Constantine Leichoudes

Constantine Leichoudes was a Byzantine scholar, high official, and churchman of the eleventh century who served as Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, under the name Constantine III, from 1059 until his death in 1063. He came from a distinguished family associated with the capital and received the advanced literary and rhetorical education typical of the Byzantine civilian elite. In the middle decades of the eleventh century he belonged to a well-known circle of intellectuals that also included Michael Psellos, John Xiphilinos, and John Mauropous. These men combined classical learning with public careers and left a substantial mark on the court culture of Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos. Surviving literary sources, above all the works of Psellos, portray Leichoudes as cultivated, capable in administration, and of a moderate disposition.

During the reign of Constantine IX (1042-1055), Leichoudes rose to the summit of the civil hierarchy. He held the dignity of protovestiarios and served as mesazon, the emperor's chief minister, and thus exercised wide influence over imperial government. The same reign saw a notable revival of higher studies in Constantinople, often dated around 1045, when faculties of law and philosophy were organized or restored; Xiphilinos became nomophylax of the law school and Psellos hypatos of the philosophers, while Leichoudes remained the group's principal figure in high political office. After Constantine IX died in 1055, the throne passed in quick succession to Theodora, Michael VI, and Isaac I Komnenos. Through these unsettled years Leichoudes continued to be counted among the leading civilian notables of the empire.

Patriarch Michael I Keroularios died in January 1059, after a tenure famous for conflict with the emperors and for the break with the papacy in 1054. Later in 1059 Isaac I abdicated in favor of Constantine X Doukas. Leichoudes was then raised to the patriarchal throne and consecrated in early 1059. As a senior layman promoted directly into the episcopate, he followed a path familiar in Byzantium, in which a learned civilian was rapidly ordained and installed as patriarch. His patriarchate, in contrast to that of Keroularios, was marked by relatively harmonious relations with the imperial court of Constantine X. Contemporary assessments emphasize his learning and his preference for moderation in church-state affairs.

Leichoudes died in 1063 while still occupying the see of Constantinople. Michael Psellos composed a funeral oration in his honor, which remains a principal source for his reputation among his peers. He was succeeded, after a short interval, by his old associate John VIII Xiphilinos. Many personal particulars—his year and place of birth, whether he had been married, and the place of his burial—are not recorded in the sources that survive. He is remembered as a representative of the eleventh-century Byzantine civilian intelligentsia and as a patriarch whose brief and comparatively quiet tenure stood between more turbulent episodes in the history of the church of Constantinople.