Simplicius, Saint

▪ Italian saint

born , Tivoli, near Rome [Italy]

died March 10, 483, Rome; feast day March 10

      pope from 468 to 483. He became Pope St. Hilary's successor on March 3, 468, during a period that was turbulent ecclesiastically and politically.

      During Simplicius' pontificate the Eastern church was torn between orthodoxy and Monophysitism, a doctrine teaching that Christ has only one nature rather than two—i.e., human and divine—and in particular by disputes between partisans and opponents of the orthodox Council (451) of Chalcedon, which had condemned Monophysitism. When Basiliscus usurped power from the Eastern Roman emperor Zeno in January 475, he supported the Monophysites, who gained control of the key sees of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. When the emperor Zeno regained power from Basiliscus in August 476, it was assumed that he would restore orthodoxy in the East, but instead he pursued a conciliatory approach to the Monophysite controversy.

      In the meantime, Simplicius witnessed the end of the Western Roman Empire when no successor was nominated after the boy emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed in 476 by the barbarian Odoacer. By grant of Zeno, Odoacer then became patrician and in effect the first king of Italy.

      In 482 Zeno promulgated his Henotikon, a conciliatory document that reaffirmed the doctrines of the Council of Nicaea (325) and made a disparaging reference to the Council of Chalcedon. The Henotikon was acceptable to the Monophysites and produced some religious peace in the East. Acacius, the bishop of Constantinople, who had previously sided with the papacy in defense of Chalcedonian orthodoxy, now abandoned Simplicius and subscribed to the Henotikon, but his action caused a schism (the Acacian Schism) with Rome. Simplicius remained steadfast in upholding Chalcedonian orthodoxy and opposing Zeno's pro-Monophysitic policy.

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