Pope Felix III

Felix III was bishop of Rome from 483 to 492, a pivotal pope during the first major rupture between the Roman and Eastern churches. He is best remembered for excommunicating Acacius, patriarch of Constantinople, in 484 over the Henotikon, the doctrinal compromise issued by the emperor Zeno that sought to reconcile Chalcedonian and Miaphysite Christians by sidestepping the Council of Chalcedon's definition. This act precipitated the Acacian Schism, a roughly thirty-five-year breach between Rome and Constantinople. A Roman aristocrat by birth, Felix was a forceful defender of papal authority and Chalcedonian orthodoxy, and he was the great-great-grandfather of Pope Gregory the Great.