Constantine III of Constantinople

Saint Constantine III Leichoudes was Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople from 1059 until his death in 1063. He was a scholar, a fellow student of Michael Psellos, and a high court official before he became a monk. The Orthodox Church honours him as a saint and remembers him on 29 July.

He was born in Constantinople (the sources disagree on the place of his birth) and was a fellow student and close friend of John Mauropous, Michael Psellos and John Xiphilinos, who formed an influential circle of young scholars, philosophers and statesmen in the political and cultural life of Constantinople in the 1040s-1070s. In his youth he entered state service and quickly made a career at court. Under Michael IV he was already in the senate. He then became one of the closest advisers of Michael V, and under Constantine IX Monomachos he was protovestiarios, that is, administrator of the emperor's finances and personal property, and proedros, president of the senate, being in effect prime minister under a weak-⁠willed emperor. He supported Psellos, who then entered the service of the court.

Around the year 1050 his career was suddenly broken: Monomachos, thinking that Leichoudes had gathered too much power, stripped him of his titles and drove him out of the capital, forcing him to become a monk. By the middle of the 1050s he had returned to Constantinople and was abbot of the imperial monastery of Mangana, where a large complex of buildings with charitable foundations was then rising, whose immense revenues he administered himself. In 1059, after the arrest and death of Michael Cerularius, with the favour of the emperor Isaac Komnenos, but also under pressure to give up his rights over the monastery of Mangana, he was elected patriarch, by vote of clergy and people, on 2 February 1059. After Isaac I Komnenos became a monk, Patriarch Constantine III took part in the coronation of Constantine X Doukas. In relations with the Church of Rome he followed his predecessor's line and did not name the pope among the heads of the local Churches. He dealt with a dispute over possessions between the monastery of Vatopedi and the monastery of Saint Hypatius. In 1060 the memory of the former patriarch, Cerularius, was solemnly honoured in the capital, and the eulogy was delivered by Psellos.

He died on 9 or 10 August 1063, and Psellos wrote a funeral eulogy for him. John VIII Xiphilinos succeeded him. Two writings of his survive, on a guilty slave and on a murderous priest who was deposed. He urged Psellos to write the first part of his Chronographia, the history of the years 976-1059.