or their leader Odoacer,
one of the lowest extraction, but a tall, resolute, and intrepid man,
then an officer in the guards, and an Arian heretic, who was proclaimed
king at Rome in 476. He put to death Orestes, who was regent of the
empire for his son Augustulus, whom the senate had advanced to the
imperial throne. The young prince had only reigned eight months, and his
great beauty is the only thing mentioned of him. Odoacer spared his
life, and appointed him a salary of six thousand pounds of gold, and
permitted him to live at full liberty near Naples. Pope Simplicius was
wholly taken up in comforting and relieving the afflicted, and in sowing
the seeds of the Catholic faith among the barbarians. The East gave his
zeal no less employment and concern. Zeno, son and successor to Leo the
Thracian, favored the Eutychians. Basiliscus his admiral, who, on
expelling him, usurped the imperial throne in 476, and held it two
years, was a most furious stickler for that heresy. Zeno was no
Catholic, though not a stanch Eutychian: and having recovered the
empire, published, in 482, his famous decree of union, called the
Henoticon, which explained the faith ambiguously, neither admitting nor
condemning the council of Chalcedon. Peter Cnapheus, (that is, the
Dyer,) a violent Eutychian, was made by the heretics patriarch of
Antioch; and Peter Mongus, one of the most profligate of men, that of
Alexandria. This latter published the Henoticon, but expressly refused
to anathematize the council of Chalcedon; on which account the rigid
Eutychians separated themselves from his communion, and were called
Acephali, or, without a head. Acacias, the patriarch of Constantinople,
received the sentence of St. Simplicius against Cnapheus, but supported
Mongus against him and the Catholic church, promoted the Henoticon, and
was a notorious changeling, double-dealer, and artful hypocrite, who
often made religion serve his own private ends. St. Simplicius at length
discovered his artifices, and redoubled his zeal to maintain the holy
faith which he saw betrayed on every side, while the patriarchal sees of
Alexandria and Antioch were occupied by furious wolves, and there was
not one Catholic king in the whole world. The emperor measured every
thing by his passions and human views. St. Simplicius having sat fifteen
years, eleven months, and six days, went to receive the reward of his
labors, in 483. He was buried in St. Peter's on the 2d of March. See h