Emperor Zeno

Zeno (c. 425-491) was Eastern Roman emperor from 474 to 491, an Isaurian general (originally named Tarasis) who rose through marriage to Ariadne, daughter of Emperor Leo I. His reign saw the formal end of the Western Roman line in 476, when Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus and returned the imperial insignia to Constantinople; Zeno later channeled Odoacer's rival Theoderic the Ostrogoth into Italy. He is best remembered in church history for the Henotikon (482), a doctrinal compromise meant to reconcile Chalcedonian and Miaphysite Christians, which instead triggered the Acacian Schism and a decades-long rupture with Rome. The five letters he received from Pope Felix III belong to this conflict, in which the papacy pressed Zeno and Patriarch Acacius over the orthodoxy of the imperial settlement.