Ignatius of Constantinople

Ignatius of Constantinople, originally named Nicetas, was a son of the Byzantine emperor Michael I Rangabe and of Prokopia, daughter of Emperor Nikephoros I. He was born in the late eighth century into the highest ranks of the Constantinopolitan aristocracy. When Leo V the Armenian overthrew Michael I in 813, the deposed emperor’s sons were castrated in order to bar them from the throne and were forced into monastic life. Nicetas received the monastic name Ignatius. He spent the following decades as a monk and abbot, founding and ruling monasteries, among them houses on the island of Terebinthos in the Sea of Marmara and the monastery of the Archangel Michael at Satyros on the Asiatic shore of the Bosporus. Contemporary and later sources present him as an austere, uncompromising monastic leader associated with the rigorist party in the Constantinopolitan church after the restoration of icons.

In 847, after the death of Patriarch Methodios I, the empress-regent Theodora selected Ignatius as patriarch. His first tenure was characterized by a strict disciplinary line toward clergy who had been involved with iconoclasm and toward moral failings at court. He came into open conflict with Bardas, uncle of the young emperor Michael III and the dominant figure in the government, whom Ignatius is said to have excluded from communion because of an irregular sexual relationship. In 858 Ignatius was deposed, confined, and eventually induced to resign. Photius, a distinguished scholar and high civil official, was rushed through the degrees of ordination and installed as patriarch on Christmas Day of that year. Ignatius’s supporters refused to accept the change. The dispute developed into the Photian Schism. Pope Nicholas I, appealed to by the Ignatian party, declared Ignatius the lawful patriarch and rejected Photius, producing a serious breach between Rome and Constantinople.

Basil I the Macedonian, after murdering Michael III and seizing the empire in 867, deposed Photius and recalled Ignatius, who was restored to the patriarchal throne in November of that year. In 869–870 a council met in Constantinople under Ignatius; it condemned Photius and is recognized by the Catholic Church as the Fourth Council of Constantinople, counted as the eighth ecumenical council, though the Eastern Orthodox Church does not receive it as ecumenical. Ignatius also asserted Constantinopolitan jurisdiction over the newly converted Bulgarians by ordaining an archbishop and clergy for them, a policy that collided with papal claims and strained relations with Rome even after his restoration, including during the pontificate of John VIII. He remained patriarch until his death.

Ignatius died in Constantinople on 23 October 877 and was buried at his monastery of Saint Michael at Satyros. Photius was restored to the patriarchate shortly afterward. Despite the bitterness of the schism, Ignatius came to be venerated as a saint in both the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic churches. His feast day is 23 October, and he is entered under that date in the Roman Martyrology. He is remembered as a monastic patriarch whose two periods in office stood at the center of the ninth-century struggles over ecclesiastical authority, missionary jurisdiction, and the relationship between the sees of Rome and Constantinople.