Callistus II Xanthopoulos

Saint Callistus II Xanthopoulos was a hesychast monk, a spiritual writer and ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople in the year 1397. He is known above all for the work he wrote with Ignatius Xanthopoulos, the Method and Precise Rule in one hundred chapters, included in the Philokalia. The Orthodox Church commemorates him on 22 November.

Monastic life

He was born in Constantinople in the fourteenth century, but his birth date, his lay name and his schooling are not known. According to Symeon of Thessalonica, who knew both men personally, Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopoulos came from Constantinople. He was a disciple of Saint Gregory of Sinai, whose life he wrote. They lived many years on the Holy Mountain, according to some sources in the cell of Saint Onuphrius of the Pantokrator monastery, according to others in the skete of Magoula, opposite the Philotheou monastery. Together they founded a small monastic community, afterward known as the monastery of the Xanthopouloi, from which they took their name. Some consider Ignatius the younger brother of Callistus, but the kinship is not certain: they may have been brothers or only brothers in monastic life.

Together they wrote an important work on prayer and the monastic life, in a hundred chapters, on the hesychast life and the unceasing invocation of the Lord's name. It holds an important place in ascetic literature and is preserved in the Philokalia. Their contemporaries, among them Isidore of Thessalonica and Sylvester Syropoulos, called them "saints" and "divine".

The patriarchate

On 17 May 1397 he was elected patriarch, in the reign of the emperor Manuel II Palaiologos, in the fourth year of the siege of Constantinople by Sultan Bayezid I. His patriarchate lasted only about three months, in some accounts five, until August or later. According to some sources he left the throne because of illness and withdrew to the monastery of Xanthopoulos, where he died in October or November of the same year.

According to another version he set out with other clergy for Serbia and stopped at the Holy Mountain. There Maximos of Kafsokalyvia prophesied that he would not see his flock again and, as he departed, sang verses from the funeral service for him. Callistus reached Serbia but died there, in the city of Serres, on the journey.

Veneration

There is no evidence of formal canonization or of a cult of Callistus as a saint until the eighteenth century, when Saint Nicodemus the Hagiorite pointed out that this is the Callistus whose memory appears in the Synaxarion on 22 November. Still, a "Saint Callistus" is named on this date in synaxaria older than the thirteenth century. The Orthodox Church commemorates him on 22 November.