Elias
ELIAS. There were three patriarchs of Jerusalem of this name.
Elias I.
1. Elias I. was patriarch from A. D. 494 or 495 till his deposition by a council held at Sidon, whose decree was enforced, A. D. 513, by the emperor Anastasius I. He died in exile A. D. 518.
Elias Ii.
2. Elias II. held the patriarchate from A. D. 760, or earlier, to 797, with the exception of an interval, when he was expelled by an intrusive patriarch Theodorus. He was represented at the second general council of Nicaea, A. D. 787, by Joannes, a presbyter, and Thomas, principal of the convent of St. Arsenius near Babylon in Egypt: these ecclesiastics were also representatives of the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch.
Elias Iii.
3. Elias III. was patriarch at least as early as 881, when he sent a letter to Charles le Gros and the prelates, princes, and nobles of Gaul.
Elias died about A. D. 907.
Works
Letter to Charlemagne
Editions
A Latin version of the letter of Elias to Charlemagne (for it is scarcely probable that the original was in that language) was published in the Spicilegium of D'Achéry.
Further Information
Papebroche, Tractatus preliminaris de Episcolpis et Patriarchis Sanctae Hierosolymnitanae Ecclesiae in the Acta Sanctorum: Maii, vol. iii. with the Appendix in vol. vii. p. 696, &c.; Labbe, Concilia, vol. vii.; D'Achéry, Spicileg. vol. iii. p. 363, ed. Paris, 1723.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.