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Callinicus of Constantinople

Our Father among the Saints Callinicus I, Patriarch of Constantinople

Patriarch · Bishop · Confessor · d. 705 (synaxarion) or 711 (chronicles)

Commemorated 23 August — Repose of the blinded and mutilated patriarch

Callinicus I was Patriarch of Constantinople from 693 to 705, through the first and most violent reign of Justinian II. A priest of the great shrine church of the Theotokos at Blachernae before his elevation, he is remembered for a single refusal: when the emperor determined to pull down a church of the Mother of God that stood in the way of an extension to his palace and demanded the patriarch's blessing on the demolition, Callinicus answered that he had prayers for the raising of churches and none for their destruction, and — when pressed — gave only the bitter doxology "Glory to God who suffers all things, always, now and ever and unto the ages of ages." The church came down. When Justinian, deposed and mutilated in his turn, returned from exile in 705 to take his revenge, the patriarch was seized, blinded and mutilated, and — the synaxarion says — walled up alive at Rome, where he was found still living after forty days and died four days later. The Church numbers him among the holy hierarchs and keeps his memory on August 23.

Priest of Blachernae, Patriarch of the City

Callinicus was a presbyter and skeuophylax of the church of the Theotokos at Blachernae, the imperial city's chief Marian sanctuary, where the robe of the Mother of God was kept and where the Akathist had been sung in thanksgiving for the city's deliverance. On the death of the patriarch Paul III (686–693) he was raised to the throne of Constantinople in August 693, in the tenth year of the emperor Justinian II, called Rhinotmetos, "the slit-nosed," from what was later done to him.

Justinian II was a ruler of great energy, real piety and no self-control. It was he who had convened the Quinisext (Trullan) Council in 691–692, whose canons Callinicus inherited and enforced; it was he who taxed and confiscated until the capital and the provinces alike turned against him.

The church of the Theotokos and the emperor's palace

The episode by which the Church remembers Callinicus belongs to the last years of that first reign. The emperor resolved to enlarge the palace, and the ground he wanted was occupied by a church of the Most Holy Theotokos (the notices call it the Theotokos "of the Metropolis"). He sent to the patriarch for a prayer for the demolition — the customary blessing before a building was taken down.

Callinicus refused. The Church, he replied, has prayers for the founding of temples and none whatever for their destruction. The emperor pressed; the patriarch at last gave the only words he would give — "Glory to God who suffers all things, always, now and ever and unto the ages of ages" — and the demolition party, taking the doxology for the required blessing, pulled the church down at once. The refusal cost him nothing immediately, but it was not forgotten.

The fall and return of Justinian II

In 695 the city rose. Justinian was deposed by the patrician Leontius, his nose and tongue were slit — the mutilation intended to bar him for ever from the throne, since Byzantine custom held a maimed man ineligible to reign — and he was exiled to Cherson in the Crimea. The chroniclers record that Callinicus took part in the acclamation of Leontius and in the deposition; whether from consent or from the impossibility of refusal, the sources do not agree, and this is the sharpest of the questions about him.

For ten years Justinian schemed in exile, escaped, married the sister of the khagan of the Khazars, took refuge with the Bulgars, and in 705 came back to Constantinople with a Bulgar army, entering the city — the story runs — through a disused water conduit. The vengeance he took was systematic: the usurpers Leontius and Tiberius Apsimar were dragged through the Hippodrome and beheaded, and their partisans hanged along the walls.

Blinding, immurement and repose

The patriarch was among the first taken. Justinian had him deposed, his eyes put out, and — in the account carried by the Greek and Slavonic synaxaria — his tongue and nose cut off in mockery of what had been done to the emperor himself. He was then sent to Rome and there immured alive in a wall, a stone chamber built around him. Forty days later the wall was opened and he was found still living; he survived four days more and reposed, worn out by his sufferings, in 705. The tradition adds that the Apostles Peter and Paul appeared to Pope John and directed him to bury the martyred hierarch in the Church of the Apostles at Rome, which was done with honour.

The Byzantine chronicles tell a plainer story: that Callinicus was blinded and exiled to Rome, and that he died some years later, in November 711. The Church has kept the fuller synaxarion account in her books while historians follow the chronicles; both are recorded here.

Feast and commemoration

August 23 (church date; Old Calendar civil September 5). The day is the leavetaking (apodosis) of the Dormition of the Theotokos — a fitting coincidence for the hierarch who lost his eyes rather than bless the pulling down of a church of the Mother of God — and the festal office governs it, so that Callinicus, like the other saints of the day, has only his synaxarion notice and distich in the printed Menaion. He is entered fourth in the Greek synaxarion of August 23, after Lupus and the two hieromartyr Irenaei. His memory is kept throughout the Byzantine world; in Greek usage the name Kallinikos is carried by many hierarchs after him.

Hymns

Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a hierarch)

The truth of things hath revealed thee to thy flock as a rule of faith, an icon of meekness and a teacher of abstinence; therefore thou hast achieved the heights by humility, riches by poverty. O Father and hierarch Callinicus, intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.

Iconography

Callinicus is written as an aged hierarch of the middle Byzantine type: in phelonion and crossed omophorion, or in the sakkos of a patriarch in later work, blessing with the right hand and holding the Gospel in the left, with a long white beard tapering to a point and a high bald forehead. Where an iconographer marks the manner of his suffering, the eyes are painted closed — the sign of the blinded confessor — as they are for the blinded emperors and hierarchs of the iconoclast century. The inscription reads Ο ΑΓΙΟΣ ΚΑΛΛΙΝΙΚΟΣ or, in Slavonic, СТЫЙ КАЛЛИНИКЪ, which does not by itself distinguish him from the martyr Callinicus of Gangra; the hierarch's vesture does.

No storable image has been added. A colour panel captioned СТЪ КАЛЛИНИКЪ was examined on Wikimedia Commons ("File:CallinicusI.jpg") and rejected: the underlying work carries no date, shows the halftone screen of a modern printed reproduction, and its Slavonic caption does not distinguish this Callinicus from the martyr of Gangra — so that storing it would risk both a copyright claim on a living iconographer's work and a false identification. The Menologion of Basil II, which would otherwise be the first resort, covers only September to February.

Disputed questions

  • Death in 705 or 711? The synaxarion notice, followed by the Greek and Russian service books and by the Orthodox lives, has him die of his mutilations within weeks of Justinian's return, in 705. The Byzantine chroniclers and the modern lists of patriarchs give his deposition in 705 and his death in November 711, after some years of blind confinement. The two cannot be reconciled, and the entry keeps both.
  • Immured at Rome, or exiled to Rome? The dramatic immurement, the forty days and the vision granted to the pope are proper to the hagiographic tradition; the chronicles know only a blinding and a removal to Rome — one recension saying he was shut up in a monastery. The name of the pope is given in the received notice as John VI (701–705), though John VI died in January 705 and John VII reigned from March of that year, which is one more sign that the notice is transmitting a tradition rather than a dossier.
  • His part in the deposition of 695. That the patriarch crowned Leontius is recorded, and it is the ground on which Justinian took his revenge. Whether he acted willingly, or under the compulsion which a synod and a mob can put on a patriarch, is not recoverable. The Church's judgement is expressed by the calendar: it is the man who would not bless the destruction of a church of the Theotokos, and who paid for it with his eyes, that she commemorates.
  • Not to be confused with Callinicus of Gangra, the martyr of Asia Minor (July 29), nor with the martyr Callinicus commemorated with Thyrsus and Leucius (December 14). The patriarch is a hierarch of the eighth century and no martyr of the persecutions.

Sources

  1. Greek Menaion and the Synaxarion of Constantinople, August 23 (glt.goarch.org) — the notice of "our father among the saints Callinicus, patriarch of Constantinople," with its distich.
  2. Orthodox Church in America, August 23 — St Callinicus, Patriarch of Constantinople (the Blachernae presbyterate, the refusal of the prayer for demolition, the doxology, the blinding and mutilation, the immurement at Rome, the forty days, and the vision of the Apostles to the pope); azbyka.ru, September 5 (Old Calendar), for the Slavonic form of the life.
  3. Theophanes the Confessor, Chronographia, and Nikephoros, Short History, for the reigns of Justinian II, Leontius and Tiberius Apsimar, the deposition of 695, the return of 705 and the fate of the patriarch — the chronicle tradition against which the synaxarion notice is measured.
  4. Lists of the patriarchs of Constantinople (Callinicus I, August 693 – 705; death dated by the chronicles to November 711), consulted for the disputed dating.