CIRIACUS of Antioch. – Jacobite patriarch of Antioch, who lived in the 8th century. A monk in the monastery of Bīzōnā or “of the columns” near Callinico, he was elected patriarch and ordained at Harrān on 13 August 793. Information about his life is drawn from the Ecclesiastical Chronicle of Bar Hebraeus (I, Louvain 1872-77, pp. 329 ff.; G. S. Assemani, Bibl. Or., II, Rome 1724, pp. 116, 341-44). He effected important liturgical reforms and promoted a short-lived union with the patriarch of the Julianists. He became embroiled in a controversy with the monks of Cirrus and Gubbā Barrājā over the expression “Panem caelestem frangimus,” which he forbade from use in the liturgy; this led to a schism.
Of C. there survive: forty canons (W. W. Wright, Cat. of Syr. Manuscripts in the British Museum, I, London 1870, p. 222, col. 2) from the Synod of Bēt-Bōtin; an Anaphora (ibid., loc. cit., pp. 206, 210); the decree of union with the Julianists (ms. Brit. Mus. Add. 17145, f. 27 b¹) along with administrative writings, homilies on theological topics, and a synodal letter to Mark of Alexandria, of which only an Arabic version is extant.