John, bishop

Identified only as "John, bishop," this figure appears as a correspondent in the papal letter collections of Pope Hormisdas (r. 514-523) and Pope Gregory the Great (r. 590-604). John was one of the most common episcopal names in late antiquity, and the entry gives no see, no Latin form, and no dates, so it cannot be securely matched to any single known bishop; it may even conflate more than one person across the two collections, which are separated by roughly a century. Bishops named John are frequent in this period both in the Latin West and the Greek East (e.g., during the Acacian schism that Hormisdas worked to end, and among the many Italian, African, and Eastern bishops with whom Gregory corresponded). Honest assessment: an obscure correspondent who cannot be placed or dated with confidence on the available evidence.