Euthymius I of Constantinople

Saint Euthymius I the Syncellus was patriarch of Constantinople from February 907 to May 912. A monk from youth, he was the spiritual father of the future emperor Leo VI the Wise. The Church remembers him as a severe ascetic and a bishop who did not yield before the emperor's will. He fell asleep on 5 August 917.

He was born around 834 at Seleucia in Isauria and devoted himself early to monastic life. At seventeen he was tonsured in a monastery on Mount Olympus in Bithynia, where he led a very strict life, enduring hunger, thirst and cold, and in hard winters wearing only a ragged garment. He then built a monastery on a gulf opposite Nicomedia and, in the 880s, came to Constantinople, to the monastery of Saint Theodore. He was tied to Patriarch Ignatius, whom he called his master. Most probably in Ignatius's second patriarchate (867-877) he was named spiritual father of Prince Leo, son of the emperor Basil I. He supported Leo in his conflict with his father over his relationship with Zoe Zaoutzaina. According to the Life of Euthymius he helped him endure his imprisonment in 883-886 and foretold in prison his accession to the throne. After Basil's death Leo rewarded him by making him abbot of a newly built monastery in the Psamathia quarter of Constantinople, and then syncellus, an important office from which many rose to be patriarch. His relationship with Leo was, however, according to one historian, notoriously stormy, which may explain why he became patriarch only in 907. Between November 896 and December 898 he was imprisoned in the monastery of Saint Diomedes. In 906, according to the Life, the abbot of Psamathia took part in placing the Virgin's belt on the head of the ailing empress Zoe, who recovered.

In 906 he was godfather to Constantine, son of Leo VI and Zoe Karbonopsina. The emperor's fourth marriage provoked the conflict with Patriarch Nicholas Mystikos; after Nicholas's removal and the decision of a synod to admit the emperor to communion as an exception, Euthymius accepted the patriarchate in February 907. He did not proclaim Zoe augusta in church, and did not restore the priest who had married Leo and Zoe. He crowned Constantine VII as co-⁠emperor. Some bishops accepted him, others stayed with Nicholas, so parties arose called the Euthymites and the Nicolaites. After Leo's death in May 912, his brother Alexander deposed him and brought Nicholas back. His Life, written by a partisan, tells of a humiliating trial, the stripping of his vestments and beatings, and today's scholars accept the violence but regard the description as in part a defence of his party. He was exiled to the Agathos monastery. In February 914 Zoe asked him to return to the throne, but he refused. He fell asleep on 5 August 917; the reconciliation of his followers with Nicholas took place only in July 920. His feast is on 5 August.