disinterested zeal, in truth, that animated A.: he strove to win absolute independence from Rome and supremacy over all the Eastern Churches. It was in fact probably by him, without any prior consultation with Rome, and certainly with his signature, that the Henotikon was compiled, issued by Zeno (482): a formula of faith intended to unite, as its name says, all the subjects of the empire. In it the faith sanctioned at Nicaea and at Constantinople was professed, but that of the Council of Chalcedon was tacitly renounced.

Pope Felix III (II), through legates, ordered A. to give an account of his conduct at Rome; when this order failed, he excommunicated and deposed him. The papal sentence, brought to Constantinople, was pinned by a daring monk onto the pallium of A. while he was officiating in Hagia Sophia. In revenge A. erased the name of Felix III from the diptychs and inaugurated that schism which, after him, was called the Acacian. It lasted from 484 to 519, when, on Easter day, the patriarch John solemnly accepted the profession of faith proposed by Pope Hormisdas and struck from the sacred diptychs A., Zeno and others.

Gaetano Corti