14 Facts About Pope Constantine

Pope Constantine was fluent in the Greek language and immersed in Eastern rituals and practices.

Pope Constantine delivered a combative letter from Pope Leo II to Emperor Constantine IV in 682.

Pope Constantine met and developed a rapport with Constantine IV's son Justinian II on both occasions.

Pope Constantine was one of the many Greek popes of the Byzantine Papacy, the period during which Rome was under the rule of the Byzantine Empire and popes required the approval of the emperor for consecration as pope.

The defining issue of the papacy at the time of Pope Constantine's election was the Western rejection of the Trullan canons of the Quinisext Council.

In 710, Emperor Justinian II demanded in a iussio that Pope Constantine appear before him in Constantinople.

Unlike his predecessors, Pope Constantine neither delayed nor made excuses to avoid appearing in the imperial city; in fact, he "identified with Byzantium as perhaps no Roman pontiff before him ever had".

Pope Constantine specifically chose attendants who were "cut from similar cloth" as he, and likely to be sympathetic to the East.

Doubtlessly, Pope Constantine himself learned of the exarch's errand before departing for Sicily, then Gallipoli, and then Otranto, where the group stayed for winter.

Pope Constantine entered Constantinople on a "horse caparisoned with gilded saddle clothes and golden bridles and bearing on his head the kamelaukion, or diadem, which the sovereign alone was authorized to wear and then only on 'a great public festival of the Lord'".

The fact of Pope Constantine's having been summoned to Constantinople was the real proof that the "imperial writ still ran in Rome".

Pope Constantine was the last pope to visit the city until Paul VI did in 1967.

Pope Constantine demanded Constantine's support of the view that Christ had only one will.

Pope Constantine further refused to receive an imperial portrait or coins with the emperor's image and refused to commemorate the emperor in Mass.