Saint Tarasius of Constantinople

The following year, the Emperor Constantine and Irene, his mother, wrote to Pope Adr pape Adrien Pope who approved the mission of Hildegrin in Saxony. ian regarding this election of Tarasius; these letters are found in Anastasius the Librarian, in the preamble to the Second Council of Nicaea. They begged the Holy Father to come to Constantinople to preside over the council as the first and sovereign Pastor, in the place of Saint Peter, or to send someone who could preside in his name; and Tarasius wrote on his side, for this same purpose, to the three other patriarchs of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem.

Far from believing himself dispensed, by his dignity as patriarch, from practicing religious virtues, he devoted himself more than ever to prayer, humility, and self-contempt. He treated the poor magnificently and served them excellent food himself, although for his own part he practiced extreme frugality and was content with very little, as much for his food as for his clothing and his bedding, and he did not even allow his servants to wait on him. He took no less care to make modesty reign among the clergy; for, instead of the gold belts and silk garments they were accustomed to wearing, he gave them belts woven from goat hair and garments of simple fabric, without any ornament. He himself catechized his people, particularly the soldiers, most of whom were infected with the heresy of the Iconoclasts, and, in order to have helpers and coadjutors in such a worthy ministry, he had a monastery built on the left side of the Thracian Bosphorus, where he placed a good number of learned religious so that they might serve him in supporting and upholding the Catholic faith.

In the month of October of the same year, the Pope gave his response to the emperors; after having proven the veneration of images, he rebuked them for having given the title of universal to the Patriarch of Constantinople; and, as for Tarasius in particular, he blamed his promotion and his consecration, yet promised to ratify them if he ensured with the emperor that the honor of the holy images was restored. This was in line with the sentiments of our Saint, whose heart was inflamed with ardor for the Christian faith.

On August 7 of the year 786, the ecumenical council was assembled in this capital of the empire, in the Church of the Holy Apostles, for the subject we have just mentioned; but everything there was disrupted and broken by the arms of the Iconoclasts, who were incited by the bishops of their party. Therefore, the emperors, using prudence, postponed it to another time and sent the bishops back to their sees. As for the legate of the Sovereign Pontiff and those of the Eastern Patriarchs, the Empress Irene kept them with her and had them remain there until the following year; the council was transferred t o the Nicée Episcopal see of Theophanes after the persecution. city of Nicaea, in Bithynia, where Saint Tarasius held the first rank after the Pope's legates; it was finally concluded and decreed, by the unanimous consent of all the assembled Fathers, who were no fewer than three hundred and fifty, that the veneration of the holy images of Our Lord, of his divine Mother, and of the Saints was a very pious thing, and that all those who maintained the contrary would be struck with anathema.

The council having concluded, the holy Patriarch returned to his church, where all his care was to bring back to the fold of Jesus Christ the sheep that had strayed: he did so with surprising gentleness, not depriving of their rank or their benefices the clergy who had been ordained by the heretics, but requiring only that, in embracing the true faith, they subscribe to the holy Council of Nicaea. Nevertheless, this conduct was not well received by the very persons who led a religious life, particularly by Sabas. This excellent personage, unable to approve of this way of proceeding by Tarasius, which he judged too soft and even suspected of simony, withdrew from his communion; but the holy Patriarch cleared him of this suspicion, while also working with all his power to extirpate this plague from the Eastern Church, for, to this effect, he made an express ordinance: "That the promotions of priests and other ecclesiastics should be made without any retribution."

This same gentleness of the holy Patriarch was no less apparent on the occasion we are about to relate. A magistrate was accused, before the emperor, of having stolen his finances. Extremely distressed, and not knowing what to do, he fled into the church, as into a place of asylum: archers pursued him, and, not daring to violate the immunity of the Temples, they hemmed him in so closely that he could not leave for any necessity whatsoever. What did our holy Patriarch do? He had such kindness that he himself took the care to bring food to this prisoner; furthermore, when he was forced to leave this place, the Saint always accompanied him, in order to serve as his assured protection. And as finally the guards, annoyed by such a long wait, insolently snatched this sheep from the arms of his shepherd, he excommunicated them, and did so much that his innocence was recognized, and he was sent away free. Our Patriarch also showed his zeal for the house of God in another circumstance.

Emperor Constantine, L'empereur Constantin Byzantine emperor whose divorce caused a conflict with Plato. son of Irene, repudiated his legitimate wife named Maria of Armenia, a girl, in truth, of low birth, but who was nevertheless regarded for the holiness of one of her uncles named Philaret, called the Merciful; and, in her place, he married a servant named Theodote, whom he had crowned empress. Having been unable to obtain the consent of the holy Prelate for this alleged marriage, he had it blessed by a priest named Joseph, steward of the church of Constantinople. Tarasius found himself greatly troubled by this, fearing rightly that, if he declared the emperor excommunicated, he would renew the war that his predecessors had waged against the holy images; however, unable to approve this illegitimate marriage, he rebuked him severely for it, and even threatened him with anathema in case he persisted in his crime. Constantine, being offended by this, carried his resentment to the point of having Tarasius arrested, whom he confined strictly, without allowing any of his people to approach him, under penalty of the whip and banishment. The Saint suffered this persecution with invincible constancy and without relaxing his zeal in any way, until at last, God Himself doing justice to the sinners, permitted, by an equitable judgment, that Constantine lose at once his sight, his life, and the empire, through the schemes and intrigues of his mother Irene. Then, Saint Tarasius drove from the Church that cowardly priest who had blessed the illegitimate wedding of the emperor with Theodote, and, by this m eans, he reconciled with Théodore, dit le Studite Byzantine abbot and theologian, defender of ecclesiastical discipline. the abbots Plato and Theodore, called the Studite, who had been offended that he had not fulminated the anathema against the adulterer. For God, as we have said, having punished the guilty, the discord ceased between these Saints, one of whom is truly praiseworthy in his prudence, since it is sometimes good not to carry things to the extreme; just as it is also, moreover, very useful to hold firm for the severity of justice: two courses of action that tend toward the same end, the glory of God.

Finally, the holy Patriarch, after having governed the church of Constantinople for twenty-two years with a singular purity of life and a constant confession of the Catholic faith, performing great alms, and practicing all the virtues required of a good shepherd, fell into a great and painful illness, which made him judge that his end was near. He prepared for death through an inviolable fidelity to his pious exercises; his ardent love led him to celebrate the most holy sacrifice of the Mass every day, according to his custom; and, as he had great difficulty doing so because of his weakness, he had a wooden table placed in front of the altar, upon which he leaned and supported his chest to complete these august mysteries.

Some time before giving up his soul, he was tormented by the sight of demons, who reproached him with several crimes of which they strove to convince him; but he, without being frightened, spoke to them with assurance and convinced them themselves of a thousand impostures: this was heard by those present, as reported by the religious Ignatius, a uthor of his lif religieux Ignace Author of the biography of Saint Tarasius. e. He adds further that the Saint, no longer able to use his tongue, chased these specters away with his hand, as if he were fighting against them, until his senses began to fail; and when at church they were singing at Vespers this verse: "Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear my prayer," he left this mortal life to pass to a happier one, on the 25th of February, in the year 806.

The regret for his death was general, and the emperor himself, who was then Nicephorus I, went to visit the holy body, threw himself upon it, covered it with his own robe, and, with laments mixed with cries, called him his father, his shepherd, his divine master, his aid in the conduct of the empire, the invincible defender of his armies, and the conqueror of his enemies. He was carried with pomp into the church of the monastery of the holy Martyrs that he had had built on the Bosphorus. God has shown, through several miracles, how favorable this holy Patriarch is to Catholics and terrible to heretics, even since his passing. Leo V, Emperor of the East, called the Armenian and the Isaurian, having renewed the persecution against the holy images, was killed by Michael, surnamed the Stammerer, who seized the empire, following the threats that the same Saint Tarasius had made to him, appearing to him during his sleep.

The life of Saint Tarasius was written very amply by Ignatius, a religious at the monastery of the Bosphorus, an eyewitness to his finest actions; Surius has faithfully reported it in his first volume. Cardinal Baronius makes mention of him in his Annals and in his Remarks on the Roman Martyrology; it is from there that we have drawn what we have written about him.