St Silverius, son of a pope, pope, ex-pope
Few men who have attained the office of Bishop of Rome can have had such a roller-coaster career as Silverius (d. 537 or 538). Italy at this time was in the throes of the Gothic Wars, a generation of battles between the Ostrogothic occupiers who were Arian Christians and the Byzantine Empire under the great Justinian. It was Justinian’s dream to reconquer the western part of the Roman empire which had been lost to the Germanic barbarians. He succeeded in retaking North Africa, Sicily, and part of Spain but was drawn into a conflict that devastated Italy. It was also a time when the imperial court in Constantinople was tangled in the lingering controversies about the number of Christ’s natures.
Silverius was son of Pope Hormisdas (d. 523) who fathered him before he began his priestly career. Hormisdas had to deal with the heresies springing from those in the East who rejected Trinitarianism and the Council of Chalcedon’s definition of the Godhead, a situation made worse by the fact that the powers occupying Rome were antitrinitarian themselves. Silverius was elected pope in 536 with the support of the Gothic court but later that year imperial forces under Belisarius took Rome. Some say that the empress Theodora caused Belisarius to depose Silverius and send him into exile because of his opposition to the Monophysite schism (which Theodora always supported) but it may simply have been a political coup to remove someone who did not owe his position to those in the capital, Constantinople. Silverius is said to have died of starvation in captivity. He was widely recognized as a saint and is still venerated on southern Italian islands (and in the Italian community in New York, as shown above) as San Silverio.