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John Talaia had announced his election to the Pope in order to be acknowledged by him; also, as was customary, to the patriarch of Antioch; but had sent his synodal letter by some indirect manner to Acacius, who thus received the notice by public report, rather than in the official way.
It was on the death of this patriarch, Timotheus Solofaciolus, in 482, that the clergy and many bishops had chosen John Talaia as his successor.
As Peter the Stammerer had gone to the emperor to get his election approved and supported by Zeno and Acacius, so John Talaia had solicited Pope Simplicius to confirm his election. This the Pope had been on the point of confirming, when he received a letter from the emperor accusing John Talaia, and urging the appointment of Peter the Stammerer.
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.
Incensed at what he considered the slight offered to him by John Talaia, he took up, with the utmost keenness against him, the cause of a rival, Peter the Stammerer, who had been elected by the Eutychean party. He worked upon the emperor's mind in favour of the Monophysite pretender.
The zealous monks of his own city withdrew from his communion, and sent one of themselves, Symeon, to Rome to inform the Pope of all that had happened, and disclose the faithless behaviour of his legates. In another letter the Pope had cited Acacius to appear at Rome to meet the accusation brought against him by John Talaia, the patriarch of Alexandria.
The eastern bishops crouched before the emperor's power and his patriarch's intrigues, who deposed those who were not in his favour, and tyrannised over the greater number, so that many fled to the West. John Talaia himself, the expelled patriarch of Alexandria, received the bishopric of Nola from the Pope, to whom he had appealed.
Leo's third successor called him to account in exactly the same terms as St. Leo would have used, and required him to meet at Rome the accusation brought against him by John Talaia, a duly elected patriarch of Alexandria, just as St. Julius, a hundred and forty years before, had invited the accusing bishops at Antioch to meet St. Athanasius before his tribunal.
Blent with that doctrine was the attempt of three emperors to substitute themselves as judges of doctrine for the Apostolic See and the bishops in union with it. At the moment when John Talaia was expelled from Alexandria, the Monophysite heresy, espoused by Acacius and imposed by Zeno, would have triumphed, save for the Popes Simplicius and Felix.
The Pope called a council, in which he considered the complaint now brought before him by John Talaia, as a hundred and forty years before St. Athanasius had carried his complaint to Pope Julius. It was resolved to support the ejected bishops, to maintain the Council of Chalcedon, and to request from the emperor the expulsion of Peter the Stammerer, who was usurping the see of Alexandria.
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