Sergius of Tella

Sergius of Tella was the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and head of the Syriac Orthodox Church from to or to 560.

Early life Sergius was born at Tella and was a friend of Jacob Baradaeus. He became a monk at the monastery of Hala and was ordained a priest by the bishop John of Anazarbus. As a monk, Sergius accepted the doctrine of tritheism, and accompanied Jacob Baradaeus to Constantinople in 527. At Constantinople, Sergius tutored Empress Theodora's grandson Athanasius, and became a friend of John Philoponus, who wrote a non-Chalcedonian treatise named "A Treatise Concerning the Whole and the Parts" at Sergius' request.

Patriarch of Antioch Jacob Baradaeus, who had become Bishop of Edessa, consecrated Sergius as patriarch of Antioch at Constantinople, thus cementing the schism in the church of Antioch into the non-Chalcedonian Syriac Church and Chalcedonian Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch. Sources disagree on the date of Sergius' consecration as patriarch. According to the Zuqnin Chronicle, he was consecrated in 544, whereas John of Ephesus in his Ecclesiastical History dates the consecration to 557. Sergius resided at Constantinople for the duration of his term as patriarch, for which he was later erroneously termed patriarch of Constantinople by the 14th-century historian Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos in his Ecclesiastical History. He died a natural death, either in 547 as per the Zuqnin Chronicle, or in 560 as per John of Ephesus.