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Updated: June 1, 2025
But while, immediately after the death of Acacius, his successors, Fravita and Euphemius, were renouncing his pretensions, at the same time that they would not surrender his person, it is well to see how the bishops of eastern Illyricum, subjects of the emperor Anastasius, addressed the Pope upon his accession.
During fifteen years, from 496 to 511, as Euphemius had resisted the covert heresy of Anastasius, so did Macedonius, and, like him, he fell at last before the enmity of the emperor. Upon the deposition of Macedonius, the emperor obtained the election of Timotheus, who during seven years was his docile instrument.
Anastasius disregarded all that the Pope said. He persecuted to the utmost his bishop Euphemius, because, though not admitted to communion by the Pope, inasmuch as he refused to erase from the diptychs the name of Acacius, he yet vigorously maintained the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon.
This condition he maintained, acknowledging Euphemius as orthodox, but not as bishop, because he would not remove from the diptychs the names of two predecessors who had died outside of communion with the Roman See. Euphemius had himself subscribed the Henotikon of Zeno, without which the emperor would never have assented to his election; but he confirmed in a synod the Council of Chalcedon.
Thus he succeeded in overthrowing two bishops of his capital Euphemius and Macedonius neither of whom lived or died in communion with Rome, because, though virtuous and orthodox in the main, they would not surrender the memory of Acacius. They had, moreover, one grievous blot on their conduct as bishops.
What the subsequent patriarchs, Euphemius and Macedonius, alleged, was that he was so rooted in the minds of the people that they could not venture to condemn him by removing his name from commemoration in the diptychs. In 490, Euphemius followed in the see of Constantinople. He was devoted to the Council of Chalcedon, and ever honoured in the East as orthodox.
So the emperor Anastasius had involved Macedonius of Constantinople in many accusations and expelled him from his see, and banished him to Gangra. Not long after, having sent away both him and his predecessor Euphemius, under pretence that the patriarchs had arranged with each other to take refuge with the Goths, he slew them with the sword.
How should we offer the old bond of the apostolic ordinance to men who belong to another communion, and prefer to it, according to your own testimony, condemned heretics." Euphemius, then, is inconsistent: he must either admit to his own communion all who are in communion with heretics, or remove all.
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