Leo Styppes

Saint Leo Styppes was ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople from May 1134 until his death in January 1143, in the reign of the emperor John II Komnenos. Before being elected patriarch he was a presbyter and steward of the Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. He was declared a saint by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and he is commemorated on 12 November.

Election as patriarch

Little is known of his earlier life. He was elected patriarch in May 1134, as successor to Patriarch John IX Agapetos, who died in the second half of April of that year. The Patriarchate's synod, according to a synodal act of May 1134, had first given a negative opinion on the transfer to the throne of Constantinople of the patriarch John of Antioch, who had never set foot in Antioch but had exercised authority over the metropolises of the imperial territory under his jurisdiction.

The length of his patriarchate is given differently by the sources, from eight years to nine. The Byzantinist Venance Grumel reckons it at eight years and eight months.

His ministry

His ministry was calm and passed without notable events in the reign of John II Komnenos. The decisions taken in this time concerned mostly the heretics and schismatics brought to light in the disputes of the time of Alexios I Komnenos. In 1135 an attempt at rapprochement between the Eastern and Western Churches, begun by Lothar of the Holy Roman Empire, failed.

In May 1140 Leo presided over a synod that condemned the works of the recently deceased theologian Constantine Chrysomallos. These writings circulated among monks and influential laymen, and the synod, having gathered several copies and compared them, found in them Messalian and Bogomil teachings and ordered them seized and burned. Scholars today, however, link Chrysomallos with the mystical tradition of Saint Symeon the New Theologian, so the condemnation of that time does not match how he is viewed now.

In his time a ruling was also made forbidding magical rites and fortune-⁠telling, which were common among the upper classes. The occasion was certain practices of sorcerers at the bedside of Zoe, wife of Alexios Komnenos, the son of the sebastokrator Isaac, when she was gravely ill. Leo asked for severe penances for laymen guilty of such practices. A decree of his on the legality of certain marriages between relatives by marriage is included in the Jus Orientale and the Jus Graeco-⁠Romanum.

Repose

He departed to the Lord on 12 January 1143, about three months before the emperor John II. After a few months' vacancy of the throne, Michael II Kourkouas became patriarch. Leo is commemorated on 12 November in the Greek calendar.