man, St. Marcian (February 17th) had a very holy wife, St. Justinian (November 15th) deserves the credit of two immortal works, the Codex and the Church of the Holy Wisdom, but what can one say for St. Theodosius II (July 29th), St. Leo I, the Emperor (January 20th), St. Theodora, the public dancing woman who became an Empress, and was always a Monophysite (November 15th), St. Justinian II (July 15th), St. Constantine IV (September 3rd)?
An even easier road to heaven is open to patriarchs, as long as they do not quarrel with Cæsar. St. Anatolius († 458, his feast is on July 3rd), we have heard of at Chalcedon (p. 36); he had been a Monophysite and Dioscur's legate at court, but he was a poet who wrote some of the earliest Greek Stichera. St. John IV the Faster († 599) deserves the gratitude of his successors for having left them the proud if ill-omened title of Œcumenical Patriarch. But not only he, every Patriarch of Constantinople from Epiphanius († 535) to Thomas I († 610) is a Saint, except only Anthimus I. It seems invidious to leave him out; but then he was a Monophysite, deposed by Pope Agapitus in 536. From 669 to 712 again every patriarch is canonized with five exceptions, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter, the four Monothelites condemned by the sixth general council (680), and John VI, the accomplice of the usurper Philip Bardesanes (711–713).[1] But the Byzantine Church has some more respectable Saints than these. There are numbers of Confessors, monks from every Laura,[2] and a great crowd of Martyrs, massacred by Saracens, or executed by Iconoclast Emperors.
That the Eastern Churches used and reverenced Images and Relics of Saints is also too well known to need proof. This custom also they had inherited from the catacombs. In all Eastern Churches the first thing that met a stranger's eye, then
- ↑ Philip was an Armenian soldier who murdered the Emperor Justinian II. After two years' reign he was deposed, and his eyes were put out by Anastasius II (713–716), The Patriarch John promptly implored forgiveness of the Pope and the Emperor; he was allowed to be Patriarch till his death (715), but he had ruined his chance of being canonized.
- ↑ A Laura (λαῦρα) is a Greek monastery.
