Patriarch Alexios the Stoudite passed away on this day in 1043. My apologies for the delay in sending these reports. My mother’s funeral took place this Monday, and then I was teaching eight hours of classes. The relative stability of the Byzantine Empire in the first half of the eleventh century ended with the death of Emperor Basil II the Bulgar Slayer on Christmas Day, 1025. Alexios, the Abbot of the Studite monastery brought the dying Emperor the major monastery’s relic, the head of St. John the Forerunner, for veneration at his request. To thank Alexios, Basil appointed him to the patriarchal see. Skillfully maneuvering between court factions, Alexios retained his post during subsequent frequent changes of rulers. For instance, he issued a special Synodal decree (Tomos synodikos) threatening the enemies of Emperor Constantine VIII, Basil’s brother and successor, with eternal excommunication (anathema). In the year of his death (1028), Constantine VIII, brother and successor of Basil, appointed Romanos III Argyros, a relative of the ruling dynasty, as his heir. Argyros was a married man; therefore, Patriarch Alexios found a pretext to dissolve his marriage so that he could marry Princess Zoe. Out of gratitude, Romanos III, having ascended the throne, annually contributed 80 liters (about 25 kilos) of gold for the needs of the Great Church. When Romanos III was killed with the complicity and possibly participation of Zoe, Alexios the Studite, the very next day after the murder, married Zoe to her lover Michael IV (1034), for which he received another 100 liters of gold as a gift. Despite the help provided to Michael IV and Zoe, Alexios almost fell victim to the intrigues of their all-powerful minister John the Orphanotropos. With the support of the latter, several dissatisfied metropolitans expressed doubts in 1037 about the canonicity of Alexios’ installation as patriarch. In response, Alexios expressed his readiness to leave the see under the condition of deposing all the bishops he appointed during the 12 years of the patriarchate and excommunicating the three emperors he anointed to govern the empire. Such a proposal could not be accepted, and Alexios the Studite retained the patriarchate. During the short reign of Michael V, the nephew of Michael IV adopted by Zoe, Alexios the Studite was deposed and exiled to a monastery on charges of conspiracy. Alexios returned to the city in April 1042, when an uprising against Michael V began in Constantinople, to crown the nun Theodora, Zoe’s sister, as empress. Theodora and Zoe, who had returned from exile, hated each other. Their short rule ended with Theodora being returned to the monastery and Zoe marrying a new husband, Constantine IX Monomakhos. This time, the patriarch did not personally crown the ruling couple, but only the new emperor. The following year, 1043, Alexios the Studite died, and his property (about 800kg of gold) was confiscated by the treasury. During his patriarchate, Alexios the Studite issued several conciliar decrees, including prohibiting the transfer of monastic estates to the laity (November, 1027) and the appeal of monks and clergy to secular court (January, 1028), as well as softening marriage norms (marriage in the seventh degree of kinship was declared illegal, but not subject to termination). In 1034, the Patriarch founded a new monastery in the vicinity of Constantinople in honor of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary (the so-called “Cyr Alexia”), for which he wrote a typikon based on the one from Stoudios monastery. This typicon was adopted in the Russian Church and lasted until it was replaced by the current so called Hagiopolite (St. Sabba) Typikon in the late 13th/early 14thcenturies. Source: Archpriest Vladislav Tsypin, “Konstantinopol’skaia Tserkov’ pri Patriarkhe Aleksee Studite,” [The Church of Constaninople under Patriarch Alexios the Stoudite], pravoslavie.ru. |
