Constantine I (Metropolitan of Kiev)

Constantine I was Metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus' in the mid-twelfth century, a Greek hierarch sent from the Patriarchate of Constantinople during one of the sharpest canonical crises in the early Church of Rus'. In 1147 Grand Prince Iziaslav II Mstislavich had induced a portion of the bishops to elect Kliment Smoliatich metropolitan without the blessing of the ecumenical patriarch, the first attempt to raise a native candidate independently of Constantinople. Several hierarchs, above all Niphont of Novgorod, refused to recognize Kliment. After Iziaslav's death and Yuri Dolgorukiy's seizure of Kiev, Patriarch Luke Chrysoberges and the Constantinopolitan synod named Constantine to restore patriarchal authority over the see. Constantine reached Kiev in 1156. Niphont, who had travelled to meet the new metropolitan, died in Kiev that same year before Constantine's position was fully secured.

Once in office Constantine treated Kliment's acts as invalid. He deposed clergy ordained by Kliment and required reordination, a policy that, from Constantinople's standpoint, repaired canonical order but that alienated many priests, monks, and princely houses which had accepted the earlier metropolitan. Constantine's hold on Kiev depended on Yuri Dolgorukiy. Yuri died in 1157, and the ensuing struggle for the Kievan throne left the metropolitan without a reliable protector. Clerical and princely opposition forced him to abandon the cathedral city. He withdrew to Chernigov, where Prince Sviatoslav Olhovych received him, and he never recovered the Kievan throne.

Chronicle tradition, especially the Hypatian Chronicle, gives a striking account of his last days. Conscious of the discord that had marked his tenure, Constantine is reported to have ordered that after death his body should not be buried in a church but dragged from the city and thrown to the dogs. The instruction was carried out. A violent storm then lasted three days, after which the body was taken up and buried with honor in the Church of the Holy Saviour in Chernigov. He died in 1159. The episode, whether read as penitential humility or as later narrative coloring, became the chief memory of his end.

Constantine was never a patriarch: in his lifetime the see of Kiev remained a metropolitanate under Constantinople. Almost nothing is recorded of his birth, family, or early career beyond his Greek origin and his selection by the patriarchal court. As an Eastern bishop he belonged to the monastic, celibate clergy. His short metropolitanate is important mainly as evidence of the twelfth-century contest between Constantinopolitan canonical control and the political ambitions of the princes of Rus'. No reliable source preserves a year of birth, a precise birthplace, or a later formal canonization with a universally observed feast.