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St. Simplicius
00:17:21
Pope Saint Simplicius lived through the fall of an empire and during one of the most tumultuous theological controversies in history. Join Dr. Jean-Paul Juge and Dr. Elizabeth Klein as we discover how he guided the Church through such a time. From him, we can learn how to persist with courage no matter how hopeless we feel.
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Podcast Narrator
You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live and share their faith.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
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 St. Simplicius. I'm your host, Dr. Elizabeth Klein. I'm here with Dr. Jean Juge. How are you today, Dr. Juge?
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Dr. Jean Juge
Doing great.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
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 Simplicius come back on your top list. So I was going to ask you, what were you like? Yeah, that's the one. I want that saint.
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Dr. Jean Juge
So you're telling me you don't have a deep devotion to St. Pope Simplicius?
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
I have to say, I have never thought about him.
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Dr. Jean Juge
Oh, you know, it's always, you know, good baby name out there.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
That's right. Just keep it simple.
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Dr. Jean Juge
That's right. I'm interested in, you know, patristic, that is early Christian controversies over Christ or christological debates. And he was a pope right after or two popes after the Council of Chalcedon. And so this is an important council in defining, right. How Christ is both. How he is both fully human and fully God. And, and so, yeah, so that was my answer.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
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 Chalcedon, even though it sort of defined the crisis fully God, of fully 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 Nicaea. 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 hashes these things out, so some things
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Dr. Jean Juge
get resolved, new questions get opened.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
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 this Pope? So who is he, when does he live and how does he get involved in the controversies after Chalcedon.
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Dr. Jean Juge
Yeah. So he's Pope, that is Bishop of Rome between 468 and 483 A.D. so it was right in the middle of his papacy that the Roman Empire, which was already, we could say, declining, right. Has. Has basically totally ended. Right. The Western Empire ends in. In 476. You have a doic. The. The Germanic ruler, right. He's going to overtake the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, and become king of Italy in 476. And so, you know, it's. It's hard to be the pope when.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Not a good time to be pope.
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Dr. Jean Juge
When Rome ends, it's a bad time to be pope. You ever want to be pope. You know, it's not all fun, but actually Odoacer was, even though he was an Arian and so not a Christian who followed the doctrine of the Council of Nicaea, right. He respected the Roman Church, and so it was fortunate that he didn't totally wipe out the Roman Church, while simply
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
because at 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.
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Dr. Jean Juge
And so, you know, this helps contextualize the rest of Simplicius. You know, I guess we could say, you know, time as pope, because he's going to also deal with some very serious theological conflicts in the East. And so we should just take in. Take into account that when he's having conflicts with the Eastern emperor in Byzantium, right. Everything has fallen apart for him. And so that just kind of intensifies things.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yeah. So Pope Simplicius, we chatted a little bit about it before. His. His life and the political situation that he went through is quite complex and involves a lot of names. So we thought we'd kind of boil it down a little bit to maybe a couple of things he really contributed to in these sort of controversy, in this situation where the Ramad har is 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. 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?
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Dr. Jean Juge
Yeah, so he's going to be a staunch defender, right, that of the supremacy.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Right.
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Dr. Jean Juge
Of the see 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, and he had a real clear sense that he was a representative of Peter and that Peter the Apostle still acted through his. See, yeah. Leo did not accept this canon that was issued at the Council of Chalcedon, 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 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 II in the time of Simplicius to get Simplicius to agree to this canon. Right. To get him basically to agree that, hey, now that your half of the empire has fallen, you should accept us as 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, to make that emperor happy. Right. Because you're now kind of in enemy territory with an Arian king of Italy
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
also, in some sense, you know, if you're 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. And also it requires a lot of faith if you think about it, you know. Cause 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 Empire is 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?
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Dr. Jean Juge
And it also just shows that the papacy is more than. Right. The privileges that have accrued to it since the time of Constantine. Right. It was a really a pivotal moment of testing the identity, I think, of the papacy and the awareness people had of what the Papacy means.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Absolutely. And 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 new, the center of the Church. Because Peter and Paul Shed their precious blood here, not because the emperor lives here.
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Dr. Jean Juge
That's right. That's right.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Okay. So despite sort of it being advantageous in several ways for Simplicius 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. The theological principle.
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Dr. Jean Juge
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.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Living in the shambles.
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Dr. Jean Juge
Yeah, living in the shambles in the 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.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
And 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, no, we want to be the referee. So tell us a little bit about the theological controversy that he was most directly involved in.
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Dr. Jean Juge
Yeah, this is a key moment in which Simplokis is really going to actually stand with Constantinople against some secular rul.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Right.
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Dr. Jean Juge
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 chalcedon. So in 476, there's a usurper to the throne and Emperor Zeno, who is the emperor in Constantinople at the time, gets kicked out. Right. And this usurper is a champion of the. 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 Chalcedon at this point, are legitimate. Right. And in this way, he's trying to, you know, unite people around this idea that there's just a single hypostasis and a single nature in Christ. So Simplicius is actually going to stand with the. The bishop of Constantinople against this Right. He's going to affirm the legitimacy of, of Chalcedon and, and of the teachings of Chalcedon. 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 Chalcedon.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
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 Chalcedon thinking about, like, but what exactly do we want to say? Like, nobody denied Jesus was divine and 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?
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Dr. Jean Juge
And that's right. It's, it's. The question is not whether he's human or whether he's divine. Right. At this point, it's just how did these two, you know, seemingly incompatible realities exist in a single subject?
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
It seems like too many nature fit in one person.
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Dr. Jean Juge
Exactly right.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
One too many natures.
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Dr. Jean Juge
That's right, yeah. So it was the both. And is the difficult part. Right, the.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
And it is often. Yeah, and it is often, you know, if you get deep into studying these things as myself and Dr. Juge do, 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, in these precise ways. And with the Monophysite controversy, in some ways it still goes on today because there are some who broke away at the Council of Chalcedon who would prefer to be called Miaphysites, 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 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.
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Dr. Jean Juge
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 Simplicius 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 Simplicius demanded that the emperor, you know, bring these murders to justice. Right. So it wasn't just an intellectual kind of dispute. Right. And Simplicius dies before any of this gets resolved. Right. He's going to really resist a certain bishop named Acacius. Right. Who's going to kind of lead a schism in the church. Right. From 489 until even all the way to 519. But Simplicus goes to his death, like, really resisting this division in the church.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
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.
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Dr. Jean Juge
That's right.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
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 this saint, but from many of the saints.
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Dr. Jean Juge
Yeah. And not finding excuses for not doing that important work. Right.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
So simply don't pass it off to the Byzantines.
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Dr. Jean Juge
That's right. Well, just Simplicius. 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.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yeah, 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.
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Dr. Jean Juge
Yeah. And I think I would imagine he followed the conviction of his predecessor, Leo, that it's not just him working. Right. It's that Peter continues to intercede and exercise authority right through him.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Yeah. Ultimately, it's God's work.
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Dr. Jean Juge
That's right. Yeah. It's not all about what he can accomplish. Right.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
So we've already talked about maybe some sort of legacy that he leaves the church or some takeaways. Do you have any other thoughts about how he might bring Pope and Plicius's trials into our own lives or benefit from sort of the theological controversy he. He fought in?
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Dr. Jean Juge
Yeah, it's not unusual when we do these Saints podcast to really comment on. On courage of. Of these saints. Right. Especially courage against worldly leaders, worldly opposition. And I think really this all comes to their 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 the spiritual good that they're pursuing. Right. And I don't know about you, I find it difficult to sometimes remember that.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
And while you're speaking too, I was thinking just in general sort of abandonment 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 in our own times. 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 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.
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Dr. Jean Juge
Amen.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
Well, thanks so much for joining me and sharing with about this Pope that I didn't know a whole lot about.
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Dr. Jean Juge
Of course, it was great.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klein
St. Simplicius, pray for us.
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Podcast Narrator
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