ATTICO, patriarch of CONSTANTINOPLE. — Born at Sebaste, in Armenia, and having gone to Constantinople, he was among the most ardent opponents of s. Giovanni Crisostomo and testified against him at the Council of the Oak (404). He was immediately called to succeed him in the see of the capital (March 406–October 425). The unjust deposition of Giovanni, which was not recognized by Pope Innocent I, produced a schism between the Roman Church and the Eastern patriarchs. It also brought about a local schism in the Church of Constantinople. The Johannites were very numerous in the capital until the time (c. 417) when A., imitating Alessandro of Antioch, restored the name of Giovanni to the diptychs, thereby reestablishing relations with the Pope. Interest, perhaps more than love for ecclesiastical unity, prompted him to this gesture. Like his predecessors, and more than they, he worked to extend the jurisdiction of the see of Constantinople over the ecclesiastical provinces of Asia Minor (the dioceses of Thrace, Asia, and Pontus), and he undoubtedly inspired the decree of the emperor Theodosius II of 14 July 421, which removed the provinces of Eastern Illyricum from the Roman patriarchate and placed them under the supreme supervision of the bishop of New Rome. A. was a mediocre orator, but always orthodox. He dealt with heretics more by threats than by action. He showed himself severe only toward the Messalians and the Johannites.
The Council of Ephesus and s. Cirillo quote a passage from one of his homilies on the Incarnation, preserved in Syriac and published in its entirety by M. Brière in Revue de l’Orient chrétien, 29 (1933–34), and by J. Lebon in Muséon, 1933, pp. 167–202. The passage corresponds, in fact, to the first part of the fifth of the homilies published under the name of Proelo, which is found in PG 65, 716–21. Apart from this homily, only fragments and four letters remain to us from A.
Despite the shadows that obscure his memory, A. is listed among the saints in several menologies, and the Bollandists have concerned themselves with him in order to defend his memory (cf. Acta SS. Ianuarii, I, Antwerp 1643, pp. 473–83; Augusti, I, Antwerp 1750, pp. 32–37; and PG 65, 637–50).