AGAPITUS I, POPE, saint. — Pontiff from 535 to 536. He was descended from a noble Roman family. His father, Gordianus, was a priest of the title of SS. Giovanni e Paolo on the Caelian Hill (d. 501 or 502). Nearby was the residence in which A. established a library, of which we know the inscription (G. B. De Rossi, *Inscriptiones christianae urbis Romae*, II, Rome 1888, pp. 16, 28). Very little is known of A.’s life before his pontificate. He was archdeacon and succeeded John II (d. 8 May 535), five days after his death, very likely brought to the papacy 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 papal elections from Byzantine and Gothic interference (C. Mirbt, *Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsttums und des römischen Katholizismus*, Tübingen 1934, no. 201). Dioscorus soon died, and Boniface condemned his memory and bound to himself a large part of his electors by threat of excommunication. But A. immediately satisfied them by convening the clergy of Rome in assembly during the first days of his pontificate. Before them he burned the document in which sixty Roman priests had subscribed to the condemnation of Dioscorus. It was a reaction against recent attempts to introduce the practice of the Pope desiring a successor, contrary to the ancient tradition that entrusted the election to the Roman clergy.
Some documents of A. remain that regulate ecclesiastical affairs in various parts of Christendom: he accepted the appeal of Contumeliosus, deposed at the Council of Marseille, presided over by Caesarius of Arles (533), and decreed that a new trial be held before different judges (15 July 535). To Caesarius he refused the faculty of alienating the goods of his church for the benefit of the poor fund. He received the delegation of African bishops, gathered in council at Carthage after their liberation from the Vandals (535), and in response to their inquiries declared that an Arian convert could not receive ecclesiastical offices and recognized as just the council’s request that no African cleric be received into the Roman Church unless in possession of the necessary documents. He supported his decisions with a collection of relevant canons (9 Sept. 535). On the same subject of the Arians he gave a similar reply to the Emperor Justinian (15 Oct. 535).
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 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 with their wives and children massacred. To procure the money for the journey A. pawned some sacred vessels, which were later returned without charge. He was received triumphantly in the East; but contrary to what the *Liber Pontificalis* says, an eyewitness (cf. C. Baronio, *Annales*, ad an. 536, no. 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, after long and laborious negotiations, he succeeded in obtaining the expulsion of Antimus, who, with the support of the Empress Theodora, had moved from the see of Trebizond to that of Constantinople and was suspected of Monophysitism. A. himself elected and consecrated the priest and monk Menas as his successor (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 was given splendid funeral rites. In the following September his body was taken 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 burial in St Peter’s, and in the Greek Church on 17 or 18 April.