Saint Alexander, Patriarch of Constantinople

Life

Alexander participated in the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in place of the aged Patriarch Metrophanes, and afterward succeeded Metrophanes. When certain philosophers wished to debate him about the faith, he said to one of them: "In the name of my Lord Jesus Christ I command thee to be silent!" And the philosopher was struck dumb that very instant. By his prayer he also cut short the life of Arius. He died in the ninety-eighth year of his life, in 340. Saint John the Faster governed the Church in the time of the wicked Emperor Anastasius, an Acephalite heretic. He reposed in the Lord in 595. Saint Paul IV governed the Church for five years and eight months, and renounced the throne, secretly receiving the great schema in order to repent of his sin in that he had at first sided with the Iconoclasts. He was the predecessor of the great Tarasius, and reposed in the Lord in the time of Irene and Constantine, in 784.