FELIX III, POPE. — Strictly speaking, he should be called FELIX II, because the previous one was an antipope. Pontiff from 483 to 492. His father, also named Felix, was a priest of the title of Fasciola (SS. Nereus and Achilleus). From the very first year of his pontificate, he witnessed the storm stirred up in Africa by the Vandals against Catholics, and after the persecution, he established in a synod the norms for the readmission of the “lapsi” into the Church.
But the most important event of his pontificate was the consummation of the Eastern schism, also known as the Acacian schism. Upon ascending the Chair of St. Peter, he learned of the publication of the Henotikon of the Emperor Zeno and of the intrigues to entrust the Church of Alexandria to the heretic Peter Mongus. John Talaia, the Catholic bishop driven from Alexandria, came to Rome to seek justice from the Pope. Felix, without hesitation, immediately sent a mission with numerous letters to Zeno and Acacius with the aim of defending the Council of Chalcedon and the dogmatic letter of St. Leo the Great, summoning the patriarch of Constantinople to answer the charges brought by John Talaia. The mission was difficult and delicate: the two legate bishops failed in their mandate through money and fear, allowing themselves to be swayed by the schismatics, even attending the solemn liturgy celebrated by Acacius, in which the name of Peter Mongus was solemnly inserted into the diptychs. Felix, informed by the monks faithful to Rome of the legates’ defection, convened a synod of 77 bishops in which he deposed the traitors and excommunicated Acacius. To deliver the sentence of excommunication in Constantinople, the defender Tutus was entrusted with the task; upon arriving in the East, he made contact with the monks, who, upon learning that Acacius refused to accept the papal document, affixed it to his cloak as he went to the church. Several of those monks paid for their boldness with their lives, others with imprisonment. Even Tutus later allowed himself to be corrupted and, having gone over to the schismatics, was deposed and excommunicated by the Pope. Acacius erased Felix’s name from the diptychs, and the schism came to divide the Eastern Church from Rome. Felix’s actions were justified, since the schemes of the Eastern bishops—ambitious intriguers and supporters of the Monophysite heresy—posed a continual danger to ecclesiastical unity. Felix died on March 1, 492, and was buried in the basilica of St. Paul, due to the close ties of his family with the basilica.
Agostino Amore