Sergius I, Patriarch of Constantinople

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. became the promoter of monoenergism, with the aim of bringing back to unity the Jacobite Monophysites who were reluctant to accept the Council of Chalcedon, but he fell into a grave heresy, since he admitted only one energy or activity in Christ. 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, one of S.'s first conquests, was placed in the Alexandrian see. Among S.'s opponents, St. Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem, and St. Maximus the Confessor stood out. In 634 S. wrote to Pope Honorius a rather insincere letter proposing that no one should speak any longer either of "monoenergism" or of "dyoenergism." Honorius rashly consented, while St. Sophronius published his synodal letter against monoenergism. An imperial Edict of 634/35 confirmed the prohibition of disputes. But given the failure of this decree, Heraclius published in 638 the Ecthesis, the work of S. and of Pyrrhus, which speaks of two natures but of only one will in Christ. S. still had time to convoke a Council at Constantinople which accepted the Ecthesis. The imperial edicts regarded as the work of S. were condemned in the Council of the Lateran (649) and by the Sixth Ecumenical Council (680-81).

Ignazio Ortiz de Urbina