ATTICUS, Patriarch of Constantinople. - Born at Sebaste, in Armenia, and having gone to Constantinople, he was among the most bitter opponents of St. John Chrysostom and testified against him at the Council of the Oak (404). He was immediately called to succeed him on the see of the capital (March 406 - Oct. 425). The unjust deposition of John, which was not recognized by Pope Innocent I, produced a schism between the Roman Church and the Eastern patriarchs. It also determined a local schism in the Church of Constantinople. The Johannites were very numerous in the capital until the time (c. 417) when A., imitating Alexander of Antioch, restored the name of John to the diptychs, thus re-establishing relations with the Pope. Interest, perhaps more than love for ecclesiastical unity, drove 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 undoubtedly inspired the decree of the emperor Theodosius II of 14 July 421, which took away from the Roman patriarchate the provinces of the Eastern Illyricum in order to place them under the high supervision of the bishop of New Rome. A. was a mediocre orator, but always orthodox. He inveighed against heretics more with threats than with acts. He showed himself harsh only with regard to the Messalians and the Johannites.
The Council of Ephesus and St. Cyril cite a passage from one of his homilies on the Incarnation, preserved in Syriac and published in full 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 Proclus, which is found in PG 65, 716-21. Apart from this homily, nothing remains to us of A. but fragments and four letters.
Despite the shadows that darken his memory, A. is catalogued among the saints in several menologies, and the Bollandists have occupied 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).