Early Life and Episcopate
Acacius first appearers in authentic history as the orphanotrophos, or an official entrusted with the care of the orphans, in the Church of Constantinople, which he administered with conspicuous success. Suidas further describes Acacius as possessing an undoubtedly striking personality of making the most of his opportunities. He seems to have affected an engaging magnificence of manner; was openhanded; suave, yet noble, in demeanour; courtly in speech, and fond of a certain ecclesiastical display.
His abilities attracted the notice of the Roman emperor Leo I, over whom he obtained great influence by the arts of an accomplished courtier, which led to his succession to the seat of Patriarch on the death of the Gennadius in 471. The first five or six years of his episcopate were uneventful enough. Soon he involved in controversies, which lasted throughout his patriarchate, and ended in a schism of thirty-five years between the churches of the East and West.
On the one side he laboured to restore unity to Eastern Orthodoxy, which was distracted by the varieties of opinion to which the Eutychian debates had given rise; and on the other to magnify the authority of his see by asserting its independence of Rome, and extending its influence over Alexandria and Antioch. In both respects he appears to have acted more in the spirit of a statesman than of a theologian; and in this relation the personal traits of liberality, courtliness, and ostentation, noticed by Suidas, are of worthy importance.
Read more about this topic: Patriarch Acacius Of Constantinople
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans—which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“To suppose such a thing possible as a society, in which men, who are able and willing to work, cannot support their families, and ought, with a great part of the women, to be compelled to lead a life of celibacy, for fear of having children to be starved; to suppose such a thing possible is monstrous.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)