Patriarch Apollinarius of Alexandria

Apollinarius (also spelled Apollinaris) was the Chalcedonian, or Melkite, Patriarch of Alexandria in the mid-sixth century, occupying the see from 551 until about 569. He belonged to the imperial, Greek-speaking line of Alexandrian patriarchs that remained in communion with Constantinople after the Council of Chalcedon of 451, as distinct from the parallel non-Chalcedonian Coptic succession that held the allegiance of most of the Egyptian population. Surviving sources do not record his place or date of birth, his family, or his early career. Later episcopal catalogues that give only the years of his patriarchate cannot be treated as evidence for his youth or origins, and he must not be confused with the fourth-century heresiarch Apollinaris of Laodicea, with the second-century apologist of similar name, or with Saint Apollinaris of Ravenna.

He was installed in 551 by the authority of the Emperor Justinian I after the deposition of his predecessor Zoilus. Zoilus had lost imperial favor in the controversy over the Three Chapters, Justinian’s effort to condemn certain writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and Ibas of Edessa in the hope of conciliating Miaphysite opinion without formally abandoning Chalcedon. Apollinarius accepted that policy. During his tenure the Second Council of Constantinople, later counted as the Fifth Ecumenical Council, met in 553 and endorsed the condemnation of the Three Chapters; the Chalcedonian church of Alexandria under Apollinarius was aligned with the council’s decisions and with the emperor’s ecclesiastical program more generally.

Egypt in this period was religiously polarized. The Chalcedonian patriarch in Alexandria typically depended on the court, the garrison, and a Greek urban minority, while the countryside and much of the city followed the Coptic hierarchy, whose leaders were often in exile or under constraint. Contemporary and near-contemporary narratives, many of them partisan, present the Melkite incumbents of the sixth century as reliant on civil and military power. Precise details of Apollinarius’s own administration—including any episodes of coercion or liturgical confrontation—are poorly documented in sources that can be independently verified, and Coptic historiography naturally portrays the Chalcedonian occupants of the see as outsiders imposed from Constantinople.

Apollinarius remained patriarch into the early years of Justin II, Justinian’s successor. Standard catalogues of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria place the end of his tenure in 569, which is generally taken as the year of his death; he appears to have died in office and was succeeded by John, numbered John II or John IV in different reckonings of the Melkite line. No reliable account of his burial, personal writings, or a later cult has come down to us. Because the documentary record is thin, any reconstruction of his inner life, pastoral style, or local following remains limited to his place in the imperial church politics of Justinian’s reign and the continuing schism that divided the Alexandrian church after Chalcedon.