Confessor Pope Agapitus

Pope Agapetus I (also spelled Agapitus), venerated in the East as a confessor, was Bishop of Rome from 535 until his death in 536. He was born in Rome, the son of a priest named Gordianus who served at the church of Saints John and Paul on the Caelian Hill and who was killed during the civic violence connected with the Laurentian schism in the time of Pope Symmachus. Later tradition associated this family with Pope Felix III and, through that line, with the ancestry of Pope Gregory the Great. No reliable source records an exact year of birth. Before his election Agapetus served as archdeacon of the Roman Church. He succeeded Pope John II on 13 May 535 and was already of advanced age.

His pontificate lasted less than a year and unfolded amid the opening of Justinian’s Gothic War and the Christological disputes of the sixth century. In the West he confirmed the acts of a council at Carthage that regulated the reception of former Arians into the Catholic Church after the imperial reconquest of North Africa, and he dealt with questions of Roman church property and clerical order. The Ostrogothic king Theodahad, fearing a Byzantine invasion of Italy, compelled the pope to travel to Constantinople as an envoy to persuade Emperor Justinian I to halt or delay the campaign. Agapetus reached the imperial capital in early 536.

There he found the see of Constantinople occupied by Anthimus, formerly bishop of Trebizond, a prelate of anti-Chalcedonian (miaphysite) leanings installed with the support of Empress Theodora. Agapetus refused communion with Anthimus and required a clear profession of the faith of the Council of Chalcedon. When Anthimus would not comply, the pope, with Justinian’s eventual consent, deposed him and consecrated Mennas as patriarch of Constantinople. Western sources treated this as a notable defense of Chalcedonian orthodoxy and an assertion of Roman authority in the East, though the wider ecclesiastical settlement remained contested in later decades, including during the Three Chapters controversy. Agapetus also conferred with Justinian on doctrine and is reported to have received an imperial profession of faith.

He died in Constantinople on 22 April 536 after a brief illness. His body was brought back to Rome and buried in St. Peter’s Basilica. He is honored as a saint in both East and West: the Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates him as a confessor on 17 April; the Roman Martyrology lists him on 22 April; and the traditional Roman feast of the translation of his relics is 20 September. He belonged to no religious order. Surviving sources do not document a wife or children, nor do the principal hagiographical collections attach a well-established list of patronages to his name. His historical importance rests on the Constantinople mission and the deposition of Anthimus rather than on a long administrative reign in Rome.