Arsenios Autoreianos

Arsenios Autoreianos (also rendered Arsenius Autoreianus) was a Byzantine monk and Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in the thirteenth century. He was born in Constantinople to the Autoreianos family, a house of some standing in the Byzantine world. From youth he followed the monastic life, residing in communities in Bithynia, on Mount Athos, and elsewhere, and he gained a reputation for ascetic strictness, learning, and independence of mind. Those traits later defined his stormy career on the patriarchal throne.

In the mid-1250s, while the Byzantine court still ruled from Nicaea and Constantinople remained under Latin occupation, Emperor Theodore II Laskaris named Arsenios patriarch. He thus headed the Church of Constantinople in exile at a moment of political weakness. After Theodore II died in 1258, the child-emperor John IV Laskaris was left under a disputed regency. Michael Palaiologos rose first as regent and then as co-emperor. Arsenios consented to crown Michael VIII but sought to bind him by oath to protect the rights and eventual succession of the young John IV.

The recapture of Constantinople from the Latins in 1261 restored the patriarchate to the imperial city, and Arsenios returned to office. Not long afterward Michael VIII had John IV blinded in order to eliminate him as a rival. Arsenios judged the act a crime against the legitimate heir and against the oaths previously sworn, and he excommunicated the emperor. The conflict ended with Arsenios’s deposition in the mid-1260s. He was sent into exile and spent his remaining years in monastic confinement, chiefly on the island of Proconnesus in the Sea of Marmara, where he died in 1273.

His removal did not close the dispute. Adherents known as Arsenites refused to acknowledge the patriarchs appointed in his place and continued to regard Arsenios as the lawful head of the church. The Arsenite schism divided the Byzantine Church for decades and was formally healed only in 1310, when his remains were brought to Constantinople for a ceremony of reconciliation. He is remembered as a prelate of uncompromising principle whose clash with imperial power left a lasting mark on the ecclesiastical politics of the restored empire.