Eikon

Constantine of Constantinople

Our Father among the Saints Constantine I, Archbishop of Constantinople and Ecumenical Patriarch

Patriarch · Bishop · d. 9 August 677

Commemorated 9 August — Repose as Patriarch of Constantinople

Constantine I was Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople for not quite two years, from September 675 to his repose on 9 August 677 — the last patriarch of the capital before the Sixth Ecumenical Council, and one of the churchmen whose refusal of the Monothelite compromise prepared the way for it. He had served the Great Church as deacon and as its treasurer (skeuophylax) before his election, and the Byzantine notices remember him as an opponent of the heresy of one will in Christ and as a man of weight and piety. The Greek calendars keep him on August 9, the day of his death.

Deacon and treasurer of the Great Church

Nothing is transmitted of Constantine's birth or family. He appears in the record already in the service of Hagia Sophia, where he was a deacon and held the office of skeuophylax — the keeper of the sacred vessels and, in practice, the treasurer of the Great Church, one of the senior administrative dignities of the patriarchate and a normal step towards higher office. The Byzantine chroniclers, and after them Ephraem the historian in his verse chronicle, describe him as a man of substance and piety who had travelled through Thrace and Macedonia, which suggests service or mission in the European provinces of the empire before his elevation.

Patriarch, 675–677

He succeeded the Patriarch John V on the throne of Constantinople on 2 September 675. His whole tenure falls in the last years of Constantine IV Pogonatus, in the aftermath of the first great Arab siege of the capital, and in the years when the emperor was already turning against the imperial theology of his father and grandfather.

That theology was Monothelitism — the doctrine, urged from Heraclius' reign onward as a formula of reunion with the Monophysites of Syria and Egypt, that in Christ there is a single will. It had been imposed by the Ecthesis and shielded by the Typos, and resisted at the cost of their lives by Maximus the Confessor and Pope Martin. The synaxaristic notices remember Constantine precisely as an opponent of the Monothelite heresy, and his patriarchate belongs to the turn of imperial policy: within two years of his death the emperor had summoned to the capital the council that met in the domed hall of the palace in 680–681 — the Sixth Ecumenical Council — and condemned the doctrine of one will, confessing in Christ two natural wills and two natural operations.

Constantine did not live to see it. He reposed on 9 August 677, having held the throne one month short of two years, and was succeeded by Theodore I. The brevity of his patriarchate, and the fact that the great vindication came after him, are why so little of him survives: he is one of the hierarchs whose orthodoxy is recorded chiefly by the direction in which he left the Church he governed.

Feast and commemoration

August 9 (church date; Old Calendar civil August 22), within the afterfeast of the Transfiguration and within the Dormition Fast. The day's office in the Menaion belongs to the Apostle Matthias; Constantine is commemorated by his notice, with the common of a hierarch where a local usage adds hymns. He is kept chiefly in the Greek calendars, and is among the patriarchs of Constantinople commemorated collectively in the diptychs of the Great Church.

Hymns

Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a hierarch)

O God of our fathers, who dealest ever with us according to Thy gentleness: take not Thy mercy from us, but by the prayers of Thy hierarch Constantine direct our life in peace.

Iconography

Constantine is painted, where he is painted at all, in the standard hierarchical type: an elder in the phelonion — often the polystavrion, the cross-covered vestment proper to a patriarch — with the omophorion crossed on the breast, the right hand blessing and the left holding the jewelled Gospel. He is bearded and grey, without a distinguishing attribute; the inscription Ο ΑΓΙΟϹ ΚΩΝϹΤΑΝΤΙΝΟϹ ΠΑΤΡΙΑΡΧΗϹ ΚΠΟΛΕΩϹ is what separates him from the other hierarchs of a sanctuary programme. His natural place is in the frieze of the Patriarchs of Constantinople painted in the bema of Byzantine and post-Byzantine churches, ranked among the hierarchs who concelebrate the Divine Liturgy in the apse.

No pre-1900 image identified as this patriarch has been located for this collection; the Menologion of Basil II, which does carry portraits of a number of patriarchs of the capital, covers only September to February.

Disputed questions

  • The day of his commemoration. The Greek synaxaristic tradition and the Greek calendars give August 9, which is the day of his death; some Western reference lists and the hierarchical catalogues give 29 July instead. No explanation of the discrepancy is transmitted, and this collection keeps the Greek date and records the variant.
  • Not to be confused with Constantine the Great (May 21), nor with the later patriarchs of the name — Constantine II (754–766), who was an iconoclast and was deposed and put to death, and Constantine III Leichoudes (1059–1063). The homonymy with the iconoclast Constantine II in particular has caused this patriarch to be passed over in some lists.
  • How much he did. The record does not permit any account of his acts as patriarch beyond the fact of his orthodoxy and the dates of his tenure; the entry does not manufacture one.

Sources

  1. Greek synaxaristic tradition for August 9 — the notice of Constantine I, Patriarch of Constantinople, deacon and skeuophylax of the Great Church and opponent of Monothelitism.
  2. The episcopal lists of Constantinople (patriarchate 2 September 675 – 9 August 677; predecessor John V, successor Theodore I).
  3. Ephraem the historian, Chronicle of the Patriarchs (verse chronicle, 14th c.), for the description of his character and his passage through Thrace and Macedonia.
  4. For the context: the acts of the Sixth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople, 680–681) and the Monothelite controversy; the entries for Maximus the Confessor and Martin the Confessor in this collection.