Felix III

Pope Felix III (reigned 483-492), sometimes numbered Felix II because an earlier antipope named Felix was once counted in the papal succession, was the Roman bishop whose pontificate was dominated by the Acacian Schism, the first major rupture between the churches of Rome and Constantinople. Reacting against the Henotikon, the formula of union promoted by the Eastern emperor Zeno and Patriarch Acacius of Constantinople to reconcile Chalcedonians and Miaphysites, Felix convened a Roman synod in 484 and excommunicated Acacius, opening a breach that would last until 519. A Roman aristocrat and reputedly an ancestor of Pope Gregory the Great, he was a vigorous defender of the Council of Chalcedon and of Roman primacy; his surviving letters to the emperor, the Eastern bishops, and his own legates are central documents of late-fifth-century church politics.