Pope Felix

The name Pope Felix does not identify a single historical person. Several bishops of Rome, and at least one widely classified antipope, used it, and later numbering was further confused by medieval lists. No verified year of birth survives for any of them, and later compilers sometimes mixed archival notices with pious legend. What follows therefore distinguishes the principal figures rather than assigning one set of dates or places to the bare title.

Pope Felix I was Bishop of Rome in the third century, from about 269 until his death in 274. Contemporary evidence for his life is thin. The Liber Pontificalis later presents him as a Roman and attributes to him a ruling that Masses should be celebrated in connection with the tombs of martyrs; modern historians treat that attribution with caution. Tradition places his burial in the Catacomb of Callixtus on the Via Appia. He has long been venerated as a saint, with a customary feast on 30 December.

In 355, during the Arian controversies, the emperor Constantius II sent Pope Liberius into exile and had the Roman archdeacon Felix consecrated in his place. This Felix II is generally regarded as an antipope. When Liberius returned, Felix was driven out. Confusion between this man and an earlier martyr named Felix, together with shifting papal catalogues, produced lasting irregularities in the numbering of later popes called Felix.

Pope Felix III (so numbered in modern Catholic lists) reigned from 483 to 492. He was a Roman of a distinguished family and the son of a priest also named Felix. Sources indicate that he had been married and was the father of children before his election; through that descent he became an ancestor of Pope Gregory I. His pontificate was dominated by the Acacian schism. He rejected the Henotikon of the emperor Zeno and excommunicated Patriarch Acacius of Constantinople, a breach that lasted for decades. He died in 492 and is commemorated as a saint on 1 March.

Pope Felix IV held the see from 526 to 530, with the support of the Ostrogothic court. Tradition places his origin in Samnium. He is remembered for converting a pagan temple in the Roman Forum into the basilica of Saints Cosmas and Damian. Near the end of his life he sought to designate his own successor, which provoked resistance among the Roman clergy. He died in 530. A much later claimant, Amadeus VIII of Savoy, took the name Felix V when elected at Basel in 1439; he is counted as an antipope and resigned in 1449. Precise birth years, many family details, and specific patronages are not securely documented for any of these men.