Saint Symmachus

On 22 November 498 the majority of the Roman clergy elected the deacon Symmachus, a Sardinian who had been baptized as an adult, in the Lateran; the same day the party that wanted peace with Constantinople, led by the senator Festus, elected the archpriest Laurentius in Santa Maria Maggiore. Both sides appealed to Theodoric, the Arian king of Italy, who ruled for Symmachus on the grounds that he had been chosen first and by more people. A synod of 499 then outlawed canvassing for the succession during a pope's lifetime, and Laurentius accepted a bishopric.

The peace lasted two years. In 501 Symmachus was accused of celebrating Easter on the wrong date, of unchastity, and of squandering church property; summoned to Ravenna, he fled back to Saint Peter's, and Theodoric appointed a visitor to run the Roman church while a synod tried the pope. The synod could not: after three sessions it declared in October 502 that no case had been proved and that the matter must be left to God, since the successor of Peter could not be judged by his inferiors. Laurentius returned, seized the Lateran and most of the city's churches, and held them for four years while clergy fought in the streets and priests were killed. Only in 506 did Theodoric, tired of it, order the churches returned to Symmachus.

Symmachus spent the rest of his reign at Saint Peter's, where he built the first papal residence, hospices for the poor, and a fountain in the atrium, and where he sent money to the African bishops exiled by the Vandals in Sardinia. He died on 19 July 514.