PAUL II, PATRIARCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE

Reigned Oct. 1, 641, to Dec. 27, 653. Elevated at the accession of the Byzantine emperor Constans II, who succeeded heraclius, and just prior to the pontificate of Pope Theodore I, Paul became patriarch at a time when monophysitism was fragmenting the Byzantine Church. At first he declared his adherence to the orthodox Christology, then (646–647) accepted the compromise position of monothelitism put forward by his predecessors, Patriarchs sergius and pyrrhus. In 648 he backed with his authority the decree of Constans, known as the typos, which simply forbade all further discussion of the Christological question. Then in 649, along with Sergius and Pyrrhus, he was excommunicated and anathematized by the Lateran Synod called by Pope martin i. This action, coupled with the fact that Martin's elevation had taken place without imperial sanction, resulted in the Emperor's seizing the pope and exiling him to the Chersonesus in 653, the year of Paul's death. Imperial attempts to solve the Monophysite controversy, either by compromise or enforced silence, lost their urgency by the end of Paul's tenure; by that time Arab conquests had overrun the most strongly Monophysitic provinces of the Byzantine Empire. The Monothelite compromise was abjured by the Byzantine Church itself at the sixth ecumenical council, constantinople iii (680–681), which declared Paul, among others, heretical.

Bibliography: v. grumel, Les regestes des actes du patriarcat de Constantinople (Kadikoi-Bucharest 1932–47) 1.1:120–121. Letter to Theodore, j. d. mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio (Graz 1960) 10:1020–26. c. j. von hefele Histoire des conciles d'après les documents originaux, tr. and continued by h. leclerq (Paris 1907–38) 3:398–400, 426–432. h. pargoire, L'eglise byzantine (Paris 1905) under "Monothéletisme." Histoire de l'église depuis les origines jusqu'à nos jours, ed. a. fliche and v. martin (Paris 1935) 5:165–168. f. x. seppelt, Geschichte der Päpste von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des 20. Jh. (Munich 1954–59) 2:59–63, 65ff. g. ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State (Oxford 1956, New Brunswick NJ 1957) 92, 97. h. g. beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur im byzantinischen Reich (Munich 1959) 55, 432–433.

[d. a. miller]