CONSTANTINE I, POPE. – After the very brief pontificate of Sisinnius, C. was elected as his successor. A Syrian by origin, he was consecrated on 25 March 708. The emperor Justinian II invited him to Constantinople, perhaps to obtain approval of the canons promulgated at the Council in Trullo in 692, which his predecessors Sergius I and John VII had not accepted. In 710 C. met Justinian II at Nicomedia. The details of the conversations between the Pope and the Emperor are unknown, but C. approved only those canons that were not opposed to the faith, good morals, or the decrees of Rome. The Roman deacon Gregory was of great assistance to the Pope; on every occasion he was able to give the Emperor exhaustive answers concerning the questions under discussion.
On 24 Oct. 711, C. returned to Rome, where he learned that the exarch John, surnamed Rizocopus, had imprisoned and put to death without trial several distinguished ecclesiastics. Only three months had passed since the Pope’s return when, in Constantinople, Philippicus Bardanes, having rebelled, ordered Justinian II to be beheaded.
The new Emperor was a Monothelite; consequently, he annulled the decrees of the Sixth Ecumenical Council and sent Rome his profession of faith, which was naturally rejected. Indeed, as a protest, clergy and people had a large painting made in St. Peter’s depicting the six ecumenical councils; the people then refused to receive Duke Peter, because he represented a heretical sovereign, and for the most part remained loyal to Duke Christopher, who had been elected under Justinian II. The civil war that followed was quelled through the Pope’s intervention, and subsequently by the news that Anastasius II had been proclaimed emperor in Constantinople on 4 June 713. He hastened to annul the decrees of his predecessor and to send Rome an orthodox profession of faith. When a dispute arose between the bishop of Pavia, who wished to be consecrated by the Pope, and Benedict, archbishop of Milan, who claimed the right to consecrate him, C. intervened, ruling in favor of the bishop of Pavia. He died on 9 Apr. 715 and was buried in St. Peter’s.