Simplicius, Saint, Pope

SIMPLICIUS, Saint, Pope. - A native of Tivoli, son of Castinus, he succeeded Hilary on 3 March 468. He died on 10 March 483. Despite his long pontificate, little information has come down to us about his activity.

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, and St. Lawrence Outside the Walls he established weekly rosters of cardinal priests for the administration of the Sacraments. Few letters and acts of S. are preserved; among them particularly important are the one to Bishop Zeno of Seville, appointing him his vicar for Spain, with the obligation of watching over the execution of the pontifical decrees, and two others addressed respectively to the bishop of Ravenna and to those of the Abruzzi concerning the appointments of bishops. He was buried in St. Peter's. Ado was the first to include him in his Martyrology, whence he passed into the Roman one, where he is commemorated on 2 March.

During his pontificate occurred the collapse of the Western Roman Empire at the hands of Odoacer (476), an event which nevertheless left the minds of his contemporaries unmoved, already accustomed as they were to barbarian invasions. More important were the vicissitudes of the Church of Alexandria, troubled by the Monophysite struggles and by the interference of the Byzantine Emperors. After the heretic Timothy Aelurus had been deposed and exiled, he was replaced by Timothy Salophaciolus, a moderate and charitable man who governed with skill and goodness, restoring peace to that Church. Things changed in 475, when Basiliscus was elected emperor of the East; he published an encyclical in which he condemned the Council of Chalcedon and the Tome of Pope Leo, and recalled Aelurus to Alexandria. In 476 Basiliscus was driven out and Zeno took up the reins of government again: Salophaciolus returned to Alexandria, but the Catholic faith suffered a hard blow, especially through the work of Acacius, patriarch of Constantinople, who, eager to increase his prestige, sought at any cost a compromise with the Monophysites. This was prepared by the election of Peter Mongus as bishop of Alexandria, despite the fact that Salophaciolus before dying had designated the Catholic John Talaia (v.) to succeed him, and shortly afterward by the publication of the Henotikon. Throughout all these changes S. was poorly informed and sometimes not in time; nevertheless he wrote several letters to Zeno and to Acacius asking for the removal of Peter Mongus from Alexandria, without however obtaining anything. Nor were his efforts to have Peter Fullo, another heretic installed in the Church of Antioch, deposed any more successful.

Agostino Amore