Holy Hierarch Flavian I, Patriarch of Antioch

Saint Flavian of Antioch
القدّيس فلافيان الأول، أسقف أنطاكية

Today in the Orthodox Church, we commemorate one of the early holy Patriarchs of Antioch, the predecessor to our beloved Patriarch John X (Yazigi): Saint Flavian. Flavian was the thirty-third in the apostolic succession of the hierarchs of Antioch, the immediate successor of Saint Meletios.

Flavian [Gk. Φλαβιανός, Ar. Falâfyân فلافيان] was a native Syrian of Antioch, born to a wealthy family around the year 320. His father died when he was quite young, and left him the heir of a rather sizeable patrimony. Although he was robbed of a father in his life and although his mother exercised little control over him, Flavian was nonetheless not particularly disposed to the prideful, riotous excesses of other wealthy young men, and Saint John Chrysostom praises him in his homiletics as having been sober and simple in his wants from an early age. He was close friends with Diodoros, a young man of Antioch who would later become a priest, and thereafter a bishop in Tarsos (and one whose theological writings would influence Mâr ’Ishâq). When a mild form of the Arian hæresy began cropping up in Antioch, Flavian and Diodoros left their homes and lived in the wilderness as hermits.

An Arian bishop named Leontios ‘the Eunuch’ arrived in Antioch, having replaced the exiled Orthodox bishop, Saint Eustathios. It is a testament to how weak the Nicene, Orthodox faithful were in numbers, that they were disparagingly called ‘Eustathians’ at this time, after Eustathios. Before he departed, the holy Eustathios besought his flock to remain in unity with each other and to follow his successors. The Orthodox ‘Eustathians’ were at this time led by Flavian and Diodoros – still laymen, but who managed to attract a sizeable following. Flavian and Diodoros held meetings of the Orthodox faithful outside the city walls, in the open air and on the slopes of Mons Silpius around the tombs of the martyrs, for the church properties all belonged to the wealthier Arian party. During these meetings Flavian and Diodoros reintroduced the practice of antiphonal singing to the Orthodox Church in Antioch.

The hæretical bishop Leontios was not particularly pleased with this. He attempted to proscribe the meetings at the tombs, and bring the Orthodox ‘Eustathians’ back into the churches. Flavian and Diodoros did not resist this edict, and the followers of Eustathios went back into the churches – though in so doing they gained still more followers while not compromising the faith revealed at Nicæa. A frustrated Leontios was, in the words of Blessed Theodoret, ‘compelled to retrace his steps’.

This time was a particularly tricky one in the church of Antioch, as a messy four-way schism ruptured the church of Christ in the wake of Eustathios’s exile. There were the professed Arians, who had a steady supply of bishops and considerable financial and institutional clout given to them by a succession of Arian-leaning emperors starting with Constantius II.

The majority of the Nicene followers of Eustathios, including Flavian and Diodoros, accepted the election of the gentle Saint Meletios as the Patriarch of Antioch. Meletios was by temper mild and sweet, and he discoursed primarily on ethics. Most of the Nicene Christians in Antioch had no objections to such a man, who at the very least they trusted not to manipulate or persecute them as Leontios had.

However, Meletios was objectionable to the Eustathian Zealots because he also early on enjoyed the support of some moderate members within the Arian party, and for a long time would not speak openly on Christological matters. Some of these Zealots broke away in schism from Meletios, under a priest named Paulinus who was consecrated a bishop by a Sardinian churchman named (I kid you not!) Lucifer Calaritanus. These Eustathian Zealots considered themselves to be, and behaved as, an underground church in resistance. One further offshoot of these extreme Eustathians led by a man named Vitalian, out of reaction against the reigning Arianism, took refuge in an opposite hæresy – that of Apollinarios of Latakia.

Saint Meletios, like Saint Eustathios before him, was banished from Antioch on the orders of Emperor Valens, who conducted a harsh persecution on the Orthodox faithful in that city. Meletios had appointed the two friends Flavian and Diodoros to the diaconate and later to the priesthood, and in his absence as well the Orthodox flock he led was fed with the body of Christ and heard the word of truth rightly divided. Once again the Orthodox gathered in the ravines and caves and mountains outside the city. But they were not without sufferings. The soldiery under Valens had orders to beat, humiliate and disperse the meetings of the Orthodox under the priests Flavian and Diodoros. And yet they persevered through these trials, strengthened in faith, until Valens met his end in 378.

His successor, Emperor Gratian, with good intentions attempted to return the churches to the Orthodox Christians and affect reconciliation between the moderate Nicenes under Saint Meletios – who had for the past decade been openly professing an Orthodox Christology – and the zealous followers of Paulinus. This attempt did not succeed. Paulinus was recognised by Rome and Alexandria; Meletios by Constantinople and Jerusalem. Flavian was instrumental, however, in persuading Gratian’s governor that Saint Meletios was the rightful claimant and should have charge of the churches.

Flavian accompanied Saint Meletios to the Second Œcumenical Council called by Emperor Saint Theodosius. Meletios, however, reposed in the Lord before the Council was completed. In the wake of Meletios’s passing, Flavian was elected bishop of Antioch and consecrated by his friend Diodoros over the objections of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus. There was some controversy surrounding Flavian’s accession to the Patriarchate. Two church historians record that Flavian had promised not to seek the archepiscopal see in the event that either Meletios or Paulinus reposed, and Paulinus – as well as the bishops of Rome and Alexandria – cried foul to the Emperor. For most of his tenure as Patriarch of Antioch, the Roman and Alexandrian prelates shunned Saint Flavian as forsworn and illegitimate.

As bishop, however, Flavian behaved himself with admirable discretion. He converted his father’s mansion, which he had inherited in his youth, into a hospital for the sick. He also gave up all his personal funds and divided them among the poor in Antioch. In 386 Patriarch Flavian ordained John Chrysostom to the priesthood. In the following year, Antioch rose up in a tax revolt against Emperor Theodosius and destroyed his statue in the city. The emperor’s well-attested wrath (as witnessed later in the hippodrome massacre at Thessaloniki) threatened the city with harsh reprisals. Saint Flavian personally went to Theodosius and managed to cool the emperor’s temper sufficiently to ward off any violent demonstrations against Antioch’s citizenry.

Flavian’s bishopric and reputation among the churchmen in the West were saved entirely owing to his friend and fierce advocate, Saint John Chrysostom, soon to be Archbishop of Constantinople. It was Chrysostom whose golden tongue managed to convince Pope Saint Siricius of Rome and even the paranoid Pope Theophilos of Alexandria to reconcile with Saint Flavian and recognise him as a brother-bishop. Saint Flavian, for his part, returned Saint John Chrysostom’s loyalty when the saint came under attack in the Roman court. Saint Flavian protested even until his very last breath, the ill-treatment, deposition and exile of his friend. The blessed repose of Saint Flavian in 404 was peaceful and without illness or pain. He had been bishop of Antioch for twenty-three years. Holy archbishop Flavian, benefactor of the sick and defender of Christ’s flock against hæresies, pray unto Christ our God for us sinners!