Nephon I of Constantinople

Nephon I was Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople from 1310 to 1314. A native of Veria, former abbot of the Great Lavra on Athos and metropolitan of Cyzicus, he is remembered chiefly because under him, in 1310, the Arsenite schism, which had divided the Church of Byzantium for nearly fifty years, was ended. He is entered in some lists among the saints, and his commemoration is given on 23 December (the Serbian source gives 11 August). The sources on him are short and judge him in varying ways, so the account below says only what can be supported by them.

Origin and life on Athos

He was born at Veria, in Macedonia. The Serbian source says that at birth he received the name Nicholas and that he was a disciple of Patriarch Athanasius I, whom he succeeded on the throne. His date of birth, his name in the world and his family are not known, and the Greek sources say he had a middling education. Perhaps he lived for a time at Thessalonica. He entered monastic life and settled on the Holy Mountain, where in an act of 1294 of the protos John he appears as abbot of the Great Lavra.

Metropolitan of Cyzicus

He was elected archbishop of Proconnesus and, toward the end of the patriarchate of John XII, became metropolitan of Cyzicus, a city on the south coast of the Sea of Marmara. In 1303 Cyzicus was threatened by the Turks and, according to the sources, Nephon himself led the defence of the city during the siege. He took special care of the refugees from the interior of Asia Minor who took shelter at Cyzicus. Because he sold church vessels to pay for the refugees' care, around 1309 he was accused of sacrilege and simony. He rejected the charges and explained that the sale of part of the church's property was made necessary by helping those fleeing the Turks. Patriarch Athanasius asked Emperor Andronikos II to look into the case, but the emperor delayed, perhaps because he wanted to see Nephon as patriarch, while Athanasius, for his part, pressed for an inquiry for fear of being accused by the Arsenites of covering things up.

Patriarch of Constantinople

In September 1309 Athanasius again left the throne, and on 9 May 1310, after a time of indecision, Nephon was elected patriarch, as the emperor's personal choice. He suited the emperor not only by his administrative experience but also because he had a more conciliatory attitude toward the partisans of Patriarch Arsenios Autoreianos.

The most important thing of his patriarchate was the official ending of the Arsenite schism. It had begun in 1261, when Emperor Michael VIII ordered the young co-⁠emperor John IV Laskaris blinded. Patriarch Arsenios excommunicated Michael, and in 1265 he was removed from the throne. Part of the clergy and faithful did not recognize the removal and the new hierarchy, and his followers were called Arsenites. The division lasted several decades. His predecessor, Athanasius, required that the Arsenites' return to communion be accompanied by sincere repentance and the giving up of group claims. Nephon showed himself readier for compromise. The Arsenites gave up some of their demands, among them that of setting up their own patriarch, and Emperor Andronikos II wanted reconciliation, because so long a conflict weakened the unity of the Church and the stability of the state.

On 14 September 1310, on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, communion was solemnly restored in the cathedral of Hagia Sophia. At the service the remains of Arsenios were brought, clothed in patriarchal vestments, and, according to the description of the historian Joan Hussey, Nephon symbolically received from the hand of his dead predecessor an act of release from the excommunications he had pronounced. The emperor announced the terms of reconciliation in an act of union, after which representatives of the two sides served together. This form of reconciliation allowed the former Arsenites to recognize the existing hierarchy without discarding the memory of Arsenios. The service did not, however, erase all disagreements: some bishops opposed the terms, among them Metropolitan Theoleptos of Philadelphia, a great spiritual authority and guide of the future theologian Gregory Palamas. So the year 1310 is regarded as the institutional end of the schism, not its disappearance in a moment.

The sources also say that Nephon sent in 1310 a letter to Prince Michael Yaroslavich of Tver, condemning the possible acts of Metropolitan Peter, in answer to the complaints of Bishop Andrew of Tver, sent through the monk Akindin. A Bulgarian source adds that, because on Crete there were only Catholic bishops, Nephon gave the bishop of Kythira the right to ordain priests on the island, a right kept until 1590.

Judgement on him and retirement

The Greek sources show him as a worldly and very skilled man, known as a good and prudent administrator, which he proved when he reconciled almost at once with the Arsenites. The same sources say, however, that his life of luxury, love of money, of horses, of costly clothes and good food, and the use of money of the women's monasteries to put up buildings, scandalized. The scholar Nikephoros Gregoras judged him unlearned, full of envy, worldly pride and greed, but historians observe that this judgement is not fully to be trusted, for Nephon corresponded with Nikephoros Choumnos, with Bishop George Chioniades of Tabriz and probably with Constantine Akropolites. His patriarchal term ended on 11 April 1314, with the charge of simony (the Bulgarian and Serbian sources say he was slandered by enemies). He withdrew to the Peribleptos monastery in Constantinople, where he lived.

He built the church of the Holy Apostles at Thessalonica, where his ktetor portrait is preserved, and also endowed the small monastery of Peribleptos. His death is dated in some sources to 3 September 1328, but rather the date remains unknown, and according to the testimony of Sanudo he was still alive in 1333.