12 February 2025

Antony Cauleas, Patriarch of Constantinople, Confessor


From Fr Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints:

HE was by extraction of a noble Phrygian family, but born at a country seat near Constantinople, where his parents lived in retirement for fear of the persecution and infection of the Iconoclasts. From twelve years of age I have served God with great fervor, in a monastery of the city, which some moderns claim to have been that of Studius. In process of time he was chosen abbot, and, upon the death of Stephen, brother to the emperor Leo VI., surnamed the Wise, or the Philosopher, patriarch of Constantinople in 893. His predecessor had succeeded Photius in 886, (whom this emperor expelled,) and labored strenuously to extinguish the schism he had formed, and restore the peace of the church over all the East. St. Antony completed this great work, and in a council in which he presided at Constantinople, condemned or reformed all that had been done by Photius during his last usurpation of that see, after the death of St. Ignatius. The acts of this important council are entirely lost, perhaps through the malice of those Greeks who renewed this unhappy schism. A perfect spirit of mortification, penance, and prayer, sanctified this great pastor, both in his private and public life. He died in the year 896, of his age sixty-seven, on the 12th of February, on which day his name is inserted in the Greek Menæa, and in the Roman Martyrology. See an historical panegyric on his virtues, spoken soon after his death by a certain Greek philosopher named Nicephorus, in the Bollandists. Le Who, Oriens Christianus, t. 3; also t.1. p. 250.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments are subject to deletion if they are not germane. I have no problem with a bit of colourful language, but blasphemy or depraved profanity will not be allowed. Attacks on the Catholic Faith will not be tolerated. Comments will be deleted that are republican (Yanks! Note the lower case 'r'!), attacks on the legitimacy of Pope Francis as the Vicar of Christ (I know he's a material heretic and a Protector of Perverts, and I definitely want him gone yesterday! However, he is Pope, and I pray for him every day.), the legitimacy of the House of Windsor or of the claims of the Elder Line of the House of France, or attacks on the legitimacy of any of the currently ruling Houses of Europe.