Ignatius of Constantinople

Saint Ignatius, hierarch, was patriarch of Constantinople from 847 to 858 and from 867 to 877, in the time of the great dispute with Photius. He was the son of the emperor Michael I Rangabe. He is honoured by the Orthodox and Catholic Churches and commemorated on 23 October.

Beginnings

He was born around 798, named Niketas, son of the emperor Michael I and Prokopia, daughter of the emperor Nikephoros I. Still a child, he was placed, nominally, at the head of the imperial guard of the Hikanatoi. When his father was overthrown by Leo V the Armenian, in 813, Niketas, at fourteen or fifteen, was castrated, so that he could not claim the throne, and sent to a monastery. He took the name Ignatius, was ordained priest by Bishop Basil of Parium and lived mostly on the Princes’ Islands, the usual place of exile of members of the imperial family. He became abbot and founded three monasteries there.

Patriarch

After the death of Patriarch Methodius I, on 4 July 847, the empress Theodora made him patriarch, in part because he held to the veneration of icons. He was a support for Theodora in the time of the iconoclast dispute. From the start he had conflicts with part of his predecessor’s following; he did not admit to his enthronement Gregory Asbestas, archbishop of Syracuse, who was under church charges, and Gregory appealed to Pope Leo IV, starting a dispute between the sees of Rome and Constantinople. His power weakened after Theodora was removed: Emperor Michael III and his uncle Bardas became his adversaries. Ignatius excommunicated Bardas, the empress’s brother, who had left his wife and taken up with his daughter-⁠in-⁠law, refusing him Communion at Theophany; later he refused to approve the forced tonsure of Theodora and her daughters. Accused of supporting a pretender to the throne, he was forced to withdraw and was exiled to the island of Terebinthos, in the Marmara Sea, on 23 October (or November) 858. A synod deposed him on the basis of a canon forbidding appointment of a bishop by the civil power.

In his place Photius, a scholar close to Bardas, was made patriarch, on Christmas Day 858, after passing in six days through all the grades of the priesthood. From Photius’ election a schism broke out, since many bishops thought Ignatius’ departure illegitimate. A synod of 170 bishops deposed and anathematized Ignatius. Pope Nicholas I intervened: papal legates retried the case in 861, and Nicholas rejected that synod and held one of his own, which condemned Photius and declared Ignatius the lawful patriarch. Photius excommunicated the pope and the Latins at a synod in 867, for the teaching of the procession of the Holy Spirit also from the Son (the Filioque), added to the Creed in the West. Nicholas died before learning of it; his successor, Hadrian II, condemned the synod. The dispute over the Filioque was one of the causes of the separation between the Churches of East and West.

Return and end

In 867 Michael III was murdered, and Basil I the Macedonian, co-⁠emperor, drove out Photius and restored Ignatius, on 23 November 867. Ignatius sent priests and bishops to Bulgaria, to prevent the growth of the pope’s influence; the Council of 870 recognised the autonomy of the Bulgarian Church, and Ignatius ordained its first archbishop, Joseph. He was more inclined to understanding with the West than Photius, and convened the council called in the West the eighth ecumenical. He died on 23 October 877, and Photius was again patriarch and supported his proclamation as a saint; later he gave Hagia Sophia a mosaic portrait of him.