St Silverius

Silverius is one of the saddest papal stories of the early Church because almost everything around him was stronger than he was except his conscience. Son of Pope Hormisdas, he had not risen high in orders when in 536 he was pushed onto the Roman see by the Ostrogothic king Theodahad, who wanted to block a Byzantine candidate. The true crisis came almost at once. The Empress Theodora wanted him to restore the monophysite leaders Anthimus and Severus. Silverius answered respectfully, but he would not yield. That refusal placed him in the path of imperial and ecclesiastical intrigue far larger than himself. When Belisarius took Rome and the Byzantine party gained the upper hand, Silverius was first targeted by forged accusations and then removed outright.

Carried off to Patara in Lycia, he briefly found an advocate in the local bishop, who appealed to Justinian and won an order for inquiry. But Silverius never recovered his office. Before he could safely return, the supporters of Vigilius seized him again, and under the influence of Antonina he was sent away under guard to the island of Palmarola. There he died soon afterward from harsh treatment. Whether hunger killed him, as Liberatus says, or whether he was murdered more directly, as Procopius suggests, the deeper line of the story does not change. Silverius was broken by court politics and church maneuvering because he would not betray what he believed the faith required. The irony that Vigilius later resisted the very monophysite program for which Silverius had been cast aside only deepens the tragedy.