SERGIUS I, patriarch of CONSTANTINOPLE. — Of Syrian origin, he was consecrated on 8 April 610 and died on 9 December 638. He placed the treasures of the churches at the disposal of the emperor Heraclius to subsidize the war against the Persians, during which he governed the Empire as regent. He saved Constantinople from the siege laid by the Avars and the Persians in 626.
S. promoted monoenergism with the aim of bringing back to unity the Jacobite Monophysites who were recalcitrant toward the Council of Chalcedon, but fell into a serious heresy, since he admitted in Christ a single energy or activity. Around 621 he won Heraclius over to his doctrine, and the two of them propagated it in Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt, where in 633 Cyrus, bishop of Phasis, was appointed to the Alexandrian see, one of S.’s first conquests. Among S.’s opponents, St. Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem, and St. Maximus the Confessor were prominent. S. wrote (634) to Pope Honorius a disingenuous letter proposing that no one should henceforth speak either of “monoenergism” or of “dioenergism.” Honorius imprudently consented, while St. Sophronius published his synodal letter against monoenergism. An imperial Edict of 634/35 confirmed the prohibition of disputes. But when this decree proved unsuccessful, Heraclius published in 638 the Ecthesis, the work of S. and Pyrrhus, which speaks of two natures but of a single will in Christ. S. still had time to convene a Council in Constantinople that accepted the Ecthesis. The imperial edicts regarded as S.’s work were condemned at the Lateran Council (649) and by the Sixth Ecumenical Council (680–81).
Ignazio Ortiz de Urbina