Macedonius II of Constantinople

Macedonius II was Patriarch of Constantinople in the late fifth and early sixth centuries, holding the see during the reign of Emperor Anastasius I. Surviving sources do not record a verified year or place of birth. He is described as a nephew of Gennadius I, who had been patriarch of Constantinople earlier in the fifth century, and as a presbyter of the Great Church of Hagia Sophia before his elevation. He succeeded Patriarch Euphemius after the latter’s deposition by Anastasius, an event placed in the mid-490s (commonly 495 or 496). Anastasius favored a religious policy built around Zeno’s Henotikon and was sympathetic to Miaphysite Christology; he appears to have hoped that Macedonius would prove more compliant than Euphemius, who had insisted on the authority of the Council of Chalcedon (451).

In office Macedonius remained a Chalcedonian. Accounts of his accession associate him with a demand for an orthodox profession of faith and with continued liturgical and canonical recognition of Chalcedon, including the treatment of the council in the diptychs. Over the following years the gap between patriarch and emperor widened. Anastasius pressed for a more explicitly anti-Chalcedonian line in the capital, while Macedonius represented the Chalcedonian clergy and populace. The dispute belonged to the larger crisis known as the Acacian Schism, which divided Rome and Constantinople over the Henotikon and over communion with sees that rejected or downplayed Chalcedon. Riots and factional conflict in Constantinople formed the political background to the patriarch’s fall.

In 511 Macedonius was deposed. Contemporary and near-contemporary narratives mention a cluster of accusations used against him, including charges of Nestorianism, of tampering with scriptural or liturgical texts, and of conspiracy or disloyalty. He was replaced by Timothy I, a figure more acceptable to the emperor’s religious aims. Macedonius was sent into exile, first in connection with Chalcedon and then to Euchaita in Pontus (Helenopontus). Later, amid insecurity in that region—sources refer to raids that made Euchaita unsafe—he was moved to Gangra in Paphlagonia.

He died in exile at Gangra around 517. Chalcedonian writers of the following generation treated him as a confessor who had suffered for the definition of Chalcedon. His removal, together with the earlier exile of Euphemius and the pressure placed on other Chalcedonian bishops, was reversed in its broader ecclesiastical effects only after Anastasius’s death, when Justin I in 518 restored a Chalcedonian settlement in Constantinople and ended the Acacian Schism with Rome. Precise details of Macedonius’s early life, any marriage or children, the exact circumstances of his burial, and a universally attested feast day are not preserved in the reliable historical record; later calendars sometimes associate him with veneration as a confessor, but that cult is not documented with the same firmness as his patriarchate, deposition, and death in exile.