Celestine of Rome
Our Father among the Saints Celestine, Pope of Rome
Bishop · d. 432
Commemorated 8 April — Repose of the Pope of Rome, defender against Nestorius
Celestine (Pope of Rome 422–432) was a defender of the Orthodox faith against the heresy of Nestorius, standing with St Cyril of Alexandria in the years before the Third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus (431) and sending his legates to confirm its condemnation of the Nestorian error. He also opposed the Pelagians and, the tradition records, sent Palladius and then Patrick toward the mission of the western isles. He is honoured among the holy hierarchs of the undivided Church.
Celestine was a Roman, and after serving as a deacon of the Roman church was chosen bishop of the city in 422. His episcopate fell in the years of the great Christological crisis, when Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, began to teach that the Virgin should be called not Theotokos ("God-bearer") but only Christotokos, dividing the one Christ into two. When Cyril of Alexandria wrote to Rome laying the matter before Celestine, the Pope, in a synod of 430, condemned the teaching of Nestorius and called on him to recant; and when the Third Ecumenical Council met at Ephesus in 431 to judge the question, Celestine sent his legates, who joined in confirming the deposition of Nestorius and the confession of the Theotokos. Thus the see of Rome stood with Alexandria and the Council in defence of the true faith of the Incarnation.
Celestine also laboured against the Pelagians and the Semi-Pelagians in the West, and — according to the chronicler Prosper — he sent the deacon Palladius as first bishop "to the Scots believing in Christ," part of the movement of mission that would soon carry the Gospel to Ireland through St Patrick. He reposed in 432. He is one of the holy popes of the ancient, undivided Church honoured in the Orthodox calendar.
Feast and commemoration
April 8 (church date; Old Calendar civil April 21), within Great Lent.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a hierarch)
O God of our fathers, ever dealing with us according to Thy gentleness: take not Thy mercy from us, but by the prayers of Thy hierarch Celestine guide our life in peace.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Celestine is shown as a bishop of the Roman rite or in the Byzantine omophorion, blessing or holding the Gospel. No pre-1900 icon of him alone has been identified for this collection.
Disputed questions
- Not to be confused with the later Pope Celestine V (the hermit-pope of the thirteenth century, of the divided West), who is not of the Orthodox calendar.
- Nor with Celestine the Martyr (May 25), a different saint entirely: the Greek books keep Κελεστῖνος πάπας Ῥώμης on April 8 and Κελεστῖνος ὁ μάρτυς on May 25, the latter a martyr of whom nothing survives but a synaxarion line and who died by violence, where the pope reposed in peace. Popular lists conflate the two on the strength of the shared name and the shared association with Rome.