Zeno

Zeno came from Isauria, where he took refuge when Basiliscus seized the throne (Evagrius, Ecclesiastical History 3.3). He marched back on the capital, Evagrius says, after Basiliscus had ruled for two years, and annulled what the usurper had decreed in his circular letters against Chalcedon (Evagrius, Ecclesiastical History 3.4, 3.8). Evagrius, who disapproved of him, describes his private life as shameless (Evagrius, Ecclesiastical History 3.1).

When the see of Alexandria was disputed he expelled one claimant, restored Peter Mongus, and addressed to the Egyptian church the statement called the Henotikon (Evagrius, Ecclesiastical History 3.12). It names Nicaea as the one creed, condemns Nestorius and Eutyches, and anathematises any other teaching “whether at Chalcedon or in any synod whatever” (Evagrius, Ecclesiastical History 3.14). To the protests of Pope Felix he replied that he and all the churches received and revered the Council of Chalcedon (Evagrius, Ecclesiastical History 3.20). He died in 491, in the consulship of Olybrius, in what Marcellinus counts, with the months of Basiliscus, as the sixth month of the seventeenth year of his reign (Marcellinus Comes, Chronicle under the year 491); Evagrius says that he died of epilepsy and left no child (Evagrius, Ecclesiastical History 3.29). See the Henotikon and the Acacian Schism.