Confessor Germanus

Saint Germanus, known in Eastern Christian tradition as Germanus the Confessor, was Patriarch of Constantinople in the early eighth century and is remembered above all for his resistance to the first phase of Byzantine iconoclasm. He was born in Constantinople in the seventh century into a prominent family. According to the chronicle of Theophanes, his father, the patrician Justinian, was executed in connection with a political conspiracy under Emperor Constantine IV, after which the young Germanus was mutilated and placed among the clergy. He advanced in the church of the capital and of its hinterland and became metropolitan bishop of Cyzicus before his elevation to the patriarchal throne in 715, in a period of acute dynastic instability and of Arab pressure on the empire, including the great siege of Constantinople that followed soon after.

Germanus became patriarch during the brief reign of Theodosius III and remained in office under Leo III the Isaurian, whom he crowned in 717. His historical importance is bound up with Leo’s turn against the veneration of icons, which became open imperial policy in the later 720s. Germanus refused to give patriarchal sanction to the destruction of images. In letters and in his dealings with the court he argued that honour paid to icons was consistent with received Christian practice and with the doctrine of the Incarnation, and he would not subscribe to the emperor’s decrees. On 17 January 730 he was compelled to resign and was replaced by Anastasius, a cleric prepared to support the new policy. Because he lost his see rather than accept iconoclasm, later Orthodox tradition ranks him among the confessors, those who suffered for the faith without dying a martyr’s death.

After his deposition Germanus withdrew from public office. Surviving notices of his last years are thin; he is generally described as living in retirement in or near Constantinople, whether at a family residence or in a monastic setting, until his death in the following decade. Exact years of birth and death are not securely established in the sources, which offer conflicting figures (commonly placed by modern reference works around the mid-seventh century for his birth and in the 730s for his death). Several theological and liturgical writings have been transmitted under his name, including correspondence connected with the iconoclastic dispute (notably letters associated with the sees of Synnada and Claudiopolis) and homilies, among them Marian homilies. A mystagogical commentary on the liturgy has also been attributed to him, though modern scholarship has debated the authorship and date of some works in the corpus.

Germanus was honoured as a saint in the Eastern Church, with his principal feast on 12 May; he also appears in Western martyrological tradition on that date. The Second Council of Nicaea in 787, which restored the veneration of icons, looked back to him as a witness to the earlier practice of the church of Constantinople. Precise details of his burial, and many episodes of his early life beyond the chronicle notices, remain uncertain and are mixed in later accounts with hagiographical development. He was not Bishop of Rome, nor a Coptic pope; his office was that of Patriarch of Constantinople. As a eunuch cleric and later patriarch he lived in ecclesiastical celibacy and is not recorded as having a spouse or children.