Pope Constantine (708-715)

The last pope in Constantinople until 1967

The journey of 710-711 has become a memorial landmark. For more than twelve centuries, no pope would return to the capital of the Eastern Empire. It was not until the visit of Paul VI to Patriarch Athenagoras in 1967 that a pope reintroduced Constantinople into his personal itinerary.^[13]

This continuity of pontifical silence with regard to Constantinople belongs to the common history of the Christian East and West. It marks the progressive break between Rome and the Byzantine East, which will lead to the schism of 1054 and will only be restarted by the Second Vatican Council and the Paul VI-Athenagoras meeting in Jerusalem in 1964 then in Constantinople in 1967. Constantine is therefore a precise historical milestone in the long separation of the two lungs of the Church.

A Syrian in Rome, but a Roman man

Treccani underlines that Constantine, filius Iohannis of Syrian origin, is not an oriental agent parachuted into Rome: he already belongs to the Roman clergy at the rank of regional subdeacon.^[14] The Liber Pontificalis then notes that he had been chosen with other Roman clerics by the Pope Agathon to bring to Constantinople the Roman dogmatic letter intended for the sixth ecumenical council, and that he had returned to Rome with the acts of the council at the time when Pope Leo II was responsible for their Western confirmation.^[15][16]

Treccani even specifies that Constantine could have been the brother of the brief Pope Sisinnius, without documentary certainty.^[17] The solid fact is elsewhere: before being pope, he already knew personally Constantinople, the imperial court, the Trullus room, the conciliar acts and the Roman diplomatic codes. When the emperor summons the pope, the emperor summons a man who knows exactly what is happening in Constantinople.

The pope who did not bow to Philippicus

The other reason for his importance is more austere. The trip of 710-711 could have remained a brilliant and isolated episode: a Syrian received in triumph in Constantinople. But the year 712 completely reverses the picture. The monothelite emperor Philippicus claims to overturn Constantinople III; Constantine refused, had the imperial letter condemned by synod and had the six councils represented in Saint Peter's to establish Orthodox memory.^[18][19]

It is this contrast which gives Constantine his Catholic profile. He is the pope capable of a sumptuous welcome and capable of refusal without unnecessary drama: he does not break political communion with the empire, but he refuses the effigy, the name, the doctrine. This discreet firmness prepares the doctrinal work of saint Gregory II, who will be pope of the iconoclastic crisis.^[20]

Table of witnesses

The Holy See: the safe boundaries

The official Vatican file sets the limits: beginning of the pontificate on March 25, 708, end on April 9, 715, origin Syrian.^[21] The most accurate title is therefore: Pope Constantine (708-715).

The Liber Pontificalis gives a duration of seven years and fifteen days, followed by a vacancy of forty days before the election of Gregory II.^[22][23] These figures correspond to the official chronology of the Holy See and provide the exact order of magnitude.

The Liber Pontificalis: a story close to the events

The Roman notice begins with the identity: Constantine, of Syrian nation, son of John, sits for seven years and fifteen days.^[24] The moral portrait is sober: the notice insists on his simplicity, his gentleness, his liberality with the poor, and makes the trip to Constantinople the great narrative of the pontificate.^[25]

The text then gives the historical heart: convocation by the emperor, departure with a delegation of clerics, itinerary through Naples, Sicily, Reggio, Otranto, crossing to Constantinople, reception at the seventh mile by Tiberius and the patriarch Cyrus, prostration of Justinian II, communion given to the emperor, confirmation of privileges, return to Rome, ordinations, resistance to Philippicus, mosaic of the six councils, burial at Saint Peter's.^[26][27]

Treccani: the key to modern interpretation

The notice by David Miller in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani is valuable because it places Constantine in the Byzantine century of the papacy. He refuses to reduce these Eastern popes to imperial puppets: their linguistic competence and their roots in the Eastern diaspora allow them, on the contrary, to be Rome's best negotiators against Constantinople.^[28]

It also underlines the geopolitical dimension: the journey of 710-711 is not limited to a doctrinal debate on the quinisext canons; it touches on the question of Ravenna, the fiscal balance of the empire in Italy, the status of Pavia, and the very identity of the papacy in an Italy where imperial authority is still present but already fragile.^[29]

Syrian origin

The Liber Pontificalis gives two certain pieces of information: Constantine is of Syrian nationality and his father's name is John.^[30] The English-language Wikipedia notice (“Pope Constantine”) places his birth in Tyre (today in Lebanon) around 664.^[31] Neither the Liber Pontificalis, nor the Holy See file (which indicates only Syria), nor the Treccani notice gives this place or this year: Tyre 664 remains an uncorroborated fact, to be received with caution.^[32][33]

Caution does not detract from the essential: Constantine belongs to this Christian eastern diaspora which flocked to Rome in the 7th century, fleeing or following the upheavals caused by Muslim expansion, the crushing of the Persian Empire, the conquests in Syria, Egypt and North Africa. Several popes from the middle and end of the 7th century came from the same world: John V the Syrian from Antioch, Serge I from the Antiochian family, Sisinnius the Syrian, Constantine too.^[34][35]

Regional subdeacon and Roman cleric

The Liber Pontificalis recalls that Constantine entered the Roman clergy and that he had reached the rank of regional subdeacon before 680.^[36] This point is important: he is not an oriental bishop parachuted into the pontificate, nor a foreign monk imposed by the emperor. He entered the Roman hierarchy through the normal doors and served in the ecclesial administration of the city.

Treccani specifies that Constantine was probably the brother of the brief Pope Sisinnius, immediate predecessor, who died twenty days after his election in 708. The data remains a hypothesis, but it fits well into the family profile of a Roman clergy with a strong oriental component.^[37]

Legate to Constantinople III (680-681)

The strongest element of his pre-pontifical biography is his conciliar legation. The Liber Pontificalis relates that Pope Agathon had sent Constantine, with the priests George and Theodore and the deacon John, as Roman representatives to the sixth ecumenical council meeting in Constantinople from November 7, 680 to September 16, 681.^[38][39] This council defined the Catholic doctrine of two natural wills and two natural operations in Christ.^[40]

Constantine is therefore not only a witness to the monothelite case; he is an actor, in a subordinate but essential position. When, more than thirty years later, monothelitism returned with Philippicus, Constantine spoke as a man who had known the room of the Trullus, seen the bishops vote, listened to Macarius of Antioch defend his cause and heard the final definition acclaimed on September 16, 681.

Bearer of the acts in 682

The Liber Pontificalis further adds that Constantine had been chosen by Pope Leo II to carry the acts of the council and the Roman synodal confession to the Emperor Constantine IV in 682.^[41][42] We then see a man already invested with Roman confidence to speak to the Byzantine emperor.

This continuity is valuable for understanding 710-711: the pope who made the royal journey to Constantinople had already done so thirty years earlier as legate. He knows imperial diplomacy, the court, the chamberlains, the language. This is probably one of the reasons why Justinian II called it rather than imposing a more violent procedure on Rome.

Sisinnius: twenty days in the Lateran

On January 15, 708, Pope Sisinnius was consecrated. His health is very poor; the Liber Pontificalis notes that he was unable to bring his hands to his mouth because of gout, but that he nevertheless had a firm will and that he ordered the firing of lime for the restoration of the walls of Rome.^[43] He died on February 4, 708, after twenty days of pontificate — dates from the official list of popes of the Holy See (15.I.708 – 4.II.708).^[44][45]

This hasty death explains the context of Constantine's election. The city is already under construction for fortifications; Roman possessions in Sicily and Calabria are threatened by tax pressures; Ravenna whispers; Justinian II has reigned since his spectacular return to the throne in 705 and wants to have the quinisext canons recognized. The see cannot remain vacant for long.

Election March 25, 708

Constantine was elected and consecrated on March 25, 708. The Liber Pontificalis indicates that he takes possession of the Lateran; the Holy See file confirms the date.^[46][47]

Treccani emphasizes that the Roman election procedure, since the reform obtained by Benedict II from Constantine IV in 684-685, no longer requires a long imperial confirmation which paralyzes the see.^[48][49] Constantine can therefore be consecrated quite quickly. This relative procedural autonomy is one of the discreet achievements of the Byzantine papacy of the 7th century.

A consecration immediately contested

One of the first serious affairs of the pontificate was the consecration of Felix, new archbishop of Ravenna, by Constantine in 709.^[50][51] Barely ordained, Felix evades Roman obedience and relies on Ravenna secular power to assert a form of autocephaly: Ravenna would have its own rights which exempt it from jurisdiction Roman.^[52]

This dossier is not new. Under Vitalian (657-672), Constant II had supported a Ravennate autocephaly; under Donus (676-678) and Agathon (678-681), the return to Rome had begun; it is never completely closed. Felix extends the autocephalous temptation in the fragile context of the beginning of the 8th century.

Imperial expedition punishes Ravenna

Regardless of the conflict with Rome, Justinian II wanted to punish Ravenna for having, according to him, played a role in his ouster and exile in 695-705. A Byzantine expedition was sent in 709; the city is taken; several notables were deported to Constantinople; Felix is ​​tried, blinded and exiled to Cherson, on the Black Sea.^[53][54]

The detail matters. Even before the pope's trip to Constantinople, Justinian II showed that he can strike Ravenna with extreme violence. This imperial intervention paradoxically strengthens the Roman position: without needing to act himself, the pope sees Ravenna subdued by imperial force.

The return and submission of Felix

After the assassination of Justinian II in December 711, Felix was released and returned from Pontus to Ravenna.^[55][56] Treccani indicates that he ended up submitting to the Holy See, handing over to the pope the documents of obedience that he had initially refused to sign.^[57] The Catholic Encyclopedia summarizes the scene: Constantine supports Roman supremacy against the insubordination of Felix; Felix submits after a great misfortune.^[58][59]

The episode shows the typical articulation of this era: Rome does not need to force authority, the empire strikes on its side for political reasons, and the consequence is an ecclesial reintegration. But Constantine never exploited imperial blindness: he welcomed Felix's submission in canonical form, and his successor Gregory II completed the pacification of Ravenna.^[60]

A disciplinary council of 691-692

The Quinisext Council or in Trullo was held in Constantinople in 691-692, during the first part of the reign of Justinian II. Convened to complete the fifth and sixth ecumenical councils (Constantinople II in 553 and Constantinople III in 680-681) with disciplinary legislation, he promulgated 102 canons.^[61]

Several canons deeply offend Roman discipline: canon 13 authorizes married priests and deacons to continue married life; canon 55 prohibits the Roman fast on Saturdays in Lent; canon 82 prohibits the representation of Christ in the figure of the Lamb, a courtly image in the East but already dear to Rome. Canon 36 reaffirms parity between Constantinople and Rome in the terms of canon 28 of Chalcedon, which shocks Roman sensibilities.

The refusal of Serge I (701)

Serge I (687-701) formally refused to sign the acts in 692. Tradition reports that he preferred to die rather than approve the new developments contrary to Roman customs. Justinian II sends the protospatharian Zacharias to bring him back to Constantinople, like Pope Martin I once did, but the Italian army defends the pope and the mission fails.^[62] The protospatharian is a senior officer of the court of Constantinople, head of the guards who bear the sword.

This Roman resistance under Serge I set a precedent: no papal signature will be given to validate the quinisext canons as they stand. But Emperor Justinian II did not forget the affront. When he returned to power in 705 after ten years of exile and mutilation (hence his nickname Rhinotmète), he reopened the file.

John VII (705-707) procrastinates

The distant successor of Serge I, John VII (705-707), also received imperial requests to have the canons approved. The Liber Pontificalis reports that he sent them back to the emperor without formally approving or rejecting, out of human fear according to the Roman notice itself.^[63] The attitude is considered timid but it leaves the file open.

It is this open file that Justinian II reopens a third time in 710 by summoning Constantine: after the refusal of Serge I then the return of the acts without approval by John VII, the emperor again attempts to obtain Roman adherence to the canons of the Quinisext Council of 692.^[64]

Imperial pressure has not weakened in twenty years: three successive popes have had to say no, or not say yes.

The imperial iussio and the Roman decision

In 710, Emperor Justinian II sent Constantine an imperial iussio asking him to come to Constantinople.^[65][66] The pope accepted. The decision is not obvious: Constantine knows that the previous ones summoned (Vigil in 547, Martin I in 653) ended badly.^[67][68] But he also knows that Justinian II has just punished Ravenna, that he has partially restored Roman possessions by returning property, and that he has shown, in other cases, attention to Roman prestige.

The journey is therefore not a movement of submission. It is a state diplomatic visit: the pope travels as head of the universal Church, at the official invitation of the emperor, to negotiate ecclesial issues. The Liber Pontificalis specifies that before departure, Constantine left the archpriest, the archdeacon and the primicerius of the notaries in Rome to govern the Church in his absence, according to custom.^[69][70] The primicerius of the notaries is the head of the Roman chancery, the first of the clerks in charge of official acts.

Departure: October 5, 710

Departure took place on October 5, 710 from Porto, port of Rome.^[71][72] The delegation included thirteen people, including several Eastern clerics and the future saint Gregory II, then deacon of the Apostolic See.^[73][74]

The route follows the Tyrrhenian coast then the Adriatic:

• Naples, where the pope is received with honor;
• Sicily: Palermo and Reggio in Calabria;
• Gallipoli;
• Otranto, where the delegation spent the winter 710-711;
• Island of Chios, where the strategos (the Byzantine general commanding the imperial fleet of the region) joins them;
• crossing the Ionian Sea and the Aegean;
• Constantinople in spring 711.^[75][76]

The pope resides at Placidia Palace, which had once hosted Pope Vigilius in 547 and the Roman apocrisiaries.^[77] The apocrisiaries are the permanent representatives of the pope to the emperor in Constantinople.

Welcome to the seventh mile

The welcome is designed like an imperial adventus. At the seventh mile of the city, the imperial delegation awaits the pope: the co-emperor Tiberius, approximately six-year-old son of Justinian II; the patriarch Cyrus of Constantinople; senators; the nobles; the palatial clergy.^[78][79]

The Liber Pontificalis specifies a famous iconographic detail: Constantine enters the city mounted on a horse with golden saddles, golden reins, and wearing on his head the kamelaukion, that is to say the imperial diadem that only the sovereign is authorized to wear and only for “a great public feast of the Lord”.^[80][81]

The gesture is not a joke: it is a public statement. The emperor recognizes in the pope a quasi-imperial dignity in triumph.

“The following day, dressed in the cope, wearing the silk diadem around his head, mounted on a harnessed horse, the reins and harnesses decorated with gold, he entered the royal city. ” — Liber Pontificalis, notice of Constantine (the triumphal entry into Constantinople)^[82]

The meeting at Nicomedia: the prostration of Justinian II

Justinian II awaits the pope in Nicomedia, instead of waiting for him in Constantinople itself. The Liber Pontificalis says that he prostrated himself at the feet of the Pope, kissed his feet and mutually embraced him. The Catholic Encyclopedia soberly comments that the cruel emperor received the pope with the greatest honor, “prostrating himself before him and kissing his feet”.^[83][84]

“The day they saw each other, the most Christian Augustus, the crown on his head, prostrated himself and kissed the feet of the pontiff; then they fell into a mutual embrace. ” — Liber Pontificalis, notice of Constantine (the prostration of Justinian II)^[85]

The Liber Pontificalis thus attests a public prostration of the emperor before the pope, the crown on his head, followed by a mutual embrace^[86]; the Catholic Encyclopedia repeats the same gesture: the emperor receives the pope with the greatest honour, prostrating himself before him and kissing his feet.^[87] The important thing is less the exact degree of the imperial humiliation than the public nature of the gesture: Justinian II highlights the dignity of the Apostolic See in the very heart of the East.

Sunday mass: communion given to the emperor

The following Sunday, the pope celebrated mass and gave communion to Justinian II. On this occasion, the emperor renews or confirms “all the privileges” of the Roman Church.^[88][89]

This liturgical detail has a very precise ecclesial significance. The Byzantine emperor often claimed to receive communion according to imperial fashions, that is to say separately, in the sanctuary. Justinian II here receives communion from the hands of the Pope, in the normal position of the faithful. The gesture does not deny imperial dignity, but it recalls that the emperor receives the Eucharist from the hand of Peter's successor, like every Christian.

Deacon Gregory's negotiation

The great doctrinal and disciplinary debate was led, according to Treccani, by the deacon Gregory, future saint Gregory II.^[90] The result was what modern literature sometimes calls the compromise of Nicomedia or compromise of Constantinople.

The content: Constantine does not approve en bloc of the quinisext canons. He only accepts the provisions already approved by previous councils and compatible with the Catholic faith. Canons which contradict Roman usage — strict celibacy of the clergy, Saturday fasting, prohibition of the figure of the Lamb — are left without explicit approval.^[91][92][93]

The compromise is clever. It avoids rupture but saves the essential: the liturgical and disciplinary freedom of the West. Treccani emphasizes that the emperor, after the failure of the coercive methods employed against Serge I, this time gives the pope assurances that remove any binding content from the invitation — and that the results remain the same.^[94]

Return to Rome: October 24, 711

The Pope returns to sea in autumn; he returned to Gaeta, then to Rome on October 24, 711, exactly one year and nineteen days after his departure.^[95][96] The Liber Pontificalis notes the joy of the city and the organization of the return ceremonies.^[97]

The trip was, in itself, a success. It will remain in ecclesial memory as the last demonstration of political and liturgical communion between Rome and Constantinople before the long iconoclastic crisis and the schism.

Coenred of Mercia and Offa of Essex

In 709, two Anglo-Saxon kings left their kingdoms for Rome. Coenred, king of Mercia since 704, abdicates in favor of his cousin Ceolred. Offa, king of the East Saxons, accompanies him. Both want to become monks in Rome, in the wake of the great Anglo-Saxon conversions launched by Gregory the Great and continued by Vitalian.^[98][99]

The Liber Pontificalis simply notes, in Constantine's notice, that “in his time, two kings of the Saxons came with many others to pray to the apostles; as they hoped, their life quickly came to an end”.^[100] The sentence is sober, but it says a lot: the kings obtained the grace they were looking for — to die in Rome in prayer at the tomb of Peter.

Tonsure by the pope

Coenred and Offa received the tonsure from the hands of Pope Constantine, embraced monastic life and died shortly after in Rome.^[101] The event is also reported by the Venerable Bede in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, book V.^[102]

The episode describes the place of Rome in the Anglo-Saxon imagination at the beginning of the 8th century: a sanctuary, a monastic school, a final resting place desired by Christian kings. It is also a testimony to the papacy that the English mission launched more than a hundred years earlier continues to bear fruit.

The conflict with Milan

In 711, Archbishop Benedict of Milan claimed his right to consecrate the new bishop of Pavia, Armentaire. The case concerns an ancient jurisdictional division between Milan, Pavia and the Holy See in Lombardy. The Lombard king Ariperto II intervened, and Pope Constantine decided.^[103][104]

Treccani specifies that Constantine subtracts Pavia from Milan and places it in direct dependence of the Holy See.^[105] This decision is not an arbitrary novelty: it corresponds to an existing situation, but it fixes it legally.

The patrimonium Alpium Cottiarum

Treccani connects this decision to another fact: between 705 and 707, Ariperto II had returned to the Roman Church the patrimonium Alpium Cottiarum, that is to say the pontifical possessions of the Cottian Alps which the Lombards had confiscated.^[106][107]

The direct dependence of Pavia can therefore be read as a response from Constantine to a friendly Lombard gesture: Rome receives its patrimonial goods, and in return confirms the direct authority of the Holy See over Pavia. The file is minor in the collective memory, but it demonstrates Constantine's attention to the concrete balances of Christian Italy.

Death of Justinian II, murder of young Tiberius

A few weeks after the pope's return to Rome (October 24, 711), Justinian II was assassinated in December 711 in Damatrys in Opsikion, during a revolt that started from Cherson under the usurper Bardanes, who took the name of Philippicus.^{[108][109][110]} The episode is one of the most tragic in the Late Byzantine Empire: Justinian's mother takes refuge the young Tiberius, his six-year-old son and co-emperor, at the altar of the Saint Mary of Blachernae church; Philippicus' soldiers drag him out of the sanctuary and slaughter him on the spot.^[111]

This tragedy is not only political violence: it is the brutal disappearance of the six-year-old co-emperor who, a few months earlier, had welcomed Constantine at the seventh mile of Constantinople. The pope has just lost an imperial interlocutor and a child he had approached.

Monothelite Philippicus

The new regime is monothelite. Philippicus, a former officer exiled in Cherson, publicly supports the doctrine condemned by Constantinople III: one will in Christ. Upon his arrival, he deposed the patriarch Cyrus, who had welcomed Constantine, and installed in his place a monothelite patriarch, John VI of Constantinople.^[112]

For Constantine, the blow was of great doctrinal gravity: the emperor attacked not only a discipline, but the sixth ecumenical council itself. And Constantine, former legate from 680-681, cannot accept such a challenge.

Conciliabule of 712 and imperial letters

In 712, Philippicus summoned a council of eastern bishops to Constantinople. This council of no Catholic value abolished the canons of the sixth ecumenical council, reinstalled in the diptychs the names of the monothelite heretics that Constantinople III had erased (Sergius, Cyrus, Honorius, Pyrrhus, Paul, Peter, Macarius), and removed the mosaic of the sixth council which decorated the palace imperial.^{[113][114][115]} The diptychs are the official lists of names read during mass: to be inscribed there means to be recognised in communion with the Church.

Philippicus then sent Rome an imperial letter asking Pope Constantine for accession. The pope convenes a synod in Rome; the letter is examined and condemned.^[116][117]

“For Constantine, admitting nothing of the heretic emperor himself, rejected his letter. ” — Liber Pontificalis, notice from Constantine (the pope refuses Philippicus monothelite)^[118]

The mosaic of the six councils in Saint Peter's

At the time when Philippicus erased the mosaic of the sixth council in Constantinople, Constantine made the exact opposite gesture in Rome: he had represented in Saint Peter's basilica the six ecumenical councils, inside a arca (an aedicula).^[119][120]

The image has not been preserved, but the intention is clear: what a monothelite emperor tries to erase in Constantinople, Rome fixes in marble, glass and stone. The setting of St. Peter's becomes a doctrinal manual for pilgrims: Nicaea 325, Constantinople I 381, Ephesus 431, Chalcedon 451, Constantinople II 553, Constantinople III 680-681 — the six councils that Catholics receive in common.

Refusal of portrait, coins and commemoration

The pope pushes the liturgical and symbolic rupture even further:

• He refuses to receive the imperial portrait sent by Philippicus, contrary to custom which wanted it to be hung in the papal residence and acclaimed.
• He refused to put into circulation in Rome the coins bearing the effigy of Philippicus.
• He refuses to commemorate the name of the emperor at mass, which is a serious liturgical break in the Byzantine tradition.^{[121][122][123]}

These three refusals were not anecdotal gestures: at the time, they publicly signified that Rome no longer recognized the heretic emperor as a Catholic emperor. Constantine does not invent revolt; he performs a canonical act.

Urban conflict in Rome: Christophorus and Pietro

In Rome itself, Roman resistance is organized. Duke Christophorus, favorable to the pope's position, is deposed by the imperial authorities. Philippicus sends a new duke, Pietro, who is to impose the authority of Constantinople.^[124]

The Liber Pontificalis and Treccani report a fight on the Via Sacra, where the supporters of the deposed duke and those of the new duke clashed. Constantine intervenes peacefully: he dispatches priests carrying crosses and Gospels to stop the fighting. The scene is very beautiful and very typical: the pope does not mobilize the Roman militia; he interposes the liturgy.^[125][126]

The Pope sends priests with the cross and the Gospel into the midst of urban bloodshed.

The incident says two things. First, the Byzantine papacy is not an ecclesial dictatorship: Rome remains a political city with its dukes, its militias, its parties. Then, the pope really carries weight in the city: he has the moral authority to stop a civic fight. Constantine is the pope of nonviolent resistance to a heretical emperor.

The fall of Philippicus: June 3, 713

On June 3, 713, the troops of the theme of the Opsikion, dissatisfied with the emperor, blinded Philippicus in the hippodrome of Constantinople. He is deposed. His reign lasted less than two years.^[127]

The Liber Pontificalis and the Catholic Encyclopedia explicitly link this fall to Roman persistence: while Philippicus tried to undo a council, Rome had kept the faith of the six councils, and Constantinople itself ended up rejecting its emperor. Without drawing a miraculous story from it, ecclesial historiography saw in this concordance a sign of the fragility of heretical power.^[128][129]

Anastasius II: the profession of Orthodox faith

Anastasius II, who succeeded Philippicus, is orthodox. From Pentecost 713, he sent to Rome a profession of Catholic faith through the exarch Scholasticus, that is to say the Byzantine governor of Italy who resides in Ravenna. The Liber Pontificalis notes that the imperial letter affirms the faith of the Sixth Ecumenical Council and guarantees that the Romans who had resisted Philippicus would not be punished.^{[130][131][132]}

It is the unspectacular but decisive crowning achievement of the pontificate. Resistance did not break the empire; on the contrary, it brought the empire back to the common faith. Constantine, who had received Justinian II with splendor, received Anastasius II soberly but with the same doctrinal integrity.

Resumption of liturgical communion

The Catholic Encyclopedia reports that Patriarch John, who had participated under Philippicus in a heretical act, became Orthodox again and wrote that the apostolic preeminence of the pope is to the whole Church what the head is to the body.^[133]

The formula is old - it comes from the patristic tradition on the primate - but its resumption in this imperial letter means one thing: Roman resistance did not serve to humiliate Constantinople, it served to save it doctrinally.

The ordinations

The Liber Pontificalis gives an administrative assessment. Constantine ordained for various Churches sixty-four bishops, and in Rome fourteen priests and three deacons (the figures vary slightly according to the editions and according to what is counted in Rome or outside Rome).^[134][135] Even in the midst of an imperial crisis, a seven-year pontificate therefore continues to provide the Church with normal routines.

A document: the privilege of English monasteries

The Encyclopedia.com (New Catholic Encyclopedia) presents as Constantine's surviving pontifical document the privilege which authorizes English monasteries to elect their superiors.^[136] The Catholic Encyclopedia (Mann, 1908) corroborates that such an English privilege may have been preserved: citing Haddan and Stubbs (Councils, III, 276), it judges possibly authentic the privilege granted to the monasteries of Bermondsey and Woking — and rejects on the other hand as apocryphal the Evesham pieces bearing the name of Constantine.^[137] The detail is precious: it shows that beyond major affairs, Constantine managed ordinary ecclesial freedom - that of English monasteries which must be able to choose their abbots without depending on a civil power or an ambiguous local authority.

Care of the poor and pilgrims

The Liber Pontificalis, in its biographical part, also emphasizes the liberality of Constantine towards the clergy and the poor. On his return from the trip, he would have distributed considerable sums; he would have supported Roman hospices and diakonia.^[138] This charitable dimension is found in almost all the notices of the popes of the 7th century, but it is worth remembering: a pope is not defined by diplomatic files alone.

April 9, 715

Constantine died in Rome on April 9, 715, after seven years and fifteen days of pontificate according to the Liber Pontificalis.^[139][140] The seat remained vacant forty days before the election of saint Gregory II.^[141]

His burial is in the Constantinian basilica of Saint Peter, near the other popes of the 7th and early 8th centuries. The basilica will disappear with the Renaissance reconstruction, but the memory of the pope is preserved in the pontifical books and in the official list of the Holy See.

The successor

The successor is not unknown: it is precisely Gregory, the deacon who had negotiated in Nicomedia. Becoming pope under the name of Gregory II, he will be the pope of the great iconoclastic crisis under the emperor Leo III the Isaurian.^[142] The doctrinal and personal continuity between Constantine and Gregory II is almost perfect: it is the Roman team of 710-711 which still governs the Church in 715.

The last pope in Constantinople

The trip of 710-711 remained, until 1967, the last official visit of a pope to Constantinople.^[143] This chronological data has a symbolic value: it marks the end of a mode of imperial and liturgical unity between Rome and the Greek East.

Under Saint Gregory II, the iconoclastic crisis will publicly rupture religious relations; the emperors will sequester the pontifical possessions of southern Italy; the Lombards will take Ravenna in 751; the pope will turn to the Franks; the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 will open another world. Constantine's journey is therefore, in the grand historical structure, the ultimate act of diplomatic unity between the papacy and Constantinople for more than a millennium.

Loyalty in diplomacy

The first teaching of the pontificate is that accepting a meeting is not giving in. Constantine goes to Constantinople; he receives with dignity; he publicly celebrates mass for the emperor; but on the quinisext canons which contradict Roman usage, he does not sign. Diplomacy is never a dilution of the deposit.

The lesson also applies to contemporary files. A dialogue with a distant interlocutor does not require approval of his positions; it only obliges us to listen to them seriously, to speak clearly, and to leave the Catholic confession intact.

Resistance in the liturgy

The second teaching is the political role of the liturgy. Faced with Philippicus, Constantine does not only write letters: he refuses the effigy, he refuses coins, he refuses commemoration. And he had the six councils painted in Saint Peter's.

These actions are not minor. They demonstrate that in Rome, faith is seen, sung, engraved in stone. It is the same intuition that would later inspire Roman resistance to iconoclasm: Christian truth is not only a thesis, it is an image, a liturgical text, a name pronounced at the altar.

The Peaceful Pope Amid Violence

The third teaching is active peace. On the Via Sacra, while two factions clash around the dukes Christophorus and Pietro, Constantine does not arm anyone, does not summon anyone to the civil court; he sends priests with the cross and the Gospel and puts an end to the fighting.^[144]

The image is valid as a pastoral principle. When violence breaks out in the city, the pope has no other weapon than Christ; but this weapon is enough, provided it is carried amidst blood.

“...until the pontiff sent priests with the Gospels and the cross of the Lord, and thus the parties were calmed. ” — Liber Pontificalis, notice of Constantine (the intervention on the Via Sacra)^[145]

• Pope John V (685-686) — another Syrian pope, former legate to the same council, distant predecessor in the Byzantine papacy.
• Pope Saint Agathon (678-681) — pope who sent Constantine as legate to Constantinople III.
• Pope Saint Leo II (682-683) — confirms the acts of the sixth council; sends Constantine with the acts to Constantine IV.
• Pope Saint Benedict II (684-685) — obtained from Constantine IV the relief of imperial confirmation, from which his successors benefited.
• Pope Saint Serge I (687-701) — refused to sign the quinisext canons in 692, the first act of resistance of which Constantine would be the heir.
• Pope John VII (705-707) — pope of cautious procrastination on the same canons.
• Pope Saint Gregory II (715-731) — negotiator deacon in Nicomedia; successor of Constantine; pope of the iconoclastic crisis.
• Council of Constantinople III (680-681) — definition of the two wills and two operations of Christ, of which Constantine was legate.
• Quinisext Council (in Trullo, 691-692) — disciplinary canons partially rejected by Rome.
• Ancient St. Peter's Basilica — where Constantine has the six ecumenical councils represented.