Sergius II of Constantinople

Saint Sergius II was Patriarch of Constantinople from 1001 (by other data 998 or 999) until his death in July 1019, in the time of Emperor Basil II. A learned man of distinguished family, a relative of the Great Patriarch Photius, he was first abbot of the monastery of Saint Manuel. As patriarch he ordered questions of church law and monasticism and opposed certain fiscal measures of the emperor. His commemoration is on 12 April. About some deeds attributed to him, above all a rupture with Rome, the sources do not agree, and this is shown below.

Origin and election

According to the historian John Skylitzes, Sergius was a relative of the celebrated Patriarch Photius I of the ninth century. The degree of kinship is uncertain: some sources call him great-⁠nephew of Photius, others nephew, though by age the first version seems more plausible. He was brother of the magistros Cosmas, the first judge of Constantinople. Before his election he was abbot of the monastery of Saint Manuel, renewed by Photius, and, by some sources, spiritual father of Emperor Romanos I Lekapenos. Part of the older literature identified him with another Sergius, abbot of the same monastery and confessor of Romanos I in the first half of the tenth century, but academic prosopography regards the identification as improbable because of the great gap in time.

The date of election is discussed. According to E. G. Muralt he was patriarch from July 998. According to others, from 999, and Michel Le Quien also takes 999. According to Yahya of Antioch he was appointed in the 26th year of Basil II's reign, that is, after 11 January 1001. Modern prosopography gives June or July 1001, after a long vacancy following the death of Sisinnios II in 998. He became patriarch at an advanced age. Emperor Basil the Bulgar-⁠slayer chose him. He led the Church of Constantinople for eighteen or twenty years and in his time the Church had, it is said, 80 metropolises, 39 archbishoprics and 550 bishoprics.

As patriarch

Sergius was very learned. Continuing the line of Photius, he upheld the solidarity of the interests of the Byzantine Church and the empire in the struggle with papal Rome. Already in 1001 he judged a dispute between the monasteries of Athos: without hearing the other side, he did not decide finally, but ordered the protos there to gather information and settle the matter. Other acts of his concern marriage impediments set by Patriarch Sisinnios and the discipline of priests. One source says that in his time, with the help of Russian clergy, all the church laws up to then were translated into Russian.

He opposed the allelengyon, that is, the placing on the wealthy landowners of the fiscal debts of the poorer households. Basil II had introduced this measure during the long wars, especially with Bulgaria. The chronicles mention protests of the patriarch and other men of the Church, but the emperor did not repeal the decision. The conflict touched also the interests of the great church landowners. After Basil II's victory over Bulgaria in 1018, Sergius again tried to obtain the removal of the fiscal burden, without success. In May 1016 he issued a tomos on the conditions of entrusting monasteries for administration to private persons, in the regime called charistike. Entrusting was permitted on condition of preserving the monastery and caring for it, not turning it into a worldly estate. The text has not survived entire. The decision and the emperor's signature are known from a later canonical commentary of the twelfth-⁠century jurist Theodore Balsamon.

In 1004 he blessed the marriage of Maria, daughter of the noble patrician Romanos Argyros, to John, son of the doge of Venice Pietro II Orseolo. The Venetian chronicler John the Deacon describes the blessing of the marriage by the patriarch of the capital and the participation of the emperors in the ceremony, but does not name Sergius. The attribution of the event to his patriarchate rests on general chronology.

Symeon the New Theologian

An important source is the life of Saint Symeon the New Theologian, written by his disciple Niketas Stethatos in the eleventh century. According to it, Sergius at first approved the veneration of Symeon's spiritual father, Symeon the Studite, but later was drawn into the dispute between the disciple and Metropolitan Stephen of Nicomedia. In 1009 Symeon was exiled from the capital. The patriarch later reconsidered his explanations and consented to reconciliation. The Life is favourable to Symeon: in the accounts of support, Sergius is named, and in the descriptions of persecution the author often mentions only "the patriarch". This peculiarity matters for a critical reading of the work.

Rome and the end

A Greek source says that in his patriarchate Pope Sergius IV mentioned for the first time, in his enthronement letter, the Creed with the filioque, and that this led Patriarch Sergius to strike the pope's name from the diptychs, which made communion between the Churches problematic, long before the schism of 1054. The event is called the "schism of the two Sergii". But a critical analysis shows that there are no contemporary testimonies of such a rupture. The earliest accounts belong to authors of the early twelfth century, among them Euthymius Zigabenus. So this version is distinguished from the proven acts of Sergius's church governance. One source says "the pope's name was removed from the diptych" in his time, and another does not affirm it. Sergius died in July 1019. His successor was Eustathius.

The commemoration of Patriarch Sergius was at first honoured only by the monastery of Saint Manuel, and today it is honoured by the whole Orthodox Church on 12 April. An unfinished work on Nestorians and Jacobites, addressed to Emperor Constantine, is also attributed to him; its attribution calls for caution, since Constantine VIII became sole emperor only after Sergius's death, though earlier he had been co-⁠ruler with Basil II.