Pope St. Hormisdas

Pope St. Hormisdas (reigned 514–523) was born at Frosinone in Latium and had been married before entering the Church — his son would later become Pope St. Silverius. Elected to the See of Peter, his great achievement was the healing of the Acacian schism, the thirty-five-year rupture between Rome and Constantinople that had followed the East's compromises with Monophysitism.

His instrument of reconciliation was the celebrated Formula of Hormisdas, a profession of faith that reaffirmed the doctrine of Chalcedon, condemned the heretics, and asserted in strong terms that the Roman See had always kept the Catholic faith unblemished — requiring the Eastern bishops to sign it as a condition of communion. In 519 the emperor Justin I and the patriarch of Constantinople accepted the formula, restoring unity between East and West. That document remained a classic statement of papal authority, later echoed at the First Vatican Council.