Caesarius, bishop of Arles, had visited Pope Symmachus in 513 while being detained in Italy.

This meeting led to Symmachus being decorated with a pallium.

Based on this introduction, Caesarius later writes to Symmachus for help with establishing his authority, which Symmachus eagerly gives, according to William Klingshirn, "to gather outside support for his primacy."

Symmachus has provided money and clothing to the Catholic bishops of Africa and Sardinia who had been exiled by the rulers of the Arian Vandals.

He has also ransomed prisoners from upper Italy, and given them gifts of aid.

He dies at Rome on July 19, 514, after a sixteen-year reign and is succeeded by Hormisdas as the fifty-second pope.

Hormisdas was born at Frosinone, Campagna di Roma, Italy.

Before becoming a Roman deacon, Hormisdas was married, and his son will become pope under the name of Silverius.

During the Laurentian schism, Hormisdas had been one of the most prominent clerical partisans of Pope Symmachus.

He was notary at the synod held at St. Peter's in 502.

Two letters of Magnus Felix Ennodius, bishop of Pavia, survive addressed to him, written when the latter tried to regain horses and money he had lent the pope.

Unlike his predecessor, the election of Hormisdas lacked any notable controversies.

Upon becoming Pope, one of Hormisdas' first actions is to remove the last vestiges of the schism in Rome, receiving back into the Church those adherents of the Laurentian party who had not already been reconciled.

The account of his tenure in the Liber Pontificalis, as well as the overwhelming bulk of his surviving correspondence, is dominated by efforts to restore communion between the Sees of Rome and Constantinople caused by the Acacian schism, the consequence of the "Henoticon" of the Emperor Zeno and supported by his successor Anastasius, who had increasingly inclined towards Monophysitism and persecuted those bishops who refused to repudiate the Council of Chalcedon.