Paul II of Constantinople
Paul II of Constantinople | |
---|---|
Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople | |
Installed | 1 October 641 |
Term ended | 27 December 653 |
Personal details | |
Denomination | Chalcedonian Christianity |
Paul II (Greek:
Paul II was elevated at the accession of the Byzantine emperor Constans II, who succeeded Heraclius, and just shortly before the pontificate of Pope Theodore I. Paul became patriarch at a time when monophysitism was fragmenting the Byzantine Church. At first, he declared his adherence to the Orthodox Christology, then (646–647) accepted the compromise position of monothelitism put forward by his predecessors, Patriarchs Sergius and Pyrrhus. In 648 he backed with his authority the decree of Constans, known as the typos, which simply forbade all further discussion of the Christological question. Then in 649, along with Sergius and Pyrrhus, he was excommunicated and anathematized by the Lateran Synod called by Pope Martin I. This action, coupled with the fact that Martin's elevation had taken place without imperial sanction, resulted in the Emperor's seizing the pope and exiling him to the Chersonesus in 653, the year of Paul's death. Imperial attempts to solve the Monophysite controversy, either by compromise or enforced silence, lost their urgency by the end of Paul's tenure; by that time Arab conquests had overrun the most strongly Monophysitic provinces of the Byzantine Empire. The Monothelite compromise was abjured by the Byzantine Church itself at the Sixth Ecumenical Council (680–681), which declared Paul, among others, heretical.
References
[edit]- ^ Brooks, E.W. (1897). On the lists of the patriarchs of Constantinople from 638 to 715. ByzZ 6: 33-54.
- ^ Morcelli, Steph. Antoni. Africa Christiana. Vol. 1. p. 144.
- ^ "Ecumenical Patriarchate".