ON SAINT ANTONY CAULEAS, PATRIARCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE
In the year of Christ 895.
Preliminary Commentary.
Antony Cauleas, Patriarch of Constantinople (Saint)
By I. B.
[1] Enrolled in the registers of the Blessed among both Latins and Greeks is Antony, surnamed Cauleas, who presided over the Church of Constantinople at the end of the ninth century from the Incarnation of Christ. Concerning him the Roman Martyrology states: At Constantinople, Saint Antony the Bishop, in the time of Leo VI the Emperor -- namely he who, born of Basil the Macedonian, was called the Wise or the Philosopher. Saint Antony is venerated on February 12. The commemoration of the same Antony was annotated in the Additions to Usuard by Molanus thus: Also at Constantinople, Saint Antony, great among the Pontiffs of God and admirable among Patriarchs. The Menaea preceded with these words: On the same day (February 12) the commemoration of our holy Father Antony, Archbishop of Constantinople. They append an eulogy, concerning which see below.
[2] Philip Ferrari in the General Catalogue of the Saints who are absent from the Roman Martyrology inscribed Saint Antony under February 11, not the 11th from the Menologion of the Greeks, as he professes in his Annotations. But which one? Certainly not the one published by Henry Canisius; not the Greek one printed at Venice; not the one said to have been composed by order of Basil the Macedonian and preserved at Rome, since Antony survived the Macedonian by several years. Ferrari makes other errors in the same Annotations, as some have written by mistake; when he says that he was substituted for Photius the schismatic and heretic under Leo IV the Emperor. Leo IV was the son of Copronymus and a hundred years earlier than Antony, who, under the reign of Leo VI -- not Photius (whom he erroneously calls Plotius) but Saint Stephen, the brother of the Emperor Leo -- was appointed as successor.
[3] In the third year of Leo, which was the year 888 of the Era now used by the Latin Church, made Patriarch in the year 888, Antony was raised to the Patriarchate. So Cedrenus in his Compendium of Histories: In the following year (he had previously related the events of the second year of Leo's reign)
in the following, that is, the third year of his reign, Stephen, the Emperor's brother and Patriarch, departed this life. In his place Antony, surnamed Cauleas, was ordained Patriarch. Gabius rendered this erroneously in Curopalates with these words: In the following year Stephen, the Emperor's brother, and the Patriarch departed this life: in whose place Antony, surnamed Cauleos, was appointed. after Saint Stephen; In Greek he is also called Kauleas by Cedrenus and Zonaras and in the Series of the Bishops of Byzantium in book 4 of Greek Law; and Stephen, the brother of the Emperor, was the same person as the Patriarch, as Curopalates himself had related a little before; and in Cedrenus the reading is "apelipe ten zoen," he departed this life, not "they departed." Stephen seems to have died on May 17, on which day Baronius writes that he is venerated by the Greeks, volume 10 of the Annals at the year 888, number 8.
[4] It is not sufficiently clearly handed down in what year Saint Antony died, or for how long he administered that Church. died, not in the year 901 Baronius in the Annotations to the Martyrology and Vossius in book 2 on the Greek Historians, chapter 26, write that he died in the year 901. They seem to have drawn this opinion from Curopalates, who after writing that upon the death of the Patriarch Antony,
Nicholas Mysticus was designated Patriarch -- on the same page (as also Cedrenus, whom he perpetually follows) narrates that the Emperor Leo, on the day of Pentecost in the temple of Saint Mocius, was wounded with a club by a criminal, as some have quite plausibly supposed in error, and that it was predicted to him by the monk Marius that he would live ten more years. For thus one might reason: Leo died in the year 911, ten years after that wound was received; therefore it had been inflicted upon him in the year 901, on May 31, for Pentecost fell on that day in that year; not long before, therefore, Nicholas had succeeded Antony, who had died on the day before the Ides of February. But although the events those writers interpose are touched upon in few words, they were enacted over the course of many years; in the manner, that is, in which after the death of his first wife Saint Theophanon, Leo then took a second and a third wife and distinguished them with the imperial diadem.
[5] Baronius reconsidered what he had annotated to the Martyrology in volume 10 of the Annals, where at the year 890, number 13, he wrote thus: In this year the Patriarch of Constantinople, Antony, dies, not in the year 890, where he had sat for only two years. So it is in the Series of Patriarchs of Constantinople interwoven in the body of Law. But the years assigned in that Series to the Patriarchs who governed that Church in the time of Leo do not cohere with each other sufficiently. For it is said that Stephen sat for three years, Antony for two, Nicholas Mysticus for eleven; after his ejection, Euthymius for five years and six months; and finally, upon Leo's death, with Euthymius expelled, Nicholas was restored. In the first year of Leo, the year of Christ 886, Stephen was raised to the Patriarchal throne, after the expulsion of Photius, who had never legitimately obtained it. (as is clear from the time of his successors, Stephen died in the third year thereafter, 888. If Antony sat for only two years, he must be said to have died in 890, as Baronius determined. Therefore in 901 Nicholas was ejected, having sat for eleven years. It will follow that Euthymius, to whom five years and six months of the See are attributed, was expelled in 906 -- but this finally occurred in 911, when, upon Leo's death, Alexander assumed the Empire. Therefore five years and some months are missing from the number of years assigned to Antony; nor is there anywhere mention of an interregnum, since always, when one died or was expelled, another was created Patriarch.
[6] The error becomes apparent in another way if you argue thus: Euthymius was expelled in the year 911, in the month of June, upon Leo's death. He had sat, moreover, five years especially from the expulsion of Euthymius in 911, and six months from the beginning of the year 906. Therefore Nicholas had then been first ejected, after presiding over the Church for eleven years, from February of the year 895, on the twelfth day of which his predecessor Antony had died. Finally, when in the year 912 Alexander died, Constantine, the son of Leo, was already completing the seventh year of his age, as Zonaras and Cedrenus write: and therefore he must have been born at the age of the year 905. And indeed, as Cedrenus testifies, Nicholas baptized him in the temple of Hagia Sophia. Then the same Nicholas, because the Emperor had taken Zoe -- who, not yet joined to him in wedlock, had borne him that son -- as his fourth wife and of the birth of Constantine Porphyrogenitus in 905) and had crowned her Augusta, barred Nicholas from the sacred rites. And when he would not allow himself to be persuaded by any entreaties to admit him into the church, he was removed from the See at the beginning of the year 906, having sat for eleven years from the year 895, in which it follows that Antony must have died, after having governed the Church for seven years, but 895. he who, as we have said, had succeeded Stephen in the year 888.
[7] Cedrenus and Curopalates narrate only that upon the death of Antony, Nicholas Mysticus was designated Patriarch; they do not express how many years the former had sat. Zonaras appears to have expressed this, but through the carelessness of the copyist or a defect in the ancient codex, it has been omitted in the printed copies. The Greek reads thus: "For Antony, having survived on the throne of Constantinople for years... The duration of his See omitted or erroneously expressed by writers, and having departed this life, Nicholas Mysticus was ordained Patriarch." Wolfius translates: For when Antony, having governed the See of Constantinople for years..., had died, Nicholas Mysticus was designated Patriarch. That there is an error in the cited Series of Patriarchs, as we contend, appears to have occurred because the numeral 2 was written in place of 7; or simply 2 instead of 7. When otherwise the author may have correctly written: Antony Cauleas, under the same Leo, for seven years, or seven
years. Antony Cauleas, under the same Emperor Leo, seven years.
[8] Published by Lipomanus in volume 5 of the Lives of the Saints, and then by Surius, is the funeral oration, or Life woven together with an encomium, by Nicephorus, a most blessed philosopher and orator, of Antony, great among the Pontiffs of God and admirable among Patriarchs. The Life written by Nicephorus: This we also give here from the same source. Who this Nicephorus was, and whether he composed other works, we have not read anywhere. That he lived under Leo the Wise, the Emperor under whom Antony also lived, is clear from the oration itself.
[9] A summary of the Life of Saint Antony, composed from the same oration, exists in the Menaea, the eulogy in the Menaea: in which it is indicated that there was some monastery bearing his name, perhaps founded by him, or in which he himself had formerly received the monastic habit. The Menaea have thus: "His commemoration takes place in his monastery." his monastery. His commemoration is celebrated in his own monastery.