Saint Paul of Constantinople, Bishop and Marty
Cum autem persequentur vos in civitate ista, fugite in aliam. Amen dico vobis, non consummabitis civitates Israël, donec veniat Filius hominis. “And when they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another. Amen I say to you, you shall not finish all the cities of Israel, till the Son of man come.” (Matthew 10:23)
I. A note on this entry
St. Paul of Constantinople lived in the hardest years of the Arian crisis, the quarter-century after the Council of Nicaea when the emperors of the East used their power against the bishops who held to its faith. He is one of the three great confessors of Nicaea in those years, alongside St. Athanasius of Alexandria and St. Hilary of Poitiers. He is the least known of the three, chiefly because he left no writings. Everything we know of him comes from others: from St. Athanasius, who knew him and defended him; from the Church historians Socrates and Sozomen, who wrote in Constantinople about ninety years after his death; and from the acts of the Western councils that took up his cause.
The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on the seventh of June. In the East, where he is honoured as one of the founding fathers of the Church of Constantinople, his feast falls today, the sixth of November. We remember him here on the Eastern date, because he is a saint of the undivided Church and because his story belongs to both halves of it. He was a Greek bishop, condemned by Eastern synods. He appealed to the Bishop of Rome and was restored by Western councils. And in the end he died for the faith of Nicaea in a village on the frontier of Armenia.
His life is hard to tell in a straight line. The ancient historians themselves disagreed about the order and the dates of his exiles, and modern scholars still do. What follows gives the sequence most commonly accepted, and the dates are approximate.
II. The choice of Bishop Alexander
Paul was probably a native of Thessalonica. As a young man he came to Constantinople, the new capital that Constantine had dedicated in 330, and he was ordained a priest and served as secretary to its aged bishop, Alexander. Alexander had stood with Nicaea against Arius. It was in Constantinople, by the tradition the city kept, that Arius died suddenly in 336, on the eve of the day when the imperial party meant to force his readmission to communion. Alexander had spent the night before prostrate in prayer in his church, asking God either to take him from the world or to spare the Church that sacrilege.
When Alexander was dying, his clergy asked him whom they should choose to succeed him. Socrates and Sozomen both report his answer (Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica II.6; Sozomen, Historia Ecclesiastica III.3). If they wanted a man who could teach and who was eminent in holiness of life, they should choose Paul. If they wanted a man of affairs, skilled in dealing with the powerful and with the business of the world, they should choose Macedonius, a deacon of the church.
The clergy and people chose Paul, about the year 337. The choice decided the rest of his life. The party that had worked to bring back Arius, led by Eusebius of Nicomedia, had the ear of the court. They had wanted a bishop of the capital who would be pliable, and Paul would not be.
III. The first exiles
The Emperor Constantine died in May 337, and the Empire was divided among his three sons. The East went to Constantius II, who favoured the party of Eusebius throughout his reign. When Constantius came to Constantinople and found Paul installed without his consent, he had a synod depose him. Eusebius himself was then moved from Nicomedia to the see of the capital, about 339.
This was itself a scandal. The canons of Nicaea forbade a bishop to leave his own church for another, and the transfer of Eusebius was exactly the kind of ambition the canon was written to prevent. St. Athanasius remarked bitterly that Eusebius had abandoned Nicomedia for Constantinople as a man leaves a wife for a richer one.
Athanasius, who knew Paul personally and wrote about him within a few years of his death, tells us that Paul was banished four times. The first time, Athanasius says, was to Pontus, on the southern shore of the Black Sea. Paul then made his way to the West, where Athanasius too had taken refuge, and they went together to Rome. Pope Julius I received them and held a council there about 340 or 341. He found that Athanasius, Marcellus of Ancyra, and the other Eastern bishops who had appealed to him had been condemned unjustly, and he admitted them to his communion.
IV. The riot and the death of Hermogenes
Eusebius died in 341, and Paul returned to Constantinople. The people of the city received him as their bishop. The Arian party at once consecrated Macedonius against him, the same Macedonius whom Alexander had judged fit only for the business of the world. The city split into two factions, and there was fighting in the streets.
Constantius was at Antioch. He ordered Hermogenes, his master of the cavalry, who was passing through Thrace on his way to campaign, to go to Constantinople and expel Paul by force. When Hermogenes tried to carry out the order, early in 342, the people rose against him. They set fire to the house where he was staying, dragged him out, and killed him in the street. Socrates and Sozomen both record it (Socrates II.13; Sozomen III.7).
This episode must not be passed over. A man was murdered by a mob that believed it was defending its bishop. The historians do not say that Paul directed the riot or approved it, and nothing in his character as Athanasius describes it suggests that he did. But it was done in his name, and the court used it against him for the rest of his life. It is a reminder that zeal for the truth, when it passes into violence, does not serve the truth. St. Peter’s sword in the garden did not defend Our Lord; Our Lord rebuked it (John 18:10-11).
Constantius came to Constantinople in person in the depth of winter. He drove Paul out of the city. He punished the people by cutting their daily allowance of grain from the public stores by half. He did not confirm Macedonius as bishop, either, because he was angry that Macedonius had been ordained without his permission and that his own general had died in the quarrel. But Macedonius was allowed to remain in the city and to minister in its churches.
V. Sardica and the return
Paul went west again. The Western Emperor, Constans, held to the faith of Nicaea, and he pressed his brother to allow a great council to settle the disputes between the bishops of East and West. It met at Sardica, the modern Sofia, about 343. The Easterners came, found that Athanasius and the other exiled bishops were to sit with the Western fathers as bishops in good standing, and walked out. They held a rival synod at Philippopolis and issued an encyclical renewing their condemnations. The Western bishops who remained at Sardica, under the presidency of Hosius of Cordoba, declared the exiles innocent.
Constans then wrote to Constantius. The historians say that he threatened war if Paul and Athanasius were not restored to their churches. Constantius was fighting the Persians on his eastern frontier and could not afford a war with his brother. About 344 to 346 he gave way, and Paul returned to Constantinople and took possession of his church again. It was the longest peace he was to have, and it lasted only as long as Constans did.
VI. The window at the baths of Zeuxippus
In January 350 Constans was murdered by the usurper Magnentius. The bishops of Nicaea lost their protector in the West, and Constantius moved against them at once. He sent orders to Philip, the praetorian prefect of the East, to remove Paul from Constantinople and to install Macedonius.
Philip feared the people, who had killed an imperial general eight years before. Socrates tells how he went about it (Historia Ecclesiastica II.16). He went to the great public baths of Zeuxippus, beside the palace, and sent a courteous message to Paul asking him to come and discuss some public business. Paul came. Philip showed him the emperor’s letter. Then, while the crowd waited outside the main doors, Philip’s men took the bishop out through a window that opened onto the palace grounds, put him on a ship, and sailed for Thessalonica.
The prefect then rode in his chariot to the great church, with Macedonius beside him and soldiers with drawn swords around them. The people had heard what had happened and were packed into the church and its approaches. The soldiers forced a way through the crowd. In the crush and the panic, Socrates says, three thousand one hundred and fifty people were killed, some by the soldiers’ swords and many trampled to death. Macedonius was carried to the bishop’s throne over their bodies.
VII. Singara, Emesa, Cucusus
Paul was now an exile in earnest, and this time there was no Western emperor to bring him home. Athanasius gives the stages of his last journey (Historia Arianorum 7; Apologia de Fuga 3). He was taken in chains to Singara, a fortress on the Persian frontier in Mesopotamia, then to Emesa in Syria, and finally to Cucusus, a lonely town in the mountains of Cappadocia on the borders of Armenia.
At Cucusus he was shut up in a narrow, dark place and left without food, in the hope that he would die of hunger. After six days his jailers found him still alive, and they strangled him. Athanasius tells us that the Arians afterwards put it about that Paul had died of an illness. But, he says, those who lived in the place knew the truth and told it, and Philip the prefect, who had arranged the matter, fell from office within the year and died in disgrace.
Athanasius wrote this in his Defence of His Flight, which answers the charge that he was a coward for hiding from the soldiers sent to arrest him. He named Paul among the bishops who had been murdered or worn to death in exile. His point was this: the Arians wanted the bishops of Nicaea dead, and it was no cowardice to escape them. Our Lord Himself had said, When they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another. He had hidden from those who sought to stone Him until His hour had come (John 8:59). The saints fled when they could, Athanasius said, and they died bravely when they could not flee. Paul had done both.
Half a century later, in 404, another bishop of Constantinople was sent into exile at Cucusus by another emperor: St. John Chrysostom. He lived there for three years before he was marched to his death further on. The village on the edge of Armenia received two bishops of the capital as prisoners, and both are saints.
VIII. Return and cultus
Paul died about 350 or 351. The Arian ascendancy in Constantinople lasted almost thirty years more. Macedonius himself was deposed in 360 by a synod of the stricter Arian party, and he went on to deny the divinity of the Holy Ghost. The heresy of the Pneumatomachi, the “fighters against the Spirit,” was long called by his name.
The tide turned with Theodosius the Great. In 380 he entered Constantinople and gave its churches back to the Catholics. The next year, 381, the Second Ecumenical Council met in the city and completed the Creed of Nicaea with the article on the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who together with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified. In the same year Theodosius had the body of Paul brought back from Cucusus to the capital with great honour (Socrates V.9; Sozomen VII.10). It was laid in the great church that Macedonius had built, and the church was given Paul’s name. The Arians’ bishop had built the church, and the Catholic martyr took possession of it.
The Byzantine Church honours Paul as a confessor and hieromartyr on the sixth of November. The Roman Martyrology names him on the seventh of June. In the Middle Ages his relics were believed to have been carried to Venice, which gathered many relics of the saints of Constantinople. That belongs to the devout tradition of the city rather than to certain history.
IX. What his life teaches
That the faith is worth more than the see. Paul could have kept his throne at any point by coming to terms with the court. Eusebius showed how it was done. Paul preferred four exiles and a prison in Cappadocia. For we have not here a lasting city, but we seek one that is to come (Heb. 13:14).
That there is a time to flee and a time to stand. Paul did not go looking for martyrdom. He escaped when escape was honourable, appealed to Rome when appeal was possible, and returned when he could return. When there was nowhere left to go, he died at his post. This is Our Lord’s own teaching in the tenth chapter of St. Matthew, and Athanasius used Paul’s example to defend it. Prudence and fortitude are not enemies, and a martyr does not need to be reckless.
That communion with Peter is a refuge. When the synods of the East condemned him, Paul went to Rome. Julius received him, and the Western fathers at Sardica vindicated him. The council of Sardica also gave the Church its first canons on the right of a condemned bishop to appeal to the Roman See, and it did so in the very years when Paul and Athanasius needed that right. When the bishops of a whole region go astray, the faithful bishop looks to the Chair of Peter, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren (Luke 22:32).
That zeal must not become violence. The people who loved Paul killed Hermogenes, and three thousand of them died in the church in turn. The Church does not ask her children to defend the truth with fire and murder. The weapons of her warfare are not carnal, but mighty to God (2 Cor. 10:4). Paul’s own victory came through suffering, not through the mob.
That the truth outlives its persecutors. Paul died in prison believing that the Church of Constantinople had been handed over to heresy. Thirty years later the city confessed the full faith of the Trinity in an ecumenical council, and Paul’s body came home in triumph to a church that bore his name. The saints do not always see the fruit of their fidelity. God sees it for them.
Practice
Examine. Have I ever kept quiet about the faith to keep my position, my comfort, or the good opinion of those above me? When I am treated unjustly, do I seek redress by lawful means, or do I nurse resentment, or strike back? Is my zeal for the truth ever mixed with anger, contempt, or a wish to see my opponents humiliated? Do I pray for those who persecute the Church, as well as against their errors?
Do. Learn the Nicene Creed in Latin, if you do not already know it, and pray it slowly once this week as a profession of the faith Paul died for. Pray for bishops and priests who are suffering for the faith today, in prison or under pressure from governments. If you know a priest who is isolated or treated unjustly, write to him or visit him.
Pray. St. Paul has no proper Collect in the 1962 Missal. Pray the Collect of the Common of a Martyr Bishop:
Infirmitatem nostram respice, omnipotens Deus: et, quia pondus propriæ actionis gravat, beati Pauli Martyris tui atque Pontificis intercessio gloriosa nos protegat. Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum Filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia sæcula sæculorum.
“Look upon our weakness, O almighty God: and since the burden of our own deeds weighs us down, may the glorious intercession of blessed Paul, Thy Martyr and Bishop, protect us. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end.”
Aspiration. Non habemus hic manentem civitatem, sed futuram inquirimus. “We have not here a lasting city, but we seek one that is to come.”
Devote. In this month of the holy souls, pray for all who died in the riots of Constantinople, Catholic and Arian alike, and for the soul of Hermogenes. Ask St. Paul, St. Athanasius, and St. John Chrysostom, the exiled bishops, to obtain for the Church in our own day bishops who will not trade the faith for favour.
If you wish to go deeper: the Church History path follows the Arian crisis from Nicaea (325) to Constantinople (381): the exiles of Athanasius, the councils of Rome, Sardica, Rimini, and Seleucia, and the restoration under Theodosius. The Theology and Doctrine path treats the homoousion and the procession of the Holy Ghost, and the Macedonian error that the Second Council condemned. The East-West Comparative path takes up Sardica’s canons on appeal to Rome, how East and West have received them, and the shared cult of the confessors of Nicaea. The Lives of the Saints path sets Paul beside Athanasius, Hilary, Eusebius of Vercelli, and John Chrysostom, the bishops who suffered exile for the faith.
Sancte Paule, ora pro nobis.
Sources consulted: the Holy Scriptures in the Douay-Rheims version with the Vulgate; St. Athanasius, Historia Arianorum 7 and Apologia de Fuga sua 3 (PG 25); Socrates Scholasticus, Historia Ecclesiastica II.6–7, 12–13, 15–16, 26 and V.9 (PG 67); Sozomen, Historia Ecclesiastica III.3–4, 7, 9 and VII.10 (PG 67); the canons of Nicaea and Sardica (Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils*; Hefele,* History of the Councils*); the Roman Martyrology; the Byzantine Synaxarion for 6 November; Butler’s* Lives of the Saints*; the* Catholic Encyclopedia*. The words of the ancient historians are given in paraphrase. Dates follow the most common modern reconstruction, which is uncertain at several points.*