Constantine the Jew

Constantine the Jew (Constantine "the former Jew", ho ex Ioudaion) was a Byzantine monk and evangelist, born around 850 and reposed on a 26 December after 886. He is venerated as a saint in his monastic milieu and in Constantinople, and a French source says the Orthodox Church recognizes him as a saint.

He was born into a Jewish family at Synada and excelled in Hebrew and the Old Testament from an early age. According to the account, he was converted as a youth by the power of the sign of the cross, which he had made in spontaneous imitation of a Christian merchant. His full conversion was gradual and may be linked to the campaign undertaken by Emperor Basil I (867 to 886) to convert the Jews. His family arranged a marriage for him, but on his wedding day he fled to the monastery of Phlouboute, where he was finally baptized.

He remained at Phlouboute for twelve years. He was ordained a priest in order to evangelize the Jews of Nicaea. In a vision Saint Spyridon told him to go to Cyprus, from where he brought a relic of a martyr named Palamon, which he gave to the monastery of Saint Hyakinthos in Nicaea. After Phlouboute he joined the monastic establishments of Bithynian Olympus, where Jewish relatives tried to have him arrested as a fugitive. He eventually settled on Olympus, first at Atroa and later at Balaios. From Olympus he is said to have intervened to reconcile Emperor Basil I with his son Leo VI, co-⁠emperor since 870.

His anonymous life was written by a Nicaean monk early in the 10th century, during the reign of Leo VI, probably in Constantinople; the author did not know him and relied on oral traditions. The author portrays him as popular with the Byzantine aristocracy, and the miracles attributed to him are unconventional: in one, a seductress faints when Constantine makes the sign of the cross. Archbishop Anthony of Novgorod records the existence of a church dedicated to him in the Jewish Quarter of Constantinople in the 13th century.