ntificate lasted four years
and eight months; during the whole course of which his extant letters show
that he was no less exposed to temporal abandonment than Felix, and no less
courageous in maintaining the pastorship of Peter.

But the death of the emperor Zeno in 491, and the death of Pope Felix III.
ten months afterwards, in 492, require us to make a short retrospect of the
temporal condition of empire and Church at this time. Zeno, receiving the
empire at the death of his young son by Ariadne, Leo II., in 474, had
reigned seventeen years, if we comprise therein the twenty months during
which the throne was occupied by the insurgent Basiliscus from 475 to 477,
precisely at the moment when Odoacer terminated the western empire. Zeno,
recovering the throne in 477, had acted as a Catholic during about four
years. Pope Simplicius had warmly congratulated him on the recovery of the
empire on the 8th October of that year. In 478, the Pope had thanked
Acacius for informing him that the right patriarch, Timotheus Solofaciolus,
had been restored at Alexandria. But from 482 all is altered. The chronicle
of Zeno's reign becomes a catalogue of misfortunes. The publication of his
Formulary of Union is a gross attack upon the spiritual independence of the
Church. He imposes it upon the eastern bishops on pain of expulsion. He
puts open heretics into the sees of Alexandria and Antioch. All this is
done under the advice and instigation of Acacius, who is the real author of
the Henotikon, and who completes his acts by open defiance of Pope Felix.
When Zeno died he left the empire a prey to every misery. In Italy, Herules
and Ostrogoths were desperately contending for the possession of the
country. Barbarians beyond the Danube incessantly threatened the
north-eastern frontiers. There was no truce with them but at the cost of
incessant payments and every sort of degradation. Egypt and Syria were torn
to pieces by the Eutychean heresy. The infamous surrender of Italy to
Theodorick in 488 has been touched upon. By that the support which the
Ostrogothic king had given to keep Zeno on a tottering throne, followed by
the terror which his discontent had caused at Constantinople, purchased
from the Roman emperor himself the sacrifice of Rome and all the land from
the Alps to the sea. Such was the man with whom the Popes Simplicius and
Felix had to deal. To him it was that, from a Rome which drew its breath
under an Arian Herule, the commander