Acacius

This record appears to conflate more than one late-antique figure named Acacius, since its letters span two collections a century apart. In the correspondence of Pope Simplicius (468-483), "Acacius" is Acacius, bishop (patriarch) of Constantinople from 471 to 489, the dominant figure in the Eastern church of his day and the central protagonist of the Acacian Schism, the first lasting rupture between Rome and Constantinople, triggered by the Henotikon of 482 and his communion with anti-Chalcedonian bishops; he was excommunicated by Pope Felix III in 484. In the letters of the fourth-century rhetorician Libanius of Antioch, "Acacius" denotes one of several correspondents of that common name, most likely Acacius the sophist of Caesarea, a rival rhetor, or a homonymous imperial official; these are otherwise lightly attested and known chiefly through the correspondence itself. Because the database merges these distinct persons, no single birth or death year applies to the record as a whole.