PIETRO MONGO. — Monophysite Patriarch of Alexandria, born at the beginning of the 5th century, died 29 Oct. 489. He was probably a deacon of Dioscorus of Alexandria and his companion in exile.
On his return to his homeland he led, together with Timothy Aelurus, the monophysite party in the struggle against Dioscorus’s Chalcedonian successor, Proterius, who was killed in a popular uprising. Through secret intrigues he then managed to isolate Timothy Salophaciolus and have himself elected in his place as Patriarch of Alexandria (477), but opposed by the Emperor Zeno he was forced to flee, moving from house to house. He was officially reinstated in his dignity when in 482 he gave his adhesion to Zeno’s Henoticon, which, however, while implicitly implying the repudiation of the Tome of St Leo the Great and the Council of Chalcedon, fell short of satisfying the extremist current of the monophysite party: the monks’ opposition was fierce, and they refused to communicate with him, remaining without a patriarch; hence their name of “acephali” (q.v.). Mongus, then torn between the desire to retain the Emperor’s friendship and that of coming to terms with the more intransigent monophysites, behaved in an ambiguous manner, earning the description of “one of the most skilful opportunists that Byzantine theology ever produced” (L. Duchesne). His name is included in the monophysite calendar.