The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor (AM 6121) states that the Pope signed the condemnation of the heretical former bishop of Constantinople Pyrrhus at the tomb of *Peter (the Apostle, S00036). Chronicle compiled in the Byzantine Empire in the early 9th c., using extracts from earlier Greek texts.
Evidence ID
E08045
Type of Evidence
Literary - Other narrative texts (including Histories)
Major author/Major anonymous work
Theophanes
Chronicle of Theophanes, AM 6121 [AD 628/9]
Πύρρος δὲ τὴν Ἀφρικὴν καταλαβὼν συνοψίζεται τῷ ἁγιωτάτῳ ἀββᾷ Μαξίμῳ, τῷ αἰδεσίμῳ ἐν μοναχικοῖς κατορθώμασιν, καὶ τοῖς ἐκεῖσε ἐνθέοις ἱεράρχαις οἵτινες τοῦτον ἐλέγξαντες καὶ πείσαντες πρὸς τὸν πάπαν Θεόδωρον ἀπέστειλαν ἐν Ῥώμῃ. καὶ λίβελλον ὀρθοδοξίας ἐπιδεδωκὼς τῷ πάπᾳ ἐδέχθη ὑπ᾿ αὐτοῦ. τῆς δὲ Ῥώμης ὑποχωρήσας καὶ ἐν Ῥαβέννῃ ἐλθὼν ὡς κύων ἐπὶ τὸ ἴδιον ἐξέραμα ἐπέστρεψεν. τοῦτο δὲ μαθὼν ὁ πάπας Θεόδωρος τὸ πλήρωμα τῆς ἐκκλησίας συγκαλέσας καὶ τὸν τάφον τοῦ κορυφαίου τῶν ἀποστόλων καταλαβών, αἰτήσας τὸ θεῖον ποτήριον, ἐκ τοῦ ζωοποιοῦ αἵματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ τῷ μέλανι ἐπιστάξας οἰκείᾳ χειρὶ τὴν καθαίρεσιν Πύρρου καὶ τῶν κοινωνούντων αὐτῷ ποιεῖται.
'Now, when Pyrros had come to Africa, he met the most holy father Maximus, who was venerable by reason of his monastic achievements, as well as the godly bishops who were there, who reproved and converted him and so sent him to Pope Theodore in Rome. He handed to the pope a declaration of orthodoxy and was received by him. But when he had departed from Rome and came to Ravenna, he returned to his own vomit like a dog. Upon learning this, Pope Theodore called together the full body of the Church and proceeded to the tomb of the foremost Apostle, where he asked for the holy chalice and, dripping some of Christ's life-giving blood into the ink, signed with his own hand the condemnation of Pyrros and those who communicated with him.'
Text: de Boor 1883, 331.
Translation: Mango and Scott 1997, 462.
Liturgical ActivitiesProcession
Cult PlacesEcclesiastics - Popes
Procession
Other liturgical acts and ceremonies
Cult PlacesBurial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Activities accompanying CultMeetings and gatherings of the clergy
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - Popes
Heretics
Source
Theophanes (759/60-818) came from a wealthy and politically prominent family from Constantinople. After marriage and a brief career as a secular official, he became a monk, living in the monastic communities centred around Mount Sigriane in Bithynia, and eventually abbot of the community known as Megas Agros. He acquired the epithet 'Confessor' (Homologetes) through his resistance to the renewal of Iconoclasm by the emperor Leo V (813-820), which led to Theophanes' imprisonment and then exile to the island of Samothrace, where he died. For full discussion of the evidence for Theophanes' life, see Mango and Scott 1997, xliv-lii, and, for a briefer summary, his entry ('Theophanes 18') in the Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire (http://www.pbe.kcl.ac.uk).The Chronicle of Theophanes covers the period from 284/5 to 812/813. It was a continuation of the Chronicle of George Synkellos (ob. c. 810) which ran from the creation of the world to 284. George had apparently intended to continue his chronicle down to his own time but died before he could do so; the extent to which Theophanes, in producing his chronicle, was simply editing and polishing material already collected by George remains uncertain (see Mango and Scott 1997, liv-lv). The Chronicle of George Synkellos contains some material relevant to the cult of saints, up to its stopping point in 284; however, this is not included in the CSLA database because the sources for all George's information (chiefly Eusebius) survive and have database entries in their own right.
Theophanes and his sources
The key characteristic of Theophanes’ Chronicle is that it is not a composition of Theophanes’ own, but a patchwork of extracts from earlier sources, collected and arranged in chronicle form, in other words under an entry for each year. Theophanes’ role was confined to piecing the patchwork together (i.e. removing pieces from their original context and placing them under individual years), and to some extent condensing and abbreviating material. As he put it in his preface: 'I did not set down anything of my own composition, but have made a selection from the ancient historians and prose-writers and have consigned to their proper places the events of every year, assigned without confusion' (trans. Mango and Scott 1997, 2). Since many of Theophanes’ sources are still extant, the extracts in his chronicle can often be compared with the original, which shows that that this was indeed his method of compilation, though he makes occasional editorial interventions, and sometimes misunderstands source material (Mango and Scott 1997, lxxii, xci-xcv; Howard-Johnston 2010, 272-3, 276-84).
It is because Theophanes' Chronicle is essentially a compilation of earlier sources that a number of extracts from the Chronicle are included in the CSLA database, even though the work itself dates from more than a century after AD 700, our usual cut-off point for evidence. We have not included material which reproduces sources that have their own entries in our database (such as Eusebius, John Malalas, Theodore Lector, Procopius, and Theophylact Simocatta), but have included entries (for the period up to 700) for items in Theophanes whose original source is lost.
For discussion of Theophanes' work as a whole, see the introduction to Mango and Scott's translation (Mango and Scott 1997, xliii-c); Howard-Johnston 2010, 268-312; and the essays in Jankowiak and Montinaro 2015.
Chronology
Theophanes' chronology is based primarily on the annus mundi (year since Creation). There was more than one system of calculating AM dates: the one used by Theophanes, following George Synkellos, was the Alexandrian era, which started from the equivalent of 5492 BC, thus making the first year of the chronicle, AD 284/5, the AM year 5777. The first day of the year under the Alexandrian system was 25 March, and this was used by George Synkellos; however, it is evident that Theophanes (without ever stating his practice explicitly) used 1 September as the first day of his chronicle years, thus matching the standard secular dating system in the Byzantine empire (indictions): see Mango and Scott 1997, lxvi. While the year-by-year chronology is based on the annus mundi, Theophanes includes considerable other information in the heading for each entry (not given here): the year from the Incarnation (the same principle as AD dating, but the system used by Theophanes dated the Incarnation to AD 8/9), and the regnal years of the Roman emperor (Theophanes only ever lists one emperor here, normally the one ruling in Constantinople), the king of Persia (the Caliph in later entries), and the bishops of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. The accuracy and mutual consistency of these different forms of dating varies considerably across different entries. In the body of each entry, Theophanes often preserves the form of dating used by his source, such as consular years or indictions. For a full overview, see Mango and Scott 1997, lxiii-lxxiv.
Discussion
Pyrrhus was appointed Patriarch of Constantinople by the emperor Heraclius in 638. He was a supporter of Monotheletism, a Christological doctrine adopted by Heraclius (and his immediate successors) which was regarded by the papacy as heretical. A few months after Heraclius' death in 641, Pyrrhus resigned or was deposed during the succession disputes which followed the emperor's death. By the mid 640s he was in Africa, and in 645 at Carthage he engaged in a disputation with Maximus the Confessor, the main theological opponent of Monotheletism, which ended with him renouncing the doctrine. As Theophanes describes, Pyrrhus subsequently went to Rome and declared his adherence to Chalcedonian orthodoxy in a written statement (libellos); he was received by Pope Theodore with numerous marks of honour (according to the longer account of the incident in Liber Pontificalis 75.3). Some time later, after travelling to Ravenna, the seat of the Exarch (governor of Byzantine Italy), Pyrrhus abandoned his renunciation of Monotheletism. When this was known at Rome (probably in 647 or 648), Theodore held a synod which formally condemned Pyrrhus: this is what Theophanes means by his reference to Theodore summoning 'the whole body of the church' (the course of events is clearer in other sources, such as the Liber Pontificalis).These events are widely reported in the sources for the period: Theophanes' general account is paralleled in the Liber Pontificalis and also in an address by Theodore's successor as pope, Martin I, to the Lateran Council of 649 (translated Price 2014, 123). They all use similar language: most notably all compare Pyrrhus to a dog returning to its vomit. These texts are not dependent on each other and must derive (indirectly in Theophanes' case) from a common source: probably the formal condemnation of Pyrrhus issued by the synod (which does not survive). However, the depiction of the pope leading a procession to the tomb of St Peter and signing Pyrrhus' condemnation in ink mixed with 'Christ's life-giving blood' (consecrated sacramental wine) appears only in Theophanes and another 9th c. Greek text, the Synodicon Vetus. Mango and Scott identify his source here as a lost anti-Monothelete work, which was partly based on the 7th c. writer Anastasius of Sinai but included other material (Mango and Scott 1997, lxxxvii). The story about Peter's tomb does not appear in Anastasius' extant works, so its original source is obscure. It may have come from Maximus the Confessor, who was probably in Rome at the time (though this is not absolutely certain), or from members of his circle – which would explain why the story survives in Greek but not Latin.
This incident appears in the chronicle under the year equivalent to 628/629 (Mango and Scott 1997, 460-62) because this was the year in which Theophanes placed a meeting between Heraclius and the anti-Chalcedonian bishop Athanasius of Antioch, which he depicts as the beginning of Heraclius' abandonment of Chalcedonian orthodoxy, and which he accompanies with a narrative of the entire controversy, down to the condemnation of Pope Martin I and Maximus the Confessor in the mid 650s (all this material apparently coming from the same anti-Monothelete source). For further discussion, see Booth 2014, 202-3, 278-293; Price 2014, 11-17.
Bibliography
Edition:de Boor, C., Theophanis Chronographia (Leipzig: Teubner, 1883).
English translation and commentary:
Mango, C., and Scott, R., The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284-813 (Oxford: OUP, 1997).
On Theophanes:
Howard-Johnston, J., Witnesses to a World Crisis: Historians and Histories of the Middle East in the Seventh Century (Oxford: OUP, 2010).
Jankowiak, M., and Montinaro, P. (eds.), Studies in Theophanes (Travaux et mémoires 19; Paris: Centre d'Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance, 2015).
Further reading:
Booth, P., Crisis of Empire: Doctrine and Dissent at the End of Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014).
Price, R. (trans.), The Acts of the Lateran Synod of 649 (Translated Texts for Historians 61; Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014).
Record Created By
David Lambert
Date of Entry
26/11/2020
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00036 | Peter, the Apostle | ὁ κορυφαίος τῶν ἀποστόλων | Certain |
|---|
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