Confessor Paul

Saint Paul the Confessor, also known as Paul I of Constantinople, was a fourth-century archbishop of Constantinople and a leading defender of the Nicene faith against Arianism. He was a native of Thessalonica and served as a priest of the church of Constantinople under Archbishop Alexander. When Alexander died in 337, the orthodox clergy and people of the city elected Paul as his successor, while the Arian party put forward Macedonius. The disputed election, and the religious policy of the emperor Constantius II, shaped the rest of Paul’s life. He is counted among the early occupants of the see later styled patriarchal, and the church historians of the following century—principally Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, and Theodoret—are the main narrative sources for his career. Precise details of his family, education, and the year of his birth are not preserved.

Constantius II was in the West when Paul was first chosen. On his return the emperor sided with the Arian party: a synod deposed Paul and installed Eusebius of Nicomedia on the throne of Constantinople. Paul withdrew to the West, where he obtained the support of Pope Julius I of Rome. After Eusebius died in 341, Paul returned and was again received by the orthodox in the capital, only to be expelled once more. The struggle between his adherents and those of Macedonius produced serious unrest in the city; the magister equitum Hermogenes was killed in the disturbances, and Constantius drove Paul out again. A synod at Antioch continued to treat him as deposed. Throughout these years Paul stood with Athanasius of Alexandria and other Nicene bishops who suffered similar cycles of exile and restoration as imperial favour shifted between the homoousian and Arian (or homoian) parties.

Paul found a political protector in Constans, the Western emperor, who pressed his brother Constantius to restore the Nicene bishops. In the mid-340s, in the aftermath of the Council of Serdica, Paul was restored to Constantinople together with other Nicene exiles. The arrangement did not survive Constans. After Constans was killed in 350, Constantius was free to act against the Nicene leaders in the East. Paul was banished to Cucusus in Armenia. There, according to the fifth-century church historians and the later hagiographical tradition, he was strangled by Arian priests. That violent death, following years of deposition and exile for his refusal to abandon the Nicene confession, earned him the title of confessor and, in many accounts, of martyr. The year of his death is traditionally given as 350; the exact day and some circumstances of the murder remain imperfectly documented.

After Nicene orthodoxy was established in the empire under Theodosius I, Paul’s relics were brought from Cucusus to Constantinople, where they were received with honour and, according to the received tradition, enshrined in the church of Saint Lawrence. His memory was kept in both East and West. The Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates him on 6 November; the Roman Martyrology has observed him on 7 June. He is remembered as a bishop who accepted repeated exile rather than compromise the faith of Nicaea, and as one of the confessors whose sufferings marked the middle decades of the fourth-century Arian controversy. Beyond the outline given by the church historians, his early life, any possible family, and a detailed list of writings or patronages are not securely attested.