Christianity · Saints · 9th century · Constantinople

Photios I

Photios the Great

The learned patriarch of Constantinople whose disputes with Rome (the Photian Schism) foreshadowed the East-West split, and whose scholarship preserved much of antiquity.

Life

Photios I (c. 810–893), among the most erudite men of his age, twice served as patriarch of Constantinople. His conflict with Pope Nicholas I over jurisdiction and the filioque clause — the Photian Schism — prefigured the later Great Schism between Orthodoxy and Rome. A prodigious scholar, his Bibliotheca summarizes and preserves knowledge of hundreds of ancient works now lost. Honored as a saint in the Orthodox Church, he is a pivotal figure in the divergence of Eastern and Western Christianity.