Macarius I of Antioch

Macarius I of Antioch was Patriarch of Antioch from 656 to 681, when he was deposed for professing monothelitism.

Life His title seems to have been a purely honorary one, for his patriarchate lay under the dominion of the Saracens, and he himself resided at Constantinople. Nothing is known of him before the Sixth Ecumenical Council, which deposed him on account of his monothelitism, after which he disappeared into obscurity in a Roman monastery. Nonetheless, he is noted in ecclesiastical history for causing the anathemisation or condemnation of Pope Honorius I.

In the first session of the council, the Roman legates delivered an address in which they described four successive patriarchs of Constantinople and others as having "disturbed the peace of the world by new and unorthodox expressions", referring to the controversial doctrine of monothelitism. Macarius retorted, "We did not publish new expressions but what we have received from the holy and œcumenical synods and from holy approved fathers". He then went through the names given by the legates, adding to them that of Honorius.

At the close of the council Macarius and five others were sent to Rome "as the place they were more likely to be converted from their errors". This was done at the request of the council and not, as Hefele makes it appear, at the request of Macarius and his adherents. Macarius and three others who still held out were confined in different monasteries (see Liber Pontificalis, Leo II).

Later on, Pope Benedict II tried for thirty days to persuade Macarius to recant. This attempt was quoted in the first session of the Seventh General Council as a precedent for the restoration of bishops who had been declared heretics. Baronius gives reasons for supposing that Benedict's purpose was to restore Macarius to his patriarchal dignity, the patriarch who had succeeded him having just died (Annales, ann. 685).

The profession of faith in the Eucharist, in his "Ecthesis", is perhaps the earliest instance of a reference to this doctrine in a formal creed. To Macarius the Eucharist was a palmary argument against Nestorianism. The flesh and blood in the Eucharist is not mere flesh and blood, he argued, for how else could it be life-giving? He contended that it is life-giving because it is the own flesh and blood of the Word, which being God is by nature Life. Macarius develops this argument in a manner which shows how shadowy the line was which separated the Monothelite from the Monophysite.