St. Simplicius

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Welcome to Catholic Saints, the podcast about the lives of the saints and their

legacy for the church and for us. Today we are doing Pope Saint Simplichius. I'm

your host, Dr. Elizabeth Klein. I'm here with Dr. Jean-Paul Jouge. How are you

today, Dr. Jouge? Doing great. So I was curious. I send out a list of saints to

the professors and ask if they want to speak about any of these particular saints.

And I have to say I was a little surprised to see Saint Simplichius come back

on your top list. So I was going to ask you, what will you like? Yeah, that's the

one. I want that saint. So you're telling me you don't have a deep devotion as

Saint Pope Simplichius. I have to say I have never thought about him. Oh, you know,

it's always, you know, good baby name out there. That's right. Keep it simple. That's

right. I'm interested in, you know, petristic that is early Christian

controversies over Christ or Christological debates. And he was he was a Pope

right after or two popes after the Council of Calcedan. And so this is an

important council in defining right how how Christ is both how he is both fully

human and fully God and and so yeah, so for the listeners, I mean, I didn't

know a thing about this particular Pope, however, I was obviously aware of

the Christological controversies being my area of study as well. And so I don't

know as a little historical tidbit for our listeners, the Council of Calcedan,

even though it sort of defined the crisis fully Godfully man, this did not end

the controversies, but rather in some sense fueled them and by defining it

debates were continued after. This is also true of the famous Council of

Niceia. And so for anyone out there who thinks that councils always have the

last word or are self-interpreting, this is actually not the case throughout

all of church history. Councils are often followed by periods of discussion,

complications, unrest, division, as the church sort of has hashes these things

out. So things get resolved, new questions get opened. That's exactly that's

exactly right. And so we should be grateful to all of these theologians who

through their blood sweat and tears we have the doctrines of the faith that we

have. So why don't we hear about about this Pope? So who is he when does he live

and how does he get involved in the controversies after Calcedan? Yeah, so he's

Pope that is Bishop of Rome between 468 and 483 AD. So it was right in the

middle of his papacy that the Roman Empire, which was already, we could say,

declining, has basically totally ended. The Western Empire ends in 476. You

have a doissar, the Germanic ruler, he's going to overtake the last emperor,

Romulus Augustilus, and become King of Italy in 476. And so it's hard to be the

Pope when, not a good time to be Pope. When romance, it's a bad time to be

Pope. You ever want to be Pope? You know, it's not all not all fun. But actually a

doissar was, even though he was an Aryan, and so not a Christian who who followed

the the doctrine of the Council of Nicae, right? He respected the Roman

church. And so it was fortunate that he didn't totally wipe out the Roman

church while. Right. But it's a difficult time to be Pope sort of negotiating with

what we would then regard a Christian heretic, being the emperor, and also dealing with a sort

of dissolution of an empire that has been there for thousands of years. And so, you know, this

helps contextualize the rest of Simplicius's, you know, I guess we could say, you know, time is

Pope because he's going to also deal with some very serious theological conflicts in the east.

And so we should just take into account that when he's having conflicts with the Eastern emperor

in Byzantium, right? Everything is fallen apart for him. And so that just kind of intensifies things.

Yeah. So Pope Simplicius, we chatted a little bit about it before his his life in the political

situation that he went through is quite complex and involves a lot of names. And so we thought we

kind of boil it down a little bit to maybe a couple of things he really contributed to in the

sort of in the situation where the Roman Harris falling, where there's controversy about where

the church should go from there. And also this sort of theological division that's just taken

place over the council. So one thing that you already mentioned to me that came up is the rights

of the papacy. So how does he get involved with dealing with that? Yeah. So he's going to be a staunch

defender, right? That of the supremacy, right? Of the sea of Rome, of the pontiff as a successor

of Peter and the unique rights apart from, you know, those of other bishops, right, that follows

from this. So Leo the great was was a Pope, two popes previous to Simplicius. And he had a

real clear sense that he was a representative of Peter and that Peter the Apostle still acted

through his sea. Yeah. Leo did not accept this canon that was issued at the Council of Cal

Seed and which tried to make Constantinople, which was now the new center of the empire, tried

to make it equally important to Rome. It implied that Rome was only ever, you know, had the status

and the authority it did because that was where the center of the empire was, but now that Rome's

fallen and Constantinople is the new center, you know, it should be on equal footing, right? And so

there was an effort by the eastern emperor Leo the second and the time of Simplicius to get

Simplicius to agree to this canon, right? To get him basically to agree that, hey, now that you're

you're half of the empire is fallen, you should accept us as the new the new papacy, basically,

right? We're the new head of the church and you can imagine how it would be very advantageous

in a worldly way to make that emperor happy, right? Because you're now kind of an enemy territory

with an Aryan king of Italy. Also in some sense, you know, if you don't not sort of theologically

grounded in what the papacy is, the idea that like, hey, yeah, you could take the governance of

the church off my hands right now. It's not looking so hot over here. Right. And also it requires a

lot of faith if you think about it, you know, because this is the first time it's really tested

Rome as the center of the church because in some ways it is sort of self evident, you know,

the Roman empires in charge of everything. Peter and Paul died in Rome, founded the church there,

but now Rome is falling. So what does that mean about the church? Does that mean the church is

going to be overcome? Should we pass over the sort of papal seat to Constantinople or what?

And it also just shows that the papacy is more than, right, the privileges that have accrued to

it since the time of Constantin, right? It was a really pivotal moment of testing the identity,

I think, of the papacy and the awareness people had of what the papacy means. Absolutely. And of what

it means to be in a proper relationship with the empire. So there was this idea, as you've said,

well, Constantinople is the new Rome, the emperor lives there now, and therefore it's also the new

Rome so far as the church is concerned. And the bishop of Rome is going to say, no, Rome is the

center of the church because Peter and Paul shed their precious blood here, not because the emperor

lives here. That's right. That's right. Okay. So despite sort of it being advantageous in several

ways for some plikias to sort of yield to the requests of the emperor or seek their help or seek

their friendship, he asserts sort of what he knows to be true about the sea of Rome and sort of

stands on that theological principle. And, you know, maybe a second point we can focus on with

his legacy is that he still actually exerted a considerable theological weight in controversies,

even though he's all the way up. I live in the shambles. Yeah, I live in the shambles and

there's other side of the empire. And that, you know, I think it speaks to the kind of authority

he had that his voice is still recognized, even, even if contested by enemies all the way,

right, in Constantinople. And this is typical of the early papacy, this sort of like referee role

when there's a theological controversy, there's a sort of natural sense that you appeal to Rome

and that Rome's voice is significant. And in fact, this is part of the reason why

Constantinople wanted to keep asserting itself. Like, you know, we want to be the referee. So,

tell us a little bit about the theological controversy that he was most directly involved.

Yeah, this is a key moment in which St. Paulicius is really going to actually stand with

Constantinople against some secular rulers, right? So, this is known as the monophysite

controversy. This is a very nice fancy theological term for people, right? Monophysite,

basically just referring to those who believe there's just one nature or only one nature in

Christ, right? That he's not, that he's not one person with a human nature and a divine nature,

right? But that the single personhood, the single subject of Christ means that there's just one

nature, right? And this is opposed to the teachings of the Council of Calcedan. So, in 476,

there's a usurper to the throne, an emperor Zeno, who is the emperor in Constantinople at the time,

gets kicked out, right? And this usurper is a champion of the monophysite cause, right? So, he

he tries to get all of the bishops to agree that only the first three ecumenical councils,

that is, all of them except for Calcedan at this point are legitimate, right? And in this way,

he's trying to unite people around this idea that there's just a single hypothesis and a single

nature in Christ. So, St. Paulicius is actually going to stand with the Bishop of Constantinople

against this, right? He's going to firm the legitimacy of Calcedan and of the teachings of Calcedan.

And eventually, this emperor who got exiled, right, he's going to come back, he's going to restore

order, and he's going to restore Orthodox acceptance belief in the teachings of Calcedan.

And this is a fairly complicated theological controversy. I think we can take for granted,

oh yeah, well Jesus is fully God, fully man, like that's the Orthodox faith that's super important

to how we understand salvation. But there was a lot of theologians really hard at work leading

up to and after the council of Calcedan thinking about like, but what exactly do we want to say?

Like nobody denied Jesus was divine in human, but how can we say exactly how he's human?

And how can we say exactly how he's divine and how do they work together?

That's right. It's the question is not whether he's human or whether he's divine right at this

point, it's just how do these two seemingly incompatible realities exist in a single subject?

It seems like two and a half years have been in one person. Exactly.

Right. You want too many nature. That's right.

Yeah. So the both ends is the difficult part, right?

And it is often, if you get deep into studying these things as myself and doctors use to,

it is often a matter of terms and theological words that we want to use. And so,

you know, we should have great gratitude for things like the creed because every word was chosen

carefully. And some words were even fought over and people really sort of gave their,

their theological life to understanding God in these precise ways. And with them, an

opposite controversy in some ways is still goes on today because there are some who broke away

at the Council of Calcedan who would prefer to be called meathicides United Nature. And there's

actually been some sort of rapprochement between the East and West and some of the people that

broke away in trying to come to an understanding that actually we are saying the same thing,

but we're just using slightly different terms. But it really is, it really is the heart of the

faith to understand who Jesus Christ is. And we can take it for granted that we've received this great

patrimony of understanding our Lord, but it really did take a lot of work and prayer from a lot of

people. Yeah. And, you know, theological dispute wasn't as polite back then either, right? So,

you know, just to say a little more on the story of Simplikias with the emperor and the

monophysites at the time, there was a monophysite revolt during his papacy where the patriarch of

Constantinople was killed, right? And Simplikias demanded that the emperor, you know, bring these

murders to justice, right? So, it wasn't just an intellectual kind of dispute, right? And Simplikias

dies before any of this gets resolved, right? He's going to really resist a certain

bishop named Cacius, right, who's going to kind of lead a schism in the church right from 489

until even all to the way to 519, but Simplikias goes to his death, like really resisting this

division in the church. Yeah, that's another him sort of dying in the midst of it. This is another

repeated thing that comes up when we've done these saint podcasts, which is that quite often saints

will die before they sort of know the outcome of their own legacies or whether or not the efforts

they made were really successful or worth it. I think that's really something very valuable for

me that I've taken from the lives of the saints, because quite often from inside their own

life story, things are a kind of mess. And we look back and say, oh, they wrote this great treatise

and they helped keep this or that thing from happening, but at the time it may not really seem

like that at all. That's right. And so the sort of courage really to persist in what we know is

right, and to persist in doing what God has called us to, even when it doesn't seem to be bearing

a lot of fruit, is something I think we can learn from them the same, but for many of the saints.

And not finding excuses for not doing that important work, right? So Simplikias.

Don't pass it off to the Byzantines. That's right. Well, just Simplikias, right? You know, as you

said, kind of in the shambles of an empire, you know, he didn't have a cushy place to do this work,

I guess, but he still gets it done. Yeah, that's that's right. And he had I think a lot of great

faith in God having chosen Rome as the center of the church, despite sort of appearances to the

contrary, shall we say? Yeah, and I think I would imagine he followed, you know, the conviction of

his predecessor Leo, that it's not just him working, right? That's that Peter continues to

intercede and exercise authority right through him. Yeah, I mean, ultimately it's God's work.

That's right. Yeah, it's it's not all about what he can accomplish, right?

So we've already talked about maybe some sort of legacy that he leaves the church or some takeaways,

how many of his thoughts about how he might bring Pope Simplikias's trials into our own lives

or benefit from sort of the theological controversy he fought in. Yeah, it's not unusual when we

do these saints podcast to really comment on courage of these saints, right? Especially courage

against worldly leaders, worldly opposition. And I think really this all comes to they're having

a sense for a spiritual good being higher than any comfort, right? Or any prestige or any status

and really staking their entire life on on the spiritual good that they're pursuing, right? And

I don't know about you. Find it difficult to sometimes to remember that. And while you're speaking

to as thinking just in general sort of a bandiment to divine providence, it can be really like to have

really faith that God knows what he's doing. And it can be extremely unsettling, you know, in our

own time, it's not like we live in the most stable, fuzzy, warm times we know how everything's going

to turn out. But in any sort of unrest, whether it's sort of like in our family, financial situations

or unrest in our country or unrest in the world, to understand that God knows what he's doing,

and that we can't we can only be sort of attached to the church as the institution that will never

fail and not be attached to any other human institution, even though we may love them and work

for them, ultimately it's in God's hands. We have to sort of sort of trust in that and always

be faithful to him. Amen. Well, thanks so much for joining me in sharing with about this Pope that I

didn't know a lot about. Of course, it's great. Saint St. Plagueis for us. Thank you for being a

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