Agapetus I, Pope, Saint

AGAPETUS I, Pope, Saint. - Pontiff from 535 to 536. He was descended from a noble Roman family. His father, Gordian, was a priest of the titular church of Sts. John and Paul on the Caelian Hill (d. in 501 or 502). He had his residence nearby, where A. established a library whose inscription is known to us (G. B. De Rossi, Inscriptiones christianae urbis Romae, II, Rome 1888, pp. 16, 28). We know very little of A.'s life before the pontificate. He was archdeacon and succeeded John II (d. 8 May 535), five days after his death, very probably brought forward by the party of Dioscorus. The latter, five years earlier, had been elected by the Roman clergy in opposition to Boniface II (530-32), designated by Felix IV (526-32), with the aim of removing the papal election from Byzantine and Gothic interference (C. Mirbt, Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsttums und des römischen Katholizismus, Tübingen 1934, no. 201). Dioscorus died soon after, and Boniface condemned his memory and bound to himself a large part of his electors with the threat of excommunication. But A. immediately gave them satisfaction by gathering the clergy of Rome in assembly from the very first days of his pontificate. Before it he threw into the flames the document in which 60 Roman priests had subscribed to the condemnation of Dioscorus. It was a reaction to the recent attempts to introduce the practice that the Pope should designate his successor, against the ancient tradition that entrusted the election to the Roman clergy.

There survive from A. several documents regulating ecclesiastical affairs in various parts of Christendom: he accepted the appeal of Contumeliosus, deposed in the Council of Marseille presided over by Caesarius of Arles (533), and decreed that the trial be reheard before new judges (15 July 535). To Caesarius he refused the faculty of alienating the goods of his church for the benefit of the fund for the poor. He received the delegation of the African bishops, assembled in council at Carthage after their liberation from the Vandals (535), and in response to their questions he declared that a converted Arian could not receive ecclesiastical offices, and he recognized as just the council's request that no African cleric be received into the Roman Church if he were without the necessary documents. He supported his decisions with a collection of canons on the matter (9 Sept. 535). On the same subject of the Arians he gave a similar reply to the emperor Justinian (15 Oct. 535).

His relations with the latter soon became closer. Justinian, under the pretext of avenging the murder of Amalasuntha, had begun the conquest of Italy. Belisarius had already taken possession of Sicily. Theodahad, king of the Ostrogoths, frightened, ordered A. to ask the emperor to renounce the conquest of Italy and withdraw his troops, otherwise he would have all the senators massacred along with their wives and children. In order to procure the money for the journey, A. pawned part of the sacred vessels, which were later returned free of charge. He was received in the East triumphantly; but contrary to what the Liber Pontificalis says, an eyewitness (cf. C. Baronio, Annales, ad an. 536, n. 59, IX, Lucca 1741, pp. 543-45) and Liberatus (Breviarium causae Nestorianorum et Eutychianorum, 21: PL 68, 1038 ff.) assure us that A.'s political mission failed. Instead, following long and laborious negotiations, he succeeded in obtaining the expulsion of Anthimus, who, thanks to the support of the empress Theodora, had passed from the see of Trebizond to that of Constantinople and was suspected of Monophysitism. To succeed him A. himself elected and consecrated the priest and monk Menas (13 March 536). A few days after the approval of Justinian's profession of faith (18 March 536), he fell gravely ill. He died at Constantinople on 22 April 536 and received splendid funeral rites there. In the following September he was transported to Rome and buried in St. Peter's. He is venerated as a saint in the Latin Church on 20 September, the anniversary of his entombment in St. Peter's, and in the Greek Church on 17 or 18 April.

Ireneo Daniele