CALLISTUS I, PATRIARCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE

1350–54 and 1355–63, Byzantine preacher and hagiographer; d. 1363. He was a monk at Iviron on Mt. athos, companion of Gregory palamas, and disciple of gregory sinaites, the principal proponent of hesy-chasm in the skete of Magula. Callistus signed the Hagiorite Tome of 1341 as a hesychastic manifesto. In March of 1342 he joined the Athonite delegation in Constantinople to negotiate peace between John VI Cantacuzenus and the court of Anne of Savoy; on June 10, 1350, he succeeded his former student Isidore I as patriarch of Constantinople. He presided over a synod in Blachernae palace (May to June 1351), which canonized Palamite doctrine. He was deposed after 1353 for refusing to crown Matthew Cantacuzenus Emperor.

After the abdication of John Cantacuzenus in 1354, he regained the patriarchal throne. He reorganized the parochial system under the surveillance of an exarch, excommunicated the Serbian Czar Stephen Dušan, and attempted to regroup the various Orthodox churches, particularly the Hungarian, under his patriarchate. He spread Palamite doctrine, particularly through biography, and wrote a life of Gregory the Sinaite; a life of St. Theodosius of Tirnovo; a panegyric on John the Faster, renovator of the Prodromos-Petra monastery; and many homilies, a number of which have been recently discovered.

Bibliography: o. volk, Lexicon für Theologie und Kirche, new eds. 5:1263. m. jugie, Catholicisme 2:391–392; Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 11.2:1789–92. Kirche und theologische Literatur im byzantinischen Reich 774. j. meyendorff, Introduction a l'étude de Grégoire Palamas (Paris 1959).

[i. h. dalmais]