Joseph I Galesiotes

Saint Joseph I Galesiotes was twice Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, from 1266 to 1275 and from 1282 to 1283. The Church remembers him as a confessor, because he opposed the union with Rome which Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos sought. His feast is kept on 30 October.

He came from Asia Minor and was married for eight years, then took the monastic habit after his wife's death. From 1222 to 1254 he is recorded as a reader, and in 1259 or 1260 he became abbot of the monastery of Saint Lazaros on Mount Galesios near Ephesus, from which he took his name. He became the confessor of Emperor Michael VIII. In 1264 the emperor sent him to Patriarch Arsenios to ask for the lifting of the excommunication the patriarch had laid on the emperor for the blinding of the young Emperor John IV Laskaris. Arsenios remained firm, and the emperor deposed him and named Joseph patriarch on 28 December 1266. In early 1267 Joseph lifted the excommunication, which enraged the supporters of Arsenios and deepened the Arsenite schism.

In 1272 he officiated at the coronation of Andronikos II as co-⁠emperor, but soon fell out with Michael VIII over the union with the Church of Rome. For the emperor, threatened by the ambitions of Charles of Anjou, the union was the only means of staving off a Western attack. The Byzantine clergy and people, however, almost universally opposed the concessions made to the pope on doctrine and primacy. In 1273 Joseph swore an oath not to accept the union on the terms the pope set. In early 1274, as the Byzantine envoys prepared to leave for Lyon, he withdrew from his duties. The union was concluded at the Council of Lyon, and John Bekkos, who supported it, was placed in his stead. Joseph resigned on 9 January 1275 and retired to the monastery of Anaplous and then to Chele on the Black Sea coast, returning to Constantinople in summer 1280 to the monastery of Kosmidion.

After Michael's death in 1282 Andronikos II reversed his father's church policy, removed John Bekkos and recalled Joseph to the patriarchate on 31 December 1282. A synod called by the emperor declared the union void. Because of poor health Joseph resigned shortly before his repose on 23 March 1283. For his steadfastness against the union, his successor Gregory II regarded him as a confessor, and he was later numbered among the saints.