Dioscor's Robber-Synod; and no Catholic could accept this compromise or sign a document which treated the last general council in such a way. Zeno's Henotikon is one of many attempts to shelve a hotly disputed question instead of solving it; such attempts are always doomed to failure.
But there were time-servers willing to please the Emperor, whatever he demanded. Peter Mongos willingly signed the Henotikon, in whose composition he had played a great part. He was restored to Alexandria by the Government; John Talaia, the Catholic Patriarch, was driven out and fled to Rome. Here he became the friend and counsellor of several Popes, notably of Gelasius I (492-496).[1] Mongos imposed the Henotikon on the clergy of Alexandria. But a number of extreme Monophysites (chiefly monks) would not accept it from their side, renounced his jurisdiction, and became the sect of the Akephaloi[2] So also in the Patriarchates of Antioch (where Peter the Fuller now came back in triumph, 485) and Jerusalem (where Martyrios, Juvenal's successor, accepted it) the Henotikon was imposed on equally reluctant Catholics and Monophysites.
From all sides complaints came to the Pope. At this time Felix II (or III,[3] 483-492) reigned. He sent legates to Constantinople to maintain Chalcedon and restore the deposed Catholic bishops. But Zeno threw them into prison, and then bribed them to accept Mongos's restoration. Just then John Talaia arrived in Rome, and was able to report to the Pope all that went on in the East. In 484 Felix held a Roman synod and excommunicated Acacius of Constantinople as responsible for the intrusion of Mongos and the Fuller, and as the author of the Henotikon. Once again we see Rome upholding the faith of a general council without compromise against the secular Government, while practically the whole East tamely accepted the tyrant's interference in a question of dogma.
- ↑ See "John Talaia" in the Catholic Encyclopædia. For his possible influence on the development of the Roman Liturgy see Fortescue: The Mass, pp. 164-165.
- ↑ Ἀκέφαλοι, "without a head."
- ↑ The numbers of all Popes Felix are given differently, according as one does or does not count Felix, the anti-pope in the time of Liberius (who held the see from 357 to 365), as Felix II.
