Alexander of Constantinople
Bishop of Byzantium and the first bishop of Constantinople
Alexander of Constantinople (Ancient Greek: Ἀλέξανδρος; c. 241 – 337) was bishop of Byzantium from 314 and the first bishop of Constantinople from 330 (the city was renamed during his episcopacy in 330). Scholars consider most of the available information on Alexander to be legendary.
Origin and early life
According to the Synaxarion, Alexander was originally from Calabria in Italy and his parents were called George and Vryaine. From a very young age, he was given to God and stayed in a monastery, where he cultivated virtue and became a good labourer of God's commands. He was granted divine visions, while for twenty days he stayed completely fasting. But he also stayed naked for four years and fell into thousands of problems because of attacks of the Saracens. In this way, he lived many years traveling around Greece with his pupils Vitalius and Nicephorus.
Alexander was elected as a vicar to assist the aged bishop Metrophanes of Byzantium. According to Gelasius of Cyzicus, Metrophanes was alive during the First Council of Nicaea (325), but could not partake due to his age and ill health, so he sent instead Alexander of Constantinople, whom he destined as his successor.
“Alexander of Constantinople” enters the record as bishop of Byzantium and the first bishop of Constantinople. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Alexander, Constantinople and Bishop can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q982488. VIAF identifies the subject as 85487020. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alexander of Constantinople” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.