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.
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