Felix III, who held the papal seat from 483-492, is called by several scholars “Rome’s first aristocratic bishop.” As the first elected pope after the fall of the last western emperor, his aristocratic origins would bestow a distinctly new status to the office of bishop of Rome on the eve of new challenges to his authority from the Eastern Patriarch in Constantinople, Acacius. But was Felix the first aristocratic bishop? And how important were social background and aristocratic networks after…