Saint Hormisdas

Hormisdas, a deacon from Frosinone, married before ordination and father of the future pope Silverius, was elected on 20 July 514 and took over a church still bruised by the Laurentian schism and out of communion with Constantinople. He healed the first by reconciling the Laurentian clergy, and he waited out the second. Twice the emperor Anastasius opened negotiations and twice broke them off; in 517 he told the pope he could put up with insults but not with orders.

Anastasius died in 518. His successor Justin I was an old soldier of Chalcedonian views, and his nephew Justinian wanted the West. Hormisdas sent legates with a document to be signed, not discussed. On 28 March 519, in the presence of the emperor, the patriarch John and the bishops with him signed the Formula of Hormisdas: Acacius and his successors were struck from the diptychs, the Monophysite patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch anathematized, and the reason given in the pope's words, that "in the apostolic see the Catholic religion has always been kept unblemished," because the Lord had said to Peter, "you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church." Some two hundred and fifty Eastern bishops added their names. The schism of thirty-five years was over on Rome's terms.

Hormisdas refused, in his last years, to endorse the formula of the Scythian monks that "one of the Trinity suffered in the flesh," which Justinian would later force through. He died on 6 August 523 and was buried in Saint Peter's; his feast is that day.