October 806-815 A.D. Nicephorus I—Constantinople’s 80th; Iconodulolater; Important Canonical/Textual Work
October 806-815 A.D.
Nicephorus
I—Constantinople’s 80th; Iconodulolater; Important Canonical/Textual Work
Nikephoros I of
Constantinople
St. Nikephoros I or Nicephorus I (Greek: Νικηφόρος Α΄, Nikēphoros
I ), (c. 758 – April 5, 828)
was a Christian Byzantine writer and Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople from April 12, 806, to March 13, 815.
See also
References
External links
Nikephoros I of
Constantinople
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
Saint Nikephoros of Constantinople
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Nikephoros I of
Constantinople trampling onJohn VII of Constantinople. Miniature fromChludov Psalter.
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Born
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Died
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Honored in
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He was born in Constantinople as the son of Theodore and Eudokia, of a strictly
orthodox family, which had suffered from the earlier Iconoclasm. His father Theodore, one of the secretaries of
Emperor Constantine V, had been scourged and banished to Nicaea for his zealous support of Iconodules, and the son inherited the religious convictions of the
father. Nevertheless, he entered the service of the Empire, became cabinet
secretary (asekretis), and under Irene took part in the synod of 787 as
imperial commissioner. He then withdrew to one of the cloisters that he had founded on the eastern shore of the Bosporus, until he was appointed director of the largest home for the destitute in
Constantinople c. 802.
After the death of the
Patriarch Tarasios, although still a layman, he was chosen patriarch by the wish of the emperor (Easter, April 12, 806). The uncanonical choice met with opposition from the
strictly clerical party of the Stoudites, and this opposition intensified into an open break when Nikephoros, in
other respects a very rigid moralist, showed himself compliant to the will of
the emperor by reinstating the excommunicated priest Joseph.
After vain theological
disputes, in December 814, there followed personal insults. Nikephoros at first
replied to his removal from his office by excommunication, but was at last
obliged to yield to force, and was taken to one of the cloisters he had
founded, Tou Agathou, and
later to that called Tou
Hagiou Theodorou. From there he carried on a literary polemic for the cause of the iconodules against the synod of 815. On the
occasion of the change of emperors, in 820, he was put forward as a candidate
for the patriarchate and at least obtained the promise of toleration.
He died at the monastery of
Saint Theodore (Hagiou Theodorou), revered as a confessor. His remains were solemnly brought back to Constantinople by the Patriarch Methodios on March 13, 847, and interred in the Church of the Holy Apostles,
where they were annually the object of imperial devotion. His feast is
celebrated on this day both in the Greek and Roman Churches; the Greeks also
observe 2 June as the day of his death.
Compared with Theodore of
Stoudios, Nikephoros appears as a
friend of conciliation, learned in patristics, more inclined to take the defensive than the offensive,
and possessed of a comparatively chaste, simple style. He was mild in his
ecclesiastical and monastical rules and non-partisan in his historical
treatment of the period from 602 to 769 (Historia syntomos, breviarium).
He used the chronicle of Traianus Patricius.
His tables of universal
history (Chronographikon syntomon), in passages extended and continued,
were in great favor with the Byzantines, and were also circulated outside the
Empire in the Latin version of Anastasius Bibliothecarius,
and also in Slavonic translation. The Chronography offered a universal history from the
time of Adam and Eve to his own time. To it he appended a canon catalog
(which does not include the Revelation of John). The catalog of the accepted books of the
Old and New Testaments is followed by the antilegomena (including Revelation)
and the apocrypha. Next to each book is the count of its lines, his stichometry, to which we
can compare our accepted texts and judge how much has been added or omitted.
This is especially useful for apocrypha for which only fragmentary texts have
survived.
·
Apologeticus
minor, probably composed before
814, an explanatory work for laymen concerning the tradition and the first
phase of the iconoclastic movement;
·
Apologeticus
major with
the three Antirrhetici against Mamonas-Constantine
Kopronymos, a complete dogmatics of the belief in images, with an exhaustive discussion and refutation of
all objections made in opposing writings, as well as those drawn from the works
of the Fathers;
·
The
third of these larger works is a refutation of the iconoclastic synod of 815
(ed. Serruys, Paris, 1904).
Nikephoros follows in the path
of John of Damascus. His merit is the thoroughness with which he traced the
literary and traditional proofs, and his detailed refutations are serviceable
for the knowledge they afford of important texts adduced by his opponents and
in part drawn from the older church literature.
See also
References
·
Paul
J. Alexander, The Patriarch
Nicephorus of Constantinople, Oxford University Press, 1958.
External links
Patriarch
of Constantinople
806–815 |
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