Confessor Pope Hormisdas

Hormisdas was born at Frusino, the modern Frosinone, in central Italy. The Liber Pontificalis identifies him as a Campanian by origin. He came from a family of some means. Before he received holy orders he was married and had a son, Silverius, who in 536 would himself be chosen bishop of Rome. Hormisdas later entered the Roman clergy and served as a deacon under Pope Symmachus (498–514). Those years were marked by the Laurentian schism, in which a rival claimant, Laurence, contested Symmachus’s election with the support of part of the Senate and clergy. Hormisdas remained on the side of Symmachus.

After the death of Symmachus, Hormisdas was elected pope on 20 July 514. The election appears to have been peaceful, suggesting that the worst of the Laurentian conflict in Rome had passed. Italy was then under the rule of the Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great, an Arian, who generally allowed the Catholic Church to manage its own affairs so long as public order was preserved. In the early years of his pontificate Hormisdas dealt with residual disciplinary cases from the schism, corresponded with bishops in Gaul and the Iberian Peninsula, and sought to uphold Roman canonical norms in the West.

The principal achievement of his reign was the end of the Acacian schism between Rome and Constantinople, which had lasted since 484. That rupture had followed Rome’s rejection of Emperor Zeno’s Henotikon and the condemnation of Patriarch Acacius of Constantinople, who had supported the compromise edict. Emperor Anastasius I (491–518) had remained hostile to a settlement on Rome’s terms. His successor, Justin I, a supporter of the Council of Chalcedon, together with his nephew Justinian, opened negotiations. Hormisdas dispatched legates bearing a profession of faith, subsequently called the Formula of Hormisdas. It required the condemnation of Acacius and of other opponents of Chalcedon, acceptance of the Tome of Pope Leo I and of the Council of Chalcedon, and recognition of the doctrinal authority of the Apostolic See. On 28 March 519 the formula was accepted in Constantinople by Patriarch John II and the emperor, and eucharistic communion between the two churches was restored. Many Eastern bishops subscribed to the formula in the following period. The document was later cited in arguments about the primacy of the Roman see.

Hormisdas spent his remaining years consolidating the reunion, receiving Eastern petitioners, and administering the Roman church under Gothic rule. He died in Rome on 6 August 523 and was buried in St. Peter’s Basilica. He is venerated as a saint and confessor in the Catholic Church, and his feast day is 6 August. Through the Formula of Hormisdas and through his son Silverius’s brief pontificate, he left a lasting mark on the fifth- and sixth-century papacy.