medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
A native of Thessaloniki, this Paul (a.k.a. Paul the Confessor) was intermittently metropolitan of Constantinople from the later 330s to his final removal from office probably in 351. In the numeration of the bishops of Constantinople he is Paul I. An upholder of Nicene orthodoxy, during virtually all of this time he had to contend with disfavor by the Arian-leaning emperor Constantius II (r. 337-361), who replaced him in 337 or 338 with the elderly Eusebius of Nicomedia (the prelate who had baptized Constantine the Great). Re-elected after Eusebius' death in 340, Paul was again removed in 342 following an outburst of confessional and civil strife that caused the death of Constantius' general Hermogenes.
Replaced by the overtly Arian Macedonius I, Paul went into exile, garnered support from St. Athanasius of Alexandria and other pro-Nicene bishops, and, like Athanasius, was restored to his see in 346 when Constantius (not yet sole emperor) bowed to pressure from his Western co-ruler Constans I. Accused of involvement in Magnentius' usurpation after the assassination of Constans in 350, he was removed yet again after Magnentius' defeat at the battle of Mursa in September 351 and was sent into exile where he was soon strangled (352?). Paul's replacement was again Macedonius; anti-Arian propaganda blamed Arians for Paul's murder. In 381 the emperor Theodosius the Great translated his relics to Constantinople. A cult making him Constantinople's answer to St. Athanasius of Alexandria as a champion of orthodoxy was already in place in the fifth century. He has at least two premetaphrastic Bioi (BHG 1472 and 1472a); the former is in Photius' _Bibliotheca_ (cod. 257). Their tenth-century expansion by St. Symeon Metaphrastes is BHG 1473.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Paul of Constantinople (Paul the Confessor):
a) as depicted (martyrdom) in the late tenth- or very early eleventh-century so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, Vat. gr. 1613, p. 163):
http://tinyurl.com/prkf43r
b) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Eutychius of Constantinople) in the late thirteenth-century frescoes (ca. 1295) by Eutychios and Michael Astrapas in the church of the Peribleptos (now Sv. Kliment Ohridski) in Ohrid:
http://tinyurl.com/3hxksap
c) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1311 and ca. 1322) in the church of St. Nicholas Orphanos in Thessaloniki:
http://tinyurl.com/3j7tmsr
d) as depicted (at left; at right, St. Achilles / Achillius of Larissa) in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) in the southeast little dome of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending upon one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/q6kjx3f
e) as depicted (lower register in panel at upper right; martyrdom) in an earlier fourteenth-century pictorial menologion from Thessaloniki (betw. 1322 and 1340; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Gr. th. f. 1, fol. 16r):
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/msgrthf1/16r.jpg
f) as depicted (martyrdom) in a November calendar scene in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the narthex of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/32c84k4
g) as depicted (martyrdom) in the mid-sixteenth-century frescoes by George / Tzortzis the Cretan in the katholikon of the Dionysiou monastery on Mt. Athos:
http://tinyurl.com/pvcfbwr
Best,
John Dillon
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