SIMPLICIUS, POPE, St. — A native of Tivoli, son of Castinus, he succeeded Hilarius on 3 March 468. He died on 10 March 483. Despite his long pontificate, few details have come down about his activities.
He dedicated the churches of St Stephen on the Caelian, of St Andrew in Catabarbara on the Esquiline, and of St Bibiana. In the basilicas of St Peter, St Paul, St Lawrence outside the Walls he established weekly turns of titular priests for the administration of the Sacraments. Few letters and acts of S. survive; among them are especially important one to Bishop Zeno of Seville appointing him his vicar for Spain, with the duty of overseeing the execution of papal decrees, and two others addressed respectively to the bishop of Ravenna and to those of the Abruzzi concerning episcopal appointments. He was buried in St Peter’s. Ado was the first to include him in his Martyrology, whence he passed into the Roman Martyrology, where he is commemorated on 2 March.
During his pontificate the fall of the Western Roman Empire at the hands of Odoacer took place (476), an event which, however, left contemporaries unmoved, already inured as they were to barbarian invasions. More significant were the events in the Church of Alexandria, troubled by Monophysite strife and the interference of the Byzantine emperors. The heretic Timothy Aelurus was deposed and exiled, and replaced by Timothy Salophaciolus, a moderate and charitable man who governed with skill and kindness, restoring peace to that Church. Matters changed in 475 when Basiliscus was elected emperor in the East; he issued an encyclical condemning the Council of Chalcedon and Pope Leo’s Tome and recalled Timothy to Alexandria. In 476 Basiliscus was driven out and Zeno resumed the reins of government: Salophaciolus returned to Alexandria, but the Catholic faith suffered a severe blow, especially through the agency of Acacius, patriarch of Constantinople, who, eager to increase his prestige, sought at all costs a compromise with the Monophysites. This was prepared for by the election as bishop of Alexandria of Peter the Fuller, despite the fact that Salophaciolus before his death GALAZIA (v.) as his successor, and shortly afterwards by the publication of the Henoticon. Throughout all these changes S. was ill-informed and sometimes too late; nonetheless he wrote several letters to Zeno and Acacius demanding the removal of Peter the Fuller from Alexandria, without however obtaining anything. Nor were his efforts to secure the deposition of Peter Fullo, another heretic installed in the Church of Antioch, any more successful.
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