Two Patriarchs and One Profession: A Middle Byzantine Theological Compilation Misattributed to Germanos and Methodios of Constantinople

Scrinium: Journal of Patrology and Critical Hagiography. 2025. Vol. 21. No. 1. P. 342–359.

Lukhovitskiy L.

A profession of faith preserved in Princeton MS 180 (13th century, 2nd half) is wrongly indexed in the catalogue of Greek manuscripts at Princeton and the database Pinakes as an unpublished text by Germanos I, patriarch of Constantinople (715–730). Upon closer examination, it appears to be a later compilation that draws upon at least three different sources, none of them earlier than the 9th century. Another version of this compilation transmitted by Vaticanus graecus 1753 (15th century, 2nd half), has been attributed to Methodios I (843–847) since its partial publication in 1868. A reexamination of the evidence available to the editor J. B. Pitra shows that this attribution is also incorrect. A profession of faith purportedly pronounced by Methodios on March 11th, 843, is a historiographical phantom that conflates two different texts: the aforementioned compilatory profession (no earlier than the 1st half of the 11th century) and a polemical treatise Adversus Constantinum Caballinum (late 760s).

Keywords: History of Church Councils, Byzantine literature, Greek manuscripts, Patriarchate of Constantinople, profession of faith