The Roman Church And Its Bishops 443
clearly no longer in the king’s favour. Moreover, the incident immediately fol-
lowed Boethius’ trial and execution, at a time when Theoderic was increas-
ingly questioning the loyalty of his most powerful Roman subjects.84 It is likely
no coincidence that Theoderic’s most invasive act within the Roman church
occurred just after John I’s death, when he forced the ordination of his can-
didate, Felix IV, over a cleric preferred by members of the Senate. In sum,
Theoderic’s relations to the Roman church and its bishops follow no pattern
other than political contingency.
The relationship between pope and emperor has often been studied as the
clash between two irreconcilable conceptualizations of the church: an impe-
rial vision, which recognized the emperor’s expansive arm in religious affairs;
and a papal vision, which touted the papacy’s claims to Petrine authority as
the basis for its leadership of an ecumenical church, with limited imperial
participation.85 Many scholars have viewed the Ostrogothic period as an epoch
of weak imperial presence in Italy, when the ‘papal vision’ was on the rise. At
the centre of this questionable narrative are the Acacian schism (484–519) and
the rhetorical actions of Gelasius. The Acacian schism was rooted in theologi-
cal differences, which divided late 5th-century Christians over the nature of
Christ and the authority of the Council of Chalcedon (451).86 While Rome
and many Christians, especially in the West, upheld Chalcedon’s authority
and its definition of Christ as having two natures ‘in one person’, many other
churches and Christians, especially in the East, rejected the Chalcedonian
formulation and insisted upon a Christology that defined Christ as hav-
ing a single divine nature. When tensions between Chalcedonians and anti-
Chalcedonians became extreme in the East during the 480s, Acacius, the
bishop of Constantinople, helped the emperor Zeno publish a compromise
document called the Henotikon, which the emperor demanded Rome accept.
Simplicius and then Felix III balked (among other problems, the Henotikon did
not acknowledge the authority of Leo’s Tome, which had been influential in
the Chalcedonian formulation), and in 484 Felix III excommunicated Acacius,
removing his name from the Roman diptychs. Acacius responded in like, and
so the Acacian schism began.
Until 518 Rome was not in communion with Constantinople (among
other anti-Chalcedonian sees), and its relations with the imperial court were
84 Noble, “Theodoric and the Papacy”, pp. 419–23 handles this issue well.
85 See Meyendorff, Imperial Unity; Sotinel, “Emperors and Popes”; and Amory, People and
Identity, pp. 196–7.
86 The literature on the Acacian schism is vast. See Gray, “Legacy of Chalcedon” for an intro-
duction to the theological issues.