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Updated: May 19, 2025
If there was a degradation yet to be endured it would be that a Herule soldier of fortune should compel a Roman senate to send back the robes of empire to Constantinople, and be content to live under a Patricius, sprung from one of the innumerable Teuton hordes, and sanctioned by the emperor of the East; and Acacius would not forget that in the councils of that emperor he was himself chief.
But his example was followed in 482 by Zeno, who issued his Henotikon, drawn up it was supposed by Acacius of Constantinople, addressed to the clergy and people of Alexandria. Many of the eastern bishops, through fear of Zeno and his bishop Acacius, submitted to this imperial decree; many contended for the truth even to death against it.
This Acacius did, humbly begging the Pope's pardon for such a transgression of the due order and hierarchy, and repeating the offence against the Nicene order and constitution on the first opportunity. In the same way he has interfered with the elections at Alexandria.
One only point, he said, whatever might be his personal feeling, he could not concede, that regarding Acacius, since otherwise the living would be driven out of the Church for the dead, and great disturbances and blood-shedding would be inevitable. He left it to the Pope's consideration.
He rested on the emperor Zeno's support, who did everything at his bidding. Every arm of deceit and of violence he used equally. The monks, called, from their never intermitted worship, the Sleepless, in close connection with Rome, suffered severely. So Acacius passed the remaining five years of his life, dying in the autumn of 489.
As if to bring the danger nearer home to them, Eudoxius the new bishop of Antioch, and Acacius of Cæsarea convened a Syrian synod, and sent a letter of thanks to the authors of the manifesto. Next spring came the conservative reply from a knot of twelve bishops who had met to consecrate a new church for Basil of Ancyra. But its weight was far beyond its numbers.
Such a man and of course Acacius was shrewd enough to see it would have been a tower of strength to them. Unfortunately, for once Acacius was not all-powerful.
To lay down a parity between the ecclesiastical privileges of the two sees, Rome and Constantinople, because their cities were both capitals, is implicitly to deny altogether the divine origin of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. That is, to deny that the Church is a divine polity at all. The conduct of Acacius was to bring that matter to an issue. The end of it will show whether he was right or wrong.
Some evil-disposed person put Constantius on demanding from the new bishop a sermon on the crucial text 'The Lord created me. Acacius, who preached first, evaded the test, but Meletius, as a man of honour, could not refuse to declare himself. To the delight of the congregation, his doctrine proved decidedly Nicene. It was a test for his hearers as well as for himself.
The last letter we have of the Pope, dated November 6, 482, strongly censures Acacius for communicating nothing to him concerning the Church of Alexandria, and for not instructing the emperor in such a way that peace might be restored by him. On March 2, 483, Pope Simplicius died, and was succeeded by Pope Felix. John Talaia had come in person to Rome to lay his accusation against Acacius.
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