Hormisdas

Hormisdas was born about the year 450 at Frusino (modern Frosinone) in the territory of Campania near Rome, in the declining years of the Western Roman Empire. His Persian name is thought to have been given in honor of an exiled Persian noble, Hormizd, though the names of his father and son point to an ordinary Italian lineage. Before entering the ranks of the clergy he was married and became the father of a son, Silverius, who would himself later occupy the chair of Peter. After the death of his wife he became a deacon. During the Laurentian schism he stood among the most prominent clerical partisans of the legitimate Pope Symmachus and served as notary at the synod held at St. Peter's in 502. Two letters addressed to him by Magnus Felix Ennodius, bishop of Pavia, survive from the period when Ennodius sought the return of horses and money lent to the Apostolic See.

On 20 July 514 Hormisdas was elected bishop of Rome in an election free of the controversies that had marked the reign of his predecessor. One of his first acts was to heal the last remnants of the Laurentian schism in Rome by receiving back into communion those adherents who had not yet been reconciled. The greater part of his pontificate, however, was absorbed by efforts to end the Acacian schism, which had separated the Sees of Rome and Constantinople since 484 over the Henoticon of the Emperor Zeno and the policies of Patriarch Acacius.

Emperor Anastasius I, pressed by the revolt of the general Vitalian, opened negotiations. On 28 December 514 he invited the pope to a synod fixed for 1 July 515; a second, less courteous letter followed on 12 January 515. Hormisdas replied on 4 April, welcoming the prospect of peace while firmly defending the position of his predecessors. He convened a Roman synod and on 8 July announced the dispatch of an embassy composed of Bishops Ennodius of Pavia and Fortunatus of Catina, the priest Venantius, the deacon Vitalis, and the notary Hilarius. The pope's conditions were clear: public acceptance of the Council of Chalcedon and the letters of Pope Leo; anathematization of Nestorius, Eutyches, Dioscorus, Timothy Aelurus, Peter Mongus, Peter the Fuller, and Acacius with all their followers; the recall of exiles whose cases were reserved to the Apostolic See; and the sending to Rome of bishops accused of persecuting the orthodox. A second legation under Ennodius and Bishop Peregrinus of Misenum likewise failed. Anastasius attempted to bribe the envoys and, after defeating Vitalian, broke off negotiations on 11 July 517. The Liber Pontificalis records that the emperor died the following year, struck by a thunderbolt.

His successor, the Catholic Emperor Justin I, at once reversed Anastasius's religious policy. All the demands of Hormisdas were granted. The names of Acacius and of the Emperors Zeno and Anastasius were erased from the diptychs, and Patriarch John II of Constantinople accepted the Formula of Hormisdas. On 28 March 519, in the cathedral of Constantinople before a great throng, the end of the thirty-five-year schism was solemnly proclaimed and communion between East and West restored. Hormisdas also received into communion a number of Balkan bishops, including John of Nicopolis, archbishop of Epirus, who had broken with Constantinople.

Pope Hormisdas died in Rome on 6 August 523 after a reign of more than nine years. He was buried in Old St. Peter's Basilica; his tomb was later destroyed during the construction of the new basilica. The Church keeps his feast on 6 August.

Chiediamo l'intercessione di Hormisdas, e imitiamo oggi la santità di questa Vita.